AI Summary
5 min readWhen the Brat album came out last year, staff writer Yasmin Tyeg listened to it before going out one night and "it just shut something off in my brain and I was like, I'm in my twenties again." That moment of feeling suddenly younger, despite having responsibilities like waking up at five to care for a kid, captures the strange, contradictory experience of aging today. Along with producer Natalie Brennan, Tyeg is launching a new Atlantic podcast season called How to Age Up that examines how our relationship with age has fundamentally changed — and why we might be thinking about it all wrong.
The invention of age obsession
The episode opens with a striking historical observation: in the early 1800s, knowing someone's specific age would have been "like somehow randomly knowing your neighbor's blood type." Age simply wasn't a defining category of identity. Today, by contrast, we are saturated with age-consciousness — from anti-aging products to longevity optimization to the constant cultural pressure to stay young.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introducing: How to Age Up** - The hosts, Yasmin Tyeg and Natalie Brennan, introduce the season's theme: rethinking aging and why we’re so age-obsessed today compared to the past.
- 2 (01:19) **Resetting Assumptions About Aging** - The season will feature people challenging stereotypes and building cross-generational communities.
- 3 (01:48) **The Confusing Rules of Aging** - The hosts note how health advice keeps shifting, making aging feel like a game with constantly changing rules.
- 4 (02:19) **Subscribe and First Episode** - The first full episode drops Monday, April 7th, and listeners are urged to subscribe now.
- 5 Standout Quotes
- 6 (00:45) "In the early 1800s, knowing somebody's specific age would be today like somehow randomly knowing your neighbor's blood type. It just wasn't a thing."
- 7 (01:02) "It's about this optimization and it causes people to be less supportive of public health interventions because it really is about you. You you you the responsibility is on you. And if you're not doing it, you're failing."
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Our scientific understanding of the aging process may be expanding, but is our cultural thinking about aging keeping up? In the new season of The Atlantic’s popular How To series, co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan explore the cultural gamification of aging, the obsession with defying this inevitable process, and how we might shift our understanding of aging to embrace the beauty of being mortal. Just as “leveling up” is a positive notion, How to Age Up challenges listeners to consider how we all, regardless of our specific age, might live better.
How do you think about aging? Please send a voice memo to [email protected] with your name, your age, and answers to the following questions:
- What aspects of aging are you nervous about?
- What are you looking forward to as you age?
- Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited to get older?
Sending in a voice note means that you are consenting to the possibility of The Atlantic using your audio in a future episode of How To.
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