The Retirement Wisdom Podcast  By  cover art

The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

By: Retirement Wisdom
  • Summary

  • Retire Smarter
    Retirement Wisdom LLC
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Episodes
  • Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath
    Apr 29 2024
    Our memory seems like a mystery. Why can I rattle off the stating lineup of the 1967 Red Sox but can't remember what had for lunch yesterday? Charan Ranganath can explain. He joins us to discuss his new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Mattersand what we can do to strengthen our cognitive fitness. Charan Ranganath joins us from California. _________________________ Bio Charan Ranganath, Ph.D, is the author of the new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters. He is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California. __________________________ For More on Charan Ranganath, Ph.D Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters Website __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D. The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD Successful Aging – Daniel Levitin ___________________________ Wise Quotes On Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone "...I really recommend for people to do new things and get out of their comfort zone. Novelty can be hugely important. It can be anxiety provoking for some people and you've got to be careful about that. But one of the things that we know is curiosity and novelty are associated with activity in these areas of brain that release and process dopamine. Dopamine is a modulator that, as I mentioned, promotes plasticity. Some work even suggests that if you, let's say, put an animal in a box and you let it explore this box that it's never been in before, its brain gets flooded with dopamine. Then if you give it some task, now it will be better at remembering the things that it was doing for this task. So in other words, that dopamine can have this spreading effect. So I think that is something that will improve people's memory, potentially. And also I think that kind of engagement is just good for people in general. There's also just a lot of value in seeing and feeling that you're learning. It can get very easy to get into a rut and then feel like everything is the same. Sometimes you lose that curiosity as you get older. I know because I see this in my colleagues sometimes and I'll say, Hey, what are the findings in your lab that you're most excited about? And they'll say, Nothing's new, it's all the same, we're all just rehashing the same stuff. And I find that so depressing because it is like my whole business is curiosity and I am a big believer in the power of curiosity." On The Mind-Body Connection "If you want to improve your cognitive functioning, or you want to retain your cognitive functioning over time and you want protect your brain health, consider that your brain is the seed of the mind and it is a part of your body. I think a lot of people have this idea of somehow I am my mind, and then my brain is separate. And it's not. It is all connected. What this means is that if you're not taking care of your mental health, your emotional health your physical health, it's going to affect your cognition and possibly increase your risk for dementia.... If you want to get in to the positives, sleep and exercise are very important." On Prioritizing & Memory "So at a minimum you want to prioritize, right? So I don't hear people telling me, Boy, I remember this temporary password that I had from 10 years ago. That's really great. I'm so happy about this. Even if you remembered everything else, you wouldn't tell me this, right? And you certainly wouldn't tell me I remembered that you're happier about ...
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    30 mins
  • Tap Into the Wisdom of Toddlers – Hasan Merali, MD
    Apr 25 2024
    There's a lot we can learn - and relearn - from the younger people in our midst. They do many things in a way that's highly beneficial for older adults. Dr. Hasan Merali is the author of the new book, Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas, which shows us how toddlers bring out the best in humanity and how we can, too. It’s a whole new way of looking at and learning from toddlers. He joins us from Ontario. __________________________ Bio Hasan Merali, MD, MPH, is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on child injury prevention in low- and middle-income countries. He has published more than twenty-five peer-reviewed journal articles, and his writing has been featured in Science, The Boston Globe, NBC, CBC, and Popular Science. Dr. Merali lives in Oakville, Ontario, with his wife and their toddler daughter. ____________________________ For More on Hasan Merali Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas Website ____________________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross Auburn Sage Who Has the Secret to Well-Being? The Answer May Surprise You. Old People's Homes for 4 Year Olds ___________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Power of Fun – Catherine Price Emeralds of Oz – Peter Guzzardi ___________________________ Wise Quotes On Sleeping Like a Toddler "I think sleep is one of the most important ones, and for anyone interested in wellness or improving their life, I would argue that sleep is the most important one to start with. I think it's a foundation for everything else to build on. And I like the toddler routine because it is so simple and it works. And so the Toddler bedtime routine is a very easy thing to do. And if we all did it, we would all sleep better like they do, and so what you do is you set a bed time, you kind of stick to it. You got to be regular about that time. Start an hour before. None of this involves any screens, so those screens are completely off. One hour before, you're either taking a hot bath or shower and what that does actually is cool down your body and your body needs to be cooler when we sleep and so that kind of gets your body into that mode. The next thing you do what toddlers do is they have lotion put on them and certainly that's something we could all do. It feels good, massage is good but really any hygiene related activity is fine. And then finally I think we're going to talk about this later too is reading and that is the best way to end your night. It's no screens. If it's an e-reader, it is fine, but there's no other distractions. And it s a way to consolidate all that knowledge we're getting because if you read and then sleep, you're going to retain a lot more of it too." On Laughing Like a Toddler "If you look at a graph of age across the spectrum and how much we do an activity, there is the first cliff that we go off is really humor and laughter. And there are a whole bunch of other ones. Reading is another one. Play is a another. And some of them do come back when you're retired, which is wonderful. You know, for reading, it comes back for example when your 65. But laughter is definitely one of them that we can never reach the same level that we did have when we were toddlers. So toddlers left to themselves and they're miked up. They're laughing almost one time a minute. So nearly 60 times an hour. And adults, at most, will get to half of that level. And so this amount of laughter is good for them and us for a lot of different reasons. It's everyone knows this it's a stress reliever. It makes us feel good. And one of the things that I mentioned that toddlers are always ...
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    28 mins
  • The Wisdom and Wonder of Uncertainty – Maggie Jackson
    Apr 22 2024
    We're surrounded by uncertainty and we don't like the feeling of not knowing. But there's often hidden strength in some things that make us uncomfortable. Maggie Jackson's new book explores the research that shows that uncertainty is not a weakness, but instead can be a powerful tool for navigating complexity with creativity and adaptability. Maggie Jackson joins us from Rhode Island to discuss her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure and why we should embrace uncertainty as a catalyst for curiosity - and more. ________________________ Bio Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her prescient writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure has been lauded as "remarkable and persuasive" (Library Journal); "trending" (Book Pal); "incisive and timely-triumphant" (Dan Pink); and "both surprising and practical" (Gretchen Rubin). Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain was named a Top 10 Social Sciences book of 2023 by Library Journal and a Top 50 Psychology book of the year by the Next Big Idea Club. The book inspired Jackson's recent lead opinion piece in the New York Times on uncertainty and resilience. Her acclaimed book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of our tech-centric, attention-deficient modern lives. With a foreword by Bill McKibben, the book reveals the scientific discoveries that can help rekindle our powers of focus in a world of overload and fragmentation. Hailed as “influential” by the New Yorker and compared by Fast Company.com to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Distracted offers a “richly detailed and passionately argued … account of the travails facing an ADD society” (Publishers Weekly) and “concentrates the mind on a real problem of modern life” (The Wall Street Journal). The book is “now more essential than ever,” says Pulitzer finalist Nicholas Carr. Maggie Jackson’s essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and in media worldwide. She wrote the foreword to Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics (Academic Press, 2019) and has contributed essays to numerous other anthologies, including State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton, 2015) and The Digital Divide: Arguments For and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Penguin, 2011). Her book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable. Jackson is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, including a 2016 Bard Graduate Center Visiting Fellowship; Media Awards from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board, the Massachusetts Psychological Association, and the Women’s Press Club of New York. For a National Public Radio segment on the lack of labor protections offered to child newspaper carriers, she was a finalist for a Hillman Prize, one of journalism’s highest honors for social justice reporting. Jackson has served as an affiliate of the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto; a Journalism Fellow in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland; and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Her website has been named a Forbes Top 100 Site for Women three times. Jackson is a sought-after speaker, appearing at Harvard Business School, the New York Public Library, the annual invitation-only Forbes CMO summit, the Simmons and other top women’s leadership conferences, and other corporations, libraries, hospitals, schools, religious organizations, and bookstores.
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    29 mins

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