Back in the day, people only lived until they were 50 or 60 years old. Their paths were pretty much the same. Be born, possibly get an education, and definitely go to work. For the lucky ones, they’d retire.

The map of living has fundamentally changed as people live longer, some to 100 and beyond, causing us to think about longevity — at work and in life. My guest today knows a thing or two about the evolution of longevity.

Ken Stern is a podcaster and media executive who hosts Century Lives in conjunction with the Stanford Center on Longevity. This research center is described by Ken as “the world’s leading think tank on the impact of longevity on our lives.” Launched by a psychology and political science professor, Laura Carstensen, it’s all about changing the conversation surrounding longevity to how we reinvent our entire course of life with the “notion that longevity really begins at birth,” Ken says.

Ken cares deeply about longevity, but it’s the overall notion that has pulled him in. “What I love about the topic is that it encompasses everything, and one of the interesting things that got me into this thing was the notion that we’re a much longer-lived society than we used to be,” he shares.

If you are interested in talking about aging, work, meaning and purpose for people, then this episode is for you.

Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is a B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

The New Map of Life

The Stanford Center on Longevity does research on how work, geography, education and family structures influence our longevity. And this has been a central topic on season one of Ken’s podcast, Century Lives. It’s led to and helped formulate the center’s The New Map of Life initiative.  

“The New Map of Life is the culmination of decades worth of work at Stanford about how to live longer, happier lives and more productive lives. It actually started with a challenge,” shares Ken. He says that Carstensen, the center’s founder, talked about the need for us to rethink how we live for years until she finally took the step to get people to rethink their lives — create The New Map of Life initiative. 

The program looks at “all the segments of health care and work and retirement and how we organize our communities, which is a big challenge,” Ken says. “And the first report on it came out last fall, but it’s going to be an ongoing project as they work to describe it. Our role is to turn that into a little bit of a podcast form.”

The Future of Work and Longevity

When I think about my long-lived life and the life I want to have, I honestly don’t want to think about work. In Century Lives, Ken wants to challenge the common perspective of thinking about the long term. 

“Most people who think about longevity in work think about longer careers,” he says. People live longer, meaning they’ll work longer, which isn’t all that appealing. And that’s why in season two, Ken wants to refocus the concept to make it less intimidating.

“So the season of this podcast to really focus, how do you really invent careers so that idea is not scary? It’s actually ennobling and attractive to people, and how can they have multiple careers and ones that don’t kill them along the way?” Ken explains. The podcast season starts with young adults coming out of college and entering the workforce.

Purpose Without Burnout 

For me, contributing and being productive wherever we are for 50-plus years sounds exhausting, especially when it comes to how we treat our bodies, physically and mentally, in today’s world. I don’t think the modern lifestyle and body are built for a 60-year career without experiencing burnout. This plays against the idea of longevity for our jobs and future of work, and Ken explains that the perspective is different for everyone.

People on the younger side of the workforce have a very similar outlook when it comes to retirement — they want to sleep late because they expect to be tired after a long career. However, that’s not the case for people in the older age groups. Ken explains, “If you talk to people who are 50, 60, 70, they’re not thinking about sleeping late. They’re thinking about, ‘How can I still have a purposeful life?’”

It’s about looking for meaning and purpose in all parts of our journey. “So I think it’s not about our bodies breaking down. It’s about, how do you find purpose in all different stages of your life? And having enough time over the course of 50 years that your body doesn’t break down and you can still have that,” he says. 

The future of work and our career longevity depend on several factors. Still, following the best research and advice, we must acknowledge the purpose of every milestone. “We think about health span, not just lifespan. So you get a health span that allows you to be productive and purposeful well into your 80s or 90s or someday, even beyond,” Ken says.

[bctt tweet=”‘One of the interesting things that got me into this thing was the notion that we’re a much longer-lived society than we used to be.’ ~ @kenpstern. Tune into this episode of #PunkRockHR!” via=”no”]

People in This Episode

Full Transcript

Laurie Ruettimann:

This episode of Punk Rock HR is sponsored by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

Hey everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. Back in the day, people lived to be 50 or 60 years old. They were born, maybe they got an education, they definitely went to work, and if they were lucky, they retired. Now, people live to be 100 years old or longer, and the map of living has fundamentally changed.

My guest today is Ken Stern. He’s a podcaster and media executive who hosts the show Century Lives in conjunction with Stanford Center on Longevity. In this season of Century Lives, Ken is going deep into the world of work and exploring what it means to have a career when you live to be 100 years old. How do they do it in Finland? How do they do it in Iceland? What do kids today think about their careers and what they’ll be doing in 50 or 60 years? That’s what Ken is exploring.

So if you’re interested in topics like aging and work and meaning and purpose, well, I invite you to sit back and enjoy this conversation about the future of work with Ken Stern. 

Hey Ken, welcome to the podcast.

Ken Stern:

Hi Laurie. Nice to be here with you.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I’m super-pleased you’re here. Listen, why don’t we get started by having you tell everybody who you are and what you’re all about?

Ken Stern:

So I’m Ken Stern. I’m the host of a podcast called Century Lives from the Stanford Center of Longevity, and I write and think and talk to people about the impact of longevity on our lives and our society.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Why do you care about longevity?

Ken Stern:

Well, I care about it for a number of reasons. What I love about the topic is that it encompasses everything, and one of the interesting things that got me into this thing was the notion that we’re a much longer-lived society than we used to be. The lifespan has largely doubled in the last 150 years, but we still operate as if our lives are much shorter.

Some of the rules of society: The retirement age of 65 was invented by Bismarck in 1880 when he was trying to figure out how not to pay people pensions. The idea that we get all of our education in the first quartile of life doesn’t make a lot of sense when you’re going to have 40-, 50-, maybe even 60-year careers. So, I love thinking about these topics and talking to people about these topics.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Ken, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your podcast?

Ken Stern:

So it’s called Century Lives, it’s from the Stanford Center of Longevity. The Center of Longevity is the world’s leading think tank of the impact of longevity on our lives. We launched it in January. Season one was about what we call the New Map of Life — just how do you reimagine society across all these different segments in light of longer life. Season two, which comes out in May, it’s all about the future of work in light of longer life. I’m super-excited about that topic.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I know you’re intertwined with Stanford and have a great relationship with them, so tell us a little bit more about it.

Ken Stern:

So the podcast, actually, that I host is their podcast. So I’ve been working with them on podcasts and other things for a couple years. The Stanford Center on Longevity was launched by a psychology and political science professor at Stanford named Laura Carstensen about 12 years ago, and the group that has really tried to change the conversation about longevity to one about aging and the challenges of aging to one about how do we reinvent our entire course of life? With the notion that longevity really begins at birth. If you really want to think about healthy productive century-long lives, you have to think about the entire life course in new ways.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Why do you tell us a little bit about the future of work and why you took that on as a topic for season two of your podcast? Because when I think about my long-lived life and the life I want to have, I don’t want to think about work, but you tell me, why did you want to tackle the concept of work?

Ken Stern:

Well, it starts with the question, which is most people who think about longevity in work think about longer careers. So when I start talking to people about, hey, in the future, maybe not me, because I’m a little bit on the old side, but my son might need to have a 40-, 50-, 60-year career. That makes people [want] to push me off the top of a building, because that idea is not particularly appealing. And I understand that.

So the season of this podcast to really focus, how do you really invent careers so that idea is not scary? It’s actually ennobling and attractive to people, and how can they have multiple careers and ones that don’t kill them along the way? And that’s the topic we try to tackle. Starting with kids coming out of college. So the season starts with kids at Stanford, Stanford Podcast, them embarking on their 50-year career, and will go all the way through older workers and the new retirees.

Laurie Ruettimann:

So before we talk about all that, I just wonder if we can stop for a second and answer this question: Is the notion of a career an old-fashioned idea? Because if I recall the language on the Stanford website and I’ve listened to your podcast. There are three structures to our lives: the idea of being born, and being educated in the early part of our career, and then retirement. That’s an old way of thinking. And the work you’re doing today with Stanford is all about the new way of living in the new way of work.

Ken Stern:

So we’re used to thinking of a career as almost a continuous thing, and we already know that’s changing. So one of the people we interviewed has written a book called “The Squiggly Career.” So it’s not up and to the right, it’s all over the place. Average person will have 25 different jobs and three different careers. And if it makes sense, it’s going to be needed to be broken up by education and caregiving and time off to recharge. So that unbroken —

Laurie Ruettimann:

Or also illness or age, or —

Ken Stern:

Exactly.

Laurie Ruettimann:

— all sorts of things that get in the way of living and thriving.

Ken Stern:

Mental health breaks, just the known unknowns. Donald Rumsfeld was famous for saying the known unknowns. I don’t know what’s going to happen in that 50 years or 60 years. Something unexpected it’s going to happen.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Ken, I’ve got to be honest with you. For me, it feels like this idea of contributing and being productive wherever we are for 50 or 60 years — well, it sounds exhausting, especially the way we treat our bodies today. So maybe we can start there because I don’t think the modern lifestyle and the modern body is really built for a 60-year career. I don’t know if I feel like I can do another eight- or 10-hour day in 20 years. I’m not sure I’m built for that. So you tell me, what does the future of work look like and what did you discover as you were doing your reporting?

Ken Stern:

So that question looks very different depending on who you ask. So if you ask people on the younger side, 25, 30, what do they think their retirement looks like? They will answer, “I want to sleep late.” Because they view, like, “50 years, I’m going to be exhausted and tired.” But if you talk to people who are 50, 60, 70, they’re not thinking about sleeping late. They’re thinking about, “How can I still have a purposeful life?”

So I think it’s not about our bodies breaking down. It’s about how do you find purpose in all different stages of your life? And having enough time over the course of 50 years that your body doesn’t break down and you can still have that — we think about health span, not just lifespan. So you get a health span that allows you to be productive and purposeful well into your 80s or 90s or, someday, even beyond.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Ken, I approach this topic as a 47-year-old who feels tired all of the time, but I’m American. And I think, boy, this lifespan of mine, it’s taxing. But you go and report on work and lifespans in countries other than here in America. And I would imagine that lifespan and health span and education differ greatly based on geography. So can you talk to us about that?

Ken Stern:

Yeah. So in the run-up to season two, we’re doing special episodes on different work cultures. So we start with Iceland, which is the first country formally go to a less-than 40-hour workweek and talk to people who use that extra time just to recharge or take care of family or do things that help them really have a well-rounded life. We talk a lot about work-life balance, you got to adjust the hours. This week it’s Finland, and the notion of radical flexibility from where you work, what hours you work, and give you time to approach work differently.

And the next one, which I think in some ways the most interesting, is Singapore, which along with Japan is the longest-lived society. And they’re tackling that question of, OK, people are going to work longer, but they need to work differently. So they still have a retirement age of 62 or 63. But after that, the government encourages reemployment, but in different work in a way that allows them to have life flexibility that’s important and appropriate to that age. So finding that right balance. Other countries are very intentional about it in ways that we aren’t in the United States. But I think you can learn a lot by listening to what other countries are doing, what other companies are doing.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Do you take a radical position in this season on what the future of work should look like? Do you plan a flag? Do you say what it should be? And more importantly, what it shouldn’t be?

Ken Stern:

I hope so. We’re still producing it. So that is to be determined because, truthfully, we’re still doing reporting, but I think the answer is yes. I mean I think it starts with a notion that you’re not going to have a happy, productive 40-, 50-year life if all you’re doing is working and there’s no time for other things that are important and there’s no space. It’s a current thing to say, but historically it’s a very un-American thing to say. Max Weber in [“The Protestant Ethic and] the Spirit of Capitalism” really pervades how we think about work. But if you’re going to have that work-life that fits into 100-year life, it’s going to be a very different work world, which is hopefully one we describe.

Laurie Ruettimann:

So call me crazy, but I don’t think you can have a long-lived life if all you do is work. And I’m a little concerned about that, because I’m in the world of human resources right now. And we are trying to have a conversation around progressive people practices and conscious capitalism and treating people well. But I know that a lot of it is talk, and some of the tenets of progressive people practices, well, they’re actually antithetical to profit and profitability and revenue.

So I think there’s this natural tension in the system, and it feels nearly impossible to live a life that’s long and well-lived and also work in a capitalistic society. And the people who are doing it really well, well, those are the people who are born at third base. And I just wonder if we can actually live the long lives that you talk about and still have the system that we have. Don’t we need to light it on fire?

Ken Stern:

So I’m going to start off by at least questioning the issue of a trade-off between hours of work and productivity. That’s a long discussion. I mean the 40-hour workweek was challenged before Henry Ford put a flag in and said, “This is what we’re going to do.” It was challenged, like, “how could you lose profits and have people work less?” And it was productivity studies that showed that at 40 hours, people actually were more productive than they were at 50 hours. And what Iceland has found, or at least arguing, that it’s going to be the same at 36 — people are more productive when they have more time and are better-rested.

I think that notion of a trade-off has to be — it’s not a trade-off. It’s necessarily real. I mean, one of the things John Maynard Keynes, the greatest capitalist economist, predicted that his grandchildren would only work 15 hours a week because they would trade productivity gains for more leisure time. And it hasn’t happened — literally for his grandchildren, NPR interviewed them. But I think that’s got to happen. I mean, it’s the nature of capitalists. We got to buy a little more leisure time for us to be effective over longer lifespans.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I don’t disagree with that. And I also think there’s this emerging conversation around basic income or guaranteed minimum income that makes sure people aren’t working themselves to the ground, and they aren’t falling behind, and they can do other things and create a long-lived life. So while we’re at it, what is it that makes someone have a long-lived life? I mean, we’re dancing around it. We’ve talked about the importance of structuring work so that people can live a long-lived life, but what are the criteria?

Ken Stern:

So there are a lot of different factors that affect, often at childbirth. So there’s a geography of long-lived life to begin with. So I live in Washington, D.C. And if you have the good fortune to be born in Georgetown, you lived to 94. And if you had the bad fortune of being born in Anacostia, you lived to 67. So things happen early, and it’s access to good foods and stable families and education. All those matter in terms of what — early on, whether you’re going to have that long-lived life. And that’s an investment that we should be thinking about.

But more than that, it’s lifelong learning. For people who are active mentally, schooling doesn’t start and end at high school or college. They continue to be mentally engaged — which is why work actually matters to lifelong health — and almost invariably do better. And the other thing that actually is family. So we often assume — the health span is often tied to income, but it’s also tied to family structure. And if you have strong networks and strong family structure, multi-generational families that take care of each other tend to be longer lived. So a lot goes into health span and living well.

Laurie Ruettimann:

So all of that research that’s being done at Stanford that you about in the first season of your podcast, really formulates this New Map of Life. So I want to make sure that we describe that. Can you tell us what the New Map of Life is?

Ken Stern:

So the New Map of Life is the culmination of decades worth of work at Stanford about how to live longer, happier lives and more productive lives. It actually started with a challenge. So Laura Carstensen, who I mentioned earlier, who founded the Center on Longevity, has been talking about these issues. We need to rethink how we live — for quite a number of years. It’s her research she’s been thinking about.

And after a while, some of her colleagues and funders and partners said, “Well, that’s great that you’re talking about it. We need to rethink it. Why don’t you do it?” That was born the New Map of Life project, which is how do you [rethink] all the segments of health care and work and retirement and how we organize our communities, which is a big challenge. And the first report on it came out last fall, but it’s going to be an ongoing project as they work to describe it. Our role is to turn that into a little bit of a podcast form.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, and this conversation around rethinking work and making sure that we’re aligning all of the different aspects of our lives to a better way of living. This conversation is so important and so prescient right now, because everybody’s talking about the Great Resignation. So I just wonder, what are your thoughts on the Great Resignation and where does that fall in with season two of the podcast?

Ken Stern:

So the Great Resignation is in many ways an unexpected accelerant of a lot of these trends around work about the fight for work-life balance. The idea of remote work, which was fairly foreign in the US — very commonplace in a place like Finland — but very foreign in the US until now. And I think it’s brought to a head a lot of these issues that people have been talking about, which is like, “how do you redesign work in a way that makes sense over longer life?” And all of a sudden there’s a real-life public experiment in that. 

And it’s proved, I think, that some of the things that people speculated about could really help people, in terms of remote work and more flexible hours — that they could be trusted with it — is actually proven true in real life. And the question, I think, is a natural experiment: It continues as companies clamor to bring people back to work, or is it a moment in time that we all remember at some point as like, “Oh, that’s how it worked for those two years.”

And I think from our perspective, as we do our report on this: If the pandemic hadn’t happened, we’d be describing how people worked during the pandemic. More flexible work, the fight for work-life balance, the fight for flexible work hours, the fight for caregiving opportunities and the need for more learning opportunities. All those happened during the pandemic, and the question of whether those are sustainable or not.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I think one of the really interesting things about the Great Resignation is that it’s forcing a conversation around power and whether or not people will even come back to work and their expectations of what work will look like. And I wonder if you have an opinion right now about that shift in power between workers and employers, and what’s happening on the ground, not just in professional business environments, but in health care and retail and all sorts of industries around the world.

Ken Stern:

I have no idea how it’s going to shake out. I can make a prediction, but it’s a coin flip for me. I hope it works out that what employers asking for — so there are a couple of things that are happening. One of which is, it’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” the old Johnny Paycheck song. A lot of the Great Resignation is about bad bosses, in the notion that I can find — either because I can walk down the street to another job and find it, a better job, or through technology, I have access to a world of jobs that didn’t exist before. But it’s mostly about labor shortages, and that gives workers powers to claim a work situation that is better for them and better for their families. I think labor is probably more cyclical in that upper hand that labor has right now might pass, but I hope not, because it’s been out of whack the other way for way too long.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I have this working theory that it’s not a Great Resignation. It’s a Great Talent Swap. Doesn’t matter the openings. There were openings before COVID, and there are going to be job openings now and for time in memoriam. But people are just flopping around from one job to the other, and they’re not really truly aligning themselves with their values, with their goals. They’re not really taking the time to think about what they want in their careers, and they’re just swapping out one terrible position for another. And I mean, maybe something is happening with their paycheck, but they’re definitely not moving ahead emotionally. They’re not moving ahead and working at that intersection of purpose and meaning. They’re just swapping out one experience for the other. So I wonder if you have any thoughts on that or any reflections or any insights.

Ken Stern:

So I think that’s largely right, but not exclusively right. So I think there’s a bunch of different things going on. I think the biggest thing is, the fact people are looking for a better job and the hope that the grass is greener, which is not always true. But there are a lot of early retirements as older workers find it hard to reintegrate into the workforce, which is a long term

Laurie Ruettimann:

 — wait, are those early retirements or are they almost forced retirements?

Ken Stern:

And that’s a good question. I think it is — most of them are probably retirements forced by circumstance. And there is, I think, people leaving the workforce for caregiving and things like that, for sure. But the one thing I would say, I’m 58. So I’ve had resumes and I’ve looked at resumes for decades now. I think one thing has changed for sure. If I saw the resume of someone who had 10 jobs in a decade in the past, I would’ve just said, “There’s something wrong with that person. They can’t hold a job.” I think that has changed. The idea of declining job tenure. There’s changes in expectations to how long you’re supposed to be a job. So I think some of the job-hopping reflects society and that’s OK. It’s OK for you to look for a better job, circumstances for you and your family, which I hope is a good thing.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah. I hope so, as well. Well, I’m super excited for season two of the podcast. And if there’s one thing you want to leave our listeners with, what do you want them to know about the upcoming season that you’re excited about?

Ken Stern:

So this is more about me and I hope about your listeners, as well. I’m excited about going out and talking to actual workers. So it starts with, we have a lot of professors and experts and they’re great, but the conversations that I love is, starting with episode one, which is talking to kids at Stanford about what that career looks like and with their faculty adviser and how wrong they are. But that’s the privilege of youth … We’re going to go to Kentucky and talk to blue-collar workers about their future of work. We talk to older workers, and that’s really the fun thing, is actually hearing real stories that, I think, really demonstrate and illustrate what the future of work hopefully can look like. And hopefully, at the end of the day, we can come back and answer your question and say, “yes, we put a flag in the ground, and this is what the future of work needs to look like.” So to hear about the podcast, they should go to, well, either wherever they get their podcast, Apple or Spotify, or to longevity.stanford.edu.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Perfect. Well, Ken, it was a pleasure talking to you today. I hope you come back and let us know how things shake out for the future of work.

Ken Stern:

I’d be thrilled to do it. Great talking with you, Laurie.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Hey everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Rock HR. We are proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com. Punk Rock HR is produced and edited by Rep Cap with special help from Michael Thibodeaux and Devon McGrath. For more information, show notes, links, and resources head on over to punkrockhr.com. Now that’s all for today and I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.

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