Young at Heart with Kojo Nnamdi

Mary Kay Fleming thought she knew what retirement would look like. A developmental psychologist and humor writer, she assumed that when her husband Don retired, life would carry on much as before. He’d stay busy. Maybe even renovate the house.  That’s not what happened. Instead, the scientist she’d known for decades surprised her by turning to poetry—an old, unspoken dream that finally had room to...

Aging changes what the body can do.   Kathie Hewko knows that firsthand. A 79-year-old real estate agent, she long marked time with an annual swim beneath the Golden Gate Bridge—until illness forced a reckoning with what it means to keep dreaming when the body no longer cooperates.  After completing her swim beneath the bridge, "it was very spiritual to me," she says. "I just felt so free." She's...

Arlene Okerlund has always trusted the detours.  A Shakespeare scholar and professor of English, her life has been shaped by chance encounters, unexpected pairings, and a philosophy she sums up simply: “Serendipity rules.”  Again and again, she followed curiosity—even when it didn’t fit neatly into a plan.  One curiosity lingered for years. Every June during her childhood, when the carnival came t...

For nearly thirty years, Chris Donovan built a life that looked solid from the outside.  By day, he worked for a steady paycheck as a telephone repairman. But alongside that life ran another one—quieter, mostly hidden. Since childhood, Chris was always doodling. And not just any doodles. He drew shoes.   “I was staring at shoes all the time,” he says.   The problem was that becoming a shoe designe...

For most of their working lives, Lori and Mike thrived in high-stakes control rooms as air traffic controllers, where calm, precision, and authority were essential. “That was a huge part of my life,” Lori says. “That’s what I was.”   So when retirement finally came, the relief was real—but so was the fear. Walking away from a job that defined them left an unexpected emptiness.  A chance night out...

Just before her 70th birthday, Marian Knapp crossed a finish line years in the making: she earned her PhD. “It didn’t matter that I was the oldest student,” says Marian. “The age difference didn’t make any difference at all.” In this episode of Young at Heart , Marian reflects on returning to the classroom later in life — and how her years of lived experience actually helped her excel academically...