Debbie talks to the incomparably prolific writer and editor Sari Botton about her popular online Oldster Magazine and how the topic of growing old touches a nerve with everyone from Millennials to GenXers (Sari is 57) to Boomers. 

Sari Botton publishes three different newsletters on Substack and she’s got over 1,500 paying subscribers.  So growing old is definitely a hot topic – and not just for Boomers in their 60s and 70s.

Her approach to aging is interesting; in fact, she’s been obsessed with growing older since she turned 10 and entered double digits. And she says she still feels 10 or 11 inside her head. She describes aging as traveling through time in a human body—of any gender, at every phase of life. Thus Oldster Magazine is about the experience of getting older and what that means at different junctures. 

In this episode Sari and Debbie talk about ageism (what it is and isn’t); Sari’s experiences of growing older (no more wooden clogs for her); and the close to 100 interviews she’s done on Oldster about growing older (and what we can learn from them). They also talk about Martha Stewart’s recent Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover. Does it make the point that you can look good in a swimsuit at any age (Martha is 81)? That age doesn’t matter?? Or is this just Martha Stewart being Martha Stewart?

They also delve into Sari’s new skincare routine (yes, a nod to getting older) and why birthday parties are so important to her.

Sari is the author of the memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo and was a contributing editor and columnist at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Bay Path University and Kingston Writers’ Studio. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. She is the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department of SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.

Mentioned in this episode or useful:

• SariBotton.com
• Oldster Magazine
• Adventures In “Journalism”
• Memoir Land
• Sari’s answers: This is 56: I Respond to My Own Questionnaire
• About that Martha Stewart Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Cover… (Oldster Magazine, May 26, 2023)
• S5-EP15 of [B]OLDER: Abigail Thomas on Life at 81
• Anne Lamott
• Patti Smith
• Oldster T-shirts: OldsterMagazineMerch
• Egyptian Magic skincare
• Glow Juice skincare 

More from Oldster:

• This is 32: Beauty Journalist Jessica DeFino Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
• This is 48-and-10-Months: Author and Podcaster Jennifer Romolini
• This is 46: Maggie Smith
• This is 72: Master Memoirist Beverly Donofrio
• An Interesting Question – by Abigail Thomas 
• A Wrinkle in Time – by Laurie Stone
• The Unpublishable  (Jessica DeFino’s magazine about the beauty industry)