The Encore Project Podcast

Retirement is not the end of your productive life — for many men, it’s the beginning of their most entrepreneurial one. Free from the constraints of a corporate ladder, a boss, and someone else’s agenda, retired men are starting businesses in record numbers. And they’re succeeding at higher rates than younger entrepreneurs, because they bring something no accelerator can teach: decades of experien...

You don’t need money to start a nonprofit — you need a mission, a network, and the willingness to do the unglamorous work of building something from the ground up. For retirees who have a cause they care about and decades of professional experience to bring to it, starting a nonprofit is one of the most meaningful ways to spend the next chapter. In this episode, we walk through the full process: d...

Change doesn’t slow down in retirement — it just changes shape. Where work once defined your days, retirement opens up an unstructured expanse that can feel liberating or disorienting depending on how prepared you are for it. Add in the health changes, the losses, the shifting social dynamics, and the identity questions that come with no longer being defined by what you do, and you have a season o...

For most men, the family home is both their largest asset and their strongest emotional anchor. But in retirement, keeping that home isn’t always the smartest financial or lifestyle decision. Selling and renting offers a set of advantages that are worth taking seriously: liquidity, flexibility, freedom from maintenance, and the ability to right-size your living situation for how you actually want...

Retirement gives you the one thing that was always in short supply during your working years: time. The question is what you do with it. For senior men who’ve spent decades deferring the trip, the adventure, the curiosity they didn’t have room for, retirement is the invitation to finally show up for all of it. In this episode, we explore what it actually looks like to enjoy retirement with intenti...

Online dating has become the most common way people meet romantic partners at every age — including men in their 60s, 70s, and beyond. But for senior men who didn’t grow up with apps, the learning curve can feel steep, and the whole process can seem designed for someone half their age. In this episode, we cut through the confusion and give senior men a clear, practical guide to online dating: whic...

 When senior couples decide to marry, they often find that the traditional wedding playbook doesn’t quite fit. The big venue, the formal reception, the expense — none of it may reflect who you are or what this moment actually means. The good news is that a second or third marriage later in life is an opportunity to do it entirely your own way, and the results are often more meaningful and more mem...

 Somewhere in the busy decades of career and family, many friendships quietly faded. Not through conflict or falling out — just through distance, time, and the relentless forward motion of life. In retirement, those old connections often come to mind with unexpected warmth, and for many senior men, reaching back out feels both appealing and awkward. In this episode, we talk about why old friendshi...

 Making friends as an older man is genuinely harder than it was at 25 — there’s no campus, no team, no office to serve as the social infrastructure that once made connection automatic. But the need for friendship doesn’t diminish with age; if anything, research shows it becomes more critical to health and longevity. In this episode, we tackle the practical challenge of forging new friendships in y...

 A surprising number of men reach their 60s and realize, with some discomfort, that they don’t have close friends — not really. Acquaintances, yes. Former colleagues. Neighbors they wave to. But not the kind of friends you can call when things are hard, or who would notice if you went quiet for a week. This episode is for those men. We talk about why male friendship so often fades in the working d...

 Grandparenting today looks nothing like it did a generation ago. Families are spread across time zones, screen time competes with face time, and the cultural and technological gaps between grandparents and grandchildren have never been wider. But the research is clear: a close relationship with a grandparent is one of the most protective factors in a child’s development — and for the grandparent,...

 As men age, the quality of their family relationships becomes one of the strongest predictors of their health, happiness, and longevity. Yet many senior men find themselves emotionally distant from their adult children, estranged from siblings, or simply too busy with the habits of independence to invest in the bonds that matter most. In this episode, we make the case for family as the most impor...

 Grief doesn’t just belong to the person who lost someone — it moves through a marriage, reshaping how two people communicate, connect, and lean on each other. For senior couples who may have been together for decades, navigating shared or individual grief can be one of the most difficult tests a relationship faces. In this episode, we explore how grief affects the dynamics of a long-term marriage...

Dating after 65 can feel like being handed a rulebook written for a completely different game. The apps are unfamiliar, the social dynamics have shifted, and many men find the whole thing exhausting and slightly undignified — yet the desire for genuine companionship doesn’t go away just because the process is uncomfortable. In this episode, we talk honestly about why dating feels so hard for senio...

Not every senior man who wants a close relationship wants to get married again — and not every man who doesn’t want to remarry wants to be alone. The spectrum of what men in their 60s, 70s, and beyond actually want from relationships is broader and more nuanced than our cultural defaults suggest. In this episode, we explore the real differences between companionship and marriage for older men: wha...

 Every man over 65 has a story of something he survived — a loss, a failure, a health scare, a life turned upside down. What separates the men who come back from those moments and the ones who don’t isn’t luck. It’s resilience — a skill that can be built deliberately and that, research shows, actually tends to strengthen with age when it’s cultivated. In this episode, we explore what resilience lo...

Retirement removes the structures that once organized life — the schedule, the role, the identity — and in that open space, questions of meaning and purpose tend to surface with new urgency. For senior men, spiritual practices offer one of the most reliable paths through that territory. Not necessarily through organized religion, though that works for many, but through any disciplined practice tha...

 One of the most damaging myths about aging is that the brain stops learning. It doesn’t. Neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to form new connections and adapt — continues well into later life, and learning new skills is one of the most powerful ways to keep it active. For senior men in their 60s and beyond, picking up a new skill isn’t just a hobby — it’s a health strategy, a source of confiden...

Legacy is one of those words that can sound abstract until you sit quietly and actually think about what you want people to remember about you — not at your funeral, but in the decades after. For senior men, the question of legacy is one of the most important and most neglected conversations in retirement. It’s not primarily about money or possessions. It’s about values modeled, relationships deep...

 You’ve probably heard them your whole life — the quiet assumptions that accumulate around aging like sediment: that you’re past your prime, that learning slows down, that adventure belongs to the young, that the best is behind you. None of it is true. In this episode, we take on the most persistent myths about aging head-on, look at what the research actually says, and make a clear case for why m...

Aging stereotypes don’t just come from outside — they’re absorbed so deeply that many older men apply them to themselves without realizing it. The assumption that memory fades, that wisdom doesn’t matter, that older people are a burden rather than a resource — these ideas are both wrong and harmful. In this episode, we examine where these stereotypes come from, how they take root in culture and me...

Long-term goals are important — but they’re not what gets you out of bed in the morning. What actually drives motivation, especially for men navigating the open-ended days of retirement, is the experience of small, regular wins. Completing something. Finishing a chapter. Walking the route. Fixing the thing. These daily and weekly accomplishments activate the brain’s reward system in ways that dist...

There are quotes you read and forget, and there are quotes that stay with you — that surface at exactly the right moment and reframe how you see your situation. For senior men navigating the particular challenges and opportunities of later life, the right words at the right time carry real weight. In this episode, we share ten motivational quotes specifically chosen for their resonance with men in...

IQ peaks early and holds relatively steady. Emotional intelligence — EQ — can keep growing for the rest of your life, if you work at it. For senior men, this is genuinely good news. The self-awareness, empathy, emotional regulation, and social skills that make up EQ don’t require youthful reflexes or a sharp memory — they require experience, reflection, and intention, all of which men in their lat...

For men who’ve spent decades building expertise, the idea of simply stepping away from meaningful work in retirement doesn’t sit right — and it shouldn’t. Encore careers offer a path to channel that experience into something that serves your community, reflects your values, and sustains your sense of purpose. Whether it’s mentoring, consulting, teaching, leading a nonprofit, or starting something...