Seven Words that Demand Our Awareness: Be Healthy- Be Kind - Respect the Environment

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Well, hello to all of our listeners joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program. And I'm your host, Joe Casciani. On each program, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. You can learn more about my club at my website. Be sure to take a look at my new training and activities manual, Better, Longer, and Happier: A Guide to Aging with Purpose and Positivity. It's a series of 12 modules in a card deck format developed for activities directors at senior living communities. Be sure to visit the website at livingto100.club blh to take a close— closer look at the Kardec series. Now on to our program. On our program today, our guest is Joe Simonetta, a multi-dimensional humanist and widely respected author and speaker. He's written 10 books, many about the mix of crises our world faces and about solutions that implore us to understand and align with the reality in which we exist and its behavioral demands. Rather than always playing catch-up with our health, finances, and education, Joe writes and speaks about the basic steps needed to be and remain healthy, to be kind to one another, and respect the biosphere. How to stay ahead of the 8-ball. So to speak. We'll also discuss his first-place gold medal finish in the sprint triathlon in the 80-84 age division in the US National Senior Games held in July of last year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. First, a little background. Joseph R. Simonetta holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University— Harvard Divinity School where he studied ethics, global environmental problems, world religions, cosmology, and evolutionary biology. He also studied at Yale Divinity School. He holds a, he holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Colorado. He also studied architecture at the University of Southern California, and he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business logistics Joseph Casciani from Penn State University. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he's the second of three sons of an immigrant blue-collar steelworker and his wife. He was raised in the shadows of the blast furnaces of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He's since lived for significant amounts of time in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, Greece, New Zealand, and Ecuador. He's been an Army officer, professional athlete, entrepreneur and businessman, architectural designer, real estate developer, home builder, environmental activist, author, and senior editor of the World Business Academy, and twice a nominee for U.S. Congress. Intermittently, he's written a mix of fiction and nonfiction books about humanity and the state of the world. Joe, you've been busy over your journey. Welcome to our program today.

Thanks, Joe.

Good to be here with you.

Yeah, it's been, uh, kind of an unusual life.

Yeah, doing all the—

all that you mentioned.

You've touched on a lot of different dimensions and perspectives. Well, I, I touched on it, but, um, give us maybe the highlights of what brought you to where you are today. You've been around the block a few times. So what, what stands out in your mind as helping you reach the place where you are today?

Well, as you mentioned, my father was an immigrant. He only had an 8th grade education because he had to go to work. He came from Italy in 1912, a long, long time ago, with his parents and with his, just with his mother. And a couple of siblings. When he went through Ellis Island, the agent asked his mother what his name is. What's this boy's name? And my grandmother said, it's Rosario. And the agent said, we don't use that here. His name is Russell. That became his name, which happens to be the name of one of my brothers and his name of my son. So anyway, I grew up in this essentially immigrant household. Dad, as I mentioned, an 8th grade education. My mother graduated from high school, but I guess she was particularly intelligent because she skipped 2 grades. They accelerated her to 2 grades in high school. My 2 brothers, I had 2 brothers. I'm in the middle. I'm the middle son. Even though my father had hardly any education, formal education. He was a very, very wise man, very responsible person. And we all ended up getting at least one master's degree, all three of us. My older brother, in fact, went to the United States Military Academy at West Point. My younger brother retired recently as a vice president with Pepsi. In the early years, and I always liked sports, I played sports my whole life and continue to play sports, as you mentioned. I do a triathlon now and then. And I wasn't really much of a student. I wasn't interested in academics all through high school and college at Penn State as an undergraduate, where I played a couple of varsity sports, tennis and soccer, president of my fraternity. But I almost flunked out at Penn State. First semester, I got very, very bad grades. In fact, my my counselor said he bet me that I was going to flunk out. Yeah, I guess that's what I needed, you know, somebody to say that to me, give me a challenge. Well, I still never got great grades, but I got what I needed to graduate. Yeah, I was smart enough to get, you know, any grade that I, that I wanted to get, I could get. But I, I did, I really didn't have any direction. And later on, I got, as you mentioned, a couple of master's degrees. From there, I went on and had experiences in all those fields that you mentioned, from being a military officer, professional athlete, architect, in politics and religion and writing and entrepreneurial experiences and on and on. I think, I guess to answer your question about how did I get to where I am, part of, part, of it, um, is of course from having all these, uh, different experiences, diverse experiences in diverse fields. This gives you, uh, a, a greater perspective on life. I remember when I was 40 years old, my birthday, I was living in Los Angeles at the time, working in architecture. And, and I, and around those years, right before 40, I was getting very interested in, have concern about the state of the world. And I remember writing that humanity had created a destructive and unsustainable momentum that must be arrested and reversed if we're going to sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species. Not many people were thinking along those lines at that time. That was 1983. So that was like 20, almost 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 40 years ago. And, uh, you know, then I, I left Los Angeles at that time, and, uh, I, uh, I wrote my first book, which was called The Heroes Are Us: A Call to Rescue Our World, which I wrote in '84 and '85, and, uh, Then I went on and did a number of things, including running for the United States Congress. Eventually, I studied at Yale and Harvard Divinity Schools. I think studying at Harvard in particular, and I transferred from Yale because I found Yale too confining. They looked at the world through the lens of Christianity, which was far too narrow for me. I was pretty old when I went to Yale and Harvard. When I graduated from Harvard, I was 50 years old when I graduated from Harvard, probably the oldest student in the student body. But when I went to Harvard, in Harvard you're required to study all the world religions. And up to that point, even though when I was a kid, I was an altar boy, I would serve Masses. Even before grade school, I would serve Mass in the morning Mass. Went to catechism, never registered with me. I just had no interest in religion, and it was a complete disconnect for me. So when I went to these schools, I was very open-minded to study religions and see what is there, what, what is there for the world, what answers are there for the world. And, and as I mentioned, at Harvard you have to study all the world religions. And when I did, and I— it just occurred to me, there's nothing here. This is old stuff. You know, this, this is really— these are the products of the infancy of our intelligence. And, uh, and then studying, uh, on my own at Harvard, I studied, um, evolutionary biology, uh, actually with, uh, E.O. Wilson, the late E.O. Wilson, who was a very famous biologist. Um, that was a very interesting piece for me to understand where we came from, the origins of life, and then up to the current day. And then cosmology, which I studied on my own, the origin and structure of the universe, to just to understand the scope of things and, and how tiny, tiny, tiny this planet is. It's just a mere speck on the blueprint of existence. It's nothing. It's tiny. It's 8,000 miles wide, 24,000 miles in circumference, in volume 3 millionths the size of the son. You know, so those are, you know, when I was at Harvard, the, um, the last year at Harvard, you're required to do a thesis. And, uh, you have to do this thesis to graduate. And you have fall semester and spring semester class with other graduate students, about a dozen or so. With the thesis professor. And when it came time in the early part of the fall semester for us to declare, we had to stand up and say what we're going to do our thesis on. And I stood up and I said, I'm going to write on the need for a new world belief system.

Yeah, like, that's a light topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So people looked at me like, who is this guy? So that final year at Harvard, it's a lot of work, these schools. And, uh, I wrote a book while I was doing my normal coursework. I wrote a book, um, a manuscript for a book. It was called One: A Third Millennium Belief System. And when it came time to do my thesis, I took parts of this book and put it into— and used it for my thesis. And submitted it, and that was the spring of '93, supposed to graduate. And I was very relieved. I was one of the first people to be done with my, you know, with my thesis. And I had other papers to write and other exams to take, and I took a deep breath. And then I got a phone call from the thesis professor, and he said, this paper is not acceptable. He says, I want— come to my office. Meet with me and another professor.

Yeah.

So I go to this meeting and they say, you can't write a paper like this. If you want to write a paper like this, you really have to bounce it off other theologians' ideas and theologians' ideas. And they had a list of books. So you have to read these books. And they showed me the list. Like, this is the books that are— well, there must have been nearly 20 books on the list. And he said, if you want, you can come back next year, try again. And this was devastating news because I just did 3 years between Yale and Harvard working extremely hard. And I was married at that time, my first wife. And I said, let me see the list. I looked at the list and I said, I said, I'll write another thesis right now. They were incredulous. They think, yeah, go ahead. You think you could do that? It was like an impossible task. So I said, yeah, I'll write into this. So I took the list to the library and got all the books, took them home. And I said, okay, if they want a regular thesis paper, I can do that. I've written those kinds of papers. I skimmed all the books and I wrote the paper, submitted it, and, um, did the other coursework and exams and papers. Then I got a phone call and the professor said, your thesis is accepted.

There you go.

Yeah, they accepted it, and then I ended up graduating with my class. But that whole experience really contributed to my, my worldview greatly, you know, as well as tracking politics and then inserting the religious component into it and understanding what that whole world was about.

I know when we spoke earlier on the phone, you had talked about your early religious background, your Catholic background, and how that had shaped a lot of your worldview. Um, was that—

not really, not the Catholic background did it. No, it really didn't shape my worldview because I, uh, I really wasn't into it, you know. I, uh, it never registered with actually. My worldview was more shaped by my environment and my parents and the wholesome home environment with parents who were very honest and straightforward and hardworking and responsible. Okay, that was the beginning.

Yeah, but that provided the, the basis, the foundation, the support, kind of the nurturance that helped you to feel good about yourself, good about your future.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was kind of shocked actually when I went out into the world and you find that life isn't like it is at home. People don't treat you that way. They're not honest like that.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a rude awakening.

So you've, you've come through different Well, let's start with the professions and the careers. You took a lot of different directions, a lot of different turns. What was the most, um, what was the most lucrative job you've had, and, and what was the most meaningful? I realize they're not necessarily the same, but tell us the top money, you know, earning job and, um, most meaningful, most rewarding job for you.

It's probably a real estate development that I did in Ecuador, in the southern part of Ecuador, in the Andes Mountains, from about 2005 to 2014. It's probably the most meaningful and the most potentially lucrative. I say potentially because it's still remains to be seen. At the, at the end, I got involved in a, in an agreement that remains to be fulfilled. But anyway, in 2004, I was living where I am now in Sarasota, Florida. Lived all over the country, but I've come back to Sarasota a number of times. My mother had just died at 89 years old, and December of 2004. She was living in the same town, and that kind of freed me up. And I was thinking of maybe leaving the country. A lot of people were moving to countries like Costa Rica, Panama, um, and, uh, I did some research, and in fact, I looked at those two countries, um, at that time. I think I really wasn't happy with the politics in this country either at that time. And Panama and Costa Rica were too similar in terms of the weather and the hurricanes. I was also getting tired of hurricanes. We had 3 hurricanes blow through where I live in Florida that year. And a friend from California mentioned Ecuador. And I looked at it. He mentioned a town by the name of Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba. Small town, but it was written about some years ago in National Geographic. It's one of the 3 places in the world that had the largest percentage of people living over 100 years old. And I think it was a place in Russia and a place in, I'm not sure where, maybe India. And I read about it. I said, that sounds very interesting. So I went there and I I intended maybe like to semi-retire, maybe write, just, you know, I wasn't married at that time and somebody showed me this property which was a ranch, which down there they refer to it as a hacienda. It was 663 acres. So it was a big property for sale and I walked it with the owner and I thought, well, I could do a pretty interesting real estate development on this property.

There you go.

And I had never done that. I mean, I worked as an architect, but I never worked on a real estate development. But I thought, well, like, which, which I thought about many, many things in my life. I thought, well, I, you know, I can do this. It's like the triathlon story. First time I did it, I said, I can do this. And so I, I, I, I ended up buying the property. It was, uh, I forget, I think it was over $2 million, over a million dollars for it at the time, 2004, which is a lot of money in Ecuador. But I had to get a financial partner, and I came back to Sarasota. So I was there initially, like summer of 2005, met that owner of that property. It was an old rundown hacienda. The house was dilapidated. There were cows were grazing. It was overgrown. The gate in the front was destroyed. It was a mess. I mean, it was really a mess. So I came back and spoke to a friend of mine who I played tennis with. He was, I think, a Yale law school graduate. And I said, I'm looking— I had 3 people in mind to be a financial partner, and he was one of them. And right off the bat, he said, I'll do it. So he took on the responsibility to raise the money for this project, and I took on the responsibility to do everything, to go there and everything. So I sold my home and moved there in September of 2005. Now, I didn't know a word of Spanish. I didn't speak Spanish. I didn't know one person. I didn't know anybody there. And I took on this project.

Sure.

So I started meeting people. I did the project from 2005 to 2014. It turned out to be like one of the most reputable real estate developments in all of Ecuador.

Was it commercial? Was it commercial?

Oh no, it was residential. Although there was a hotel that was under construction.

Okay.

And we had a world-class equestrian and hiking center. We had art. We had an administration building that I built. Well, I designed and built everything. It was called Hacienda San Joaquin. San Joaquin. There's still a website for that. It's just www. Hacienda San Joaquin. And if you pull that up, my name is still on there. I don't own it anymore. Yeah, my name is still on the homepage as the developer.

Well, why not? Sure.

Yeah, so, uh, that's most of the people that bought—

jump right into it like that. It's fascinating. You, you build your, your resource team and fill in the gaps what you don't have, uh, capability to do, and You pull it off. Good for you.

Yeah, it was really a great experience. I liked, uh, the Ecuadorians are really, really, uh, uh, nice people and very responsible and hard workers. And I met my wife, my current wife.

Oh, okay. There. Okay.

In 2008, and then we got married in 2009, and we had a son there in 2013. My son, who as I mentioned, his name is Russell, same as my father, uh, he was born there. On the interest, a very interesting thing about my son's birth, which relates to my books, is that we didn't think we could have a child. I was pretty old then. Uh, the year he was born, I was 70, and At first, we couldn't generate the pregnancy. We thought we would have to do IVF, in vitro fertilization. And we went to a clinic in Quito, which is north in Ecuador. We were south in the Andes Mountains at 5,000 feet. We were at an elevation of 5,000 feet with spectacular views. So the in vitro fertilization place said, yeah, you need to do this. Sperm is not moving rapidly enough. So we came here for our vacation, back to Florida for a very short vacation. I think in the 9 years I was there, I must have taken vacation maybe 6, 7, 8 weeks. I was working all the time, pretty much 24/7, because I lived on the, in the development. I created a beautiful estate for us. So we came back from the vacation We were gonna go to the clinic and my wife said we don't have to go. She said she's pregnant. She got pregnant naturally. So our son is born in April of 2013 and the day after he's born, I said, wait a second, he was born April 22nd.

That's Earth Day.

So I write all these books. About the Earth, and I ended up having a son born after Earth Day.

Yeah, yeah, more connections. Yeah, so you, uh, became a father in your 70s. Does that make you feel old or young?

Well, I also have a daughter.

Yeah, two children. She was born—

she was born in 2015, right, when I was 72. Um, I think it does both. Makes you feel young. I know. Makes you young because, you know, you go to elementary school, you go to the activities, you go to these meetings, you go to soccer, you go to gymnastics, piano, singing classes, you play with the kids. And but at the same time, you find you go to these meetings or you go to school, you go to a classroom, you go to an auditorium, you realize you are the oldest person at this event by far. For sure. Because I could be— I'm nearly old enough to be the great-great-grandfather of my children. My son is 11, you know, and I'm 81 this year. Yeah. And my daughter's 8.

Yeah.

Um, and mostly, you know, because I've stayed in good shape, I don't have any problem physically. Keeping up with them because I've always done sports and I help, I help my son early on when he was 4 years old when he was starting to play soccer. And he's at 11, he's a pretty good soccer player. And my daughter is a very good gymnast too at 8. So, so it's both, you know, it makes you feel young because you're, you're also with other parents and you're 40 years older than all these other parents.

Yeah. Yeah, but for you, I, like I say many times, age is only a number and you're physically, uh, in such good condition. You were able to, you know, get involved with, uh, physical activities, the sports of your children. So that probably made you feel as young as their, the other parents. Oh, it does.

I mean, I don't, I don't really feel out of place or anything.

Yeah. Yeah.

I look a, a lot younger than my age and yeah.

So, um, you know, when we spoke also, we, we talked about, you know, the title of our program today is Seven Words That Demand Our Awareness: Be Healthy, Be Kind, Respect the Environment. Those are three strong sentiments of yours. Be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. Help us, help us understand why that captures pretty much everything that we want to do.

Yeah, yeah. As you know, one of my books is, is this one, Seven Words That Can Change the World. And, you know, those are the seven words: be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. Maybe the best way I can explain is that, is, as I mentioned, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed that All truth passes through three stages. First, it's ridiculed. Second, it's violently opposed. Third, it's accepted as being self-evident.

Hmm.

Now, the truth— such truth has emerged in our lifetime, informs us that we exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking whole, which all the parts are interconnected. And depend upon each other for survival. Now, simply put, everything's connected to everything else. We exist not separately, but in communion with all other living things. Life's an interrelated, interdependent phenomenon. Everything's in relationship. That's the nature of the universe, and, and that's the nature of life, and that's the nature of the reality in which we exist. Like it or not, reality has behavioral demands. That is, if you want to live, if you want to stick around, these behavioral demands can be summarized in 7 words: be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. These 7 words have the power, you know, to change the way life has been, the way we govern, the laws that we enact, the way we do business, the products we create, the services that we offer, the way we treat our employees, the way we treat our environment, the way we treat each other, the way we treat ourselves. Be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. So leaders must model this behavior, and teachers must teach it, and we must exhibit it if we're going to sustain humanity. Advance our civilization and succeed as a species. So this requires entering into complete new understanding of our reality and what is truly sacred in life. It's not about supreme beings, it's about a way of being. It's about those relationships in life having to do with our health, each other, and our environment, which at our peril we cannot violate, damage, dishonor, or destroy. If we violate these relationships as individuals, as nations, as a civilization, we suffer, and then we disintegrate, then we perish. It's, it's simply the way life works. It's not contrived or fiction. It's not arbitrary or subject to dismissal, nor is it any way negotiable. How we take care of ourselves, each other, and the environment determines not only the quality of our lives, but whether we live or die. These relationships are sacred. They're the wellsprings of life. We emerge from these relationships We're sustained by them. We're surrounded by the very sacredness that historically we've sought from afar. Our window of opportunity to make the necessary and monumental shift in our thinking is small compared to the large obstacles in our current belief systems that must be dissolved. Yet we must do this. If we and all the other life forms that share this jewel of a planet are going to survive. So be healthy, be kind, respect the environment. Why are those words so critical and powerful? Because we exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking whole. Those are the operative words, interlocking whole, in which all the parts are interconnected and depend upon each other for survival. This interlocking whole is the undeniable foundation for the architecture of life and for our civilization. If we continue to destroy the relationships that form this foundation, relationships having to do with our health, each other, and our environment, our house, our structure, our civilization will collapse. Conversely, if we honor these relationships, we'll succeed. And prosper in every way. So the choice is ours, as it always has been. The difference today is we know a great deal more about what sustains and optimizes life. It's time that we honor the knowledge that we have. Only then are we going to improve the quality of our lives, arrest and reverse our destructive and unsustainable momentum, end our needless suffering, prosper together, find peace, sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species. Yeah.

So a simple analogy is the three-legged stool. We care for ourselves, we care for others, and we care for the environment. And we need all three to stay viable. That's your point. Yeah.

Yeah, I refer to those three as, as the foundational relationships of life.

Yeah.

Which, yeah, similar to your three legs of the stool, the foundation.

And the stool cannot stand on two legs. Yeah. Or one, of course.

Yeah, right, right. You have to do all three.

Yeah. So you describe yourself as a humanist. Um, very interesting. How would you define that term? How do you see humanism?

It's just, uh, it's really simple. It's just, uh, humanist is just based in reality and science. It's just objective understanding of life, science, reality. No supernatural. It's, it's that simple. You know, and I came to that secular humanism as consequence of studying all the world religions and realizing that it's also unnecessary. And plus, the supernatural stuff is complete nonsense. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, that's another conversation.

Yeah, well, yeah, when you look— yeah, when you look at, you know, at religion, you know, we— if you, you, um think about humanity and what we have done, you know, since we've been here. And the planet's been here 4.5 billion years, as you know. We've only been here for 300,000 years. That's all, 300,000 years, Homo sapiens. But most of that time we were Stone Age hunter-gatherers for the 300,000 years. It wasn't until 10,000 to 12,000 years ago with the domestication of plants and animals that the agrarian age began. So the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, we mostly have been agrarians. It wasn't until a little over 200 years ago in the late 1700s in England, the industrial age began.

Sure.

By 1850, it spread to Belgium, Germany, France, and then eventually to the United States. Then the middle of last century or so ago, we began our transition from the Industrial Age to the post-industrial, high-tech, digital, and information communication age we live in today. So, you know, we've been here all this time, 300,000 years, but most recently, you know, as more of modern humans. You know, today, as you likely know, we have over 8 billion of us. Each week we add another million and a half. It's expected 2080s, we're going to level off at about 10.3 billion people. Now, the 8.5, 8+ billion people we have now live about 195 nation states speaking about 3,100 languages. Now, the way things have turned out for us, for humanity, is that many of the 8.5 or 8+ billion people, and many of these nation-states are fighting with each other every day, everywhere, over everything imaginable. Now, this fighting, you know, this all leads up to science and religion, but this fighting contributes to life's instability and unpredictability and stability. But it's not the only thing. We have to deal with the fickleness. There's a whole bunch of things that humanity's got to deal with that they have to turn to science, many people turn to religion. We have the fickleness of nature. When you live on one of these things we call planets, they all have natural disasters. On this one, we have earthquakes and hurricanes. Other parts of the world are known as typhoons and cyclones. So we've got earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, floods, drought, and, you know, other severe weather phenomena. And also contributing to life's unpredictability, instability, and uncertainties, we have the extraordinary number of illnesses we contract, which we suffer, countless accidents and injuries that occur regularly. We have all manner of addictions and substance abuse and related problems. We have all kinds of criminal activity going on every day, everywhere, in every way imaginable. Now, while all of that taken together is an extraordinary amount for anybody to deal with, on top of this, to contribute to this, how humanity is challenged and stressed, We've, because there's so many of us now living on a finite planet, planet of finite size, and we don't understand our reality. Many people don't understand our reality and the behavioral demands of our reality. We've created an interrelated web of life-threatening environmental problems. We're depleting our resources, our forests, our fisheries. Our rangelands, our croplands, our plant and animal species. We're destroying our biological diversity on which evolution thrives. The 6 mass extinctions going on now, the first caused by other than a natural cause like an asteroid striking the planet or climate change. The 5 mass extinctions we've had so far, 4 of them have been caused by climate change. The current 6th mass extinction is caused by something different, something unique. It's caused by us. It's caused by humanity. Then as consequence of our powerful electrical and diesel and solar pumping techniques, we're draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables. Then we're systemically polluting our air, our water, and our soil. We now have microplastic and nanoplastic contaminants in our food and water. We've got plastic. In our food and water. And that comes from, among other reasons, dumping about 14 million tons of plastic garbage into our ocean every year.

We're creating a lot of perils, aren't we? We know that.

Well, yeah, and then the big one, you know, as a consequence, those are all hugely significant. But on top of that, as a consequence of sending gases into our atmosphere, you know, our atmosphere extends from the Earth up 6,200 miles. It's divided into 5 layers. The lower area is called the— the lower layer is called the troposphere. That's where these gases, methane, carbon dioxide, and, um, um, um, um, are getting trapped. Methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide is the one I can think of. They're getting trapped in the troposphere, the lower layer of the atmosphere., and they're not letting the hot, warm air escape from the planet as it normally has. So we're, it's like we're living in a greenhouse. We're trapped in this greenhouse and it's getting warmer. So we're experiencing symptoms of global warming and climate change, symptoms like heat waves and devastating droughts, destruction of croplands, dying farms, accelerated species extinction, destruction of coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent intense storms, coastal flooding, more rapid spread of diseases and pandemics, acidification and poisoning of the oceans, famine, starvation, human migration, heat deaths, economic collapse, and, uh, and, and, and, uh, social conflict and potential wars, all associated with global warming And climate change, which many people deny exists, and many people deny that we are the cause of it from these greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, which means— maybe you'll understand what that means. What does it mean, burning of fossil fuels? It means we're burning the dead remains of plants and animals. That are embedded in the Earth's crust in the form of coal, oil, and gas. And so, uh, how many— so how much carbon dioxide are we sending into the atmosphere? 2.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide. And how frequently? Not every year, month, week, or day, but every second, 2.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide. It's on the rise. So that's it. And These problems that I— it's not an exhaustive list of environmental problems, plus these problems interact with each other, plus other ominous and unpredictable, unprecedented problems known as multi-hazards. So, you know, so life is very perilous. It's up and down like a seesaw that we're sitting on. In the theaters where we tell the stories of our lives, it's not an accident For symbols, we have the masks of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow. So life has always been like this. So for answers, get to this point where science— humanity has turned to science and religion, two almost opposite, diametrically opposite disciplines. And we can talk about science and religion a little bit if you'd like.

Well, I'm looking at the time, Joe, and I want to make sure we can talk about your win at the U.S. National Senior Games. That's— yeah, we can have a minute or two. Can you tell our audience what that was all about and what you were able to accomplish without a lot of preparation?

Well, yes and no on the preparation part. There was a lot, but As you mentioned, the United States National Senior Games, which are held every 2 years, were held last year, which is 2023, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2022, in the fall of 2022, I was looking at the website for the United States Senior Games. I participated a little bit here in Florida in racquetball. I think I won the racquetball championship because I played a lot of racket sports, tennis, squash, racquetball, and I've won a lot of racquetball tournaments. But at that time, I had gotten away from racquetball. I had gotten back into running because I used to run a lot. I used to run 6 miles a day, 6, 7 days a week. And I looked at the website, the triathlon caught my eye and I thought, I wonder if I can compete in this. And I looked at the times and I said, I don't know. I said, I said, I said, I think I can do that. You know, it's called a sprint triathlon. There's different triathlons, sprint, Olympic, and then there's full triathlons. The sprint, you typically swim about half a mile, but in the senior games, you swim a little bit over a quarter of a mile, and then you do a bike, 12.4 miles on the bike. Then you run 3.1 miles. So I'd be doing a little running, no biking. I had a bike, but I really wasn't using it. And I was doing a little swimming. So I started around November 2022 to get ready for this July 2023 event. And then I made myself a schedule because I played so many sports. I know how to work out. I know how to train. So I start getting on the bike, swimming. And doing swimming and running constantly. You can only do so much when you get older because you injure more easily. So it came time for the event, and I flew to Atlanta and then up to Pittsburgh and signed in, went to this bike shop where I had reserved a rental bike. And got a hotel above Pittsburgh cuz the event was at a lake above Pittsburgh. Uh, and there's other guys in the hotel. It's kind of a funny story cuz there are other guys in the hotel that were getting ready to do the triathlon. Most of these people were winners from different states cuz to do the nationals, you're supposed to win your event at the state level. But they let me in and other people who wanted to get in, into triathlon cuz a lot of states don't offer the triathlon, so they opened And when I was talking to the guys at like breakfast the day before the event and meeting them and they're saying, how did you get into this thing? And I said, this is the first race. Not only the first triathlon, the first race I've ever done in my life. These guys are kind of laughing and they're very, very nice. These guys have been doing this stuff for years, have very sophisticated bikes and equipments and running shoes and, and running outfits and, and, and wetsuits and everything else. And so the next day, you know, the event begins very early in the morning. And I'm with my age group, which was 80 to 84. And you start off at the lake and you're supposed to swim this 400 meters, which is a little over a quarter of a mile. And I do that easily. It's no problem. Just nothing. And, uh, They dropped, they had this rope in front of everybody and they dropped this rope and I, and I was, and I took off and there were a lot of guys in our group. There were two groups that were much younger than me and they, they took off and I thought I could keep up with them. So I swam two laps. I created two major mistakes in this, in this event that I learned from. After I swam out at 100 yards or so, I was out of breath. Everyone went by me. I couldn't, I couldn't breathe because I went out too fast. I thought I can keep up with these people and I went faster than my abilities, my, that I could handle in terms of trying to keep up.

You were trying to keep up with the younger, the younger ones. Yeah.

And even guys my own age, you couldn't really tell because everybody was together. And I, all of a sudden, I could not believe it. I could not swim. I had some backstroke, breaststroke, sidestroke. I was gasping for air and I said, you idiot. I was talking to myself. You think you can come to an event like this and compete with these guys? Been doing this for years and you see what happens to you. So I struggled through. I was like one of the last people out of the water. And then you run and you put on your running shoes and your helmet and jump on your bike. So I got on my bike, did the 12 miles, then I figured, you know, I'm completely out of this race. There's no way. So I get off the bike and I get rid of the helmet, start running. You do the 3.1 miles. It was 2 loops. You go out in one loop, then you repeat it. And I was going out on the first loop and I got near the turn, approaching the turn coming back. And then I saw on my left, guy coming toward me. Who won the thing the year before. I said, wait a second, I'm still in this thing. I caught up to them. As horrible as I did, I lost like 6 minutes in swim, which is a huge amount of time. I caught up to them. I said, I can catch that guy. So I ran around the first loop, ran by him, and I didn't know it. There was a guy in front of me who was ahead of him, and I ran in front of him. And then I finished the second loop, came down, and they had this board up, this electronic board, the finishing times. And this guy from Alabama who I met, he said, you may have won this thing. I said, no, there's Rob's name is above me and John's name's above me on the board. But I didn't realize that at the time there were no times for those guys. And then there was a woman standing next to me with her cell phone and she was getting all the times and the finish. I said, can you check my name, please? And she checked it and she said, you won the gold medal.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. How about that?

I couldn't believe it.

How about that? Because on a rental bike too. Yeah.

And not only was it a rental bike, because I'm gonna do a triathlon on the nationals in September in Atlantic City. I'm gonna rent a bike, but, but a very sophisticated bike. This wasn't even a road bike. Now it didn't have real wide tires, but it didn't have the real narrow. So that was the sec— second major handicap. Yeah, the swim was a, was a real disaster.

Congratulations, that's, uh, that's quite an accomplishment. You've, you've, you have a lot of things that you've accomplished and achieved, and you really need to be proud of everything you've done, Joe. I mean, I can see every direction you've taken. You've taken pride in what you're doing and respect yourself and respect others, and you've accomplished a lot. So gold stars to you.

Yeah. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

For sure. Yeah. It looks like we're out of time though, but I, I just wanna remind my listeners, be sure to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for my email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. And if you're affiliated with a senior living setting, be sure to look for my new training manual, Better, Longer, and Happier. Joe, thanks so much for being a guest on our show. People want to learn more about you and your books. How can they do that?

Yeah, I have a, a website with my books. It's just, uh, www.joesimonetta.com, and there's a bio there as well.

Joe Simonetta, S-I-M-O-N-E-T-T-A.com.

Rise. Simitata, like Simon. S-I-M-O-N-E-T-T-A.com. Joseph.

Okay, well, thanks so much again. Much appreciated. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.

Thanks, Joe. Good to be with you.

You're welcome.