Midlife Crises

In this episode Alvin and I review a research article that attempts to track how wisdom changes over the life span. This is a little longer than our normal run time, so if you want to break this up into smaller segments, we spend the first 25 minutes catching up and talking about some of our favorite and most hated Christmas songs as we enter the holiday season. In minutes 25-68 we talk about what wisdom is and how researchers attempt to measure wisdom, and briefly discuss the difference between making measurements in the hard sciences vs. the social sciences. We take a break from the research discussion in minutes 68-77, where I quiz Alvin in our Real or Fake segment about whether an article about Zoophilia is real, or is a fake report from the Onion. Then in the final 37 minutes of the episode we discuss whether the research shows that our wisdom peaks in the midlife, what factors might contribute to higher wisdom, our reflections on whether we might have had high levels of wisdom in our young adulthood, and some suggestions about how folks might increase their wisdom later in life.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @midlifepod2023

Wisdom Across the Lifespan paper: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/69/2/209/543518

Development of SAWS paper: https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-020-1456-9

Very Bad Wizards episode on zoophilia: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-272-neigh-means-yay/id557975157?i=1000634845734

Zoophilia article from the Journal of Controversial Ideas: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/255

email: [email protected]

Twitter (X): @midlifepod2023

Carolyn’s website: https://nathanswaypoint.com

Carolyn’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/carolyn.g.lambert

Carolyn’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coaching_with_carolyn/

Jai Institute for Parenting: https://www.jaiinstituteforparenting.com/

Nanny Connie (parent coach): https://www.nannyconnie.com/

In this episode Alvin and Jack wanted to do a follow up on their discussion of changing mindset by looking at how human personalities change over the life span. Previous guest Adina Fox joins us to discuss the findings of a meta-analysis that looks at whether different personality traits change significantly in adulthood. Before we get into that, Alvin gives us an update on how he got hoodwinked into bottle feeding newborn kittens, Jack gives a quick review of his recent experience at a Willie Nelson concert (minutes 0-15), and we respond to some listener feedback from our changing mindset episode (minutes 16-37). After our discussion on changing personalities with Adina (minutes 38-77) we give some final thoughts on changing mindset later in our adult life, and end with some Are You Not Entertained streaming recommendations (minutes 78-90).

The big theme of this episode is reflecting on how we have changed our mindsets or ways of thinking throughout our adult lives. Before diving into that we spend the first 30 minutes catching up on our recent travels. Alvin tells some interesting stories about his trip to Peru, and in particular he reflects on how traveling to South America has changed since his journey there in his mid-twenties. I also give a quick update on my 55 mile hike in the Sierra Nevada mountains, including how I encountered a family with three young children hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico. In our housekeeping segment we report on some of our listener feedback and discuss how we would like to do a new segment called Profiles in the Midlife, where we hope to do short interviews with listeners to hear their perspectives on navigating midlife crises or any of the issues we have discussed on the pod. From minutes 36-51 Alvin and I have a quick follow up discussion about vampires and the human fascination with the prospect of eternal life, and how it may not be as appealing as one might think, and we do a real or fake segment in which Alvin has to guess whether an article that discusses the possible health benefits of older people receiving blood transfusions from young people is from The Onion or a real journal article.

Finally, starting at about minute 51 Alvin and I talk about a few of the books that have changed our mindsets or ways of thinking. We note in our housekeeping that we now have a Twitter (X) account for the podcast, and our handle is @midlifepod2023. If you have examples of books or other life events that have changed your mindset or ways of thinking we would love to hear them. You can share them with us on our Twitter feed, by sending us a direct message on Twitter, or by emailing us at [email protected]. We will also be sharing links to the articles and books that we discussed in this episode and we will be posting pictures from our recent travels, so please go follow us on Twitter.

On today’s episode we have on as a special guest Mike Miller. He is a long time friend of Alvin and a loyal follower of the podcast. Mike is a fellow graduate of the University of North Carolina, has been an educator for 25 years and is currently an administrator at a private K-8 school in Asheville, NC, and his listener submitted stories have been twice nominated for a poddy award on the Carolina Insider podcast. Mike is (hopefully) starting the upward trend on the life happiness curve as he turns 50 in a couple of weeks, and as a practicing Catholic he is here to provide some alternative perspectives on death and the search for happiness, which are heavily influenced by his faith. Mike is also a parent who has recently seen his youngest child enter adulthood, so after some initial discussion about terrorists and vampires, Mike gives us some general critiques on the podcast, and we get his views on helicopter parenting, student resiliency, and his general take on midlife issues. Finally, we introduce a new segment called You’ve Got Mail, and we end with a Where were you when segment on the 1996 Olympic Park bomging. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

In this episode we have on as a guest Adina Fox, a licensed clinical social worker from Ashland, Ohio. After some initial banter about whether we would prefer to identify as Gen Xers or millennials, we talk to Adina about the general notion of midlife crises and whether they would be related to actual mental health disorders, what types of remedies she seeks with her patients, how she determines whether patients should seek counseling, advice on whether you might want to consult a therapist, some of her own reflections on entering the midlife stage, her experience working with elderly patients who are approaching death, and her thoughts on how therapy is portrayed on TV and in the movies. We end the episode with a Where were you when segment, in which we reflect back on the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

In this episode Alvin and I catch up on recent life events,

If you are interested in hearing the Making Sense of Death

If you are interested in checking out the book Denial of

Here is the link the to the Vox article by Anna North about

https://www.vox.com/23759898/kids-children-parenting-play-anxiety-mental-health

Send us your comments and thoughts about how you are coping with thoughts of death, or send us questions about coping with death or mid-life issues to our upcoming guest, who is a licensed mental health professional.

You can reach us by email at [email protected]

In this episode we briefly follow up on our iGen/Gen Z discussion and talk about helicopter parenting (3:48), reflect on our podcast venture up this point (23:35), introduce the life happiness curve (37:04), and finish up with a Are You Not Entertained segment (55:47) where we report back on previous streaming recommendations (and provide a couple of new ones as well).

Episode 3: In this episode, we introduce a new segment called "Real or Fake" in which we have to guess if ridiculous sounding journal articles are real research articles or fake articles from The Onion. We also discuss a book called "iGen" by Dr. Jean Twenge. We attempt to figure out how to deal with kids and young adults from Generation Z.