Kurt Nelson 0:00 Hey, welcome to behavior groups, the podcast that explores our human condition. I'm Kurt Nelson Tim Houlihan 0:13 and I'm Tim Houlihan. We talk with researchers and other interesting people to unlock the mysteries of our behavior by using a behavioral science lens, okay? Kurt Nelson 0:22 Tim, quick question, you wanted to live to be 100 years old, and I know that's not a given for you, right? You might not, right, but if you did, if you did want to live to 100 what would you change first? Would you change your diet or your social Tim Houlihan 0:40 calendar? Oh, man, that is just not a fair Kurt Nelson 0:42 question. Why isn't it a fair question? Tim Houlihan 0:45 That's just really, that's like, it's crazy. Those are two crazy opposite things, that are they anyway? Okay? But because I talked to our guest like you did, I actually know that there is an evidence based answer for this. So let's put it to our listeners grooves. Which do you think would have the greatest impact on your longevity, your diet or your social calendar? Because today's guest argues that the answer might surprise Kurt Nelson 1:13 us, yeah. And today our guest is Ken stern, and we talked with him about his new book, healthy to 100 the book explores what really drives longevity, or a big portion of it, and we got into a pretty deep conversation about what that is, and while genetics matter, and while diet matters, most of the current evidence suggests how we live matters more. So the story isn't just about what we eat or how we exercise, it's also about how we connect. Tim Houlihan 1:46 Yeah, we got into social prescriptions, and in the UK, that's where doctors actually prescribe social connectivity. Now, then we explore why Japan's older workforce participation isn't just driven by economics. And yes, some of it is economically driven, but mostly it's cultural. Work actually provides a groove, a purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 2:11 And so we unpack the troubling trend of age segregation in America, how 55 plus communities that both Tim and I could be a part of now can be socially vibrant in many ways, but they also reinforce some of these generational divides and keep us separated from intergenerational connections and Ken challenges. The idea of retirement as this endless leisure, because endless leisure can become endless isolation. So not good. No, not good. Tim Houlihan 2:50 Okay, so this conversation isn't about the most current memes or pseudo scientific hacks or supplements. It's about belonging, purpose, community, design, finding your groove at whatever life stage you're in, and that will lead to discovering what it means to be healthy and not just alive at 85 or 95 or 100 or however long, Kurt Nelson 3:13 there you go. So if you're thinking about your career, your family retirement, or simply how to build a life that sustains you. Our conversation with Ken Stern, we think, will have a really impactful component for you and will move you. Tim Houlihan 3:32 So we invite you to sit back and relax with a generous pour of social calendar bliss and enjoy our conversation with Ken Stern. Tim Houlihan 3:48 Ken Stern, welcome to Ken Stern 3:50 behavioral grooves. Tim Kurt, nice to be with you guys today. Tim Houlihan 3:54 It's really our pleasure, and of course, we're going to get our things loosened up with a little bit of a speed round. So would you prefer to ride a bicycle or a unicycle? Ken Stern 4:06 A bicycle, I don't know how to ride a unicycle off. Kurt Nelson 4:11 Ever any inclination to try. Is there or is that just like why would I do that? I already can ride a bike. Ken Stern 4:19 I have enough trouble with bicycles to not 10 fate, you know. Kurt Nelson 4:25 Okay, what if you go, what if you really understand that my, my youngest, actually knows how to ride and rides, and we have, like, two unicycles that are now hanging up from the the you know, thing in the ceiling in the garage, and they never get used now, you look at them, and I go, maybe I'll try one day. And then I just never do, Ken Stern 4:45 yeah, but Tim was about to ask me if I could, if I could, like, snap my finger and do it. I would do it, and I would juggle as I did it, because then I would really be, you know, that would be the thing, yeah, juggle a little bit. So, okay. Right? Tim Houlihan 5:00 As the father of a son who can actually do both of those things at the same time, I look at it, yeah. I mean, he's a circus performer, so like that, that's his thing. But like to look at that, and I guess go, I don't aspire to that. I have no aspirational value. Kurt Nelson 5:19 All right, all right. Speed Round is not speedy here. So let's we'll move on to the second question. Ken, are you a coffee person or a tea person? Ken Stern 5:28 Wow, I'm neither. I am a non hot beverage person, not hot beverage. Yeah, I do not drink any hot beverage. And it's not like I don't like hot things or I don't like beverages. I just never found a hot beverage I like. So I am hot chocolate. I'm probably the Nope, don't drink it. I mean, the name, it's in the name Tim, I will and I only two, but I'm generally, it's generally just favorite form of content, content of food for me. So, yeah, just a nice, weird things about me. I don't like Kurt Nelson 6:05 people who like are non caffeine, where they you know, that's part of it. You know, different pieces I've never we've in over 500 episodes, and this is probably 90% of we asked this question. That's a first. So you are raised up here. Ken Stern 6:24 I'm honored to be the first. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 6:30 we can't do any more than this here. Ken, we're done a brand new piece of information. Okay? Tim Houlihan 6:35 Third speed round question, which is statistically better for maximizing your life expectancy living your remaining years in a big city or in a small community? Ken Stern 6:47 Oh, that's not a speed run question for me. So I think there's a lot of individual variability in that, in terms of choice and where you can find your community. I will say, though, that statistically, urban dwellers live longer, at least in the US, than rural dwellers. I don't think that probably has a lot of impact on individuals and their choices. But as a if I wanted to give a social science answer the question, it would be big cities, perfect. Kurt Nelson 7:19 All right, fantastic. Yeah, and, and we will come back to that. We'll come back to this next maybe, maybe this next one. Tim wrote all of these wonderful Speed Round questions, and he gave me four different options for this one, which he's making me choose. And they're all really good normally when, when he does this, there's like one that stands out, but there's four really good ones. So I have to pick one, and it's going to be this. Can you imagine a world where doctors begin prescribing social interactions and not just medicine? Ken Stern 7:52 Oh yeah, sure, because that word world exists. It's part of the it's social it's called Social prescribing, as exists in the UK, as part of the national medical system. And it's done episodically, incrementally here in the US, not by many, but it's, it's done. Kurt Nelson 8:15 And so with that, I mean, well, well, let's, we'll get into that later, because I have a bunch of questions about that. But anyway, we'll keep going. Tim Houlihan 8:25 Okay, well, we are talking to Ken Stern. This is such a delight, actually. So just even so far, Ken, it's just been so much fun. We're talking about your latest book. You with your latest book, healthy to 100 let's get some basic sort of facts out of the way. When it comes to living a long and healthy life, let's start with the big picture question. Where are you on the nature versus nurture question? Ken Stern 8:48 So I would have given you a pretty strong nurture behavior answer to that. There's a long line of research that actually says genetics plays a relatively small part in our life expectancy, and that things like diet, exercise, I'll talk about social connection, environment, income, education, all play a defining role in how long and how healthy, how long we live and how healthy we are. It's actually some new research that came out in the last month that actually challenges a little bit about that sort of the assumption about the balance between the two. But I still believe, just based on the balance of the evidence so far, that most of how long we live is determined by how we live, rather than what genes we get from our parents, both affected. There's no question that there is some of both. Only question is like, is it a 66 6040 thing? A 5050, thing? A 7070, 30 thing? Yeah. Kurt Nelson 9:51 Okay, very, very interesting. I think the the basic premise of your book, you're not saying, hey. Day, we have to exercise seven times a week, various different things. You're can the basic premise of your book be simplified down to this idea that maybe we're a little bit over indexed on physical factors related to aging and not necessarily the social and mental factors. Is that my over generalizing that to a degree or no, that's Ken Stern 10:22 actually a pretty good way of putting it. Kurt. So a lot of things affect how long and how healthy, how long we live and how healthy we live. And I'm never going to say that diet, exercise, access to health care don't matter. But to your point, we have, historically and continue to under index on the importance of social connection, the risk of loneliness, which has been by researchers, found to be roughly equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, being lonely. And we dive into that research in a little bit, having purpose in life, having some of my colleagues at Stanford say, have which they described, having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. All those things have matter enormously to our health. Some are causative, some are corollary, correlative, but they all really have an intense impact on both the quality and health of our lives. Tim Houlihan 11:16 Actually, what you just said about loneliness made me think about John cacioppose research. Cacioppo is a acolyte of Robert Cialdini on persuasion, but Cacioppo has done a lot of work in loneliness, and he talks about like, the important, like, one of the things that we can easily identify with loneliness is all the emotional trouble, but there's also some cognitive detriments to being lonely. Tell us about your your perspective, the work that you've done on this and where you see loneliness really impacting us. Like you said, it's 15 cigarettes a day. I mean, it's a pretty significant impact. Ken Stern 11:56 So I think the way I explain it, and to be clear, I'm not a researcher. I'm a storyteller. I'm a journalist. I describe. I try to make other people's research understandable and engageable by others. So the way I understand it is there's both a cause and effect of loneliness on health and a correlative one. The causative is like we have been bred by you know from time, you know the time that humans existed, to be find safety in numbers, right? It was dangerous to be outside the pack for all of human history. If you were alone, you were at risk, and if you were with others, you had greater chances of survival. So our biological systems reward being part of a group and punish us if we are isolated from the group. So if we are lonely and socially isolated, our body responds. It leads to higher stress levels. It leads to higher cortisol levels and all that our body responds to it, so that has impact on Heart, heart on on inflammation, and it has effect on our cognitive abilities as well. There's a very clear relationship between loneliness and cognitive cognitive health. That's sort of the that's the biological imperative we have, that to be part of the group, the and maybe, you know, in 3 million years, as we're evolved, that will be different. But now, now we have a, you know, a biological be imperative to be socially connected. And there's also just a correlative thing. If you're socially isolated and lonely, you don't get out of bed, you don't move as much, you don't get around you don't interact with people. You don't get the same type of social guidance about your own health that you would if you were with other people. So there is sort of that both the cause and effect, and then the effect of if you're if you're socially engaged, it means you're moving, means you're and you're getting signals about your own health from from from those around you and people are taking care of you in ways that you don't if you're Kurt Nelson 14:08 lonely. Hey, grooves, quick break from the conversation to talk about something we don't bring up enough on the show. Tim Houlihan 14:14 Yeah, that's right, when we're not behind the mic, we're working with organizations to apply behavioral science in ways that actually move the needle for leaders, teams and whole cultures. Kurt Nelson 14:25 So whether it's designing smarter incentives, boosting engagement, setting goals that actually stick, or helping teams navigate change, we bring real science to real workplace challenges. Tim Houlihan 14:37 And we don't just talk theory. Our approach blends research backed insights with hands on strategies that drive results. Now we've seen small behavioral shifts lead to big wins in Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups, and even in mission driven nonprofits. Kurt Nelson 14:54 Yeah, and we bring the same curiosity, creativity and care to our client work that we bring to all. Every episode of the show, Tim Houlihan 15:01 Billy, I think people might want more than what we bring to the show. Kurt Nelson 15:06 You you probably have a point there. You're probably right. Tim Houlihan 15:11 Okay, so we'll bring more care and creativity to our work with you and your teams than what we do on the show. Kurt Nelson 15:18 Yes, more care. So, so if you're ready to build stronger motivation, better team dynamics, and maybe even make your workplace a little more groovy, Tim Houlihan 15:27 yeah, reach out to us, grab us on LinkedIn or Facebook or just drop us a line. We'd love to help you and your team find your groove. Kurt Nelson 15:40 That's yeah. I find it really interesting when we talk about this throughout the book, you bring in other cultures, more of the social cultures that are more communal in nature, and some of the Asian countries that you talk about, Korea and some of the others, but in the US, and you might disagree with me here, but us seems to have this ethos of the lone cowboy out on the plane. And like you know, solitude is a is a virtue, and some of these other aspects that may not be as reflective in maybe other cultures and other things is that, do you see that as part of this? Or am I over, over thinking that, like, is this a worse issue, this loneliness in the US than it is in other parts of the world? And again, I don't know what your thoughts on that it Ken Stern 16:34 would be. Yeah. So loneliness is, I think, by most measures, worse in the US than in many parts of the world, the drivers of modern loneliness are true everywhere. It's about sort of technology adoption. I mean loneliness and loss of social connection, or social capital, as Bob Putnam wrote it about in Bowling Alone was originally driven by television and now by phones. That's true here. That's true everywhere you go on a subway in Seoul or in Singapore, people are head down in their phones, just as they are here. So there's a challenge everywhere. The challenge, I think, is exacerbated here by certain aspects of our culture. One is that unlike those other places, they don't, which are taking on sort of social health as a function, as a part of public health, and thinking about how to people, keep people socially connected in a much more strategic way than happens here, especially in the second half of life, which is what I usually write about, but they're just aspects of how we live. I mean, think about the suburbs, which create sort of physical distance between people. You asked me at the beginning about whether you should be in a small community. Which I turned into rural versus urban. It's hard to be socially connected just because of the geography of of a larger, sprawling country. And the second thing is, we have to your point about Kurt, about sort of the lone wolf. One thing we've done is we've devalued family as a social connector. So it is still considered it's less so today than it was 15 years ago, but still considered socially unacceptable be at home after the age of 18 or 21 that something's wrong with you if you're living with your family. We're the only places on place on Earth, really, that has large scale housing system that's built around taking older people and saying, move away from your community of a lifetime and go these places without people of other generations. It's a very strange thing if you're trying to build social connection as part of healthy living. Tim Houlihan 18:37 That's beautifully said. Thank you for that Ken. Something that we really appreciated about your your writing, is that you distinguish between longevity or a long life expectancy and then a healthy life expectancy. Can you tell us a little bit about the that's not just a nuance in your mind? Yeah. Ken Stern 18:58 So there's actually two distinct measurements of which we do here in the US, we do very poorly on both. And I'll go into a little detail. One is life expectancies. What we usually talk about, it's about 79 here. The other is a measure of healthy life expectancy, which is how many years you can expect to live in good health. And that's also a measurement that every country in the world makes, and we do poorly. So in the United States, life expectancy 79 we have finally actually gotten to back over as of last year, life expectancy is now the highest ever been in the US, 79 which is actually point one higher than it was about 15 years ago. So we finally went down during the period what is known as the death despair, and then went down during even more during covid now has finally returned, sort of essentially, its prior levels. But compare that to about Japan, which is about seven years longer, and every and to every one of our peer countries, we are by far the. Lowest among all the economically advanced countries. We're closer to Belarus and I think El Salvador than we are to Japan and Korea and other Switzerland, other long lived countries. And that's a real sort of indictment how we live. And it gets worse if you start looking at healthy, long, healthy life expectancy, because Americans live longer in poor health, more years in poor health than in other countries. So if you add in that, you can basically expect to live about 10 years longer in good health in Japan than you can in the US. Wow, that's really a stunning difference. Not quite 10 years, but it's very close. Kurt Nelson 20:38 Yeah, you bring up that aspect too, of that women have, historically have a longer life expectancy, but in the US, that unhealthy part of that is longer in women than it is in men. Can you expand on that? A little bit? Ken Stern 20:55 I can do at great length. We actually did an entire season on the podcast about that. So if you got about six hours sure our day is open, I'll plug my podcast, century lives, which we did, I think, our seventh season on that topic. So there's actually, it's actually a phenomenally constant thing that women everywhere live about 5.2 years longer than men. I think globally, it's 5.2 and us is 5.3 and there's just tiny variations everywhere, but everywhere, you know, that's a sort of a constant thing. And I'll just mention one thing, because it's sort of a blow your mind. Fact, so in Japan, to go back to Japan for a second, where life expectancy is about 87 or 86 that means thinking, just doing the math on it. Women live very close the median, not the average, but the median life expectancy for women now is exactly 90. Wow. Everyone says, wow. And that, I mean, you know, and it is such a wow thing. That means, like, if you die, if a woman dies in Japan at the age of 89 you don't say that's a full life. You say, bad luck. You know, really an amazing thing. So, so everywhere, there's this difference in life expectancy, but in the US, and I actually don't know if it's true everywhere, but in the US, women spend more years of their higher and higher percentage of years in poor health? Yeah, I think a reflection of a couple things. One is the greater responsibilities and stresses we put on women health, you know, sort of caregiving responsibilities, financial stress, because women live longer and make less, and those stresses are bad for your health. And then I think the second is there's a long history in the US of not taking women's health issues as seriously as as men's health. And that's just not just an opinion thing, like for most of medical history in the US, we treat women as small men. Women weren't even it wasn't actually until, I think the late 90s that NIH, that NIH started saying, Hey, you got to actually also test women in your in your in your in your medical test. There's a long belief that women, because there was they could get pregnant, could actually throw off tests, so many, many health tests and, you know, drug tests and everything were about men for decades and decades and decades. Only really incredibly recently that that has changed. Tim Houlihan 23:35 Yeah, what a world we lived in. Are still living in to some degree. Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy. I wanted to switch a little bit here and talk about a fellow Minnesotan, Dan Buettner. He has in his book Blue Zones, you actually reference Dan's work about kind of the way that he's looked at the at the world, and, you know, points out places where there are definitely places on earth there's been some pushback in recent years, but, but there's definitely some places on Earth where people live longer, you know, like, you know, Okinawa and Sardinia. I think for those of us who can't just pack up and move to Sardinia or Okinawa, what comes to mind as like, well, here's some things that we could do actually in our life that might assist us in that healthy living index. Ken Stern 24:29 So I have a complicated view as to Dan's work and the blue zones. The good thing, which I hope to focus on, is a lot of the lessons he took away from his work on the blue zones have proven be correct, and I think in some respects, ahead of their time, and I think that's really important to acknowledge and celebrate, the bigger challenge. I think I mean, so I think we do have to say. There has been, you know, some, as you mentioned, Saul Newman from Oxford has raised significant questions about the reliability of life expectancy data you find in Ikaria and Okinawa. And I think those are fair challenges. But the bigger challenge, I think, is, to your point, Tim, we're all not going to live in places like, you know, essentially rural places where people live in the same places for generations and generations and have some type of stress free environments. We're all going to live most. 99% of us are going to live in very different places. And I think the lessons from those places are not highly transportable to the urban, high stress environments that most of us live in. I do think the one thing he spends a lot of time describing the importance of social connections and social ties in those places, the social connections we're gonna have in modern life are gonna be different from it, but it's the idea is right, that social connection, how we interact with others, is a enormous marker of of health and healthy life expectancy, and something we need to pay more attention to. So I want to give Dan credit for that, even if the sort of the method of getting there is not, I think, always the right one. Kurt Nelson 26:18 So Ken, can you expand on that social connection, and how? How can we in this modern world, which, as you mentioned in the book, and I think you might have even said earlier, you know, we are getting away from with phones and other aspects of this, where that interpersonal connection isn't necessarily the same as it was. What can we do, given what you've looked into, to help us make those connections more better connections that are actually going to help us live this healthy, longer life? Ken Stern 26:57 Yeah, so let's actually start with the challenge, which you alluded to, so that basically, and this goes back to Putnam's work, starting around 1980 that's when sort of the focus of his book came out. Boy long came around 2001 but his study period was around 1980 that's when television became ubiquitous in the US, and all the institutions that brought us together began to decline. Participation in religious organization, participation unions, sewing circles, reading clubs, PTA, all started long term declines that would do the day, and they've accelerated in sort of the iPhone era, the time we spend alone, and so the basic markers of social connection, the time we spend alone, has skyrocketed. The amount of time we spend with friends has gone way down. My son, who's 18th generation, spends an hour less with friends today than my generation did. The number of people who have six or more friends has plunged in last 15 years, and the number of people who report having no friends has, I think, doubled in that same period of time. So all these markers of a lonely society are getting worse and worse. Okay, so that's the bad news. The good news is one there are things that every individual can do to support their social connection. And I think people, you know, people have plans, they have food plans, they have fitness plans, they should have social connection plans as well. And when they're thinking about their especially about their retirement, because often social connection for people come from work a lot, but as their retirement, people walk off this work cliff, they should be thinking not just about their financial plan, but their their social connection plan in the in the second half of life, all the things we can do about society to make it easier for people to social connect. So in Korea, you alluded to, there is a constitutional right to lifelong learning, and the country is invested in lifelong learning centers. You know, you go to a city, any city, virtually any city in in Korea, and there could be 200 Lifelong Learning cities within almost everyone within five minute walk of where you live. And a social consensus that is something that you should be doing. You should be getting in the house. You should go into a lifelong learning center. You should be investing in lifelong learning for yourself as an active citizenry in Japan, which is not only the longest lived country in the world, if you don't count Monaco, which I don't it is also the country in which people a higher percentage over the people over the age of 65 continue to work, and that's not because they don't do for economics, so that that's always going to be a piece of why some people work. They do it because it is considered. There's a social consensus that working is gives purpose, it gets you out of the house and is good. For you in your health. So people do it, and they've created a part time working ecosystem. So people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and even some people in their hundreds continue working on their terms. So there's lots of things that can happen on a social basis, and there's also things that individuals can do as they think about how do I want to stay socially connected as I age. Kurt Nelson 30:25 It's interesting, because you talk about this lifelong learning, continuing to work. And I just look at my grandfather, who lived to 96 so pretty well aged, and he had worked most of his entire life at the railroad, the night shift manager for this, you know, railroad where the trains came in. I can't even describe what it is, but he retired at like 65 and then he went to work like at 67 at a local hardware store, and worked there for another, you know, 15 years part time doing that. That's not the norm. And is, is that the, at least in the US at that point, it was, I know, like my my parents were, like, going, why is grandpa working and all of these different things. And so is there part of this? Is it about how we view the roles that we have as we age, and that is kind of misconstrued from your opinion, yeah, Ken Stern 31:26 so I think it's a great story, and you hear lots of stories like that. People get bored, they get lonely, they want to go. It's a trend called unretirement. But we do have sort of this social belief that comes 60 or 65 it's time to stop working. And then there's vision of retirement, sort of this endless vacation. Turns out, it's not an endless vacation for virtually everyone. It's a time of often, of financial want and increasing loneliness. But we have this sort of idea that that's the way it's supposed to be. And there's, you know, there's something our brain says that, come 65 you're not supposed to be working anymore. And companies kind of believe that, and people do too, even though that 65 number is entirely made up Kurt Nelson 32:17 that part. Yeah, yeah. So, so the you Ken Stern 32:20 say, well, we're supposed to retire. You ask people when they're supposed to retire, you know, and it's usually somewhere in that 65 range that people and then you ask, where does that come from? And it comes actually from Chancellor Otto van Bismarck, who was the Chancellor of Prussia in the 1880s who was under pressure to create a retirement plan for, mostly for mine workers in Germany who lived a terrible life. And so he finally did it, I mean, and to his credit, he created the first public pension retirement plan in Europe and in the West. Tim Houlihan 33:00 It's amazing. It's Ken Stern 33:01 amazing, right? Except he didn't really care about the just not who he was. Tim Houlihan 33:08 Because why? Why tell us there's a particular bit of friction here in the date that he chose for people to retire and the average life expectancy at the time, yeah, so Ken Stern 33:18 he picked, so he originally picked 70 was reduced to 65 at the time when the average life expectancy for workers in Germany was 41 Yeah, so, you know, there weren't a lot of people are gonna be checking into that pension plan. But the irony is that 65 sort of got stuck in our in our sort of stuck in the popular, popular imagination. You know, Roosevelt picked it up for the Social Security system, which is not a retirement age, it's an age of pension eligibility. But it's become sort of, you know what is, sort of the age that was sort of picked to avoid financial liability has become sort of like a moral right. Is the way these things always do. They get stuck in the popular consensus. We didn't think that's the way it's supposed to be, as opposed to something that, you know, some 19th century Prussian aristocrat picked for its own purposes. So, so we do need but we do see actually, some trends. The fastest growing part of the labor force in the US is 80 plus, very small part, but 65 plus is next. So there, there is sort of this movement towards un retirement, but we don't really have a system that encourages it or makes it easy. So finding that part time job at the hardware store can be difficult. It's why you see people driving for Uber in Japan. By contrast, I spent some time with the silver Gen Z Human Resources organization, which was set up about 20 years ago to represent only workers over the age of 6565 to 102 1 million, 1 million workers are part of that thing, and they only have part time work, so they spend all their time working with companies, with government. To create part time work that's available for older workers, so it's a system that works for them and their needs, as opposed to us trying to squeeze into the economies that's really built for the traditional labor force Tim Houlihan 35:12 age well, and that's a great tee up for one of the later chapters in the book is about the last ism and by the way, I just have to say fantastic titles of the chapters, like, like, when you like writing about Bismarck, Bismarck's revenge. I just, I love that. But okay, but back to my question ageism. I when I was in my early 40s, I had the opportunity to hire for a bunch of positions for a team. And I remember getting some, some applications from people who were in their late 50s, and some some of them in their mid 60s, and just feeling like, what do they have to offer? Like, and when I interviewed them, all I heard was the old ideas and things that I could felt like I could comfortably dismiss them. And so I was a perpetrator of ageism. And now, and I have turned 65 years old, and I have been the recipient of ageism now on this end, and it's, it's quite a bitter sting being able to recognize that I've been on both ends of this, this sword, tell us about why ageism is still acceptable. Why in the United States, why is it still an okay thing to go? Yeah, that dude's getting a little on that gray side. We'll just, we'll just dismiss him. Yeah. Ken Stern 36:37 So I've avoided the gray side by just losing my hair. So the Yeah, it's a very interesting, you know, that in it sort of an era now we're in sort of the counter attack on it, but an era in which we are down on sexism, racism, gender, you know, whatever, whatever ism you want, ageism remains socially acceptable so for so and it's considered people can talk about it as if it's a natural thing to do. I mean the workplace, the idea that we would favor younger workers and associate them with, you know, the values of of energy and speed and technology savvy, and want to have more of them and get rid of the old folks or the older folks. That's, that's a, you know, that's actually a corporate strategy in a lot of places. Yeah, it's often in layoffs older folks. And older folks are 50 plus. We're not talking about, you know, we're talking about, you know, pretty close to half the country, sorry, more than half the adult population. At that point. They are the first out, and they find it extraordinarily hard to be reemployed once they lose their jobs. And that's a very common driver of quote, unquote retirement is being forced out of your jobs and into an unplanned and early retirement. And it's a it's illegal. You get, I mean, it's been against the law to discriminate against age in the workplace for the last 70 years, 60 years. But actually, no one knows that. They just consider it sort of the business strategy. And that's, you know, that's what sort of morally wrong. It doesn't actually turn out to make a lot of sense. Make a lot of sense. There's tons of data about the value of intergenerational teams and what older workers bring in terms of institutional knowledge and wisdom and ability to strategize in which ways and do things you can't do early in your career. So it's just tons of research about the value that older workers and younger workers together bring to a company, and it's going to be a bigger problem the future. The truth of matter is we're going to companies are going to have to adopt to a world in which the 18 to 64 the traditional labor force is shrinking. Birth rates are plunging. Immigration policy in the US is pushing out a lot of younger workers. The reason that US companies haven't, I think cotton to older workers so far, is because they haven't had to, because we've had immigration, but the number of people in the 18 to 64 age group is going to is declining, will continue to decline, and if companies want to grow, they're going to have to figure out ways to encourage, retain and support older workers. My expectation is that when the economics turn, the social views will begin to turn with it. That that hasn't happened yet, but I think Unknown Speaker 39:39 it will. Are you hope? Yeah, you're hopeful. Ken Stern 39:42 I am. I think, you know, I don't see it. But, you know, economics has a way of changing people's views of what works and what doesn't. And I will say, I mean, you know, I wax on endlessly about Japan and Singapore and Spain, Italy and all the great things they do, truthfully, some of their views. Are driven by culture. We just talked about different views of age in those cultures, but also driven by economics in Japan, until about 20 years ago, it was a very rigid hit 60 or 65 you're gone. I mean, that was just the rule. And it was only when it became a super age society that people be on the way come. Said, Wait, wait a minute. Maybe these older workers really have something of value when they needed them, that's when views begin to change. Kurt Nelson 40:28 Yeah, it's interesting. You talk about that in particularly Japan, you're going, all right, well, if the average age is up, we're in 80s. That's 25 years that they are, you know, living and not being able to have that contribution, or various parts of that I think are really interesting in the book, you also bring up a really fascinating piece that kind of correlates to this. You talk about older workers mixing with younger workers. You also talk about that family structure, or just those communities. And you referenced this a little bit earlier. Us is the only one where, hey, 55 plus living communities go live down in Phoenix with just a bunch of people, you're similar age. Or what's the one in Florida that the big one you mentioned this village, the village that's the fastest growing community in the United States, as I think you had mentioned there. And the the negative impact, the unintended consequences of that. Can you talk a little bit about some Ken Stern 41:34 of that? Yeah, there's a lot of evidence. Again, I think, sort of a biological imperative that shows that when you put the generations together, they fit together like pieces of jigsaw puzzle, and that has health benefits and developmental benefits to all generations. There's just lots of of research that support that from both economic development opportunity develop for the young and for health and cognitive value for older folks. And I think, and we've sort of swam against that evolutionary tide by having this sort of cult of individualism. Kurt that you described again, it's again. It's really a new, a new development. I mean, until roughly the 19th century, the basic, basic unit, economic unit, living unit, in the US was the farm. And people of all generations lived together, socialized together, and it was a natural thing. It was only in sort of the urbanization, mobilization of the US in the early 20th, early mid 20th century that families being split apart part and we began to actually create a cultural norm around like, that's a good thing that, you know, if there's something wrong with you, if you move out, hey, you know, move it was only in the 1950s that we, Big Ben sleefer created Youngtown, the First 55 plus active aging community outside of Tucson, and I think against all odds, persuaded him and then subsequently Sun cities persuaded people to like leave behind their communities, to move this place where it's 100 degrees, and socialize and socialize people they don't know. It's a very strange thing, and it's a uniquely us thing. I'll actually tell you a story, and I will say, I think it's important to say the 55 plus communities actually do a lot, right? So I live in a sort of a longevity world. My colleagues all hate this idea of these 55 plus communities, but if you go there, they make it very hard to be socially isolated. I mean, because everyone is in some club or some activity, and there's always something happening. And if you go the villages, which is endless development of 150,000 people over the age of 55 and mostly over the age of 70, there's a club, there's activity for everyone. There is, there's, you know, the social pressures to be out and about and connect with people, and that's something that I admire and wish could be in, you know, in our average, in our ordinary lives. But one of the I'll tell you a story. It's done the book because it happened afterwards for my podcast. So the we're in a season, our season nine right now. And the first is called the home stretch, is about how we live. And the first episode, I went to two places. I went to latitudes, Margaritaville, the Jimmy Buffett theme, one of three. Jimmy Buffett theme, retirement communities. This one's in Panama City, where you can go to the bar and chill and take your car, your dog to bargaritaville. Tim Houlihan 44:41 Bargaritaville quite a Ken Stern 44:45 likable place, you know, it's got, you know. And then I went to a place called Gorham house in Maine, which is a combination nursing home and preschool. So you go this place, and you know, most the residents of the place are 8090, even 100 and I think I actually talked to Miss Mary. I think she's 106 and in the front of it, they have a preschool with, you know, 25 kids every day, ages three and four. And you can just imagine, I mean, just two things to say about one is you just imagine the joy that brings to the older residents to be able to hang out with the kids and be part of their lives and see the kids parade through the nursing home once a week. You know, in full, you know and sing a song is clearly the highlight of people's lives in the sort of community of very, very of the very, very old. But what the story that I was told there by the preschool director, that I thought was the one I'll stick with me forever, is she told me that the the elementary school teachers in Gorham have told her that the kids who come through their program are the most empathetic kids in their elementary school classes. So if a kid comes in in a wheelchair, all the kids, most of the kids don't know what to do with it, and sort of shun them, because it's different and it's strange. And the kids that come through preschool are used to differences. They're naturally empathetic. They've seen people in wheelchairs, they've seen people at different stages of life. They've built a sort of a natural empathy for others who may not be quite like just like that, that it carries through, through their elementary schools and perhaps their entire lives. And I think that's a real developmental story that we miss sight, lose sight of it to our own peril. Tim Houlihan 46:35 You brought up one of our favorite ideas, flow from Mihaly Ching sense, my high and this idea of flow, and then micro flow, and, of course, how it kind of integrates with ikigai, this meaning in life kind of thing. And we love that, by the way. We just absolutely adore the way that you pieced all that together in part, because it kind of reminds us of the way we think about being in a groove of being something that's longer than and more rhythmic than just being in the moment. It's something that you kind of have throughout a period of your life, possibly and and you probably haven't spent a lot of time thinking about what it's like being in your groove. But we want to ask, How do you think, how do you think aging well might have to do or might be connected to the idea of living a life that's sort of in your groove? Ken Stern 47:29 Yeah, so I will say, I will confess, Tim, I haven't spent a lot, as you speculated. I have not spent a lot of time thinking about it. So I'm not sure my answer will be to that point, but I mean, one thing I observed in some of my travel were people taking and finding value in the small acts of life. You know, one of the interviews I did in Japan were these three older women, all in their 80s, working in a in in a kitchen, making traditional dishes. And I think it was the rhythm of their lives, the fact that they got up in the morning, they went with their friends to this kitchen. It wasn't the work per se, it was the it was the rhythm of that, that how they did it, and the value they have from being together and being out and about. And there's also another scene that I saw that I think wouldn't have struck me if I hadn't been doing what I didn't, which is also in Tokyo, my family came out and joined me. We went to the Meiji Shrine. And to get to the Meiji Shrine, you have to walk down this long dirt and gravel path. It's probably half mile, maybe a mile long, and it's swept every day by this group of older workers who sort of rhythmically swing, had these big push brooms, and they swing back and forth across the path all day. And I went, and I sort of walked along it. And of course, they're sweeping, and people are walking, you know, 1000s of tourists, myself included, walking along, kicking everything up, and they're sweeping behind it and doing it. And I had one, you know, sort of my American reaction was like, This is frustrating. Let's pave this path. But I was actually there a couple times, and I've sort of watched these guys. They were all guys, you know, so older workers just rhythmically going back and forth, making the same movement over and over, and in my sort of, you know, chaotic western life, that drove me nuts. But they seem, you know, perfectly comfortable. I can't crawl into their head. Maybe they were screaming their heads off. Who knows. But it seemed from the outside that they were calm, measure this. This was their This was their contribution to this important site. They were going to keep the do the best every single day to keep that path as pristine as humanly possible, despite the Big Foots of people like me. And I don't know if that, but that sort of, you know, that sort of calm really, sort of captured my imagination that day. Kurt Nelson 50:00 It seems very Sisyphus in the kind of constant, you know, never getting that that rock all the way up and and always having to be keep pushing it. I found what you said really interesting about finding those small moments that are important. And I'll pull this back into my own life. My father in law, who is now 87 and just in the past couple years, has had some real cognitive and some strokes, minor, what they call, you know, minor strokes, but cognitive ability, kind of memory, even physical ability, have gone down. But I take him to rotary every, every Wednesday, we have these, you know, social rotary meeting that he brought me in 25 years ago. And so I continue to do that. And he has, like, these little routines that he looks forward to. One of them being walking his dog. And we live in Minnesota, and so sometimes that gets really hard if he is balance is not as good, and different pieces of this and we have snow and ice and crazy sidewalks, and he has a relatively big dog, and it's dangerous, but we have all decided as a family that that is really important to him. He looks forward to that walking of the dog is kind of a ritual routine piece of that. Is that what you're talking about in some of these as well, or is it, does it need to have a deeper kind of meaning, like even as you talked about that sweeping but that's part of a larger kind of component to the shrine. Yeah. Ken Stern 51:41 So actually, I'll give you two answers that Kurt. One is, I think your father in law's, you know, goal of of maintaining routines and getting out of the house, really important. Walking dogs actually turns out to be really good for social connection. There's actually a concept called loose ties that you know, it's not just the it's a whole ecosystem of social connections that matter. It's not just the person. Kurt Nelson 52:12 We know the person's dog's name. We don't necessarily know their name, but we talk to them when we pass your Ken Stern 52:17 interaction with other people. Turns out loose ties matter a lot in terms of health, and I think it has mostly do with you. You have loose ties, means you're getting out and about, and that's really matters. Also say, I suspect I won't try to sort of psychoanalyze you, Kurt, I'm bad enough. Oh, go ahead. Please indulge us, please. I think people love it. Yeah, this actually matters a lot to you and to your family. The fact, you know, the one of the sort of elements of social connection and having purpose and feeling good and having that sort of jolt of dopamine is actually doing good things for other people. It can be as small as sort of giving up your seat on a bus or or even just talking to a stranger, but helping a neighbor is actually really good, or family member is actually really good for the helper, not just the help be in terms of how you feel about yourself and your sense of social of sort of being part of community, and that actually has a great health effect. So there's a positive value to that, even if it's hard, and you know, you have to get out and in in the minus 10 weather and do that. It's actually a big marker of healthy of healthy aging. Tim Houlihan 53:33 Ken, we have reached that fantastic point in our conversation when we get to turn to music, where we get to talk about the maybe the most important thing that we've discussed today, and that is the desert island disc question, are you ready for this? Ken Stern 53:50 Ken, I am sadly prepared for you. And let me, let me tell you why, because I mentioned this to you in sort of pre game, but I'll say to your listeners, which is, I'm not a music guy. I'm kind of somewhat little bit tone deaf. I don't really know much about music. I'm married to a woman who's passionate about music, and I have a son who somehow is actually musically talented and is in a band, and that's a big career of it. And they're constantly talking about music. They have no idea what they're talking about, and it's like, Come on, let's talk about sports or what's on TV or politics, but they want to talk about music. So when I saw that, you know you want to talk about my desert island music, it's like, maybe The Sounds of Silence is probably going to be the first Kurt Nelson 54:34 Exactly, exactly, right? You vetted your picks with your with your family, though, right? Speaker 1 54:40 I did. They told me to make it simple. Tim Houlihan 54:45 You get to make it whatever you want, because, and this is not a go to the grave question, by the way, it's just right now, if you ended up on a desert island and you had that listening device that only allowed you for two artists, which two artists would you take with you? Yeah. Ken Stern 55:00 So that's actually a hard question. And part of the answer is, you know, my musical tastes, such as they are, sort of stopped at a certain point. My family claims that they stopped in the 70s when I was a teenager, but they go a Tim Houlihan 55:15 little bit into the age of 13 and 16, maybe somewhere there. Ken Stern 55:19 That's right. That's exactly right. So that's, that's a, that's a, you know, mid 70s, that's, you know, not necessarily considered the best, but I would probably say Springsteen and you two are probably high, high on my list. And I think I could be pretty happy with that for quite a while. Well, I think those are great Kurt Nelson 55:36 choices, right? They both have large catalogs. You get a lot of variety. Springsteen, particularly, is like different well, you too. I mean, you too has gone through multitudes of different iterations of kind of musical sounds and various different things. But, yeah, those are they bring you back to that time when you're in that teenage years and those formative years, and help bring some memory, but also they have some new stuff. I mean, Springsteen was just here in Minneapolis performing his new song, given all the stuff that's going on here. So, you know, you have stuff up until just a few days ago. So there you go. Yeah. Ken Stern 56:14 So I'll tell you, I'll confess I was trying to workshop things with my families. So because, you know, they're talking about indie vans and, you know, like, my son's into fountains of Wayne, whatever they are. So I was like, Oh yeah, I should use one of the one of them and sound cooler than I am. Nope. Don't do you have no way of answering any follow up question. Tim Houlihan 56:35 I'm curious in because, and I'm asking, of course, because something is coming to mind for me. So it's, it's all about me in this situation. But is there anything in the Springsteen or YouTube catalogs that you'd say I probably won't listen to that? Ken Stern 56:51 Oh yeah for sure, just because I don't know him that. I mean, I sort of soundtracks, you know. So they're actually certain, you know, to your point, wasn't 1316, but there was a certain stage of my life that I was around people who played music a lot and talked about music a lot, not my family. And so I heard the sort of the Springsteen and the YouTube of the time, and that's the part that sort of is meaningful, you know, Tunnel of Love era, you know, sort of, I remember when tunnel love came out. Those will speak to me, things that came, you know, outside that era, I just won't know as well. Tim Houlihan 57:26 So yeah, did you ever meet any of those guys in your past jobs? Just out of curiosity? Ken Stern 57:31 No, no. Never met. No. Tim Houlihan 57:36 I mean, you know you had in different roles, you kind of had some access, so I was just kidding. No, I guess Ken Stern 57:45 music is not just No, I've never had that, that fun or privilege. Tim Houlihan 57:51 All right. Well, Ken Stern, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being such a wonderful guest today on behavioral grooves. Ken Stern 57:58 Oh, such a fun time talking with both of you, Tim and both of you, Tim and Kurt, thanks for having me on the show. Kurt Nelson 58:11 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Ken. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our old but socially connected brains. Tim Houlihan 58:25 Wouldn't that be great to be socially connected and old and healthy? Kurt Nelson 58:31 It would be great just to be socially connected and young and healthy too. But yes, it would be good if we yeah, we are socially connected when we're older. I thought this was really interesting. And we've heard, I mean, this, this, I think, was our deepest conversation into this topic. But this has come up in others, just tangentially, this idea of how important social connections are to healthy longevity. You know, the Harvard study they've been then, that was the main takeaway from that. There have been other studies, but it was really interesting talking to Ken, and you know, the book, he brings in a lot of information from some of the Asian countries he's visited and some of the work that they're doing. So this is not just like a optional thing. This is a real thing that we need to be doing. Yeah, I Tim Houlihan 59:26 also just want to thank you for bringing up a lot of Ken's experiences in Asia and different Asian countries. It's sort of like if we can learn from what other cultures are doing, well, what like? Why not do that? You know, it's not just a Blue Zone story where you have to live in Sardinia or, you know, on a little tiny island in northern Japan or something, and eat fish all the time. There are other things that you can do that we can learn from other cultures, that we could apply to our own without a lot of effort. And I think that. Social connectivity is a really great place to start. Kurt Nelson 1:00:02 Well, I know you are really focused in that this is not just a lifestyle choice, that this social connection aspect is a biological need, right? Tim Houlihan 1:00:16 Very much so. And for a guy who's been moving around for the last, you know, several years I really, really was intentional in this last move in Chapel Hill to find a place that had good community like we really were intentional about connecting to other people, because it is a biological need. It is, it is something that we really rely on for our well being, not just, Oh, that's nice to have. It's a need to Kurt Nelson 1:00:47 have, yeah, and I love how Ken takes this this loneliness component, not as a emotional issue, but it is that he reframes it as this physiological risk that directly impacts how our bodies work, how they respond. I mean, the idea that loneliness is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day is just crazy. I mean, if you that just blows my mind. I mean, yeah, I when I think about the that kind of impact that it has, and that's, that's really powerful, yeah? Tim Houlihan 1:01:32 Well, we are hardwired to to form and maintain strong interpersonal bonds, like belonging isn't optional, right? It is motivational, and it's primary, and so the better off we do at serving that social functionality in our lives, the better it will do on decreasing loneliness. And we will. We won't be living like we're smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Yeah, I think John Cacioppo, who we've talked to, we've talked about recently because of his work with Bob Cialdini. But John cacioppose, work on social neuroscience shows that that loneliness actually ends up increasing this vigilance and concern for social threat, stress reactivity. It impairs cardiovascular and cognitive function, functioning over time, like like this, like just being lonely, it is like a just a normal stress thing, and the better off, better we can do at avoiding just feeling lonely, the healthier we are. Kurt Nelson 1:02:38 Yeah, I mean, I think he described it as a biological alarm system that being alone is it's like we're not meant to be alone. We are meant to be part of a tribe. That's how we evolved. And so when we're socially disconnected, we have all of these physiological things, cortisol rises, inflammation increases, chronic activation of of all of those stress neuro neuromodulators, right? They wear down both our hearts, executive functioning, just a whole bunch of other stuff that a not good, because it's just like we open up a pack of cigs and just smoke them. Tim Houlihan 1:03:18 Well, only 15, though today. Oh, how Kurt Nelson 1:03:21 many is even in a pack? What's in a pack? I don't know. I don't even know. Is it 15, or is it I have no idea. My mom smoked pack a day, if not more, but I have no idea. Tim Houlihan 1:03:32 Yeah, the other thing that something that I was thinking about is the difference between, we've heard about weak ties and strong ties. Oh yeah, you know Mark renovators work, and I think that we might be construing some of what Ken's saying is we have to have these really tight strong ties. We need these really strong but it that's not always the case, like we can actually find strength through weak ties or loose ties and still have a social connectivity function that can allow us just form new acquaintances, right? Just just go out and and see people, just be at the grocery store and say hi to people doing the Nick Eppley thing, right? Kurt Nelson 1:04:15 Yeah, well, and I think there's another aspect of this, which is like community groups or social groups where, you know, I've been a member of my local, one of my local Rotary Clubs for 2530, years. Now every member of that club isn't a good friend, but they're connections, and I see them on a pretty regular basis. So I, you know, I'd recognize them if we were in a shopping mall, and now, am I going to go hang out with them outside of Rotary? Probably not. Some of them, I do. Some become really good friends, but others not so this idea of being deliberate right, of finding those communities right, and making those we. Connections, as well as building those friendships. I mean, you know this, you have a dog, but walking a dog is a fantastic way of building that community, because people you walk your dog on a regular basis the same you meet other people who walk their dogs on a regular basis or hanging out and that you start to form those connections, right attending Rotary, going to a gym and chatting up with people at the gym. There's 1000s of ways going out to get your coffee instead of making coffee. You know, in your house, I know it costs more, but hey, it might actually be worth it to go down to Starbucks or caribou or your local coffee shop, and just sit around and have those conversations with the barista and the other people who are down there. Maybe just make that a weekly thing once a week. So if you're Tim Houlihan 1:05:51 going to have a fitness plan, if you're going to plan to go to the gym three times a week, what are you doing for a social plan? Are you planning on getting out? Are you planning for are you time blocking your schedule to say, I'm going, I'm going to go do these social things, what like? Maybe we just need to reframe some of this, you know, in terms of the way we think about that sort of stuff. Kurt Nelson 1:06:13 I agree. I agree. I think that's great. I think the other thing that Ken brought up that I found really fascinating is this inter general, intergenerational, not intergeneral, intergenerational component that we have gone away from how we have lived for up Until a couple 100 years ago, into these segregated divisions by age, least in the US, Tim Houlihan 1:06:45 right, right? It's been, it's been completely normal. It's been and we're getting to the point where, as we mentioned, I think, in the introduction, these 55 plus communities, which are fantastic for creating all this sociality. That's really great. But it also is segregational. It ends up sort of pulling ages apart rather than putting them together. And of course, Ken's stories are fantastic about the stuff that he saw in in Japan and in Asian countries, where they have this silver workforce, and they're they're bringing people together. They're bringing people with age and wisdom, you know, into into the workforce in a really positive way. Kurt Nelson 1:07:26 Yeah, I think that's a really key piece as we're moving forward with this. And the idea of having those connections across generations is so important, not just to for us and well being and growing older and being healthy as we get to 100 if you want to go to 100 Tim, but this idea of how that helps the younger generation, and the wisdom, right, that you can have, Tim Houlihan 1:07:56 there's and it's more than just wisdom. You know, there's all kinds of studies that I don't remember. I think it was Laura Kurt Stinson, who said, who basically figured out that that younger people who get exposed on a regular basis to older people end up having sort of they they've reduced their biases against old people, which actually allows them to perform better at work, like they're better in diverse situations in general. So you put them into diverse environments, and they're better with working with people who are just a little bit different from them in a really productive way, not just like a, Oh, I get along like, oh, let's just get into the work. Yeah, and that's, that's a big plus. And speaking of which, I just have to say that when I was a 30 something, I had the opportunity to I was hiring for bunches of jobs, all for a bunch of years. But I remember my mid to late 30s, I was hiring for a position, and a guy interviewed who was in his early 60s. And I just thought, What is this guy doing? Like I absolutely had ageism, where I was judging him, on his, on his, basically his record of the fact that he was out of a job at 60 something. Yeah, and I totally failed at that. I just have to admit that that was a huge failure on my part. And then I really applaud people who are willing to think about, look, whatever job I'm hiring for, it's not for the rest of my life, it's not for the rest of my career, the rest of their career. It's just a job it's going to be the next couple of years. This is the work that I need done. Hire somebody who's good for it, regardless of the age that they're Kurt Nelson 1:09:43 at, well, and the idea that, like at 65 we just stop being productive members of the workforce is such a crazy thing. And again, I think Ken talked about, like in Japan and even in Korea and some of the other places about this idea. Idea that we are working they're working longer, and that's good. That's a good thing. It's not this idea of, you know, you're, you're done at 65 and that's it. So I think there's a really good thing to think about. Is, all right, I'm hiring somebody at 6061 6263 they could be with me for 1015, years. That doesn't mean that they're going to be only there for three or four years. They can be there for a long time. And that is both positive for them as well as for you. And again, as we get older, you know the we know that our brain speed decreases, right? The neuro neurons firing that that speed is decreasing. But we have built in this crystallized intelligence, pattern recognition, the idea that we are less anxious and less stressful because we've been there, done that, seen similar things, and so we can apply that knowledge, that wisdom, we can bring that calming sense to high stress situations, and that has really powerful effects that ripple well beyond just us, like that individual that you're hiring. It permeates out to the larger group. And I think that's fantastic. Tim Houlihan 1:11:23 I'm glad you brought that up. Can I just like to offer a personal anecdote. I did some mentoring when I was working at the bank, and there was a couple of young women who were just in a in a place where, you know, they just wanted to make every move perfect. They wanted their career just like everything, every assignment that they took was so critical to them. And and of course, if you if you get so restrictive, you lose out on serendipity, on the things that that you don't know will happen, and you also give up this idea that there's a lot of stuff that I can't control, yeah, and so it was really great to be able to have conversations with them on a regular basis. Say, look, relax a little bit, because there, this isn't just the this might be the first time, so it's going to feel unfamiliar. That's okay, but it's not going to be the last time this stuff happens. So think about different ways of dealing with it, so that you don't get so stressed because it's Speaker 2 1:12:21 not worth it, yeah, ultimately, in the end, yeah, okay, all right, Kurt Nelson 1:12:26 all right. Well, let's, let's wrap this up before we do, let's give people another opportunity to join a community of people. Yes, our Facebook, behavioral grooves community, absolutely. Tim Houlihan 1:12:41 And because it's fun, it's interesting, it's, it's vital we have we exchange ideas. There's always kind of some give and take and some back and forth, and some ins and outs and puts and calls, and it's just, it's just good. Kurt Nelson 1:12:56 And then subscribe. So yes, it's a fantastic space. Also subscribe to our substract. We would love that, and then share this with a friend. You can do that right now. You can share this episode. You have somebody who you think would be wiser for having listened to our conversation with Ken, or any of our past episodes. Share it with a friend, and then reach out, and then you're having that social connection of with that friend. Hey, I listened to this awesome podcast today, and I thought of you. You should listen to it. And, oh, by the way, let's get coffee, or let's like, you know, let's call each other up there we go. Tim Houlihan 1:13:33 So I love that, actually. Okay, so I just want to say to encourage people to have a behavioral strategy for your life if you're going to book time for the gym, if you're going to book time for work, book time for your social life, book time for even acquaintances, both loose ties and and strong ties, because belonging regulates our stress system and the contribution that it makes fuels meaning in our lives Kurt Nelson 1:14:00 as well? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of evidence that really highlights that and shows that. So, you know, the real question for listeners becomes, what are those intentional structures of belonging that you are going to be building into your life right now? What are the social grooves that are enhancing this phase of your life so that you can live a long and healthy life moving forward? Tim Houlihan 1:14:30 Those are great questions, and as you think about those grooves, we hope that you use them this week as you go out and find your groove. Can you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai