Ageism and Elections: Louise Aronson and Ken Covinsky

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GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast 47 min 5 speakers 2 chapters transcribed 9 hours ago
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What prompted the emergency podcast on ageism and elections?

Eric Widera 0:00
Welcome to the GeriPal podcast. This is Eric Wadera.
Alex Smith 0:03
This is Alex Smith.
Eric Widera 0:04
And Alex, who do we have with us today?
Alex Smith 0:06
Today we're delighted to welcome back Louise Aaronson, geriatrician, professor of medicine at UCSF in the division of geriatrics, author of Elderhood. We've had her on multiple times. Louise, thank you so much for joining us today.
Louise Aronson 0:17
It's a pleasure as always.
Alex Smith 0:19
And we have Ken Kavinsky, frequent host, frequent guest on this podcast, who is also in geriatrics at UCSF in the division of geriatrics. Ken, welcome back to JerryPal. Great to be here, Alex.
Eric Widera 0:30
So this is a hot topic. Uh we're gonna push this one out early. This is gonna be about ageism and elections. We've got a lot to talk about here. But before we do, uh, who has the song request for Alex? I do.
Alex Smith 0:44
Alex
Bruno Satin 0:46
the song. We all nominate Alexa.
Alex Smith 0:48
Well, the issue was this was like kind of an emergency podcast. We had multi we've had multiple people over the last week come up to us and say, can you please do a podcast about ageism and elections? We want some clear-eyed thinking about this. And yesterday, like quickly asked Louise Auronson and Ken Kavinsky to join us. So given that time was short, I just proposed for what it's worth by Buffalo Springfield because it's a good kind of like Rallying cry, um, you know, it's time for some disruption, called arms, sort of song from the sixties. So here's a little bit of it.
Unknown 1:29
Something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. They're telling me I've got to beware. It's time we stop children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down
Unknown 2:01
Battle lines be Nobody's right. If everybody's wrong. Young people speak in their mind. Getting so much resistance from behind it's time we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
Bruno Satin 2:30
Ooh,
Eric Widera 2:31
what is going down?
Bruno Satin 2:33
Bravo. That was excellent.
Eric Widera 2:37
So uh we're gonna do things a little different. We actually opened up to uh uh Twitter or X or whatever you wanna call it to start us off with some of these these questions about what's what's going down right now with ageism and elections. Well I'd say right now, I would say this has been a a a constant issue in elections where age comes up not infrequently. I think John McCain and Obama, and anybody remembers that, there was a lot of discussion about Obama being too young and McCain being too old. I think McCain was seventy one. Now how old does Trump um have it down here somewhere? Trump is seventy-eight. Seventy eight. Biden's eighty one. It came up with Feinstein. She died in the Senate at age ninety.
Eric Widera 3:24
So not new, but Alex, do you wanna start start us off with some of the Twitter questions?
Alex Smith 3:30
Sure. W thank you to our listeners for sending in your questions. The first question is from Anand Iyer. How do we find balance between not being ageist but expressing legitimate concern? Louise, let's go to you with this.
Louise Aronson 3:47
Well, I think I might have a a kind of different answer to many people on that one, where I would argue that not expressing concern when it's warranted could be a version of ageism. When you ignore the bad parts of things, you're not telling the full story, you're not giving voice. And we've certain certainly seen this with racism and other isms. So we need to discuss the full spectrum of aging honestly, or when we discuss the good parts, we will lack credibility.
Eric Widera 4:18
How do you think about that, Ken?
Ken Covinsky 4:20
I I think that was very well said, Louise. You know you know I think What ageism when you get right down to it is, is not really seeing the individual in front of you and the individual in the setting of what they're trying to accomplish and what matters to them. So that, you know, it's always appropriate, you know, when you have a question about somebody's ability to do what matters and do what you might say is their daily functional tasks, you know, are they in a position to be able to do it? Uh you know, I think one thing that's a little bit different about some of the settings we're describing is as geriatricians, we focus on often the here and now that you know we deal with people's circumstances now and we think about helping them do their best now.

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