- To me time, it doesn't mean anything.

The piece takes as long as is needed.

- Yeah, just being outdoors yesterday, the chicken scratching around while I was planting the peas.

- I kept gambling and I hit rock bottom.

- Body mass index is conceptually flawed.

It works very well.

- The car that struck me was a hit and run.

- They never found the driver?

- Oh, no, no, no.

(upbeat background music) - Welcome to "Getting Dot Older", the new TV series where Americans over 50 share intimate personal revelations about aging.

I'm your host, Roberto Mighty.

This series interviews people live and online and asks everyone the same questions, like number two.

When I was younger I used to think that older people didn't?

And number 23, I am most ashamed of.

You can answer these questions on our online survey.

So join us, stay tuned on TV and I'm looking forward to hearing your story online.

(upbeat background music) In our Boomer Passions segment, Mario uses shop tools to make fine art.

Lee survives a hit and run on his bicycle.

David wants to break past patterns.

John hits rock bottom and our boomer quiz is about Roberto Clemente.

(gentle background music) My next guest was born and raised in New England where his parents were both teachers.

He struggled in prep school, then transferred to a local town school where he enjoyed hanging out with what he calls "regular kids."

And eventually he went to college.

- So I went to Brown University where my dad happened to be teaching, which was maybe a mistake to be in the same place with my dad.

But I got in and I struggled there.

The high school didn't prepare me well and I didn't know what I really wanted to do.

I was casting about, you know, do I want to try to be a doctor?

I don't know, I'm having trouble with this organic chemistry so.

- Now wait a minute, everyone has trouble with organic chemistry, I mean.

- Right.

Yeah, I flunked (laughs).

- Well, you wouldn't be the only one, - I mean really.

- That's true.

I could have gone back and tried again but I decided I wanted to be a teacher.

- David was not thrilled with school but he'd always enjoyed working with his hands.

After graduating from college, he found a way to combine his desire to teach with his love of carpentry.

- And I taught woodshop to kids here in New Hampshire for 12 years.

- Wow, that's great geez.

- I liked it.

I mean, it wasn't a natural thing for me.

I'm not one of those natural get up in front of the kids and they all hush and listen and do what I say.

It wasn't me.

So I struggled, but I eventually came up with a good good classroom system, good curriculum, and the kids loved it, and I loved the kids, so.

- That's great.

- It was good.

- David's mother was an avid gardener.

After years of teaching woodshop, he began to think about combining all of his influences.

- And I really wanted to be a farmer, a carpenter, just work with those regular people like I was getting to know in high school, and I've succeeded in doing that.

I found jobs doing carpentry, I bought a piece of land I'm still sitting on here, been here for 40 something years and it's not exactly a farm, but I have an orchard and grow my own vegetables and.

- Ah yes, getting away from it all.

How did that work out for David?

So to that extent, like you're living a dream, you know.

- Yeah, I do feel quite fortunate.

I don't like being alone as much as I am.

But I'm in a good place and yeah, just being outdoors yesterday, the chicken scratching around while I was planting the peas, you know, it was pretty pleasant on a sunny day.

- Unfortunately, not everyone can find fulfillment living in the country.

- My wife, who I'm now separated from, was a big part of that too.

But she decided she needed to be living more in town than out here and became unhappy and we just, you know, we couldn't get to where we were happy with each other.

So I'm at that point of being alone when I didn't expect to be.

- Right.

Well, how old were you when you and your wife separated?

- Just she moved out just before Christmas.

- Oh wow.

- So it's recent, yeah.

We separated in this same house in September, and it's my second marriage.

I had another marriage.

Right after college I met a woman who I loved her kids so I married a woman and two great kids, still very connected with my stepdaughter.

So, but having two marriages that have ended when I expected them to be for the rest of my life, it feels sad.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so that's a sadness in my life still.

- Right, I bet.

Question number three.

The one thing I wanna do before I die is, and the reason I haven't done it yet is.

- Wow, the one thing I wanna do before I die is have a really good, loving, caring sharing relationship with a woman.

For me, it's a woman because I've tried and failed at that and I am still working on understanding why I failed at that.

It's easy to see the failings in my two long-term partners, but it's harder for me to really understand my part in that so I better keep working on that.

- We'll hear more from David in upcoming episodes.

Remarriages can be tough.

According to the Pew Research Center, "The divorce rate for adults ages 50 and older "in remarriages is double the rate of those "who have only been married once."

Now how about you?

Are you contemplating a second, third, or even fourth remarriage?

Are you in your second, third, or fourth remarriage?

What have you learned along the way?

(upbeat background music) - So this is the studio where I work and some of these pieces represent what I do.

(upbeat background music) (upbeat background music continues) (upbeat background music continues) (gentle background music) - This viewer survey comes from Glenn, a retired science teacher who watches the show in Western Illinois.

Here's Glenn's answer to survey question number 17.

What I'm about now is.

Glenn says, "What I'm about now "is staying alive until my kids have finished college "which keeps getting extended these days."

Glen has got a good sense of humor.

Well, Glen, good luck to you and the family.

Keep laughing and thanks for sharing.

(upbeat background music) My next guest grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and is a husband and proud father.

But before all that, he was a freshman at an expensive college in the northeast.

He'd earned a scholarship, but that money ran out in his senior year.

- And so I said, okay, let me weigh the possibilities, you know.

I was enrolled in school for the senior year and I thought about the possibilities and I said, you know what?

I need to cut my losses and come outta here because I wasn't prepared to borrow money.

- I hear you.

- Or borrow any more money.

- I hear that, yeah.

Lee went back home to Missouri, enrolled in a local college and got on with his life.

By the time he retired, he'd become a teacher at the St. Louis Library.

- Right, and that was the joy that I had in what I got to do there was to lead a class in teaching basic computer skills.

- Wow.

- Because as you might be aware, there's a vast, vast canyon between people with skills that they can use and people who don't have skills.

- Absolutely.

- And it brought me great joy to introduce it to people in a way that they could understand and make use of on their own.

- Right.

- You know.

- That's true.

- And I'm elated, but sometimes afraid when people stop me in public who remember being in my class.

And the way that they stop me is not always the most polite way.

- Oh, what do you mean?

- Well, some lady yelled across a grocery aisle, "That's him, that's him right over there."

I thought I was gonna be subject to arrest.

(Roberto laughing) - Get him.

- My wife looked up and said, "You better go see about that."

I said, "I'm not going there, "I don't know what is going on."

And she came up and she brought her relative, whoever was with her, and came up and shook my hand and said she wanted to thank me that she catapulted from my classes to first being engaged digitally herself, and she said I helped give her the inspiration to advance to a different job.

- Wow.

- Based on the start she had with me.

- That's fantastic, congratulations.

- Well, I was elated, but I thought to myself, she's giving me way too much credit, but it's nice, you know.

- I'll take it.

Lee has been an avid cyclist for over 60 years, including commuting to and from work on his bike.

That can be risky.

- I've had three interactions with cars.

- Interactions.

- Over that time, and the worst one was the most recent one, just about five and a half years ago.

- What happened?

While riding his bike, Lee was hit by a speeding car - And the strike blew a big hole in my thigh.

- Ooh.

- That took 86 stitches to close.

- Oh man.

- And I learned from experience, it's not the flight, it's the landing.

- Is that right?

(Robert laughing) - The landing broke one leg in two places.

- Oh man.

- And all five toes on my opposite foot.

- Oh, ouch, ouch, ouch.

So both legs were kind of outta commission then?

- Oh, I was outta commission for the better part of three months, you know.

- Oh yeah.

- And I'm too old for that man.

- That foolishness.

You have stuff to do, you're a man of responsibility, you know.

- Roberto, I'm too old for that stuff, man.

You know, to be all busted up like that.

- Lee recalls the aftermath of his accident.

- The car that struck me was a hit and run.

- They never found the driver.

- Oh no, no, no.

Thank God for strangers that mean well, because two guys were pedestrians on the street and came up to me and stood around me so that I wouldn't be in any danger from the cars going by.

- Wow, wow.

- Because I was crawling.

- Now Lee is grateful for those men.

They put themselves in harm's way to stop him from getting hit by more cars.

- Before they came up, a couple of cars whizzed by pretty close.

They said, what's that guy doing in the street?

And they just went on by.

- Just went on by.

- I mean they probably had appointments to get to and you know, things to do, you know.

But it was quite an experience.

I'm thankful for all the people who helped me get through it.

None the least of which was my wife who was very empathetic.

- We'll hear more from Lee in an upcoming episode, but what about you?

Have you had a terrible accident and lived to tell the tale?

Is there someone you'd like to thank for your recovery?

- [Narrator] The "Getting Dot Older" series includes expert advice for people over 50.

Our growing number of topics will include medicine, elder care, financial services, nutrition, geriatrics, estate planning, and lifelong learning.

- When it comes to our health, some common terms can be confusing.

I asked Dr. Walter Willett to help clarify a couple of familiar phrases involving weight and fat.

- What's the relationship between obesity, and please define obesity, and body mass index and in a way that I think most people could understand it, please.

- Yeah, there's no perfect way of measuring obesity.

Basically it means excessive amounts of body fat and we can't, while people are living, we can't exactly measure that directly.

So we have indirect ways of getting at it, and probably the most common is body mass index.

And that's just dividing our weight by a version of height that gives us our weight adjusted for our height.

Obviously a tall person should have a higher weight than a shorter person.

So we wanted to adjust our weight for our height, that's what body mass index is.

And it doesn't directly distinguish fat from muscle which is a basic limitation, but as it turns out most of the variation between people of the same weight is in the amount of fat, not the muscle.

So as it turns out, even though body mass index is conceptually flawed, it works very well.

In fact, we've seen it works as well as really expensive, the gold standard method, DEXA for example, which isn't used clinically it's used in research primarily.

But in predicting future risks and abnormalities, it turns out body mass index does remarkably well.

But I think it's best used not just by itself but also keeping track of waist.

Because a lot of us men especially can stay the same weight and be basically going through middle life converting our muscles into fat, which isn't good.

So if that waste is growing then that's a sign that there's excessive fat building up.

And also change in weight from when we were 18 or 20 years of age, that if we put on more than a couple of pounds, say from age 20 or 21 almost or surely that's mostly gonna be fat mass, unless somebody's really into muscle building and then they know what, you don't have to use any fancy measurements to know that you, you ignore that little gain of weight with heavy muscle building exercises.

So putting these three measurements together body mass index, which is basically weight adjusted for height, change in weight since we were about 20, and keeping track of our waist, that gives us a pretty good idea on whether someone is overweight or not.

But most importantly, keeping an eye on change over time.

And just weight by itself, if we put on a few pounds it means we're on track in the wrong direction and it's time to make some minor adjustments and not wait till we put on way too much weight, it's really hard to get it off then.

- Well, doctor, that was great.

That was a lot of information and I really appreciate your time.

We'll hear more from Dr. Willett throughout the "Getting Dot Older" series.

(gentle background music) This viewer survey comes from Dan who lives in the Spokane, Washington area.

Here's Dan's answer to survey question number 18.

My relationships now are.

Dan says, "My relationships now "are some kind of caregiver to my wife.

"She has suffered for 30 years "from non-life threatening illness.

"She cries every day."

Dan, that sounds very sad.

Our heart goes out to you and your wife.

Thank you so much for sharing and I really hope things improve, man.

My next guest lives in North Carolina and worked for the government for many years in a position requiring a security clearance.

He told me about a very difficult time in his life.

- I got into ah pretty high risk ventures that are normal to get into, like gambling.

- Oh yeah.

- Going to casinos.

You know, I had a pretty good job with pretty good savings, but I was single, so, you know, there's a little bit of, I need some excitement in my life.

So I met, you know, met some people that were gamblers and got involved with that and I got addicted to gambling that quick.

Trying to, you know, keep a nice steady job, good income, but I got into gambling and literally threw a lot of money away and then couldn't stop.

And then when the employer says, "We're gonna take your clearance", that meant, "You're fired."

- You're fired, right you're done.

- And that's where I found myself.

So I'm working as a muffler mechanic now.

Instead of 35 bucks an hour, I'm getting 10 bucks an hour.

And- - Now what about your gambling?

Are you still doing that or did you hit rock bottom?

- Yeah, so I lose my job and I get this crappy job and I keep gambling.

And it's like, man, this is not right.

And so literally I gambled for about 15 years without that decent job, going from job to job.

Even when I got decent jobs I kept gambling and I hit rock bottom.

I can't remember what it was, but you know, financially, it's probably everything in my life was just devastated.

I go to a psychiatrist and she says, "You gotta go to gambler's anonymous, "you gotta stop gambling."

And I went to a GA meeting local, and sure enough, man, I felt like I was in a fellowship of people that knew exactly where I was.

And it settled me and I was able to give up gambling.

I've been probably eight years free of not making it a single bet.

- Man, I'm so happy to hear that.

- Yeah, right, right.

Oh, it's, you know, when people get addicted to things, it will kill you.

It'll send you to jail, it will kill you, and if you don't give it up, you're in trouble.

And when you do give it up, they always tell you, your life is gonna change the minute you stop this.

And it's true, it really does happen.

So anyone who's addicted to anything.

I'm always encouraging them with my gambling.

It's like I can give it up and it does change your life and I'm thankful to be away from it - We'll hear more from John in upcoming episodes.

Most adults who gamble do not have a diagnosable condition.

However, according to the Yale School of Medicine, "Hallmarks of gambling disorder "include not being able to stop despite the consequences."

- [Narrator] If you or someone you know has a mental illness, is struggling emotionally, or has concerns about their mental health, there are ways to get help.

Use these resources to find help for you, a friend, or a family member.

(gentle background music) - [Roberto] A series of visits with senior artists.

I first saw this artist's work several years ago.

With studios in Mexico and the US, his pieces are exhibited in museums and galleries internationally.

I asked him to be a guest on "Getting Dot Older".

- My name is Mario Kon, I'm an artist.

I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, also raised in Buenos Aires.

I used to spend a lot of time at my father's workshop working in wood and carving.

- [Roberto] When he was a child, Mario was deeply influenced by a family member.

- My grandfather, he was the catalyst for me to learn how to work in wood, carve and paint, and sometimes burn.

(gentle background music) - [Roberto] Mario gave me a tour of his studio near Boston Harbor.

- So this is the studio where I work and some of these pieces represent what I do in terms of like carving, painting, or burning.

This piece right here is one of my favorite works which I call "Electric Fence".

And this piece you can see is carved on a single piece of plywood.

This piece of plywood is only one inch thick and yet I was trying to get as much depth into the piece as possible.

- [Roberto] Mario uses tools I recognize from construction work.

I wondered about his techniques - And the way that this piece started.

I start like basically chipping and cutting into the piece and in that way looking what is inside.

Everything that you see over here in this section is within the piece of wood.

(gentle background music) - [Roberto] I asked him how he got started.

- These things were done when I was only maybe six years old, obviously with the help of my grandfather.

But I used to enjoy doing these images of all Egyptian works.

(upbeat background music) - [Roberto] I wanted to know if each of these pieces takes a long time.

- So a lot of people ask me how long it takes to create one of these pieces.

To me time, it doesn't mean anything.

The piece takes as long as is needed, and only is finished when I feel like everything that I can do on the piece had been done.

(upbeat background music) (upbeat background music continues) - Thanks so much.

Please go to our website and take our survey and let us know if you're interested in doing a video call interview with me.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your story online.

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