This roundtable discusses the podcast Music, Creativity & Mental Health with Emily James. Terry McBride, Chairman & CEO of Nettwerk, Coleen Novak, Artist Manager, Chris Norwood, Chief Strategy Officer and Caren Mix, Director People & Operations reflect on the podcast just as the dust was just settling on the United States election, so you’ll see some pretty interesting ways this discussion integrated the two! We discussed many things: tolerance of ambiguity and Emily’s metaphor of ‘things that fall between the cracks’; the Buddhist parable of the 2 arrows and how we can influence our reaction to the inevitable difficulties in life; how there is always hidden opportunity in adversity; how focusing on what we can do (rather than what we cannot) leads to enhanced wellbeing by building a more internal locus of control; using music as a therapeutic outlet that creates a shared emotional understanding with the audience; the centrality of prosociality as a strategy to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity; and the way that the creative arts can unite people across polarised politics by highlighting what we all have in common.

This Q & A explored the podcast entitled: 'Is Our Time Running Out?' We begin with a summary of that podcast and then the main themes touched upon in our discussions were: the wisdom for us all of an eledely father who says: 'I don't look to the future. I'm not wishing my life away. I want to live for the day'; how to live more of the 'holiday paradox' (that it passes quickly in the experiencing, but is spacious in recollection) in everyday life; whether it is optimal to experience spaciousness in both the present moment and in recollection; how the ageing brain has a much larger library of experiences and may be slower, but it is deeper; and how the old-fashioned dinner-time habit of the family members discussing that they did that day serves to add both spaciousness and significance to the day.

As we get older time appears to go by faster. This may be because we experience less novelty each day and therefore record fewer new frames of memory to 'replay' in recollection. It may also be because our brain processing is slower because it is far more complex than for younger people, and because our neural architecture degrades over time. Also it makes a big difference if we are paying attention to time duration in-the-moment or retrospectively. If the present is interesting, novel or significant, time tends to fly by in the moment, but retrospectively we experience it as being of longer duration.