After a successful, demanding, and high-stress career, how do you shift gears to a new, more balanced life in an early retirement?  Marybeth Crane shares her story and insights. Dr. Marybeth Crane joins us from Texas. _________________________ Bio Dr. Marybeth Crane is a retired board-certified podiatric foot and ankle surgeon. She specialized in sports medicine in private practice for over twenty-five years and successfully built a multi-million-dollar private practice from humble beginnings. In her spare time, she completed more than twenty marathons, a dozen or so Half-Ironmans, and two Full Ironman Triathlons. She’s the author of the book Drop the S: Recovering from Superwoman Syndrome. She believes that exercise is the most powerful drug physicians can prescribe and that choosing a healthy lifestyle will help combat the aging process. ____________________________ For More on Dr. Marybeth Crane Drop the S: Recovering From Superwoman Syndrome Website Blog _____________________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like The Power of Reinvention – Joanne Lipman Strategic Quitting – Julia Keller Is It Time to Break Up with Busy? – Yvonne Tally ______________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ On Identity in Retirement “I actually found that’s a real thing. My husband was very concerned because I’ve been Dr. Crane for 30 years. And now all of a sudden, I’m Marybeth. And I will tell you that probably for the first six months to a year, it was hard to meet someone new and say, Hi, I’m Dr. Crane. No, it’s a Hi, I’m Marybeth. And I would have to change it because I didn’t want to sound like some arrogant jerk. Oh, by the way, I’m a doctor. So it’s a real thing. But you also start to think about who is Marybeth versus Dr. Crane, because Dr. Crane was like a different entity. In fact, my husband would tell me when I came home, could you turn the doctor off? Because I was running the practice and my name’s first on the door, it’s my way of the highway kind of thing. And you’d come home, and now you’re a team. And I’m not the captain of the team necessarily every day. So in retirement, you start to actually be more your authentic self.” On Structure in Retirement “You learn to figure out what your priorities are for getting through your day –  the things that you want to get accomplished, the things you can get accomplished, the things you really don’t feel like getting accomplished, and maybe can take off the to do list, versus you’re running a company you have a strict schedule that you’re going hour to hour to hour. In my case, every 15 minutes there was a different person in my room, and whether you wanted to do it or not, they were there whether it was a good day or a bad day, they were still there. So, flexibility is probably the best thing, but the more you get to decide what’s important, your priorities definitely change. I feel like I was running a marathon as a sprint. When I was practicing, you’re just going, going, going. And we have an entire generation that glorifies the grind – the more you grind, the more money you make, the better off your life is. Well, that’s not what it is. It’s really, can I fulfill the things that I can do out there that somebody else can’t, can I do the things I want to do, and not what I have to do?” On Purpose “If I can help just one person, then that’s my purpose. If you think that your purpose is to play golf every day, I would tell you no. But there is a purpose to that too, because you’re out there, you’re having fun with other people or other couples, you’re enjoying the outside, and you’re delving into their retirement, because most of them are retired or thinking about being retired. And you’re helping them get through those those building blocks to what does the rest of your life look like?”  

In today’s complex, fast-paced world, what can we learn from philosophers? John Kaag thinks we can learn a lot. He’s created an audiobook Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life), discussing his ideas highlighting Thoreau, Emerson and William James. He’s also the co-founder of Rebind, an AI company transforming classic literature into interactive, guided experiences. Rebind pairs books with original interactive commentary from some of today’s greatest thinkers who serve as expert guides,  featuring conversations, personal anecdotes, historical context, and reflections. Rebind was named to Fast Company’s prestigious list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025 and was a TIME Magazine “Best Invention of 2024.” John Kaag joins us from Massachusetts. __________________ Bio John Kaag is a distinguished philosopher and author, widely recognized for his deep knowledge of Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden. He has authored several books, including American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, both of which were New York Times and NPR Best Books of the Year. In 2023, he published Henry at Work, a thorough examination of Thoreau’s philosophy as it relates to post-pandemic work habits. Kaag has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harper’s Magazine, bringing timeless philosophical insights to a wider audience. ________________________ For More on John Kaag Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life)  Rebind Try Rebind – Discount offer _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Living for Pleasure – Emily Austin, PhD The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD An Artful Life – John P. Weiss _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ Wise Quotes On Philosophers – and AI “I think it’s interesting. I think that when it comes to the perennial questions of philosophy, like why am I here? What is the good life? Why is life worth living? These questions typically are answered in very personal settings, between friends, between family members, between, I teach at UMass Lowell, so my classes are relatively small within a classroom setting. But I think what’s interesting is that when like lots of readers and lots of thinkers don’t have the chance to interact with others in a sort of active way. My mother was one of these individuals. She retired when she was 68, and she lived until she was 76. And during that time, she spent quite a bit of time online, reading online, but she really missed human companionship. And what’s interesting with this time of AI and artificial intelligence is that we have the ability to scale one-on-one tutoring interactions. Many people have talked about the use of Chat GPT and asking Chat GPT questions and getting responses. But what I find really interesting is that we have the chance to use AI to dynamically distribute original human comments and commentary into conversation.” On William James, Action and Emotion “William James…was the founder of empirical psychology at Harvard, the founder of American Pragmatism, which is one of the two major philosophies that was born in the United States in the 19th century. William James, in his empirical studies of psychology, discovered that there’s a real relationship between action and emotion. And we often times think that we’re happy and therefore we smile. But William James, and it’s it’s termed the James-Lange theory of emotions instead of saying that we smile because we’re happy. James said the other way around. He said, we are happy because we smile. So anybody who’s been down in the dumps and gone for a walk and felt better or anyone who’s even tried a little bit of yoga, sort of the beginning sun salutation, where you point your hands up to the ceiling and point your chin up to the ceiling. Looking up has this transformative power on our emotional landscape. And James was the first to discover this. It’s going back to my mother. She declined very precipitously when she could no longer walk and her emotional state sort of declined very rapidly as well.” On Habits “William James was pretty smart about habits. He said, following the ancient Greek Aristotle, that habits form ourselves. So if you think about who you are as a person, you are sort of defined by what you do in a habitual way, and your body actually takes the shape of the habits that we participate in. James, however, unlike Aristotle, was interested more in our ability to break habits, to unfix the beliefs that might have been given to us by our conventions, our society, our histories, and trying to overcome those. For James that was the task of life. If we think about cases where we reach our limits, or our habitual limits in life, and then overcome them and explore possibility, risk, uncertainty, what philosophers call indeterminacy, the sort of shakiness where the universe is not what we just expect, those are chances for us to both risk and lose something in some cases, but also to test ourselves and to discover who we are beyond the sort of normal constraints of everyday life. And James was interested in both thinking about life as a risk, but also as a reward, and both of those are equally ours when we explore them at the limits. And and I found that to be pretty instructive when I was reading James or rereading James for the umpteenth time and thinking about my mom being like, oh, man, I wish she could still get around. And what is interesting is that James suggests that even when our mobility and our actions are inhibited, we still have the ability to do small actions. And those small actions do matter for our emotions and for how we’re feeling. So I take that as pretty interesting.” On Rebind “[On Rebind] you get to go read Walden with me or you’ll be able to read The Tale of Two Cities with Margaret Atwood or Salman Rushdie doing Candide. And you’re basically getting a one-on-one masterclass with an expert about a classic book. And you get to ask any questions that you want and you’ll get pretty good answers. And thankfully, they’re originally and authentically sourced from the commentary that we’ve gotten.  There are 13 books up on the site. There’ll be 27 by the fall. Well, I’ve learned that it takes that AI has this. a very, very bad rap that it is not particularly popular and people are very suspicious. And people don’t mind interacting with a generic AI bot if they’re dealing in insurance, if they’re insurance agencies or maybe they’re pharmaceutical companies, they just wanna get answers about their drugs or something. But they don’t want to hear a generic AI bot wax eloquent about great books or poetry or things that we really care about. And that’s where the authenticity really matters. And I had to convince these authors, John Banville who won the Booker Prize, Marlon James who won the Booker Prize, Atwood, Rushdie, Elaine Pagels who gave us the gospel or gave us commentary on the Gospels.I really had to convince these participants and commentators that we weren’t pirating anything and that we were distributing their words know, useful in authentic ways. So that was one thing. The second thing is that people like to talk about books. There are 50 million people involved in Bible study, and we’re going to put out the Bible this spring in this form. There are five million people in book clubs, and people like to hear other people’s thoughts about reading. And that’s something that I’m hopeful about in terms of turning this into a genuine group reading experience.”    

Ed Hajim shares his remarkable journey from a tumultuous childhood—moving through foster homes and orphanages after being kidnapped by his father—to becoming a successful businessman and philanthropist. Hajim explains how his experiences became advantages later in life, teaching him adaptability, resilience, and self-confidence that fueled his success at the University of Rochester and beyond. Now dedicated to giving back, he focuses on helping young people through scholarships and education initiatives, guided by his philosophy that “anything is possible, education is the solution to everything, and never be a victim.” Hajim offers powerful insights on finding purpose in later life stages through volunteerism, mentorship, and philanthropy, emphasizing the profound satisfaction that comes from helping others succeed. _______________________ Bio Ed Hajim, the son of a Syrian immigrant, is a seasoned Wall Street executive with more than 50 years of investment experience. He has held senior management positions with the Capital Group, E.F. Hutton, and Lehman Brothers before becoming chairman and CEO of Furman Selz. Hajim has been the co-chairman of ING Barings, Americas Region; chairman and CEO of ING Aeltus Group and ING Furman Selz Asset Management; chairman and CEO of MLH Capital; and chairman of High Vista, a Boston-based money management company. In 2008, after 20 years as a trustee of the University of Rochester, Hajim began an eight-year tenure as chairman of the university’s board. Upon assuming that office he gave the school $30 million—the largest single donation in its history—to support scholarships and endow the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Through the Hajim Family Foundation, he has made generous donations to organizations that promote education, health care, arts, culture, and conservation. ______________________ For More on Ed Hajim Island of the Four Ps: A Modern Fable About Preparing for Your Future Website On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom ______________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller How to Live a Values Based Life – Harry Kraemer ________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn __________________________ Wise Quotes On Reviewing Your Interests “Go back and look at your passions. If you left some passions behind, did you really want to paint or play the piano? Or had you always wanted to find out about France or Belgium or Argentina? Well, the passions you left behind, and now you have to really have the time and the energy to pursue them. One of my passions, as you’ll see in my book, is to help people do better than they thought. And that’s a lifelong passion because no matter what you’re involved in, if you can pursue that, you’ll get a great response. So you have to go back and look at your passion and maybe in an athletic experience. And I do believe this concept of taking time to reflect. I like to take the holidays at the end of the year and sit down and spend time to do a really deep dive and ask questions. Now, passions are not only my interests, my likes, my dislikes, my talents, and also contextual. You may be in a situation where I don’t know how long it’s going to take California to come back, but you can commit yourself to getting involved with the problems there. That could take five years of your life if that’s what excites you.” On Testing Your Pursuits “Start writing early as possible, write things down and look at them monitor them. Sit down and write down here’s what I want to do.  And then I think every once a year, do a very simple dive, to say that I accomplished it. And every three years, do a real deep dive, maybe I’m on the wrong path. I wouldn’t question every year where I’m at. I mean, it takes you by mind three years to see whether this thing is good enough, but write it down, but also spend time in what I call contextual sense. Think about what the world, where the world is going, like AI or biotech. You don’t have to be really knowledgeable, you just get interested in them. What are the trends in Alzheimer’s? A friend of mine runs it, has been involved in Alzheimer’s. And he’s got a foundation, which he’s now working to solve the problem. But write it down, write it down. Go back to some of the old things you did once. There are a lot of places, or finding another organization that fits something you’re really interested in.” On Purpose “Well, finding the new purpose is more difficult. You go through life and your first purpose will be to be financially independent and my second purpose was to have a family that I could support. The third purpose was to be successful in business and so forth. Older people in my mind, you have to reach back and find a purpose that you want. The fourth part of life is community, giving back.  It’s pretty easy to find a purpose in giving back. The other purposes are material, and they’re ephemeral by the way, too.”

Will your next phase be your time? If you’re a people-pleaser, or know someone who is, you’ll want to hear from Hailey Magee, author of Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power. It’s time to set better boundaries, advocate for your needs and priorities and start living the life you’ve imagined. Hailey Magee joins us from Seattle. ______________________ Bio Hailey Magee is a certified coach who helps people around the world break the people-pleasing pattern and master the art of self-advocacy. Holding a credential from the International Coaching Federation and certified by Erickson Coaching International, Hailey has worked with over 500 private clients, helping recovering people-pleasers rediscover not only their power and agency, but their pleasure, joy, and sense of wonder. Her debut book, Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2024. Hailey’s refreshingly nuanced perspectives on boundary-setting and self-advocacy have captured the attention of millions on social media. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Gottman Institute, Business Insider, and Newsweek, and she has facilitated workshops in partnership with WeWork, Women In Music, and a variety of other companies and organizations. Hailey is dedicated to offering her clients clear, research-supported strategies for change. She resides in Seattle, WA. ______________________ For More on Hailey Magee Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power Website ______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD The Joy of Saying No – Natalie Lue Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn _______________________ Wise Quotes On People Pleasing “It’s really just the act of putting other people first at our own detriment, chronically. So unlike regular generosity, which can feel really great and benefit our relationships, people pleasing tends to be a chronic pattern of behavior that really negatively affects us over time. And the costs are high. First of all, because we’re always centering other people and putting them first, we become really disconnected from ourselves. So we struggle to access our own dreams, our own desires, our own needs, and that can lead to life feeling kind of hollow and one dimensional. On top of that, our emotional health can suffer because we’re often over committed, burned out, resentful and disconnected.” On Boundaries “I think of these as the growing pains of strengthening a new muscle of learning how to prioritize ourselves. Like with any new workout, there’s some soreness after. But what we can do is we can find some reasons that might make that guilt or selfish feeling feel a little bit worth it. And for me, the best way to flip the script and really become more confident prioritizing yourself is really just to remember that over commitment and lead to resentment in our relationships and really harm them over time. So if you’re over-committed spending too many hours watching your grandkids, you might begin to resent your kids for asking so often. And if you’re over-committed to a certain volunteer organization, you might slowly begin to resent the people at the organization, because you’re so burnt out and taxed from all your giving. So what I like to remind us is that our boundaries, learning how to prioritize ourselves, are not anti-relationship. They’re pro-relationship because they create the distance at which you can really love and appreciate a person or an organization without resenting them. And I say in my book, research actually shows, which I found this so, so reaffirming, that people who practice healthy selfishness, quote unquote, which basically means those who have a healthy respect for their own needs and health, actually report having more positive relationships and more loving attitudes toward others, because they’re not constantly fatigued and burned out. So this really helps us flip the script.” On Fear “…the common thread is there’s fear. I’m doing this because I have to and I’m afraid. And that’s so different from kindness, which is really just, I’m doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I want to help. And if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I’m still not sure, which one is it? The simplest little question you can ask yourself to discern which one is happening is just ask right now, do my insides match my outsides? Because when we’re being kind, they match our outside, smiling and giving and generosity is matched by an inner sense of just goodwill and contentment. But when we’re people pleasing outside, we’re smiling and happy and giving, but inside we’re shut down or resentful or frustrated or overwhelmed. And so that dissonance is what you want to watch out for.”    

We spend a lot of time each day in conversation. What if you could get better at it? Alison Wood Brooks, author of the new book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, shares her research and tips on how to master conversation, become a better listener, navigate difficult discussions – and what makes an effective apology. Alison Wood Brooks joins us from Massachusetts. ________________________ Bio Dr. Alison Wood Brooks is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School, where she created and teaches a course called TALK. As a behavioral scientist, she is a leading expert on the science of conversation. Her award-winning research has been published in top academic journals and is regularly cited in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and NPR. Her research was referenced in two of the top ten most-viewed TED talks of all time and depicted in Pixar’s Inside Out 2. In 2021, she was named a Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professor by Poets & Quants. “TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves” is her first book. _________________________ For More on Alison Woods Brooks Read Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves Website Workbook __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Our New Social Life – Natalie Kerr & Jaime Kurtz Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile Big Goals – Caroline Adams Miller The Ritual Effect – Michael Norton _________________________ What Will Your Next Story Be? Stay in the Loop with once a month updates on featured conversations and noteworthy articles. Wisdom Notes keeps ideas coming your way once a month to help you create it. _________________________ Best Books for Retirement _________________________ Wise Quotes On Boomerasking “Asking questions is magical. It’s why there’s a whole part of the acronym is about asking. But Boomerasking, which is named after the outgoing and incoming returning arc of a boomerang, is sort of a boundary condition on the power of question asking, because it’s like this. It would be like, I say to you, Joe, have you ever been to Nepal? And you say no, and I’m like, let me tell you about the time I went to Nepal. It’s almost like you’re thinly veiling your egocentrism and sort of self-centeredness, your desire to disclose about yourself. You’re kind of masking it with this insincere question. And you hear it all the time. And what we find in our research is that when I say, have you ever been to Nepal, first of all, that question is so specific, you’re already on high alert. You’re like, oh, God, here comes a story about Nepal. But even if I were to ask you, like, how was your weekend, and then I let you answer, and even if you were excited to answer that, and then I bring it right back to myself immediately without following up on your answer, it makes you feel like I wasn’t interested to begin with. And that’s a really bad feeling. In the end, conversation needs to be sort of ping pongy back and forth, where both people are sharing about themselves, but also feeling affirmed and validated and listened to as we’re playing this ping pong game. And so if you bring it right back to yourself in boomerask, it undermines the healthy ping ponginess of a conversation. Thank you. Follow ups and callbacks do exactly the opposite. So whereas Boomer asks are a villain and you’re doing, you’re bringing it too much back to yourself, which people do all the time. Follow up questions, keep the focus on the other person. So anytime someone gives you this great gift of a disclosure, you share anything about your weekend. Or if I say, have you been to Nepal and you say, no, but I’ve been to Tibet or whatever.If they’re giving you any sort of sharing, some disclosure, some information about their perspective, that is such an amazing gift. That is the greatest gift that humans can really give to each other. And so a follow up question shows, hey, I value the gift you just gave me. I want to hear about your time in Tibet. I want to hear about your weekend. I actually care about your perspective and I want to learn from you. So follow up questions are superheroes.” On Listening – and Mind Wandering “The idea of listening seems so simple on its surface. It’s sort of deceptively simple. The human mind, unfortunately, and fortunately, was not built to focus on one person and one idea at a time. Our brains are amazing. And so they were more built to wander, right? They’re we’re constantly drawing connections between adjacent and unrelated ideas. We’re thinking so much, you know, even while I’m talking to you, I might for a fleeting moment, remember, oh, I got to pick up my kid in like an hour and a half, right? That’s not bad, per se, doesn’t mean that I’m a bad listener. But it is bad if I’m pretending to listen to you, and I’m actually thinking about something else. And it means that we aren’t actually exchanging the information that we believe we are exchanging. If we’re constantly pretending to listen to each other, and we’re not actually hearing each other, that will become a problem. You know, if you disclose something important about yourself to me, and I don’t hear it, but I pretend to hear it, that’s not going to go well. So we studied we studied this tendency by having hundreds of people come together and have conversations. And we interrupted them every five minutes. And we said, Okay, were you just listening to your partner? 24% of the time, people self reported that they were not listening to their partner, that their mind was wandering elsewhere. And we suspect that is a pretty massive underestimate because we all know that it’s embarrassing to admit that you weren’t listening. There’s this very high social expectation that you listen attentively. So we suspect that our minds are wandering even more frequently than that, and that’s already a very high number. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a criticism about the human mind, but what can be helpful about it is realizing, oh, my mind is wandering a lot of the time, your mind is wandering a lot of the time. What can we do to make sure that we actually are hearing each other, that we’re actually exchanging the information we think we are, that we’re making each other not only feel heard, but making sure that we actually are heard. I want to allow your mind to wander and also have a successful conversation. And so I think that’s a very helpful thought experiment of what can we do? First of all, we can give people more grace, when they don’t hear something, like it’s not because they’re not interested all the time, often it’s because they’re doing, they’re so interested that they’re probably elaborating on something you already said earlier. And being a little bit more direct and overt about admitting when we haven’t heard someone, right? Like, oh, I missed that thing. Did you mean this or this? Can you repeat that? These little repair strategies can be very, very helpful.” On Difficult Conversations “So my teaching and research on conversation has been incredibly empowering for me and for anyone who is nervous or conflict averse, because it made me realize that first of all, as we were talking about earlier, whole conversations aren’t hard and bad and scary and hostile. It’s just like little moments. And that’s what we talk about in the book. It’s called, it’s not like difficult conversations. It’s moments of difficulty. And moments of difficulty can crop up even in conversations that are supposed to be fun, right? Like you think about gathering with your family at Thanksgiving or going out on a date or having a gathering with friends. You never know when a little moment of a little rift is going to happen. A little moment of difficulty crops up that was unexpected. And even more sort of troublingly, I worry that we often sort of poke barbs into each other in ways that we never even know that that moment of difficulty has come and gone. That someone that you’re talking to might ruminate about later and you didn’t even know that you said something hurtful. But let’s set that aside. In the moments when you do know that things have gotten difficult, these moments of difficulty can occur for any, for any number of reasons. And in the book, we talk about a model, like layers of the earth. And above the surface, these are the words and gestures that you can see during the conversation. We might simply be using the same word to mean different things, or we might use different words to mean the same thing, or we’re just sort of talking past each other, we misunderstand each other. Those sorts of coordination problems can cause all kinds of moments of difficulty during a conversation. Just below that at the sort of surface of the earth are our emotions. So let’s say you’re feeling really calm, but I’m like stressed out. And I need you to like be there for me more intensely that can cause conflict, or I’m really excited and want to have a good time and you’re feeling sort of sleepy and want to be peaceful. We’re going to have a bit of a emotional clash there. Beneath that are our beliefs. So I believe the truth about something, I believe some data about vaccines, you believe different data about vaccines. We disagree and are we going to confront that and discuss it? Are we going to avoid it? It’s up to us beneath that we have differences in motives.” ___________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn

Can an experimental mindset help you navigate your transition to retirement? Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of the new book Tiny Experiments, discusses how to become a scientist of your own life and unlock new habits, interests, and behaviors for your next phase of life. Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins us from Austin. ________________ Bio Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.  She’s a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. A former Google executive, she went back to university to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology & Neuroscience from King’s College London. As the founder of Ness Labs and author of its widely read newsletter, she writes about evidence-based ways for people to make the most of their minds, navigate uncertainty, and practice lifelong learning. Her work has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals and mainstream publications such as WIRED, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and more. ________________ For More on Anne-Laure Le Cunff  Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World Ness Labs ___________________ Best Books for Retirement ___________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg Design Your Life and Get Unstuck – Dave Evans Growing Old, Staying Rad – Steven Kotler _________________ Get Wisdom Notes Once a month updates on featured conversations and noteworthy articles. What Will Your Next Story Be? Wisdom Notes keeps ideas coming your way once a month to help you create it. ________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.6 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. Connect on LinkedIn ____________________ Wise Quotes On Becoming a Scientist of Your Own Life “An experimental mindset is one where we have both high ambition and high curiosity. This is really embracing the fact that you need both if you want to grow in life. And if you want to achieve more than what you think is currently possible, if you want to achieve more than what is within the realm of your imagination with what you know today, you need hard work, sure, but you need to keep some doors open for exploration, surprises, serendipity, and those kinds of collaborations that we can’t really plan for. And an experimental mindset is really about becoming the scientist of your own life, treating everything, every challenge and uncertainty in general as an opportunity to experiment and to learn something new.” On Reframing Retirement “I think retirement is such an amazing phase in life for experimentation. But unfortunately, because all of a sudden, everything we knew, all of the routines and the ways of working are changed for lots of people overnight, we find ourselves in that liminal space, that space of uncertainty. And so we might tend to have one of those three automatic responses. Because we might experience cynicism, escapism, perfectionism, instead of experimenting. Some of the key benefits of embracing this experimental mindset are really to use this phase to discover new things that you might want to do. To maybe reconnect with things that you were curious about and had to pause or put aside because you focused on your career or on your family or on any other projects. And it’s really considering that time as a time of possibility. All of a sudden, you don’t have someone else deciding what your calendar and schedule is supposed to look like. And you have this newfound freedom, which, yes, comes with a lot of uncertainty. We can also come with a lot of creativity.” On Tiny Experiments So tiny experiments, as I described them in my book, are inspired by the scientific method. But you don’t need a lab, you don’t need equipment. You certainly don’t need to apply for funding. You can just run your own tiny experiments by designing your protocol. And I call this protocol a pact because it’s a commitment to curiosity. The way you design a pact is by choosing an action, something you’re curious about, and committing to performing that action for a certain duration. And again, it’s inspired by the scientific method where when you conduct an experiment, you say, these are the number of trials we’re going to conduct, and this is how we’re going to collect data. And to choose on an action, it always starts with, again, with curiosity. So you can use this magic word, maybe. Maybe if I did that thing, I would feel more creative. Maybe if I did that thing, I would be more productive. Maybe if I did that thing, my garden would look better. Maybe if I did that thing, I would meet new friends. And so you start with maybe and you, that’s basically the hypothesis. That’s your hypothesis. And then you say, okay, what is the thing? So let’s say you kind of want to grow your professional network after you’re retired, you want to meet other people who maybe are retired and working on interesting projects and you want to connect with them. So you say, maybe if every Monday I reach out to someone I admire, someone whose work I enjoy on LinkedIn, I send them a message and I do that for six weeks. So that’s your pact. I will reach out to a new person every Monday for six weeks. That’s your data collection. That’s your pact. And the great thing is again, same as scientific experiments is that you withhold judgment until you’re done. A scientist doesn’t stop the experiment in the middle and say, I don’t quite like what I’m seeing here. Let’s stop. No, they collect the data and then the assess it. So you finish this, you send your six messages on LinkedIn over the next six weeks and at the end of the six weeks, you ask yourself, did that work? Was my hypothesis correct? Did that help me grow my professional network? Did I meet interesting people? And do I want to keep going? And if yes, that could even turn into a habit. Thank you. There’s a completely different definition of success and failure when you design experiments.”

Our guest today notes that “retirement is a little bit like life. It’s likely to be different than you think it’s going to be.” David Horton, MD shares the story of his life wife Dee Dee, and carrying on her mission and legacy. He discusses her book, Layer Upon Layer, which he helped complete. David Horton joins us from Washington State. _____________________ Bio David Horton, a retired oncologist turned book editor, spent his career driven by a deep passion for science and genuine connection with his patients. After completing his residency, he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he met his wife, DeeDee. Known for his patient-centered approach grounded in respect, empathy, and the art of deep listening, David founded RadiantCare Oncology, building a practice that aligned with his values as both a doctor and a person. David and DeeDee shared 32 years of love, self-growth, and adventure, creating a steadfast partnership. Now retired, David is dedicated to honoring DeeDee’s mission by publishing her book, Layer Upon Layer, to continue her message and legacy _______________________ For More on David Horton, MD Layer Upon Layer book Website ____________________ Best Books on Retirement ____________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Well-Lived Life – Dr. Gladys McGarey Ride or Die – Jarie Bolander On My Way Back to You – Sarah Cart _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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 1.5 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. Connect on LinkedIn _____________________ Wise Quotes Redefining Yourself in Retirement “Retirement is a little bit like life. It’s likely to be different than you think it’s going to be. I think of retirement as quitting the structured daily routine of your week. Mainly, we’re keeping that because we need work to provide us with financial stability. The beauty of retirement is the opportunity to redefine yourself, realizing you’ve grown so much since you chose a career and started things. And so the first thing is you have to pay attention to the financial aspect early on, if you want the freedom to redefine yourself earlier while you have better health and you have more flexibility to integrate into the world and how it’s changed. And I think that’s so essential now because technology and things has taken over so much. The earlier you get on that, the more significant you can redefine yourself with retirement.” On Layer Upon Layer by Dee Dee Horton “A lot of the things described in Layer Upon Layer are things that Dee Dee either experienced herself or observed in her years of growing up as an athlete, as well as being a teacher and ultimately a coach. And I think one of the things that always bothered her was more the idea that the attention related to sports and being quote unquote successful in our society was a little bit of an easier journey or a lot of an easier journey for the males in our society. And that was always something that I think bothered her. And what also bothered her was whenever she did see in the media stories that were related to female athletes, it wasn’t about the female athletes working hard and striving and giving up things and discipline and all of that, which is the true sporting experience. Instead, it seemed to be the female athlete that was giving up the sport for either the love of a man, or it would be the male coach or the male boyfriend that came in and said, somehow motivated her and turned her into something more as opposed to having done it herself. And so I think she having a love of writing and things like that, she decided to write a book to I guess try to make people pay a little more attention to those issues. Well, interestingly, that was something that she picked very early on. And she loved it.” On Purpose “I do feel like retirement is a chance for people to redefine themselves and recognizing how much we’ve grown from the time we chose our profession and to where we are now. And in many ways, a huge part of my initial decision to retire was because my father had passed young, he was 61, and when I got to be in my early 50s and had a doc examine me where I had a little neurologic thing. And I went to see the neurologist and basically said to me goes, Well, Dave, don’t worry, this is one of two things. It’s either ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, which that’s one of the worst, that’s a bad bad when you get or it’s or it’s nothing. And the light went, wait a minute, I could be my dad so easy. So that was my chance to break away from an extremely, extremely intense, busy profession of providing cancer care for a large region in western Washington. I had spent my life, not only taking care of tons of patients, but planning out how to build clinics that it made it easier for patients to get in for treatment. And I said, Wow, this will be my chance to spend more time with Dee Dee and and continue to do more of the things that we could do together. And also free her to explore some things that she wanted to go into because she had been tied down to me being in a fixed location. And that’s the way it started. But it, of course, as we talked about retirement is going to be different, just life is going to be different than you think it’s going to be. For me, I guess what I’ve done is the heartbreak of losing Dee Dee has given me a purpose. I really felt satisfied with the gift that I had left my community, feeling like I’d made my community a better place and made a contribution.”    

A lot will change once you retire and you may need build a new a social circle. Natalie Kerr and Jaime Kurtz join us to share research-backed strategies you can use to build and strengthen meaningful relationships from their new book Our New Social Life: Science-Backed Strategies for Creating Meaningful Connection. Natalie Kerr and Jaime Kurtz join us from Virginia. ______________________ Bios Natalie Kerr, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and award-winning professor at James Madison University, where she studies social connection and loneliness. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences, and Social Influence. She is co-author of the book Our New Social Life: Science-Backed Strategies for Creating Meaningful Connection. She also designs community programs for people who want to cultivated deeper connection in their lives. Jaime Kurtz, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at James Madison University. Her research focuses on strategies for savoring and well-being and has been published in journals such as Psychological Science, the Journal of Positive Psychology, Emotion, and Developmental Psychology. Her work has been published in journals such as Psychological Science and the Journal of Positive Psychology. Most recently, she is the author of The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations. She is also the co-author, with Sonja Lyubomirsky, of Positively Happy: Routes to Sustainable Happiness, and she regularly presents seminars on mental health to continuing education health care professionals nationwide. _________________________ For More on Natalie Kerr & Jaime Kurtz Our New Social Life: Science-Backed Strategies for Creating Meaningful Connection _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like How to Make New Friends in Retirement – Dr. Marisa G. Franco The Laws of Connection – David Robson The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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. ________________________ On Social Connection “So, as humans, we have a fundamental need for social connection. We live happier, healthier, and longer lives when we feel deeply connected to other people. And while we might experience and express this need in different ways, the need for social connection is really universal. It’s so fundamental that we have built-in biological mechanisms to encourage it. When we’re socially isolated, our brain triggers cravings for human contact, in much the same way that it triggers cravings for food after a few hours of not eating. So, we literally crave connection. And that’s why so many of us felt starved for connection during the pandemic. The problem is that in everyday life, many of us simply ignore the craving or we deny it. We treat socializing like an indulgence rather than an essential health behavior, and we fail to prioritize it. We recognize the importance of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating, and we take steps to maintain them. But going out with friends, going to Happy Hour, Trivia Night, these things often take a backseat. Somehow, they feel less important when in reality, they’re just as vital to our health and well-being.  So, we really need to shift our mindset and see social connection as an essential need rather than a want.” On Meaningful Conversations  “But keep in mind that that signal, that inner kind of guidance can go a little awry with a season of extended isolation. So it can become very cyclical. So just be on the lookout for that when you tune in. I love this question because I absolutely hate small talk, and I’m always looking for opportunities to go deeper. Small talk is the norm in everyday conversation. Unfortunately, it just is. And breaking away from that can be a little scary, but there’s some research that suggests that maybe we shouldn’t be as afraid as we are.  Let me tell you about one study real quick. So they had participants engage in both shallow and deep conversations with strangers. And the shallow conversation, they answered questions like, how’s your day going so far? And in the deep conversation condition, they went a little deeper. They disclosed more personal information by answering questions like, if you could undo one mistake you have made in your life, what would it be – and why would you undo it? So pretty deep, especially with a stranger, right? Well, they had people predict how they would feel about the conversations, how much they would enjoy them, and then they reported on their actual experience. And what they found was that people expected to prefer the shallow conversation, but they actually preferred the deeper one. And they felt closer to their deep conversation partner than to the shallow conversation partner. And the deep conversations were not as awkward as they thought they would be. Sure, they were a little bit awkward at first, but not as much as they thought. They liked the deep conversations better.” On Attention “For me, one of the practices that I’ve really tried to put into my life, in addition to going deeper in conversations, is really being aware of where my attention is when I am interacting with people. I’ve just noticed how good it feels to be the focus of someone’s attention, and being able to give that back is a really valuable gift, especially in these times when our attention is so limited, and being pulled in a million different directions. We all know how crummy it feels to be in an interaction, and somebody just picks up their phone and starts looking at their phone, or just looks away, and you can tell they’re not with you. I try my best to really give people my attention, and realize how valuable that is.  It also underscores a point that we make in the book, too, that I think a lot of people think to be liked, and to have a rich social life, you have to be incredibly charismatic, you have to have a great sense of humor, or all these stories to tell. And sure, those things help, but just being with someone, truly with someone, and giving them your attention, even if you’re quiet about it, that can also really boost connection and relationship quality. I’ve been trying to just be more aware of where my attention is, focused. So part of it, just with any habit, really starts with awareness.”

A great retirement takes work – and learning. In her seventh year in retirement, Judith Nadratowski joins us to share her lessons learned so far in her retirement journey – lessons that can help you plan better for yours. _____ Bio Judith Nadratowski is her seventh year of retirement after a 40-year career at Cleary Gottlieb, a top international law firm based in New York where she was most recently Manager, Partnership Resources & Executive Committee Matters. You can read more of Judith’s insights, ideas and reflections on retirement on her blog Retirement Commentaries. ______________________ For More on Judith Nadratowski Judith Nadratowki’s Retirement Commentaries ______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Life After Work – Brian Feutz Retirement Rookies – Stephen & Karen Kreider Yoder Strategic Quitting – Julia Keller The Vintage Years – Dr. Francine Toder _______________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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. _______________________ Mentioned in This Episode Yes Man – Jim Carrey _______________________ Do Your Homework Explore summaries of the Best Books on Retirement ________________________ Wise Quotes On Being a Beginner “…being a beginner and learning to build things from scratch. I really went into my retirement thinking I would just really easily slip into my life. And now I could do all the things I never had the time to do. And that was exactly the reason I chose to retire. I wanted to take advantage of time. I was still in my early 60s and wanted to do new things and things I had done during a very demanding career. And I also wanted to search for a new focus. I knew I needed –  I dread using the purpose word, but that sense of purpose is something that I definitely felt I needed. And I knew that I wanted to search for something that would fill that, that I could really sink into…Retirement life takes some work and it’s not going to just happen and you have to be the catalyst. You have to figure out the gaps and start filling them in…you can really seriously think that you could try something new. So what I meant by being a beginner was I had to shed all of my sense of knowing everything and really strip down to get things that would bubble up, that would be of interest to me and to really that start from scratch. Design from the bottom up. And that wasn’t so easy when you’re used to mastering your job for quite some time.” On the Transition to Retirement “But the hardest thing for me, the challenge really was that my life wasn’t just that change in schedule. But it was [when] I realized how many intangibles my job gave me that I missed. And I wasn’t even able to articulate them at first. But as I started to think more deeply about them, I realized that my job really shaped so many things about me and was always in the background. It was how I saw myself, it was how I even chose to spend my free time. It was based around my job and how much time I would spend and even sometimes how I viewed other people. It was just so much a part of me that I never realized it was so entrenched so that when I started thinking about it, I knew that I was choosing my retirement. I was enthusiastic about it, but I felt lost. I couldn’t really figure out what those things were. And when you, if anyone were to ask me, well, what do you want to do? I couldn’t really come up with good ideas. I was really pretty lost that way. So I guess I would say how I met the challenge was one baby step at a time. I really just regained perspective. I felt that first I was kind of anxious and upset about it, but I just realized how fortunate I am to be in that position. And that helped a lot. It controls your emotions. And then I just took it in baby steps. I knew what I didn’t want to do. So I could start there, even if I didn’t know exactly what I did want to do.” On Saying No “When I stepped into retirement, my default was going to be yes. And that worked. That was good in the beginning, but it’s not necessarily the approach you can follow for a long time. And so what I’ve learned is that saying no isn’t a bad attitude and it isn’t it’s not necessarily that you’re being ungrateful or…being lazy about it. It’s really you saying on track, and for me, especially when I was in more kind of emotional or feeling like if I was unoccupied or a little frustrated and not getting where I wanted to be quick enough, if I had opportunities that really didn’t work or even ones I tried that I knew they weren’t working, I would almost default to yes, because I would think, Well, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be better. But deep down , really, I knew these were not working. So what I’ve learned is that having that kind of mission statement of what your values and goals are – and I mean goals in a very broad way – just what matters, how you want to spend your time – and if you have that as sort of your benchmark, it helps you,. It’s your framework, and it’ll help you make decisions. So saying no is a very positive thing is what I’ve learned.” On a Weekday Mindset “I think they would say it’s flexible within its structure and well-balanced and I think the part they would probably notice the most is that I’d like to keep a Weekday Mindset. I found what worked for me when I retired was I didn’t like that notion of every day is Saturday – that was like Oh my gosh! That was dreadful to me and I needed to put myself back on a weekday schedule. I’m certainly not strict but what I mean is that I use the mindset of the Monday through Friday rhythm and I like that. My work – and I put it in quotes ‘my work’ – which would be like my projects, my writing scheduling, meetings and things like that I do on a weekday schedule. Saturdays and Sundays, the weekends, are my time for leisure and fun activities and even desserts. So it works for me.” On Advice to Friends on Planning for Retirement “I know a friend who has said to me my retirement is just going to be sitting on the beach with a book. That might be what you think, but it really won’t be. I just want them to think about it as a lifetime and so I’d recommend reading to them. Think about why they wanted to retire. It’s not just about taking a vacation or stopping work, but what is beyond that? What does it mean to you? Think about what they think they might miss about their job. There will be some gaps to fill and there’s ways to do it, but you need to know what they are before you can start to do that.  I think also that there are retirement coaches and career coaches who are very helpful and can help you even a year out, I would say even more, but a year out would be a nice time…Even if you don’t know exactly how you’re going to do,  just build some awareness because I think that was something I lacked was that awareness. It’s very important to me and why my blog was born is to build some awareness. And the other thing I would tell them though is not to get too caught up in thinking you have to have all the answers. Because you want to,really be in the time and get to know who you are and what matters to you.”  

What’s the current stage of retirement and aging in the US? And how did we get here? James Chappel discusses his new book Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, the impact of The Gray Panthers and why The Golden Girls is “the most important TV show in the history of American aging.” James Chappel joins us from Durham, North Carolina. ___________________ Bio James Chappel is the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center. He’s the author of the new book Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, a history of aging, health, and disability in the USA from 1920 to the present. It appeared in November 2024 and has been widely reviewed in outlets like The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times. He received his PhD from Columbia University. At Duke, he works on the intellectual history of modern Europe and the United States, focusing on themes of religion, gender, and the family. He has published two books and published widely in both scholarly and non-scholarly sites (The New York Times, The Nation, and more).. He is currently co-chair of the Prison Engagement Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and founded the Duke-in-Prison lecture series. _______________________ For More on James  Chappel Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel _______________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode The Simpsons clip (2:45) _______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy – Teresa Ghilarducci Life in Retirement: Expectations & Realities – Catherine Collinson Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller ______________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. 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. __________________________ Wise Quotes On The Gray Panthers “Actually, the 60s was a lot more intergenerational than people remember. There are a lot of older activists. And there also was a lot of old age activism. So what the finally winding back to your question, they’re kind of like the 60s for old people. Obviously the name, right? So the Great Panthers, it’s obviously a play in the Black Panthers. Black Panthers are, among many other things, kind of the more radical wing of the Civil Rights movement, just as the Gray Panthers were the more radical wing of the old age movement. There was a kind of mainstream old age movement, which was in favor of things like Medicare, which was great, you know, they succeeded. The Gray Panthers are more like the talented movement. They are more like less dramatically reoriented American society towards older people. And so they do a lot of amazing things that I think ought to be remembered. And I think that in 2025, what’s most striking about their activism is how, in today’s words, we’d say it’s very intersectional. So they don’t think about old age by itself. They actually think about old age and environmental justice. They think about old age and how to have like a greener society. They’re already doing this in the 1970s. They’re thinking about old age and racial justice. They’re paying a lot of attention to communities of color. They’re paying a lot of attention to nursing home residents. This is that period when the mainstream discussion of the AARP groups like that were paying very little attention to nursing. But the Great Panthers said, no, we have to pay attention to the most needy of us. We need to pay attention to nursing home residents. Let’s empower them. Let’s organize them. Let’s organize nursing home workers to improve their conditions and wages. And so I think that if we’re thinking in the 21st century about a [vision], which maybe not all of your listeners are, but I think it’s an important thing, a kind of more radical transformative vision for old age and old age policy, I think the Gray Panthers are the most interesting kind of recent group for things like that.” On The Golden Girls “A show like Gracesand Frankie, I don’t know what would the viewership numbers are,  probably a couple of hundred thousand people or so, whereas The Golden Girls, this is 30 or 40 million people watching it. I guess a lot of your viewers probably skew older if they might remember that world, but any younger listeners, which, might not know or even remember that once upon a time, a TV show could actually matter, because it’s watched by so many people. And The Golden Girls is one of those shows. So I think the Golden Girls is the most important TV show in the history of American aging. In the early days of TV and film, you do not see that many older people represented. And after World War II, when older people are represented at all, it’s mainly a negative portrayal.  Then the Golden Girls comes on the stage in the 1980s. And it’s a great show. It’s very funny. But what makes it revolutionary is that it’s a show about older women living alone. It’s basically about congregate housing. I can experiment in congregate housing for older women in 1980s Miami. That’s the show. It’s four older people, they aren’t even that old – three of the four characters are in their mid fifties, and one of them is in their mid seventies. And they have like kind of low status jobs, they’re substitute teachers and social workers, things like that. It was kind of interesting is that these are either single or divorced women in low status, low paying jobs. You would think a show like that would be like a depressing show. And that was always seen as like the worst case scenario. Here we have like retired unmarried school teachers, that’s like the neediest population of older women. And their children do not help them. But this is not a sad show. It is a happy show about what old age can be in late 20th century America. And so the show is a comedy. And if you watch the show, they do all kinds of things like they are like, it’s a very sexually liberated show. All four of the women are sexually active, like outside of marriage. They are doing lots of jobs. And so even though they’re, they’re really like in their over the course of the show, they’re kind of in their late 50s, early 60s.” On Retirement “Some of it is financial. Some people need to stay in their job. But a lot of people, including people in my own family, they don’t know what to do without their job. So they stay in their jobs, which has a numerous kind of negative consequences for the firms and also for younger workers, mainly because they don’t know what to do with retirement. And so I think that, I don’t know, a bigger public conversation about what retirement is, I think that we’re overdue for such a conversation.”