WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Calla Crossley Show. When it comes to getting older Mark Twain said age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind it doesn't matter. And now there's research to back this up. Turns out with ageing we are what we think harboring negative stereotypes about getting old can actually affect our health. As we get older for the worse we can undo this by thinking more positive thoughts. If we mock all associations we make with aging from Chamblee mama shuffleboard court to surrendering to a senior moment. We could begin to improve our lives and longevity. This hour we look into the mindset that can bring on heart failure or get us to that happy healthy 100. We top it off with another edition of pop culture Queen K9 Monica Collins is taking your calls on all things done. Up next from new thoughts on old age to teaching old dogs new tricks. First the news from NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying. Commuters along the East Coast are

still digging out from last night's snowstorm many of them are just picking up vehicles they were forced to abandon on snow clogged roads after spending hours with no success trying to get unstuck. In the Washington D.C. area people woke up this morning to frigid homes. They were among tens of thousands of people to lose electricity. It was a similar scene points north in Connecticut Diane Orson of member station when PR reports the latest storm dumped more than a foot of snow in her state. It's starting to feel very familiar. Another day of school cancellations. Transportation delays and driveways that need to be dug out with the snow blower. CAMDEN RESIDENT Kathy Larson says she usually likes the snow to get to be a bit much colder because there's nowhere to put it. I think we've probably got 14 or 15 months maybe more than what. Remember that two buildings in the town of Portland Connecticut collapsed under the weight of the snow. Governor Dannel Malloy has ordered all non-essential state employees to

delay arrival to work until noon. For NPR News I'm Diane Orson in New Haven. The wintery mess is apparently largely to blame for the latest surge in new unemployment applications. The Labor Department says an additional fifty one thousand people file for jobless insurance for the first time last week because they were unable to do so earlier due to recent winter storms that hit the south. Economist Hugh Johnson you get a lot of volatility in these numbers at this time of year and I think we all are braced and expect it but we didn't expect a weather related increase in jobless claims that certainly came as a surprise. At last check on Wall Street the Dow was up 17 points at twelve thousand two. Nasdaq up 17 a twenty seven fifty seven. In other news a Muslim population is expected to increase by 35 percent over the next two decades. NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty has more on a new study by the Pew Research Center in the John Templeton Foundation.

According to Pew's projections Muslims will make up more than a quarter of the world population in 2030. Increasing one and a half percent a year. That's twice as fast as non-Muslim populations. Most Muslims will live in the Asia-Pacific region as they do now. And the biggest growth is expected in sub-Saharan Africa. Europe is expected to see some Muslim expansion. The United States much less so. Among the reasons for the growth Muslims have higher birth rates and non-Muslims and a larger share of the Muslim women are in or will soon enter their prime reproductive years. By contrast Western countries are seeing an aging population and birth rates tend to decline in countries where women are wealthier and better educated. Barbara Bradley Hagerty NPR News. Here's the latest from Wall Street the Dow is up 16 at twelve thousand two. This is NPR. Egypt's leading democracy advocate Mohamed El-Baradei reportedly has a return of the country which is in the grip of political turmoil with the largest anti-government protests not seen

in Egypt in years. He called for restraint adding It is a crucial moment in Egypt's history. It could difficult undertaking to that good bit. But the big miss in this include such as Vitamin C. And understand that change has to come. There is no other option. Protesters are demanding that the president Hosni Mubarak step down. After nearly 30 years in power African Union leaders are to hold a summit over the weekend with a prolonged political standoff in Ivory Coast likely to dominate proceedings. NPR's Ofeibea Quist Stockton reports cracks are showing in the United Continental front that has so far backed one candidate in November as disputed presidential vote. And South Africa and Uganda among the African countries questioning the threat by Ivory Coast neighbors to use force to remove the incumbent leader. That leaves a lesson what are the internationally recognized presumed winner of the contested election in a fix. He's been pressing for military intervention as the only way to dislodge Bibo a move

West African leaders initially supported. But weeks of diplomatic mediation have failed to resolve the presidential pass trouble. What the economist is gaining financial control of Ivory Coast. But my book The most a political operator is buying time winning hearts and minds in his bid for negotiations and a vote recount. Stockton NPR News we continue to see gains on Wall Street with the Dow up nearly 12. This is NPR. Support for NPR comes from IBM working to help mid-sized businesses become the engines of a Smarter Planet. Learn more at IBM dot com slash engines. Good afternoon I'm Kalee Crossley. This is the Calla Crossley Show research on aging suggests that the fountain of youth is within us. We actually can be as young as we feel which has everything to do with how young we think we are. Joining me to discuss this is Ellen

Langer. She's a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In a recent paper age related ques on health and longevity she and colleagues collected a number of studies indicating that how young we feel can affect our health. As we get older. Her latest book which is which also tackles these issues is counter-clockwise. Ellen Langer welcome. Thank you for having me. Now before we do divide divide I dive into the conversation I can say it. Listeners we want to hear from you. How old do you feel. What makes you feel old being called ma'am or Gramps. When do you feel young. What stereotypes about aging influence how you feel about your age. We're 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. So Ellen Langer in 1989 your book Mindfulness became an international bestseller and it's a concept that really puts together the mind and the body so first let's start there telling our listeners what that what mindfulness is all about.

Well mindfulness as I have been studying it for a very long time is so simple it almost defies belief that all you need to do is notice new things when you notice new things that puts you in the present and makes you sensitive to context and so on. And once as you're noticing it since nothing stays the same and things look different from different perspectives. But once you start noticing it becomes interesting because you see you didn't know that thing as well as you thought you did. Most of us suffer from mindlessness or we can call it an illusion of certainty. We think we know when you think you know you don't pay attention. You have lots of pop psychology that says be in the moment which really is an empty instruction because when you're not in the moment you're not there to know you're not there so you can't put yourself there. OK. And the way to be there is again just noticing. All right so now we take that concept of mindfulness and apply it

to aging. And how does that work. Well many of the things we believe in bad aging are just mindless beliefs that we've accepted when we were younger and never thought to question again. So for example when you're young and think you're never going to get older though it's certainly preferable to the alternative that you're led to believe your memory is going to get bad. Now what happens is as you get old then you forget something the first thing you've forgotten is how often you forgot when you were young. So this is not something that you've never experienced before. But what happens is then you make an attribute to this loss of memory to your age when it might have little to do with that. For example when I was young and up and coming whatever that I would be meeting people and it felt important that I learned everybody's everybody's name. At this point Kelly in all honesty I don't care. If you

introduce me to five people and I don't learn their names then later when you refer to one of them and I don't know who it is I might mistakenly think that I have forgotten. You can't forget if you didn't learn it in the first place. So what happens is as we get older we care about different things and mistakenly think that our memory is worse then then it might be. All right I'm speaking with Ellen Langer She's a psychologist one of the really founders of the concept of mindfulness. And her latest book is counter-clockwise how young we think we are we feel can affect our health as we get older is the premise of that book. OK so now we have a tribute at certain things to aging which really we shouldn't do. Am I allowed to and you know you are. Yeah yeah you know please. Yeah. Just that the book is about health and well-being at any age. So that sort of important to this is not all about aging but the

way I have the right mindset so if we're mindful of when we're younger we'll avoid many of the problems that many people today face as they get older. OK our number is 8 7 7 3 0 one eighty nine seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy we want to hear from you. Is what Ellen Langer is describing. You call in and let us know if that's what's happening now while people are listening and some of them are probably pooh poohing it and saying Right yeah so we need to put on the table some of the studies that you've done. Yes. Which help to support this so. I'm very fascinated by the one that you did with the man that you took to the New Hampshire retreat center. Yes private for us. I will I actually did that study many years ago and the results were so astounding that I didn't report all of them because I wanted to be taken seriously. And so I use that to anger many of the brand new studies that basically let me tell you the idea behind it. Before I tell you

exactly what we did of the four centuries you have psychologists and philosophers worrying about the mind body problem. Very simple. The question is has always been how do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to this thing you can touch the material body and mind but we've all had the experience you know you're watching a TV show when the music increases and your heart starts racing and so on. And in all the work on mindfulness it occurred to me that these are just concepts they're just words and that if we put the mind in the body back together so to speak then we're everywhere putting the mind. We're necessarily putting the body so I have study after study where we put the mind in a healthy place and then take measures from the body. So in this particular study we took elderly gentlemen and they were around 80 and that was when 80 was 80 not the new 60. I mean

these people were old. OK. In fact I interrupt myself. I remember vividly that as they were individually coming to my office to go to the lab to be tested to see if they could be in the study helped usually by their adult daughters barely making it down the hallway and I'm saying to myself What am I getting myself into that I wasn't sure they were going to live through the day no less be able to spend this week away. But they did. And we took them to a timeless retreat that we retrofitted to 20 years earlier so well the props magazines TV shows movies they saw everything was from the past and the experimental group was to live for that week. As if it was the pass. Speaking about the past in the present tense so their minds were. Now was that earlier time we had a comparison group that went to the same place saw the same

items watch the same TV shows and movies and so on but for them they were reminiscing for the week. So their minds were in the present saying you know this is now and that was then. And interestingly we got positive effects for both groups which I can discuss if you're interested. And even more improvement in the experimental group their vision improve their hearing improve their cognitive functioning improve their strength improved. We have taken photographs of them before we started the study and of all the men and then at the end and had them rated by people who knew nothing about the study and they were also rated as looking younger. Now they didn't look like teenagers or right and 20 years younger but noticeably younger. Wow. All right.

That's Ellen Langer She's a professor of psychology at Harvard University. Discussing one of her studies and we're taking a call now from Barbara from Cambridge Go ahead please. Yes hi thanks for taking my call. And you're sure. Yeah I am kind of an instinctive Jewish and I'm in a kind of reverse May-December marriage my husband of a thousand years younger and I'm a woman in my 60s and I'm also an artist and I forget for a month at a time that I am a woman and I think my artist friends who are kind of in the same age group some of them I think they forget you. So I don't know if I think there is so much resonated with me a lot how you think of yourself in your head now can affect how you feel overall. And I don't know if it's more of the being married to a younger guy or more being the artist I don't know but I'm only intrigued with your book. Thank you Barbara I think actually you're in the perfect position that in the

most recent paper we published we find that when there's a big age difference the person who is in that older position tends to. Live Longer age better that in some sense you're brought into this younger life and age just as you've described becomes less of an issue in the book I wrote before the Counter-Clockwise book it's called becoming an artist reinventing yourself through mindful creativity and I also paint and there I basically show people how engaging their mindful creativity is also good for their health. So you win both ways. That's great. Thank you. Now she's in the really great position 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 give us a call if you are feeling young and you are getting younger. As a result of that you need. Go ahead.

Well I thought that it might be interesting to people to know that recently this summer I filmed a series with the BBC and wall to wall productions where they replicated the original counter-clockwise study and what was interesting this they did this with British celebrities who were absolutely charming. And it was supposed to be a replication of the experimental group. But because they were celebrities and a little cantankerous and what have you and they kept pulling them out of the so-called present which was the past to interview them and so on and get footage that it seemed more like the comparison group the reminiscing group in the original starting and there was something that happened there when I did the original study that wasn't scientifically. It wasn't I wouldn't have planned OK but I'm glad that it happened. Let me tell you so

as I am arriving in this minibus with these older men I realize that my male graduate students and Dr. postdocs weren't with me. So there I am with eight older men and eight large suitcases and this was back in a time when I was lazy and sexist and what have you. There was no way that I was going to carry these suitcases. And so I made an announcement the moment we got to the retreat saying you are responsible. You can unpack it here and take the shirt up at a time. You can move it an inch at a time. This was so drastically different from the way they were being helped to death by family and friends who who love them that the change for them was also almost palpable that it said well maybe I can do these things everybody expects me to do it and they did it and the more they did the more they saw they could do. And they too. Showed many positive consequences of for the week for the BBC.

Again something I find interesting. So they showed all the same effects that we got originally. Now I said that when I ran the original study I didn't report everything so I didn't report that these people who seem like they were going to make it through the day. At the outset that at the end a couple stopped using their canes and that we were playing touch football. Now I'm old enough that I don't really just put it all out there. OK that for the BBC production what I found interesting was that each of the people showed an improvement in vision and they didn't report it. The same sort of thing you know which is sad to me that these original findings I had so many years ago and things are moving or moving in the right direction but it's slower than it needs to be. We have an enormous amount of control over our health and well-being and and our. Usually utilizing so little of it.

All right I am speaking with Ellen Langer professor of psychology at Harvard University. We're discussing her research on aging in a recent paper she and colleagues collected a number of studies indicating that how young we feel actually affects our health as we get older. Now listeners you've heard or what do you think about when you think about getting older who are your role models. Are there stereotypes out there that make you think you're older and you really feel weird 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 8 9 7 8 that's 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We'll be back after this break. Stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from arts commerce and the world on stage presenting the world premiere of The Color of prose about the Rose Kennedy story at the Paramount beginning January 27. You can find more information online at Art's Emerson dot org and from Dana Farber Cancer Institute inviting you to help celebrate the opening of the Yaki Center for Cancer Care in February. Patients and their families

helped to create a thoughtfully designed place of healing Dana-Farber dot org slash Yaki Center and from safety insurance committed to safety and driving. And reminding parents of teenage drivers that it is illegal in Massachusetts for their children to drive while using a cell phone. You can learn more at safety insurance dot com. Of the next FRESH AIR in the wake of the Tucson shootings. We look at gun control legislation the history of the NRA and the controversy over what the Second Amendment means. We talk with Robert Spitzer the author of The Politics of Gun Control. Join us for the next FRESH AIR. This afternoon at two on eighty nine point seven The WGBH. Right now one of the most popular DVDs in the world. Is a co-production of the BBC and WGBH Boston. This with grace and the boys are a great song. It's Downton Abbey.

From the beloved PBS series Masterpiece Classic continue the legacy of masterpiece and will thank you with a DVD copy of Downton Abbey for a contribution of seventy five dollars almost all the details are online at WGBH total. Everybody has his own story the world he has seen fit to kill in front of his brown instantly. He deafness gave my life coming up at 3 o'clock on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in my guest Ellen Langer a professor of psychology at Harvard University. We're talking we're discussing her research on aging in a recent paper she along with her colleagues collected a number of studies indicating that how young we feel actually has a direct effect on our health. As we get older listeners we want you to weigh in on this. Does how you feel correlate with your actual age. How do you judge how old you are. By the way you look by the way you

feel by the way society treats you. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 0 1 89 70. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Going to go straight to calls Jen from West Roxbury yuan eighty nine point seven. WGBH Go ahead please. I tell you hi and thanks for having me on right. Go ahead. Well I'm in my late 30s and I'm a musician and that's an interesting occupation to be and when you're. In your late 30s and you've been doing it for about 20 years people tend to you know there's kind of this old joke that mommy when I grow up I want to be there and then. And the punch line is where you can't be both. I'm going Yeah so you know I have no sort of gig to gig in. Album the album that I write and do this sort of the feelings change and people are constantly curious about Yuri and I kind of kinda high at it and just let people get their just you know avoid the situation altogether.

And it's interesting that yeah I've noticed when I really center myself and just sort of don't think about age it doesn't. I feel younger and I you know I'm able to do what I need to do at the moment and you know I it's funny how I think two years ago people thought I was older than they think I am so glad you're still rather young right now and I was going to say what does it mean when a 30 year old Rachel said Yes I'm her age what does that mean that you know I'm approaching 40 and it's it's an occupation though where you know people really feel like you should be 23 and if you don't make it five and they're in the business then you should you know hang it up. So you're aging yourself by thinking you're you're worrying about being older which is Ellen's point right. Yes but I'm saying that it's you know it's been an interesting fight against that and sort of. I've done it. It's resonating with me.

Well thank you very much for it Jim for the column and let Ellen respond go ahead. Well actually I'm going to take advantage of being a musician to tell you about some work that I also reported in the unbecoming book. What we did was to take our history of musicians who basically were bored and many are and you probably can confirm that because they're playing the same pieces over and over again. And we teach we taught half of them to play mindfully in the instruction again was so simple it was make it knew in very subtle ways that only you would know. All right so that's noticing new things is the essence of mindfulness which keeps the neurons firing and is the essence of engagement and is actually life giving and we so we have office trysts performing mindfully or mindlessly playing classical music. We record it and we then play those recordings for other people. And overwhelmingly they preferred the mindfully played piece and the musicians prefer it and that so all of

the research suggests that it's good for you. People find it appealing and. Be in your 30s and to worry about turning 40. I think the probably the best thing for you to do is make some new friends that are 50 so that you can stand a child. Marty from Providence you're on eighty nine point seven WGBH Go ahead please. Hi thanks for having me on. You know it is you know you've talked just about AIDS generally and how you feel about that. I'm 42 and I've always thought that I don't feel any age and that is when I think of it chronologically has seemed like it really can't be me I certainly could have been around that long. But recently I found that I'm having some heart trouble and that has been you know just going to a cardiologist and and going through that exercise has really. Kind of walk me to my core about

why you did what help is relative to age and in a way that I really hadn't even considered. I think what you're describing is the essence of Ellen's work Ellen. Having nothing to do with age though. That it's too complicated. I mean unless Cali will agree that I can sit here with you know no next three hours. But so much of what we know about disease in general is misleading and that no matter what diagnosis we have we take that seriously those diagnoses in some sense are best guesses. And so you have to remember that and take take care of yourself you know as you have your symptoms. We tend to hold things still and not notice the fluctuations nothing stays still and if we listen I call attention to variability as a way of dealing with lots of medical issues. If you notice when it's a little worse when it's a

little better whatever that it is then you ask yourself well why. And then in generating answers to that. Two things happened the first is that you might actually find the answer and help yourself. The other is asking those questions rather than just mindlessly accepting what the medical world gives you and then worrying both of which are mindless. It is bad for your health by questioning you and again actively engaged and that's good for you. I give an example to make it clearer rather than with a heart ailment. If you have asthma for example and most people have asthma when they feel they need it they take the inhaler. They don't pay attention to the fact that they don't need that inhaler all the time. Well why not. Why when you're talking to Kally do you not need the inhaler. When you're talking to me you need the inhaler and as soon as you recognize that then you say oh maybe you should stop talking to me or make

your interactions with me more like they are with Kelly. The bottom line to what I'm saying really is that even with these scary diagnoses we may have more control over our health than we're led to believe. All right I have a couple questions to ask you want to talk to you about what your critics say about the work. But first we're getting a lot of women who don't have any credit you got you got credit. So I want you to weigh in on why so many women callers and not men on this subject of aging. Well yeah that's interesting. And I just wondered if you had a thought before I think another woman you know and that well I don't know it could be why do you have so many women listeners yesterday and all men. It's very interesting. OK I just I love us from Quincy you're on eighty nine point seven. Go ahead please. I you're so good to see you. I'm just curious 84 this weekend for a year and I'm still working. MARTIN Right. But I'm worried all the time I work with people who actually has something similar to your field and I'm always thinking about what they're going to

think about all the wrinkles I have I sat in the sun for many years and I'm very wrinkled. But somehow they get past that maybe more than I do. Exactly now what happens is when you have no information you're going to use the one or two cues that are available to you. So your wrinkles will tell somebody perhaps that you're older than you might want them to think you are. But once you start engaging them then the terms of the engagement change and age becomes background rather than foreground. All right thank you very much Lois for your call. And I want to take David the brave man from Marblehead. Thank you so much for calling in. You're ninety nine point seven WGBH Go ahead please. Hi how are you my. Oh yes I guess I'm the only man that's calling driving down the road. Ray's not calling just listening in the whole mindfulness and just being aware and just being aware of the little things that just keep you in the present moment. I

recently am forty two and a woman that I've reconnected with is 43 and we met in a parking lot of a concert in 1986 and when we were 18 and 19 years old and over the years randomly happened to me we were both remarried and recently divorced and a year ago we sat down and have a pint of beer and started talking and fell madly in love. And so now you feel younger. Well will we. We've been together a year now and it seems like we are 18 and 19 years old right. And we look around and we both are very young and I. We don't know that we're forty three years old we're 18 and 19 years old right. I don't I don't think there's any great advantage to knowing what age one is and to act in so-called age appropriate ways who decided what's appropriate. I myself I'm sorry. He's all right with you. Yeah yeah.

I myself don't have a sense of being older. I think that when I'm doing whatever I'm doing that I'm doing it fully and I don't see how my age matters for most things. And because I don't have children and I teach college students and graduate students their age is always the same. And so I look at them and says If my age is always the same and the paper that was a reason for Cali invited me on the show deals with some of these age related cues that lead us to to think that age matters in ways it might not. So for example people who wear uniforms for a life time if it's their whole adult life then you're missing the age related way to understand that I'm fond of saying is if I went to a fancy store and I try on a mini skirt. Hopefully they won't let me leave the store

because it's age inappropriate right now. What that means is clothing somehow signals age. So if I'm wearing a uniform for my whole adult life I'm missing that kid. And we find that matching for socio economic issues and things of this sort that the people who are in uniforms are aging better that what we did in another study is we had women and a hair salon where we compared those who had their hair colored with those who had their hair cut it could have been cut and colored But the important thing was color versus not. And we covered their face so that covered their hair. So all you could see is their face. And what happened is and then we would show these photographs we photograph them show them to other people people who again knew nothing about the study and had them rate how old they thought they were. And those people who had their hair colored so they thought they

looked younger then were evaluated by others who couldn't even see their hair as looking younger. Well here's the thing. This is to the criticism that some you know have your work and that you know they say oh are these. Well you know I don't want them showing up. Has a lot of themselves and they say you know it sounds good but you know what happens to the person who really tries to employ mindfulness in the best way possible but they cannot change their physical health. So it doesn't work for them I mean some of this criticism happens. I remember a couple decades ago with regard to cancer patients. Yeah you know I mean they think you're blaming the fifth Yeah yeah well you know I think that we shouldn't blame the victim because the victim is a victim of the culture and the culture has taught us that we don't have this control. So that you're not at fault for believing that. But because of that fear of blaming the victim we don't want to give up the control we actually do have.

OK. All right Margery from him Go ahead please. Hi Now you've raised so many new issues to me. Quick question. Thank you for doing the show better than I could when you could have it. People here they have expression anything in particular whether they had colored or not. Not a word that's a very good question about what we did was instruct them as to you know how to look. So we didn't get broad smiles and won cases and I on the other. But but that raises an interesting question I think that when you're feeling good about yourself you do smile and when you're smiling I think that people are likely to see you as a little younger and to the extent that we think that old is bad. So a smile means you couldn't possibly be in that bad category. The main point of all of this is that there are cues that tell us where in firm cues that tell us that we're losing it that we're decrepit in someone that we've bought into and now it's

time to question them that you know somebody had pointed out to speak of Cali's criticism which I like to see these people up close that when the Counter-Clockwise book first came out somebody showed me this person's response to said not a professional. That said that's ridiculous how can you make people younger. And it occurred to me that maybe that needed a little explaining. If you were born in a certain year let's say if you were born in 2000 in 80. No I mean 1980. Yeah. There is no way that I can change the date to make it 1990 or 2000. But when you say what do we mean by age. And we say that Well what we mean by age is memory. It's strange and we break it down to each of these dimensions and then I ask you does it seem so inconceivable that you couldn't make somebody has memory and prove that you couldn't make somebody a little stronger

that you couldn't make somebody auth rightest diminish even a little bit. And so on. And it's it's in that way when we look at these smaller components of what we take to be our age that we can in fact find room and ways to improve. All right. Jim from Providence Go ahead please. I callate great show. It's nice to hear professional out there has the same frame of mind. I've known this stuff for a long time it's just great to hear that someone is doing research into it. I've been having the loss of a loss of memory as you grow older argument with my mom who is now 85. For as long as I can I want to you. I'm 49 49 year old grandfather OK and I feel ageless. I've always felt I've never you know I see the signs of age but they don't mean a thing to me. So it's always felt like I'm 19 years old.

Yet when we help people. Thanks Jim. Well me to help people with everything. There's less reason for them to remember. And if you don't have reason to remember you're not going to remember and that's going to be the case no matter how old you are. When I was very young not very very you know that's a you know in my 30s for example during the summer because I was an academic I'd have the summers off. I never knew what day it was because every day was the same in some sense and I didn't need to know. And so I've I've paid attention to that when people of any age have reason to remember when it's made meaningful for most for the most part we remember. I mean the bottom line is Ellen Langer it can't hurt you. Exactly. Have it more than that it can't hurt. This is what's so exciting to me about all of the things I write about in counter-clockwise. Is that going ahead and believing everything

that I'm suggesting leads you to an increase in mindfulness and I have 35 years of hard research published in the leading journals that show that this is good for your health and well-being. So again so if you find a solution based on what I've said great. Even if you don't the search for it is good for you and if you thought you were going to die in six months and you become obsessed with that what is the advantage. You know you don't know. I could get hit by a car when I walk outside. Nobody knows when that day is going to be I think the medical world is in some way criminal. When they give this information because they can't know you can never predict the individual case. And all we as individuals care about. That's fine if a treatment is good for most people but it's not good for me frankly and so on. I thought it might be interesting to people to hear about a couple of the more recent studies

to get an idea airing very fast were coming out here. OK so a study on vision. When you go to the doctor you have to look at the eye chart the eye chart goes from large letters getting progressively smaller. What that does is tell you soon you're not going to be able to say. So what we did was create an eye chart where letters get progressively larger thereby saying Soon you will be able to see. And what happens is people can see what they didn't see before. Our expectations Govern a great deal of our health and well-being and we can control our expectation. And that's a great place to leave it provocative and interesting conversation. Thank you very much Ellen Langer. My pleasure. We've been talking about aging and how our perceptions of how young we feel can influence how we age. I've been joined by Ellen Langer She's a professor of psychology at Harvard University. Her latest book is counter clockwise. Look it up. Up next it's Queen canine Monica Collins aka ask a dog lady.

She's here to dispense advice on all things don't give us a call at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We'll be back after this break stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from celebrity series of Boston. My primary concern is box office. Jacques Rogge director of marketing and communications when we make GBH a part of our overall marketing plan. It's the difference between a piece of advertising in print or 60 seconds somewhere versus an entity whose existence is backing you up. To learn more call 6 1 7 350 500 next time on

the world a team of journalists follows a thousand Marines around southern Afghanistan. They post photos and stories at a website every day. But it's more than just reporting the primary audience is the families of these Marines giving them a hub to communicate between each other. A social network built on a WAR NEXT TIME ON THE WORLD. Coming up at 3:00 here on eighty nine point seven WGBH. Hi I'm Brian O'Donovan and I hope you will join me this spring for a 10 day Irish soldier and we traveled through the byways and islands of the west of Ireland with singer songwriter Robbie O'Connell. The income for the saver delicious dinners of locally grown fare and enjoy nightly sessions with some of the area's best musicians. Space is limited. Reserve your spot at WGBH dot org slash learning tours. There are an estimated fifteen thousand four hundred eighty two homeless people in Massachusetts.

Here WGBH is series about one man's story of homelessness and artistry recognizing Bruce online now at WGBH dot org. It's time for another edition of pop culture. Joining me to talk about things that drive people to give up their dogs and what you can do to avoid this heartache is Queen canine princes of pooches the dawn of dogs. Monica Collins she writes the syndicated column Ask dog lady and she's taking your calls monocles. Collins welcome. Thank you cal or listeners this is your chance to get advice if you have questions about your dog any questions at all. Give us a call at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy. And Monica before we even talk about what we're supposed to talk about. Yeah I have to ask you about this new this is a breaking news dog story. Yeah this new

AP side poll or paramour. Many say pit they ask a lot of people if they had to give up their dogs their pets versus their sweetheart which one would they choose. And a sizeable 14 percent. There Pitt that's the person that's Yeah they say that he had. Well yes but 84 percent said they wouldn't give up their sweetheart. But I think the point of this Paul was trying to get to what would make you think about giving up your dog as opposed to your human relationships. And you know it's really kind of sad in a in a life. You have a dog but then you get married you have a child. And there are various reasons that can impel you to give up your animal. Listeners were 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 3 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Ask Dog Lady Monica Collins is here to answer

your questions. So a third of these people a current pet owner said it would be extremely or very difficult if they were forced to choose between a pit and a family member who became allergic. Now that's a very young thing right I thought that was interesting. But allergic. I have to tell you that I have questions about allergic and suddenly becoming allergic. I'm no doctor nor do I play one on the Internet. But but it would seem to me that before you got a dog you would have done some homework on what we call hypoallergenic dogs. These dogs are not going to totally be allergy transmission free but they certainly can bring down the quotient on getting allergies from them and indeed these dogs all the little dogs which we may like poodles who well the Labradoodle shits a doodle all these new doodle

dogs that are crossed with poodles that they're one breed that is crossed with a poodle. They are supposedly very low allergy causing. Oh OK so there are two alternatives. People just don't do any research they just sort of don't do their research they don't do their dogs they give off a lot of dander. I'm talking now about your golden retrievers. Yeah you may be allergic to the golden retriever but you might not be allergic to the golden doodle. OK we're going to pause this conversation and take a call from Heather from Cher Bern in Massachusetts you're ninety nine point seven WGBH Go ahead please. How I Am i haven't you been I'm very calm and he's wonderful with people and other dogs except around his food and dogs there are other dogs he just very crashed. Yeah I'm wondering if this can be changed at all. Who I. Because food aggression and first of

all Heather I'd love to know the name of your dog. If you think it's a foggy foggy day in London. It's well foggy food aggression is kind of scary to be very honest really. Yes and food aggression with humans is scarier in most cases than food aggression with other dogs with other dogs it's part of their it is what natively they protect. They always protect food bones. I know that my shorty is the mildest dog in the world but bringing another dog over into our house and he becomes the most protective Wolf I've ever seen. Well you know in a lot of that Heather is to be expected. If AGI is protective with you and aggressive with you is he. You know I mean without her dog. Well then that's a good sign I would say. OK I would say you just have got to keep other dogs away from him in a boat.

I only ask because we can't have other dogs. In the House I think at some point I'd like to get another dog but that dog worries me with his current behavior Well I think that there is a way of dealing with that i.e. that you feed the dogs completely in completely different rooms that you really do not have any food activity is no shared food activity between the two dogs right. You give one his due and then you give the other her due so that you're not mixing food. That's a good idea. I got it. Yeah keep them separate. Heather I just want to ask Can I ask another question. I'm dying to know. Does foggy just love this snow. He'd like that but it's even it's hard for a big dog with all the snow to around. Yeah I guess that's true. I guess that I know that. Happy with the temperature I think. Yeah at first he's enjoying it. However you Finland's are these enormous thank you Hazur for the call.

Thanks. Oh great they are so they're there. Yeah they're small horses with long hair. OK just one final thing from this AP pit side or pair more than I thought was interesting. Women are far more likely than men to say the human pit choice would be a tough one. I guess middle just dump their girlfriends and women would think about a little more. In fact one guy says I would absolutely give up my girlfriend for him. I know it sounds insane but I've had numerous relationships with women. My dog has never let me down. Oh that kind is silly. That's kind and also in that poll another really interesting thing is that urbanites would be more inclined to give up their human sweet heart then people that live in rural areas or in suburbia. That's pretty interesting I thought if Jan from Boston you're on eighty nine point seven The Kelly Crossley Show Go ahead please. Hi I have I have a golden retriever. Yeah well her name is Mae Yeah. I've actually she's my

fourth generation and I had started with her great grandmother. We were in a major automobile accident a rollover. Where I sustained a brain injury and I swear that made knew exactly what I was going through because she remained a mainstay in a positive for me through all the stuff I had to do to get my brain working correctly again. Wow. And it really bond to me now is much tighter than it has ever been. How do you go on. Go ahead. No I just wondered if you had heard about Afghani Afghanistan and Iraqi war veterans coming home that have there be dogs working with them that these talks or are trained to work with brain injury victims. So maybe may have just stepped into the breach when you never know with dogs theyre kind of magical creatures. The Afghan in Afghanistan the ones working with the Afghanistan veterans are quite successful.

They are very success you know. Thank you very much Dan for your comment that I think thank you. Thank you for the call. Whenever you hear an inspiring story about a dog it makes. Well I think it's not just a dog. We have to talk about the animal human bond. It really is quite it still is very mysterious but very profound. OK. 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy. I want to read one of your letters here. Dear Dog Lady I just got a note today from my neighbor informing me that my dog Shandy a Jack Russell terrier who's 8 months old has been howling nonstop for some time. My nosy neighbor is getting frustrated with the situation and wants to tell the management that I have a dog. We are not allowed to have them. I crate Shandy during the day come back home for lunch and then go back to work. I leave her toys and chew bones in her crate. What do you suggest I do. Well that's a tough one. If dogs are banned in this

and she's well aside from that list of those move of flouting the law. Let's move away from the illegality and just deal with the bs. I think I well I think she's got to talk to her neighbor first of all and then I think she's got to make sure that the dog is well supervised and well occupied throughout the day so it can't be in a crate all day. A crate they love their crates they love their crates. It took me a long time to realize this. It took me a long time to understand that in the dog world a cage is not a bad thing. It took me a long time to realize that. But once I realized it I realized that when a dog is in its crate it is shut down it and if it likes its crate it enjoys being there and enjoys shutting down. OK so some of that howling has to do with maybe not enjoying something in which there is some situation where the dog is not exercised well enough or the dog does not have enough distractions. OK gotcha. The dog is not being taken out enough. All right that's

a good answer. Jay from Somerville you're on eighty nine point seven Go ahead please. Hi Guy. Hello. We're going to pick up our dog at the end of February. A new puppy. Oh really cool. Yeah we're excited. And I've been reading so many books and of course reading just theory and the area that I have designated to have them go potty right is currently under you know 60 where the snow is coming out of her house right. So the question I have. Can I train to go somewhere else outside like right in our front step there and then move it to the place that I often want to go or keep or training. I don't understand if you paper Tran dog to go on newspapers in your home any transition to go for it to go outside. You're a very smart man and you're asking the right questions because because really when you allow your dog to go inside you

are giving it permission to go inside period for the duration. What I would suggest to you Jay this is the hard thing and I don't know what books you're reading but I hope there are at least saying it that you don't look at a spot now buried under 10 feet of snow where your dog is going to go but that you take your dog for a walk every day you take your dog out. At least my record when I first got my puppy was nine times in one day. You're taking your dog out because you're for your dog a walk is the lifeline into figuring out who am I when am I where am I and where do I go and where do I go. Well yeah. I mean I guess I was but you know but I'm taking the dog out for a walk every day but I'm hoping to get the dog to go to the bathroom on my property so I don't have to pick it up while I'm walking. I mean no no no you have to do that I'm going to let you know I mean really sorry to tell you

but there are wonderful bio bags that you can quickly go down pick it up and it will be the hardest thing you have to do with a new dog is picking up. It will be something that I never thought in my lifetime I would be doing but you will have to do that. And it's much better than dogs can't. They're not aircraft carriers or air or air planes they can't go on a specific area. It's very hard to train them to do that. And that's only something that could happen after a couple of years. But they but they really need their walk outside. They need to know their neighborhood. Thank you very much. OK Thanks Jay for the call 9 times dog. It's a hard thing. You know we're talking Mike why giving up dogs. Yeah this house training is probably the one reason that more dogs are surrendered because people either fail at house training or they don't want to do

the house training or it's too much effort involved in the house training. And I asked Jay and anyone else who's considering getting a puppy to stick with it because it will pay off big time. I will have a trained dog who do not have to worry about whether they're going to be going in the living room and for home most people would like to keep even more than their boyfriend or girlfriend. Exactly. Thank you so much Monica Collins writes the syndicated column Ask dog lady the humor or lifestyle advice column about Dog's Life and Love. You can't like the ass dog Lady Fan Page on Facebook where you can ask a question and post a picture of your dog. Thanks dog lady. Thank you Kelly. You can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show at WGBH dot org slash Kelly Crossley follow us on Twitter or become a fan of the Kelly Crossley Show on Facebook today show was engineered by Antonio only art and produced by Chelsea Mirza and I white knuckled me and Abby Ruzicka.

We are a production of WGBH radio.