What if the secret to a longer, healthier, and more purposeful life isn’t about diets or exercise routines, but about connection, purpose, and how we approach aging itself? In this conversation, Ken Stern author of the new book Healthy to 100: How Strong Social Ties Lead to Long Lives.  He shares powerful lessons from his travels across Asia and Europe, where he studied some of the most vibrant societies with a track record of longevity. From intergenerational living to lifelong learning, Ken challenges the way we think about retirement and shows how our later years can be a time of renewal, engagement, and meaning. If you’ve ever wondered how to thrive in the decades ahead, this episode will give you a fresh perspective—and the motivation to design your own path.

Ken Stern joins us from Washington DC.

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Bio

Ken Stern is the Founder of the Longevity Project, which fosters public conversation on the impact on longer lives on civil society, and engages a global audience through events, research and newsletters. Stern is the host of the award-winning podcast Century Lives, from the Stanford Center on Longevity.

Stern is the author of the new book Healthy to 100: How Strong Social Ties Lead to Long Lives. He has also been a regular contributor to a diverse group of publications such as Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and Slate.

He is also the CEO of Palisades Media Ventures, a Washington D.C. thought leadership company.

Stern was previously the CEO of National Public Radio. Prior to joining NPR, Stern was a senior executive in American International Broadcasting, beginning his media career with Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty in Munich. Stern, a lawyer by training, holds degrees from Haverford College and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Beth and their son Nate.

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For More on Ken Stern

Healthy to 100: How Strong Social Ties Lead to Long Lives

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Podcast Conversations You May Like

The Super Age – Bradley Schurman

Joyspan – Kerry Burnight, PhD

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

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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 1.6 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 Intergenerational Relationships

“The countries I visited were Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Italy, and Spain. And I picked them because they’re among the longest-lived and the healthiest countries, but there are others. I picked them because in some ways they’re actually challenging countries. They’re not ideal. Singapore is hot and notoriously stressful. People in Spain really smoke a lot and they drive terribly. Their income is not as high as other places. There are a lot of things that says they shouldn’t be as healthy as they are. So I wanted to know what was their secret sauce. When you write a book like this, Joe, as you probably know, you do a lot of research in advance and have a lot of conversations. So in some ways it’s not really set up for surprise, but there were things that surprised me. One was, so I’ll mention two things. There are a lot more than that, but I’ll mention two things. One that surprised me, that was uniform across, they all have somewhat different approaches to longevity and social connection. But one thing that was uniform was the deep commitment of each of those societies to intergenerational relationships. In the U.S., back to table 23, we actually think it’s natural to divide people based upon their age. They were all those countries. both directly and indirectly, had all sorts of strategies of bringing the generation together for the good of the young and for the good of the old. So that was one thing that was surprising about sort of the uniformity of that across all those societies.”

On Working Longer

“In Japan, I met workers in their 80s and their 90s. In Korea, I met people who were engaged in lifelong learning and, gained degrees at the same age. In Italy, people were volunteering into their 80s and 90s, and sometimes it was hard to tell who were volunteers and who was being served. The thing that actually sort of got me is that every time I asked them, all those people, almost 100%, how long they wanted to keep doing what they were doing, whether it was working or learning or volunteering or taking care of family members, the answer is almost uniformly until I can’t. And that was sort of the anthem of the trip, until I can’t. There was no notion that like at 65 I have to turn it off or 62 I’m supposed to stop doing things. The answer was I get vitality from what I do, I get meaning and purpose, and I’m gonna keep doing that until the day I can’t.”

On Cultivating New Relationships in Retirement

“The first thing I’m going to  say is don’t retire or don’t retire casually, right? Or don’t retire because you think it’s time to retire. So I’ll start with that. But a lot of people can retire and they retire at different ages and I’m very big on the importance of work as part of community, but that’s not going to be for everyone. And even in Japan, which has the highest percentage of older workers, only roughly half of people between 65 and 70 still work. So there are millions of people who can retire. So I think the thing is, the first thing I say is treat those years after retirement the same way you’ve achieved the years before retirement.You have a plan, think about how you’re going to be engaged. Don’t treat those years as any less valuable than the years that preceded it. So maybe work, maybe part-time work, it might be volunteering, it might be lifelong learning, it might be the clubs you’ll join, the groups you’ll form. But treat it with the same seriousness and purpose. It’s really hard, as you said, to often replace those networks. You spend 40 years or so at work building up relationships, talking to people every day. They may or may not be your friends, but they’re your network. They’re the people who you engage with. And then they’re gone. I’m almost in the snap of the finger. And you can’t just replace that unless you’re looking for other ways to engage with people and with ideas.So my friend, Mark Friedman, who’s also written great books on the subject, says that we’re sort of designed like jigsaw puzzles that fit together, the generations fit together. And I think what sort of the evidence shows and these things I saw is that just an enormous value that different generations bring together, it works, and it’s a lot of different contexts.It’s when you have multi-generational workforces, multi-generational work groups, they tend to do better than single generation work groups. They bring different ideas, different experiences, and it’s true in community as well. When you find ways to bring the generations together, people do better. Kids do better, tons of evidence about how that multi-generational having people who aren’t members of the family is actually the single most important thing in terms of childhood development. But it’s also really good for older people, whether you’re 50 or 60 or 70, just the opportunity, the vitality the young people bring to you, the opportunity to learn from other generations to have purpose in raising the next generation.”