Sarah Kanowski

So do you think there are, I mean, particular professions where a retirement age should be enforced?

What kind of economic reforms do you think could help alleviate some of the negative consequences of increased life expectancy?

Well, I mean, that then leads, I guess, into the changes to our political process that you think could better reflect the changing lifespan.

I guess it's that interesting thing, isn't it?

If the majority of your voting population is midlife or older, then it's hard to encourage people to vote against what look like their own economic or political interests.

In this new demographic landscape, Lucinda, you'd count as something called the young old, I think.

Is that right?

Given that, given where you're kind of at in this march of time, how has exploring all of this affected your own sense about what your future decades might look like, what you want them to look like?

Because even having to think about this stage of life and, you know, further decades along as well is a new thing.

People are having to think about a span of their life in a different way.

And if they're retiring at 60, there might be another 30, 35, 40 years they have to think about.

I guess the sort of dark shadow maybe hovering around all of this conversation around your book is death, which is still an inevitability despite what those tech pros might want.

Have you found that there's still a taboo socially about acknowledging death?

It also puts us away from every other life on the planet.

This idea that humans somehow can avoid death and no other living being can.

Well, as you say, I think it's a way of avoiding the present in a deep way, trying to imagine that it can just be extended forever.

I want to really, before we end, Lucinda, think again about the many elderly people who right now are having a tough time, who already feel like their life is somehow a burden to their family now, maybe to the whole country, and I don't want them to feel worse out of hearing this conversation.

What do you want the message to be for those people who are already in advanced old age, who maybe are in that hard gap between health span and life span?

I keep thinking about that image of your nana on the farm, I'm sorry, the property with her red lipstick and her red hair, offering everyone a whiskey.

I mean, it can be a really great stage of life.