Suddenly Senior

He’s only just turned 60 but he's already familiar with issues around aged-care facilities, because he’s been trying to keep young people out of them. Tim Ferguson is best known for his comedy work with The Doug Anthony Allstars but has many other accomplishments under his belt, not least his advocacy for disability rights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sleep becomes such a valuable commodity in our older years but unfortunately, for many of us, it gets harder to fall asleep as we age. Dr Stan Rodski is a neuroscientist, a neuroplastician, and most importantly a sleep expert! He shares his tips for regular good quality sleep. You can read more in his book The Neuroscience of Excellent Sleep.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Youth is the currency of the music industry and ageism is rife within it, but Deborah Conway believes you can make age work for you if you put a bit of creative thinking into the mix.  During the 90s she was the 'it' girl of the Australian music scene. At the age of 64 she’s still as creative, passionate, and fired up as she ever was and has recently released a memoir titled Book of Life. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a founding member of the Warumpi Band Neil Murray inadvertently wrote Australia’s unofficial national song. He also helped record the first rock song sung in an indigenous language. After a life on the road touring and performing, these days he’s focussing on living a simple life and preserving energy which has become a precious resource.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robert Tickner began his advocacy with Friends of the Earth and ended up becoming the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Hawke/Keating governments. He's still fighting for the underdog as Chair of the Justice Reform Initiative, as well as being Co-chair of the EveryAGE Counts initiative to combat ageism. He says ageism is rife in the employment sector and says it's just a matter of time until class actions are launched.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we grow older we find ourselves grieving the loss of many things; our friends and family, our homes and neighbourhood, our bodies and minds, and more surprisingly many of us  grieve the loss of our own sense of self. Writer Carol Lefevre likens this grief to a type of ‘homesickness’, elusive and bone gnawing in nature.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bryan Brown's acting career started in the 70s with films like The Odd Angry Shot and Breaker Morant and he quickly became a fixture on our screens, and still is. But he’s also a producer and a writer of books, his most recent titled The Drowning. He doesn't think about death much, has no plans to retire, and keeps fits by surfing whenever he can.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iva Davies followed an unconventional path to pop-star status. Initially immersed in the world of classical music (he even did a stint in the ABC Training Orchestra) he went on to pioneer Australia’s electronic music scene with his band Icehouse and has become one of the country’s most highly regarded composers and multi-instrumentalists. He’s currently on tour - buy tickets HERESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grahame Bond changed Australian TV forever with his mad-cap creation Aunty Jack, a fat and feisty persona who frequently threatened to ‘rip your bloody arms off’. This led to a portfolio career with digressions into advertising, lifestyle television, and blockbuster stage shows like Boys Own McBeth and 2JJs Nude Radio. Luckily this all took place before cancel culture emerged.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australian actor Heather Mitchell has been on our screens or stages every year since her career began in the 1980s. Now into her 60s she’s still got plenty of job offers rolling in. She says that’s because older women no longer buy into old norms around the ageing process and there’s demand for their stories to be told. Now she’s telling her story in a memoir called Everything and Nothing and she’s excited about the next stage of her life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First he was Fat, Forty and Fired. Then he was Fit, Fifty and Fired Up. Now Nigel Marsh reckons he’s Smart, Stupid and Sixty. He must be doing something right because his TED speech on work/life balance has clocked up over four million hits. Oh, and he also hosts The Five of My Life podcast. Find Nigel's books and contact him hereSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve started waking suddenly in the night with an acute and anxious awareness of the inevitability of death, you’re not alone. After experiencing this herself, journalist and author Jane Hutcheon discovered that it’s a common phenomenon for people in their late 50s and 60s. That’s when she realised she’d become a juvenile geriatric. Find Suddenly Senior on FB here and on Instagram here Join the Juvenile Geriatric Substack here Find Jane's work hereSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Not all 'influencers' are young and vacuous, posting thousands of images on Instagram which promote products that end up in landfill. Lex Marinos (Kingswood Country, Aunty Jack, Matlock Police) was recently crowned Senior Influencer of the Year for his role as co-host of the podcast Baby Boomers Guide to Life in the 21st Century.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If there was an aesthetic that defined Australia’s rock/pop culture in the 80s then Reg Mombassa was surely a master crafter of it. His band Mental As Anything was heard on radio around the country and it seemed everyone wore a Mambo t-shirt featuring his darkly-comic art.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the biggest worries we have as we age relates to brain function with dementia and Alzheimer’s at the top of the list. But should we just accept a general decline in brain function? Neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay explains what happens to the ageing brain, the role that hormones play and why women often experience reverse adolescence in their post-menopausal years.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.