The Retirement Wisdom Podcast Retirement Wisdom

You're wise to be planning for your retirement. But the best-laid plans can be turned upside down in an instant. Sarah Cart joins us to share her experience and her new book On My Way Back to You: One Couple's Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope.



Sarah Cart joins us from Massachusetts.



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Bio

Sarah Cart was raised and educated in New York and New England. As a freelancer, she wrote for multiple local publications while she and her husband, Ben, raised four sons in northeastern Ohio. Upon becoming empty nesters, the two moved to the Florida Keys, but they returned every summer to the Pennsylvania Poconos, where each had lifelong family connections. Then came Covid. The pandemic, combined with Ben’s health issues, necessitated their sheltering in place in Florida for the entirety of 2020. In the wake of Ben’s undergoing miraculous lifesaving measures, they have been afforded the unanticipated gift of a future and, more than ever before, relish time spent with family and friends.



Sarah Cart’s On My Way Back to You is a first-hand account of the rollercoaster world of lifesaving transplants and the unimaginable challenges Sarah faced as she struggled to manage her husband’s devastating illness and to save his life, their marriage, and her sanity.



Throughout her 42-year marriage, writer Sarah Cart has enjoyed a life of “gloriously controlled chaos,” as she and her husband, Ben, a successful entrepreneur and seasoned outdoorsman, embarked on numerous adventures with their four active sons. Then the unthinkable happened.



In suspenseful and heartrending detail, Cart shares how Ben developed an incurable autoimmune condition that was manageable and under control one minute and threatened to kill him the next, landing him in the ICU as the Covid pandemic closed the world down. Thrust into the role of nurse and caregiver, Sarah joined the ranks of 39 million Americans who champion and care for an ailing loved one.



In addition to confronting doubts, fears, and endless setbacks, aggravations, and red tape, she also had to consent to daunting procedures on Ben’s behalf. Too, there were the months-long Covid-era restrictions on hospital visitations and the post-surgery snafus with home healthcare personnel. Thank goodness for the heartfelt communiques with family and friends, all of which reflect the faith, fortitude, grit, and grace that sustained her.



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For More on Sarah Cart



On My Way Back to You: One Couple's Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope



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Podcast Episodes You May Like



Ride or Die – Jarie Bolander



The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D.



Planning for Family Caregiving – Danielle Miura, CFP



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Wise Quotes



On Perfection vs. Good Enough



"Perfection is not always a good thing. I never perfected being a perfectionist, but I like to know that things are done well and right and the way they're supposed to be and the very sobering idea that if we had known before Ben went into the hospital that he had a broken hip, which is the kind of thing I mean, I was his caregiver, how could I not know that? That's unforgivable. But if we'd known it, he wouldn't have been a candidate for transplant. That just blows my mind. Not all the examples are that huge, but well, another one is he probably wouldn't have been a candidate for transplant if it hadn't been the COVID pandemic."



On Gratitude



"Over the course of Ben's being in the hospital, I had taken to sending emails to family and friends on a regular basis to keep everybody on the same page. And I had all those emails, and in the beginning,

There are a lot of variables to consider in planning for retirement. A big one is longevity. We don't know how long we'll live, but we should plan for a long life. But there's more to consider than just our lifespan. Rejoining us is Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of Age Wave, to discuss her new book Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, a guide to living better longer by proactively attending to your healthspan, your brainspan and your wealthspan.



Maddy Dychtwald joins us from California.



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Bio

Recognized by Forbes as one of the top fifty female futurists globally, for nearly 40 years, Maddy Dychtwald has been deeply involved in exploring all aspects of the age wave and how it’s fundamentally transforming our lives and the world at-large. This has led her to become an award-winning author, acclaimed public speaker, and thought leader on longevity and aging, health, wellness, and the new retirement.



Maddy co-founded Age Wave, the world’s leader in understanding and addressing the far-reaching impacts of longevity and our aging population. The Age Wave team has worked with more than half of the Fortune 500 in industries ranging from healthcare and medical technology to financial services and consumer products.



With women at the forefront of the longevity revolution, Maddy has dug deep into their specific longevity-related wants, needs, challenges and opportunities. As a researcher and social scientist, she has led numerous acclaimed studies, including the landmark Women, Money and Power sponsored by Allianz and Women and Financial Wellness: Beyond the Bottom Line for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition, she has been involved in more than 25 thought leadership research studies worldwide on longevity, aging, retirement, health and wellness, family and social connections, purpose, caregiving, finances, and leisure, which have cumulatively garnered more than twenty billion media impressions. As a blogger and member of The Wall Street Journal’s Expert Panel, Maddy’s posts on leadership, wealth management, and financial planning have topped the most-read lists. Her insights and research have been featured in prominent media outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR.



Maddy has written four books, including the award-winning Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better, and the children’s/young readers’ book Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. Her highly anticipated new book, Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, (Mayo Clinic Press, May 2024) will provide an insider’s guide to living better longer, covering everything from fitness and nutrition to hormones and ageism, from sleep to purpose, from navigating the healthcare system to the role of finances.



Over the years, Maddy has herself become part of the age wave and has experimented personally with how to increase her own healthspan, brainspan, and lifespan. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Women Against Alzheimer’s and serves as a board member of the non-profit BrightFocus Foundation, which funds cutting-edge research to cure diseases of the brain and eye. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia in the Active Aging and Longevity 2 Fund. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia, a collaborative women-focused investment platform in their “Active Aging & Longevity Fund 2.



Maddy and her husband Ken were awarded the prestigious Esalen Prize for their outstanding contributions to advancing the human potential of long-lived men and women worldwide. An empty-nester, she is highly involved with her adult children and her granddog.



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It's time to step back and look at the best of our podcast conversations earlier this year with some brief clips to help you retire smarter.



Links to the full conversations are below:



The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman



The Portfolio Life – Christina Wallace



Rightsize Your Life for a Brighter Future – Marni Jameson



From Cravings to Control – Revamp Your Habits – Dr. Jud Brewer



Working Identity – Herminia Ibarra



The Emotionally Intelligent Retirement – Kate Schroeder & Nick Wignall



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Other "Best of" Podcast Episodes You May Like



The Very Best of 2022



The Best of 2021 – Retirement Wisdom



Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast 2023 – Part Two



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Best Books on Retirement



Here are my recommended books (with short summaries) to get ready for the non-financial side of retirement.



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About Retirement Wisdom



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



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



About Your Podcast Host 



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



 



 

Our memory seems like a mystery. Why can I rattle off the stating lineup of the 1967 Red Sox but can't remember what  had for lunch yesterday? Charan Ranganath can explain. He joins us to discuss his new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Mattersand what we can do to strengthen our cognitive fitness.



Charan Ranganath joins us from California.



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Bio

Charan Ranganath, Ph.D, is the author of the new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters. He is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California.



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For More on Charan Ranganath, Ph.D



Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters



Website



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Podcast Episodes You May Like



The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D.



The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD



Successful Aging – Daniel Levitin



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Wise Quotes



On Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone



"...I really recommend for people to do new things and get out of their comfort zone. Novelty can be hugely important. It can be anxiety provoking for some people and you've got to be careful about that. But one of the things that we know is curiosity and novelty are associated with activity in these areas of brain that release and process dopamine. Dopamine is a modulator that, as I mentioned, promotes plasticity. Some work even suggests that if you, let's say, put an animal in a box and you let it explore this box that it's never been in before, its brain gets flooded with dopamine. Then if you give it some task, now it will be better at remembering the things that it was doing for this task. So in other words, that dopamine can have this spreading effect. So I think that is something that will improve people's memory, potentially. And also I think that kind of engagement is just good for people in general. There's also just a lot of value in seeing and feeling that you're learning. It can get very easy to get into a rut and then feel like everything is the same. Sometimes you lose that curiosity as you get older. I know because I see this in my colleagues sometimes and I'll say, Hey, what are the findings in your lab that you're most excited about? And they'll say, Nothing's new, it's all the same, we're all just rehashing the same stuff. And I find that so depressing because it is like my whole business is curiosity and I am a big believer in the power of curiosity."



On The Mind-Body Connection



"If you want to improve your cognitive functioning, or you want to retain your cognitive functioning over time and you want protect your brain health, consider that your brain is the seed of the mind and it is a part of your body. I think a lot of people have this idea of somehow I am my mind, and then my brain is separate. And it's not. It is all connected. What this means is that if you're not taking care of your mental health, your emotional health your physical health, it's going to affect your cognition and possibly increase your risk for dementia.... If you want to get in to the positives, sleep and exercise are very important."



On Prioritizing & Memory



"So at a minimum you want to prioritize, right? So I don't hear people telling me, Boy,

There's a lot we can learn - and relearn - from the younger people in our midst. They do many things in a  way that's highly beneficial for older adults. Dr. Hasan Merali is the author of the new book, Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas, which shows us how toddlers bring out the best in humanity and how we can, too. It’s a whole new way of looking at and learning from toddlers.



He joins us from Ontario.



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Bio

Hasan Merali, MD, MPH, is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario.



He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University.



His research focuses on child injury prevention in low- and middle-income countries.



He has published more than twenty-five peer-reviewed journal articles, and his writing has been featured in Science, The Boston Globe, NBC, CBC, and Popular Science. Dr. Merali lives in Oakville, Ontario, with his wife and their toddler daughter.



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For More on Hasan Merali 



Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas



Website



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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode



Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross



Auburn Sage



Who Has the Secret to Well-Being? The Answer May Surprise You.



Old People's Homes for 4 Year Olds



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Podcast Episodes  You May Like



The Power of Fun – Catherine Price



Emeralds of Oz – Peter Guzzardi



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Wise Quotes



On Sleeping Like a Toddler



"I think sleep is one of the most important ones, and for anyone interested in wellness or improving their life, I would argue that sleep is the most important one to start with. I think it's a foundation for everything else to build on. And I like the toddler routine because it is so simple and it works. And so the Toddler bedtime routine is a very easy thing to do. And if we all did it, we would all sleep better like they do, and so what you do is you set a bed time, you kind of stick to it. You got to be regular about that time. Start an hour before. None of this involves any screens, so those screens are completely off. One hour before, you're either taking a hot bath or shower and what that does actually is cool down your body and your body needs to be cooler when we sleep and so that kind of gets your body into that mode. The next thing you do what toddlers do is they have lotion put on them and certainly that's something we could all do. It feels good, massage is good but really any hygiene related activity is fine. And then finally I think we're going to talk about this later too is reading and that is the best way to end your night. It's no screens. If it's an e-reader, it is fine, but there's no other distractions. And it s a way to consolidate all that knowledge we're getting because if you read and then sleep, you're going to retain a lot more of it too."



On Laughing Like a Toddler



"If you look at a graph of age across the spectrum and how much we do an activity, there is the first cliff that we go off is really humor and laughter. And there are a whole bunch of other ones. Reading is another one. Play is a another. And some of them do come back when you're retired, which is wonderful. You know, for reading, it comes back for example when your 65. But laughter is definitely one of them that we can never reach the same level that we did have when we were toddlers. So toddlers left to themselves and they're miked up.

We're surrounded by uncertainty and we don't like the feeling of not knowing. But there's often hidden strength in some things that make us uncomfortable. Maggie Jackson's new book explores the research that shows that uncertainty is not a weakness, but instead can be a powerful tool for navigating complexity with creativity and adaptability.



Maggie Jackson joins us from Rhode Island to discuss her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure and why we should embrace uncertainty as a catalyst for curiosity - and more.



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Bio









Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her prescient writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure has been lauded as "remarkable and persuasive" (Library Journal); "trending" (Book Pal); "incisive and timely-triumphant" (Dan Pink); and "both surprising and practical" (Gretchen Rubin). Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain was named a Top 10 Social Sciences book of 2023 by Library Journal and a Top 50 Psychology book of the year by the Next Big Idea Club. The book inspired Jackson's recent lead opinion piece in the New York Times on uncertainty and resilience.

Her acclaimed book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of our tech-centric, attention-deficient modern lives. With a foreword by Bill McKibben, the book reveals the scientific discoveries that can help rekindle our powers of focus in a world of overload and fragmentation. Hailed as “influential” by the New Yorker and compared by Fast Company.com to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Distracted offers a “richly detailed and passionately argued … account of the travails facing an ADD society” (Publishers Weekly) and “concentrates the mind on a real problem of modern life” (The Wall Street Journal). The book is “now more essential than ever,” says Pulitzer finalist Nicholas Carr.

Maggie Jackson’s essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and in media worldwide. She wrote the foreword to Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics (Academic Press, 2019) and has contributed essays to numerous other anthologies, including State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton, 2015) and The Digital Divide: Arguments For and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Penguin, 2011). Her book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable.



















Jackson is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, including a 2016 Bard Graduate Center Visiting Fellowship; Media Awards from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board, the Massachusetts Psychological Association, and the Women’s Press Club of New York. For a National Public Radio segment on the lack of labor protections offered to child newspaper carriers, she was a finalist for a Hillman Prize, one of journalism’s highest honors for social justice reporting. Jackson has served as an affiliate of the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto; a Journalism Fellow in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland; and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Her website has been named a Forbes Top 100 Site for Women three times.

Jackson is a sought-after speaker, appearing at Harvard Business School, the New York Public Library, the annual invitation-only Forbes CMO summit,