We can learn a lot about how to grow old from aging the Māori way. Welcome back to this podcast, Learning How To Be Old. Listen if you might be old one day ... even if you don’t believe that will ever happen.

Today’s guest — and a fount of precious knowledge — is Grace Hoete. She is Senior Arts Advisor for the Wellington City Council and the manager of Toi Poneke. But I got to know Grace as an actor. In my last play, The Secret Lives of Extremely Old People, she played a 93-year-old Māori writer called Puti. Like all 5 characters in the play, Puti is an imaginary character but she speaks a true story based on the words and stories of people who were children in the 1930s. And that makes them different from you and me.

Grace has known very old people who share many of Puti's life experiences, and she tells us a great deal about aging the Māori way. It’s fitting that she should share this knowledge in a podcast, with her glorious voice, and not in writing — because the Māori way of passing on knowledge is also oral.

The podcast ends with a very old song in te reo, He Puti Puti Pai. The words were written in 1926 by Sir Apirana Ngati, and the Turakina Māori Girls College Choir recorded the song in 1978, as far as I can tell. Thanks to Viking Sevenseas for permission to share it in this episode about aging the Māori way.

Auckland: from 2–6 April 2025 you can see The Secret Lives of Extremely Old People at the Dolphin Theatre in Onehunga. I’ll be there on the last afternoon for a Q&A session. Come along, do!

Timaru: from 9–16 May the South Canterbury Drama League is showing the play, and I’ll be there on the 14th and 15th. Maybe we’ll meet: please introduce yourself!