In this episode of Revolutionize Your Retirement, host Dori Mintzer talks with Michael F. Kay about what it really means to transition from career to retirement. They explore identity, purpose, joy, and the challenge of redefining success beyond a job title. Michael shares insights from his book How to Craft Your Chapter X and offers practical tools to help listeners navigate this important life transition with intention and authenticity.

Connect with Michael F. Kay
LinkedIn
Website
Podcast
How To Craft Your Chapter X

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

In this episode of the Revolutionize Your Retirement Interview with Expert Series, host Dori Mintzer welcomes back author Bruce Feiler to discuss his new book, A Time to Gather, and why rituals matter more than ever. Together, they explore how rituals help people navigate transition, reduce loneliness, and create connection in a fragmented world.

Bruce shares the personal experience that sparked the book, including his family’s transition from an empty nest to a full nest and back again, and how that led him to study group rituals around the world. He explains the difference between individual life transitions and collective “group quakes,” and why modern people are increasingly creating bespoke rituals for divorce, illness, grief, retirement, and other major life changes.

This rich conversation also explores examples from Bruce’s research, including divorce parties, grieving circles, rituals for loss, and customized ceremonies that help people face shame, fear, and uncertainty with support from others. Bruce outlines five core elements of an effective ritual: boundaries, stakes, compromise, empathy, and hope.

Connect With Bruce here:

Website: https://www.brucefeiler.com/

Substack: https://brucefeiler.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

LinkedIn: / brucefeiler

Instagram: / brucefeiler

Youtube: / @brucefeilervideos

A Time To Gather: How Ritual Created the World and How It Can Save US, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and from independent booksellers. Prior to the book’s release date of May 19th, you can order a signed copy from Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. Go to https://brucefeiler.substack.com/about to find the link.

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

This episode features retirement transition expert and former lawyer Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons, author of Encore: A High Achiever’s Guide to Thriving in Retirement, in conversation with host Dori Mintzer about how high achievers can rethink retirement as a creative “encore” rather than an ending. Elizabeth shares her own story of leaving Big Law, the contrasting retirement examples of her father and grandfather, and what she’s learned from 16 years of helping professionals design more intentional, energizing next chapters.​

Together they explore how to bridge identity beyond job titles, move from a life dominated by work to a richer “mosaic” of relationships, wellbeing, contribution, and play, and shift from reacting to others’ demands to actively creating your own structure, time use, and definition of fulfillment. Through stories of clients who rediscovered passions like jazz, community leadership, and even Broadway, Elizabeth illustrates practical tools—such as “shaking the snow globe” with reflective questions, experimenting instead of seeking instant mastery, and using annual and daily planning to align time with what matters most.​

Key ideas:

• Retirement as another “graduation,” where you carry forward your enduring self rather than your business card.​
• Shifting from a monolithic work‑centered life to a flexible mosaic that includes health, relationships, learning, service, and joy.​
• Moving from a reactor mindset (responding to others’ agendas) to a creator mindset (designing your own days, experiments, and projects).​
• Using small, low‑risk experiments to explore new interests and locations instead of needing a fully formed plan from day one.​

Connect with Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons

• Website & programs: encoraco.com​
• LinkedIn: Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons​
• Book: Encore: A High Achiever’s Guide to Thriving in Retirement (available via major booksellers)

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

In this conversation, Kerry Hannon, senior columnist and on‑air expert at Yahoo Finance and award‑winning author of 14 books, including Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future. Kerry explains why Gen X has become the “test market” for do‑it‑yourself retirement, how credit cards, student loans, and career instability have left many feeling unprepared, and why she still believes Gen X can absolutely get back on track.​

You’ll hear about the shift from pensions to 401(k)s, the squeeze of caring for aging parents while raising kids, and the very real impact of rising healthcare costs and economic uncertainty. Kerry also shares hopeful, highly practical strategies—paying down debt, using retirement calculators, working with fiduciary financial planners, and even creating a vision board—to turn anxiety into action. Along the way, Dori and Kerry explore working longer by choice or necessity, navigating ageism, redeploying your skills, and the power of multigenerational connection at work and in life.

Connect with Kerry Hannon:

• LinkedIn: Kerry Hannon
• Website: KerryHannon.com
• Book: Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future by Kerry Hannon and Jana Heron

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

In this episode of the Revolutionize Your Retirement Interview with Experts series, host Dori Mintzer speaks with Dr. Linda P. Fried, a global leader in healthy aging, about why rising longevity is a hard-won success rather than a crisis, how the shift to older populations is transforming societies worldwide, what older adults most want from later life (independence, purpose, learning, contribution, and mattering), and the many often-unseen ways older people already bolster economies and communities through work, caregiving, and volunteering, challenging fear-based narratives like the “old-age dependency ratio” and the impact of ageism and age segregation.

Key topics discussed

• The value of longer lives and demographic change: Public health advances have added decades to average life expectancy, bringing the U.S. to the brink of having 20% of its population over 65 and creating a new demographic reality shared by many countries.
• What older adults want: Global and U.S. studies show older people consistently prioritize aging in place, avoiding being a burden, maintaining relationships, having purpose, lifelong learning opportunities, respected voices in community life, and roles where they truly matter.
• Mattering, retirement, and mental health: Research highlighted in the Wall Street Journal finds many retirees feel less valued, needed, and connected, with loss of mattering predicting post‑retirement depression and illustrating how identity and health are tied to meaningful roles.
• Economic and civic contributions of older adults: Older people’s paid work and volunteering together are estimated to equal roughly 7% of U.S. GDP, while economic evidence shows older workers strengthen rather than crowd out opportunities for younger workers.
• Ageism, age segregation, and distorted narratives: Dominant policy tools such as the old‑age dependency ratio frame older adults as dependents, reinforcing ageist beliefs and obscuring real contributions, especially in a highly age‑segregated society where generations rarely mix.
• Capabilities and assets of later life: Science increasingly documents that aging can bring new cognitive strengths (complex problem analysis, values‑based judgment, breaking problems into steps), greater prosocial motivation, generosity, emotional balance, capacity for conflict mediation, and a generative drive to leave the world better.
  
  

Connect with Dr. Linda P. Fried

LinkedIn: Linda P. Fried

Learn more: Columbia University

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

After surviving a major cardiac arrest at 75 and multiple earlier health crises, journalist and author Bruce Frankel has returned to his first love: poetry. In this conversation, Bruce shares how brushes with death, a long reporting career, and a late-life immersion in poetry have shaped a renewing, spiritually grounded creative life in his 70s. He and host Dori Mincer explore what it means to say “yes” to life after illness, loss, and transition, and how attention, curiosity, and creativity can become daily practices of reverence as we age.

Bruce traces his “nine lives,” from a cancer diagnosis at 42 through early heart events to his 2024 cardiac arrest on the treadmill. As Bruce re-immerses himself in poetry after two decades away, he reflects on how aging has shifted his perspective from youthful romanticism to a more grounded, reverent love of the world. He shares how re‑reading mentors and contemporaries, many of whom are now gone, has revealed how much the poetry landscape has changed, especially in terms of voice, diversity, and themes of sickness, death, and loss. At the same time, he describes his own new project as being about renewal rather than decline, shaped by the ecosystem right outside his window: a vernal pool behind his house in Massachusetts and the “fairy shrimp” that lie dormant in the muck for years before emerging again.

The vernal pool becomes both metaphor and teacher as Bruce talks about curiosity, attention, and the invisible life that was happening in his backyard all along. He explains how learning about the brief, intense lives of fairy shrimp and their long-hidden eggs mirrors his experience of late‑life rebirth, and how showing up to write daily has invited the “muse” back into his life. Along the way, he and Dori explore the impact of near‑death experiences—for both of them—on how real and precious life feels, the spiritual dimension of attention (drawing on Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a form of prayer), and the ongoing challenge of discerning when to say “yes” to roles and responsibilities and when to step back to honor one’s creative and inner life.

Connect with Bruce Frankel

• Books:
  • What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life?
  • World War II: History’s Greatest Conflict (co-author)
  • Live Smart After 50 (co-editor)
• Co-founder, RedString
• LinkedIn:

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide,

• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, shares insights from the world's longest study on happiness, tracking over 2,500 people since 1938. The core finding: A good life comes from caring for your body and relationships, as warm connections predict health and longevity better than cholesterol levels at midlife. Privilege doesn't guarantee happiness, as inner-city participants matched Harvard men in well-being.

Guest Introduction:

Dr. Waldinger is a Harvard Medical School professor, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen master who directs the 85+ year Harvard Study. His TED Talk has over 50 million views, and he co-authored The Good Life with Marc Schulz, distilling study lessons on connection. He teaches meditation globally and psychotherapy at Mass General Hospital.

Connect With Guest:

• Website: robertwaldinger.com
• Book: The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
• TED Talk: "What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness".
• LinkedIn: Robert Waldinger

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

In this episode of Revolutionize Your Retirement, host Dori Mintzer talks with gerontologist, author, and longtime positive aging pioneer Rick (Harry R.) Moody about his latest book, Climate Change in an Aging Society. Rick describes how he came to link two topics many people avoid, aging and climate, and why he believes older adults have a unique role to play in responding to the “four horsemen of the climate apocalypse”: fire, flood, drought, and heat.

Rick and Dori discuss how climate realities are already affecting decisions about where and how to live, home insurance, health, and the ability to “age in place.” Drawing on stories from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, wildfire survivors in Paradise, California, and his own move from Boulder to the Bay Area, Rick underscores that relocation is not a full solution, as almost every region now faces some climate risk. Instead, he argues that the key is to move from paralysis and denial toward action—mitigation and adaptation—rooted in a sense of legacy and intergenerational responsibility.

The conversation highlights Rick’s core message: “Here, now, you, hope.” He explains why hope is not naïve optimism but “a verb with its sleeves rolled up,” and outlines three powerful roles for individuals at any age: citizen (voting, marching, contacting elected officials), consumer (choices about energy use, travel, food, and purchases), and investor (shifting money away from fossil fuels and toward more sustainable options).

About the Guest – Rick (Harry R.) Moody, PhD

Rick (Harry R.) Moody, PhD, is a pioneering gerontologist, educator, and author whose work has helped shape the modern conversations on positive aging, ethics, and the spiritual dimensions of later life. He is the former Vice President for Academic Affairs at AARP, visiting faculty in the Creative Longevity and Wisdom program at Fielding Graduate University, and visiting professor at Tohoku University in Japan.

Rick previously served as Executive Director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College and as Chair of the Board of Elderhostel (now Road Scholar). He has written or co-written numerous influential books and articles, including the widely used gerontology textbook Aging: Concepts and Controversies (now in its 10th edition), Ethics in an Aging Society (the first book on biomedical ethics and aging), and The Five Stages of the Soul, which has been translated into seven languages.

Key Topics We Cover

• Why climate change and aging belong in the same conversation, and why the title “Climate Change in an Aging Society” matters.
• The difference between fear, despair, and what Rick calls real hope (not optimism), including reflections from Václav Havel and David Orr.
• Mitigation vs. adaptation and what each means for older adults deciding whether and where to move, downsize, or age in place.
• How dreams can mirror climate anxiety and also point toward personal action and awakening in the second half of life.

Connect with Rick Moody

• Mind-Body Website: https://cmbm.org/governance/
• Books:
• Five Stages of the Soul
• Aging

What to do next:

• Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition
• Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts.
• Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.