Public Radio International

Classical composer Elliott Carter turned 100 last December – and he’s still writing music. When Kurt visited him at his home in the West Village, he found Carter to be plain-spoken, funny, and energetic. And he didn’t look a day over 80.

Writer Henry Alford has a new book called How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth). We sent Alford to Washington Square Park to ask strangers to share their hopes and fears about growing old.

What’s it like to practice the same line of work as your spouse? Novelist Naeem Murr wrote about that marriage for the Poetry Foundation. We brought him together with his wife, Averill Curdy, for both sides of the story. Produced by Studio 360’s Pejk Malinovski.

As a starving writer, Katy Lederer had credit card debt and couldn’t hold on to her apartment. So she took a job at a hedge fund, but she kept writing poetry on the side, often about money and our complicated lust for it. Now a full-time poet, her recent collection is Heaven-Sent Leaf. Lederer tells what modern money-making and modern verse have in common.

Young adults in Japan are unemployed, disenchanted, and depressed. Roland Kelts talks to poet Misumi Mizuki, novelist Ryu Murakami, and other artists to understand why. And he finds that Japan’s troubled youth might be changing the country for the better.