This week I gave a mini-presentation to my colleagues at Yale’s Information Society Project. Below are some of the broad questions I put to them.

Stereotypes underlie all prejudice. As I point out in my Introduction, we call out racist and sexist attitudes but seldom question descriptions of older people as confused or feeble. In fact, variability is a hallmark of older populations. Why are ageist attitudes given a pass?

Not only would working longer keep people healthier and happier, it would ease the strain on Social Security and Medicare, boost our sagging economy, and improve the standards of living of millions of Americans. We’re not talking about octogenarians hanging in there, just about adding a few more years to the current average retirement age (63 for men, 62 for women). Yet widespread ageism across the job spectrum makes this scenario unlikely.

The search function came in handy when reviewing the transcript of my interview with Dr. Natalia Tanner, whom I met in her sunny Detroit office on November 11th. Since it feels as though everything Tanner wasn’t the first black woman pull off, she was either the first woman or the first African-American to accomplish, I’d searched for “first.” The last find was the one that stuck in my head.

In September I had the privilege of meeting with Bob Butler, a pioneering gerontologist perhaps best known for coining the term “ageism” in 1968, whose work introduced the concepts of "productive aging" and "successful aging." Nowadays, finding the term “productive aging” too commodified, he’s switched to “productive engagement,” which he defines as “any productive activity, including even taking care of yourself.”