Do you hate being middle-aged? NPR's Alllison Aubrey wants to change that

Ailsa Chang turned 50 this year. She planned her birthday party "with the intensity of a heat-seeking missile," determined to prove to the world, and maybe to herself, that she was thrilled about the decade ahead. She still isn't sure if that was genuine excitement or a defiant performance. Probably both.

That tension got her excited to talk with her NPR colleague Allison Aubrey, whose new book, " Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love ," argues that the years after 50 can bring renewed purpose instead of decline. Aubrey joined Chang in person at NPR West in Culver City to discuss it.

Aubrey has a wider window in mind than most people picture when they hear the word "midlife." She puts it at 50 to 75, she said, pointing to a Pew Research Center projection that 3.7 million people worldwide will be over 100 by 2050.

At a time when a century-long life is possible, Aubrey said, then turning 50 doesn't mean winding down. It means roughly half a lifetime is still ahead, with room to look past parenting and paychecks and ask a harder question: What is my purpose now?

To find answers, Aubrey interviewed more than 150 people making what she calls a "third turn," a phrase she borrowed from her grandfather's "Kentucky Derby wisdom," about the unexpected opportunities to surge ahead in the third quarter of life. She found a pattern in the stories that struck her most: people who took the skills and instincts built over a career and pointed them toward something more personal, something closer to legacy than to a job title.

These stories are at the heart of "Your Turn": A lawyer who closed her practice and opened a bookshop. A nurse practitioner who started singing lead vocals in a band that tours up and down the coast of Maine. And a former magazine editor, Joanne, who Aubrey describes as a "buttoned-down and a committed perfectionist," who signed up for her first improv class in her late 50s.

Joanne is in her 60s now and performs improv in Washington, D.C. She told Aubrey that improv gave her a new script for life: saying "yes, and" to whatever came next. Chang said the story pushed her to consider her own leap, singing lessons and an acting class, which she committed to on the air.

Chang asked Aubrey how two reporters who spend their careers in hard news should think about making room for play. Aubrey pointed to a study she covered earlier this year out of University College London. Researchers found that people who regularly engage with the arts, through singing, dancing or going to the theater, appeared to age more slowly at the cellular level than people who don't.