The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

How will you make a difference?

Registration for the next Designing Your New Life Group is now open. Learn more here.

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When it comes time for your next chapter, do you want to make a difference? One avenue to do so is through mentoring. In director Jay Silverman’s new heartwarming film “Camera” Beau Bridges plays Eric, an aging repairman who forges an unusual friendship with Oscar, a bullied nine-year-old who can’t speak, but finds a voice through photography under Eric’s mentorship.

Jay Silverman joins us from Los Angeles.

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For over 40 years, Jay Silverman has excelled as a leading Director, Producer, and Photographer specializing in award-winning films, television, digital, and print campaigns; having worked with renowned celebrities such as Denzel Washington, Beyonce, Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Foxx, and Ray Charles. His advertising clients include IBM, Coors, Panasonic, Disney, Budweiser, CBS, ABC, Pepsi & Apple.

His current dramatic feature ‘Camera’, stars Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy Award Winner Beau Bridges, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Scotty Tovar, Bruce Davison, and Miguel Gabriel, released on Amazon and Apple in July 2024.

Jay’s narrative films have been awarded numerous Best Feature and Audience Awards at festivals across the country, along with being honored with Belding, Telly, Promax, and Lucy Awards for his commercial work. In addition, he has also been recognized for his achievements in creating and producing many national PSA campaigns for the American Cancer Society, the Foundation for the Junior Blind, the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, and the Sierra Club.

Some of his early directorial work was for the original launches of the smash hit TV series “American Idol”, “Desperate Housewives”, “NYPD Blue”, “The Drew Carey Show”, and many more. Jay Co-Created and Executive Produced “The Cleaner”, an hour-long drama for Paramount Pictures, which aired on A & E. Additionally, he produced and directed 40 episodes of “One on One” for TV One featuring many stars like Beyonce, Denzel Washington, Usher, Jamie Foxx, and Terrence Howard. Jay also produced and directed a one-hour special titled “Inside the Rings with Troy Aikman” airing on Fox before the 2011 Super Bowl to much success.

Other notable shows include “Roots 30 Year Anniversary Special” for TV One, “The Secret Things of God” for Fox, and “D’Jango Unchained”, a one hour special for The Weinstein Company.

A graduate of Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara with a Master of Science Degree, Jay founded Jay Silverman Productions in 1979 in Hollywood California, and built a 40,000 square foot facility including 3 sound stages. Jay lives in Santa Monica, California, with his three wonderful daughters.

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For More on Jay Silverman

Website

Watch Camera:

Apple

Amazon

Trailer

Beau Bridges Interview: The Film That Lit My Fuse

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Mastering Your Transition to Retirement

The Mutual Benefits of Intergenerational Volunteering – Atalaya Sergi

Some Kind of Heaven – Lance Oppenheim

Take the Detour – A Second Act Career Story – Melissa Davey

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success

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Wise Quotes

On Camera

“And that’s kind of the fun part of the whole movie. Well, you’re tying it into my personal life because I have three daughters and my last child was born through much premature. And the backstory on that is we decided to use her backstory for the protagonist, the young little nine year old boy, because when she was born at less than two pounds, they damaged her trachea and her vocal cords during incubation multiple, multiple times, and subsequently, she could barely talk. And we thought that that backstory would be not only accurate, because I lived it, to portray in this movie, but it became consistent with the model of what we wanted to say. Because in my own life, even when I was 15 years old and I was using a camera, I wasn’t a very good communicator. And what I did was have the luxury of watching my brother, who was kind of was my mentor at the time, take pictures. And I thought, Wow, this is a great way to tell stories. And I became attached to that idea. And at the age of 15, decided I wanted to be a photographer.”

On Mentoring

“And I thought to myself, this is the beginning, we’re all approachable. And most of the time we’re underutilized as as as seniors, because I really genuinely believe every one of us has the capacity to mentor somebody. I try to mentor other people all the time. I wouldn’t be where I’m at if it wasn’t for mentors. To me, there’s always going to be people who have this desire to want to open their mind to helping others.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Start finding your new tribe. Registration for the next Designing Your New Life Group is now open. Learn more here.

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Get smarter about social connections. Science journalist David Robson rejoins us to discuss his new book The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network.

David Robson joins us from London.

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David Robson is an award-winning science writer specialising in the extremes of the human brain, body and behaviour.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, he worked as a features editor at New Scientist for five years, before moving to BBC Future, where he was a senior journalist for five years. His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Atlantic, Aeon, Men’s Health and many more outlets. In 2021, David received awards from the Association of British Science Writers and the UK Medical Journalists’ Association for his writing on misinformation and risk communication during the COVID pandemic, and in 2022, he was a finalist for the Best British Science Journalist of the Year Award.

David’s first book, The Intelligence Trap, was published in 2019, and received worldwide media attention. His second book The Expectation Effect was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and won the British Psychological Society Book Award. His third book, The Laws of Connection, was published in June.

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For More on David Robson

Website

The Laws of Connection:The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network

David’s First Conversation with Us: The Expectation Effect

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Self-Compassion – Dr. Kristin Neff

How to Make New Friends in Retirement – Dr. Marisa G. Franco

Will You Flourish or Languish? – Corey Keyes

Happier Hour – Cassie Holmes, PhD’

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Planning for retirement?

Check out our recommended Best Books on Retirement. Some may surprise you…

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Wise Quotes

On The Importance of Social Connectivity

“I was blown away really by the strength of the link between social connection and health and wellness. So we’ve known since the 1970s, that the number of social connections that people have and the quality of those connections can predict longevity and general health across the lifespan. So people who not only have more connections, but also feel really supported and understood by the people around them, do tend to live longer. And that’s just been replicated hundreds of times. So the evidence base is really unquestionable, in my opinion. And we know that it at least equals the other lifestyle factors that we take for granted now, things like obesity, or remaining at a healthy weight, how much exercise you do, whether you smoke, whether you drink, whether you take medication for your hypertension – all of those things we accept as being important for our health and longevity. But when you look at the effect sizes, they’ve been measured in these huge studies, you find that people’s social connection is just as important. I found that really surprising just how important it was.”

On Meaning 

“It was very clear to me that social connections are important, as C .S. Lewis said, for providing meaning in life.  C.S. Lewis claimed that they didn’t have any survival value though, that friendship wasn’t important for survival. And what this research really showed is that actually, it does give us meaning in our life, but it’s also incredibly important just to live a long and healthy life. So, I wanted to try to do my part in raising this awareness and let people know, not just how important that is, but then how they can overcome those psychological barriers to achieve that connection that we all deep down really crave.”

On Cognitive Biases and Social Connection

“So that’s one bias. Another is something called the liking gap. And that is when we’ve had a good conversation with that new acquaintance. You felt like there was a real rapport with that person, but you don’t trust that the other person felt the same way. You worry that maybe they were just being pretty polite to you, that they were hiding their feelings, but you wonder if they were bored, whether you offended them, you kind of mull over some kind of faux pas that might have been, that you might have said that you think they’re really going to focus on. Again, those expectations are just completely unfounded. The research shows that each party experiences this liking gap where they think the other person liked them less than they liked the other person. Each person is underestimating how likable they were. So you go away, you don’t really necessarily want to make an extra effort to meet that other person because you don’t trust that your feelings were reciprocated when probably they were. That is a big barrier. And so actually my big advice for people to make new friends in any situation would just be to try to bear these biases in mind, to recognize that if you do make a habit of talking to strangers, chances are it’s going to be really pleasant, that’s going to give you an immediate mood boost.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

You may not know yet when you’ll retire, but there will be a broader context for your retirement. And while no one knows exactly what the future will bring, it’s wise to consider emerging trends that may impact your next act. Futurist Robert B. Tucker joins us to discuss some of those trends – and why you need to “futurize” your next act in your third trimester of life.

Robert Tucker joins us from Santa Barbara, California.

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Take Charge of Your Future.

Learn more about our next Design Your Life group program starting in September.

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Robert B. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource (TIR), and an internationally recognized leader in the field of innovation. Formerly an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Tucker has been a consultant and keynote speaker since 1986.

His pioneering research in interviewing over 50 leading innovators was published in the book Winning the Innovation Game in l986. Since then, he has continued to publish widely on the subject, including his international bestseller Managing the Future: 10 Driving Forces of Change for the New Century, which has been translated into 13 languages. In Driving Growth Through Innovation he identified the emerging best practices of 23 innovation vanguard companies. And in his latest work, Innovation Is Everybody’s Business, Tucker interviewed 43 innovation-adept individuals from multiple industries and all levels of organizations, and teaches the personal skills necessary to become an innovator in this hyper-competitive world.”

As one of the thought leaders in the growing Innovation Movement, Tucker is a frequent contributor to publications such as the Journal of Business Strategy, Strategy & Leadership, and Harvard Management Update. He has appeared on PBS, CBS News, and was a featured guest on the CNBC series The Business of Innovation.

The Innovation Resource, based in Santa Barbara, California, is a consulting firm devoted exclusively to assisting companies seeking to improve top and bottom line performance via systematic innovation.

Tucker is a much sought after keynote speaker at conventions, company management meetings, and industry conferences. Clients include over 200 of the Fortune 500 companies as well as clients in Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Australia.

Robert Tucker resides in Santa Barbara, California with his wife, Carolyn McQuay, and daughter Cara Rose Tucker.

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For More on Robert B. Tucker 

Website

Books

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman

The Portfolio Life – Christina Wallace

The Future You – Brian David Johnson

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Mentioned in This Podcast 

Reimagining Retirement: It’s Time to Futurize Your “Third Act”

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Wise Quotes 

The Gift of Longevity

“I’m seeing a need to refocus institutions and companies and organizations, but also, if we take this into kind of the personal level, to reimagine and reinvent how we’re approaching this thing called retirement. The one thing that the Boomers really are coming up short on is affiliation. We’re not joining the clubs, the service clubs, like our forebearers did. Well, these retiring Boomers are part of a larger mega-trend right now. It’s the aging of Western societies, and Japan, China, and South Korea, and really a significant chunk of the world’s population, getting older due to medical breakthroughs and healthier lifestyles. The fact is, we’re living longer, Joe, 30 extra years is what they’re saying, compared to a person 100 years ago. So we’ve been kind of given this gift. Right now, in America, there are 78 million people in the US over the age of 65. And they’re outnumbering the under 18 population for the first time in history. And think about this. Where is this going?”

On Taking Charge of Your Future

“I wrote about how many of today’s retirees are squandering this gift of extended life. It’s very sad to me. They’re watching 33 hours of television a week. They’re on the internet 15 to 20 hours a week. My grandmother used to say, idleness is the devil’s workshop. But when you stop to take a look, many of us started out strong, full of conviction. And today we’re idling away those extra years in loneliness, in poor health, in perpetual worry over our finances, and over the state of the world. And so this third act movement is all about how do you think about, how do you plan for, how do you experience this third trimester of life, so that you make the most of it? I really believe that in their heart, people want to live connected and fulfilled lives through community, not to be isolated, and not to have affiliation with their fellow human beings.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Early Bird Registration is Now Open for the September Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – Learn More

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Who do you want be when you grow up? It’s a question we were all asked in our youth – and it may be a fruitful question to consider now as you consider your next phase of life. It was a catalyst for our guest today in taking up a challenging pursuit that was way outside her comfort zone. Your new pursuit may be very different from hers, but her experience may inspire you take up something new – something challenging that will make you excited about each day ahead. Gwendolyn Bounds, author of Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age, joins us from New York.

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Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds is an award-winning journalist and author of multiple books, including her newest — Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age — which will be published in June 2024 by Ballantine Books.

Bounds currently works as Vice President of Content & U.S. Media Partnerships for SmartNews, a news & information curation platform powered by machine learning and human wisdom. Before coming to SmartNews in 2022, Bounds was Vice President & Chief Content Officer for Consumer Reports overseeing editorial strategy, content creation and operations for all the brand’s print, video and digital products. Prior to that she worked at The Wall Street Journal for two decades in multiple leadership and content development roles.

In her non-office time, Bounds competes in obstacle course racing — a demanding military-style sport requiring speed, endurance, mobility, and strength. The story of her transformation from an unathletic office executive glued to her screens into an age-group medalist and Spartan Race world championship competitor is chronicled in her new book Not Too Late.

Bounds’ first non-fiction book, Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, A Town and the Search for What Matters Most was published in 2005 by William Morrow. The critically-acclaimed book recounts her experiences at an old Irish pub in New York’s historic Hudson River Valley after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bounds previously served as a regular on-air contributor to ABC News, including its Good Morning America show, for general consumer economic issues and has appeared on CNBC, The Weather Channel, CNN, MSNBC, DIY Network and Fox News. She is a seasoned speaker and moderator on topics of leadership, business and media.

Bounds was an executive producer of the Emmy-nominated NBC TV series, “Consumer 101,” which she helped launch at Consumer Reports in 2019. That same year, Bounds was named one of Folio’s Top Women in Media. Bounds was executive producer on a short-form documentary called “A Beautiful Death,” part of a Consumer Reports multimedia package that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

A native of North Carolina and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bounds is a past board member of the university’s Board of Visitors, General Alumni Association and the Hussman School of Journalism & Media. Bounds is also a member of the North Carolina Media & Journalism Hall of Fame.

She currently lives and trains in New York’s Hudson River Valley and serves as a board member for multiple nonprofits, including American Public Radio’s Marketplace franchise, the award-winning Highlands Current nonprofit community news organization and the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center.

“When I woke up that morning after the dinner party, I was very disconcerted. And I still don’t know why I typed this, Joe, but I typed into Google, What are the hardest things you can do? And one of the algorithmic search answers that came up was another question, which was What are the hardest physical things you can do? And Spartan Racing and obstacle course racing were among them. For me at that point, having never been a competitive athlete, someone who was a last picked kid for teams, spent a lot of time sitting on the bench, passing out water to my friends, this was so far out of the realm of anything I thought I could do.”

On Tapping Into Information As We Age

“But fortunately, I had made a young mentor, an elite racer in the sport, a young woman who reached out to me via email. And instead of letting me wallow in my misery and commiserate, she was just very quick to say, Yeah, that happens. And it happens when you are not prepared. And here’s what you do need to be prepared. You need these gloves, and you need to use this technique and you need to wear these pants. And she really, Joe, and I think this is important for anybody in any activity they want to want to embrace, she made me understand that it’s not all about strength and speed, but it was about getting smarter and information. And that led me to understand that in any discipline, any activity we take up, we can find our edges and equalizers as we age by tapping into information. So that race sticks with me as a particularly critical one because I could have quit and I didn’t, and it was a turning point.”

On Movement – and Trying Something New

“And to get ourselves out of this inertia and potentially a rut of chronic boredom. And chronic boredom has been associated with all sorts of health risks from anxiety to depression to even the risk of making mistakes. So finding something new that you can engage in and to get out of that cycle, something that will make you wake up every day excited to try something new that forces you to learn, to unlearn, to relearn, this is this doesn’t have to be obstacle course racing or sports, as you said, it can be anything. I do think there’s a real benefit to having movement be part of our life as we age. Over and over again, you’ll hear that, you know, the research shows that we can get profound changes for our bodies and our minds just by starting to move more regularly, even in middle age and beyond. And those statistics are incredibly powerful. And so I think no matter what you choose, building movement into your day, more regular movement. I just wrote about this for my newsletter today is so important, not just again, for the physical side of being able to do what you love with the people you love, but also for the protective neurological and cognitive impact that it has.

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Time to Reinvent? Early Bird Registration is Now Open for the September Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – Learn More

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Let’s face it. Retirement isn’t for everyone – especially a “traditional retirement.” An increasing number of people are choosing to work longer or to reinvent themselves and create their own new path forward. Mark Walton joins us to discuss his new book Unretired: How Highly Effective People Live Happily Ever After. You’ll be interested in the learning about the three paths he found people are pursuing as more fulfilling alternatives to a traditional retirement. One of them may be an intriguing option for you.

Mark Walton joins us from California.

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Mark S. Walton is a Peabody award-winning journalist and business author, Fortune 100 management consultant, and Chairman of the Center for Leadership Communication, a global executive education and communication enterprise with a focus on leadership and exceptional achievement at every stage of life.

He is additionally Founder and Chairman of the Second Half Institute at the University of California, the nation’s first university-based program to focus on personal leadership and career development in midlife and beyond.

In addition to his most recent book, “UNRETIRED: How HIghly Effective People Live Happily Ever After” Mark is the author of “Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond” was the focus of a national PBS TV special of the same name, and “Generating Buy-In: Mastering the Language of Leadership,” published by the American Management Association and selected by Business Week as one of the Top 30 business books of the year.

He has been a Professor of Leadership in the U.S. Navy’s Advanced Management Program, at Toyota University, and at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he taught leadership skills and strategies at the Senior Executive Institute and in the MBA and Executive MBA programs at the nationally top-ranked Kenan-Flagler Graduate Business School.

As Chairman of the Center for Leadership Communication, Mark has taught extensively in corporate universities and management development programs nationwide, and has worked individually with CEO’s, Division Presidents and a wide range of other senior executives and professionals at many of the world’s leading organizations, including: Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy Corporation, General Electric Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, NASA, and the United States Navy and Marine Corps.

Earlier in his career, Mark was an internationally-recognized network television news anchorman, correspondent and analyst, specializing in political leadership and national affairs. A founding correspondent of Cable News Network (CNN), he served as CNN’s first Chief White House Correspondent and, later, as CNN’s Senior Correspondent, traveling the nation and world from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The book ‘CNN: The Inside Story’ characterizes him as “one of a small group of renegades who changed the face of TV News.”

While at CNN, Mark was a recipient of broadcast journalism’s premier honor, the coveted Peabody Award, for his role as Correspondent in CNN’s live coverage, from Moscow, of the failed Soviet coup in 1991 and the subsequent fall of Communism. His reporting and writing have also been honored with The National Headliner Award, Ohio State Journalism Award, Cable Ace Award, the Gold Medal of the New York TV and Film Festival and the Silver Gavel of the American Bar Association.

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For More on Mark S. Walton

Unretired: How Highly Effective People Live Happily Ever After

Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond

The Second Half Institute

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Podcast Episode You May Like

The Unretirement Life – Richard Eisenberg

Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller

Independence Day – Steve Lopez

How to Build a Non-Profit Encore Career – Betsy Werley

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Mentioned in This Podcast Conversation

Serena Williams’s Next Challenge? The Rest of Her Life.

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Wise Quotes

On Identity & Retirement

“The number one kind of loss or consequence is this abstract thing called personal identity. There’s a loss of personal identity – and it’s not abstract at all. If you’ve worked for decades to become someone, it merges with who you are on all levels. And some people will say that’s a negative, you shouldn’t become that engaged and involved in your work that the rest of you disappears. But for people who are successful, people who are highly effective, there really is no alternative and I certainly have experienced that. I’m sure you have. I don’t see anything wrong with it. The problem is that if the day after you leave that career you become in your own eyes a has been, you’re in a lot of trouble. And that is a consequence. That’s the biggest downfall of all to retirement –  for people who are successful and who are electing to retire.”

On Purpose & Retirement

“The other’s a loss of daily structure. And I’ve seen this often in the areas where I’ve lived, where I’ve met people who’ve been retired for a while, and it’s not their fault that they don’t know what day it is, but they have nothing to hang their day on. They’ve lost their sense of purpose. And the other one, and I’m sure you’ve seen it as well, is a loss of friends and social network. These are the consequences of retirement. A lot is said about and written about in all the retirement books about that you can replace the kinds of people you’ve gotten to know over the last 20, 30 years, people you’ve worked with. But in reality, that turns out not to be true. Once you’re outside of an organizational structure or outside of the kind of a structure that you work in with, you’re connected to a lot of people. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to recoup. So that should be part of the black box warning. Watch out. This is coming your way. Will you be able to deal with it? And for most people, it’s a very, very difficult journey.”

On Fascination  – and Reivention

“I speak of it as a building block, the number one building block of an unretirement plan. That’s a term I invented because everybody talks about retirement plans. Well, what’s an unretirement plan? And the building block that I found consistently in the people I’ve interviewed is that they’re fascinated by something. They have always been, they may have put it aside, but then when they spend some time or take or experiment with things that that truly instinctively draw them forward, they find that it has an enormous power behind it. And I found that when you put your fascination to work, the result is this wonderful psychological state that’s called flow, which is this sense of immersion that we’ve all had hopefully at some point, if not many in our careers. Immersion, which leads to producing results which are discontinuous with what we might expect. So building block number one of an unretirement plan is to revisit what fascinates us and to say, Well, why am I not pursuing that if I have not been? How do I do that? Experimenting with that, putting that to work, will create flow. And success is a natural outgrowth of flow.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Aging may be on your mind this week. And it’s an often overlooked aspect of planning for retirement. Coleen T. Murphy, a leading scholar of aging, and the author of How We Age: The Science of Longevity, details how recent research on model systems, combined with breakthroughs in genomic methods, have allowed scientists to probe the molecular mechanisms of longevity and aging, This research is helping us understand the fundamental biological rules that govern aging – and it may be bringing us closer to extending healthspans and slowing the effects of aging.

She joins us here in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Coleen T. Murphy is professor of genomics and molecular biology at Princeton University. She is director of Princeton’s Glenn Foundation for Research on Aging and director of the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity in the Aging Brain. She is director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories For Aging Research at Princeton.

Murphy completed a B.S. with honors in biochemical and biophysical sciences at the University of Houston and earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University. She was awarded a graduate fellowship at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.

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For More on Coleen T. Murphy

How We Age: The Science of Longevity

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath

How Not to Age – Dr. Michael Greger

The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer

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Wise Quotes

On Why We Age

“I think if the better question is why wouldn’t we age? Like in the entire universe, entropy is at work. So things fall apart and unless you put in energy to repair them, those things will fall apart. So we’re no different, but just we’re better at repairing all of our cells and tissues and everything else when we’re young, right? My kids, if they get a cut, it heals up in like two days. And if I do, it doesn’t. So we see those repair processes decline with age. And so that’s really why we age because the amount that our body’s put into repair actually gets overwhelmed at some point.”

On Cognitive Aging

“So, by studying processes that change with age, my lab is extremely interested in cognitive aging. So we want to make that extend as long as possible. Even if it didn’t extend lifespan, if we found a mechanism to maintain your cognitive function as long as possible, that would be super valuable for all of us. And so, that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about healthspan. A lot of these age -related diseases that we care about in humans and then we understand the molecular mechanisms so that we can find ways to extend that in humans as well…Can we actually extend the you know the time of normal cognitive function? And it turns out we’ve been able to uncover pathways that do control that. So I’m really excited about some work that we did where we you know we found some we found a genetic pathway where if we flipped on just one protein made it more active in one neuron of the cell. Admittedly they have hardly any neurons – they have only 302. But this particular neuron is one that’s really important for regulating their memory and we turn that on a super old worm and it rescued their memory. Nobody really cares until you show it in a mouse. And so we collaborated with friends of ours at UCSF and they put in into the hippocampus so the brain of the two -year -old mice. So that’s like a 75 to 80 year old person. They put in the same activated protein in these it. rescue their memory. So that shows that we can use these pathways to find something in worms and apply it to mammals. And by the way, that protein is exactly the same in mice and humans. So that gives us sort of a way into this problem where we could start to address it pharmaceutically. So that’s an example. I don’t think it’s the only way. I think there’s going to be lots of ways that we can slow down cognitive aging, but that’s one example from my lab.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

What challenges could derail men’s retirements?  Journalist and associate professor Dawn Fallik joins us to discuss what she learned in the research for her article in Kiplinger Why So Many Men are Bad at Retirement. And we explore what men can learn from women that may save men’s retirements.

Dawn Fallik joins us from Philadelphia.

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Dawn Fallik is an award-winning reporter specializing in database analysis, feature writing and medical coverage.

She has 20 years of daily reporting experience at for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She spent a month in India covering the tsunami, investigated medical errors and went to the prom at age 26. This year she was nominated and served on the 2022 Pulitzer Prize jury.

Although she left full-time reporting for full-time teaching, Fallik continues to cover medical issues for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine and Neurology Today. She has worked on the multimedia desks at the Wall Street Journal and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She spent six years writing for The Wall Street Journal’s medical desk, and live blogged two Olympics and multiple television shows for the WSJ’s culture site SpeakEasy. She’s interviewed Tim Gunn, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Judy Blume. She has witnessed executions, investigated abusive priests and covered rent-a-cow companies. But she believes there’s nothing more fun than a good weather story.

In September 2007, she started as a full-time assistant professor at The University of Delaware. She took over as journalism director in 2009 and eventually grew the minor to 250 students.

From 2012-2015 she served on the Board of Directors for the DART Society, which works with journalists who cover trauma and violence.

Since the age of 18, Dawn has lived in 12 cities, eight states and two countries.

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For More on Dawn Fallik

Website

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

Men’s Sheds

What to do about lonely older men? Put them to work.  The Washington Post

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Independence Day – Steve Lopez

Retire Happy – Dr. Catherine Sanderson

Why Retirement is About Much More Than Money – Ted Kaufman & Bruce Hiland

If You Love Your Work, Will You Hate Retirement? – Michelle Pannor Silver

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Wise Quotes

On What You’re Retiring To

“So I think that, that for men in particular, thinking about just even planting that seed earlier, and starting to think about retirement in a positive way, would be a big change and gets you into that positive path of mind. That sounds very woo, but if you think about retirement as a positive thing and not about how much you’re going to miss work, that’s going to be a big change. And I think a lot of people when they plan for retirement, they’re just thinking about the money aspect, like I have to put so much away. And that’s sort of such a distant future thing. It’s not really a personal plan where you’re not just saying I’m going to travel, but I always wanted to go to Greece, and start like having concrete plans that you want to put in place, so that when you do retire, you’re already making plans for the future. You’ve already got things in place that you can look forward to.”

On What Men Can Learn From Women

“…something like 50% of men over 60 described themselves as lonely. They’re so tied to work, that’s where their social connections are. So how do you start establishing life outside of work before you’re done with work? Maybe that’s joining a bowling league, or if you’re part of a church or a synagogue, becoming more involved with those activities. You start making those outside connections beforehand. I’ve worked many places now, and I still have friends from almost every place that I have worked. Because, and they’re almost all female friends, we make the effort to continue to reach out and say Hey what are you up to, whether it’s on Facebook or in real life here in Philadelphia. And then the other thing that I’ve found that has been really important is that if somebody reaches out to you and they invite you to do something and you can’t do it, or you’re just not interested in that activity, use the No, but. I can’t go to your daughter’s ballet recital. But how about next week we go grab whatever. You’re showing that person that you are interested in moving that friendship forward so that the effort isn’t all on one side. And that isn’t an issue just for people in retirement, that’s across the board right now. It’s figuring out how to create those social connections and keep them going. And it does require effort from both sides. The other thing that was the main obstacle was that, also a little surprising from my end, just because I hadn’t thought about it, is that it’s a joke that men don’t go to the doctor. But that has real consequences. Women grow up and we go to the doctor every year. We go to the gynecologist every year starting very young. And so we establish that routine, that check-in.”

On Diversification

“The other thing that I found, and this came out of a different story, was thinking about activities that you can do s if you’re retired. Could you be an adjunct professor, so that you are sharing your knowledge with younger generations? It keeps you involved and also keeps you connected with a younger community. Look at groups like Meetup. You’ll see Meetup has a number of different activities, not just for men, but for people over 50. There’s a group by me that goes out salsa dancing, and it’s men and women over the age of 50. So just find different ways that you can try something new. And you know what, if you try it once and it’s not for you? That’s fine. But that way you have different opportunities. And then think about where could you volunteer? What is a cause you’re passionate about? Maybe it’s a political group. Maybe it’s pet rescue. There’s a lot of animal rescue groups. Maybe it’s something like Habitat for Humanity where you’re going and maybe you have those skills. Maybe you always wanted to learn how to tile a bathroom. But again, you have a sense of purpose. You’re helping somebody else, and then again, you’re being with those same people on a regular basis.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Don’t underestimate the transition to retirement. How do you build a bridge from your full-time working life to your new life of freedom in retirement? It starts with doing your homework and managing your expectations for the transition period. Many people expect it to be like that last day of school before summer – running off to full-time fun, only without school resuming in the fall. But the transition usually unfolds in a series of phases – and learning more about them prepares you to anticipate, plan well and get the most out of your retirement years.

This “Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast” episode revisits earlier conversations that can help you master the transition to your retirement.

Click the links below to listen to the full conversations you’re interested in:

The Power of Reinvention – Joanne Lipman

The Skill Set for Life’s Transitions – Bruce Feiler

Navigating the Transition – Dr. Maggie Mulqueen

Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller

The Future You – Brian David Johnson

Design Your Life and Get Unstuck – Dave Evans

Planning for a transition to retirement? Take charge of your future.

Browse all episodes of he Retirement Wisdom Podcast here.

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

It’s easy to fall into a rut. What could taking up a new pursuit or a new challenge do for you? Today’s guest, Joe Simonetta is living a diverse, interesting and fulfilling life. Last year he decided to take on a new challenge at 80. He decided to compete in a triathlon. Not only was it his first triathlon, it was his first race – of any kind. And he won the gold medal in his 80-84 age division at the U.S. National Senior Games. His story may inspire you to take on a new pursuit or challenge.

Joe Simonetta joins us from Sarasota, Florida.

Joseph R. Simonetta holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School where he studied ethics, global environmental problems, world religions, cosmology, and evolutionary biology. He also studied at Yale Divinity School.

He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Colorado. He also studied architecture at the University of Southern California. He holds a B.S. in Business Logistics from Penn State University.

As a young man, disturbed at the extraordinary amount of unrelenting suffering in the world, he vowed to himself to do something to alleviate it.

He went on to live a very unusual life. He has been an Army officer, professional athlete, entrepreneur and businessman, architectural designer, real estate developer, home builder, environmental activist, author, TEDx speaker, senior editor of the World Business Academy, and twice a nominee for the U.S. Congress.

Intermittently, he wrote a mix of fiction and nonfiction books about humanity and the state of the world.

He is married to Susana Rojas Simonetta. They have a son, Russell, born on Earth Day, and a daughter, Fiorella.

He enjoys spending time with his family and training for and competing in triathlons. In the 2023 U.S. National Senior Games triathlon in Pittsburgh, he won the gold medal in his 80-84 age division.

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For More on Joseph R. Simonetta

Website 

Be Healthy. Be Kind. Respect the Environment.: What We Do to Others, We Do to Ourselves

Gingerbread Horse Rocket and The Melon Ball Express: A Story About a Little Boy Who Changed the World

Tedx Talk

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller

The Fourth Quarter – Allen Hunt

Will You Flourish or Languish? – Corey Keyes

The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer

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Wise Quotes

On Seven Words to Live By

“The three simple rules for living: be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. I have to put in context, and Arthur Schopenhauer observed that all truth passes through three levels. First, it’s ridicule, second, it’s violently opposed, third, it’s accepted as being self -evident. Such a truth has emerged in our lifetime. It informs us that we exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking pole, which all the parts are interconnected and depend upon each other for survival. Simply put, everything’s connected to everything else. We exist not separately, but in communion with all other living things. Life’s an interrelated, interdependent phenomenon. Everything’s in relationship. It’s the nature of universe, it’s the nature of the reality in which we exist. Like it or not, reality has behavioral demands. That is, if you want to stick around, if you want to live, if you want to continue on the journey, those behavioral demands can be summarized in seven words. Be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. Each one of us is like a cell in the body of humanity. The health of all of us taken together in terms of the health of humanity and the health of our civilization.”

On Updating Beliefs

“The question is, how do we reduce ignorance and suffering, expand knowledge and justice? Einstein observed that we can’t solve our problems from the same level of thinking which they originated.So it begs the question, what level of thinking are we at? What level of thinking do we need to get to? How do we get there? Well, it’s not easy to get to the next level of thinking. Many people are operating out of primitive, hardwired instincts and emotions associated with the primitive origins of our brain. At the same time, many people are operating out of deeply embedded, antiquated, divisive, and dysfunctional supernatural beliefs that are the products of the infancy of our intelligence. And these primitive instincts and emotions, which are a biological reality, and this antiquated, divisive, and dysfunctional supernatural beliefs, which are human fabrications, are a lethal combination of behaviors that are not overcome easily. But they must be overcome if we’re going to sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species. So our social and political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs must rise to higher levels. So they’re not static. They’re dynamic. And we are an evolving species. We’re a young species, as one explores that whole area, which is interesting, evolutionary biology. And we understand just how young we are. And we begin to understand why we do what we do.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Retirement offers the opportunity to pursue new interests, hobbies and pursuits. But getting retirement right takes practice. How do you start? Mary Jo Hoffman shares her story of how a daily photography practice on her daily walks with her dog evolved, culminating in her new book STILL:The Art of Noticing.

Mary Jo Hoffman joins us from Minnesota.

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Bio

Mary Jo Hoffman is the author of STILL:The Art of Noticing.  An aeronautical engineer-turned-artist, since beginning her artistic practice and founding the blog, STILL, she and her project have been featured in Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes & Gardens, among other publications, and she has collaborated with West Elm, Target, the United States Botanic Garden, and the Scottish National Opera

She is renowned for her unique and personal engagement with the natural world around her, primarily in North America’s Great Lakes bioregion and the iconic scrubland of Mediterranean France. Best known for her multi-year, ongoing project, “STILL,” she captures and posts one photo every day, on a white background, of a natural object found near her, whether leaves, flowers, seedpods, twigs, insects, or animals.

“STILL” images reflect Hoffman’s profound admiration for nature’s subtle, seasonal expressions. Her photography encourages viewers to pause and contemplate one thing at a time, to be still, if only for a moment, in a world of distracted hurrying from one thing to another. The project is an endorsement of the power of dailiness, and an invitation to re-see the too-often overlooked “infraordinary,” that surrounds us–those sights, sounds, and subtle changes that we think of as common and familiar, but which can come alive with delightful possibility when paid attention to.

Hoffman lives in Shoreview, Minnesota, on Turtle Lake, with her husband, Steve, a food writer and author, and her aging and indulged puggle, Jack, with whom she takes walks as often as possible, in woods and fields, and along lakeside trails, on the hunt for that day’s STILL blog subject.

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For More on Mary Jo Hoffman

STILL Blog

STILL:The Art of Noticing

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Wise Quotes

On Practicing Retirement

“…think about practicing for retirement. Put those pieces in place with the community, the hobbies, the interests, whatever you want to do. Start early enough to have those in place when you retire so that you don’t just one day walk out the door, and then you don’t know what to do with yourself. That struck a chord with me. So we are in France, the kids are in school, it’s the first free time in my adult life and I say to my, my husband who’s a tax preparer, but who also had creative ambitions. He was wanted always wanted to be a writer. I said, let’s practice for retirement. We have we have six hours a day between parent drop off and parent pickup. Let’s practice for retirement. So that was 2012. So 12 years ago what happened is I started a photo. So I came up with a project for myself is called a photo a day for one year. So it was a one year project to do a photo a day, which then resulted in this book that I just came out with.”

On Daily Practice

“If you’ve never done anything like a 100-day challenge. I have a 30-day challenge. I think 30 days is too short. I did a one year challenge that turned into a 12 year challenge. I highly recommend them. That’s why  I call it the sneaky superpower of daily –  of having a daily practice. The other one of the other things that that totally surprised me  was something an idea I call placefulness, which is it is this a really deep and nuanced knowledge and connection to my place.”

On Activities with Multiple Benefits

“You can call it intuitive wisdom. Whatever it is, I do think I stumbled into something very, very rewarding. Dumb luck or not, I think it highlights one of those key points about finding activities where you can get those multiple benefits from. You don’t need six things. You can find one that can give you two, three, four, five [benefits]. We’re talking about just being intentional. And then also we’re talking a little bit about narrowing down the things that you’re going to put your energy or your attention into to three, four or five things and not scattering your attention or your energy like confetti.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.