 Okay, bingo, we're back. I'm Jay Fidel. Welcome to Community Matters on Think Tech. Our show today is called AARP Hawaii Disrupt Aging at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. That's lumping it all together. All the strings. We're going to talk about disrupt aging. It's a call to shape the future on aging. Our guests on the show are Jackie Boland from AARP and Mike Malahan, who is an author who writes about a lot of stuff and travels a lot, okay? We challenge outdated beliefs about what it's like to be aging, and we're going to just generally look and see what happens to two seniors and to the world in general as they perceive seniors, and we're going to try to make some greater sense of that, not only here and now, but at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival coming soon. Welcome to the show, Jackie Boland. Thank you for having me. Mike Malahan, welcome to the show. Delighted to be here, Jay. Yeah, great. First of all, what is AARP? AARP is a membership organization for people 50 and older. We advocate, educate, and provide service for people 50 plus in their families. All right. And how big are you? Well, here in Hawaii, we have about 148,000 members, and nationally, we have about 37 million. 37 million. That makes you a very powerful organization, no? Yes. So what are your initiatives nationally? Well, of course, our big push is currently to protect healthcare for older adults, including protecting Medicare for those who have paid into it throughout their lives, and making sure that the key pieces of the Affordable Care Act that benefit older people stay in place, such as not allowing discrimination based on age and pre-existing conditions, making sure that people have essential health benefits. The job's not over, you know. No. Yeah, I do keep reading about attempts by some members of Congress to undo those things. And you took a position on this thing with the American Health Care, Affordable Health Care Act recently, huh? We didn't like it. Well, you succeeded in that regard. Good for you. You know, we need you. You know that. I do. And we can't do it alone. We need everybody that's in our membership and everybody that's connected to them. Yeah. Good work, Jackie. Okay. And you're an author, actually, Mike. That's right. You've written about a lot of things, traveled a lot of places. You are an eternally active guy, sounds like, to me. Well, I've been very, very lucky. I retired from the corporate world when I was 59, and most of my relatives were dead by 60, and I thought I might be joining them. But I looked at their lifestyle and made some adaptions, and here I am at age 74, still kicking. You're a young man. Look at him. Can we zoom in on Mike? Let's just take a look at him closely. Today I feel young. Look at the camera. You can see how young Mike looks. Right. Right. I'd get home and take my nap. Not a nap, Jackie, but still very young. I had to make up on it. So you visited 200 countries, so what period of time is that? Well, I started with Mexico and Nigeria in 1966, never dreaming that someday it would be 200. Sounds like Peace Corps. Peace Corps. This reminds me of Peace Corps. Peace Corps days. You got the bug when you were in the Peace Corps, didn't you? I had a gene, a curiosity gene I didn't know I had, and that released it. Yeah. It's a wonderful, or has been, I don't know how active it is today, but in those days when you and I were younger. It meant something. Yeah, I heard the call. I heard the call. Kennedy's call. Well, Kennedy's call. And I feel that, and this is sort of part of our whole discussion, that part of being a citizen in this country is to be a citizen diplomat. Part of being a citizen in this country is to do public service, national service, kind of one kind or another, so that you make contributions to the greater good, the common good, and to the nation in general. And the Peace Corps was and is a wonderful way to do that, I think. Yeah, that was a time when people looked up to America. I'd go into small villages in Nigeria, there'd be pictures of Martin Luther King and Jack Kennedy. Amazing. Make your heart sing. They did. They did. Yeah. So why did you get out? Well, you spend your two years and you're out. It's a two-year deal. Okay. And then I went into the corporate world for 40 years and then finally came back to retirement. Yeah, so there was a moment where you said to yourself, Mike, I got to get out of the corporate world. Yes. I got to get into something that suits my spirituality or whatever. What was that moment like? You know, I always dreamed in my heart I was a writer, but writers, most of them don't make any money, so I thought that was the road to poverty. So I was fortunate in my corporate days, my last couple years were good, and I was able to afford to retire and follow my passion and get in shape. I was way overweight when I retired, so I was able to get on that. So what kind of books have you been writing? Well, I've written a lot of books, but two that are published. One was making millions of direct sales, that was 12 years ago, still get royalties, McGraw Hill. Really? I've published Picturebrite as part of a trilogy honoring the 442 and the 100 that fought in Europe, and as I wrote that book and I visited the battlefields in Italy and France, I started thinking about the mom and dads. So that little back story became Picturebrite, and that novel all by itself starts in Kyushu in 1905 and ends the night before Pearl Harbor. Great story, gosh. How did you connect up with this guy? I was lucky. Roger Jelnick, the president of the Hawaii Book and Music Festival, connected us. Okay. Does that mean that Mike is in the Book and Music Festival? Are you going to speak there as a panel or what? I'll be on a panel, and I will have my own booth. All right, folks. So this is a good time to talk about the Book and Music Festival and what it means to AARP. Tell us about that. Well, for the first time since I've been working for AARP in Hawaii, our national CEO and author of the book Disrupt Aging is coming to Hawaii. I don't know who that is. That's Joanne Jenkins. Yes. Book picture, book picture. Okay, there we go. All right. This is her book recently. And many people find this to be a pretty provocative book with some interesting ideas. And I thought the Book and Music Festival would be a great time for people here in Hawaii to start talking about those ideas. So she'll be coming out to Keynote on Disrupt Aging, and then on Sunday we'll have seven panels. Sunday, what day? So give us a Sunday. So she'll be out on May 6th, which is a Saturday, Keynoting at the Book and Music Festival. Which is in behind City Hall there. Right, the Fosse Civic Grounds. And then we'll have a booth both days, but on Sunday we're sponsoring a Disrupt Aging Pavilion. So we have seven different panel presentations with Hawaii's thought leaders and people who embody the concepts that are in Disrupt Aging. And it's just a really good chance for people to see it personalized and to ask questions. So it comes together. So it's for thinking people, I think, is what I get from you. And the question is, what is the challenge about Disrupt Aging? What is her book around, if you don't mind telling a little about that. And where are we, including AARP, including Mike and his writing and thinking, where are we going on new concepts around aging for, what did I say before the show again, aging is not only for the seniors, it's for everyone. You can quote me, I think that. So what is it? Well, let's think about the 50th birthday, because before we came in, Mike, brought that up. So many people will say to me, I got that letter in the mail, I turned 50. And AARP is saying, you know what, you should be celebrating that moment. At no point in history has 50 been the middle until now, right? So you make it to 50, and you now have about 30 more years. When you're in your 20s and you're looking to 50, you're excited about those 30 years. And because of all these advances in health, we think you could be excited about 30 years after 50. And disrupt aging is really about how do you line up for that? How do you make the most of it? Get rid of your fear, overcome the stereotypes, and set up the systems that we need to have in place so that you can thrive. There's no ideal disrupt aging life, but there are people who are courageous enough right now to be showing how we can live that way. Yeah, so it's a double entendre. I'm beginning to get it. It's like disruptive technology. It means this isn't like it was before. It's a different idea, and we're going to change your way of thinking. When we say disrupt, we mean we're going to jostle you. We're going to change you somehow. We're going to do it different. We're going to do it different. And it may seem a little bit shake up, but it's OK, because sometimes you have to shake up in order to go maybe a different direction. So talk about your experience at 50 or 59, whenever it was. You had a disruptive experience. All of a sudden, you saw aging differently than you had seen it before. You saw it as a productive time, a writing time, a thinking time, a philosophical growth part of your life. How was that? You know, I think of it as, from our age 60, the age of uncertainty. You never know if today is your last day, but you live it like you've got 20 or 30 more years. So you set up to age 80. Well, I'm 74. My horizon is 90. So I live every day as if I'm going to live to 90, knowing that something could happen tomorrow. You know, every year that you stay alive and healthy is one more year the doctors come up with a new pill they keep you alive one more year. So I live a life like I'm going to live for a long time. But why? Why do you need this longevity? What is in it for you to have this longevity? You know, that's a great question. Nobody's asked me before. I think you have to have a compassion. There's things you want to do. You don't want to die right now, because you've got all this thing to do. I still got places to travel, books to write. I'm active with the Rotary Club. There's always something I want to do, a book I haven't read. So I think that's part of it. It's probably in that book. You have to have a purpose for being here tomorrow. Yeah, but you know, I get out of this. There's another element here I think we should dwell on for a minute. It's not just for you. That's what I get out of this. It's not just for you. And I don't think you're talking about just for me. You know, it's not really that at all, because you're doing things for others. You're sharing, sharing. OK, and maybe sharing is part of this. Just tell me yes or no. Yes. All right, that's it. Yes, yes or no, you got it. So Jackie, what are we doing to try to disrupt? I mean, what is the different model that you'd like to see evolving out of this conversation? Well, I think first of all, I can't remember who it was that said youth is wasted on the young, right? Or aging is not just for seniors. Oh, there we go. OK, OK, all right. Well, I think the different model is if people can plan ahead for those longer years, then they can live in choice about how they spend them. And it may be that they'll be of service to their community. But the big opportunity is that they can embrace something that gives them a sense of purpose. Whereas a lot of times when we're younger, we're scrambling to put a roof over our heads, feed our kids, just pay the bills, pay off our college debt. We don't feel that freedom that if we can just get past those aging stereotypes and realize if we have invested our money, saved for retirement, we have a lot of opportunity to explore. And older adults, actually, with all those years of experience behind them, if we could harness that for the good of the community. Community, I heard you say community. Yeah, the community. But just the betterment of the world, that's a huge treasure that we have. So I think one shift is to say a lot of people view aging as a burden to society. And there are some challenges that come with it. But there is also just this big potential resource right there. The second thing is to look at money. I have so many friends who don't plan for the future, who don't believe that Social Security will be there for them and somehow seem to think that they're going to die when they hit 50. And we know it's not true. So if we know it's not true, how are they going to plan so that they can have those choices in the second half of their life? Oh, yeah. And how are we going to plan so we can discuss this and understand the challenges and the overcoming the challenges in the second half of this show? That's why we take a break right now. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 AM. And we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. Hi, my name is Seymour Kazimurski. I have a show called Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Our show is about opening minds and facilitating conversations. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what we're going to be talking about. I have no idea who our guests are going to be. But I guarantee you we're going to have lots and lots of fun. Aloha from Seymour's World. My name is Calvin Griffin, host of Military in Hawaii, which airs here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 11 AM. Lee Jones will be talking about issues concerning our military, veterans community, and other related issues that concern all of us. Bingo, we're back. And we have two things to cover before we sleep. Number one is the problem with money. The other one is the problem with health, including mental health. Which one do you want to tackle first? How about money? We talked about during the break. Well, money, I talk about 401Ks. A lot of people, 401K is retirement. And they want to dip in temporarily. And they forget that if age 30, if you take out $20,000, you're taking out $160,000 by the time you're 60. Because money tends to double every seven years. Over 30 years, figure it out, $20,000, $160,000. That's why a lot of people at age 60 don't have the money because they dipped in early for in-emergency. Yeah. Well, and there's a lot of people who don't, not only don't understand the rule of the 78, but they don't understand about saving in general. Or in this country, there are a lot of people who never got exposed to that at all. And they were on the hamster wheel, all of their productive lives, and never had either aspirations or success. In building wealth. And the question I put to you, this is not an easy question. So what about them? They don't have any money. They're still in trouble. And they've been in trouble financially all their lives. Now they're in disrupt aging, if you will. Can they disrupt aging as well as somebody who has some money? Probably not. I mean, well, it depends on your definition. There's always a way you can serve your community and find a sense of purpose. But your choices are definitely broader if you have more resources. So a couple things that we're doing, one, we're trying to educate people about social security and how it works. Half of people in Hawaii take their social security early, which means they receive a reduced benefit for life. So just letting people know the implications of that. The second thing is looking at ways for people in the private sector in Hawaii to save for retirement. Over half of employees of private small businesses here in Hawaii don't even have an auto IRA. That is totally tragic. Yeah, and we know. That's so unfair. We know that people who do have that are 15 times more likely to save. So how can we work with small business to set something up for those folks so that they have an opportunity to save for retirement? Did you find receptivity? I mean, does people respond to that? Small business responds to that when you suggest that? You know, I've done a number of listening sessions with small business, and many of them didn't even know they could offer an auto IRA where they didn't have to be the fiduciary. So I think part of it is they're small. They're not thinking about the HR side of things. So part of its education. We're also trying to pass a resolution at the legislature to get a work group together to look at ways to make it easy for them. So this is something that's moving right now. That's very productive. It's a good idea. So what about the fellow who gets to retirement age and his job is gone and his work chapter is over and he doesn't have a lot of money? What does he do, Mike? I've been very lucky, so I didn't have to face that personally. But I do know from supporting community colleges like the KCC that those people who can go back to school and get some type of technical skill, it's tougher because you don't have the same mental acuity maybe at 60 that you did at 30. Speak to yourself. Yeah. Thanks a lot. I'm out of here. But the concept of the purpose of education, and it is tough. Sometimes you get to be 60, 65. You've been beaten down so much, it's hard to get that energy to come back up. I know you run into that all the time. But school is a wonderful democratizing effect, isn't it? It is. The community colleges. The school you can be smart again, you can learn, you can be lifelong learner. And you think you have to dedicate yourself to that. You have to expect to work, I think, to 7072 now. I think that should be the new normal, 7072 is the time you work. That's why you should hold up on taking social security until you're 70 or 7071, yeah. And one thing to know, there actually is brain research that shows that older adults can learn just as well as younger adults. It takes a little bit longer, but they can continue to form new brain cells. So there's no reason why they can't learn a new skill in later life. And they can have gratification out of it. Exactly. So even if they're not as quick, they can still get the gratification that keeps you going. Sure, sure. Let's talk about medicine for a minute, okay? A few minutes. Sure. Okay, forget what happened in Washington and what's gonna happen in Washington. I think we can expect, and during this administration, a lot of thrills and spills and rocky roads on that. But if I hit retirement age, the natural human species effect is I start to slow down physically. And my body, like the deacons' chariot, begins to come apart. And the wheels come off, okay? And this could be a bad day. It could be demoralizing at the least and maybe worse than that. It could be damn depressing, if you will. Can I reframe that for you? Please, why don't you ask the question you think I should ask you? So I think Mike would agree that one thing about health when you reach the midpoint or later is that, first of all, you gotta use it or lose it. But second of all, people realize it's finite. And so you see people willing to work at it more. I did a workshop for a local employer yesterday and talked about disrupt aging. And all the people over 50 said they felt healthier today than they did when they were in their 30s. You're still paying attention. Because now they're exercising. Now they're making it a point. So, and I think Mike mentioned it after he retired was when he regained his health. Yeah, my numbers. You look pretty slim to me, by the way. Yeah, my health numbers are better today. At 74, they were at 59. My blood pressure is better. My cholesterol is better. My sugar thing is better. I'll never get diabetes. And I was the opposite. I became more active when I retired and I took the time of it. And when I watched TV, I got a little step thing I do at home and I got a stretch thing I do. So I try to take dead time. I biked here today. A lot of people don't like biking. I used to deliver telegrams, I was 17. So I'm used to biking. Back to the good old days. Back to the good old days. Retired. I just said, what are you doing? I got a bike. Telegrams. But yeah, telegram, remember telegram. So I think it's like the group you had. You can stay active. And you never know, like I say, when the last day is, but I'm gonna pretend I got 10 to 15 more active years and act accordingly. That's the ideal. And that's what to strive for. And I'm sure that's what this book is about. Disrupt aging. Disrupt aging. The process of deterioration. Disrupt that. But a lot of people out there, they don't disrupt aging. You know what, there are a lot of younger people that are obese and unfit as well. My father ran his first marathon at 50. My husband, who's right on the brink there, just this year after us being married for quite a long time and him not ever exercising, he started swimming. He swam seven. You really got to him. He swam seven miles last month. That's the equivalent of running 28 miles. And he's very consistent. So I think it's that mortality, the understanding that you gotta take charge of your health. So the other points in this book are really about, first we need to change our health systems so that instead of people being passive patients in the healthcare system, that they're active consumers. They shop around for shoes. Why don't they shop around for health? And how can they empower themselves with learning about health? So one of our panels, we're featuring... This is at the Book and Music Festival? Yes, we're featuring Dr. Virginia Pressler, who invented the... Oh yeah, she's great. She's in great shape too. The Mini Medical School at Jabskum, which is a great opportunity for older adults to educate themselves about all kinds of aspects of aging. We're having Joy Barua, who's the director of government relations with Kaiser, and he'll be talking about how the health systems are changing to accommodate that. So we just have a lot of meat around the health topic and probably could have put seven panels together just on that one. Well, I think what you're doing, not only in terms of educating about how you can improve your own prospects, but getting this 37 million people together, was that the right number? It was 137 million together so that they become a political force so that they try hopefully to structure some kind of national system which approximates better systems in other countries so we can all enjoy that as a matter of routine instead of something special that we can all assume in our lives that we're paying in to get health out when we need it. But I wanna ask you this question. So you're writing, you're doing AARP, reaching what is 150,000 people here in the state, and there's actually a million people in the state, maybe 1.3 in total, yeah. Not all of them are healthy, not all of them understand what we are talking about here today. So it's a market, you're into marketing, right? So how do we reach that market to make this effective? How do we change little minds and big minds all around the state so they understand these concepts on a large statewide scale here in Hawaii, nay? Well, I think we gotta start the conversation but I also think the baby boomers, they disrupt everything, right? They're disrupting aging with or without AARP, we're naming it and they're doing it, right? They're reinventing it as they go along and so what we're trying to do is create a movement around it. Part of disrupt aging is changing the rules. If they're not working for us the way they are, let's change them. We're building a big rail system. Why can't we have adult daycare centers and kid daycares right near the rail station so that if you're caring for a parent, you can drop your parent off as you're going into work. If you're dropping off your child, you can put them there while you're going to work. Why can't we do things like that to improve our community systems so that they support us? Yeah, it's a whole way of thinking and it's a way of dealing with the community and the government, yeah? Yeah, so I think a lot of people when they think about aging, if they are aging, they don't want to talk about it because they are in denial of it and what Joanne Jenkins is saying is let's not deny aging, let's embrace the possibilities and then work together to overcome what those challenges may be. Yeah, here in Hawaii, we can do stuff. You guys are important to us because we, if you hadn't noticed, have an expanding bell curve and our population is getting larger at the larger levels. So, okay, how about you, Michael? What would you add to that? Well, what I would add to it is that if you want to do anything, you have to read or feed your mind. When I was a salesperson, I told people how to close sales and they should read about it. I subscribe to seven different health publications, newsletters, just in some of us the same stuff all the time to remind me what to do. So people have to make the commitment and you have to feed the commitment. So if you're 60 years old and you're not subscribing to anything on health, you probably have not made the commitment to live healthy for 10 more years. And you've accepted the fact that you're gonna have problems before you're 70 and that's just part of dying. I don't accept that. I don't think, you have to accept it. But you have to feed your mind positive stuff about health. You talked about horizons and you talk about 10 years after 74. Okay, I make you 84 now, you're 84. You can be 84 too, okay? Life begins at 84, I suppose. And you know, you're a little more frail than you were at 74. Maybe you don't have the energy to do the kinds of, you know, exercise and whatnot. How does your thinking change at 84? Well, I'm not there yet. But what I hope to do is what the same is now. Today might be my last day, but at 84 I'm gonna have to do the best I can that particular day. I'm lucky, you know, I'm writing the book. I've worked with a lot of people that are octetarians, even some of the people in the early 90s. I went with one, the New Orleans, it was 93rd birthday. He was still very active. He went to the Harvard University once a week to work on cell research. So I don't think 84 is the end. Dr. Morton Adler, who wrote the great books of the Western world, was still writing stuff in his 90s. Okay, and one day he hits the wall. Everybody hits the wall. Everybody hits the wall. But why don't you just wait till you hit the wall and not start thinking you're gonna hit the wall. There will be a time when you all know that. So when you hit the wall, what's your mental state? It should be, perhaps, I'm just throwing this out for you. Perhaps it should be, well, I did a pretty good job at this. I extended my life by at least 10 years. I listened to Mike. And frankly, it all helped me. And I knew I hit the wall, but the wall's further away. So I had a better time. Is that what you're talking about? Well, how about this? How about instead of that, you say, I got to do things that mattered to me. You know, I really did what I wanted to do in my life. I think a lot of people don't get to that spot. Right, and other chapter. I admire that and other chapter. And a 10-year-old today, by the way, has a 50% chance of living to 104. So we might as well start planning out past the 80s. Yeah, I suppose, and we might be one of the early ones. We could, we could. We're out of time, Jackie. So let me ask you to look at Camera One and tell them how they can find out about AERP and the Book and Music Festival and what they should do from this point forward. Let them have it. Well, please go to aerp.org-slash-hi and you will see information about the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. We will take pre-registrations for Joanne Jenkins keynote. You can just stop by the disrupt aging pavilion on Sunday, but you can find out all about it at aerp.org-slash-hi. I'll be there, Mike, you'll be there. I'll be there. We'll all see each other together. That's it. Thank you so much for coming down here, guys. Thank you, Jay. I appreciate it. Thanks for having us. This has been fun.