Science Says Aging Can Make You Happier | Laura Carstensen

**Laura Carstensen** (0:00)
Another category of goals is feeling good, feeling like we're doing something meaningful, being with people we love and care about. And those are goals that are realized in the doing, in their execution. When I talk to you, I feel good because you make me feel good. I'm not talking to you thinking, and maybe Chip will do something for me tomorrow, or next year, or you know, it's not, we're not making connections, it's not networking, it's savoring.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

**Chip Conley** (0:41)
Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis, this is Chip Conley, and today's guest is one of my favorites. She's, I could geek out with her for hours, we kept this to 45 minutes or so, but the bottom line is she is one of the greatest minds in psychology around aging, and she is the founding director of The Stanford Center on Longevity, and we talk a lot about some of her theories. Yes, we geek out, but we also get into some of the personal. We start the episode with her story of almost dying at age 21 due to her car accident and her convalescence from that, and what it taught her about older people.
I think you're going to enjoy this because it was an awful lot of podcasts out there, and books out there about the physical science side of longevity. But the reality is that the social science side of longevity, a space that Laura is one of the leading thinkers in, has shown more of a positive effect on extending lives than the physical science side. Physical science side may be catching up, and God love all of the longevity bros who are investing so much time and money and energy into that. But there's so much to learn from the social science side, and I think you're going to learn a few things from this today, and maybe feel a little bit better about aging. I'll talk to you at the end.
Laura Carstensen, welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis. I'm-

**Laura Carstensen** (2:04)
Wonderful to be here with you, Chip.

**Chip Conley** (2:07)
Honored. So honored. You're one of those people, I just was on the phone with Mark Friedman 30 minutes ago, and the two of you and Phil Pizzo, the three of you just light me up, and I was lucky enough to have all of you at a Stanford Business School reunion talk a couple of years ago, and that was great. I want to take us back to age 21 Laura, at 21, you had a tragic situation happen in your life, that in some way influenced many of the ways you see life, and one of your most famous theories, psychology theories, in some ways speaks to it as well.
So can you tell us what happened at 21, if you don't mind, and what you learned along the way from that?

**Laura Carstensen** (2:52)
First of all, it was the 70s, so I want to just, for your listeners to give me a lot of leeway there.
These were wild times. Anyway, that said, I was out with a group of people I worked with, going to a concert, and a group of us went, we all piled into cars and went to the concert, and then we piled into cars, we were all going to go play pool back in the city when we got back. I happened to get into a van with a guy I didn't know very well, and it was clear very quickly that he was very drunk, and we're driving down a country road, and the van is weaving in and out. I remember asking him to slow down, and then the last thing I remember is putting my hand on the dashboard, and then everything just went black. So he rolled off the road, and the van rolled over a few times, and I broke about, I think, well, it was 20 bones in my left leg, and then a bunch of other ones punctured along, couldn't see for a couple weeks. It was a very bad accident.

**Chip Conley** (4:01)
You were thrown from the vehicle, I think, right?

**Laura Carstensen** (4:04)
Yeah.
I believe I was thrown through the windshield, but that's what I was told. I don't remember that happening. I remember laying on the side of the road, actually, and this is probably much more detail than you wanted.

**Chip Conley** (4:17)
No, I want, listen, this is near-death experience. We love those.