A Word on Words; 4308; Dr. Bill Thomas

from nashville public television's stood in the way of celebrating all things literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word weren't jobs is below and john simko welcome once again to warlords and i am delighted to welcome dr bill thomas his awful lot of unknown musician teacher farmer and physician with wide ranging work explores the train of human aging wall street journal names the nation's twelve top innovators and changing the future retirement in america is not all crimes of eden with a futuristic thriller that explores the value of community and world it's increasingly defined by digital technology is it a day with this book of nonfiction which reconsider is the mythology that surrounds the baby boomer generation and second when navigating the passage to a slower deeper and more connected like we talked about recognizing and navigating the most fulfilling developmental stage of life

with a renewed sense wallace possible build so nice to have your i read that and i think you talk about me i'm eighty six years old and fat and i'm just about to get my second wind congratulations it's great barrier to talk about about seven when the end of the day i have to ask you just at the outset to get into it maybe lived there when the parents as the goal but this whole business of writing about writing fiction writing nonfiction in dumbo this nonfiction book obviously earned much of a leviathan from a low but some require research on fb is there a different non fiction nonfiction in in that aspect of it and infections on in and comes out but sometimes it does require researchers think limited so often to start the long war in detroit but but this is about

a war second when is about your life work and talk about well actually i think as a writer everything all worker do it ripples run some common themes that are just really important to me those things are really kind of mythology narrative fascist read and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and you know when i'm writing of a fiction work of fiction ah i can you know the characters who were part of the story can really help inform and shape the the arc of the narrative in the case a second wind this is a case where it took them the story of a generation and so the bill is a reinterpretation of the postwar baby boom story this everything say no and reinterpreted it from the point of view of age rather than from the point of the abuse which is for most common telling talk about as you know gruel

and bubba watson and not just walk there so it you know it the law is like a lot of the baby came and though and benjamin spock was like their will that's right and happily for us and happily for many others that we were right where he was when he became political and we came out so strongly as the war but you know i don't know about dr watson but i do know about that generational line on august bock load to raise our children talk about the west so we've been in american society you sort of think of the the ultimate baby doctor the original baby daughter you think of a doctor benjamin spock and his guide baby and child care but it was actually another expert before him that was

probably just as well known things dr john watson and he had a grin radically different interpreter i mean wow and i think about you know the book where you know when you think about the transition from one generation to another blow your mother does know dr john watson i've really thought of children as little machines that could be programmed to behavior we wanted and that they should be kept on a very very strict schedule and he also warned of mothers against hugging their children and if you have are using just saying now he if you've ever heard the advice of the old what the baby cried out there was watson that was tom watson's advice you don't pick up the baby when the baby's crying what the baby just cried out medication loans and eva you know not too much affection know and on the forehead and on the forty years so that he he was very very

popular in the twenties and thirties and in a way he represented his time you know the great depression and this sense of people wanting control over their lives are and he was there for them after the world war ii and his popularity fell off and doctor spots rose up because i think and i argue in the book that after the second world war americans were looking for that comfort and home in love and affection that they they wanted that after years of privation was not a big issue of it yeah but the baby in fact i think one of the prop maybe one of most famous lines in american nonfiction writing is dr spock first line of his book trust yourself you know more than you think and you know that is and then his son and i can't help but think back end and

i'm not sure we really don't we read that we really thought we were capable of tracking ourselves with it it was it was a shift away from like dr watson style of wine the expert i will tell you exactly how what to do for your baby and the more friendly open ended guidance a doctor spock gave them is good question let's admit that that as i have to follow the course of the book i'm wondering whether you looking back on a concern any difference in one generation babies and another town and dr watson's instructions play out

when those joint in that over the end with a different from the way his eye i think i think human beings are very elastic and plastic and you know there were certainly influenced by our surroundings and are rearing our child rearing that we experienced we're also captives of our bureau in our time and you know a generation that it comes of age in the context of depression and world war and the generation that comes of age in the context of relative peace and prosperity there those generations are going to look at the world differently and i think that's really what happened in america after world war two you know of lesotho live on depression because in addition to a timeframe in this country when those great suffering there is an old meaning to the word the ocean and certainly it it plays

out when you begin to think about children of all the movement toward adults who have guns how dangerous depression they re child rearing and a movement on and over you know that actually that psychological dimension is a actually a pretty important part of the book and one of the things i talk about in the book is the risks that people run when you have to move from one white face to another and you dont have good rituals of ceremonies are there's no there's no passage to the next part of life that you can necessarily find and one of the things i write about in the book is that as the great anxiety and bankston depression and fear that happens when for example yet eighty million people who have to leave childhood and enter

adulthood in the space of fifteen years and that had the constant upheaval in our american society in the book i call this the first crucible it is the first time as a janitor at a regional embassy and the second you do it so well it an edge in the book comeback really didn't come back to it and make is revisited and boy it really helps when you really were on to it with this idea of a psychological dimension of moving from one life as to another it's not easy even the old you actually passes away and you so yes or the same person that you live a new life as an adult compared to the life you lived as a child well on that first crucible nineteen sixties and seventies was as this huge generation struggled to get out of childhood into adulthood and just about set the country on fire in the process well in this book i actually look ahead and see a

second crucible coming to opera and this this is where it gets maybe a little different and new for the reader a life beyond adulthood i actually talk about our growing adulthood and how can eighty million people outgrow adulthood and enter older who had a phase of life beyond adulthood and i think that's going to create another crucible experience in a society you know a new world you deal with trends that have their lifetime affected not only the way we raise children the book also the way that we as some children are going to and over the nsa to solve challenges and the lungs when i'm thinking that the word hippie just pops right right out and there and you

do is timothy leary and then they had these ideas in there yes it clear that and it took me back end just reminded me once i was an simon says granting of deep long car and we were going to do it if they're in an know as we come to the stops on an ottawa the windows were down but some fella sit on the curb says but i think we do yeah but at a point i don't know but this generation can look back and really come to grips with what was behind i actually i do in the book i do a reconsideration of a reconsideration of this album i talk about those years the sixties and seventies in terms of hippies squares square lizza yeah and

anne as i represent gone the book really the square is one square is clearly clearly won and they were in control the way didn't understand that there were threatened insecure in a little insecure meaning what ultimately prevailed the house exactly so so when i look back and serve attempt to piece together or the hippie movement now have half a century back okay what would i see is that these young people at this time we're actually creating a critique of adulthood and this was what was so upsetting to people assumed that hey buddy throw me under belly aisle was a critique of you know hard work regularly as savings you know at the big artists you know he that was i'm a critique of that and at the time you know american society took a look at that pretty concerned and now it always is you and uses bus well as

if we had our own firmly on rather than and suddenly lost a big end of the year and were granted yet and rented really hard hard and and that's where that actually leads into what i consider to really be the meat of the book which is you know on a geriatrician i'm an expert in a juncture and when i look at coke coltrane society the problems we're facing is not aging problem is adulthood what happened that after the sixties and seventies is that we set the week the postwar baby boom generation set about building a hey are caffeinated hyper active the door to and that just became so big and powerful and took over so much of our society that it caused us to actually change childhood and change old age and remake them in the image of adulthood so one of the things i write about image in the book isn't actually critique of

all the efficiency which literature in particular stephen curry's of this seven habits and i knew that from the context of that old daughter had gone why don't so you take that hit big anybody can give me a hundred bucks and you go over way to the opposite where everything's about performance and materialism and property and authority and control airing all of the sudden if it starts looking a daughter that way the hippies liked him think they actually were on to something maybe not so well articulated but they know timothy leary you sometimes was announced ways yes and yes and continues to think that i had it so i just i'm fascinated by the way in which the mythology that grew up around the baby boom generation

it's used to shape our culture and our society no reason i wrote the book is i wanted to tell a different story the story that was injustice triumph of youth and strength a story that was really about how the boomer generation really lost their way in the eighties and nineties and got confused about what mattered most potent you're just joining us i'm talking with dr bill thomas about a second wind now again the passage to restore the grid more connected life you say in the book that you know this part for you but almost as if there's a war on aging yes we don't like to think about it as you grow into adulthood and then move to the older sony

reliance no from leave me that the deaths had been but i am but i am but it's so important to understand the transition and for the for and understand that there is a war move on the concert piano getting all time and one of the most interesting parts of the research into the book was my exploration of what i call the denial asked some culture and these are people who really believe in i mean they believe that they're going to live to be a thousand years old and that of the young that whole time and they're going to out never troll any signs of aging and there are people who believe this that might soon preaching but there's also people who believe that the live to be a

hundred and fifty years older who believes that when they're ninety years old still be climbing mountains and it is a continuum but the whole idea behind it is age you not for me not to do it i can experience it not going to go through it and obama is not going to drag my morale know the uk and i coursing named this subculture deny it was because you know it's been estimated that over a hundred million human beings have lived in history and i'll let hundred billion not one has ever grown young there isn't any evidence that any human ever avoided aging you know that any human was old and young never never happened so they are in denial and they can use some pretty aggressive means in terms of surgery and drugs and i'd read about someone in the book

your wife and that's not the culture i belong to but there's a whole lot you know face lifting has become a cottage industry and you know what's interesting about plastic surgery to look at the statistics on it around the median age when people start thinking about getting plastic surgery gets younger and younger and younger and that's actually a really a sign of age is i'm in our society that people feel threatened by signs of age and feel like they have to do something about it and the problem isn't the person the problem is the culture yes i need a loan just on the ice you know and i did though tomato and an idea but that go along with it you know walk down the street any day go to any cocktail party go to a football game going back to mom anyway you go and you look around you and then

and you know you see some people use it in a weekend on the piano so i was giving a talk in scotland few years ago and that i you know how it is when you're writing about it you're working up the ideas and get a chance to talk to you to try out some of the things i was talking about the nih wasn't in scotland and can't do the scottish brogue but yeah well you know we have between we know we know what you're talking about are that's martin dressed as lamb and others like ok yes our iowa but that down you know but it for my part i belong to a us on culture i call the enthusiasts then doesn't oppose the nuns in the us and it actually thinking to see us have a lot to offer people in terms of a different perspective on her own aging smiling the happy yeah i have to say i mean you are from make up a

poster for the enthusiasm culture can get a picture on it there's no i mean you know you are clearly you know a person enthused by what the stage of what first offer and that's what we're saying is is a city of fun you know the i'm with you know the old bob you know it's not as fun as it was when i was twenty six but it's a different kind of an aside it is there's a great bob hope joke about aging which does set up his song who wants to three hundred and the punchline is a ninety nine year old man so we we we are really privileged to have this part of life available to us and this book really argues for making the most of it just talk a little bit about writing that you've done both fiction nonfiction tolliver

experiences yes so my knee up a couple things about the crashes nineties i practice it fast to keep up my right a lot along hand on the effect of a lot of prominent bump on my finger from a writing longhand and so you know new computer well what comes later in that but i have to work ideas out of these drawings and arrows and i'd buy those inexpensive speckled composition book says and just fill them and la times all right the same things over and over and just looking for the connections i'm looking for no why aig why are these ideas coming back to me and then i gradually develop an outline and this is true for fiction and nonfiction about one of what i think the narrative arc is i'm a big believer in both fiction and non fiction both better tell story you know if you have a non fiction book out and it

doesn't tell a story you failed as a writer i mean it has to take the re read or from a to be just like the novel and so once i have an outline on my next step is i actually write the book out longhand to know which are really rich in a mostly morning hours like say nine am till noon and how you know when a quick get up go at lunch but when i start layering over a sentence that's bad i mean when you start going around and around on a sentence that means seasonal time when i'm uses to a news show not whispering in your ear you look around as you is just not come in yet so when i feel that way i act as i have a whole outlying up i just jump to some other place i don't i don't have to wait don't get up walk away from an incumbent know mentally i do because i can stop here but i have my whole outline an already know that i want three thousand words on the subject here so i'll jump over there

and just try to get some work done on that part of the book and now i don't i don't because it seemed to help me to get up and walk around or break contact that way but i will jump in the book in the book many of my books are written the written in order at all because i have a super details to the public you're in the military or listen to you i did this on this book actually is edited by trish tied it seven inches is at national native is going to see you know how i am going to show she's going to be in orbit but trish todd lover of southern writers merrill was you know she was phenomenal editor for me to work with are very like hand very very insightful but the delicate you know not not here not have beach and very encouraging which i think writers knew a lot are you

satisfied with the funk brought up women you know now the second guesses of eos i don't even want to look at it because i grew up i would change words i'm changed i basically what really happens is the books are taken away from me at some point and i would just keep going revising i don't think there's really in my craft there's no endpoint that could be an end point was a point in which it's ready for publication and then a good at it or you know make sure it's in proper order but i don't think any because of the fed a minimum of love oh my heavens what you working on next i'm very interested in treasure and treasure hunting and treasure seeking i'm interested in why human beings

green of treasure and i want to do a book about i think of it is called finders keepers and about searching for treasure and finding treasure it won't tell them aging be here when you get through the way that i would come back and sought to come back thanks for this book the second women's meaningful so many people thought the evening to summit at six second when something really reinvigorated thank you so much thank you so much thank all of you for watching and dancing and oliver word on words it's b