* This is the last episode in 2023. Back on Jan. 26, 2024! * Debbie talks to Mary Pipher, a psychologist and bestselling author of 11 books including the ground-breaking Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls.  She was the first psychologist to recognize and articulate why life was difficult for adolescent girls and why so many of them felt bad about themselves. More recently, she has written Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age, about women navigating the transition from middle age to old age (the topic of this podcast!). In 2022, she ..read more

Welcome back to Season 6! You might’ve noticed that we changed the name of the show to more accurately reflect the focus, which is to explore the transition from midlife to old age. [B]OLDER seemed a bit too general, so it's now [B]OLD AGE. Given our ageist society, it requires [b]oldness to say proudly, "I am old." This season our goal is to be even more honest and vulnerable about what it’s like as the clock ticks away. For this first episode, Debbie is joined by her husband, Sam Harrington, a popular recurring guest who is known for his dry humor. He's a retired physician and an author. The ..read more

Today, Debbie speaks to Jonathan Merritt, one of America’s most respected writers on faith and culture. Debbie met Jonathan in the hot tub in Baja Mexico, but don’t get the wrong idea. They were both in Baja to attend a weeklong workshop organized by Modern Elder Academy. And as you’ll hear in this episode, "change and transformation" were very much on the agenda. You may have heard her talk about MEA. It’s billed as a midlife wisdom school whose core mission is to shift our negative mindset about aging.  MEA is also a little bit of paradise. The campus, bursting with pink bougainvillea ..read more

Debbie talks with Dr. Bree Johnston, a geriatrician and palliative care physician in practice for 35 years who is also certified in psychedelic therapies. This is a re-airing of an episode published one year ago. The topic of psychedelic therapy has gone mainstream in the past several years and especially in the past year. In the year since Debbie and Dr. Bree spoke, the use of psilocybin, MDMA and other psychedelics as therapy for addiction, depression and to ease fear of death has been increasingly in the news. The use of psilocybin is now legal or decriminalized in a handful of states in ad ..read more

Debbie brings her favorite recurring guest, husband Sam Harrington, back onto the show. This is a special episode because they are celebrating 50 years of marriage today, Feb. 3, 2023. They were married a half century ago, in 1973. It was truly another age,  pre-Internet and so much more. They were both 21. That's an astonishing fact: they were obviously too young to get married. But they did and the marriage has lasted.  They acknowledge how lucky they are and how much they have to be grateful for.  They have six grandchildren, they like hanging out together, and Sam is still t ..read more

Today Debbie tackles the topic of aging (better? longer??) with Andrew Steele, an ebullient British scientist, writer and author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old. After earning a PhD in physics from Oxford, Andrew decided that aging -  not cancer or other diseases - was the single most important scientific challenge of our time. Why? Because of the suffering that goes along with old age. So he switched fields to biogerontology, the study of the processes of aging at the cellular level. Andrew, 37, doesn’t advocate for immortality. As he puts it: “It’s not a ..read more

Welcome to Season 5 of [B]OLDER where Debbie Weil talks about "making the most of growing older,"  both the good and the not-so-great parts of aging. But today it’s all GOOD.  Becoming a grandparent is something many people look forward to. Debbie and her husband, Sam Harrington, are lucky enough to have six grandchildren thus far. In this episode she chats with Sam (aka "Ba"), to debrief their trip to Iceland this past summer with two grandchildren. They talk about why they chose Iceland, and which grandchildren they took with them - and why - and how Dorothea and Lius fared as fell ..read more

Debbie talks to Suzanne Carmichael about navigating a new phase of her life as a widow at age 78. Becoming a widow is one of Debbie's greatest fears. But it is a reality for many married women after age 65. So she invited Suzanne, a new friend in coastal Maine, onto the show. Debbie wanted to learn more about how she is handling this difficult experience. Suzanne's husband Don passed away in August of 2020 after what she calls a 46-year love affair. The early stages of grief were awful, she tells us. But then she realized she still had a lot of energy and wanted to do something with it. Thus w ..read more

Welcome to Season 5 of [B]OLDER. This is a podcast where I talk about "making the most of growing older,"  which includes both the good and the not-so-great parts of aging. But today it’s all GOOD.  Becoming a grandparent is something many people look forward to. We are lucky enough to have six grandchildren, thus far. In this episode I chat with my husband, Sam Harrington (aka "Ba"), to debrief our trip to Iceland this past summer with two grandchildren. We talk about why we chose Iceland, and which grandchildren we took with us - and why - and how Dorothea and Lius fared as fe ..read more

Debbie Weil brings her husband Sam Harrington back on the show for a dose of his dry humor and to wrap up Season 4. Sam shares some of his favorite episodes (see below) and they discuss several topics in the news: Medical Aid In Dying and the 100-year life. If you've listened to Sam in previous episodes, you can probably guess what he thinks about living to 100.  Sam is a retired physician; friends and family affectionately call him Dr. Death. They also talk about grandparenting and what you can expect from Season 5.  Sam's favorite episodes from Season 4 [B]OLDER S4-EP13: Nicholas ..read more