Season 9

Registration for the September Designing Your New Life in Retirement is now open

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Caregiving is one of the most common, and least discussed, forces that can completely reshape retirement.

If you’re in your 50s or 60s, there’s a good chance you’ll either be a caregiver, or already are one. And yet, most people haven’t had the conversations, made the plans, or even considered what happens when a parent needs significant care.

What starts as helping out… can quickly turn into something much bigger. And for many, it quietly begins to impact their time, their finances, their relationships—and ultimately, their own retirement plans.

Today’s guest, Pamela D. Wilson, is a caregiving expert who has worked with families across the country navigating these exact challenges.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why caregiving situations become so complicated
• The early warning signs of burnout
• How family dynamics—especially among siblings—can make things harder
• And most importantly, how to approach caregiving in a way that protects both your parents—and your own future

If you’ve ever wondered how to navigate this phase of life more thoughtfully, this is an essential conversation.

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Wise Quotes

On Family Relationships

“Family relationships with aging parents and siblings are complicated… caregivers are thinking about what they’re giving up, while parents are dealing with their own losses and mortality…An elderly parent’s care needs can totally derail a child’s retirement… and most people never think about that until it happens.”

On Warning Signs

“When you get to the point where you don’t have time to take care of yourself—that is a warning sign that something is off.”

On Planning for Caregiving

“If you want to make decisions about how you live your life when you are older… you have to start planning today.”

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For More on Pamela D. Wilson

Website

The Caregiving Trap: Solutions for Life’s Unexpected Changes

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Bio

PAMELA D. WILSON is a caregiving expert, advocate, and speaker offering support to family caregivers and professional caregivers through her business of the same name. Since 1999, Pamela has been a business owner providing direct service to families, individuals, caregivers, health and care providers, attorneys, and financial planners in the areas of care management, care navigation, caregiving services, caregiver support, elder care, legal and financial appointments and estate administration.

Throughout her caregiving career, Pamela has provided education and training, advocacy, and support for family and professional caregivers. Today caregiving education, training, advocacy, speaking, and caregiver support are the main focus of her business. As the result of the aging population and increase in need for family caregivers—nearly 4 in 10 Americans are caring for a loved one—it is critical that family caregivers are knowledgeable about options, plan for care, and advocate for care needs. The increase in diagnoses of chronic disease, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease strains the ability of family members—many who became caregivers as the result of an unexpected crises— to provide daily support, navigate the care system, and to plan for future needs.

Professionals in healthcare, care agencies, care communities, and in the legal, and financial professions have a similar desire to be knowledgeable and to serve as a resource for family caregivers. Due to the specialization required in these industries and the day to day job demands, it is difficult for professionals to advise beyond the specialties in which they operate. Pamela’s expertise in the industry since 1999 provides the opportunity for professionals working in the industry to expand knowledge beyond their day to day specialties through training and education programs offered by Pamela.

Information, education, and support is offered through The Caring Generation Library®, through Pamela’s book, The Caregiving Trap: Solutions for Life’s Unexpected Changes, articles, podcasts, webinars, online support groups, speaking and training. She produced and hosted a radio program on 630 KHOW-AM in Denver called The Caring Generation®. Pamela continues to develop programming and education on topics to support family and professional caregivers. Pamela is a member of professional associations focusing on estate planning and elder care, financial and estate planning, caregiving, aging, and healthcare.

Pamela’s work has been applauded within the caregiving community because she has walked in the same shoes, and experienced the same frustrations as the professional caregivers and family members she serves. When she was 35, Pamela lost her mother to cancer and her father died a few years later. Soon after her older brother passed away, and by the time she was 40—Pamela had lost fifty percent of her immediate family. Rather than view these challenging circumstances as a tragedy, Ms. Wilson viewed them as an inspiring catalyst to answer the call in her heart to serve and help other caregivers.

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Retirement Podcast Conversations You May Love

My Mother’s Money – Beth Pinsker

Planning for Family Caregiving – Danielle Miura, CFP

On My Way Back to You – Sarah Cart

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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 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 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider 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.

Part Two is a solo conversation with Richard Eyre about the most personal project of his grandparenting work: the body of distilled life wisdom he has spent years developing for his 34 grandchildren — now published in the second half of The Grandparenting Blueprint. This conversation moves from the framework to the practice of how to translate a lifetime of learning into something children can actually carry with them. (Part One is here).

This second part of the conversation opens with Richard’s vulnerability, sitting on a beach, feeling like a “spare tire” next to Linda’s natural grandmothering, and asking what role he wanted to play. What emerged was a question every thoughtful grandparent eventually confronts: What do I actually want to pass on? Richard’s answer became a multi-year project of identifying, refining, and teaching age-appropriate life lessons,  first as “principles,” then as “tips,” and finally, when the branding breakthrough happened, as Secrets.

Richard shares the Harvard Business School case study method he adapted for nine-year-olds, the silver-dollar memorization incentive (he calls it bribery; I’ll call it incentive compensation…), how his grandchildren became unedited co-authors earning royalties, and the moment he realized the one word he most wanted to embody as a grandfather was not teacher or advisor, but champion.

For listeners who are approaching or are already in the grandparent years, particularly grandfathers, who Richard observes are often the ones quietly wrestling with questions of legacy, this conversation offers both a philosophical approach and a practical starting point.

The closing challenge to write down 10 lessons from your own life is the kind of exercise that could reshape how you  show up as grandparent for the next generation.

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For More on Richard Eyre

The Grandparenting Blueprint:How to Teach Your Grandchildren Life’s Most Important Lessons (Amazon)

Also available from the publisher at the author’s price (40% off)
https://familius.com/book/the-grandparenting-blueprint/

Use the coupon code EYREFRIEND at checkout

Website

Part One podcast conversation

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Wise Quotes

On Being a Champion

“I think what the grandparent wants to do is champion them. I’m your biggest supporter. I’m your biggest fan. I want to know what you like to do. I want to understand what you’re good at and what you want to be good at. Every kid needs a champion — and that’s probably not going to be their parents. So maybe that should be their grandparent.”

On the Case Study Method for Kids

“Case studies are really just a story. Only you, and the grandchild in this case, are the main person in this story. And I’m not going to finish this story. You’re going to finish the story. So it’s just a great way to teach.”

On Rebranding Principles as Secrets

“They came across like lectures and the kids were like enduring them rather than embracing them. And so I retooled them. I rebranded them as secrets. And suddenly I had their attention and they really started to matter.”

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Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love

Good Grandpa – Ted Page

The Long Distance Grandparent – Kerry Byrne PhD

All Grown Up – Celia Dodd

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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 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 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider 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.

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Part Two is here

What does it mean to grandparent on purpose? For Richard and Linda Eyre, the answer has been decades in the making. The bestselling authors of Teaching Your Children Values have evolved with their family, from nine children to 34 grandchildren, and along the way have developed a philosophy of proactive grandparenting that mirrors what good leadership looks like at any stage of life. In this 1st of 2 conversations about Richard Eyre’s new book, The Grandparenting Blueprint:How to Teach Your Grandchildren Life’s Most Important Lessons, we discuss:

• Why grandparenting is where parenting was 50 years ago — a new frontier for intentional engagement
• The crucial mindset shift: from manager (the parent’s role) to consultant (the grandparent’s opportunity)
• Their TEAM framework — Trunk, Ear, Assembler, and Matcher — four roles every grandparent can play regardless of geography or circumstance
• Grammy Camp, one-on-one grandfather dates, and other practices that create genuine connection across generations
• The Five-Facet Review: a structured conversation with adult children that turns grandparents into informed, effective supporters
• How knowing your family roots builds resilience in children — and what research from 9/11 survivors revealed about the power of family stories
• The four types of grandparents — from disengaged to all-in, and why the all-in approach treats grandparenting like a second career

Linda brings warmth, insights and creativity to the grandmothering side of the equation, such as music, art, storytelling, and the precious one-on-one moments that reveal what grandchildren are really thinking. Richard brings his Harvard MBA mindset (and toolkit) to the legacy-building and structured side of grandparenting, including how to give financial help without creating entitlement.

This episode is a masterclass on how to cultivate meaningful relationships with intention. It’s a powerful reminder that grandparenting, like retirement itself, is far too important to leave to chance.

Linda and Richard Eyre join us from Utah.

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For More on Linda & Richard Eyre

The Grandparenting Blueprint:How to Teach Your Grandchildren Life’s Most Important Lessons (Amazon)

Also available from the publisher at the author’s price (40% off)
https://familius.com/book/the-grandparenting-blueprint/

Use the coupon code EYREFRIEND at checkout

Website

Grandmothering: The Secrets to Making a Difference While Having the Time of Your Life – by Linda Eyre

Online Grandparenting 101 Course

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Bio

Richard and Linda Eyre are among the most popular speakers in the world on parenting and families. Their clients and audiences range from The Young President’s Organization (YPO) and major corporations and associations to a wide array of school, civic, church and community groups. They find it remarkable and gratifying that in every one of the 50+ countries where they have presented, parents have similar hopes, dreams and worries about their children regardless of economic, religious, geographic, and cultural differences.

The Eyres are authors of more than 50 books, most of which deal with work/family balance and parenting, and one of which, Teaching Your Children Values, became the only parenting book in more than fifty years  to reach #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In addition to their ongoing work with parents, their latest books are about grandparenting and “Life in Full” for Baby Boomers.

Richard and Linda have been frequent guests on national network shows including Oprah, The Today Show, Prime Time Live, 60 Minutes, and Good Morning America; and they once did regular segments on the CBS Early Show. Their parenting website, ValuesParenting.com, provides ideas, guidance and creative programs for families throughout the world.

But their most important production is their nine children (“one of every kind”) who, through the years, have helped formulate their ideas for books and speeches. The second generation Eyres and their spouses are an impressive bunch, all with university degrees from the likes of Wellesley, Harvard, Columbia, M.I.T., Stanford, and BYU and all having interrupted their university education to spend up to two years living abroad, studying, doing missionary work and providing humanitarian service. They are also doing their part to expand the importance of family through their own speaking, books, blogs, and websites, and they have presented Richard and Linda with 34 grandchildren.

Beyond their speaking engagements, the Eyre’s favorite travel projects are humanitarian expeditions to places like Ethiopia, Kenya, Bolivia, India, Romania and Mexico, and the family’s Eyrealm Foundation focuses on assisting and strengthening third world families.

Richard is a Harvard MBA, president of his own management consulting company (which worked with national political candidates and locally ran campaigns to build Symphony Hall, restore the Capitol Theater, expand the Salt Palace, extend the Central Utah Project and save the Hogle Zoo) and a nationally ranked senior tennis player. He was a mission president for his church in London and a former director of the White House Conference on Parents and Children as well as a candidate for Utah Governor. Linda is a teacher, musician, and co-founder of International JoySchools.com, an in-home, do-it-yourself co-op and program for teaching preschoolers the joys of life. Both Richard and Linda have served on numerous arts, university, and non-profit boards and do a radio show/podcast at BYUradio called Eyres on the Road that is now in its 14th annual season.

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Retirement Podcast Conversations You May Love

Grandparents’ Day – Kerry Byrne & Ted Page

The Mindful Grandparent – Dr. Shirley Showalter

The Art of Relationships with Adult Children – Francine Toder, PhD

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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 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 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider 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.

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Wise Quotes

On The Grandparent’s Blueprint

“Linda does it by group. So she’ll have her preschool group and then she’ll have her elementary age group and they all get their turn at the Grammy camp. And I’m sitting there, Joe, like, what am I? I mean, what am I doing? This fabulous Grammy is doing all these things with all these kids and I’m just sort of an observer.  And that’s really what led to this new book about these grandfather’s secrets. I thought, well, I want to leave a legacy. There’s certain life lessons I think I’ve learned as a management consultant and all the other things I’ve done in my life. And I want to  somehow condense those concepts into something simple enough that children can understand them. That’s my legacy.”

– Richard Eyre

—

On Listening 

“We just recently met with three of our granddaughters. They’re all in university. And so we went down there to meet with them and for breakfast. And it was so fun.  We call them the babes because we have these little separate groups and these are the babes. And it was so fun to be with them. But in one breakfast, we learned more about their life than we could have imagined. And what were the three things you asked? We just said, Look, we just said, while we’re having breakfast, we just want to hear your story. We want to hear your recent story. And they just got going on telling us things. And I thought, if we’d been too specific with our questions, we would have missed part of what they said.  We love to tell stories to grad kids, but what’s really great is having them tell you their story. We’ve found that if we, it sounds funny, but if we pull out a pad or a pen and take a few notes on what they’re saying, they realize we really are paying attention. We really want to know. And they tell their story and they know it’s safe with us.we we know more about them than we would have if we just spent a big family reunion and everybody because we had some one-on-one and not only that we had one-on-ones with little kids.”

– Linda Eyre

—

On Lecturing

“But the failure is the lecturing and the other failure I want to mention and I’ve made this more than Linda. Linda is way more sensitive.  I have failed in the sense that I’ve said to some of my own sons or daughters, I think you need to do a little better with this child on such and such. In other words, giving advice that’s unsolicited on parenting to your own children is almost always a mistake. It is. And we found another interesting thing. At one reunion, we did a survey, we had a survey to our adult kids and ask them, you know, do you feel like we’re too involved and not involved enough? Would you like more? Would you like less and all that. And we just saw everybody would just love everything we’ve done.  And then we got a couple of responses like, oops, we have not been very sensitive about this. He comes from a different family with a different mindset. And you really have to be so careful. So we learned so much from that. We backed off, we learned how to ask before we did things and not just blunder into it.”

– Richard Eyre

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Watch out for Part Two coming on Thursday on The Secrets section of The Grandparenting Blueprint

 

The wellness industry has a problem, and Ezekiel Emanuel is one of the few people willing to call it out. In his new book, Eat Your Ice Cream: A Contrarian’s Guide to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier, the bioethicist, oncologist, and former White House health advisor challenges both the influencers selling unproven supplements and the culture of wellness-as-self-punishment.

In this episode, Emanuel makes a compelling research-backed case that the single most powerful determinant of health, longevity, and happiness is social connection, not sleep scores, protein intake, or VO2 max. Drawing on the Harvard Adult Development Study, the longitudinal study, going strong after 88 years, and other research worldwide, he explains why loneliness is biologically dangerous, and why doctors almost never ask about it.

He also makes important points about retirement. When 40 hours of purposeful work becomes 40 hours of passive television, the brain pays a price. Emanuel argues that retirement requires deliberate design to replace the cognitive challenge, social contact, and structured schedule that work once provided. And he offers Ben Franklin, inventor of bifocals at 79, and still inventing at 81, as a model for what staying fully alive in later life actually looks like.

Ezekiel Emanuel joins us from Washington, DC.

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For More on Ezekiel Emanuel

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Bio

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor.

An oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics, he is a Special Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and held that position until August 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. In this role, he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act.

Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history. He has over 350 publications and has authored or edited 15 books. His recent publications include Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care (2020), Prescription for the Future (2017), Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System (2014) and Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (2013). In 2008, he published Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America, which included his own recommendations for health care reform.Dr. Emanuel regularly contributes to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic and often appears on BBC, NPR, CNN, MS NOW and other media outlets.

He has received numerous awards, including election to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Royal College of Medicine (UK). He has been named a Dan David Prize Laureate in Bioethics and is a recipient of the AMA-Burroughs Wellcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation David E. Rogers Award, the President’s Medal for Social Justice from Roosevelt University, and the John Mendelsohn Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, as well as honorary degrees from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Union Graduate College, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Macalester College.

Dr. Emanuel is a graduate of Amherst College. He holds a M.Sc. from Oxford University in Biochemistry and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University.

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Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love

 

The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

How Not to Age – Dr. Michael Greger

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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 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 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider 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.

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Wise Quotes

On Wellness

“Wellness should be about joie de vivre — about joy in life. It should not be only self-deprivation…Most of wellness is about don’t do stupid stuff — and most of it, we already know.”

On Retirement

“Most people when 40 hours of work drops out, 40 hours of TV comes in. Very passive. Not very intellectually challenging. That’s not retirement — that’s a slow decline…We don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about the brain part of retirement. Your brain is probably more important than your money.”

On Willpower vs. Habits

“If you have to use your willpower every time you do something, you can forget it. You have to make the wellness activity part of your habit. Doing it three to four times a week for about six weeks, that’s about what you need for a new activity to become ingrained.”

 

What if cognitive decline in your 60s, 70s, and 80s is not inevitable — but largely a function of choices you’re making right now? What can you do to stay sharp in retirement?

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a neurologist, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life. He has spent decades studying the most malleable structure in the human brain, the hippocampus, and what he’s found challenges almost everything most people believe about aging and the mind.  The brain can grow. New neurons can form at any age. The most powerful predictor of late-life cognitive health is not your genes — it’s your daily habits.

And retirement, done the traditional way, is one of the most reliable accelerants of cognitive decline that exists.  In this episode, Dr. Fotuhi walks us through his Five Pillars of Brain Health, the science of neuroplasticity, and what the research says about exercise, sleep, stress, nutrition, and brain training. He also shares one of the most remarkable patient stories of his career including a woman who arrived at his clinic in a wheelchair, seemingly destined for a nursing home, and left 12 weeks later looking for a new job.  If there’s one conversation that makes the case for designing an active, engaged, and cognitively rich retirement life, this is it.

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Bio

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a neurologist and neuroscientist who has spent more than three decades studying memory, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. He trained at Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins University, where he later served on the faculty and taught neuroscience to students and physicians.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Fotuhi has evaluated thousands of patients with memory concerns and has researched how lifestyle, medical health, and brain biology interact. His work focuses on a central question: why do some people remain mentally sharp into their 80s and 90s while others develop cognitive decline?

To answer this, he developed a practical brain-health program that integrates exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and cognitive training. His research and clinical experience led him to write The Invincible Brain, a guide designed to help readers strengthen memory, improve focus, and reduce their risk of dementia by building what he calls “brain reserve.”

Dr. Fotuhi is also the founder of NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center and frequently lectures to physicians, corporations, and community groups about preserving cognitive vitality across the lifespan. His goal is to shift the public conversation about aging—from fear of Alzheimer’s disease to proactive brain health.

He lives in the Washington, DC area with his family and continues to teach, write, and develop educational programs that empower people to take an active role in protecting their brains.

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For More on Majid Fotuhi

The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life

NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center

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Retirement Podcast Conversations You May Also Love

Make Your Next Years Your Best Years – Harry Agress, MD

Why Brains Need Friends – Ben Rein

Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy

Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath

On the Power of Narrative

“So much of what happens to our brain depends on the narrative that we have in our head about how things should happen. If you think you’re going to decline as you go into your sixties and seventies, you will. But if you have the narrative that, hey, I may be forgetting names a bit more often, but look at all the things I’m doing, look at how I’m impacting my community — there are two different narratives. If you have the negative narrative, you will get there. If you have a positive narrative, you will continue on that path.”

On Exercise 

“Exercise is really the fountain of youth. I know people talk about it figuratively, but it really is the fountain of youth. If you could bottle the benefits of exercise and give it to people as medicine, it would reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease literally — not just indirectly, directly. Walking 10,000 steps a day reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 50%. Dozens of studies have shown that. Physical movement should be a priority — the number one priority. You don’t have to do a marathon or a triathlon in order to see the benefits. Walking 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day reduces the footprints of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.”

On Sleep

“Sleep is not a passive process — it’s not like you’re just lying in bed doing nothing. During sleep, a lot of cleaning and rinsing happens in the brain, and your memories are being consolidated. The things that go on during deep sleep at night are similar to all the garbage collection that happens at night in New York City. Imagine if the garbage collection doesn’t happen for a month — it would be a disaster. When people cut down on their sleep, the brain is not as clean and crisp as it would be otherwise. Your neurons are very sensitive, fragile cells. When they don’t work, your brain doesn’t work, your cognitive abilities, your mood, your experience of daily life — the joy you would have otherwise is not there. Sleep is critically important for brain maintenance.”

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.