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 surface. With Don at home full time and Mary Kay still working, their marriage shifted in unexpected ways. Suddenly, they were together all the time. Don wanted to talk—about everything. “He could do twenty minutes on where the squirrel went after it left the tree,” Fleming says. What felt like a small adjustment became a deeper reckoning with how meaning changes when work falls away. In this episode of Young at Heart, Mary Kay reflects on what retirement asks of us—not just practically, but emotionally. She talks about the need for “a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” and the challenge of finding purpose once the novelty of free time wears off. Drawing on her background in developmental psychology, she explores how identity and contribution continue to evolve later in life. She also speaks candidly about loss, aging, and the power of humor to make those changes easier to bear. “If you cannot keep a sense of humor,” she says, “there are ways that getting older becomes much harder.” Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life’s transitions. For Mary Kay Fleming, retirement wasn’t about slowing down—it was about finding new ways to matter. 

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 shared the water with harbor porpoises, seals, and pelicans—"a good luck symbol for me"—finding not just endurance there, but meaning. Eric Greensmith faced a different reckoning. At 17, he was "King of the Beach," a lifeguard on the New Jersey Shore. After forty years as an anesthesiologist, retirement left him staring at a version of himself he barely recognized. Haunted by who he used to be, Eric set an audacious goal: reclaiming a seat on the lifeguard stand—competing against swimmers young enough to be his children. In this episode of Young at Heart, Kathie and Eric reflect on injury, illness, aging, and the discipline required to keep going anyway.  Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life's transitions—stories that invite you to imagine what's next. For Kathie and Eric, aging didn't close the door—it taught them how to read the water differently. 

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 to town, Arlene would hear live country-western music drifting from the stage. And every now and then, a banjo would cut through the noise. “When the banjo started playing, the music just sparkled,” she remembers. “I just loved it. I’d never heard anything like it—and I fell in love with it right then.”  As a young mother, she bought a banjo on an impulse and hung it on her wall. And it stayed there for nearly four decades. In this episode of Young at Heart, Arlene reflects on what it meant to finally pick up the banjo later in life—and on the long, winding path that led her there. She talks about delayed passions, trusting instinct over ambition, and discovering that joy doesn’t disappear when you put it off—it waits. Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life’s transitions—stories that invite you to imagine what’s next. For Arlene, taking the long way wasn’t a delay. It was how she arrived. 

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 designer had always felt impossible. “ I didn’t even know how you’d begin.” The idea felt too daunting, too far out of reach—so he kept it on the side.  That changed after a frightening health scare and an unexpected wake-up call that forced him to confront a hard truth: the life he thought was “safe” was slowly suffocating him. In this episode of Young at Heart, Chris reflects on what it means to stop postponing the parts of yourself that matter most—and what it takes to pursue a calling without permission or precedent. Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life’s transitions—stories that invite you to imagine what’s next.  For Chris, becoming a shoe designer meant finally choosing the life he’d been sketching out all along. 

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 at Madison Square Garden changed everything. Watching the ushers work the crowd, Mike had a thought he couldn’t shake: That would be a great job.  What started as a curiosity became a second act. Soon, both he and Lori were ushering at concerts, playoff games, and sold-out events—immersed in other people’s excitement, energy, and joy. In this episode of Young at Heart, they reflect on how retirement can strip away identity before it offers something new. Lori admits she worried she had “started to hate people” by the end of her career—only to discover, to her surprise, that working at the Garden made her love them again. “You see it through their eyes,” she says. “And it becomes a great day.” Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life’s transitions—stories that invite you to imagine what’s next.  For Lori and Mike, retirement didn’t mean slowing down. It meant finding joy in a crowd. 

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.Marian doesn’t frame her story as extraordinary. “I honestly do not know how I did it,” she says, “but I did it.” One day she’d be writing her dissertation, the next, she’d be taking care of her grandchild—then starting again.Young at Heart brings you stories of people navigating life’s transitions—stories that invite you to imagine what’s next. Marian’s story is a reminder that learning, curiosity, and purpose don’t come with an expiration date.