In Da AARP Club We Gonna Party Like It's Your Birthday

The red AARP envelope is one of the strangest American milestones: it’s mailed like a harmless membership perk, but it lands like a quiet announcement that time is moving faster than you want to admit. We follow that feeling straight into the real story behind AARP, and it gets way bigger than hotel discounts and a magazine in your mailbox. 

We start where we always do, as Nicole and Heather catching up on the here and now, then we pivot hard into the main question: what is AARP, who built it, and why does it have so much power over aging in America? You’ll hear how Ethel Percy Andrus, an educator and advocate, was galvanized after discovering a retired teacher living in a chicken coop because retirement security and affordable health insurance didn’t exist. From there, the organization grows into a national force pushing early group health coverage for older Americans, pioneering services that predate Medicare, and shaping how the country thinks about independence and dignity after 50. 

Then we trace the uncomfortable part: the money. We talk insurance partnerships, public scandals, policy fights, and the modern licensing model that brings in billions through Medicare supplement branding with UnitedHealthcare. That financial engine funds real programs and serious advocacy, but it also creates a conflict-of-interest question that won’t go away: can a group be the most trusted champion for seniors while earning massive royalties from the products seniors buy? 

If you’ve ever wondered whether AARP is a lifeline, a lobbying juggernaut, a marketing machine, or all three at once, this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who just turned 50, and leave a review with your own red-envelope story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Two best friends fucking fast. We're missing two arcades, we're having a blast. Seeing these dreams, me on screens, it was all bad. Like you know, like whatever, never, whatever. Never never never laughing, sharing, our scoring forever. We'll say you got like whatever.

Sports Fandom And Philly Rivalries

SPEAKER_07 0:31

Welcome to Like Whatever, a podcast for, by, and about Gen X. I'm Nicole, and this is my BFFF, Heather. Hello. So I've been watching a lot of Philly sports lately. You too.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

Mm-hmm. Mostly just hockey.

SPEAKER_07 0:46

Yeah, you watch the hockey, I know. Um, I've been watching the Sixers too. Oh. I did, I want to bet the game before this one because the Celtics always own us. Like for decades. We cannot beat them. And so I took the Celtics with the points and the over. Boom, I won. Last night I went back to Boston. So I was like, same bet. Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

No.

SPEAKER_07 1:15

The Sixers won. Which good, but I was like, god damn it.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

I cannot get into basketball. I just can't.

SPEAKER_07 1:23

I really love basketball. I just can't. I love to watch it.

SPEAKER_04 1:27

Now hockey. Yeah. Tonight is um game five of the Penguins Flyers. And I love the Penguins Flyers games because they are, if you're into hockey, very heated. And it has been lived up to the expectations, except I really thought they were gonna sweep the Penguins.

SPEAKER_07 1:49

Yeah, I did watch the game the other night and they lost.

unknown 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:54

And I think I watched part of the one.

SPEAKER_04 1:56

Maybe you shouldn't watch it tonight.

SPEAKER_07 1:57

I'm not. Okay. I thought of that already. I think I came in on like the second half of the first time they lost. I was like, all right, this one isn't my fault. But then the second time, and I was like, all right. Okay, this is my fault. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Well, don't worry, because one of the ladies I work with, she keeps falling asleep. And the only one and she the only one she's been awake for are the ones they won. So she was like, I'm gonna stay up tonight. And I was like, you better. Yeah, drink some caffeine later. Yeah. She's like, I have a root canal tomorrow, so I'm off. So I'm gonna stay up. And I was like better, because Okay.

Missing Indigenous Women Day Reminder

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Um I wanted I do want to say one thing because um before no after this airs next week is uh Mon no, not Monday, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo also is National Awareness Day designated as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls to honor the victims. Um they you wear red. Okay. I got a shirt. Okay. And then the the symbol is a red hand over the mouth. I remember that. Uh a red hand print over the mouth is commonly used symbol to represent the silencing of indigenous women. Uh uh, yeah. So uh for more information, you can go to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. Uh, it's focused on raising awareness and demanding justice for Indigenous women. Okay, thank you. In both the United States and Canada. Yes, I appreciate that. So I wanted to put that out. I got my shirt ready to go. Nice. Yeah. Nice. I ordered it from uh own an indigenous person. Yeah. Nice. I like to go authentic.

SPEAKER_07 3:53

Yeah, put your money where your mouth is.

Jeopardy Update And Ken Jennings

SPEAKER_07 3:57

So I said this week my Jamie Ding on on Jeopardy lost. Did he? Yeah. But he went 31 games and made just under $900,000. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 4:10

Yeah. I saw um, I guess it was an interview with Ken Jennings. Okay. And they asked how he would feel, and he said he was pretty excited. But you're gonna have to worry about it now, I guess.

SPEAKER_07 4:22

Yeah. And it was cool. He said that he rang in based on the um what's the word I'm looking for? The flow of Ken Jennings' voice. Oh. So he learned when it was time. When he was gonna just be finishing with giving the clue. So that's what gave him a lot of luck. But the guy who beat him is from Philly.

unknown 4:46

Oh.

SPEAKER_07 4:47

They interviewed him on the Philly News last night, and he did win again last night. So he's two in a row now. Um, so yeah, that's my Jeopardy update. Cool. I'm very sad Jamie Ding is gone. He's my favorite. Yeah. Well, you know.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

He's no Ken Jennings, I guess. Yeah, yeah, true. That's just crazy. That's a crazy, crazy story. So I you know, I love that. And then go on to become. I mean, I guess who else are you gonna have to host Jeopardy, but the one who was on Jeopardy the longest.

SPEAKER_07 5:19

Exactly. And it's funny because I was so resistant because nobody is Alex, so I was like, oh, I hate him. No, I hate him, but I really do love Ken. Yeah, he does a really, really good job. But I still in my head every time it comes on, and they're like, This is Jeopardy. Now here's your host, Alex Trebek. In my head every single time. My brain jumps right to it. But yeah, let's see

Meat-Eating Bees And Bee Queens

SPEAKER_07 5:48

what else. I was watching some more on the bees. Did you know that there are bees that eat meat? I did not know that. And they still make honey.

unknown 5:57

Huh.

SPEAKER_07 5:58

So you could get some meat honey.

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Meat honey. They're called uh vulture, they're called vulture bees.

SPEAKER_04 6:05

Oh, that makes sense. Mm-hmm. And they're kind of creepy looking. And I just lied to you, I do eat honey. When? Only on pumper nickel. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 6:14

Honey butter on pumpernickel. I only do honey and hot tea. Oh, yeah. Besides that, I do not like honey anything. Yeah. I'm not a honey fan. No, me neither. Not too much.

SPEAKER_04 6:28

Um like bee vomit.

unknown 6:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

I want no bee vomit. Unless it's on pumpernickel bread.

SPEAKER_07 6:36

It is really amazing to see how smart bees are, though. It's wild.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

It's cute when they fall asleep in flowers, too. Uh-huh. I love that. Those pictures are my favorites. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 6:46

But they showed like a swarm because they have the queen, and if the queen leaves, the swarm goes with her. Yes. And then they have to find a new place. So there was this one swarm and it was in between places. So it was living on a tree branch. So you I'm sure you've seen them wrapped around the trees. Well, it was raining, and they were showing the bees, they would create like a shield on the outside, and then every so often they would switch off, and the ones on top would move in, and those ones would move out so that nobody had to like stay out there and get beat up all the time. Right, right. Yeah. Wild.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

That's like the penguins in uh wherever, Antarctica or whatever, where they are in the big circle and then they move in and out of the circle. Yes. So that no one has to take the yeah, that's yeah. It's it's amazing how smart they are. I one time had to deliver a queen bee. Um, I called her Beyonce. Uh it was a it was a weird spot too, right on the beach. Yeah, one of the houses right on the beach. And um she came in a little cage and uh it was an express. So I I took I took it out and I was like, because some the one one girl couldn't because she's allergic to bees, and yeah, anyway. So um I went to the place and luckily the guy was outside because the whole time I was like talking to her and I was like uh this Beyoncé. And I was like, I I really just have to know because it says all over the box, like Queen Bee. And he was like, Oh yeah, he said, I'm trying to start a hive. Or no, I lost my queen, so I had to get a new queen, and I was like, Oh, and he was like, and it's really cool because they send her with attendance. There was like three other bees in there with her that feed her the whole time and like clean her, and like she comes with like an entourage.

SPEAKER_07 8:41

Right. I want to change my animal that I want to be reincarnated to as a queen bee. I want to be a queen bee. See, I did think of that though while I was watching the show too. I was like, man, these queen bees, oh yeah, they it's no joke.

SPEAKER_04 8:56

It is not a joke. No, I mean she was in like this nice little cage, and I mean there was and he said, Yeah, they they feed her, and and he's like, they she comes with attendance, and I was like, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_07 9:10

Yeah, they they showed a hive inside and there was a hornet, and as soon as he tried to like come in to see what was going on, they jumped on him and just killed him. Boom. Yep, nope, no intruders. Nope. So it was pretty cool.

Derby Plans And Betting Habits

SPEAKER_07 9:26

So the Kentucky Derby is the certain one. Yes, it is. I was gonna see if you wanted to meet me in Harrington, but I know that we both hate actually doing things.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

And there'll be a lot of people there.

SPEAKER_07 9:40

Yeah, I know, but that's the fun of it. I've done it a bunch of times. I don't know. Okay, too many people for you, that's fine. That's probably gonna be too many people. Yeah, that's fine.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

Like the idea of it, yeah. I love right, but execution-wise, because one time I did um before I could bet online, I had to go down to Ocean Downs to bet. And it was after work, so it was like five o'clock, and I was like, nope.

unknown 10:07

Nope, nope, nope.

SPEAKER_07 10:08

No, I love it. I I went for probably five years straight, and I it's the one time a year I drink a mint mint julep. I don't love them, but I don't hate them. They're like the special occasion, they suit the day. Um, and you we get a souvenir glass, so I have like a bunch of those that I have, but I do miss going there. I love betting the ponies.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

I do too.

SPEAKER_07 10:30

Um, yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 10:32

Okay. Well, if you're feeling ambitious with that. Well, especially because I didn't have a day off. I didn't have my day off this week. I do have it next week, I think. Uh I'm gonna try and talk them out of that. So I don't know. Okay, probably not. I know.

SPEAKER_07 10:46

I just thought I'd bring it up. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Let's

Child Stars And True Crime Spiral

SPEAKER_07 10:52

see, what else? I've been trying to watch the um child stars like like had rough times afterwards. Oh, yeah. Most of them went into porn, that's mostly what it was about, but it it's just so disturbing. It really is. Like, did you know the kid from the Christmas story that got his tongue tuck tongue stuck on a pole was in porn? I did not. Yeah. Because he was very popular around that age. He was on a ton of commercials. Like he was working 27 days out of the month. Wow. As like a nine-year-old. Yeah. And then he did the toy with Richard Pryor. Oh, yeah. And Richard Pryor really kind of screwed him up. No. Get out. But did you know Richard Pryor was raised in a brothel? I did not, but but that makes sense. It does. And so he was exposed at a very young age to a lot of things he should not have been. And so he would like send grown women over to flash their boobs at this kid because he knew he liked boobs. And I imagine there was a lot of cocaine rolling around. And he was sending, like when the kid was a little bit older, like twelve or thirteen, he was sending like twenty-some-year-old women to do some favors. Right. So he started off weird. And then he got into the porn industry, but not acting. He was stage crew, I guess, and stuff like that. And then one day somebody was like, Do you want to? And he was like, sure, why not? So yeah, it was pretty crazy. Interesting. Yeah. It it was, but it's very, very, very sad. Yeah. To see the way that they're all changed. I've been watching some of the boy band one that's out too. Um that one's kind of sad.

SPEAKER_04 12:51

I watched uh the um the new one about the Gilgo Beach murder. Okay. And it's mostly his wife and his daughter. Okay. And they still live in the house. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 13:08

Yeah. And his wife seems really pissy about it too. Like that had happened.

SPEAKER_06 13:13

Like she I don't really know about her.

SPEAKER_07 13:20

Do you think she knew?

SPEAKER_04 13:22

I wanna say yes. I think she had an idea. Um how do you live in that house? Yeah. And how do you like they have the laundry is in the room where he killed those girls. Like the daughter was saging it. Girl, that's not enough. There ain't enough sage in the world.

SPEAKER_07 13:48

I don't know. I don't get it. Yeah, I mean I just can't understand what some people think.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

I'm a big serial killer fan, but I don't think I'm gonna be living in the house that my husband killed people. Like it's one thing, like if they're like, hey, the Ted Bundy house is up for sale and you know, or whatever. Uh you five people were killed in this house. Probably I'd live there.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:12

But if it was somebody I knew, I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 14:16

Exactly. Well, I was watching uh true crime the other day, and this man had his wife killed, murder for hire. His 20-year-old son was in the house and got beat up. They killed the mom. And then the they were separated, going on divorce. He didn't want to have to pay alimony. So as soon as she dies, he goes right in and sleeps in the bed she was murdered in.

SPEAKER_06 14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 14:43

In the same bed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:46

I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

But what do I know? It would be creepy. It would be creepy. Especially because he dismembered. Like it wasn't just like he just killed him and then he Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 14:59

Yeah. He was he was a bad one. He was a bad one. I need to watch more on him. I don't know enough info yet. Watch. It's on Peacock. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

And it just came. It's like since he had been arrested. Oh, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:14

Nice.

SPEAKER_04 15:15

It's good.

SPEAKER_06 15:16

All right. Yeah, you have our question.

One Food For Life Picks

SPEAKER_06 15:20

I do.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

Our question of the week. Question of the week.

SPEAKER_07 15:24

So I've been thinking it this has weighed heavy on my mind. Yes. And I think of a lot of questions. But then I'm like, what is my real answer to that? Right. So we're going simple this week. Yeah. Because we're just getting this started. So the question is if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Cheeseburger.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

Hands down. No other choice. It would be my last meal if I was on death row. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 15:55

So mine is pizza.

SPEAKER_04 15:57

I figured.

SPEAKER_07 15:58

Yes, I figured you would figure that. But we both have good choices because they both have carbs in the bread. They both have protein. Well, it'd be pepperoni pizza specifically. I know. So protein, dairy, uh-huh. The ketchup can be your veggie.

SPEAKER_04 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 16:16

And I got sauce.

SPEAKER_04 16:17

I 100% count ketchup as a veggie. Yeah, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn't eat veggies.

SPEAKER_07 16:23

We literally don't eat any vegetables if we don't count that one. So yeah, that was a pretty basic question and an easy one. But that's I for years and years it was grilled cheese. Like when I was younger. Yeah. I always thought if I could only eat one thing, it would be grilled cheese. But I've been eating a lot of grilled cheese lately. No. Getting kind of sick of it. I could never get sick of a cheeseburger. I would never get sick of pizza. Yeah. Ever. I could eat it every meal of every day. Yeah. And I have. I could eat a cheeseburger every day.

SPEAKER_06 16:54

And I have. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. I might have one today.

SPEAKER_07 16:59

Now that you mention it. I'm thinking about it. I had one last week. Oh, they're so good. They are so good. I had one Sunday. I I did something terrible to mine though. I put a fried egg on it.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

I don't mind that for other people. I don't want that on mine, but I understand how it's. You do like eggs. I do. I love eggs. Any which way you want to give me an egg, I'll eat it. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_07 17:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:24

But I don't want to mix them with my burger.

SPEAKER_07 17:26

Yeah. It's it's a big thing now. Like a lot of restaurants are offering that, and I will take that offer every time.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Yeah. We used to have it. Mm-hmm. I hated it when though because it's gotta be right. It's gotta be an o I don't know how you ate yours, but it's gotta be it's supposed to be over easier up so that the yolk runs. Right.

SPEAKER_07 17:44

So I got one of those like a month ago, and that's no good for me. I can't, I can't do yolk like that. I need it hard fried. If it comes medium, I can make that work because it mixes with everything else. This one last week was perfect because it was straight up fried egg. Yeah. There was no juice, which suits me fine. But yeah, I got one. I mean, even the white was still runny. Yeah. And I was like, yeah. That's how I like eggs. That's my favorite way to eat them. Which is so weird for you. I know. Oh. Because it's so good.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

Easy, over easy, up, poached.

SPEAKER_07 18:17

I like them runny. When I get, I love Hollandaise sauce, so I will get um eggs benedict, but I always order scrambled eggs with Hollandaise sauce. Because I love the sauce, but not a poached egg. No, thanks. All right.

SPEAKER_06 18:33

You probably don't like Hollandaise sauce, huh? I mean, it's fine. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

I don't want it all to hate it. I don't hate it, but I don't want it either.

Hearts Of Glass Promo And Socials

SPEAKER_02 18:41

This is for the Gen Xers who carried too much too young. The ones who learned to be strong before they ever felt safe. The ones who survived and kept going. My Hearts of Glass series is a story about first love, but it's also about healing after trauma, about friends who become family, about choosing tenderness when the world taught you to wear armor. Set in the glow of 1980 suburbia, mall corridors and mixtapes. It's nostalgic, yes. But it's also a reminder. You deserved better, and you still do. If you're ready for a story that sees you, visit my website, packgreenauthor.com, and discover the books Hearts of Glass Living in a Real World, and its sequel, Hearts of Glass Fade Away and Radiate, in ebook, audiobook, and paperback. You're not invisible, and you were never alone.

SPEAKER_07 19:34

Uh like, share, rate, review. Find us on all the podcasts at Like Whatever Pod. Uh we have a website at likewhateverpod.com. We are on YouTube at Like Whatever. We have an email. We do. Um at Like Whatever. No, not at no. Our email is Likewhateverpod at gmail.com.

unknown 20:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

Perfection. Woo-hoo!

The AARP Card Shock At 50

SPEAKER_04 20:03

So today I thought we're gonna we're gonna not go back in the way back machine today. We're gonna hang out in the here and now and we're gonna fuck around and find out about AARP. Oh god.

SPEAKER_07 20:25

I was all um CBS mornings one day this week, and Gail King was like, because she had an actress on who's doing a podcast now about being in your 50s and how everybody always thought your 50s, like you're done. Yeah. And she's really trying to like show that you're not. And Gail King was like, when I turned 50, she's like, I don't know how they knew I turned 50 or what my address was, but that AARP magazine showed up and I threw it right in the trash.

SPEAKER_04 20:55

My sources R-A-A-P-A-A-R-P.org, commitment to seniors.org, and wiki. Alrighty. There's a moment that 40 million Americans know by heart. You walk to the mailbox, you're carrying a coffee, or you just came back from the gym, you barefit in the driveway, in a pair of shorts you've had since the Clinton administration. Sun is ordinary, the day is ordinary. You flip through the stack, a credit card offer, a water bill, a catalog you never asked for, and then you see it. A red envelope. Then official, your name in that font that says, We know exactly who you are. You open it, and there it is. A membership card with your name on it from AARP.

SPEAKER_07 21:37

Yep, I remember it well.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

And something inside you, something you didn't even know was load bearing shifts, because this card doesn't say congratulations. It doesn't say welcome to the club. What it says is in the quietest possible way is you are now closer to the end than to the beginning. Happy 50th birthday. Here are some coupons.

SPEAKER_07 22:00

For my 50th birthday, my dad and uh stepmom couldn't make it because they live in Florida. Uh-huh. Um, but they my stepmom created a AIRP application and put it in an envelope for me because she thinks she's funny.

SPEAKER_04 22:18

If you've turned 50 in America at any point in the last four decades, you know this moment. You have a story about it, your spouse laughed, you hit it, you posted on social media with a joke that was only 30% a joke. Uh you called your best friend and said they found me as if A R P were the FBI. But here's the thing, nobody ever asks because the comedy is too good and the the dread is too distracting. What is this organization? Uh what is this thing that seems to know your birthday better than your own mother? Where did it come from? Who built it? And how did a retired school teacher from California, a woman born in the 19th century, a woman who once found a colleague living in a chicken coop, built what would become an $11 billion empire and the most powerful lobby in American history. Dun, dun, dun.

SPEAKER_07 23:07

So exciting.

SPEAKER_04 23:08

I know. Uh to understand AFR UF A A R P you have to go back to before it existed. Uh before 40 million members and the magazine covers featuring Bon Jovi, which was one of the last ones that I saw that hurt my fucking feelings. You have to go all the way back to a girl watching Chicago Tear

Ethel Percy Andrus And The Origin Story

SPEAKER_04 23:36

Itself Apart. Ethel Percy Andrews was born September 21st, 1884, in San Francisco. Her parents, George and Lucretia, were strivers, educated, progressive, ambitious. When Ethel was five, the family packed up and moved to Chicago so George could attend law school. Ethel and her older sister, Maud, two greatest names. For real, enrolled in Chicago schools, and the city became their classroom in no way, and in ways no one intended. In 1894, Ethel was 10. That summer the Pullman strike erupted, one of the most violent labor uprisings in American history. George Pullman, the railroad car magnet, had built a company town south of Chicago where his workers lived in company houses, shopped at company stores, and drank company water. When a depression hit and Pullman slashed wages by 25%, but kept rent exactly the same, his workers walked out. The American Railway Union, led by a young firebrand named Eugene Debs, joined the boycott. Within days, rail traffic across the western United States ground to a halt. President Cleveland sent in federal troops. They clashed with strikers, fires broke out across the rail yards, 30 people died. It took the United States Army to break the strike, and a 10-year-old girl in Chicago watched it all happen. She wrote years later about the thing it taught her to look for, people at the top who tried to spread the wealth. She was drawn, even as a child, not to the strikers and not to the magnets, but to the rare figures who had power and chose to share it. The figure she revered most was Peter Cooper. Cooper was a wealthy industrialist and inventor, the man who built America's first steam locomotive, who late in life turned philanthropist. He found Cooper Union in New York City, a college offering free night classes to everyone, regardless of race or background, at a time when American higher education was almost exclusively the province of wealthy white men. Andreas would later say that what moved her about Cooper was his love for and service to folks whom he had he might never have known. In 1900, Ethel enrolled at the University of Chicago, one of the very few women in the country to attend college. She spent a year there before transferring to the Lewis Institute, an innovative teacher training school on Chicago's near in Chicago's West Side. She earned her degree in 1903 at 19 and immediately joined the faculty teaching English and German. For it was those during those years at Lewis Institute that she discovered Hull House. James Adams' legendary settlement house in the slums of Chicago near West Side, a place where Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, Russian, and Polish immigrants could find housing support, night classes in English and citizenship. A place that said, in a city built on money, you matter even if you have nothing. Ethel volunteered there. She remembered Chicago as happy and wonderful, but the chapter closed in 1909 when both Ethel and her father fell ill. The family moved temporarily, they thought, to the small town of Santa Paula in Southern California, so they could recover in the warm, dry air. Ethel rebounded, her father did not, and he continued to worsen. Which was what was back then that's where they sent you to like Arizona and California. Yeah, where the air was dry. For like consumption, tuberculosis.

SPEAKER_07 27:15

I don't think it probably worked.

SPEAKER_04 27:17

Some it did for some people. Just because, you know, I guess being out in the air. Probably being out of Chicago where it's cold. True.

SPEAKER_06 27:27

True. I could see that.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

In 1916, Ethel Percy Andrews became the first female high school principal in the state of California. She was 32 years old. The school was Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, and she would lead it for the next 28 years. A tenure so long that it defined both her life and the school's identity. While serving as principal, she went back to school herself, a master's degree, then a doctorate, both from the University of Southern California. She ran a high school by day and earned advanced degrees by night. Because apparently she had the energy of five people and slept like a hummingbird. You know, this was also one of the like when I first started this, because I had zero knowledge of ARP. Yes, other than the little envelope that comes and the one I have to deliver. And so when I found out that it was a woman in the 1800s, I was like, even fucking better. For real. So get it, girl. She retired in 1944, 34 years in education, the kind of career people celebrate with plaques and dinners and promises to keep in touch. She was 60 years old, give or take. She could have rested, she could have gardened, and she could, or she could have written a memoir. Instead, she found the chicken coop. The story has become legend, and like all legends, its details blurred depending on who tells it. But the core is documented and consistent. After her retirement, she, now deeply involved in advocacy for retired teachers, discovered that a former colleague, a retired teacher, was living in a chicken coop. Not a converted chicken coop, not a rustic outbuilding someone had charmed up with curtains, a chicken coop. Because the woman's pension was so small and no health insurance existed for retired people over 65, and she had gotten sick and the money had run out, and when everything is gone, when you have taught other people's children for 30 years, and the reward is a pension that can't keep you alive, you have to live where you can live. That's terrible. So that image, a teacher in a chicken coop, radicalized Ethel. The way the Pullman strike had politicized her childhood, it gave her a cause, and unlike most causes, this one came with a concrete, achievable demand. Retired people needed health insurance, period. No one was going to provide it. Insurance companies considered anyone over 65 uninsurable. The market had written off an entire generation as too risky, too expensive, and too likely to die.

SPEAKER_07 29:55

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 29:56

Ethel decided to fix that. In 1947, she founded the National Retired Teachers Association. Its mission was simple: secure affordable group health insurance for retired teachers. She approached insurance company after insurance company. More than 40 turned her down. Retired people were bad bets. The actuary table said so. The boardroom said so, and everybody said so. But she said otherwise.

SPEAKER_07 30:21

It's just nuts that you once you had served your purpose in their eyes in society, they were done with you.

SPEAKER_04 30:27

And it's so crazy because it's just like most other cultures revere their elderly. Not here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 30:37

Fuck you when you're a lot of things other cultures do that we don't. You know what it is?

SPEAKER_04 30:46

I want to say this is my theory. Okay. It seems that maybe that's a matriarchal matriarchal society that reveres its elders and not the patriarchal. So you know. Eventually, through persistence that bordered on obstinacy, through networking, through sheer force of I thought you were going to call it. Through sheer false of force of will, she found a partner. The plan went into effect in the mid-50s, insured by Continental Casualty Company. Within a year, subscribers leapt from 5,000 to 15,000. It was the first group health insurance for older Americans in the history of the United States. It preded predated Medicare by nearly two decades. That's so wild. Right? A retired school teacher working from her home in California had done what the federal government hadn't bothered to do. And then she met Leonard Davis.

Insurance Influence And AARP Scandals

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

He was a young insurance executive with an idea. He had already done something that the rest of the industry considered borderline insane. He'd figure out how to sell group health insurance to retired teachers in New York. It was profitable, widely, wildly profitable. Premiums came in at about $75,000 a month. Claims went out at about $25,000. The margins were extraordinary because retired teachers, it turns out, were not the catastrophic risk the industry had assumed. They were, on the whole, healthy, careful, and grateful for the coverage. What happened next depends on whose version of history you believe. In the charitable telling, Davis approached Ethel in the late 50s and offered to underwrite insurance for her Growing Teachers Association on a national scale. He brought capital, he brought expertise, he brought a willingness to ensure people the rest of the industry wouldn't touch. And in return, Ethel brought something money couldn't buy, the trust of retired Americans, her credibility and her moral authority. In the less charitable telling, the one that would explode across national television two days decades later, Davis saw a golden customer pipeline and built an entire organization around it. Well, in 1958, money does always rule. Davis was the insurance partner. He provided the $50,000 of startup capital. The organization had four founding goals, and they read like a manifesto. One, to enhance the quality of life for older persons. Two, to promote independence, dignity, and purpose. Three, to determine the role of older persons in society, and four, to improve the image of aging. I love it. Note what's not on the list. Insurance, discounts, lobbying, revenue. The founding language of AARP sounds like a settlement house charter. It sounded like Whole House. It sounded like Peter Cooper. It sounds like Ethel. And in those early years, the organization delivered. In 58, AARP created the first group health insurance plan for Americans over 65, a product so ahead of its time that it wouldn't have a federal equivalent until Medicare passed in 1965. By 1959, AARP launched its drug buying service, a mail order prescription program that introduced price competition into the pharmaceutical market for the first time. Seniors could order their medications at wholesale prices and have them delivered to their door. In 1959, 65 years before the rest of us would discover the concept.

SPEAKER_07 34:32

That's so wild. Nobody saw that and was like, hey, that's a good idea. Look at that.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

In 1961, for the first White House conference on aging, AARP built what they called the House of Freedom in Washington, D.C., a so showcase home designed with universal accessibility features. Grab bars, no skid floors, no step entries, wide doorways. It was visionary. The Americans with Disabilities Act wouldn't pass for another 29 years. Oh, trust me, I know. ARP was building ADA compliant homes during the Kennedy administration.

SPEAKER_07 35:08

Speaking of which, so I work with persons with disabilities. Yes. And while it seems like they waited way too long to pass legislation to make things um accessible to persons with disabilities, there are still a lot of places that are not accessible. There's no one policing it. So I actually even had um a client who is in an electric wheelchair and she was going to college. Um, but she was traveling through, I think she had to make three bus transfers up and three bus transfers back to get to class. So she decided to try a more local school. And she only made it one semester because even they had the the little thingy head to open the door. Uh-huh. Those didn't work on a college campus where they give you accommodations and the ADA, they have a whole office for the ADA. Right. And she would have to sit out in the rain until someone came along and opened the door for her so that she could get inside. Yeah. So yeah, it's still very far from where it needs to be.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

Well, and I know the problem, say, here, um, East Coast, probably Midwest, a little well m mostly East Coast, I would imagine. So a lot of these buildings were built in the 1700s. Correct. So they were grandfathered in or historical. So the accommodations were not made because of yeah.

SPEAKER_07 36:44

But that doesn't let you off the bottom. No, no, no, I know, I know. Now you fix it. I know.

SPEAKER_04 36:47

Yeah. But that's what that's what they use as the excuse. All right. Uh uh. In 1963, Ethel established the Institute of Lifetime Learning, pioneering the radical idea that education shouldn't end at retirement. In 1964, AARP had a pavilion at the New York World's Fair promoting dynamic maturity, a concept so far ahead of its time that it sounds like a wellness brand. And maybe it should be. Ethel edited AARP's first magazine, Modern Maturity. Personally, she was hands-on, she was tireless, and she was, by every surviving account, genuinely driven by service. Um, the motto that she coined that is still chiseled into AARP's institutional DNA was six words long, to serve, not to be served. But even in those years, the good years, there was tension underneath. Bum, bum, drama. Because Leonard Davis wasn't a philanthropist, he was an insurance executive, and the organization he had helped Ethel build was, from its very first breath, structured to do two things at once serve retired Americans and sell them insurance. The question that would define AARP for the next seven decades was whether those two missions were compatible or whether one would inevitably detour the other. Money always wins. Yeah. Ethel died on July 13th, 1967. She was 82 years old. She had lived long enough to see her teachers' association grow into a national movement, long enough to see Medicare become a law, and long enough to know that Chicken Coop era was ending. But she did not live long enough to see what Leonard Davis would do with her organization after she was gone. After she died, Leonard Davis did not step into the spotlight. He had built something better than a leadership role. He had built a system. Throughout the late 60s and 70s, Davis effectively controlled ARP through a web of interlocking business relationships. His Colonial Penn group of insurance companies were ARP's exclusive insurance providers. And I think we've all heard of every ARP member who signed up for health insurance and millions did became a Colonial Pen customer. The premiums flowed to Colonial Pen, the profits flowed to Davis, and ARP, the nonprofit, was the pipeline that made it all possible. Membership exploded. By the mid-70s, millions of Americas had Americans had joined ARP for the insurance, the discounts, the prescriptions, and the sense of belonging to something that said you're not invisible and you're not disposable. But you are old.

SPEAKER_08 39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

In 67, the same year she died, ARP helped push the Age Discrimination Employment Act through Congress. Love it. The ADAA signed into law protecting workers aged 40. 40 to 65 from being fired or passed over simply because their hair was gray. It was a landmark legislation, and ARP's advocacy was instrumental. Man, if I live back then, I would not be dying my hair now.

SPEAKER_07 40:12

I'd be like, what, I have to retire? All right. Oh no. Darn.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

I'd be so fucked because my hair's not going gray for whatever fucking reason. Well you know why? Because I want it to go gray. So I can it's easier to dye. I don't have to keep bleaching it. In 1968, ARP launched its tax aid program, a free tax preparation service staffed by volunteers. It started small. It would grow into one of the largest volunteer ran tax assistance programs in the world. 35,000 IRS certified volunteers helping more than two and a half million seniors file their taxes every single year. Let me guess. They don't offer that for free anymore.

unknown 40:49

I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 40:50

You haven't gotten that far.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

We're just in 1973. The year I was born. The Ethel Percy Andrews Gerontology Center opened at the University of Southern California. And by 75, it housed the world's first school of gerontology, the academic study of aging, finally giving in 1973.

SPEAKER_06 41:11

75.

SPEAKER_07 41:12

That was the first time a college studied. Old. Aging.

SPEAKER_06 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 41:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:18

Oldie. Oldies. That's crazy. The center was named for Ethel, but funded in large part through the Leonard Davis Connection. Even the School of Gerontology itself would be named the Leonard Davis School. And he probably made a huge donation. Yep. In 75, ARP created legal counsel for the elderly in Washington, D.C., providing le free legal service to seniors who couldn't afford an attorney. These were real programs, real services, and real people helped. It would be dishonest, dismiss them just because the man at the top had his own agenda. Let's go to your diary.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Because Harry Pirty alike, but I can feel her teenage life.

SPEAKER_07 42:15

All right, we have a home dinger for you this week. Um, it is May 31st. 1984. Memorial Day weekend.

SPEAKER_06 42:26

Oh yeah. Wild.

SPEAKER_07 42:28

Today I had to write. Had to. Because today was the most exciting day in my life. Oh my god. First, in school we had a bomb threat. Wow. Which was all we had to worry about back in our day. I wonder if kids still make bomb threats.

SPEAKER_04 42:50

Uh probably not. Yeah, I think it's probably just. I mean, they probably try, but they get them within like 30 seconds because, you know, technology. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 43:00

Yep. Uh then I saw a baby being born.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

What?

SPEAKER_07 43:05

The whole nine yards. What? It coming out. What? The cult. The afterbirth. Coming out. Everything. What? I did. And I remember this.

SPEAKER_06 43:20

Whose baby did you see be born? A cult. A baby horse. Oh, a cult. I was okay.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

I was thinking.

SPEAKER_07 43:31

The religious group. No, not cult. Cult. Cult. A cult. Not it. So my stepmom had an aunt who lived on a horse farm because we live in the country. And we were there visiting one night, and the farmhand came in and said it's go time. And we all went out to the stuff stable. And I literally watched the whole thing. I'm surprised you're grossed out. You like gross stuff. I do. But it was super, super cool. Like she the horse was laying on her side.

unknown 44:09

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 44:10

And the little leg came out and they had to like pull on it. Yeah. And then it came out. I don't know. I don't know. I was 11. I thought it was the most exciting day of my life.

SPEAKER_05 44:28

Well, you watch me, get birth.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

Because you asked me to.

SPEAKER_07 44:31

Because you like weird things. I know. I thought you wanted to be there.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

Let me tell you, solidified the fact that I did not want to have fucking kids. All these years later. I did.

SPEAKER_07 44:42

It was lovely.

SPEAKER_04 44:43

I don't want to ever, I don't want to ever see it again.

SPEAKER_07 44:46

I do remember telling you you weren't allowed to look down. I know. And then you're like, that's where all the action is.

SPEAKER_04 44:51

Where am I supposed to look?

SPEAKER_07 44:52

Why am I here then? And I remember you holding my left leg. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:56

Yeah, they were making me be interactive.

SPEAKER_07 44:58

But then they gave me that twilight stuff.

SPEAKER_04 44:59

Yeah. And I don't remember holding too much besides. We're going to be graphic for a second. Ooh. She was delivering her placenta and calling the pizza plates. If that helped you out with her food she must have forever and ever.

SPEAKER_07 45:14

Yes. Well, and that comes from a place of trauma because when I had my first child, now this was my third child that you were there for. But when I had the first, it was late at night and I had been in labor since 3:30 in the morning. Yes. So I hadn't eaten all day. And the doctor and the nurses were talking about getting pizza because they were all starving too, because they had all been tending to me all day. And I was like, please can have pizza. Yes, of course you can. No one ever brought me any fucking pizza. No one. All that came was the mean boob lady that was trying to make me nurse and it wasn't happening. Um, so yeah, I was gonna make sure I got my own pizza. You did. Yeah. I don't remember that part of it. I remember after I delivered her looking up at the nurse and saying her name, and she was like, I cannot believe you remember my name right now. But in all fairness, my first deliveries, I was in labor for like 16, 17 hours. So I went in in the evening. They're like, This is gonna be a while. They gave me some twilight. Yeah, I slept for like an hour, and then three pushes, boom, she was out. I don't remember delivering her. I don't remember pain. I'm glad I don't remember because they apparently they had to rush her to an incubator because they couldn't get her temperature up. Yeah, and I would have been freaking out. Apparently, I was uh coherent enough to order pizza, but not to know that my baby was in danger, but you know, priorities.

SPEAKER_04 46:39

But I already had I was gonna say she's also your third kid. So you were like Yeah, I did my job. Now I want to talk to you. Especially back then, because back then, didn't they still take them to the nursery? Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. I don't think they have nurseries anymore. I think the baby stays with you the whole time.

SPEAKER_07 46:55

Yeah, that sucks. Because they and they would give you the option back then. They'd, you know, do you want to to go to the nursery or stay here? I'd be like, the nursery. Get that thing out. You guys deal with that. I need to sleep. I'm gonna have to deal with it for the next 18 years of its life.

SPEAKER_04 47:09

Exactly. You can take the night. Yeah, yeah. We're good. It was funny because uh Sunday was my dad's birthday. Uh-huh. And we went out to dinner. And um, this is gonna come as a shock to anybody who listened to the Dragon's Dream episode. But we had uh we went to another place and so we had to get into his van, which he has now converted into a camper, and there's a bed in the back of it and no seats. So we were in the back of it, my mom and I. And who got the front seat? My aunt. Oh, I was gonna say one of the grandkids, that's fucked up. So I don't know what happened, but he slammed on his brakes when I was trying to get my mom situated, and I slammed into the front of the seats. Did you get yelled at? No. My mom yelled at my dad and was like, You are you hurt her, blah, blah. I mean, it it wasn't fun, but I wasn't injured. Well, anyway. Right. Anyway, my father, which is where I get my own sense of humor, said I was trying to give you a late-term abortion. And my mom said, Well, that's just not right. So if you ever need to know why I am the way I am, that says it.

SPEAKER_07 48:44

It's so funny because I get my sense of humor from my dad too. And I'm not gonna go into my story because I don't need to right now. I'll tell you after. Um, but um, yeah, I said some we we we schedule phone calls because they're retired, but they are hella busy. Very busy people. Like I am always available. And they're like, all right, how about Sunday at 10 a.m.? Okay. And I had told a story, and then something was said, and then I cracked a dark joke, and my stepmom was like, Your dad is literally sitting here, like locking his lips, like he was gonna keep his mouth shut. And I was like, Well, if that's not gonna say it, I'm gonna say it.

SPEAKER_06 49:25

I bet I know what it's about. You do.

unknown 49:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 49:36

Anyway, get back to the ARP. In 1978, CBS's 60 Minutes dropped a bombshell investigation into AARP and Leonard Davis. The report laid it bare. Davis, the reporters revealed, had essentially devised AARP as a marketing vehicle for his insurance business. But he didn't devise AARP. He had met Ethel Percy Andris in the late 50s and recognized that she had a loyal, he built the organization around one core function, selling colonial pen insurance. Man, this started out as such a great story. Well, here so the company what they figured out was that ARP wasn't just an advocacy group that happened to sell insurance, it was an insurance selling operation that happened to do some advocacy.

SPEAKER_07 50:23

Like when you started this story, I was like, I'm gonna go get some AARP insurance. Like before you brought up this guy. And I was like, I see the commercials and this woman did it, and that's great. But now, no, fuck them. I'm not doing it.

SPEAKER_04 50:38

The fallout was immediate and severe. AARP's executive director at the time, Harriet Miller, had been trying to expose the relationship from the inside. She alleged that Davis and his associates had controlled the organization for their own profit, had concealed the true nature of the arrangement, and had fired her when she refused to go along. The whole thing ended up in federal court. I love her. Who run the world? Girls. Girls named Harriet. And Ethel. And Ethel. And Mabel. And Maud. Oh Maud. ARP was forced to sever its exclusive relationship with Colonial Pen. Davis was pushed out, the gravy chain train derailed. I'm sure he went and scammed somebody else. Yeah. And now AARP faced the first true existential crisis, not a policy defeat, not a membership dip, an identity crisis. But ARP did not die. It restructured. It was it found new insurance partners. Okay. Apparently still Colonial Ben.

SPEAKER_07 51:34

That sounds shady.

SPEAKER_04 51:37

It diversified. It began slowly, haltingly, to be build an identity that wasn't dependent on one man's business empire. Um, but if the 1978 scandal taught ARP that it needed to survive without Leonard Davis, the next decade would teach it something harder, and its own members could be its most dangerous enemy. In 1984, ARP made a strategic decision that would reshape its demographics. It dropped the membership age from 55 to 50. Lucky us. Overnight, the potential membership pool expanded by millions. ARP was no longer just for the retired, it was for the middle-aged, for people still working, still paying mortgages, still raising teenagers. In 1986, ARP launched ARP slash vote, a nonpartisan voter education program designed to turn seniors into an organized electoral force. It worked. Politicians learned quickly that older Americans voted in enormous numbers and cared deeply about a short list of issues: Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drug costs.

SPEAKER_08 52:44

Hmm.

SPEAKER_04 52:46

That was in the 80s.

Medicare Revolt And AARP Reinvention

SPEAKER_04 52:56

In 1988, Congress passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, the largest expansion of Medicare since the program's creation in 1965. It added coverage for extended hospital stays, outpatient drugs, and mammog mammography screenings.

SPEAKER_07 53:12

And 88 was Bush, right?

SPEAKER_04 53:16

Oh, Bush, Bush. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 53:18

So good. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

It capped out-of-pocket spending for the first time. On paper, it was a triumph. ARP endorsed it enthusiastically. But there was a catch.

unknown 53:31

Damn it.

SPEAKER_04 53:32

The act was funded not by general tax revenue, but by the surtax on the seniors themselves, specifically on wealthier Medicare beneficiaries, those paying federal income tax. The supplemental premium started at about $4 a month, but could rise to $800 a year, climbing to over a thousand by 1993. The more income you had, the more you paid.

SPEAKER_07 54:01

Depends. Well, if it's on a scale, I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_04 54:06

Um, but many of them already had catastrophic coverage through their employee employer retirement plans or through private Medigap insurance. They were being taxed to pay for a benefit they didn't need. And the organization that was supposed to protect them, ARP, the outfit with the card and the magazine and the motto had supported the whole thing. The anger was volcanic. Seniors flooded congressional offices with letters and phone calls.

SPEAKER_07 54:33

Oh Lord, seniors love to reach out to their congressman.

SPEAKER_04 54:37

All named Karen. They protested and they did exactly what ARP had trained them to do. And then came August 17th, 1989. Okay. It is one of the most astonishing moments in modern American political history. And most people under 50 have never heard of it. Congressman Dan Rostinkowski, 6'4, barrel-chested, gravel voiced, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful men in Washington, had just finished a meeting at a senior center in Northwest Chicago. When he left the building, more than a hundred senior citizens were waiting for him. That sounds terrifying. And he did not want to listen. He walked to his car and the crowd followed. Picture and the bees attacking the hornet. They surrounded the vehicle. They blocked it from moving and they chanted, Impeach, Impeach. Rostinkowski got out of the car and tried to walk away. The crowd followed him. I mean, really, if he just ran, he probably could outrun them.

SPEAKER_07 55:44

I mean, seriously, like that's full-on rioting from gray hairs.

SPEAKER_04 55:47

I love it. A news crew filmed the whole thing, and then the moment that became legend. Oh. The six foot four Rostin Kalski cut through a gas station. He breaks into a sprint. Behind him, the crowd surges. A woman named Leona Kozin drapes herself across the hood of his car. He is running. The chairman of Ways and Means is running down Chicago street from a group of senior citizens. Some of them in their 70s, some waving signs, and all of them furious. You can't make this shit up. His car circles around and picks him up at the gas station. Dude, that's so funny. The video aired on every network. The image, the most powerful healthcare lawmaker in America fleeing from elderly constituents became a symbol. For conservatives, it was the proof that entitlement expansion always backfires. For liberals, it was the proof that bad policy design can torpedo good intentions. For everyone, it was unforgettable. Congress repealed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act year later that year. It was one of the only times in American history that a major entitlement was clawed back after being enacted. The political establishment learned a lesson and has never forgotten. Seniors vote, seniors organize, and seniors will chase you down the street if you mess with their money. Heard. But for ARP, the damage went deeper than a polit policy defeat. The organization had endorsed the act and lobbied for it. It put its own credibility on the line. ARP lost members, it lost trust, and learned a lesson of its own. Your 40 million members are not passive consumers of your advocacy. They are not a captive audience for your policy positions, and they will turn on you. AARP entered the 90s chasing, bruised, questioning itself. The 60s minute scandal had been about Leonard Davis' corruption. The catastrophic coverage debacle had been something worse. AA part ARP's own judgment, its own assumptions about what its members wanted. It needed to reinvent itself again. The 90s were AARP's rebuilding decade. After the double blow of the colonial pen scandal and the catastrophic coverage, the organization did something that large institutes almost never do. It got honest with itself. AARP invested heavily in its public policy institute, which it had established in 1985, but now became the organization's intellectual engine. The institute produced serious, peer-reviewed research on aging, healthcare, social security, and retirement security. It hired economists, demogra demographers, policy analysts, police whose job, people whose job was not to sell insurance or recruit members, but to understand the lives of older Americans and to translate the understanding into legislative advocacy. By the 90s, it also forced ARP to confront a problem it hadn't anticipated, its name. The American Association of Retired Persons. By the late 90s, half of ARP members weren't retired. Yeah, but they were 52-year old middle managers, they were 55-year-old nurses, and they were 50-year-old software engineers who had joined because the hotel discounts were real and the magazine was surprisingly good, and the card had showed up in the mail.

SPEAKER_07 59:09

It's true about the magazine. I have to admit I have read some articles in my AARP.

SPEAKER_04 59:14

I look at it every month. Yeah. The word retired became a problem. In a culture where that worshiped youth and productivity, retired sounded like finished, sounded like the rocking chair on the porch. This sounds a little excessive to me. In 1999, the organization made a move that was part marketing genius, part philosoph philosophical statement, and part act of corporate vanishing. It dropped the name. All of it. American Association of Retired Persons ceased to exist. The organization simply became legally, officially, permanently ARP. Four letters that no longer stood for anything. Oh Jesus.

SPEAKER_07 59:55

Oh my God. So that was woke in the 1990s.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

Um, it was a brilliant move, and it was also a little unsettling because when your name doesn't stand for anything, you can stand for everything or nothing. The rebranding freed ARP from the connection of retirement, but also untethered it from the specificity of its founding mission. It was no longer about retired persons. It was about vitality. Second acts, reinvention, living your best life after 50. It was a nonprofit that was starting to sound like a lifestyle brand.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:30

I don't I just can't understand what's so offensive about that. Like, I can't fucking wait to be retired. I have wanted to retire since I started working in my teens, literally. The only thing I'm good at saving money at are all of my retirement accounts. I'm my pension, my defer account, my online app that I'm saving retirement money for. I want to retire. And I am not offended if you call me a retired person when I hit that. I'm gonna wear t-shirts.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:04

I'm retired, motherfucker. By the early 2000s, AARP, the magazine, and the bulletin had become the two largest circulation publications in the United States. Bigger than people, time, bigger than anything. If you were over 50 and breathing, AARP was in your mailbox. And the card became a cultural institution. The 50th birthday ARP card is one of those rare American artifacts that transcends politics, class, and geography. It's a rite of passage, it's a punchline, it's a tiny red envelope that says time is passing. Their entire comedy routine is built around it. There are birthday cards about it, there are social media posts, millions of them, that all follow the same arc. Shock, denial, a joke, and then the quiet private moment when you look at the card and think, When did this happen? The card is ARP's masterpiece, not the lobbying, the insurance, the magazine. It's the card because the card is the moment the organization meets you where you live at the mailbox in an ordinary light of an ordinary afternoon with a message that is simultaneously a marketing pitch and an existential reckoning.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:13

You can attest to the fact that people that get AARP like their mail. Yep.

UnitedHealthcare Money And Policy Fights

SPEAKER_04 1:02:25

Let's talk about money because if you want to understand what ARP is in the 21st century, you have to follow the money. And the money tells a story that the magazine covers and the volunteer programs and the to serve and not be served motto don't quite prepare you for. In 2024, ARP reported total operating revenue of approximately $11 billion for a nonprofit. That's more than the GDP of several countries. It's more than the annual revenue of many five Fortune 500 companies. If it were for a for-profit business, it would be a major American corporation. But it is a not-for-profit organization. It's a 501c nonprofit, which means it doesn't pay federal income taxes. So where does the money come from? Because it sure is cheap as shit to get ARP. I think it's like $15 a year or something.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:18

Yeah, and they send you a trunk organizer.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:19

Like they send out, let me tell you how much shit they send out.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:23

I love my trunk organizer. I do. I've had it for three years now. I've been 50. I'm 53, so I've been 50 for three years now. I mean, it's in the back of my car and it has a roll of paper towels, and it has my shopping bags all folded up all nice and neat in it. And it has a little like rubber thing that I can put down in the back of the car if I need to put like plants in there with dirt. Like it, it's awesome. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:51

Most people assume the membership, it's the answer's membership dues. 38 million members, each paying $16 a year. I mean, $16 is a good deal for all the, you know, about $300 million a year in dues, which sounds enormous until you realize it's about 3% of ARP's total revenue. Dues are a rounding error, the coin in a cup holder. The real money comes from one source. Sponsorship. United Healthcare.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:18

Here's how it works. ARP licensed its name and logo to United Healthcare, the insurance arm of United Health Group, the largest health insurance company in the United States for use on Medicare supplement products, also known as Medigap policies. When a senior buys an ARP Medicare supplement plan, the insurance is provided by United Healthcare. ARP's name is on the card. Its logo is on the mailings, but the risk, the coverage, and the claims is all United Healthcare. Okay. It collects royalties, it collects a royalty, approximately 4.95% of every premium dollar. ARP bears no financial risk. It simply lends its name, its trust, and its brand and collects the check. Since 2007, United Health Group has contributed an estimated total of nearly $10 billion to ARP through those royalty arrangements. In 2023 alone, ARP earned an estimated $875 million from United Healthcare, a $13 million increase over the previous year. And in 2024, ARP and United Healthcare restructured their deal. United Healthcare made a one-time upfront royalty payment of just over $9 billion to extend the partnership for an additional 12 years.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:32

It's no wonder we'll never have universal healthcare, and we will never have universal healthcare. If there's that much money flowing through the AARP, like, no. So is Colonial Pen under Must be.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

Um $9 billion in a single payment to a nonprofit for the right to put four letters on an insurance card. You have too much money.

unknown 1:05:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:57

This is where the story gets complicated. Uh ARP uses that money. It funds tax aid program, the fraud prevention network, the advocacy work, the public public policy institute, the state offices, the legal services, the volunteer infrastructure. 2200 and 2250 employees. That doesn't make sense. 2200 employees, offices in all 50 states, plus DC, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Annual lobby day when red-shirted ARP volunteers flood Capitol Hill, over 400 meetings with lawmakers in a single day. That costs money. But the critique is equally real and it cuts deep because if 60% of your revenue comes from insurance royalties, you have built in financial incentive to get more seniors to buy more insurance at a higher premium. Every additional premium dollar means more royalty revenue for ARP. Your advocacy and your revenue model are not just intertwined, they are, in certain cases, in direct conflict. The tension erupted most publicly in 2010 when ARP supported the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The law made sweeping changes to the health care system, and one of the most controversial provisions was cutting approximately $716 billion. I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:23

You've never been good at numbers. It's okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:25

They're even written out. I know you don't know how to read. I don't. For Medicare over a decade to help fund expanded coverage for younger uninsured Americans. The cuts targeted Medicare Advantage, the private insurance alternative, traditional Medicare. Seniors oppose the American Air American Care Act more than any other age group. Polls showed it consistently. Older Americans did not want their Medicare dollars redirected to other programs, but ARP supported the law. And critics charged that ARP had a financial reason to do so. Medicare Advantage plans competed with the traditional Medicare supplement plans, the Medigap policies that ARP sold through United Healthcare. If the ACA weakened Medicare Advantage by cutting its funding, more seniors would turn to Medigap. More Medigap meant more premiums. More premiums meant more royalties for ARP. Various analysts estimate that ARP stood to gain as much as $2.8 billion from the shift. ARP denied the charge. It argued the ACA strengthened Medicare, not weakened it, that the law closed the doughnut hole in prescription drug coverage, that it supported the ACA because it was a good policy, not because it was good business. And both things might be true. The pattern repeated in 2022 when ARP endorsed the Inflation Reduction Act, which critics said diverted additional funds from Medicare to other programs. Once again, ARP said it was fighting for seniors. Once again, critics said it was fighting for its bottom line. And somewhere, the the truth is somewhere in between in a gray area.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:59

In a gray area, but leaning closer towards the money.

unknown 1:09:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:05

Can an organization that earns billions of dollars from selling insurance simultaneously be a trustworthy advocate for the people buying that insurance? Can the fox guard the hen house?

SPEAKER_07 1:09:14

That really is wild. Like I never I never put all this stuff together. Like I am so grateful that you're doing this.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:21

Can the fox guard the hen house if the fox is also building the hen house, funding the hen house, and sending the hen house a magazine every month? Senate investigators have asked that question. Forbes has asked the question, and watchdog groups have. ARP's answer has always been the same. Look at what we do, look at tax aid volunteers, look at the fraud prevention, look at the advocacy, look over here. Look at my pile of money. Don't look at the pile of money. Look at all of these. Sorry, sorry. It's not an unreasonable answer. Um, today ARP has 38 million members. Its CEO, Dr. Myesha Minister Jordan, oversees an organization that is simultaneously the most powerful advocate for older Americans, a multi-billion dollar branding licensing operation and a political force that can mobilize more voters more quickly than almost any other entity in the American civic life. It is exactly the paradox that has defined it since the day Ethel shook hands with Leonard Davis. A mission and a machine.

What AARP Means And Our Take

SPEAKER_04 1:10:24

Let's go back to the mailbox and the red envelope. The membership card with your name on it, arriving on your 50th birthday, with the punctuality of a process server. What does it mean now? What does ARP mean in 2026? For some people, it means to discount at a hotel or the Outback. The 10% off at the rental car counter, the small practical kindness of saving $15 on something you were going to buy anyway. It's a loyalty card for the second half of life. For others, it's the organization that saved them $200 a month on prescriptions or helped them file their taxes when they couldn't afford an accountant, fought to keep their Social Security check from being cut by Congress that treats the safety net as a negotiating chip. For critics, they are numerous, vocal, and not wrong. It's a billion-dollar brand masquerading as a nonprofit, an insurance marketing machine wearing the costume of an advocacy group, an organization that earns almost $10 billion from United Healthcare and still has the audacity to call itself a champion of the people. For historians, it's something else entirely. It's the longest running experiment in American life. Can a mass membership organization serve both idealism and commerce? Can you be a movement and a business at the same time? The answer based on 68 years of evidence appears to be yes, but only if you're willing to live with the contradiction. Only if you can tolerate the tension between to serve, not to be served, and here's your 4.95% royalty check. Every single day in the United States, approximately 10,000 baby boomers turn 65. That's not a wave, it's a tide, a demographic tsunami that has been reshaping the country since the first boomers hit retirement age in 2011 and will continue reshaping it for another decade. These are people who need health care, who need prescription drugs, need someone to fight for their Social Security benefits and their Medicare coverage and their right to not be invisible in a culture that threatens aging as a disease and youth as the only cure. Who speaks for these people? It's a 68-year-old organization founded by a school teacher who found her colleague living in a chicken coop, an organization that has been, at various points in its history, a genuine lifeline, a corrupt insurance front, a political juggernaut, a punching bag, and a punchline. Or is it something else, something that hasn't been built yet, something that could do what ARP does without the conflicts, without the billion-dollar brand deals, and without the permanent tension between mission and money? I think that uncertainty is the most honest thing you can offer at the end of the story. Ethel Percy Andrus died in 1967 with a motto on her lip and a movement at her back. She had built something real, something that came from outrage from the sight of a teacher in a chicken coop and became the largest membership organization in American history. She could not have imagined the $11 billion empire. She could not have imagined the United Healthcare deal. She could not have imagined the investigations or the 60 Minutes Expose. But she might have understood the card. Because the card is, at its core, the simple version of her original idea. It says you are not alone. You are part of something. Someone knows you're here. Whether that someone is a social movement or a marketing department, or both simultaneously, is a question that each of those 40 million members answers for themselves every day. Every time they use the discount, every time they read the magazine, every time they vote the way the lobby suggested, or ignore it or fight it. Somewhere in America right now, a person is walking to their mailbox. They're 50 years old today. They don't feel 50, because nobody ever does. And uh they open their mailbox to see the red envelope. And for a moment, before the joke, before the Instagram, before the phone call to a friend, they hold the card in their hand and feel the weight of time. The weight of everything they've done and everything they haven't. The weight of the years ahead, which are fewer now than the years behind. And maybe the weight of a question that a school teacher in California asked 80 years ago who will take care of us when we no longer can take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:32

This was heavy. Well, well, yeah, I just don't know how to feel. It sounds like they still do a lot of good.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:44

So I mean, let's be honest. Most charities get ginormous investment donations from people and or groups that they might not really want to do. So at some point you have to think what is the greater good.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:14

Yeah. And so part of this sets a nerve with me because one of my biggest issues with the world is that money rules everything. Money will always win, everybody's got a price. People will do a lot of really bad things for money, and it makes me sad. So I don't like that part of it. However, if you're trying to build this and you're trying to support these things that you think are important, why would you turn down the money? Like that's just gonna help you. But the part that bothers me is this just sounds like it is ripe for fraud.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:58

Here's how I'm gonna here is how I'm going to put it in my estimation. Okay. In my world. Okay. Because it's all about me. Always. They gave them a significant amount of money and exclusive exclusivity and all that on especially Sundays and gave them, you know, Sunday delivery at a cheaper price. Sometimes you have to get in bed with the devil. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:43

I think that's exactly the thing is what you're doing with it. If AARP is bringing in $11 billion and they are putting all that money into supporting all these really important things, expensive things, healthcare, prescriptions, lobbying, taxes, all of it. Great. I mean, it's great you have that much money that you can support. Yeah. But how many people at the top are making a lot? And that's the problem with all the nonprofits.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:17

You know, how how much are you paying?

SPEAKER_07 1:17:20

And nonprofits are just the worst to work for. Like I worked for one, they're regional, they're in multiple states around here. And it was when I was working with the um mental health population, and homelessness is a huge problem. But if these people were under our care, we couldn't leave for the day unless they had somewhere to sleep that night. And we had clients who had burned bridges at everywhere possible that we knew of to get places. So we might have to find a hotel somewhere out of town that doesn't know who they are, that we can sneak them in there and be like, oops, sorry. Um, but having to call like the big wigs to ask if we can spend $50 to pay for this room for them at eight o'clock at night when I've been at work since seven o'clock in the morning, and all I want to do is get this person a bed, and they're like, mmm, and you really have to explain yourself. Like, it's absolutely ridiculous. Like, I know they are making bank off of these people because of our healthcare system and Medicaid and Medicare and all that stuff that they're using. So that's the part that worries me about the AARP thing. If it's all going for good, great. But if there are people stealing from the and there are people stealing from it, people steal from everything.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:51

From everything. Yeah. I think that's just I think it's really mostly about your moral how you feel about it morally as to whether or not you people wish to keep your AARP membership.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:05

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I d I didn't feel at any point through your your episode that I'm anti-AARP now. Like, oh my god, I'm never it it wasn't like that. It just it just feels a little slimy. It makes me glad that Ethel didn't see where it ended up. Yeah. Um the the story of how it started is absolutely amazing. Right. I I love it. I love it, love it, love it. But this is the world we live in now, so you know what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_06 1:19:42

Money talks. We have five downloads. Wow, suddenly we had zero. I know.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:49

Oh okay. Well thank you for that. It's not even anything that was on my radar that I would have even ever thought to do. And it's not anything that I've ever put any thought into. Uh I there's so much.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:03

I have a love hate with ARP because I have to look at those fucking magazines all the time, and then it hurts my feelings when they put somebody on the cover, and I'm like, what the like Adam Sandler?

SPEAKER_07 1:20:14

I'm that old, but they're not that old.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:17

There's no way.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:18

What is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:22

Yeah, so I mean, I I thought it was a cool story. Um very cool story. You know, it really does make you have to consider like what I mean most of these what it what are you comfortable with in your Yeah, and I take hard stances on things.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:43

Like I haven't shopped at Walmart in years. I when our current administration came in and said you don't have to do DEI anymore, I had to drop a lot of companies that I really like because they were like, oh cool, we don't have to do diversity, equity, and inclusion. Score. Um and I won't shop at those places. But I didn't get that feeling from this. It it feels uns it does, it doesn't feel like icky, but it feels like but now for sure, like before this episode, if something would have broken on the news about some really bad scandal with AARP, I'd be like, oh my god, I can't believe it. But now if I heard it, I'd be like, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:35

I just it's just one of those things where you know you have to just it's it's kind of like Robin Hood.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:41

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:41

You know?

SPEAKER_07 1:21:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:42

And they it sounds like they do a lot of good. So what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

Not not much you can.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:48

Yeah.

Closing Plugs And Listener Email

SPEAKER_04 1:21:49

Anyway, if you enjoyed our show, like, rate, review, please. Uh telefriend. Um, if you thought this was completely boring on ARP, well, that's impossible. Then you should stay tuned for next week. Go back and listen to one of the other ones. I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes I'm nerd. All the time. Anyway, uh like, share, rate, review. I said that already. Telefriend.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:14

Uh we have a webfriend, I like that one.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:16

Yeah. We have a website. We do www.likewhateverpod.com. We have we're on all the um places that you find podcasts. So if your friend says I don't have they're everywhere.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:28

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:29

Or send them to our website. There you go. You can listen to it right there.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:32

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:33

Um if you oh, TikTok, YouTube, all those socials. I like whatever pod. You can send us an email about how you found your ARP card and how it made you feel to like whatever pod at gmail.com or don't like whatever.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:00

Whatever. Bye.