Still Becoming

Shannon Ball

What if the people who have the most to teach us are the ones we forget to ask? Still Becoming is a podcast hosted by Shannon Ball — conversations with people in their 80s, 90s and beyond who are still growing, still contributing, still becoming. Because aging is not an ending. It is one of life's most powerful chapters — if we dare to live it fully.

Episodes

  1. Aug 6

    Weldon 87 - I am not my achievements

    Weldon was born in a blizzard in the Oklahoma Panhandle, hours after his grandmother died — the reason there happened to be a doctor at the farmhouse at all. Eighty-seven years later, he's the first in his family to earn a college degree, a former Navy man turned theater PhD who met his wife because a director lined up the cast by height, a stroke survivor relearning his left hand one jigsaw puzzle at a time, and a man who's traveled from a rural Chinese bus to the streets of Dubai. In this episode, he talks about growing up during the Depression, spending seventy years measuring himself by what he'd achieved — and the quieter discipline of learning to let that go.

  2. Aug 5

    Caryl, 93.5 years old - "Conquer Your Fear and Become Brave"

    At 93, Caryl has square-danced her way into a new love story, marched in every Martin Luther King Jr. parade Athens has held, and once drove from Georgia to Alaska and camped the whole way back. In this episode, she takes us from a childhood riding the subways alone in the Bronx — with a grandmother who ran liquor off the coast on her honeymoon — through two marriages, a feminist collective in the Midwest, decades of civil rights organizing, and the quieter joys of bridge club and ten push-ups every morning. It's a conversation about self-confidence, risk-taking, and staying wide open to life at any age.

  3. Jul 20

    Still Becoming: Rosemary Woodel, 85 — On Resilience, Pollinator Gardens, and the Art of Adjusting

    Rosemary Woodel is 85 years old. She gardens in overalls, plays ukulele, takes photographs of bees, runs a nature newsletter, and is currently learning to use a white cane — not because she has to yet, but because she believes in preparing for what's coming before it arrives. She is also losing her vision. And she is one of the most quietly joyful people you will ever hear. In this first episode of Still Becoming, Rosemary talks about growing up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother, finding stability in school when everything else was chaos, and discovering — over eight decades — that the weird parts of her personality turned out to be her greatest strengths. She talks about the spiritual work of learning to ask for help. About what Al-Anon taught her that no therapist ever could. About deciding to move into a retirement community three days after getting a difficult diagnosis — not out of defeat, but out of wisdom. About what it means to be a citizen scientist at 85, bringing nature to people who can no longer reach it themselves. And she talks about the two things that have never failed her when life gets hard. Rosemary is not Pollyanna. She doesn't pretend everything is fine. She just refuses — quietly, consistently, with great humor — to stop becoming. This is exactly the kind of conversation this podcast exists to have.

  • 3 Episodes

About

What if the people who have the most to teach us are the ones we forget to ask? Still Becoming is a podcast hosted by Shannon Ball — conversations with people in their 80s, 90s and beyond who are still growing, still contributing, still becoming. Because aging is not an ending. It is one of life's most powerful chapters — if we dare to live it fully.

Information

  • Creator
    Shannon Ball
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    3
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Shannon Ball
  • Show Website
    Still Becoming