Elaine Sauer, Rick Sauer, Signe Swanson, Jack Waschenfelder
74 episodes listed below
Aging, argued gently around the table.
Seniors in the Building is a reflective roundtable about growing older without pretending the process is simple. Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick move from kitchen-table anecdotes into questions about usefulness, control, pride, nostalgia, health care, and what still gives later life shape.
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Seniors in the Building is built around the kind of conversation that needs time to find itself. Four friends, Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick, return again and again to the practical and emotional terrain of later life. The show is not a polished advice program. It is more intimate than that. A health-care episode can move from vaccines, doctors, and waiting rooms into the risks and usefulness of AI in medical diagnosis. A discussion of retirement can become a deeper question about whether being should matter as much as doing. The panel often starts with something ordinary. A song lyric, a kitchen-table memory, a hockey-card anecdote, or a familiar complaint about how things used to be opens the door to larger concerns about identity, purpose, fear, and belonging. The pace is unhurried. People correct themselves, agree, pause, ask again, and let an idea become clearer through the group. Aging is treated as funny at times, but never as a gimmick. The show is frank about decline, chronic health issues, lost roles, self-doubt, and the pressure to keep demonstrating worth. It is also attentive to delight. Episodes on pride, fun, social connection, and the milestone of reaching 50 episodes keep the mood from becoming heavy or abstract. The strongest moments come when the panel names a tension that many older adults may recognize but not always say plainly. Society wants elders to step aside, yet still needs their memory, judgment, mentoring, and care. Retirement removes certain demands, but it does not automatically answer what a good day should be. Nostalgia can comfort, but it can also trap people in a used-to-be world. Seniors in the Building sits with those contradictions. It suits listeners who want aging discussed with warmth, skepticism, faith-adjacent reflection, and lived experience rather than slogans.
Made for: For older adults, retirees, caregivers, and families who want candid conversation about later life without being sold a miracle plan. It also suits listeners drawn to reflective group discussion about purpose, health, memory, and social change.
What sets it apart: The show’s power is its small-panel intimacy: four familiar voices slowly testing ideas against their own lives. It turns everyday senior experiences into broader questions about culture, responsibility, technology, and meaning.
Welcome to Seniors in the Building. Join us as we talk, think and laugh our way through growing old. We are four friends experiencing aging for the first time and learning new technologies. We don't plan to go quietly into the night. We'll burn, rage, keep moving, tease, and wander down strange roads. Come join our conversation.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Four friends make aging spiritually legible through candid talk about purpose, responsibility, self-worth and the daily practice of being present.
Seniors in the Building turns the moral questions of later life into a four-way conversation among Signy, Jack, Elaine and Rick. Retirement prompts questions about obligation, purpose and identity, while discussions of the inner critic examine how regret and social expectations…
Four friends in their 70s turn retirement's big questions into the conversation your group chat keeps postponing.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful panel on retirement, obligation, and the uneasy shift from doing to being.
Seniors in the Building opens its third season with a simple but sturdy question: what do retired people still owe the world? The four friends move from money to obligation to the larger question of whether age changes responsibility, and the best stretch comes when the…
Aging, care, and AI meet in a plainspoken, unhurried conversation that stays close to real life.
Seniors in the Building treats health care as something that changes with age, timing, and the body’s growing list of demands. It moves from childhood facial burns and a broken ankle to chronic issues later on, then into wait times, referral hurdles, and the slow path toward a…
A grounded talk about the inner critic, retirement, and the value seniors can still bring.
Seniors in the Building treats the inner critic as a practical entry point into aging, shame, self-doubt, and the old failures, embarrassments, parenting regrets, career disappointments, and unresolved guilt people can carry into retirement.
A long-view conversation about civic worry, memory, and the strain of staying useful.
Seniors in the Building opens its third season with a blunt read on a world that feels unruly, then measures that unease against a long memory of duck and cover drills, the assassinations of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, oil crises, apartheid, AIDS, and 9-11.
A loose, reflective conversation about how taste changes as life keeps moving.
Seniors in the Building begins with a plain question and lets it open into something more revealing: favorite things, less favorite things, and the way those answers shift with age.
Aging news with practical expert context.
Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick argue that intentional attention can help people stay informed without letting the news cycle overwhelm their inner lives.
Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick open the third season by asking what seniors still owe the world.
The third season opens with four friends talking through the health care system.
Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick open the third season by turning toward the inner critic.
Four friends discuss the challenges of aging, focusing on the loss of control and confidence, and explore how to accept these changes without despair.
Four senior friends celebrate their 50th podcast episode by reflecting on the show's evolution, challenges, favorite moments, and listener feedback.
This episode explores whether seniors tend to live in a nostalgic 'used-to-be' world by examining common perceptions that things like products, social interactions, and costs of living were better in the past.
Four senior friends discuss the complex emotion of pride, exploring how to celebrate personal achievements, family connections, and life experiences without feeling boastful.
Four friends discuss whether growing old can be fun or delightful, exploring quotes, scientific secrets of longevity, and emphasizing the importance of social connections and laughter.
The four friends open the season by saying the world is a mess.
Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick open the third season together.
Signy, Jack, Elaine and Rick ask whether heavy TV viewing is a concern in retirement, citing the American Heart Association's recommendation of no more than two hours a day.
Hosts Signy, Jack, Elaine, and Rick, two married couples in their seventies, use Valentine's Day to ask how love changes with age, and Jack reframes "All We Need Is Love" as "love under pressure." Jack says physical and cognitive decline make a relationship "asymmetrical," while Elaine describes telling her family she would rather be placed in a safe place than have them provide her care.
This episode features a conversation with Nancy Phillips, a retired nurse and writer, who discusses spirituality and aging as part of the Growing in Wisdom program.
Four friends discuss ageism, defining it as subtle erosion of dignity and visibility for older adults in various settings like workplaces and social interactions.
Four senior friends discuss how their travel habits and priorities have changed with age, using a recent trip to the U.K.
Four friends discuss the meaning and implications of the term 'senior,' exploring how it affects identity and societal perceptions of aging.
Four retired friends discuss how identity anxiety and fear arise from uncertainty in retirement, with one sharing that creating structure and schedules helps manage these feelings.