Century Lives: The 60-Year Career

Season 2

Longer lives mean longer careers; how do we get ready?

“Century Lives: The 60-Year Career” follows the arc of the new work lifespan, beginning with college students currently tackling the “big messy process” of shaping the six decades of work ahead of them, all the way to Boomers now busy sampling the new concept of Unretirement. In between, Stern explores such subjects as the reasons why we work, the 25-job career as the new normal and the challenges faced by those without college degrees in the new economy, talking with an extraordinary range of experts, students, educators and workers. Collectively, “Century Lives” paints a compelling picture of work in today’s America and how it needs to be changed to support longer, more supportive careers.

“Century Lives” takes a tough look at the state of work now, all the pitfalls of our post-pandemic economy and what needs to be done to give more people the opportunity for longer, more productive careers,” said Stern. “While people are living longer than ever, we’re also in the midst of several unprecedented inflection points, among them a pandemic, the Great Resignation and the loss of waves of older workers, who brought experience and institutional knowledge, with no clear plan to replace them. Our longstanding assumptions about how we work have been wiped out. We’ll talk about how Americans are rethinking, creating and remaking careers that now extend a half-century or more.”

Season 2 of the popular podcast series “Century Lives” launched May 4, 2022, with a seven-episode arc that explores the nexus of longer life, the necessity of longer careers and how to make those careers more meaningful and productive. Author, producer and media executive Ken Stern returned as host of the series, produced by the Stanford Center on Longevity. It is available on Apple, Spotify and all major podcast platforms.

Episodes

Episode 1: Design Your Life. How college students are planning for careers that can sustain for six decades or more, the challenges of stepping into an uncertain work world and an innovative program helping them navigate it

Episode 2: Americans’ complicated relationship with work. How did we wind up willing to spend over 90,000 hours of our lives on the job, and how that relationship is changing

Episode 3: As the 25-job career becomes the new normal, what will be its impact on people’s lives and the workplace

Episode 4: How gig work has been the source of all the growth in jobs in the US and become the employment of last resort for millions of workers without college degrees

Episode 5: The have-not economy. The challenges faced by workers without college degrees and the changes needed in hiring and training to provide them with a path to viable, meaningful careers

Episode 6: The new importance of older workers to the economy and how companies are making changes in policy and practice to retain older workers and benefit from their labor

Episode 7: The Unretirement. As Boomers exit the workforce, they’re breaking traditional retirement rules by seeking new opportunities with purpose

The podcast’s first season set the stage for a deep dive into work by focusing on a central question: How can we ensure that our lives are not just longer, but healthy and rewarding as well? The initial season, “Century Lives: New Map of Life,” explored bold ideas for rethinking longevity in terms of education, work, healthcare, urban design and more.