Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. You know how old you are, but how old do you think you are? It's no surprise that many people feel ourselves to be younger than we chronologically are, but why is that? With us now is Jennifer Senior, great name for a story like this, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the forthcoming book On Grief: Love, Loss Memory, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, when it was published in a version in The Atlantic. Jennifer Senior's article in The Atlantic that just came out is called the Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are. Jennifer, we always appreciate when you come on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jennifer Senior: I love being on the show. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, how old are you in your head? Do you ask yourself that question? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. I see this started with a question that you asked your mother at Thanksgiving last year, and spoiler alert, she's 76, and she said she felt 45. What?

Jennifer Senior: Yes. Although you want to know, I think it started earlier than that. I have long COVID. I was like on month four of having Long COVID. I was in bed and I kind of just tweeted out to the crowd. Like, "How old are you in your head?" I have been mulling this over. It's become almost my go-to parlor trick.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, because long COVID made you feel older than you were?

Jennifer Senior: Yes. Actually weirdly, yes. I still have the same answer fixed in my head, but it has shifted. That's a whole other question, but I was still I think clinging to the idea that I was 36 in my head, even though I'm 53. I was just very curious to see what people said. I think a chronic illness will actually, unfortunately, roll the clock forward for people in their heads, but yes, this is something I did with my mom.

Brian Lehrer: Like now, I feel old. Did your mother's answer surprise you?

Jennifer Senior: Well, I think one's mother says surprises you at a certain level. [chuckles] It's consistent. It's consistent with what the data show that was comprehensive. The best design study that I looked at, that had large sample sizes, seemed to be scrupulous and seemed to ask the right question, which was not how old do you feel, but how old are you inside in your head, said that once you're north of 40, you tend to shave about 20% off of your age, but when I spoke to the author, he said, a lot of people do more than that.

To me, it sort of meant that people go back one or two pivots in their lives to when they last made a big decision so that they could either relive it or unfold the dominoes and have them fall again in a different way. It send them down again, whatever they wanted to do. That was my interpretation. It shows my mother still thinks of herself as being someone who has a lot of kick left in her, which she does. She's got a lot of potential left and a lot of pivots left to go. She thinks of herself as 45, she's by no means done with her work here.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. To even define what your experienced age is, what you're experiencing when she thinks of herself as 45 when she's 76, is it about, I think you get to this in your article, it's not about how old your joints feel, does yoga keep you flexible? It's something else, what is it?

Jennifer Senior: Right. In fact, when I took this question to Twitter, I can't tell you how many people would say things like, "In my head, I'm 30, although my knees tell me I'm 100." That's why I liked this one particular study so much, that it's really about locating yourself psychologically, as opposed to physically. If you ask people how old do they feel, it's often a very good health proxy. That's how the question started in the field of gerontology in the 70s, but I'm a little bored by that, because, duh, if you feel younger [chuckles] physically, of course--

I'm more interested in the disconnect between-- A friend of mine said that when he looked in the mirror, he would almost feel like it was a system error. He would just think, there had been some kind of mistake, that he just doesn't feel as old as is almost 60 years.

Brian Lehrer: Do politics come into this at all? Did you test that at all? Because there might be a lot of people who say they're 70 and they feel 30, but then when you test their political views, they're more consistent with people who are 70.

Jennifer Senior: Oh my God, that's brilliant. No social scientist has sliced it that fine. The only way I could think of doing this politically, and this is the first time it's been asked, you're so smart. It's such a great question. The only way I would think about it is this. To the extent that I think we all feel a little bit younger than we are, I wonder if Democrats feel even younger because they probably delay having kids even more.

They wait until they're a little older to have kids is my suspicion because they live in cities, and that tends to be an urban thing, and people's college education is differ child rearing, and therefore, you can't really imagine being when you're 50, you might have a teenager, and your parents probably didn't. Somebody blew my doors off by telling me recently that Jean Stapleton and Carroll O'Connor were in their 40s when they were Archie Bunker and Edith. "What?" [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Right, because we think of them as older than that, right?

Jennifer Senior: Oh my God, I think of them as being like 65 of a day. That they're stacks of AARP Magazine or sitting in a corner somewhere.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Although makeup does a lot. Did you see Tom Hanks in Elvis? I mean, oh my God.

Jennifer Senior: Yes, I did, and so is get Wesney bald. I'm trying to remember, anyway--

Brian Lehrer: He just looks so old and worn as that character. Anyway, Natalie, in Williamsburg, you're on WNYC. Hi, Natalie.

Natalie: Hi. I'm 40 years old, but because I'm a professional DJ, my hours tend to be very late, and I want to feel like I am 40 and do things like make dinner for my husband, like eat meals at the same time, have a Roth IRA. See? I don't even think I said it right. Is it Roth IRA?

Brian Lehrer: It is.

[crosstalk]

Natalie: Oh my God. [unintelligible 00:07:05] [crosstalk]thing.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you said IRA, sorry.

Natalie: It's not very incentivized in culture.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, sorry to interrupt. I just thought I heard you say IRA. I was corrected that you said RAI, it doesn't matter at all, so continue on your main point.

[laughter]

Natalie: Well, what I ended up doing to deal with this is I started a business where I teach kids to DJ so that I can have the hours, that "normal 40-year-olds" have. It's called Baby DJ school. Then with this new timeframe, I can have an adult life, even though I don't actually have children of my own.

Brian Lehrer: You're atypical here, your story is so interesting. If I'm hearing you right, you are 40 and you want to feel 40, but you feel younger than 40 because you work as a DJ in the music industry, which is kind of stunted your growth in a certain respect.

Natalie: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's all built around late nights and that kind of thing.

Jennifer Senior: I have so many thoughts starting with if I had a young enough kid, I would send him to DJ baby school. That is so cool. I think what I would say is, my question for you is this, you're in this profession that's skews so much younger, and you have to be out all these crazy hours that maybe your body doesn't feel like doing anymore, and you have this urge to be a little older. This is something that I have found that there's a certain awkwardness if you start identifying as younger than you are, and you're certainly talking to people who are younger than you are, they will, at some point, some heartbreaking moment remind you that they think of you is pretty old.

It will come as a very rude slap. I have been with 30-somethings, thinking I was the same age as them and they will say something that will make it completely apparent that I am Dame Judi Dench to them, that I am Maggie Smith, that I am some dowager, and it's horrifying. I don't know whether you had any sobering moments like that that made you want to shift your hours.

Natalie: Yes, I DJ a lot of weddings during the summer, and at one point, I was the same age as the brides. I would just say, "Well, our generation," and as years go by, it's like, no, they listen to different music than they did. Like my college hits were different than their college hits, and that's when I started to say like, "I am older. What can I do to shift this skill set in a direction that makes sense for where I want to be?"

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, thank you so much for a really provocative call. Kim in Fanwood, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kim.

Kim: Hi, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: All right.

Kim: Good. I'm going to be 54 on Saturday, but I have always felt stuck at the age of 16. It's always that age. Anytime somebody says, "How old do you feel?" I always say 16. I think it's due to a challenging childhood with a stepparent parental relationship that wasn't good. Then my sister left for college around when I was 16, and that was when I had to start to deal with that relationship on my own and break away from certain things. I don't know, it was like a pivotal age to me, but at the same time, I feel like I got stuck there. Plus I never had kids, so that also makes me feel like I never grew up.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. Jennifer, you read in your article about past traumas.

Jennifer Senior: I do.

Brian Lehrer: To some degree, Kim is describing a trauma here as a cause in some people of this feeling younger than you are.

Jennifer Senior: There is the same fellow who did this work that showed that we shaved 20% off our age, has done other work, showing that we also sometimes are mentally the age of our traumas. We freeze where our traumas were. Sometimes we have the opposite. I mean, I had one colleague tell me that she's frozen at the age when she got sober, which is nice. She's frozen at the age of a rebirth. Being, it is unfortunately sometimes a common thing that you can't move beyond the age where things went sideways. Either you're still working things out or you've been overly determined and overly defined by that moment. That's poignant to hear and not uncommon.

Brian Lehrer: Kim, are there ways that you try to move on from this or do you embrace feeling like you're 16 to the extent that it's a good thing?

Kim: I do try to make it a good thing. I am like your caller before, I'm also in the music industry. I'm a performer. I am also in an industry that celebrates youth and I try to use my youthful feelings in a good way in that respect. Yes, I do try to make it a good thing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very, very much. David in East Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, David.

David: Hi. Thanks for having me on. This topic really resonates with me. I've always felt much older than my years. I had a friend who reportedly said David was born 50, and that would make me about 103 now. I'm 53 physically. I don't particularly feel that quite that old, but I do, I would say I come in around 82 most times, 75 if I'm feeling more spry. The reason for that, I chalk up to the fact that I was very close with my grandparents and I embraced their life rather than rebelled against it. I love their music. I love the way they swore and where the GD scissors I mean, I just really found that hysterical and I really bonded to it.

All of my friends are at least 10, 20 years older than I am. I've never really felt comfortable with people my own age group. I've gravitated decidedly towards people who were in their 60s. Most of my friends are in their 60s, 70s, and I embraced my age. I actually have a reverse Peter Pan complex. I've always wanted to be older. I've always like I couldn't wait to get older because I just, and I had to be very responsible as a kid. My grandmother was blind and I had to balance her checkbook for her.

That put at age six or seven, I'm balancing a checkbook, so it really made me feel very early on that I had to be serious and responsible and respect money and that kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Having duties will make somebody grow up fast. Jennifer, what are you thinking as you listen to David?

Jennifer Senior: Well, first of all, David has mentioned his grandparents so much that I'm also wondering whether just having people who are that influential who are two generations up also plays a role. My grandparents were a big part of my life too, and for a very long time, I felt 40, like as an 11-year-old, as a 25-year-old. I wrote about this in my story too, that I found little girls in cliques tiresome. I found bars tiresome when I was young as in my 20s, I preferred the company of older people. I'm right with you, and I also my music tastes skewed to write the oldies.

I'm in that category, and yet at some point I slid backwards. I did not do enough intelligent writing about the old souls among us. I think I could have explored it more deeply. David, you're the first person to make me wonder about the positive influences of grandparents in that equation, whether it accounts for something or older figures. It is not uncommon for people under the age of 25, by the way, to identify as older. That makes sense, if you've had even a passing acquaintance with a young person. They tend to overestimate how old they think they are and that they can be.

Brian Lehrer: David, thank you for making us think. Now, there's an expression for people who might be young but are wise, present as wise that they're an old soul. That's a good thing-

Jennifer Senior: I just said it. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -to call a young person an old soul because it reflects a wisdom past their age.

Jennifer Senior: Yet, I'm trying to think of the inverse is true. If, I mean, would we find it insulting if we said that that person is a 20-year-old stuffed inside a 60-year-old's body? Would we say that was good or bad?

Brian Lehrer: Young at heart.

Jennifer Senior: Young at heart, right. Yes. Sure. I guess it's positive.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It could be good or bad, or like the other caller who still feels 16, you could be young at heart or you could be, you never grew up.

Jennifer Senior: No, and it's true. I have a friend who's a teacher who says that she takes some comfort when she sees on her evaluation that people describe her as youthful. It also fills with her because she wonders when she's going to get replaced. Then she thinks that it means she's young at heart. I mean, it's double-edged, I think.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, Lee in Edison, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lee.

Lee: Good morning. Then I just have to say one thing. You're one of my heroes, but I'm 92 and I will not give into the number. I refuse to be as an old person. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: How do you not do that?

Lee: Well, I'm waiting for the ladies that come from the gym. We're all going out to lunch. I'm wearing my tights and a fancy top. I'm a little bit made up and I'm not walking out the door without ever putting on makeup. There I go, and wherever I go, I want to look the way I feel inside.

Jennifer Senior: Which is how old?

Lee: 92.

Jennifer Senior: No. How old do you feel inside? How old are you in your head?

Lee: In my head, I'm 31. I figure that's a good age, and we have fun and I'm the oldest in the group, but I make everybody laugh, at the most, so that's what keeps you young. A good laugh.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Lee. Thank you very much. Well, Jennifer Senior, you've done it again. You've certainly made people think a lot of thoughts in all kinds of directions. Think about themselves, think about the people around them, the cultures around us. The article is in The Atlantic that asks, how old are you in your head compared to your chronological age? She's also the author of the forthcoming On Grief: Love, Loss Memory which won the Pulitzer Prize last year when a version was published in The Atlantic. Jennifer, thanks a lot.

Jennifer Senior: Thank you so much. This was great.

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