At 82, Filmmaker Werner Herzog Opened an Instagram Account

He follows no one himself. At 82, in 2012, Madonna Buder completed an Ironman as the oldest woman in the world: in sixteen and a half hours, she swam nearly four kilometers, cycled 180 kilometers, and ran 42 kilometers. The American is a nun and therefore bears the nickname "Iron Nun.

She only started running at 48. Today she is 95. She told the SZ-Magazin five years ago that she still trains but also has to learn to deal with her fragility, which requires "a lot of courage and great mental strength. The article is part of a weekly column that takes on one year of life at a time. It assembles a small hall of fame of old age: Matisse reinvented his late work with the blue paper cutouts, while Goethe left the stage with the possibly apocryphal "More light.

Also featured are Wally Funk's delayed space flight, Katherine Dunham's political hunger strike, and Annie Ernaux's Nobel Prize — all evidence that age can be activism, an artistic push, or a pop culture moment. The piece also soberly notes that 82 far exceeds the former life expectancy and grounds the theme with voices like Uschi Glas and innkeeper Regina Friedrich, whose everyday life oscillates between heart attack, potato salad, and perseverance humor. The column turns a number into a multi-voiced feature about late work, fragility, and the subversive point that life keeps releasing new seasons even beyond the deadline. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenende, issue 34/2026. The column is a weekly feature that examines one age each time; this installment covers the "Iron Nun's last Ironman.