There are nearly 60 MILLION Americans who are unpaid caregivers today.

Now think about that; these are people who likely have full time jobs working 40 hours a week and who are working another 26 hours a week on average looking after an aging loved one.

It’s a tough picture and it’s made worse by the lack of any kind of support available in the United States.

Certainly this long term healthcare crisis (and it is a crisis by any definition of that word) is not exclusive to America alone.

There are aging populations all over the world and countless millions more caregivers but many other countries have been proactive in implementing policies designed to mitigate the pressure that unpaid caregivers experience.

Debbie Howard, a professional market researcher, knows what it’s like to be a caregiver after spending some years caring for her cancer-stricken mother.

As a result, Debbie has devoted nearly 20 years to agitating for caregivers in the U.S., forming Aging Matters International and thecaregivingjourney.com along the way.

She is our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging.

Dave McCaughan has made frequent appearances on The Art 2 Aging; he is an experienced marketer with decades of real, “in the trenches” marketing expertise and he has made the issue of marketing to an aging population a kind of mission for the past three decades.

Today, he provides another thought-provoking Point of View in which he talks about how demographers have known for decades that the world’s population is aging (some countries faster and sooner than others, like Japan for example) and that an aging population will bring unique challenges and demands before it starts shrinking.

So, if demographers have known this for more than 40 years, Dave asks, why is it now only just dawning on policy makers? Further, is encouraging women to have more babies really a viable tactic to reverse aging in any country? Or just a silly idea with no merit whatsoever (hint: it’s the latter…)?

I can’t remember how we first heard about Fred Woolman but I knew it was imperative to have him as a guest on The Art 2 Aging.

That was more than a year ago; at the time, Fred was a full time fitness instructor at a nearby facility in his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, 125 LIVE, where he was conducting fitness classes and personal training three times a week.

At the age of 83.

He’s still at it and the fact is, he is older than anyone in his classes – and they’re all what you could call “seniors”.

They will tell you that they love his classes and they are his biggest fans.

Well, bit by bit, Fred’s fame spread beyond Rochester and recently reached the offices of the Guiness World Records headquarters in London, England.

They were intrigued that this now-84 year old guy was a fitness instructor and possibly older than any other living trainer. So they began their background checks to determine the veracity of Fred Woolman: was he who his bosses at 125 LIVE said he was? Could he be doing what he was purported to be doing at 84? Was it even possible?

Yes, it was possible, they discovered. Fred came as advertised. He was the real deal – an 84 year old fitness instructor and personal trainer.

So, Fred became a Guiness World Record Holder in September, 2025.

But not just once. Twice. He’s in the Book of Records as the oldest living fitness instructor and the oldest personal trainer in the world.

Now, what do you think that says about aging?

I reached Fred at his home in Rochester, Minnesota to get the Guiness story from the horse’s mouth and learned that he’s just plunged headlong into a new physical activity: mountain biking!

There’s no stopping this guy!

Last May, The Art 2 Aging had the pleasure of talking with Mike Drak about his commitment to regain his health.

Mike is a 70 year old man who lives just north of Toronto. His sedentary lifestyle had resulted in large weight gains and he was determined to lose as much of it as he could before August 3.

That’s when he would enter a triathlon competition in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. Here’s the link to that episode. If you are one of the millions who have decided to lose weight through injections of Ozempic, you might want to listen to it.

We got in touch several weeks ago to interview Mike again after the triathlon and learn how he fared during the event which turned out to be filled with unexpected surprises.

Every week, thousands of readers enjoy the musings about aging that can be found on Crow’s Feet. The best way to describe Crow’s Feet is to think of it as a gathering place or compendium of content about growing older that flows from the minds of hundreds of different writers every month.

Nancy Peckenham oversees the content, editing and publishing the works of her writers and leaning on her former broadcast journalism career at CNN to keep the content polished.

Nancy talks about that career, her new one with Crow’s Feet and what she, herself, thinks about growing older in this week’s episode of The Art 2 Aging.

Wayne Lehrer is a guy who thinks deeply. About life. About his role in the world. About what he can bring to others that is inspiring and supportive.

In this week’s POV, Wayne talks about “oxygen” – the thing that inspires each of us to make a contribution – and why it’s important that we locate it within ourselves each day.

Statistics tell us that as we get older, we become more prone to falls. Whether from tripping over something like a curb on the street or the dog at home, once we get past age 65, balance starts to become an issue.

But some incredible technology with bullet proof evidence that it works is being utilized by an Israeli company called Gait Better. They’ve taken the technology and applied it in real world situations with amazing results.

Our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging is the CEO of Gait Better, Hilik Harari.

Artificial intelligence. AI, as we know it, more familiarly.

Everyone is talking about AI and how it’s going to change just about everything. Which has many of us worried about just how and how much it’s going to change everything.

Should we fear it? Plunge ahead and embrace it, come hell or high water?

Regular POV contributor, Dave McCaughan, has his own take on AI. And, as usual, he makes a helluva lot of sense.

Running Time: 5:30