Don't Act Your Age podcast

How are high-mileage Americans outliving the undertaker?

Most of us remember little or nothing about being 5 years old. Frank Gregor is the exception. He recalls it all too clearly. Far better than he'd like to.

Ashton Applewhite's book ("This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Aging") is a wakeup call for a society obsessed with youth. The stigma of wrinkles. The stereotype of being feeble and forgetful. Ashton believes our worship of everything young creates a caste system where anybody over 50 is marginalized at best and shunned at worst. While you may not agree with everything Ashton says, she delivers a cherry bomb of an argument that people of any age can't ignore.

Break-ups, shake-ups and couch surfing at 60. Is it too late to rebuild your life when fate knocks you around like a piñata?

Honk if you didn't have dreams of getting rich when you were in your 20s and 30s. Well, we know a guy who turned that dream into reality. An Iowa boy from humble beginnings, he became a savvy entrepreneur, and later sold his company for the big bucks. Now in retirement, he's found that money can buy happiness — not just for himself, but the thousands of people for whom diabetes is a daily cross to bear.

A 60-something woman trying to hold a relationship together. A crisis at 8,000 feet. A certain...eh, bodily fluid. Dealing with loss without losing your mind. It's like a whole season of a TV drama in one short and sweet episode.

Lessons learned the hard way about what's truly important, whether you're 25 or 75. Listen as Hospice patients look back with the perspective only someone at the end can see clearly. Even their regrets can teach us how to live with purpose and dignity.

Ebola. Even though it's no longer a scary headline doesn't mean that it's gone. But why in hell would a comfortably retired Granddad go looking for it?

Vampires, werewolves and Godzilla gave you a chance to cuddle with your sweetie at the drive-in movies. But they couldn't compare with the scare of those gory training films your friends dared you to see in Driver's Ed. class.

During the 60s, some guys escaped the Vietnam War by going to Canada. Some by swearing they were conscientious objectors. And one guy by being very lucky.

Nearly 50 years later he recalls his good fortune: Part war story, part love story, and one like you've probably never heard before.