Episode 70: Transcript

"Where's the Gray Mafia?"

Doug French: So let me tell you, first of all, I had a wonderful experimental evening in the kitchen last night.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: Okay. You're going to tell me about your wonderful experimental evening in the kitchen. Am I going to like it?

Doug: Well, I'm getting excited that Thomas is going to be home next week.

Magda: Right.

Doug: And Thomas is like, you know, yes, whatever you want to make. And I just wanted to make a meatloaf. But I didn't have any breadcrumbs. So all I had was kind of a stale sesame bagel. Like one of those Zingerman sesame bagels that has like sesame seeds all over it. I think it's more sesame seed than bagel, frankly.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: You cut it in half and it just, they fly everywhere because there's so many of them. So I was like, all right, I'm going to blend this. And breadcrumbs. And I figured, all right, as long as I'm going all in, I'm going to make this an Asian meatloaf. I'm going to throw in some hoisin sauce, some soy sauce, some green onions and stuff. Oh, my God. I have invented Asian fusion meatloaf, as far as I know.

Magda: So, you know, you don't need to have breadcrumbs to make meatloaf. Like any kind of carb-related binder will make a good meatloaf.

Doug: Right. Any kind of thing you can make to a breadcrumb consistency, or some people just take bread and dunk it in milk.

Magda: Well, the recipe we used when I was a kid growing up was dry oatmeal used in there.

Doug: I had some of that, too. That occurred to me, but I was like, you know what? I really want to see if I can grind up this sesame bagel or not.

Magda: Well, I bet it was great with the sesame in it.

Doug: It was really good. Yeah. I have a little mini food processor that couldn't handle it. So I had to use the actual blender. Brought out the big guns.

Magda: Well, it wasn't the sesame seed that it couldn't handle. It was the stale bagel, right?

Doug: Yeah, it just flopped around. I was holding it down with both arms and it was still asking to be let free.

Magda: Well, because it was a real bagel, not one of these like, “hey, it's a super fluffy bagel!” bagels.

Doug: Well, it's one of those bagels that Zingerman's makes and will go bad in 36 hours. It turns into a brick right away.

Magda: Yeah, a real bagel.

Doug: It was good and stale when the time came. And oh my, so I'm set, man. Meatloaf sandwiches for the rest of the day. Well, that's good. Meatloaf sandwiches and pączki. Oh my God, I'm going to die in three days.

Magda: I am so jealous that you have pączki. I mean, I guess technically people are saying some of the grocery stores here have grocery store pączki, but I don't care for grocery store pączki.

Doug: Everybody's got them. DJs, I actually stopped by DJs. I got mine at Demos. Walked right in, got my allotment, and left. But I figured, let's just see what DJ's is doing. It took me three times to circle the block to find a parking space. Because it was pouring down rain. And then I get in there, and there is a line of 30 people. And the entire showcase is pączki.

Magda: One of the things I love about Michigan pączki is that it's absolutely fusion cuisine. Like, Good Cakes and Bakes was doing soul food pączki for a while. She was doing sweet potato filling. She was doing a red velvet pączki, like lemon pound cake pączki. Right.

Doug: So like soul food dessert pączki. I love that. No, like no collards, no okra.

Magda: Well, they're not savory. Yeah.

Doug: Hey, you know what? I'm all hyped up on sesame meatloaf, so all kinds of fusion now are possible.

Magda: Right.

Doug: But yeah, what a feeling to have when you waddle into the Washtenaw County clerk's office and get your passport photo redone.

Magda: Did you have to wipe powdered sugar off your mouth before you got your photo taken?

Doug: No, well, this is actually funny because, you know, I have a gray bald head and they put me against this screen with a gray background.

Magda: Oh no.

Doug: And they were losing the definition between where my head ended and the screen began. They had to adjust the resolution. And it's like, you know, we have to take that picture again because this looks like you have a big dent in your head. And I'm like, you know what? They make me take my glasses off. I'm in that overhead lighting, fluorescent lighting. And, uh, It really embraced my true look, as I've mentioned many times. I think the look that encompasses my overall vibe is, you know, when you're cutting the grass and you run over a tennis ball that's been left there for several years and it's kind of gone gray and half of the fuzz has been ground off. That's what you're looking at here with a pair of glasses on. Say yes to life.

Magda: When I got my last passport photo, I looked at it and was just like, oh my God, I didn't know that I actually looked that horrible. And she was like, “oh, it's not that bad.” That's the worst thing to say to someone, right? [Laughs]

Doug: “No, that looks exactly like you, sir.” Yes.

Magda: What you're saying is, “It looks just like you. And yes, you actually look like shit, but I'm a nice person. So I don't want to say you look horrible just as a person.”

Doug: “You present poorly is what I'm saying.”

Magda: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Doug: Looking like this, aging as poorly as I am, is actually a benefit in that when I walk into a place, they assume I get a senior discount and just give it to me.

[Theme music plays]

Doug: All right, so you've got a bee in your mind. Let's get into it. We're going to start our multi-volume series about what in the living hell is AARP even doing out here.

Magda: Yeah, you know, like we've heard about AARP forever and ever and ever. And I remember hearing, “Oh, wow, they have such great discounts. They're really advocating for people.” And so when I was 45, I tried to join them. They had a stand at the mall and I was like, I'm 45. Can I join? And they were like, oh, no, you can't join till you’re 50. Well, now I think you can join at any age. But when Mike turned 50, he was like, should I join? And I was like, I think you're supposed to join for the discounts.

Doug: Right.

Magda: And so he joined and he added me and I promptly started getting an email every single day from them.

Doug: Oh, yeah.

Magda: Which was just odious. And so I opted out of the everyday emails. I still get way too many emails from them. And, you know, I have never really logged in to explore the discounts. I guess what I want is for them to know that I need a discount on something and present me with the discount then, instead of having to scroll through. And, you know, it's like some of these things I can't imagine I need. Like, I don't even know what they have discounts on, but I'm imagining it's like 1-800-FLOWERS and stuff like that.

Doug: Yeah, I get that. Most places where I would shop and would enjoy a senior discount, I kind of already get.

Magda: Right. I don't know if it's supposed to take the place of the senior discount, but you know those fundraising cards that sports teams and stuff will sell in small towns? Where they go and they talk to 20 local businesses and the businesses agree to give like 20% off to anybody who's got the card, and then they sell the card for like 20 bucks as a fundraiser?

Doug: Right. Right.

Magda: I think that's kind of what AARP was trying to do. And so I don't know, I just ignored it. Like, because I didn't think there was something that really was going to apply to me, even though I had told Mike to join in the first place. I don't know. It just seemed like, oh, you're supposed to join AARP when you're 50, even though it's the American Association of Retired People.

Doug: And is it though?

Magda: I don't think any of us are going to be retired before we're 70 or 75.

Doug: I think they just abandoned the whole idea of retired persons, much in the same way KFC got rid of “fried.” You know, I think they're just like, just call us AARP. Let's not acknowledge what our roots were for retired people. Because now basically anybody can pay into it. And we want your money because our whole board makes seven figures.

Magda: Yeah. So they send you out a magazine every month, and I get the magazine, and I'm a person who enjoys magazines in general. Like I actually have magazine subscriptions. I have to say my favorite one is Old House Journal. I enjoy Old House Journal because I enjoy living in an old house. It's furnishing and paint porn for people who like living in old houses. So I observed that the magazine seemed to not be doing such a great job with the fact that people who are 50 and can join now are Gen Xers. But their core demographic is people who are over the age of 70. That's who they really have been serving this whole time. And so then I started looking into like what they actually do. And a lot of what they're doing is selling Medicare supplements. Or those like, I think it's like when you buy a private thing that sort of takes the place of Medicare and then you get fewer services for more money.

Doug: Right. Medigap, right. It's kind of like Aflac.

Magda: Yeah, Medigap or whatever it is.

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: It seems like that's what they're doing. And I was surprised because I would think that an organization that I guess at least used to be a lobbying organization would be advocating for more care at a lower cost than just co-branding with something that provides less care at a higher cost. And I guess their store brand care package is UnitedHealthcare, which everybody knows is like the worst and is going to be turning down.

Doug: Yes, yes.

Magda: Well, yeah, I mean, they've been turning down more claims than any other insurer. So I cannot imagine why this organization would be saying that they were advocating for this entire age group demographic that needs Medicare and that needs more medical care than other age demographics, and then be using the provider that has the highest record of turning down claims.

Doug: Because they're using AI. They're phoning it in. They're using AI to hunt for buzzwords. And if they're not there, then it says no.

Magda: So then I started thinking, well, this is kind of nuts. Why isn't there an organization that would actually serve this midlife demographic that you and I are in? We're not eligible for Medicare yet. We don't need Medicare yet because we have a completely different set of health concerns. And I was thinking the demographic I really would want to appeal to is people ages 40 to 65, maybe 68. With the midlife concerns that you and I have been talking about on this podcast, we're stuck between aging parents and kids who may or may not still be at home, maybe going off someplace else to do something else, maybe kids who are trying to apply to colleges or to other programs, and all of this stuff is very stressful. We've got work concerns that people who are retired do not. And we've just got a whole different set of health concerns, too, that I do not feel are being addressed or served by AARP. And I want there to be an association for people in midlife.

Doug: Okay, I've heard this preamble before. What are you telling me? What are you inventing now?

Magda: A midlife association.

Doug: What's our acronym going to be?

Magda: I'm going to call it Center Square because that's right where we are. Center Square, the Midlife Association.

Doug: That's an homage to Paul Lind, isn't it?

Magda: Okay. And only a certain part of the demographic will actually get who Paul Lind was.

Doug: Exactly. That's why people with a certain number of rings on the trunk are going to understand the Paul Lind reference.

Magda: Right. I don't want to call it Midlife Association because that sounds kind of bleak. But I feel like Center square is, first of all, it's got the Hollywood Squares thing, right? But it really is where we are. We're right in the middle of everything. We're a hole in the middle of that center square. And so that indicates what's up with us? I think there are a lot of support services that I would offer. I would offer the ability to talk to a live person who understood what was going on with Medicare and Medicaid in different states. So you could get access to talk to somebody–for not as much money as actually going to a lawyer–to figure out how do you start, what do you get moving on when your parent is in one state and you're in another state, and you maybe don't know what their financial situation is. This person could tell you what you need to know, what you need to look at, that kind of stuff.

Magda: I would also give support around health issues that hit people who are in their 40s to 60s. And, you know, obviously we talk a lot about perimenopause and menopause here. So we would talk about that. We would have support for that. But we would also hit all the other stuff that is hitting people in this age demographic. Men are having problems of their own. We're all having problems that are not influenced by gender that, you know, like there isn't a whole lot of support in the culture for those things. You know, I was listening to Rick Astley's memoir. He's 59. And he just announced that he's gotten a hearing aid. Like nobody thinks, “oh, my God, I need a hearing aid. I'm in my 50s.” But he just is a very practical person. And he realized that his hearing was going. So he got hearing aids. I think that's a thing that happens in your 50s.

Doug: Well, I think if we zoom out a bit, I think what we're looking at is a way to train people to look down the road at potential health issues and maybe as a preemptive, put things in place to protect against medical bankruptcy.

Magda: Absolutely.

Doug: A lot of people who go medically bankrupt don't see it coming until it smacks everybody upside the head. And so in the usual myopia of the way business works, you know, there's much more money in the cure than there is in the prevention process. I mean, we're going to get into a whole thing that's going to give me heartburn for the rest of the day. But the bottom line is so much of our culture is about pay big on the back end because there's more profit in that. But laying the groundwork for helping people emerge into their late middle life with a strong sense of how the finances work. What would happen if something catastrophic were to happen? That kind of thing.

Magda: I would do this midlife association, I would charge 20 bucks a year. 20 bucks is not a whole lot. You would have access to our media. We would be talking to people that you actually want to talk to instead of putting like Al Pacino on the cover of AARP Magazine. Like, okay, I don't really need to read another surface level interview with Al Pacino. I want a zine.

Doug: Besides, he's 80.

Magda: I mean like I was reading when I was 22, that's on a topic that goes into something that is not just toeing the party line. I want something that I can read that makes me feel like I'm a little bit smarter for having read it, and that is talking to people who were making social change when we were younger and are still making social change now. I just want to be smarter because of this instead of having things be dumbed down.

Doug: I derive inspiration from the profiles of 80-year-old people just because I do see the benefit of showing that reaching a certain age doesn't mean you're automatically put out to pasture.

Magda: Yes. Do you benefit from the profiles of 80-year-old people that ask them “What's the key to longevity?”

Doug: No, well, that's...

Magda: Because I do not. And that's what the media is saying, right? Like, I would love to talk to people who are in their 80s about, like, how the hell did you manage to get through your 50s without completely losing all your marbles? And have like an actual real conversation with them about that. But I would also like to talk to people who are in their 50s about “What have you learned over the last 30 years?” Like that's not stuff I'm seeing someplace else.

Doug: Then you listen to Julia Louis Dreyfuss's podcast.

Magda: Okay, that's one podcast.

Doug: Well, I'm glad to see stuff like that is happening now. Granted, dumb ideas like what's the key to longevity? I mean,

Magda: There are a whole lot of experts that we can talk about instead of asking somebody who's famous because they're in movies, “Do you drink sparkling water or still water? Is that the key to longevity?” Right. Like, I just think some of this stuff is so surface.

Doug: It's your genetic makeup and your wealth. The end.

Magda: I'm not convinced that that's actually true. I mean, we could talk to Marc Ross about that. Who's running the Harvard Grant study.

Doug: Oh, okay.

Magda: Which really does follow all of that stuff. And the last time I checked in with it when the previous person was running it, the keys to longevity were really creating stable interpersonal relationships.

Doug: Right. The third part is wanting to get up every morning and wanting to be with people and having your endorphins fire.

Magda: And the thing that derailed people's lives more than anything else was alcohol. I find that fascinating.

Doug: Yeah. They're saying every drink is like you're shortening your life.

Magda: Well, I mean, they're figuring out that it causes cancer.

Doug: Yeah. But still, though, it's mostly wealth and genes, because if you're wealthy, then you have the ability to eat healthier. But there's a wealth aspect as well into the level of your community. You know, however long I live will be governed by how many people there are in my daily life. I'm sure of it.

Magda: Well, I mean, yeah, that's the whole point of these discoveries. [Laughs] Of the Grant study. Like you just gave the executive summary.

Doug: Well, that's my job.

Magda: Basically, I just want to start an organization and I don't want it to be a lobbying organization because I don't know what good lobbying does now in this weird-ass new world. I just want to create support for people and get enough mass together that we don't all feel like we're fighting all this crap by ourselves.

Doug: Yeah. Accessible information is going to be really important.

Magda: Home ownership is another area I would provide support in, you know, because a lot of us didn't really learn how to maintain homes from our parents. And it's like, you know, stuff breaks and we don't know what to do about it. We don't know how much we should be paying somebody else or how to find a good person or whatever, you know.

Doug: Well, the broader picture we're getting at here, I think, is a support group that helps with the macro trend of when you're our age, you start to feel as though life is moving at a different pace and you have to work harder to keep up with it.

Magda: Right.

Doug: That's my experience. And it's not just pop culture. I mean, it's all sorts of things. Even something as mundane as having to use a smartphone. I mean, we're still lucky enough. We're savvy enough to have used a smartphone long enough to know how vital it is to have one when you get medical care. But my parents, they got a smartphone only for that because hospitals were requiring a lot of stuff to use your smartphone to check in for biometrics and all that stuff. When I see them struggle with something like a cell phone, I can only extrapolate and think when I'm their age, there's going to be something AI-related or whatever that I will not be able to wrap my old brain around. And I'll be relying on younger people to help me figure it out.

Magda: Well, I saw a theory that because there's so much new technology now, like looking at all the stuff that is available now versus like 20 years ago, and 20 years ago, we were still like there was technology, right? We had cell phones, we had the Internet, all of that kind of stuff. One of the things is that it used to be that something wasn't released until it worked. And now people are just sort of in endless beta.

Doug: First to market.

Magda: And so these products that we have are extremely niche and they don't work as well. So some of it is not that we are getting worse at learning new things. It's a twofold problem. One is that there are too many new things for us to keep track of now when there weren't like 20 years ago. And those things don't all work the way they should.

Doug: Well there's no profit in waiting until it works. You know, you've got to get it out there, get people starting to use it. And then, you know, you can sell them a software patch when the shit goes down.

Magda: Yeah. So anyway, I want to know what people think. Would you join a midlife association to get access to all this support kind of stuff? And if you would, how do I get 20,000 people to join?

Doug: Well, the other side of that, too, is I think we should do a top-down audit of AARP just from a layperson.

Magda: I don't want to do a top-down audit of AARP. I want this to be blue ocean. I'm starting from scratch. What do I want this to be? Because I think, first of all, I think there's a lot of bad stuff under the hood at AARP that I don't even want to have to know about.

Doug: There are lessons to be learned about what not to do, you know?

Magda: Well, I mean, I think they started out for a different reason.

Doug: Right.

Magda: Like they really thought they were going to lobby for their constituents. And then, you know, here, I mean, they have like what? 60,000 members, something like that. 35,000 members. [Ed note: I meant million, not thousand.] And they haven't said boo.

Doug: I remember in my thirties, maybe you can corroborate this, too, but I remember people talking about the new gray mafia, this powerful lobby and how they were going to really work hard to make sure that older people were cared for.

Magda: Right. And they have not at all.

Doug: I mean, now that I'm here, you talk about a straightforward premise of this podcast in terms of like, wait a minute, I thought my 50s would be different. I thought AARP would have a much more salutary effect on my daily life in terms of things they've successfully lobbied for, like, I don't know, negotiating drug prices.

Magda: I thought they would have a much, much more salutary effect on my parents' life. My parents are their demographic.

Doug: Are they using any benefits now? Do you know?

Magda: I don't think so. I mean, they don't have any medical products through AARP, and I don't know if my parents even belong to it.

Doug: Well, I want to talk to people who are actually deriving tangible benefit from being AARP members, because it's one of those things where is AARP like, you know, a Michael Bolton album? You know, he sells 90 million of them, but nobody knows anybody who actually has one.

Magda: Ha ha ha! Yeah, I don't know. I'm not really that interested in AARP, which isn't to say that when the next issue of the magazine comes, I'm not going to look at the cover and go, ugh.

Doug: You know what my parents hate? That's not true.

Magda: What?

Doug: But one of the main things that bothers them is that they can't make head or tail of crossword puzzles anymore.

Magda: Oh!

Doug: They are big crossword puzzle fans. They used to do the Times every day and they've stopped.

Magda: Because they don't know the clues!

Doug: Yes, they've, the terminology of the clues has passed them by. They look at something and say, what even is that? I mean, it's one thing not to recognize who Ariana Grande is or something, but all the text language, all the slang and the stuff that they've veered toward in the modern era, they don't get it. It's really frustrating for them. It reminds them all the time how old they are.

Magda: That's interesting. You know my brother-in-law is writing crosswords now. He's had one published syndicated nationally and he has one that was in his local paper and I think is coming out nationally in a couple weeks. Maybe this is generationally clued crosswords.

Doug: Well, it's not up to him, though. It's up to the editor, eventually. It's up to Will Shortz to decide how arcane the clues are.

Magda: Okay, you know there are more crossword editors than Will Shortz, right?

Doug: Oh, sure.

Magda: Right, so it's going to be very different. Just like the way people under the age of 30 take in music is so much different from the way we do. They can have encyclopedic knowledges of music that we were not able to have. Because when we were 16, we didn't have this easily accessible archive of all the music that had come before us the way they did.

Doug: But I do think you're going to see a lot more vinyl, a lot more.

Magda: Yeah, but I'm not talking about format. What I'm saying is when you and I were 16...

Doug: Well, when I was 16, you were 10.

Magda: When you were 16, you could listen to the music that was on the radio...

Doug: Yep.

Magda: Or that somebody you knew had in a format that you could access. And if there was a song that was popular when you were 16, the summer that you were 16, on pop radio, if you did not purchase that song in some format, you weren't going to hear that song three years later because it wasn't the hot song of the summer anymore.

Doug: Right. Well, you had to record it with a condenser microphone under your boombox and make a mixtape.

Magda: Right. Right, exactly.

Doug: You had to listen to Casey Kasem's Top 40 and wait for it to come on and ignore all the annoying DJ banter before and after the lyrics. But you'd have 80% of the song to listen to until it wore out.

Magda: Right. But our son, who is still 19, knows the lyrics to almost every song recorded since the year 1965. And that's because he has the internet.

Doug: Well, and then he can send me a playlist of nothing but African francophone ska pop.

Magda: Right. Exactly. But they do know a lot more music.

Doug: I know. So we were talking about AARP. So I'm guessing that one aspect of Center Square will be a viable music platform that helps older people understand what young people are listening to.

Magda: No. Oh my God.

Doug: I would pay for that.

Magda: You would pay for someone to say, this is what younger people are listening to, even though you could just literally go on TikTok and find out what young people are listening to?

Doug: I'm not going to go on TikTok. I'm divesting of all social media. Social media universally makes me absolutely fucking depressed.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: And it's a shame. I mean, I like to go onto Facebook every blue moon and see what people are talking about and surface and let people know I'm not dead. But it's just such a drag for me.

Magda: Yeah. Yeah, I don't agree with that. But everybody who listens to this podcast knows that you hate social media.

Doug: I wish it could serve a bigger purpose in my life than it does. You know, especially as you read about how it's been manipulated to really hurt people. And we're living that now. Okay. Yeah. But I think it's a really interesting idea. I think we should talk to people about what people our age would like from an organization like that. What's missing in terms of how we prepare for retirement years, you know, not disaster prepping, but at the same time, recognizing that these things are possible. It's like they tell you, if you start getting your affairs in order while you're in crisis, that's a recipe for disaster.

Magda: OK, but some of it's not future prepping. And we think it's future prepping and it's we need to take care of these problems now. Right. A lot of people who are in their 50s and even in their 40s are walking around in some sort of pain that we don't think about because we're just told it's normal and it's not actually normal. It's the beginning of something else that's going to come back and bite us in 30 years. And if we treat it like, oh, we need to get on top of it now so it doesn't come back and bite us in 30 years, that's not as powerful as saying, “oh, you have an actual problem that you can actually treat right now. And if you actually treat this problem right now, it's not going to get worse in 30 years,” right? Because a lot of these things are indicators that you're going to have problems later, right? Like very strong hot flashes.

Doug: This is my point. That's a preparation thing.

Magda: Okay, but the hot flashes are also a problem.

Doug: Right.

Magda: You need to stop the hot flashes because they're ruining your life. Yes. And because that may help your heart health down the line, right? And I think we are so trained by culture to be like, oh, my joints ache, but that's just normal. Instead of, oh, my joints ache, what is causing that? And how can I stop my joints from aching?

Doug: Well, I can say morning yoga with your son is a big part of that.

Magda: Well, good. I mean, your son isn't here. Are you still doing yoga?

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: Good. Listeners tell us, How do you feel about AARP? Are you a member? Are they serving you? And would you pay $20 to join an organization targeted to people 40 to 65-ish and our issues and give, like, actual practical help?

Doug: Okay, listen, this has been fun. So thank you listeners for staying on this long to listen to episode 70 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been AARP and whether it has any reason to exist in our lives.

Doug: When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe for our weekly episode every Wednesday and a newsletter, Friday Flames, every other Friday. This is particularly interesting to me. I hope this discussion has legs. 70 episodes. How about that?

Magda: That's a lot! That's a lot of episodes. It's a lot of editing.

Doug: Yes, my fingers will never be the same. Thanks again, everybody. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

[Theme music plays.]

Doug: It's a lot of editing. Oh my God, the editing. [Magda laughs]