4-Quarter Lives

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined again by Seth Green, Dean of the University of Chicago’s Graham School, to explore what happens when longer lives meet shorter chapters. Seth argues that the two forces together mean more transitions, and that adaptation, not stored knowledge, is now the skill that matters most. He makes the case for a midlife that stretches f...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox welcomes back economist Andrew Scott to challenge the idea that ageing societies are destined for economic decline. Drawing on his latest research, Andrew explains why falling birth rates have not triggered the collapse so often predicted, and how adaptation, technology and longer working lives could deliver a substantial longevity divi...

In this episode of 4-Quarter Lives, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with Quentin Boyes, founder of Humbug, about the assumptions that sit behind the advertising older people see — and the customers businesses miss. Quentin has spent more than 35 years in brand and customer strategy. His current work, initially developed in partnership with Brunel University and supported by Innovate UK, demonstrates h...

Ten years after The 100-Year Life changed the conversation about longevity, London Business School professor Lynda Gratton returns with Living the 100-Year Life , a more personal and practical exploration of how to build a long, meaningful working life. In this conversation with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, Lynda explains why she began her new book not with research, but with stories from her own life....

What have I learned from a summer of conversations about longer lives? Looking back over this season of the 4-Quarter Lives podcast, I realised that my guests – despite coming from very different worlds – kept circling around three big themes: identity, agency and experience . Together, they offer a surprisingly coherent map of the New Q3: the 25 or so years between roughly 50 and 75 that are emer...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Victoria Tomlinson, founder and CEO of Next-Up, to talk about her new book, Expiry Date Never, and the systems quietly pushing experienced people out of work. Tomlinson argues the problem is not age but obsolete workplace design, and that the first thing to fix is recruitment, where candidates are screened out at 50 and inc...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Jane Duncan Rogers, author and end-of-life planning pioneer, for a wide-ranging conversation about facing mortality with honesty and even joy. Jane makes the case that end-of-life planning is a form of emotional liberation, freeing the energy we tie up in avoidance. They explore grief and widowhood, the ‘after-self’ that em...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by pensions expert Richard Smith for a conversation about money, longevity and the decades we spend planning for a future we can’t predict. Smith explains why the average UK worker now juggles three or four separate pensions across a churning career, and why almost 80% of people have no idea what they hold in total. The two ex...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Anne Button and Rachel Cohen to explore how universities can support purposeful midlife transitions at scale. Anne and Rachel co-developed Change Makers, a 15-week programme based at University of Colorado Denver, designed for adults navigating their next chapter. Built for accessibility, the course runs evenings, blends online and...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Jane Moffett, author of What Next? and the Founder of KANGAROO Coaching, for a conversation about the life stage still awkwardly labelled retirement. Moffett argues the adjustment after leaving work can take up to seven years, because stopping work is a major psychological transition involving shifts in identity, values and...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by psychologist and author Dr Denise Taylor, who after more than 50 years of work stepped away from client practice to write. Taylor argues that most people misread Carl Jung: the second half of life is not about striving differently, but about going inwards. She unpicks the assumption that work means paid work, and questions...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Rob Nathan, occupational psychologist and career coach, to ask why the three-stage life — education, work, retirement — is proving so stubborn. Recorded on his 77th birthday, Nathan argues the systems around us were built for shorter lives and have not caught up, while individuals get financially and socially bound into the...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by UBER’s Briana Gilmore to explore how ageing, disability and mobility intersect — and what that means for the future of work, cities and independence. Briana reframes ageing not as a demographic segment but as an access issue, shifting the conversation from “senior markets” to systems that either enable or restrict independe...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Alastair Greener, speaker, consultant and author of Generationally Speaking, to unpick what we get wrong about generations at work. Alastair argues that much of what we label generational conflict is really about life stage, and that organisations stereotype at their peril: his research across six generations found we are,...

What if the most valuable thing you can become is... undefinable? In the first episode of the Longer Lives Need Better Maps summer series, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with Charlie Rogers, founder of the Undefinable Community and author of Undefinable Life Design . Together they explore why younger generations are rejecting traditional career paths—and why their search for identity mirrors the ques...

After twelve weeks exploring what it means to live longer, this summary steps back from individual conversations to examine the bigger picture. Rather than recapping each episode, Avivah looks at the entire series from above and asks a more fundamental question: if the emergence of a new third quarter of life is such a profound shift, why do we still understand it so poorly? The answer, she argues...

This week on 4 Quarter Lives , we revisit Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s conversation with Sebastian Kernbach , founder of the University of St. Gallen’s Next – Design Your Future initiative — the first university-based midlife programme in continental Europe. They discuss how St. Gallen’s approach blends design thinking, positive psychology and behavioural economics to help accomplished professionals re...

This week, on 4-Quarter Lives, we revisit the conversation between Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Dr Mileham Hayes, author of ‘Live Longer: Revealing Today’s Secrets of Longevity and Wellbeing’ and a specialist in preventative medicine. As he says, “preventive medicine has never realized its promise or potential...until now”. Mileham, who launched the world’s first longevity clinic and has spent nearly...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives Podcast, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is joined by Jennifer Petriglieri, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD Business School and author of Couples That Work , to explore how longer lives are reshaping modern coupledom, careers, and power dynamics inside relationships. Jennifer argues that living and working longer removes the pressure to “have it all at once” an...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives, we republish Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s conversation with Michael Fossat, head of Schneider Electric’s Future Ready program and Director of HR at Schneider Electric France. With a 180-year history, Schneider is now focused on assisting and driving the energy transition to an electric and digital future. Yet this 150,000 strong company discovered that employees over the...

In this week’s 4-Quarter Lives, we republish Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s conversation with Michael Fossat, head of Schneider Electric’s Future Ready program and Director of HR at Schneider Electric France. With a 180-year history, Schneider is now focused on assisting and driving the energy transition to an electric and digital future. Yet this 150,000 strong company discovered that employees over the...

In this episode of 4-Quarter Lives, we re-visit a conversation between Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Helen Tupper, Chief Executive of Amazing If, a company redefining careers for individuals and companies. Together they explore the intricacies of career transitions during midlife and how organizations can support these changes. The conversation also delves into personal experience, highlighting the es...

This week we revisit a conversation between Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alistair McQueen, Head of Savings and Retirement at Aviva, the UK’s largest general insurance company and a major life and pensions provider. Aviva also has a significant presence in Canada and Ireland. Alistair leads Aviva’s pensions business, helping six million people save for and live in retirement, as well as representing A...

This week, we republish a conversation between Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Chip Conley, the Founder and CEO of the Modern Elder Academy. Chip Conley is on a midlife mission. After disrupting the hospitality industry twice, first as the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second-largest operator of boutique hotels in the U.S., and then as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, leadin...

In this episode of the Four Quarter Lives podcast, we revisit a conversation between Avivah Wittenberg Cox and Professor Herminia Ibarra of the London Business School. As we navigate the realities of career shifts, Herminia shares invaluable insights on why these transitions often take years, not months, and the importance of managing expectations during this journey. We confront the myth of disco...