45 Forward #235 - Capturing the Amazing Stories of America’s Seniors

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It's just fascinating to me the resiliency that people had.
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75% of the people that we talked to grew up with no power,
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with no electricity, half the time, no running water,
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bathrooms outside of its rural area, and the one thing they all have in common is
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nobody complained, there's not one Iota of complaining about.
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So I mean my tolerance, this is like my tolerance level of young people complaining about stuff is extremely shallow.
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Yeah, yeah, so it.
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Hello everyone. This is Ron Roel, the host of 45 Forward.
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You all love good storytellers, and the best storytellers are the ones with the most to tell.
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American seniors who have already lived long lives, but our older generations often don't get a chance to tell their stories.
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In fact, they're not even asked.
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In today's episode, I'll be talking with Jack York, whose mission is to change all that.
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Jack has been immersed in the senior living world for more than 25 years,
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and he is the founder and chief storyteller of tailgate.
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Now he spends his days crisscrossing the country, capturing the amazing,
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often untold personal stories of seniors, including those of our oldest, old,
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100-year-olds, our nation's centenarians, through a project he calls vintage voices.
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The story of Jack and tailgate is an amazing, heartfelt story in itself,
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and today I'm privileged to share the story with you.
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So now let's meet Jack York, Jack. Welcome to the show.
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All right, thanks Ron for having me on.
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I love your whole tagline of making the second half of life better than the first. That's awesome.
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Yeah, and you've done that. You've had multiple parts of your life.
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So let's start with that a little bit, Jack.
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So give us, well, during the course of the conversation, we'll talk about a lot of your different pivots,
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but just give us a sense of, you know, I don't know, you started out with the tech industry.
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I guess selling semiconductors and then you made a dramatic shift.
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Tell us about that beginning and your, a bit about your origin story.
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I had a fairly conventional, I guess, you know, corporate climbing life that I was in my mid-20s,
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started working in the Silicon Valley for a company called Siliconics that was in,
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as you said, in the semiconductor industry.
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People in the senior living world have assumed I'm a tech guy, but I was always, I was just a good sales and marketing guy in the, in the, in that, in that technology world.
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And just never thinking of it as, you know, it was a good career, you know, you check all the boxes of what you're supposed to be doing, great family and kids and all that stuff.
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And never thinking of it as a business. I really get friend of mine, Leslie Swini in, in 1998, all of a sudden that's a long, that's a long time ago.
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She had the idea to donate some computers to a local assisted living community in, in California.
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And again, it was never an idea for a business. It was just, she just noticed that it looked like a lot of the people in this community that she was pretty close to geographically that were, were pretty lonely.
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Or they said, did some kind of bored.
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And so we just, just donated some computers. She worked with the residents for a year and, and it was just kind of a cool thing to do.
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And then a very spiritual thing happened that my mom, we were having an 80, the surprise birthday party from my mom in, in 1998.
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And towards the end of the party, she started, you know, not, not feeling a little, you know, just as the party was pointed out, she was getting a little dizzy.
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So we just out of precautionary call and ambulance, they come out and they look at her and then not, not overly concerned.
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But thought, well, maybe we should take her to the hospital just to, to, to be safe and it turned out that she, you know, this is such a joyful story, but it sounds so sad when you say that she wound up having a massive stroke in the, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and, and died the next morning.
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But it was her spirit was telling me to, to do something with my life that, that had purpose and had meaning and it was kind of her last gift to me.
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And so, without having any, any idea, I mean, I, I'd, I'd work for the same company for almost 15, 16 years.
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So I just completely jumped off a cliff to start a company called it's never too late with Leslie and my, and my brother Tom and had, you know, usually people start companies.
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They have, they have some, some, of, you know, a skill set in whatever that industry is.
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We, we had no idea on any level of what we were doing, which in some ways was bad of maybe some ways was good, but that was the whole inception of I into L and, which was all about bringing technology to older adults and that's kind of how the whole major pivot happened and how everything else since then is, is followed.
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Yeah, so then you decided that on the name is never too late with this is that for you or for or for, yeah, it's ever, it was all about, it was all about just, you know, it's, it's 1999.
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So the whole computing, you know, windows had just been out for a while. I mean, the whole computing world in general was just starting much less the, you know, much less older adults, much less nursing home was much less dementia.
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I mean, we were ahead of the curve on pretty much every level, but it was just, you know, with just observationally is really kind of how the whole idea started observationally.
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You go into a senior, let me community.
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And you'd see these, and you know, none of this is meant to say anything demeaning about the incredibly dedicated staff that work in senior living, but you know, you go back to 1999.
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And you have these people that are, you know, the residents that are, you know, teachers and welders and doctors and lawyers and whatever the heck their, their life was, they lived completely rich lives.
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And you'd look at the, you know, at what then was called activity programming.
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It was, it was so demeaning to people that had lived such full lives. And again, it's not, not at all a reflection of the, of the people that were interested in it is didn't have any tools.
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So, you know, you have rooms full of, you know, old VHS tapes and, and you're, you know, you're just, you're just trying to keep people.
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It was, it was, there was just nothing, it was nothing really engaging about it. And it just seemed like, there's, there's kind of be a better way to, to do this.
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It was, that's just kind of how it started. And the fact that we didn't know the industry, the fact that we didn't know, we didn't know what we were doing.
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It, it made us just ask questions of people. And, and there were so many people along the road that really helped guide the product development.
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They saw that our hearts were in the right place. And, and it was just, it was just really a, you know, just kind of a organic beginning to accompany in a, in an industry that was starting to look at computing.
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But only through the lens of medical records and clinical applications. So we were, you know, you go to a conference, we were like out and left field, you know, and all this crazy stuff.
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And, you know, we were way ahead of the curve. And like I said, it was either, it was probably to our benefit that we had no idea what we were, what we were talking about.
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Yeah, well, it's sometimes you're right. Sometimes it's good not to know. Yeah, exactly.
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But yeah. And so, of course I love your story because my show is 45 forward. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
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And so, because it's on the fact that it is never too late, you know, and, and many of my guests, Jack, you know, have, have had multiple careers, you know, after middle age.
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And I think that's, you know, that's the point of it is that you can keep growing and learning things. And, I mean, we've gone through some tremendous changes.
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And as I think back to my early days as a writer as a journalist, I'm like a little stunned. I'm like, okay, so we were using type writers and I was making copies using carbon paper.
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I know it is. It's so, you know, I, I want to do a, you know, one of my many off the wall ideas. I'd love to do some kind of a contest of 25 year olds to give them a street and smith map guide and tell them how, and they can't leave their cell phone home and like drive from, you give them an address and they got to figure out how to get there.
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I mean, it's, there's, you know, that's what's, and obviously we're going to get into the hundred year olds, you know, you, you get into the world of folks that are sitting there and you get into slide rules and you know, it's just kind of one step back, but it's the same thing.
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It's just people's a version to change and doing things differently and kind of being on the edge to do it.
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Right? Yeah. So we'll talk about a lot of things, but I want to just talk a little bit more about it. It's never too late and, you know, which, you know, now I guess is life loop, right? That's the, yeah.
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And about, so just a little bit about how, how you, how you do this, how do you go into communities, what sort of things do you do with them and, and how do you, because you do a lot of things, yeah.
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It's, it's kind of like, I and to well, and it's, it's now, you know, to my, to my delight, it's a, it's a, it's a much, it's become a much more sophisticated, broader product. It's part of a company called life loop.
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And it was, but, but like I said before, the, the, the, I and to well, the conception was it was just trying to bring to older adults that did not, kind of a combination of, they didn't have a lot of computer experience.
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But they also were dealing with different levels of physical or cognitive decline. How do you bring them the same kind of things that we get used to with the computer?
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It's it, it, it really, I don't know, I don't think it was that, that, that, that complicated of an idea just through, we were way ahead of the curve with touchscreen.
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So it's touchscreen technology and to try to let people be able to get to, without having to really know how to use a computer that just through the touchscreen and well laid out content, they could get to just sections based of travel and spirituality and games and, you know, whatever they would, it's just whatever we know, what do we do?
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I always use the analogy, I'm a big, I'm a big springsteen guy and it's not like when I hit 80, I'm gonna, all of a sudden, want the carpenters, you know, you just, you, we, we all have our passions.
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Right, right, right, that our bodies change, we may change a little physically or cognitively, we don't change the, we don't lose the, the thirst to stay connected and engage with things that are meaningful.
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So I, and to, which is all about trying to bring that, what was relevant to that person and make it easy either for them to get to individually or for an activity professional to be able to guide their way to the content in a, in a group context and it took, and it took forever to, to take off.
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The first 10 years of the company was more, just trying to get people to open up to the ideas of computers and residents and dementia more than you're selling against a competitor, we're just trying to change mindsets and, and I'm super proud of the fact that I think we helped, you know, we helped, we helped move the needle of just that kind of that common sense, equation that, you know, what everybody should have access to the same kind of things that we take for granted with technology.
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Yeah, and I love this approach because I mean, it, it relates to actually who's using it and why are they using it? So, you know, I've been involved, you know, with ARP and a lot of advocacy groups for seniors and, and people talk, well, how do we teach people, you know, seniors that use technology? Well, the same one we teach anybody about things like, like, why is, why is this relevant to you? Why would you use it? You know, what do you need it for?
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Not just, oh, well, I learn how to use all these things and program and so forth, you know, so you're, you know, you're just the fact that you, you know, it's, it's, well, in some way, it's customer-driven, you're looking at who is the customer here?
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It's, it's, it's the senior and why do they need it? And, and also, you know, breaking through this myth of like, oh, well, seniors, they can't use it, they, you know, they, they, you know, used to paper and pencils and stuff like that.
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And, and no, it, you know, but you, you needed your approach of really paying attention to them.
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In the early days, and this is obviously dramatically changed, but in the early days, in this, you know, it kind of reminds me, it reminds me so viscerally of a moment I had when I was a kid, or where I was in a teenager, late teens early, you know, early 20s, I think, that I was working for my dad, and my dad was a civil engineer.
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And, and I remember this guy coming in with a Texas instrument computer. And my dad's a total slide roll guy, you know, and, you know, grow up with that.
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And he was so resistant to this calculator, even though it was so, I'm just sitting there looking at him, it's like, oh, dad, that seems to be a lot easier than that thing that you have.
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I think a lot of the earlier resistance to IN2L, and it was almost subconscious, I think, but the person that had done a job the certain way for 20 years, all of a sudden, here's this guy showing up that has no knowledge of senior living and no knowledge of the, you know, intricacies of aging and dementia, just saying, you know what, it's a lot easier just to touch, touch this.
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If you're showing, if you got a resident who you've built this activity about going to France, and the person wants to go to Germany instead of having to completely redo your whole day, just touch this button instead of that button, it's a heck of a lot easier than all the work you've done, but there was such resistance, because it was just a different way for people to do their job.
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And so, you know, you'd like anything else, you have people that are willing to take a risk, a little bit of early adopters, I hold much of people that were so beneficial to us early on, and it took a lot of years, but it ultimately wound up being, you know, succeeding beyond my wildest dreams.
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And I'm less likely, and my, unfortunately, my brother died, the other founder early on, so it was a tough first 10 years of company, but wound up being like I said, very successful.
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Yeah, but 10 years, I mean, so, persistence is a lot of it too. I mean, nobody likes change.
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It's funny, I don't want to get off an attention, but a lot of why I, I talk a lot to people, to young people that are entrepreneurs starting businesses,
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and as much as anything else, the reason that I and 2L succeeded was when I was 25, I started saving 10, between 10 and 20%, I would save of what I made and put it into no-load mutual funds, and just every month, put money, and every month, and I'm 40, and it got too close to a million dollars, and that's what we used to launch I and 2L, every dime went away.
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But I didn't have to go look for, until about 10 years later, I didn't have to go look for any other capital, and didn't have to answer anybody else.
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So I'm a firm belief, you know, I've been more the like Jimmy Stewart model of starting a company, but half the people I talk to don't even know who Jimmy Stewart is, so I really come up with a new analogy.
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But it was, you know, I think part of it just growing up with depression, air, you know, air appearance, that, you know, you're just, or you're conservative and you save money, and that's kind of how the whole thing happened from a financial standpoint.
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Great, great, great, okay. So we're going to take a quick break, Jack. Folks, when we come back, we're talking much more with Jack York, the founder of tailgate, so don't go anywhere.
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Welcome back folks to 45 Forward. This is your host Ron Roel. We're talking today with Jack York, the founder of tailgate whose mission is to capture and tell the stories of our best storytellers, America's seniors.
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So before the break, we were talking about Decks earlier career with, it's never too late.
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I wanted to get into how you developed and moved into tailgate. How did this transition take place?
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I was in 2012, got bigger. I spent a lot of time talking about mistakes that I made as any entrepreneur can tell you that.
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I was very self aware of what I was good at. I think I was a good CEO for a company of 10, 15, 20 people. As I in 2012 got larger and more successful, I knew that I wasn't the right CEO to take it to the next level.
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I didn't lose the passion for the product, but just takes a different skill set to kind of go from point B to point C. And I think a lot of people, their egos get in the way of letting go a little bit.
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And so as in the year before COVID, I was trying to do some things that were more, you know, almost more kind of public.
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I was still passionate, so working for I and two L. But I did, I wanted to kind of get out of the operational role and just do more, really just more out in the field at the senior living communities and this.
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So we came up with the idea, I turned 60. This is five and a half years ago. I turned 60 and I in 2012 turned 20.
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And so we invented this thing called the 60 20 tour that I drove around in a van with GoPro cameras, which is what I'm doing now. We'll get to that later.
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But we it was really like carpool karaoke. We couldn't call it that from a license standpoint. So we called it cruise and in cronon.
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And we just go to communities and we would get residents to drive around, you know, drive around the neighborhood with me and we sing songs and just, you know, just have really kind of a just wherever, wherever the conversation would go and it was the first time, you know, my I and 12 career.
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Not that this is a bad thing, but I would, you know, I'd lug in a demo unit and I'm trying to talk to the executive director and the therapist and the activity world, trying to sell the product and show what it was, you know, say hello to the residents and but I didn't really interact with them and then, you know, then you leave and you go to the next community and and all the sudden with the 60 20 tour.
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It was really the first time that I really had had more deeper relations or conversations with the residents and it was like, that guys people are just so cool.
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And they're so thirsty to be heard. And that was kind of the, the, it just kind of planted a seed of there's got to be a bigger and better way to do this. And then when COVID hit.
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It was, you know, it was kind of odd because everything I and 12 was about was really so ideal for, for COVID because it was all about trying to connect residents to the outside world to their families to, you know, to what mattered to them.
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And so, you know, just in blunt capitalistic terms, COVID probably tripled the valuation of I and 12 and all of a sudden a lot of a lot of private equity companies were interested in it.
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It really wasn't that we were necessarily looking to sell the company, but it was it's kind of, and it was like, well, maybe, maybe this is the right time to do that.
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And so we, we were acquired through a private equity company became part of a company life loop and and I'm still involved with it. I love what it's turned into. Like I said earlier on, it's, it's the, the, the infusion of capital and of life loop is allowed the product to become a lot broader.
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And it's now tied into AI and doing all, I mean, it's, it's totally thriving, but, but that allowed me to, but my, I never lost the passion for I and 12, but I really felt like almost like when I started I and 12, it sounds kind of hoky, but it's true that it really felt like a calling to me when I just saw the isolation and how technology was just letting leave people behind.
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I just felt the same way, I had kind of the same feeling with tailgate that are just in general that just a calling to do a deeper job of trying to capture the stories of, of some of these folks.
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And so the initial launch of tailgate was a 42 foot trailer that we had and that's kind of how the name tailgate came because it was, it's spelled T-A-L-E because you're capturing stories, but it was initially a lot of tailgate parties that we had this 42 foot trailer that we bring all over the country and we built a recording studio inside the trailer.
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And so we'd show up at a community and have a whole day of activities and a tailgate party and then we'd be capturing stories on the inside.
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And I just, I fell in love with doing it, but I also felt like the, the, the, the sanctity of capturing the stories was getting lost in this big party and it really wasn't all about the party.
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And it was also the other, the other practical side of it is that everybody else in the company like had lives back at home and they wanted, I was pretty comfortable being on the road all the time and so there was a little bit of like, you know, what's a different way to do this and so that's kind of what it's evolved to now, but that's how it started and, and it was the same.
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It's all, I mean, really the, the, the patron saint of me is probably, Leonardo DiCaprio and catch me if you can because now I'm a, you know, now I'm a documentary film producer and before I was a tech entrepreneur, both of which I had absolutely no business doing, but you, you know, you just jump in and figure stuff out and all of a sudden, you know, you start making it work.
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Yeah, so what did you have a moment when you just really realized like, wow, people really have a thirst to tell stories and as they've told me before, sort of uplifting stories or stories of their lives that and no one was asking them.
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Was there sort of an epiphany?
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Part of it for me, you know, this is also going back to the idea of starting it is that when I was a kid, I, you know, I was talking about this before with my dad and like the, the latter part of high school or the part of college, I worked for my dad and in the summers.
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And so we would drive every day back and forth. We would drive about 30 minutes both ways. And after he died, it just, it kind of, you know, it's the classic story that you find out these things that your parents did after they died.
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So with my dad, you know, I knew about his, you know, I knew he had been a part of World War II. I knew, you know, just very rudimentary about what he did.
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And I found out after he died all this really, you know, incredibly cool stuff that he did that I, you know, I sat there in the car with him. You know, I know, you know, not one, you know, I asked, you know, we talk all day about the Dodgers about Nebraska, Corn, Husker, Football, you know, about the stuff that would, you know, we, the father, son conversations.
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But I never asked him, you know, what was it like being a 20 year old kid with a civil engineering degree and all of a sudden you're on a plane going to India to build landing strips and this thing called the Burma road.
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And so, I always bothered me. And so I think part of the, you know, almost my subconsciousness with tailgate is that every, every person's story we capture is kind of a, you know, almost a subconscious tribute to my father.
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And so, I just tribute to my father who's story, you know, I, you know, I never, I never did capture. But, you know, go back to your question.
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And I think it was like a, like a moment, it just, it was like a daily occurrence.
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Well, actually, you know, as I think about, there was, I would say a moment, there was two or three times where people would come up to me after an interview.
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And I would say, how much the interview, how much it meant to them. One, one guy in particular, it's funny, I haven't thought about this forever.
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And just your question, targeted for me. I was in a really cool community called CC Young, outside of Dallas, Texas. And did the interview in the trailer.
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And this guy, you know, I'm leaving the building and we had spent maybe a half hour with four or five different residents. This guy was one of them.
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You know, tall guy and he kind of waves me to come upstairs, beautiful community. He waves me to come upstairs to say goodbye to him. And I, and I go up to him and, you know, I'm just saying goodbye.
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And he just, he looked me in the eye and just said, you know, you made me feel relevant today. And I don't always feel relevant.
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And it hit me, you know, just that comment hit me that, you know, this is more important than, than maybe I'm thinking it is. And then I would hear people say, this has happened a lot.
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And when it first, you know, when it, when I first heard it, it made me feel really good. And as time has gone on, it's actually made me feel a little more sad than good.
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And that is people that have said that in the drives that we do, which we'll talk about in a few minutes.
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Yeah, we'll do that.
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But you'll wind up talking, you know, driving somebody around, capturing their story. And the personal again, we'll tell you that it's the most meaningful thing that they've done in the last year.
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And when I first heard that, it was, wow, that is really cool. And then it's just like, you know, that, that's a sad thing.
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Yeah, that, that they're not, and I think it's just, it's not that it's me and it's not that it's fanfare. I just think that it's somebody is, is authentically taking the time to ask questions of somebody that hasn't, that's lived a full life.
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Yeah. And, yeah.
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And, is rarely asked those questions.
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Yeah. You know, it's interesting, because you're talking, I'm thinking back to, to my childhood too.
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And, and also, and, and, you know, I know we're now into tailgate, but, but going back to life loop, to me, there is sort of a, a life loop to this.
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So, you know, you think about being a kid. And what's the most important thing that for kids is for them to feel listened to, you know, and, and, you know, the adults are in this, their own world doing this.
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And so there's this, I think this, loin, like, I just want to be listened to. And I think that sort of carries through a lot of lives.
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Now, you're at the end of your life loop or, or further down the road. And again, you know, you've got this full life.
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And, and no one's really listening. We're not, you know, I've talked about this before. We're not a society of listeners.
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We're talkers, which is okay. But, what people want frequently is to be listened to, because that what's makes you relevant.
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Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's talkers. And it's also, you know, we're a society of just sucked into our little reality into a cell phone.
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And, and again, this is something we can talk about later, but it's a, it's, you know, a passion of mine is trying to put together this isolation of the older adults paired with these high school students, who are so, you know, they have their own version of loneliness, which is just.
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Right. It's just wrapped in a different box. And it, and just looking at it, just what, and we can talk about that later about, about one about some of the things that have really struck me as, as changes that I think not so much changes.
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Just, I think things that senior living communities can do to enhance the, enhance this whole issue or bring to light this whole issue.
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Yeah, yeah. So Jack, we're going to take another quick break, but folks, we have a lot more to talk about. So don't go away. We'll be talking much more with Jack York, the founder of tailgate.
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And now we're going to transition to his stories about how he actually collects these stories. So we'll be right back.
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Do you like what you're hearing? Well, we've got plenty more where that came from. Head over to 454ward.org, where you'll find a full archive of over 200 episodes of the 45 Forward podcast, all hosted by Ron.
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Each week, Ron talks with fascinating guests, experts, advocates, and everyday folks, sharing insights and stories to help you live a better, fuller life in your second half.
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We cover everything from health and caregiving to careers, relationships, and finding purpose. Whatever helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
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That's 454ward.org. Check it out and keep moving forward. 45 Forward.
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Welcome back folks to 45 Forward. I'm Ron Roel, your host. Once again, we're talking to Jack York, the founder of tailgate.
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And about his passion for telling the stories of seniors, who really is the backbone of our society and our culture.
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So Jack, let's get into a little bit more about how you do this. I know that you've, about how you do your interviews. I've seen some of your interviews where you're actually interviewing folks in a car, which I found fascinating.
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Remind me a little bit of that Jerry Seinfeld bit, you know, coffee in the car with the comedians.
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Yeah, but I like your version better. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a couple of, like the tailgate, there's a couple of different things that we're doing.
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And one of them is we do really cool documentaries. And why don't we get to that in a minute. And then we're also, we have a great author in our staff.
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Her name is Aubrey Rodin. She's writing a book about some of these people that were mean along the way.
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So I mean, everything we're generically doing is tied to just elevating aging. And as a second tier way kind of elevating senior living and trying to kind of tweak that.
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But as far as the, what a lot of people see is the, the, the vintage voice is what we call vintage voice. It's a partnered partnership between tailgate and the company called dash media that does great work with social media in senior living.
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And so that's where I do a lot of the, you know, a lot of the interviews in the car. They're, they're, I think everybody is everybody who's a parent has experienced kind of the, how you can get your kids to say things in a car that, you know, you can just, you can have good conversation in a car.
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So there is something oddly comfortable about, you know, about just talking while you're driving. So if you look at the, the channel we've put together with this partnership is vintage voices.
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It's called vintage voices 100, which you can see on, on Instagram and YouTube, tick that call it.
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So, but I, but I, you know, I guess just, we can get to that more than a minute, but in terms of your question.
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You know, I think it's, it's just, it's just interesting to me. You know, it's funny because people will say people, I just, I laugh my rear end off sometimes because people will say that they really appreciate my work.
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And they say it like how you would talk to somebody who's digging wells in, you know, in, in the, you know, in Africa. Like, I mean, I, it's just, it's, I've always been a history person.
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I've always very enjoyed history and I'm fascinated to just see, you know, what happens from generation to generation. So for me, it's just, it's just curiosity to just try to put myself in that person's head.
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Of what their life was like. And then I think that people, they have a good radar of authenticity and they see that I'm authentic.
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Right. And the fact that I'm a stranger, I think makes it a lot easier sometimes to open up.
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And so it's interesting. And you know, this totally, I think this next comment fits with the whole premise of what you're doing, Ron is then I honestly, I never really felt to be, to be brutally honest.
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I never felt like I was a very good CEO at IN-2L. I was a good sales guy, but I really wasn't very good CEO.
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I really feel like I'm good at interviewing and, and, and, and I think it's to the point of your show, it's a skill set that I never would have ever thought that I had that I don't even tap into till my early 60s.
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And it's, and it's turning out to be something I thoroughly enjoy. You know, I think that I'm good at and I've surrounded myself with phenomenal, with the documentaries that we do, phenomenal team of editors and, and videographers that really make the conversations that we have come to life.
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But it's really, it, you know, I think that I think what anybody's good at doing doesn't seem that hard. Like for me, I really enjoy public speaking and getting in front of, you know, getting in front of groups of people and talk about these lessons I'm learning.
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And so like when you hear how the terror that public speaking strikes inside of people, I don't get it. But man, throw me a, a pipe wrench with a, with a toilet overflowing.
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And that's when I get terrified. I have no idea what to do. So I think, you know, we all kind of have our, our, our mojo of what we do. But to me, I think, again, just going back to your question, it's just being genuinely curious about the person's.
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Whatever the topic is and then just shut up and let them, let them run with it.
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Yeah, I think you're right, Jack. I think, I think people detect your curiosity. It's a genuine curiosity. You're just interested in their lives. You're listening to them.
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And, you know, I think especially with older people, you know, they've lived a long time and they can pick up, you know, things, they can sense things, you know, because they, their brain is, you know,
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something a lot of experiences and they can tell very quickly this guy is for real. And, and he's generally, you know, he's not, he's not threatening to me. He's not trying to, he's not trying to coerce me, get something out of me. He's genuinely curious and he wants to know. What was my, yeah, like this guy, this a guy, a guy in Iowa that worked for 45 mil, 45 years at general mills, then making cereal.
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And I just thought that was, I thought that was fascinating, like, you know, it's easy to stereotype, like, you know, what a, that's, that's kind of must be kind of a boring job.
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You know, you, you, the guy starts talking about it. He was doing all kinds of stuff and it, that was, that's his, his identity is general mills and the stuff that he was doing to improve cereal.
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And it, you know, from the outside, it could seem like a simple thing to him. That was his life for 45 years and you want to, you want to honor it and let him talk about it. And he hadn't talked about it for probably, you know, you know, he was 101 and or is 101 and the buddies that he worked with are all gone.
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And there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of psychological kind of dynamics to some of these conversations that I think, you know, you don't really think of, you just have the conversation, but there's a, the more I do it, the more I realize it really is happening to something a lot deeper than I originally thought.
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Yeah. Yeah, I think that we just don't think about the fact that, you know, there is loss in life. You know, you lose your family, your friends, they move away, they pass away.
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But, but your need to connect is still there, you know, and, and, you know, so I think that, yeah, as you pointed earlier, COVID really pushed this, you know, triggered this realization, like, wow, people are really lonely. They need to connect.
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But this does it in a more, you know, I don't know, you know, well, I think it's nice that you, you know, you have, you know, tailgate for for Roman numeral for joy, which is the joy aspect of it.
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This is joyful. I mean, yeah, there's a certain whistfulness about it. It's true. But the ability for people to do this, I think is really important to them.
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Any other, you mentioned this guy from General Mills, any other stories that have surprised you or just sort of stuck with you that, you know, I mean, you've done so many, I know it's hard.
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Yeah, you know, I think the, you know, let me answer kind of both specifically and generically, specifically, you know, I've talked to a handful of World War II vets, and those stories are just fascinating.
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But just a couple of months ago, you know, I can, you, I'm talking about the hundred, you like the documentaries that we do are very planned and there's a real, you know, there's a whole story that we're putting together and plotting and that's a very structured process.
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The vintage voices, hundred year old visits, you just, you just show up. You don't know what's going to happen. But anyways, so I've had a lot of these hundred, a lot of the World War II vets.
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And all of a sudden, a couple of months ago, a guy gets in just a thick German accent. And, and he grew up, he grew up in Germany as a kid.
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And he had to spend 30 minutes every morning singing praise songs to Hitler.
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Wow.
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And then at that night, he's running between his house and a bomb shelter, you know, right in the middle of everything. But you think about that stuff.
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You know, I think you, you, you think about that as being ancient history.
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And then you're just sitting right, you know, in the car right next to somebody, you know, each got your cup of coffee.
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And, and it's a, it's a person that just lived it. So I think that there's, you know, it's almost like, you know, it's, I could spend, you know, 14 of your episodes talking about the individual stories.
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There, there, there, there just is, it's, it's just fascinating to me. The resiliency that people had 75% of people that we talked to grew up with no power with no elect, you know, no electricity.
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Right.
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Half the time, no running water, bathrooms outside of its rural area.
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And the one thing they all have in common is nobody complained. There's that one I owe to complain about. So I mean, my, my tolerance.
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I mean, this is like my tolerance level of young people complaining about stuff is extremely shallow. Yeah. Yeah. So it, but I do.
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I, you know, honestly, Ron, I, I go to bed at night. I can't, I can't tell you how the, the spiritual impact these people have on me. And it just, yeah, I try to really at the end of the day, just spend some time with the lights out and nothing.
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And just think about who that person was that I talk that day. And, and it is, it is, you know, it sounds hunky to say it, but it is such an honor to capture this, you know, we just, you have somebody's life on an SD card.
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Right. And, you know, we do all the social media stuff and it's getting, you know, it's getting tens of thousands of followers and it's got millions of views. And, you know, I don't mean to sound flippant, but that is so irrelevant to me.
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The relevance to me, what we're doing is that you, you give that family. Here's the story. You know, here's this, you know, we'll edit the SD card. Here's the story of your dad's life, your grandpa's life. And my kids, you know, my, my kids never met my dad.
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And, you know, you can show a picture and it's great, but to listen, you know, it's just the honor of doing this, the capturing, and it's happened several several times where the person's died. And then we can, we can get for the family.
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And, you know, here's the stuff you inevitably didn't know about your mom and dad. So there is a, I think I used this word before. There's a sanctity to all of this and a spirituality to all of this that is just, it's just, it's hard to convey.
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Yeah. Yeah. You, you know, you, you, you miss those opportunities. You know, I think for a lot of us, you know, after, after college, you know, I came back and I spent some time.
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I was a little bit, after, but with my folks, I was working on an entrepreneurial project with one of my brothers. And, you know, for at first, you know, you're like, no, here I am back home, you know, my parents.
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But now you both adults and, you know, interestingly, in some way, the time was too short because I realized, well, now I can really talk to my dad, you know, and I remember, you know,
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inviting him to lunch one day and saying, you know, why, why did you make that decision? You know, why did you decide to drop out of law school? And who said Harvard Law School? Why do you say, you know, so things that, you know, that, that, we miss because, you know, we're such a, you know, what, you know, mobile society, you know, we're a society of movers.
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And we just keep moving and moving and we don't get that time to connect. And so this is an interesting, you know, you know, venture viewers, I really appreciate the fact that, what, what, what something you found out about your dad that you, that you had no idea.
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Well, I had, I had no idea his, his father was a lawyer, very, you know, successful lawyer and, and he could have been a lawyer. So what I found out, I said, why, why didn't you want to go to law school?
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What, what, what bother you about the law? Because he's like, you're, he turned out to be an engineer. And so he said, well, I, I didn't like the fact that as a lawyer, you could argue two sides of the issue.
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One side and then the next, he said, like, either, either one side is right or not, you know, that's his engineering mind. So he didn't, you know, he didn't like that kind of what to him was a sense of hypocrisy, you know, in the profession.
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So, but that he had never really, I never really asked him about that, like, why, you know, and that, and I, it made a lot of sense knowing my dad's had a real sense of deep ethical sense of fairness in life, you know.
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So if it weren't for that lunch though, I don't think I really would have been able to capture that.
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The other thing too is like you're in your, not that it's, this is a bad thing. It's just, it's just reality. I think you're in your teens in 20s, you're kind of in your own head. You know, you're just, you're trying to figure out your own stuff.
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So you don't, you don't think about the reflectiveness that you think about when you, you know, for me in kind of mid 60s. I do it. This kind of an, I, this is, was not planned at all, but it's, it's so relevant is that we have the van. I drive around in this whole vintage voice is 100 year old van. I drive around.
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It's all wrapped. And there's a great picture of my, there's, of my dad in World War II. And it's like right where the gas cap is.
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So every time I get gas, I'm like, have it a little silent. Hey, what's going on, dad? You know, it's like a, oh, a little connection that we have, but that, yeah, it's, it, I mean, it is, I think, you know, a takeaway from this for people is that, you know, it's a cliche, but just, you know, go, it's so easy with GoPro.
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If somebody weighs to film things that there's just no excuse not to do it. And you just, you know, while your parents are, or even your kids, you know, you just, just take time to slow down and capture stuff.
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And, and you never regret it.
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Yeah. So we're just like one more quick break. I still want to get into quite a bit of that stuff with you, but we'll get into as much as we can.
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So folks, we're going to take one more quick break, but don't go away because we have a lot more to talk about our last segment with Jack York, the founder of tailgate. So don't go anywhere.
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It's a free interactive website built around the caregiving navigator book with tools designed to make your journey easier, whether you're planning ahead, managing care right now or navigating a crisis.
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You'll find step-by-step advice, trusted resources, and over a dozen downloadable checklists from legal planning to home safety.
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Welcome back folks to 45 Forward when we're talking today with Jack York. We've been covering a lot of territory about how he is gathered and disseminated the stories of America's seniors, terrific stories, and very interesting.
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Now just talk about his vintage voices project, talks about the lives of centenarians, hundred year olds. And he had some interesting observations about, because everyone says, "Oh, what are the secrets to living so long?"
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And you had some interesting observations that had nothing to do with food and diet.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing too, I think this is like a good for your listeners. A good trivia, bar statistic is that there's more setenarians, more people, over a hundred now, than in the history of the world combined.
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So that is a crazy, so it's definitely, you know, and it's just with all the medical advances, obviously, it's not as much of a novelty as before.
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We talk a little bit about this before, and there's really, you know, you look at something like the blue zone, there's all that.
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I don't want to pretend to be a researcher, all I'm talking about is just the anecdotal stuff I've seen. But there has been no consistency at all when it comes to diet, when it comes to, you know, do you drink or not?
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There's people that have not had a drink ever, there's somebody else that, you know, at nine in the morning has a glass of bourbon every day. There's no consistency at all, but the things that have been consistent are, I mean, faith has been like 95% consistent.
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That people have been a very strong connection with God, with, you know, whatever their God is. A few people have been, you know, just kind of vehemently not, but that's still about 95%.
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What's been a hundred percent consistent, and it was, it's interesting, it's almost a couple of things. One of is, it's almost a feistyness of people, you know, obviously anybody over a hundred, most of them are going to have some kind of physical issues.
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And so there are some things they need help with, but they, they begrudgingly take that help. They do, and it's interesting because I think a lot of mindset, you know, for good reason, whether it's, and is an individual or a senior living community, is try to take every, you try to do everything for people.
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And I think that it, I walk away from this thinking, that's probably not the right answer, because people still, you know, they still want to try to use, you know, use their utensils. They still want to try to walk as much as they can.
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So that was one thing. Another thing is just a, you know, very few people that I've interviewed over a hundred are sitting around watching television. There is a thirst of, there's a curiosity that stays there.
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People asking me about the cameras and, you know, what are we doing with all this stuff? And it really is, you know, that has been very interesting. And the last thing, and this has been a great thing for me to, to look at in my, in my mid 60s is just movement.
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Very intentional people trying to move real, you know, not heavy exercise, not some people to heavy exercise, but a lot of, but people just intentionally trying to walk as much as they can and, and have consistent movement.
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But those, those three things have been pretty consistent, but it's, you know, the personalities, the, we have, oh, obviously a couple things like you, you kind of, you kind of have this, this, this sense of,
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of puritanism that you know is not really relevant, but there was one guy that was 90, it was 102, and he was talking about his wife died when he was 75.
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And, and so it was like, that must have been hard. How did, no, excuse me, 85. He, wife time is 85 was like, well, how did you, it must have been, you know, how did you deal with that? What was your, you know, what, what was the like? And he was like, well, luckily, six months later, I met a short redhead. And she was a sexual dynamo.
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And so this is like, I got 85. So I think that the, I think the reason the channel is popular. This is this, I have no research on this. It's just kind of intuitive.
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The dash media and our friend Nathan Jones who does all the analytics. Most of the people that watch it, and it's been millions and millions of views this stuff has had.
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And our people like between 45 and 65. And I think it's, I think it's showing their 80 year old parents that are feeling like they should check out that, you know, mom, look at this lady that's 20 years old older than you are. And it's just kicking butt. And I think, you know, for your audience run, that is so relevant.
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I think that how it's relevant, how irrelevant, the number of an agent's because you'll just see people that are super frail at 60 something and somebody just going crazy at 105.
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And so it really, it's just, it's a joy to keep, you know, keep finding these people and to just see, you know, what they're going to say.
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And like I said before, it's not the stories don't have to be about dramatic things they've done. There's, there's, there's a, there's a beauty to the, the more simplistic people that have just lived good lives and are proud of those good lives.
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Yeah, you've talked to me about, you know, there's just a quite dignity about a lot of these people that you, and a lot of them that as you mentioned, you know, going back to World War II, especially these veterans that you can sense that in them. But in general, I think a lot of people, there is that, you know, you, you get more comfortable with yourself as you get older.
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Yeah, and I just, just, again, a little off talk, but I just, I want to not regret that and bring us up. There really is an intense, an intensity of loneliness throughout the communities. And I really do the one thing I'm really, really trying to preach as I speak and as I talk to a lot of people that run senior living communities is to tie in with local high schools because like the one quick story that speaks to that as a gentleman.
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A gentleman that was, you know, he's, he's 101, it's kind of frail in his walker going up to the van. He gets into the van. We start talking, the guy had a, a silver star from World War II for jumping out of a plane that was flying about 100 feet over the water to rescue you to, to British pilots that had crashed.
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And like you hear that story and the guy instantly is not this frail guy in a walker. He's the guy that jumped out of a freaking plane to do that. And so I went to his house later that day.
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He had all of the stuff there to show me. He was so thirsty to tell it and show it. He'd lifted the community for 10 years. I drive out of the parking lot at the end of the afternoon. It's right across the street from a high school.
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How many classes have graduated talking about World War II, talking about the Korean War, Korean War, talking about Vietnam and right across the street are these people that are so thirsty to, to tell their experiences.
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And so I just think that I think it's easy to get caught up in the enormity of big picture issues.
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It's not difficult to forge a partnership between a senior living community in a high school to just have their history classes start integrating residents.
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To tell that that's things that people can just do.
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And I think that's, you know, there's much more engagement, much more sense of meaning.
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Yeah.
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And nothing wrong with going to having elementary or kids go and visit a senior living community or senior center and share with the seniors. But the sharing of those experiences, I think that's what's not just being there and leaving.
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Yeah.
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And it's a whole other topic, but I think the importance of a relationship rather than one and done experience.
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So before we go, I want to make sure that we tell people how to get in touch with you and to, you know, how to kind of watch the videos and all the contact information.
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But before that, I just want to know, what's next for you now?
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You mentioned that you're going around and you're still doing your lecturing, you want to do other things.
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Yeah, well, we're going to, I mean, it really is, my life is insane, schedule wise.
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So we're going to wrap up the vintage voices to her at the end of the year.
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And then next year, I'm really going to be focused.
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So we're going to still be showing some of the content.
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But next year, I'm really going to be focusing on doing the, these kind of deeper dive documentaries that are all about aging.
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And they're all, I mean, I'm not trying to make political state.
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It's all about elevating aging.
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And the stories of people that either live in senior living people that work in senior living, but really elevating all these stories that need to be told in a really professional, well done way.
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And we've done dozens of them so far.
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You can see them at our website is www.talegate4joy.com
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T-A-L-E-G-A-T-E 4 joy.com.
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And then I really enjoy speaking all over the country to a lot of what I'm speaking is to senior living organizations, but I'm trying to branch out of that.
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I'll still keep doing that.
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But I really want to get out to the community at large about these lessons I've learned.
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And in my own, however, I can do it myself and through the work we've done, just really just kind of help change the stigma of aging.
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And for both for the older adults themselves, but also for the people that have all these fears and stereotypes and all this stuff that I don't think is changed through anti-aging week or all these things that are well-intentioned.
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I think it's, you know, you watch the story of somebody that's really made an impact and it makes you not so fearful, I think, of growing old.
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And I think the work you're doing, Ron, speaks exactly to that as well.
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So, Jack, and people want to get in touch with you.
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Can I give me your email?
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Oh, yeah, email 100%.
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You know, we love to be getting folks following the vintage voices, too, or that's just vintage voices 100 on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook, TikTok, whatever.
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And then, yeah, email me and I, you know, if you've got, I'm working my way throughout the whole from kind of the carolinas up through the Northeast through the Upper Midwest and you know, in California.
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And I think, you know, if you've got a lot of stuff in California, if somebody that hears this has a great 100-year-old, I can't guarantee it, but reach out to me and if there's a way to swing my van around and grab the story, I'll do it.
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Mm-hmm, okay.
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And, you know, you're on LinkedIn and Facebook and people, you've got lots of interesting posts there.
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And then they can watch your reels, which I've done, you know, so that's a great way to get a taste for all the stuff you've done.
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So, I encourage people to go on that because they are joyful. You do come away with a sense of gratitude and joy.
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So, thanks very much, Jack. It was a great hour to talk with you. I really appreciate the terrific conversation, provoking thoughts of myself about aging.
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And my overall mantra, which is to help people age successfully, whatever that means, but basically to do it with ignoring the challenges we have, but also appreciating the lifelong growth, you know, the life loop.
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Yeah, that's right.
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All right, thanks, Ron. Great work you're doing as well and it's I'm honored to be on your show.
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All right, so folks, if you have questions from me, you want to get in touch with me, I'm Ron, dot, roel@gmail.com. Send me your comments or questions.
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So, until our next episode, keep moving forward, 45 forward.
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