What Does Spring Smell Like?

[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hi, it's Terence Casey, Editorial Director of the Age of Aging. We are so, so close to releasing season three of the podcast and I couldn't be more excited about what's in store. Starting next month, we'll be sharing a wide variety of stories and conversations about how diseases of aging affect caregivers of all ages, how health systems are transforming to support older adults, and how creating things with your hands could actually help maintain your brain. But before we get to all that, we want you to meet Ann Basting. Dr. Ann Basting is a writer, artist and activist. She's a MacArthur genius fellow and she founded timeslips.org we which inspires and supports the integration of creativity and meaning making into care systems. She's also a longtime friend and collaborator of the Penn Memory center, which is where I first heard about what she calls Beautiful Questions. They're these open minded questions that are meant to invite another person into wonderment. We introduced Beautiful Questions to a live audience in Philadelphia in 2024 when we invited Dr. Basting to co host an Arts on the Mind event at the Frankel Institute. You can learn more about the Beautiful Questions and that event specifically in our October 15 episode of the podcast, but we're now making them part of the entire upcoming season of the Age of Aging. At the end of each episode, we'll share with you a Beautiful Question. We'll seek out your responses and then those responses will be used in the following episode of the Age of Aging. We'll also share some responses on our social media as well. Dr. Basting recently sat down with Age of Aging co host and producer Jake Johnson to discuss this exciting change and how you can participate in the season ahead. Take it away, Jake. [00:02:09] Speaker B: Beautiful Questions are questions that open up a space of shared discovery between two people. People refer to questions as being open and they are definitely open questions. They're not yes or no questions, but they go a little deeper. There's an art to them, which is why we call them Beautiful Questions. They really are designed to invite people to think a little differently, that sort of nudge out of your everyday thought that you might sort of pre answer a question that's coming at you. They get you to think about your life and the world a little differently. There's often a sort of a poetic quality to them, metaphoric meaning. The reason I started calling them Beautiful Questions is it really is an art to figure out how to phrase these in a way that engages their curiosity and draws another person into meaningful connection. [00:03:13] Speaker C: So you can use the Beautiful Questions in Any context with anybody, but your work has specifically used it for people with dementia caused by diseases like Alzheimer's. Could you explain a little bit about that? [00:03:30] Speaker B: Sure. I started out with my time slips work back in goodness, 1996, a long, long time ago in a land far, far away called Milwaukee, where I was volunteering on a locked Alzheimer's unit, pract theater techniques to engage people with profound disabilities, whether they were iatrogenic, caused by the environment or drugs or the disease process. And that was when I really learned that improvisation is the way to invite someone into a relationship in the moment. But just what is that first elegant invitation? And I feel like for about 25 plus years I've been chasing that elegant invitation, and I've really landed on the beautiful question as a way to do it. And then the realization that if you can phrase a question that draws someone with profound cognitive disabilities into meaningful engagement, you can turn to any other human being and also use those questions. So it starts with accessibility there, and then just sort of goes everywhere. [00:04:43] Speaker C: I really love the concept of the beautiful questions because there are questions that I would like. You know, you would ask your friends late at night or something. You know, they get at a person and who they are and people's responses to them. They're never yes or no. They're always something that reveals something about how they think about the world. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, you know, a pithy way of saying it is they're questions that make you go, huh, Right? Huh? What do I think about that? [00:05:17] Speaker C: So we wanted to share a few questions with the listeners and have them respond. So what. What questions did you choose? [00:05:27] Speaker B: I like to do questions that land people in the moment in which they're in. So. So one question that I would ask is, what does spring smell like? [00:05:46] Speaker C: I really like that one. That's a great one because it really makes me think about a lot of things. What does spring smell like? [00:05:55] Speaker B: Oh, I have a very visceral response to that question, which is I just. I am one of those people that sneaks around when the lilacs bloom with a pair of scissors. So watch out for me in your. In your public park. Because I'm like, snip. Because I just. I just love sinking my nose right into lilacs, and they just don't last very long. They're so brief. But to me, that is really the smell of spring. [00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm even thinking now like that. The smell of flowers. But also, there's a certain quality of smell to like the air. It's like a moisture is coming back into. Into the air. That's kind of indescribable. [00:06:37] Speaker B: Some people who have pollen allergies have very distinct experiences of the smell of spring. So might smell like, you know, your nasal spray. [00:06:48] Speaker C: Yeah, right. [00:06:49] Speaker B: Allergies. [00:06:50] Speaker C: All right. Do you want to share one more? [00:06:53] Speaker B: The other one that is really one of my favorites. And I just used it with my mom and dad a couple weeks ago too, and it was very special. What do you think is a beautiful sound? And immediately my father said, the barred owl who cooks for you. He loves that sound. [00:07:24] Speaker C: That's a really good question because I immediately started thinking about music. So I thought immediately I thought of, oh, I love a horn in a song like love like a trumpet. Then I started thinking about nature and like, you know, the. The sound of water flowing or trees swaying or something like that. And bard owl is really good. [00:07:51] Speaker B: I mean, you could combine the spring and both questions because to me, there's something about the way in the woods in the spring thaw that the sound of the water trickling where it doesn't normally trickle is really lovely. [00:08:10] Speaker C: It was like a 60 degree day for the first time yesterday and I was just listening to the birds. It's like you can hear them again. There's something about like the spring birds. You're like, oh, life is coming back into the world. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:27] Speaker B: It's fun too, to then try to make the sounds and to invite whoever you're talking with to make the sounds together. It was a really special moment when dad did the who cooks for you for the barred owl? And then mom echoed and we just all made the sound of the owl together. It was very sweet. I'll say two things, which is that if people want to learn more about beautiful questions, Time slips is in the process of creating a new training module called Creative Communication. And examples of beautiful questions will really be part of it. You can take the current family and friends training on the Time slips website and that's free. And there's beautiful questions in there. There also a whole section on beautiful questions in creative care. [00:09:27] Speaker A: As soon as I heard the phrase beautiful sound, my mind went to the sounds of baseball in spring. Unlike the excitement of fall playoff baseball, which is defined by the roars of enormous crowds in South Philadelphia, spring baseball is played just above a whisper. You've got the crack of the bat, the thump of a baseball against a leather glove, and off in the distance, you can hear a beer hawker. The sounds are lovely on their own, but they symbolize that winter is passing and brighter days are ahead. That, to me, is a beautiful sound. What about you? I'd love to hear your answer to this and other beautiful questions. It's easy to participate. Just call 571-449-6474 and leave a message with your first name, where you're from, and the answer to the question what's a beautiful sound? Again, that number is 571-449-6474. If you leave a message, your response could be featured in our first episode of this season. Special thanks to Ann Basting for her contributions on this project and in this episode particular. Looking forward to hearing your answers. See you next month.