YouSaid · the spoken record

Ashton Applewhite

lines on the record: 66
first: 2019-04-01
most recent: 2019-04-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“This Jairrocks.com. I have this Jairox Facebook page. I'm at thisJairrocks on Instagram and Twitter. And I just launched a resource called Old School.info, which is a clearinghouse of free vetted anti-ageism resources. And I'm the only Ashton Apple white in the world. I'm sure that's a fantastic name, by the way.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She rolled her eyes. No, I get it. Humanity 101, you know, fear of dying is human. We're all born with it. We're very afraid of dying as kids. Interestingly, fear of dying diminishes in late life, which is interesting to me. So the fact, you know, Ponce de Leon, the search for eternal youth, you know, the fountain of youth, I think that's an eternal quest. I'm not surprised that a lot of money is going into it, but I would like people to see it as a both and proposition rather than let's not think about getting older because it's awful and scary and pretend that's not happening. Let's age as healthily as we can. By all means, let's invest billions into understanding better what happens to the body as it ages. But I would like to have a longer health span be the goal rather than what you”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we have less money. A possible reason is that I mentioned before the most important component of what we think of as a good old age is a strong social network. Women are better at creating and maintaining those relationships. So that could be why.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, and as long as that is the objective, it's rooted really in self-loathing, in denial of the fact that we are aging. And to slip that noose and to see, look, this thing is happening and there are things about it I don't like, but it is also a source of growth and power. I mean, for lots of women, late life is the best time of all. Again, not to deny the scary stuff, but to see both sides and to try absolutely to live as healthily as possible for as long as we can, but to acknowledge also that things will change and things will slow. And that is not tragic.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are very key distinctions. Most of us slow down. And when we hold up as the ideal, this idea that aging well means basically somewhere north of middle age starting to work really hard to not age, to look and act like younger versions of ourselves, to stop the clock, it sets us up to fail. It pits us against each other. It fills you with dread because you know sooner or later the umpteenth Botox, you know, you're going to start looking scary or something isn't going to work the way.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I would say I would prefer that the discourse be about pro-aging, about health span, rather than anti-aging. Because the whole, we are aging. And the whole idea that your age should be a source of shame, that if you...”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a plastic cornea. I love it. If they invented some gunk I could put in my cartilage, I would do it tomorrow. Let's do both, you know.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a fair point. Aging is living. Aging happens every day. Right. You know, dying is just what happens at the end of all that living. It is a discrete biological event. You may look at me and think I'm old as fuck, but you don't think I'm dying, right? So let's call it a problem.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Health span. Yeah, that's the same way. Which I like, I get fantastically Around us, they think we'll get there. I do see a movement, I think there will be some really significant strides in anti-aging. And I don't mean looking good or let's call it profit.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Longer, seven and a half years longer, they recover more quickly from severe disability. They walk faster. The latest study out of Yale, this is blue chip science, and it's all findable on my blog or in the book, is that having a realistic attitude towards aging confers protection against Alzheimer's, even in people with the gene that predisposes them to the disease. And the idea is that these attitudes serve as a buffer against stress and anxiety around aging, which is the result of living in an age of society. So that's why I'm pushing a social movement that challenges that dominant narrative with the science and with the evidence that we all see when we lift up our heads and look around us at the older people around us.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. It is not inevitable that you can be very Great, the goal of public health is to extend possibly lifespan but very definitely health span. Health span. Yeah, that's where I put it. Right. And that is absolutely, which I like, I get fantastically commendable objective. Let's learn more about what happens to the body and what we can do to slow the process of aging, but end it? And one thing that I love pointing out is all the research that shows how attitudes to aging affect how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level. So it's not either or, right? But of course, a pill by this pill and you can live forever is a lot more exciting than, you know, take these 10 pills, meditate for an hour and exercise for an hour, and you can live, you know, healthier but not live forever. Of course people are going to click on the live forever button. People with more realistic attitudes towards aging, which I used to say more positive, but what it really means is you see the other side of the story.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we know that's what that said. There's enormous amounts of investment, and some of it's fascinating. Some of it's fascinating. The ideas are stuff at the SOC Institute. There's stuff around meditation. There's stuff around all kinds of things. One of the people who's doing a lot of investing is explained to me. It's not so much, it's lengthening life if you want and not being sick for the last part of your life. But ending this sickness part of it is not inevitable, that you can be very healthy until the day you die.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't know children. Children and people who are much older because an ageist idea I started out with was one of the awful things about getting old is clearly that as death gets closer you must get more apprehensive. That's not the way it works. The knowledge that time is short enables us to appreciate the present more, to live in the moment. Kids do it because they don't know how to do anything else and the very old do it. Fear of death diminishes with age. If you are busy eating a grapefruit size bowls of pills every five minutes so that you don't have to think about dying, you are clearly always preoccupied with moving that ball down the road, unable ever. Live in the present. And we know that that's what.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be fantastic if we could delay aging, if we could understand more about what does go on with the body. But I think it's delusory. We don't even understand the basic biology of the cell. I also think that the social and political component is essential. Suppose you could live to be forever or live to be 200. Do you want to age in a world that treats you like a second-class citizen? I don't right. And I mean, if I'm super rich, sure, I can purchase the supports that maybe buy me friends, buy me the illusion of independence in air quotes, but it's not going to be available to most of us. And I think it's going to be a very lonely life. And lastly, philosophically, I don't think it's the right approach. We know from Greek myths and literature that tales of endless life do not end well. Right.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, all the people who are investing money in this are back to wealthy white men against somehow coincidentally how I'll take that from them.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good luck with that. There are people, much, much more research into the basic biology of aging. It's underfunded, as is almost everything to do with aging, despite the fact that population is this massive global permanent demographic trend. Research into, I don't like to call it longevity science. I call it immortality science because exactly as you said, it really is. It's not about living longer. It's about not dying. Not dying. It's expensive. You're dying slow.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To sort of skewer the idea that the most important thing about us is how we look. I don't love that name because it indicates, it suggests that the knowledge comes from olders down to youngers when in fact it's always a two-way exchange. But if more younger women knew older women who are in their full power, as so many of us are, they would be less afraid of aging, right? And stop wasting so much time worrying about it. And we older women would be reminded of how hard it is to be 20 and 30 and be more general.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you need young people if you're older. You need older people if you're younger. I think, I mean, one of my many plans in my free time haha is to, I have a consciousness raising guide on my website called Who Me Agist Free Download. And I want to make one for women and the name I'm working with is You Will Look Like Us.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the best, the most important component of a good old age is not how healthy you are or how wealthy you are. It's whether you have a robust social network. And back to one of the inevitable, the only other inevitable thing, bad thing about aging, people you've known all your life are going to die. It's really important to have friends of all ages.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And that's the problem with culture fit. Is the tendency, which is human to gravitate to, you know, people who look like us. But one of the most, you're back to things that you could do is when you get to a social event, don't make a beeline for people your own age.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's proximity. If you don't have proximity around you, if you don't have people, meaning you're not near older people, you're not people of color, you're not near women, your proximity determines a lot of your decision making.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what are those things in theory that young people need apps for that old people don't? Dating? Guess what? Older people date too. You know, older people want to find places, want to look up a restaurant.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Than an age issue up. Smartphone adoption graphs to socioeconomic status more than it does to age. So indeed, it is really important to have things with an interface. I mean, my eyes are not what they used to be, although since I had cataract surgery, I'm not wearing glasses for the first time of my life. So it's double-edged. But when you zoom in on the Maps app, the name of the street doesn't get bigger. Stuff like that would be really great. And let's back to ableism. You know, there are visually impaired people of all ages, all those, everything we do to make the world a better place to be old in makes it a better place to have a family, to have a disability, to be from somewhere else.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say the issue there is product design You know, older people like to play games. Older people need to figure out the app so they can get in the parking garage. The issue really with technology is more a class issue.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you look at the popular culture, you would think that olders, all we did was take meds and if we're, you know, and go on cruises, when of course older people do exactly the same things that younger people do, maybe not the same versions of them. But it is sort of insane to say that experience is not a liability. And not one of the stereotypes used to justify discrimination against older workers is true. The not creative thing, it's being in the same job for 30 years that makes you not creative.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's tough for them. It's tough to be a guy. But I think, and you know what an uncomfortable reckoning. And I'm not being snarky at all to realize, oh, crap, I didn't get where I got on my brains alone. But I think the awareness that there are these intersecting forms of prejudice is closer to the service. I think they must have girlfriends or boyfriends who are helping to bring that awareness home that it's in the culture. So I think it's closer. And there is also, of course, the business case, you know, to be made. I mean, not only are our key industries, I don't think tech is one of them, but where they are going to experience a shortage of good workers as olders either retire or are forced out of the workplace. And if you have a diverse client base, you want, age is a criterion for diversity. It's not that old people only sell stuff to old people. And PS.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it'll be interesting to see how that changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah Ancient apparently. Well, I think we change it in tech the way we change it everywhere. You know, I think I do think that privileged, you know, straight white men are, you know, they are the most privileged members of society. I'm starting to get pushback and being called sexist and racist for saying that.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“but not old. And again, it's a new industry too. This is an interesting that was, you know, you have the founders running them and they're not, they were young when they started interesting to see how that changes. Yeah, yeah. Bill Gates is super old comparatively. Ancient. Ancient comparatively. So with these lawsuits and things like that, how do you then change the attitude in tech to change that?”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, but you still see pushback on those things. I mean, one of the things that's interesting is they don't mention age in that group. A lot of people have urged me to talk more about the issue. We've got to talk about it. And there's been several books about it. There's a lot of lawsuits recently around age. There's an obvious bias that happens. You can't pick people at most of these companies that are very old. There's just not, even at the top, there's older people. Right.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pitching age to the intersectionality sled, if you will, is a much smaller ask than it was to say 60 years ago, you know, a woman could run a huge company as well as a man.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, think about it. If you've toddled along, I mean, I think maybe Mark Zuckerberg and his peers really think it's a meritocracy out there. But it is not. You know, obviously, as anyone with a vagina knows, you know, and all this, I mean, ableism, disability, that is a really huge hurdle to getting a job anywhere. And no one talks about the intersection between ageism and ableism. The fact is we know that diverse workplaces work better. We know that diverse companies work better. And to have to say things like, you know, I ask people, what do you think of as criteria for diversity? And everyone says, you know, gender and race, blah, blah, blah. Not too many people say age yet. But when I say how bad age, no one says that's a dumb idea, or let me get back to you. So I think my kids generation, they're millennials, the idea of intersectionality, the idea that these forms of oppression intersect and reinforce each other is very close to the surface.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We learn what we need to do when older people are forced out of the workplace and it is worse for women and worse for women of color, then they are deprived access to this stuff and these critical tools and hello.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally aegist of me, that because he was a young guy, he knew all about this. And he said, I don't know what Snapchat is. There are families now with siblings where one sibling a few years apart in age from another uses a different set of social media tools. That's true. And we olders, it is, I mean, I'm not technophobic. I'm not technophilic, but it is, I do think incumbents. Yeah, I'm both. I'm skitsy about it. You know, I had to learn to be on Twitter, which I have actually come to love. I'm still Instagram, I'm still clumsy. But, you know, if feeding your family depends on mastering a, you know, supersonic tractor or nuclear fusion, you know, you will learn how to do it. We need to, you know, the skills we need, I had to develop a social media presence because I'm self-published. I don't have affiliations and credentials. And it's become fantastically useful to me.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Man in their 30s imagined the effects further down the food chain. Agism intersects with sexism, women in the world, work world at large in the U.S., stopping promoted at age 32. And it is compounded, of course, by race and by class. So it becomes increasingly harder to get a job intact. I remember years ago I was in LA and a friend of my son's was at Snapchat came up. I guess it was, and I just assumed.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My guess, and it is a guess, is that the rate of change in tech is so great. And I have to remind people that, you know, if you were a farmer, you had to learn how to go from using a plow to using a tractor to using the supercomputer that our tractors. There is this idea of a digital divide that I think is pretty bogus too. You know, having grown up playing video games does not qualify you to be a better coder or more adept in this world. I think you have fast growing industries where young white and Asian men are prioritized in the educational system and then tend to hire people who look like them. The phrase is culture fit. It's hard to break out of that bubble. But as we know, everyone suffers when companies are not diverse. You know, if this kind of oppression is affecting skilled white”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's just as age. I mean, I have a young friend who goes to a lot of these conferences where they're, you know, around Ageland. And he's young and he's male. So 50 people ask him if he can fix their computers as he walks through the room. That's a just and sexist too.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think he Well, ageism is the first form of discrimination that many white men encounter. So I'm eager for some of those guys to get woke. I remember, and I think when it sort of bubbled forth was an article in technology review three or four years ago, I don't know if you saw it, which was sort of an expose of sorts. And the quote in it that stuck with me, they were quoting a cosmetic surgeon who does Botox and stuff. And he said he was about to plump up a guy in his 30s who said, I have a key interview and I can't look like I have a wife and a mortgage and two young kids. What does it say about our society that looking like you have two young kids and a mortgage disqualifies you for employment? I mean, that's grotesque.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember, are you kidding me? Really? Yeah, you know, right. I mean, it's such blind arrogance, privilege, hello. You know, whiteness, maleness, wealth, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it is.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, it was an ignorant thing to say. And my guess is, you know, he's obviously a smart guy. My guess is he might already be wise enough to know that that was a dumb thing to say and it's going to come back and bite him. I think the interesting, one of the interesting things about one of the interesting things”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is, and let's not forget the evil pairing with sexism as well. I mean, Zuckerberg famously said, and I am waiting for the moment when it comes back to Biden and the ass, you know, young people are just smarter, which was honestly. Well, maybe that's what's going on.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely his world. Talk a lot about tech because tech is the one place where they sort of fetishize youth. And they also allow people to stay younger longer than they're younger. Like one of the things I always say about Mucker Zuckerberg, they're like, oh, he's just a, you know, he wears a kid. I was like, no, he's a parent of two children. He's over 30. He's an adult. Like, stop fetishizing that he's this whole idea of sort of this Peter Pan mentality of lost boys and everything else. It's really very severe in tech more than other places.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not married, but we've been together a long time. He would say he's not in tech, but he's a publisher of electronic stuff. So he has definitely his world. Taco.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're here with Ashton Applewhite. Her new book is called This Chair Rocks A Manifesto Against Ageism. Let's talk about Silicon Valley and the Mythology Around Youth and Discovery and Youth and Tech. Married to someone who's in tech”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Children will Yes. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. All right, we're talking with Ashton Applewite, whose new book is called This Chair Rocks The Manifesto Against Agism. We're going to take a quick break now, but we'll be back after this.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. You know, confusion around. If you don't, if you can't jump to that conclusion that the person who got the cat out of a tree was 40 or that the person who did that was a straight guy or whatever, that causes us to interrogate our preconceived notions. And that's a better way to be in our mixy-uppy world. Yeah.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have no idea. I mean, it functions as a useful shorthand, but one place I get consistent pushback from is journalists because I say Make the case that we should leave age out of stories as you do, which is fantastic. And they go, no, no, no, it's part of the who, what, when, why, where of journalism, well, race used to be part of that too. And we took it out for exactly that reason.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sexy, whatever. I don't know anybody's age. I never pay attention to anybody's age. Ever. I don't even know how old people are. I was with someone the other day, and they were like, Don't you know how old I am? I'm like, no, I don't care. I don't care what your age is.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But discrimination is not funny And when you buy a greeting card that mocks or denies your age or tell, you know, say, oh, well, you know, of course I can't. I'm too old to do X or Y. Really good starting point is to think about how you use the words old and young. You know, people say all the time, I don't feel old. And they're telling the truth. But what they really mean is that they don't feel invisible. Or they don't feel incompetent. And those are things we feel at every point in the life. I mean, I felt, you know, I don't know about you, but my most ugly and least competent at, you know, as an adolescent. So decouple the word young from insert good thing, you know, energetic, sexy, whatever, and old from its opposite. I don't know.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, the passive knitting granny and a benevolent stereotype is still a stereotype. Or Grandpa Simpson, you know, the crankety get off my lawn, crotchety guy.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meaning, think about your own attitudes towards age and aging. One of the many ideas that seem totally impossible when I first encountered it was the idea that older people tend to be the most worst ages of all. And again, it's not just a young person problem, but we are barraged with this awful anti-aging message starting with children's books. And unless we stop the question.”
2019-04-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ashton Applewhite · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT