It's Just Aging with Dr. Sally Chivers
Amplified is an audio blog series about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. This month on Amplified, we sit down with Dr. Sally Chivers of Wrinkle Radio to discuss her work in age studies, the intersectionality present in age studies, and how joyful it is to see your best friend's laugh on a waveform.
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00:00 - Stacey Copeland (Host) [Theme music plays underneath]
Welcome to Amplified, an audio blog, a podcast, about the sounds of scholarship. From our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. I'm your host, Stacy Copeland. In spring 2023, Amplify Podcast Network put out our first invite for new podcasts to join our non-peer reviewed sustain stream. The editorial board was blown away by the number and quality of proposals we received and thrilled for what this enthusiasm might indicate about the growth and excitement around scholarly podcasting. Over the next few months, I sit down with our newest network members in the sustain stream to delve into a key question in the world of academic podcasting: why podcast? Today we're joined by Wrinkle Radio's Dr. Sally Chivers, a scholar and podcaster reshaping our understanding of aging. We'll explore Sally's journey into podcasting and her distinctive approach to Wrinkle Radio, which blends personal storytelling and academic research with critical issues at the intersections of aging, from the climate crisis to gender politics. We'll also delve into Sally's inspiration behind her podcast and how she envisions the future of Wrinkle Radio. As the show's tagline says, don't panic, it's just aging.
01:39 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
I am Sally Chivers and my research is in the field of age studies. So age studies is an interdisciplinary field, like gender studies, like race studies, like queer studies, that puts age as a critical lens. It's a humanities and critical social sciences field. So it's not gerontology, but we're kind of friends with gerontology. My own research within that it's partly on representations of aging. So cinema and fiction actually is where I started doing this, looking at how older characters are portrayed and how that has the potential to change how we think about aging. And then I've also over time done ethnographic research internationally, looking at both nursing homes and age-friendly communities, working with a team to think about promising practices, to see how we could make nursing homes better, because we know we really really need that, and then also how we can do age friendliness in a way that's not so white and neoliberal, to put it really, really straightforwardly.
02:46 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Yeah, I mean that's quite a range of research, so thinking about more of the pop culture and media side of things but also the actual everyday experiences of what aging is in society today, which I think you can tell that kind of range of expertise when you listen to your podcast. So I mean, tell us a little bit about wrinkle radio for people who aren't familiar.
03:08 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
Yeah. So the tagline of Wrinkle Radio is don't panic, it's just aging.
03:13
And there's two parts yeah, I love it too, and there's two parts of that.
03:19
One of them is actually the slogan of the Trent Center for Aging in Society, which is something that I helped to build at my university is that an aging population is nothing to be afraid of. We're taught by so many cultural messages, policies, things going on with our own bodies, in our families, to be afraid of aging. And there's, you know, whenever we see fear mongering in a general representation across the board, I worry, right, and I see that as a bit of a moral panic. So that's one of the key messages of Wrinkle Radio is like where are the moments when you are being invited to be afraid of growing old, and which of those are maybe something you should be afraid of and which of them aren't? And then the second part "it's just aging is is meant to be a play on justice, right? So I want to be talking about why some people do have more to fear about aging than others and how we could shift all of the structures that make that the case.
04:25 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Oh, Sally, I love that. I never really thought about your tagline that way and I'm sure I've read it somewhere that you think about it that way, like obviously. But it's so thoughtful to think about the kind of play on words there, the just as in it's inevitable we all age, but also just as in what makes it just in the politics of aging in society. So that's so great.
04:47 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's something I will need to emphasize even more in podcast episodes, because people think, oh yeah, we all age. It's a universal and we don't like, we don't all grow old and the thing that we consider to be old happens at different times based on socioeconomic status, race politics, geopolitics, you know the kind of just randomness of health. So I do want to talk more about that explicitly in the podcast.
05:22 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
That we all don't end up having gray hair and reaching certain ages, and what does that mean when it comes to questions of aging?
05:29 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
And who gets to worry about gray hair and who, like, could care less about gray hair Because they're hoping to survive right Like it's.
05:38 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Oh my gosh, yeah, 100%. And I mean I think that's one of the reasons we were really drawn to Wrinkle Radio when we were looking through who put out interest in becoming part of Amplify Podcast Network. So you're one of our inaugural cohort members for our Sustain stream and with Sustain we've got you and we've got a nice thoughtful cohort of folks. But what I loved about Wrinkle Radio when we first got your pitch was this nuanced social justice approach to politics of aging and that conversation when we're thinking about aging age is one of those kind of no, no topics a lot of the time with conversation, but here you actually get to listen into very thoughtful and frank discussions of aging. I can guess at why you were interested in making a podcast in relation to your work, but I'm curious you know, what brought you to podcasting in the first place?
06:35 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
It's such a great question because it was such a slow process and then such a fast and sudden process. So I knew there were these conversations happening in age studies with really interesting insights about aging. And then I know that I'm in that midlife, like people starting to hit menopause and be like holy crap, this is going to happen to me. I'm in that age group right and I know there's conversations going on there and they weren't meeting and so part of me was thinking I had an opportunity to just bring these conversations that we keep to ourselves way too often in academia into a broader public. That's one of the things I wanted to do. I was also really influenced by Kim Sawchuk, who's a prof at Concordia. She gave a presentation a while ago about how audio is more accessible because it's low bandwidth Like such an obvious point, but a real aha moment for me.
07:36
And I used audio in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic for my teaching because my students didn't have good access to internet right, like I'm in a relatively rural area, loved doing that and then honestly, like I know, everybody's world crashed down in like the early 2020s and mine really did and my physical and mental health just kind of stood up and screamed at me and said you have to do something different. So, instead of doing this podcast the way I thought I would which is like added on to all my work as a side project, somehow thinking this was some easy thing I would do I really just like turned the whole boat and thought I want to do something that excites me. And now's the time, like don't put this off anymore. So and I needed a way to work that didn't involve a lot of writing. It wasn't stuck, let's say, in the way that I felt some of the publishing I had been doing was starting to get.
08:41 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Yeah, I mean, you hear this actually quite a bit and I don't think it's talked about enough. The way we move in the academic world. We rely so much on the written word and so much on a certain style of written text that podcasting I mean, I felt the same way, but it opened up an opportunity to just think about my work in a different way and kind of remove myself. Mine was in a different experience. It was, you know, the fatigue of writing my PhD dissertation was where I found relief in coming into podcast space to to share my research in that way instead. Thinking about how Wrinkle Radio sits in the larger scheme of your research, how do you balance, you know, making this podcast and still doing academic work or running in those circles? Do you find tensions there, or how do you, how do you balance that in your everyday?
09:33 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
I haven't found tensions there yet. I started this as a sabbatical project. I'm a full professor. I won the research award that I wanted to win like a year or two before I started this. So in some ways I feel like I'm done with having to prove myself, so that kind of needing to count, needing the work to count in that sometimes bean count-y way of academia, that isn't important to me anymore, right? So I really wanted to explore impact the way that I think I actually mean impact, which is that someone might walk down the street and or come up to me at choir, like they did last night, and say I love your podcast.
10:16
I'm also finding it's really useful to bring the podcast into the classroom. So it's helpful that way. And the other way that I'm able to integrate it into my research is I'm part of a lot of large research teams and I'm just inviting people from them to be part of the podcast. So in each case, this is a way of contributing. But I went to the project Aging in Data that I'm in and I said this is what I'm doing, I am starting this podcast and they this is run by Kim Sawchuk, who I mentioned before they said okay, Sally, it sounds like this is really what you're doing. Let's make it an Aging in Data project. So they welcomed it and I have a community.
10:57
So in that way I think I'm answering this a little bit carefully because I'm in so many ways privileged, except I will say, kind of broken from the process of getting to this point of privilege and and I intend to really just make the most of of that point that I've gotten to.
11:17
So I don't have good advice for people who aren't there yet necessarily, except that what I've noticed is, as soon as I started doing this, this heart project I've wanted to do for so long and ignored a lot of the advice I got about how to make it count and the hoops to jump through, I've just gotten all the attention I would have wanted to get for my own work. I've been featured in the Globe and Mail. I was on the national CBC. I didn't put out pitches for that and I had been putting out pitches before and getting nowhere right, because there's tons of people writing about nursing homes and within a particular topic. But I just I did what I really believed in and I think I had to know that the stakes were low, like it didn't matter if it didn't work out and it really has, I feel.
12:13 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a testament to you find your people, you know you find your support system and sometimes it is you know, you get to a point with your research and you can go a few different directions, and it's good to hear, even though you do feel like you're at a point where you have that privilege and power to do what you want, you still found other people to say, yeah, do that, Sally, that is what you should be doing, and I think that's really that's honestly key. That's always the advice I give people is find your people, because if you're interested in doing something and excited about doing something, there's bound to be some others who will be there to support and maybe do it too.
12:52
And I mean with that you have some really amazing people involved as guests in your podcast, and I don't know if I'm well, I would say I don't know if I'm your target audience, but I feel like your podcast actually speaks to quite a few different demos across the board, because it is one of those topics that is just. It's part of thinking about what it means to be a human, and so in that I had asked you if you maybe had a standout episode you recommend to people, but I know that's also like picking your favorite child. I don't know if you have an answer to this, but do you have any maybe favorites or favorite moments? Even not necessarily in the episode, but perhaps just in the process of making it?
13:38 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. When I thought about it, it's like you're asking me to pick my favorite child and my best friend, because so far, the people that I have interviewed are people I really trust and who trust me, because I started like not even really knowing how to press record right and
13:54
I'm doing all of it myself all the sound design, all the setup, all the like everything. I'm glad you're not making me like double down on that question of the kind of best episode or whatever, but what I love about making it is these are people that I've worked with over years. A lot of them I've traveled with and done research in really, let's say, uncomfortable circumstances with, and I know them very, very well and I've read their work and I've written with a lot of them. But I love interviewing them and then spending like a month just listening to them. Like it's like I've had coffee with some of these best friend scholars and I've learned like I've learned what their laugh looks like on a wave form.
14:43
That was, I think, one of my favorite moments, because my very first interview was with my best friend. I had to do a project for a class I was taking on podcasting and like academics are really busy so you can't be like, can you come in? Like tomorrow. But my best friend, who had this complicated story about dyeing her hair, was all into it and I remember editing it and being like that's, I know how her laugh sounds, but now I know how it looks like on the screen. That is, I think, my favorite aha moment is just being able to spend that time with people, really hear what they're saying and get to know their voices in an intimate way.
15:24 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Can you tell me a little bit about how many episodes in now? You just had a new one we're interviewing in November seven. Now a new one last month in October 2023. How many are you thinking of making? Are you thinking of making this forever and always? Is it whenever you meet somebody that you are most interested in talking to? Walk us through a little bit about the what do they say "inside baseball questions of the podcast?
15:55 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
Sure, yeah. So I mean I expect Wrinkle Radio to grow old with me and my plan. I've made it a monthly podcast to make it manageable for me. I hope that is even proving to be a little optimistic during an academic year.
16:10
So, I'm really trying to do it in a slow, methodical, sustainable way and I do expect to do it beyond retirement. I mean, growing old is never going to get old as a topic, but I deliberately called it Wrinkle Radio, partly because I liked the sound of it, but I was also thinking it could function as a kind of channel so there could be offshoots as topics come up that are narrower and more relevant to aging in the particular moment. There could be a whole year where I focus on aging and climate crisis, or I mean, obviously I could do the entire podcast on nursing home care and care, so I could see that kind of evolution over time. But for now I still have at least dozens of colleagues that I already know their work would work really well in Wrinkle Radio. That said, I would like to return to the form of the very first episode, and that is where I would start the one that I called the Power of Grayscale.
17:19
That's kind of drawing on the Lisa Laflam story of the kind of shock of her dyeing her hair gray and compares to people's stories of dyeing their hair gray and looks into kind of the gendered ageism behind it. What I liked about that episode is it was a little bit more radio documentary than interview with an academic that I'm trying to pull out, and there was more storytelling. I think my guests are still doing a good job of pulling out stories and I'm trying to weave my own personal stories through, but I only have so many more personal stories to tell.
17:56
So with a little bit more time, maybe building a team, I could see using that approach, more kind of a community member, lived experience and an academic view that's where I'd like to see it go.
18:11 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Interesting, yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, aging and climate crisis. I was just at the huge environmental march in Amsterdam on the weekend so it is mid-November now where Greta Thunberg was speaking, and every time I go to those protests there's always such an amazing like grandmother s, grandfathers walking group organizing with their signs and the classic what is the world we're leaving for our grandchildren moments, and that is such an interesting age comparison of those experiences encapsulated beside figures like Greta, the future youth figure that gets so often used in climate crisis discourse. So, anyways, I'm looking forward to that in Wrinkle R adio.
19:06 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
Yeah, well, and just like the whole OK Boomer discourse right has come. I mean, it wasn't originated entirely because of climate crisis, but not all boomers are old, actually, and not all old people are boomers, and so it really ignores that kind of like divisive generational perspective on climate change. It ignores how devastating climate crisis is for older adults, particularly in lower and middle income countries.
19:36
So I do think there could be quite a long series as well as these people who've done decades of activism. My neighbor, who's in her 80s, said to me on the street the other day "we knew this was going to happen, we just didn't think we were going to see it. Right, like that's chilling, right.
19:53 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Yeah, so you've talked a little bit about where you want Wrinkle Radio to go, some of the topics perhaps, as it is clearly an endless topic you can take on, and a little bit about thinking about how much work it takes and how you can adjust accordingly with what makes sense for your life and your work-life balance and your other research. What do you wish if you were speaking to another former Sally or another person interested in starting up a podcast? What do you wish you knew at the start of this project?
20:29 - Sally Chivers (Guest)
On a really positive note, I wish I'd realized how quickly you can publish a podcast, like you have to get it to the point of being ready to go out there. But I wish I'd realized how fast it gets into the ears of people like across the world, and how generous audience members are, because I was really terrified of going public in this way and getting, like you know, canceled or doxxed for saying something. Like I was a little bit afraid of that and instead I get these generous emails from people of a bunch of different ages, right, like, like kind of traditional student age 20-somethings are writing me, people living alone in their 90s, right, and that hasn't been my experience, even with books that I love that I've written. So that on a positive front. I mean on the more challenging front it is a lot of work, right, Like you could do a podcast where you have a Zoom meeting and you press record and you put it out there and it will get on the platforms really fast.
21:41
But to do this kind of structured podcast, that's more like an essay. Someone warned me that it was a lot of work and I mean it really is, but I don't know anyone in academia who is afraid of hard work and it really it feels more like I am back in the life of the mind, but not in an ivory tower high-faluting way, but in a I'm actually thinking through ideas on a regular basis than I thought I would, and I also hadn't anticipated how collaborative it is, even though I'm doing it in a solo form right now, and my goal is to make my guests shine. Like I'm not competing with anybody in this process right.
22:31I make them look good. They make me look good. Other podcasts just make people want to listen to this podcast. Other podcasters want to help you do your podcast and get it out there like it really. I know it sounds really idyllic and that is kind of how I experienced the university a little bit when I first got to it, or maybe how I thought it was going to be, and I think that's if I had known that sooner, I might have started the podcast when I first had the idea, instead of waiting years.
23:09 - Stacey Copeland (Host)
Thanks for listening to Amplified coming to you each month from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. I'm your host, Stacey Copeland, and our project assistant and editor is Natalie Dusek. A special thanks to Sally for joining us in conversation this month. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, instagram or subscribe to our email newsletter for updates and to keep in touch. If you have comments or additional thoughts on our conversation today or any of our Amplify initiatives, please do reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Otherwise, I will catch you next month as we sit down with the gorgeous personalities behind Keeping it 101, a Killjoy's introduction to religion.
[Theme music out]
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Dr. Sally Chivers is Full Professor of Gender & Social Justice and English at Trent University, where she is a Founding Executive Member and Past Director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society and recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Research Award.
A prolific and sought-after speaker and collaborator, Dr. Chivers writes, speaks, and makes short films about the social and cultural politics of health, aging, and disability. Her monthly podcast Wrinkle Radio fights ageism one story at a time. She has published two books that draw on film and literary analysis to emphasize connections between aging and disability in the public imagination. Her two co-edited collections show that cultural representations influence how we think about aging, long-term care, and disability, and vice versa.
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Trent Center for Aging & Society
Intro + Outro Theme Music: Pxl Cray – Blue Dot Studios (2016)
Written and produced by: Stacey Copeland and Natalie Dusek