Now Hear This!

I’m proud to be part of a new podcast

image courtesy Crow’s Feet/Nancy Peckenham
I thought I had enough on my plate, but then . . .

Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age is a publication on the Medium.com platform, and it’s one I began contributing to last year. I was drawn to it because of its focus — aging, after all, is something we’re all doing, and if we’re lucky we’ll be doing it for many years. Once I’d discovered it, I kept coming back to it due to the caliber of its articles and the writers who create them.

Nancy Peckenham is the editor and creator of Crow’s Feet — and she’s one of those people with a quiet genius for bringing people together and making good things happen.

Like, this:

What started in a writer’s salon became a podcast

Nancy is what Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, calls a “Connector.” These are people with a special gift for creating links among people, for reaching into their deep reservoirs of contacts across a spectrum of talents and interests and making introductions that result in a kind of positive social chain reaction. Think of Nancy as a human LinkedIn, but with a warm personality.

Several months ago, she invited those who’ve written pieces for her publication to a writers’ salon on Zoom. The Medium.com thing was humming along, and Nancy had already edited and published an anthology, again titled Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age. But Nancy, a possibility thinker and a believer in collaboration, wanted to see how else the message of a forthright, creative approach to aging could be spread.

She asked us to come up with ideas. Writers are beset with ideas, and very soon there was a flurry of them. The one that gained the most traction, though, was a podcast.

But ideas are easy — execution takes work

Nothing undaunted, by the end of that initial Zoom meeting, Nancy had assembled her teams — one focused on social media, one on production — to bring the project to life. Since I have my own brief, weekly podcast and I failed to keep my mouth shut about that . . .

image by author; podcast available on most platforms

. . . I wound up on the production team.

What had I gotten myself into?

I’m polishing the first book in a series and working on the draft of its sequel. There’s my blog, and my weekly podcast, and my writing for Medium, and the short stories and flash fiction I keep submitting to literary journals and magazines. My husband and I have recently become volunteer Guardians ad Litem, advocating for children in the court system. We’ve got lots of family events, games, and performances we want to attend. There’s yoga class and book club and travel, etc., etc.

What was I doing taking on another project? I am prone to fretting over making committments. What if I can’t handle the expectations? What if it eats up all my time and energy? What if I let everybody else down? What if the whole thing goes off the rails?

Luckily, Nancy Peckenham — who has more on her plate than I do — does not think like this. She’s one of those people with the enviable attitude that if you get the right people involved for the right reasons and the right goals, good things will happen. You just have to keep moving forward.

Within a couple of weeks, we had an experienced podcaster, sound engineer, and radio producer, Rich Halten of soundrich.com, come on board, which dramatically elevated and streamlined our progress. Within months, we had three completed episodes, two of which we launched with the premier on June 15. Our publicity and social media team put together the press kit and got busy with promotion.

Our premier party included a phenomenal guest speaker, Louise Aronson, MD, the author of Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, a New York Times and Amazon bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Like I said, good stuff.

I’m a guest on one episode and have produced another

Now that we’ve got two episodes live, new Crow’s Feet episodes will release monthly. My guest spot will, I believe, be the July episode, and my interview with the witty, wise, and immensely talented Roz Warren will launch in September. You’ll hear my voice on the intro and outro of each episode.

And it has all been a pleasure — an exciting learning experience rather than a stressor. I count it a privilege to work with Nancy and her team, a very deep bench of experience, knowlege, perspective, and resourcefulness.

As I’ve said before in this blog, ageism is the one remaining “ism” that has yet to be adequately called out, let alone dismantled. So the Crow’s Feet message is one I’m excited to help put out into the world.

I encourage you to give Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age a listen — on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever else you get your podcasts. It’s well done, entertaining, and worthwhile.

And it doesn’t matter at all if you’re nowhere near collecting Social Security. All of us are aging — if we’re lucky.

2 Comments

  1. Jan,
    You didn’t mention that you have a terrific speaking voice, which now graces the opening of every podcast! Thanks for being part of the team.

Comments are closed.