As older adults move into their traditional retirement years, a growing number of them do not want to retire their minds. In fact, many experts note that those who continue learning and engage in meaningful social interaction on average live longer and healthier lives. In today’s episode I talk with Murray Shapiro and Ron Susser, two active members of PEIR, which stands for Personal Enrichment in Retirement, a unique and highly successful lifelong learning organization affiliated with Hofstra University on Long Island. What makes PEIR so distinctive? The classes, discussion groups, and events are self-directed, planned, created and presented by PEIR members themselves. Murray and Ron will describe how the organization has evolved over more than four decades, how it survived through the pandemic, and how it’s run and thriving today. Every month, PEIR members offer a far-flung array of topics, whether you’re interested in literature, history, religion, philosophy, natural or social sciences, the performing or visual arts, economics or technology. PEIR is also a social organization, and Ron and Murray will tell us how its members build camaraderie, sharing their curiosity, opinions, knowledge and passions with others each semester.