Laura Carstensen: Older people are happier

130,713 views ・ 2012-04-19

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People are living longer and societies are getting grayer.
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You hear about it all the time.
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You read about it in your newspapers.
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You hear about it on your television sets.
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Sometimes, I'm concerned
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that we hear about it so much that we've come to accept longer lives
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with a kind of a complacency, even ease.
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But make no mistake, longer lives can --
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and, I believe, will improve quality of life at all ages.
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Now to put this in perspective, let me just zoom out for a minute.
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More years were added to average life expectancy in the 20th century
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than all years added across all prior millennia
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of human evolution combined.
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In the blink of an eye,
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we nearly doubled the length of time that we're living.
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So if you ever feel like you don't have this aging thing quite pegged,
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don't kick yourself.
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It's brand new.
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And because fertility rates fell across that very same period
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that life expectancy was going up,
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that pyramid that has always represented the distribution of age in the population,
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with many young ones at the bottom winnowed to a tiny peak of older people
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who make it and survive to old age,
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is being reshaped into a rectangle.
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And now, if you're the kind of person
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who can get chills from population statistics,
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(Laughter)
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these are the ones that should do it.
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Because what that means
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is that for the first time in the history of the species,
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the majority of babies born in the developed world
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are having the opportunity to grow old.
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How did this happen?
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Well, we're no genetically hardier than our ancestors were 10,000 years ago.
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This increase in life expectancy is the remarkable product of culture --
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the crucible that holds science and technology
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and wide-scale changes in behavior that improve health and well-being.
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Through cultural changes, our ancestors largely eliminated early death
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so that people can now live out their full lives.
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Now there are problems associated with aging --
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diseases, poverty, loss of social status.
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It's hardly time to rest on our laurels.
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But the more we learn about aging,
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the clearer it becomes that a sweeping downward course
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is grossly inaccurate.
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Aging brings some rather remarkable improvements --
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increased knowledge, expertise --
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and emotional aspects of life improve.
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That's right, older people are happy.
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They're happier than middle-aged people, and younger people, certainly.
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(Laughter)
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Study after study is coming to the same conclusion.
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The CDC recently conducted a survey
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where they asked respondents simply to tell them
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whether they experienced significant psychological distress
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in the previous week.
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And fewer older people answered affirmatively to that question
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than middle-aged people, and younger people as well.
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And a recent Gallup poll asked participants
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how much stress and worry and anger they had experienced the previous day.
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And stress, worry, anger
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all decrease with age.
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Now social scientists call this the paradox of aging.
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I mean, after all, aging is not a piece of cake.
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So we've asked all sorts of questions to see if we could undo this finding.
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We've asked whether it may be that the current generations of older people
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are and always have been the greatest generations.
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That is that younger people today may not typically experience
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these improvements as they grow older.
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We've asked,
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well, maybe older people are just trying to put a positive spin
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on an otherwise depressing existence.
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(Laughter)
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But the more we've tried to disavow this finding,
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the more evidence we find to support it.
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Years ago, my colleagues and I embarked on a study
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where we followed the same group of people over a 10-year period.
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Originally, the sample was aged 18 to 94.
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And we studied whether and how their emotional experiences changed
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as they grew older.
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Our participants would carry electronic pagers
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for a week at a time,
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and we'd page them throughout the day and evenings at random times.
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And every time we paged them,
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we'd ask them to answer several questions --
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"On a one to seven scale, how happy are you right now?"
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"How sad are you right now?"
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"How frustrated are you right now?" --
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so that we could get a sense of the kinds of emotions and feelings they were having
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in their day-to-day lives.
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And using this intense study of individuals,
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we find that it's not one particular generation
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that's doing better than the others,
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but the same individuals over time
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come to report relatively greater positive experience.
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Now you see this slight downturn at very advanced ages.
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And there is a slight downturn.
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But at no point does it return to the levels we see in early adulthood.
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Now it's really too simplistic to say that older people are "happy."
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In our study, they are more positive.
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But they're also more likely than younger people
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to experience mixed emotions --
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sadness at the same time you experience happiness;
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you know, that tear in the eye when you're smiling at a friend.
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And other research has shown that older people seem to engage with sadness
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more comfortably.
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They're more accepting of sadness than younger people are.
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And we suspect that this may help to explain
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why older people are better than younger people
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at solving hotly charged emotional conflicts and debates.
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Older people can view injustice with compassion,
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but not despair.
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And all things being equal,
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older people direct their cognitive resources, like attention and memory,
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to positive information more than negative.
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If we show older, middle-aged, younger people images,
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like the ones you see on the screen,
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and we later ask them to recall all the images that they can,
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older people, but not younger people,
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remember more positive images than negative images.
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We've asked older and younger people to view faces in laboratory studies,
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some frowning, some smiling.
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Older people look toward the smiling faces and away from the frowning, angry faces.
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In day-to-day life, this translates into greater enjoyment and satisfaction.
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But as social scientists, we continue to ask about possible alternatives.
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We've said, well, maybe older people report more positive emotions
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because they're cognitively impaired.
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(Laughter)
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We've said, could it be
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that positive emotions are simply easier to process than negative emotions,
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and so you switch to the positive emotions?
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Maybe our neural centers in our brain
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are degraded such that we're unable to process negative emotions anymore.
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But that's not the case.
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The most mentally sharp older adults
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are the ones who show this positivity effect the most.
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And under conditions where it really matters,
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older people do process the negative information
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just as well as the positive information.
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So how can this be?
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Well, in our research,
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we've found that these changes are grounded fundamentally
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in the uniquely human ability to monitor time --
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not just clock time and calendar time, but lifetime.
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And if there's a paradox of aging,
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it's that recognizing that we won't live forever
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changes our perspective on life in positive ways.
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When time horizons are long and nebulous, as they typically are in youth,
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people are constantly preparing,
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trying to soak up all the information they possibly can,
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taking risks, exploring.
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We might spend time with people we don't even like
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because it's somehow interesting.
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We might learn something unexpected.
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(Laughter)
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We go on blind dates.
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(Laughter)
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You know, after all,
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if it doesn't work out, there's always tomorrow.
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People over 50 don't go on blind dates.
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(Laughter)
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As we age, our time horizons grow shorter and our goals change.
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When we recognize that we don't have all the time in the world,
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we see our priorities most clearly.
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We take less notice of trivial matters.
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We savor life.
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We're more appreciative,
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more open to reconciliation.
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We invest in more emotionally important parts of life,
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and life gets better,
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so we're happier day-to-day.
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But that same shift in perspective
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leads us to have less tolerance than ever for injustice.
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By 2015,
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there will be more people in the United States
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over the age of 60 than under 15.
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What will happen to societies that are top-heavy with older people?
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The numbers won't determine the outcome.
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Culture will.
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If we invest in science and technology
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and find solutions for the real problems that older people face
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and we capitalize on the very real strengths of older people,
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then added years of life can dramatically improve quality of life at all ages.
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Societies with millions of talented, emotionally stable citizens
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who are healthier and better educated than any generations before them,
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armed with knowledge about the practical matters of life
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and motivated to solve the big issues
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can be better societies than we have ever known.
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My father, who is 92, likes to say,
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"Let's stop talking only about how to save the old folks
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and start talking about how to get them to save us all."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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