Quotes
“Old people are my jam. On CBS Sunday Morning if a profile of a hot young Hollywood celebrity comes up, different correspondents can jockey for it. I usually don’t compete. I’m not that interested. I’m interested in older people.” (Mo)
“One of the connections among the people in (Roctogenarians) is that they are very unfettered. They felt very free to act and go for it because they weren’t hamstrung by the opinions of other people.” (Mo)
“I always assumed that the less time you have in front of you, the more fretful you might become but it’s actually the opposite. We found that people who were of more advanced ages were actually much more able to live in the present. They weren’t fixated on the future and certainly hopefully not fixated on the past because that does nobody any good – unless you’re a historian.” (Mo)
“I don’t expect to ever retire. Certainly things will evolve, but what will they look like?” (Mo)
“I’m driven to make things interesting to people who didn’t expect to be interested by them. That to me is very, very satisfying.” (Mo)
“When we’re my age and younger – I’m 55 – we can help set the stage for ourselves by not being afraid of older people and not being afraid of interacting with them or learning from them. By valuing what they bring, we can set the stage for ourselves to be valued.” (Mo)
“If you can retire in your 60s, great, go for it! But there are so many people that aren’t ready to retire and shouldn’t because they don’t want to because they’re perfectly capable.” (Mo)
“I think we need to reassess what it means to be 80. I have in my life octogenarians and nonagenarians who are in very good health and perfectly capable of contributing and working.” (Mo)
Notes
“Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs” by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg is an inspiring collection of stories celebrating individuals who achieved significant success later in life. The book features profiles of well-known figures like Colonel Sanders, who founded KFC in his 60s, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who published her first “Little House” book at 65.
Roctogenarians also highlights lesser-known individuals such as Kenneth Felts, who came out as gay at 90, and Samuel Whittemore, who fought in the American Revolutionary War at 78. Through these narratives, Rocca and Greenberg challenge societal notions of aging, emphasizing that it’s never too late to pursue one’s dreams and make impactful contributions.
Mo considers him fortunate to love what he does. He has no interest in putting on a costume at Halloween because his work is play.
In 2015, Mo met Chance the Rapper during a taping of NPR’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. Mo jokingly asked Chance if, at 46, it was too late for him to become a rapper. Chance responded, “I don’t know. Some might say it’s too early.” The conversation unearthed a truth that Mo had fallen into the trap that Mo thought he was over the hill. Said Mo, “The whole exchange caused me to hit reset and snap out of it.”
For Mo, the key to longevity is engagement. He talked about how Mel Brooks, Normal Lear and Carl Reiner all maintained successful careers in entertainment because of their constant engagement.
Transcript
0:06.01
Varsity
Welcome, everyone, to Varsity’s Roundtable Talk. Our very special guest today is Mo Rocca. Some of you may remember him from The Daily Show. Some may know him from his many appearances on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, while others know him as a correspondent on CBS Sunday Morning. Let’s not forget about Mobituaries, his terrific podcast about his favorite dearly departed people and things.
00:34.24
Varsity
Mo is also the author of Roctogenerians, a brand new book that tells the inspiring stories of people who followed their dreams and achieved success later in life. Mo, thank you so much for taking time to join us.
01:23.73
mo rocca
Derek, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show.
01:28.56
Varsity
Thank you so much. And I don’t know if you remember how we met, but it was actually at Cats in in New York at the new production that they did downtown. What’d you think of it?
01:40.34
mo rocca
Well, I loved it, but and my opinion without sounding too egotistical should carry some wave here because I have a very long history with cats. As a child, I saw the original cast of cats when I had just turned 14 years old shortly after it opened and I became obsessed with it.
02:02.08
mo rocca
And then I ended up as an usher at the National Theater in Washington, D.C., ushering when the national tour came through. So I thought saw it about 30 more times because it played there a month.
02:12.84
mo rocca
And I got a little tired of it, but I still had an attachment to it. I had the cat sweatshirt, which was very on trend right for Broadway lovers of the two green eyes in the back.
02:23.68
Varsity
Yeah.
02:25.64
mo rocca
And I wore that almost every day. during the winter at Pyle Junior High School in the eighth grade. This production, though, which is formerly called the Jellicle Ball, is so good, it’s hard to believe that this isn’t how Cats was intended to be performed in the first place. And I can’t think of a higher compliment. I mean, it really seems like, oh, this is how it should be done. It’s really fantastic. I urge anyone who has a chance to see it to see it. And my understanding is that it will go to Broadway for an open-ended run.
02:56.09
Varsity
That’s great. I did think it was a brilliant a brilliant production. So thank you for sharing that. So at Varsity, celebrating life after 60, 70, 80, and beyond is really what we do. So I was excited when you wrote the book, Roctogenarians, about older adults who achieve success later in life.
03:13.71
Varsity
In it, you tell many people’s stories, including Colonel Sanders, Morgan Freeman, Estelle Getty, and even Clara Peller, who was famous, of course, for Where’s the Beef and the Wendy’s commercials. What was the genesis of the book? What inspired you to write it?
03:28.61
mo rocca
The genesis so of the book, which might sound very transactional, is that Simon & Schuster, the publisher, actually came to me in this case and said, we want a book that will be especially relevant during the 2024 presidential election when it looked like it would be Biden versus Trump. I said, I’d like to write a book about people achieving great things in the last third of their lives.
03:57.46
mo rocca
But I’m not interested in politics. so and i And I say that without any shame. And I think i probably a lot of people shared that opinion. And I’m at least not interested in writing about politics. And I also had nothing to say about the help of these candidates. I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV.
04:18.76
mo rocca
And you have to be a certain age to get that reference. And so I said, but I will write a book about people throughout history who have achieved greatness in the last third of their lives. And I teamed up with my Mobituaries, co-writer, Jonathan Greenberg, and we had a great time. And it was honestly very inspiring for us as well, because we’re both in our fifties and looking ahead to that chapter.
04:46.56
Varsity
That’s great. Well, I love that. And I recognize a lot of the stories from profiles that you had done on CBS Sunday morning, which I’m sure gave you a lot of great material.
04:55.30
mo rocca
They did, and look, you know, old people are my jam. I mean, on CBS Sunday morning, if… you know a profile of a hot, young Hollywood celebrity comes up and you know different correspondents can jockey for it. I usually don’t even compete. I’m not that interested. I’m interested in older people. When I created my cooking show, my grandmother’s ravioli, which ran for four seasons on Cooking Channel, in which I went around the country learning to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers in their kitchen.
05:27.20
mo rocca
I did it not so much because I wanted to learn how to cook, and I’m still pretty lousy in the kitchen, but because I really wanted to hear from people in their 70s, 80s, and even older, the values that had shaped their lives, what mattered to them at this stage in life.
05:43.77
mo rocca
yeah
05:45.52
Varsity
Well, that’s great. What are you looking forward to as you age?
05:49.48
mo rocca
I’m looking forward to caring less about what other people think of me. that’s one of the that’s one of the connections, I think, among the people in this book is that they’re very unfettered. They felt very free to act and to go for it because they weren’t hamstrung by the opinions of other people. It’s a quality, I think, that we ascribe to young people. Oh, she’s going alone. Oh, he’s a rebel and does things his own way. But that’s usually not the case. I think people in their 20s and 30s
06:25.05
mo rocca
tend to care very much what other people think of them. And that’s not always a bad thing, obviously. And I think a lot of young people figuring out who they are to use modern parlance crowdsource their decisions and even sometimes their own personalities, seeing what works, what gets a good response, what gets likes on social media. But people at the other end of life are not doing that. They’re much more sure of who they are.
06:53.02
Varsity
I couldn’t agree more. I talk with you know many older adults, and that’s one of the things that they always say is they love that they don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking and that they can just be themselves finally.
07:04.73
mo rocca
Yeah, yeah. And again, that word unfettered, it’s something I keep thinking about. And one of the big surprises for me, I hope I’m not jumping the gun here is that I had always assumed that the less time you have in front of you, the more fretful you might become, but it’s actually the opposite. We found that the people that were of more advanced ages were actually much more able to live in the present.
07:30.23
mo rocca
They weren’t fixated on the future and certainly hopefully not fixated in the past because that doesn’t nobody any good unless you’re a historian.
07:36.51
Varsity
Yep. There you go. There you go. well Speaking of of history, you said that you put a lot of thought into liking the year that you were born, which would be 1969, a great year. But you said you’d have liked to have been born in 1888. Why?
07:52.21
mo rocca
Well, I just, when I was thinking about years, I would have liked to have been born. I i put 1969 in the first position because I’m happy with how things have unfolded in my life. But then I thought second choice, no, not 1968 or 1970, 1888.
08:07.02
mo rocca
And I kind of gained it out. And I would have loved to have been 12 years old at the, I don’t speak French, the Bandesier. Is that how you pronounce it?
08:15.43
Varsity
ah yeah
08:15.53
mo rocca
The turn of the century.
08:15.99
Varsity
and serve
08:17.13
mo rocca
at a very optimistic, exciting time. I would have loved to have been at the World’s Fair in St. Louis. And not just because I love that movie, Meet Me in St. Louis, but what a great score. I would have liked to avoid being drafted for World War I.
08:33.01
mo rocca
And we get into World War I, right in the community, in the US interests of war. So I would have been told I would have been 30. And I’m just not built for trench warfare.
08:40.34
Varsity
Oh yeah, behind the scenes.
08:40.63
mo rocca
It’s just not me. And then I would have loved to have been on the Orpheum circuit doing Vaudville during the vibe of day, you know meeting the Nicholas brothers, great acts like that. And then participating in early talkies. And then maybe in you know at the end, of in my last third, Ella William Frawley doing character parts during early television. And then I die in the 1960s before everything goes to hell in a hand basket.
09:08.15
Varsity
I love how much you’ve thought about this and how you have it all organized. And I that’s right.
09:13.19
mo rocca
Well, you have to plan.
09:14.98
Varsity
And and Teddy Roosevelt is my guy. I would have loved to have been alive during his presidency. I think that would have been really entertaining.
09:21.48
mo rocca
Well, I mean, yeah, yeah to be a first tier president without a war to fight. I mean, Lord knows he would have loved a war to fight and he tried very hard.
09:27.81
Varsity
That’s right.
09:27.92
mo rocca
He went to, and I think in put on his old uniform from the Spanish-American war and went to to Woodrow Wilson. You know, and say, would you let me enlist? And, but yeah, I mean, there’s a reason that but historians keep going back to him because he’s just such an exciting figure.
09:37.07
Varsity
Yep.
09:44.20
Varsity
Yeah, he’s a character. So how do you feel about retirement? On our first episode of Round Table Talk, I had the honor of interviewing Garrison Keillor, And at 82 years of age, he’s still very active, writing, touring, performing, with no true retirement in sight. What does retirement look like for you?
10:03.29
mo rocca
ah
10:05.78
mo rocca
You know, it’s funny. I’m obviously pondering that question because I don’t expect to ever retire. But what I’m thinking is certainly things will evolve and what will they look like? All I can say is that I’m driven to make things interesting to people who didn’t expect to be interested by them. That to me is very, very satisfying. If I say, I’m going to do a project, a book, a slide show, a talk about one term 19th century presidents, and there are a lot of those guys, you know, stuffed between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, a lot of facial hair, usually from Ohio. And I love that that you might say, really? And then by the end of it, be into it. And I think those things are always gonna change. I wanna make sure that I stay stimulated, that I don’t rest on my laurels. And so I’m always excited for new ideas, yeah. So i just don’t know what shape that will take
11:27.02
mo rocca
I don’t think that I’ll ever retire per se. And you know, one thing is that I’m very fortunate. I don’t love like the word lucky for some reason, but I’m okay with fortune. I’m fortunate that that I love what I do. i don’t take I try not to take that for granted. But you know how you how I know that I love what I do? Whenever Halloween comes up, I have no interest in putting on a costume. And I think it’s because
11:56.20
Varsity
Hmm.
11:56.19
mo rocca
My work is play, and that’s pretty exciting. So I don’t feel the need to do it. So I think nothing against accountants, and I love mine. But I think if I worked at the IRS or something, I would probably really look forward to Halloween, to let a rip, to like let my freak flag fly. I can’t believe I got that out of my mouth. But I don’t feel that need, because what I do is play.
12:26.31
Varsity
That’s great. That’s great. And I have to say, you know, you talk about some of those, you know, 19th century presidents. I do a lot of travel in my work and i I’m sure I can give you credit for a lot of the interest because I do try to see the presidential sites as I travel, libraries, museums.
12:44.34
Varsity
I went to Millard Fillmore’s house with a client because I remember seeing it. And I believe you’re the correspondent who covered that and actually toured the house up in East Aurora.
12:51.88
mo rocca
Oh my God, You can you can have Jennifer Lawrence or Bruno Mars or Ryan Gosling. But Millard Fillmore is mine. That house in East Aurora that he built on his own.
13:04.75
Varsity
Yep.
13:04.97
mo rocca
Yeah, terrible president, terrible person.
13:06.57
Varsity
Yep. Yeah.
13:08.29
mo rocca
But I really but what a noodle roller and that’s not a euphemism. They actually have his noodle roller in in the kitchen there.
13:15.59
Varsity
That’s right.
13:15.76
mo rocca
I remember the docent posed with the noodle roller. Yeah.
13:19.22
Varsity
That’s right. I mean, we could go down a rabbit hole. I often wonder what it would be like if Zachary Taylor hadn’t died. But hey, there we go. There we go.
13:26.83
mo rocca
Yeah, and then they went and they dug up his body. And what an anticlimax that was, because they thought they were going to find out that he’d been poisoned.
13:29.37
Varsity
Yep.
13:32.71
mo rocca
But no, he just ate a giant bowl of cherries and guzzled down, chugged ah a big pitcher of ice-cold milk, and basically exploded. I mean, his bits of his body were found, I think, in Delaware.
13:43.44
mo rocca
I mean, he’s exploded all over Del Marva, the Del Marva Peninsula. I love the name Del Marva, by the way. Somebody should name their daughter Del Marva.
13:49.15
Varsity
That’s right. I wonder if there are any out there. In the Rita Moreno essay in Roctogenarians, you highlight the fact that at 93 or so, ah she said she didn’t know how to make friends. I thought that was a really profound yet understandable kind of point of view. Have you found this with any of your other interview guests, things that you found to be really kind of profound or surprising?
14:16.17
mo rocca
Oh, boy. Well, let me just say about Rita, ah one of the great things about interviewing her, and I had profiled her already 13 years before when I thought she was kind of hanging it up. That’s why I really wanted her in the book, because when I went to profile her, she’d written a memoir. And I thought, OK, this is her swan song. Instead, that memoir was more of a manifesto, a kind of call to action, because then she began a whole other career, basically.
14:41.38
mo rocca
movies, a stage show, television. I mean, it’s really remarkable. And she really is still going strong at 93. But what I especially appreciated is how well she knew herself. And she really volunteered that she said, you know, that when she moved from her beautiful home in Oakland to sort of a senior living, not not assisted living, but kind of a senior community that she realized she didn’t know how to make friends. And I found that so poignant. And so and the book, that kind of intimacy was,
15:16.99
mo rocca
It felt like an ingredient that we needed in the book, because people like Colonel Sanders, you know doing remarkable things is one thing, but Rita relearning how to make friends, I thought was really, really resonant, really special.
15:21.05
Varsity
Hmm.
15:32.62
mo rocca
I’m trying to think of other people who, you know, I think Ruth Slenczynska, who had been the Shirley Temple of classical music when she was a global sensation in the 1930s, and is today 100 years old, I profiled her when she was 97.
15:50.27
mo rocca
and That, to me, was similarly poignant. She had substituted for Rachmaninoff when she was nine years old. That’s how remarkable a pianist and a child prodigy she was, but she had an abusive father, really terrible, terrible, and it really had no childhood. And when I met her in her 90s,
16:13.67
mo rocca
she was had, for the first time in her life, carved a jacket lantern. I mean, it was really like almost like she had just come from another planet think it’s you know because she hadn’t experienced these things. But one thing she said to me that had a similar kind of impact to what Rita said about making friends is she said to me about playing the piano now again as a much older person. And she said, well, you don’t really become a good player until you’re 60.” And I said, what do you mean?
16:46.77
mo rocca
She said, well, the notes are same the the notes are the same, but the story you tell is different. And I and i loved that because it wasn’t paul she wasn’t being Pollyanna.
16:53.10
Varsity
Hmm.
16:58.61
mo rocca
She wasn’t saying, oh, you can become a virtuoso at 70 or something. But what she was saying is that as an older person, as a musician and somebody who obviously already had technique, that she was able to bring something new to it that she couldn’t as a young woman.
17:14.30
Varsity
That’s great. Yeah, I really was surprised by that story when I first saw it on CBS Sunday Morning, because she lives just two towns away from me. I live in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and she’s in Anvil.
17:24.31
mo rocca
Ah, okay, yeah.
17:26.39
Varsity
so And I saw that she’d been doing concerts around the area, and I never knew. I wish I would have gone to one of our concerts, but yeah amazing.
17:32.54
mo rocca
Right, yeah, she’s an amazing woman.
17:34.88
Varsity
She’s the last living student of Rachmaninoff, isn’t she?
17:37.59
mo rocca
Oh my god, for sure, for sure.
17:38.15
Varsity
Is that right, Bill?
17:39.20
mo rocca
I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I, somebody could back check that, but it’s, it would, it’s hard to believe that and anybody else is alive.
17:39.42
Varsity
Yeah, yeah.
17:46.13
mo rocca
That’s done you with the Rachmaninoff.
17:46.69
Varsity
Sure. So have you found a common thread among all the stories that you tell in the book?
17:54.19
mo rocca
Well, I’ve done several. we found and i And I have to give, of course, again, credit to my co-author, Jonathan Greenberg. I think we thought about this sort of after the fact or during the writing, but then we’re looking at the story sort of from a distance afterwards. A few occurred. And I’ve mentioned a couple, I think, one of which is, I think,
18:17.66
mo rocca
It’s a generality that the older you get, the less you care about what other people think of you.
18:23.03
Varsity
Mm hmm.
18:23.70
mo rocca
I think that there is, in many different ways, or several different ways at least, a return to childhood. Sometimes in a literal or literary vein, Frank McCourt with Angela’s ashes writing about his childhood, Laura Ingalls Wilder writing about her childhood and the prairie.
18:42.93
mo rocca
, there is a return to childhood in terms of completing something that was started where there’s a section of the book called unfinished business queen guitarist, Brian may returning at the age of 60 to complete his PhD in astrophysics or Diana Nyad.
19:00.63
mo rocca
returning and finally achieving her dream of swim from Key West for excuse me from Cuba to Key West at age 64 something. She first attempted when she was 28. And I think there’s also among a lot of these people. The key is that they view endings as beginnings. They don’t view endings as endings.
19:26.99
mo rocca
So the story of Henri Matisse, unable to paint in his 70s because of stomach cancer, trading in his paintbrush for a giant pair of scissors and beginning the paper cutouts, that would have made him a legend if he only had done that is really inspiring because those are choices. I think it was instinctual for him. I don’t think he needed a pep talk or to be instructed.
19:54.64
mo rocca
he was He was an artist and he had not finished creating. I think, boy, there are other similarities. A lot of these people, there’s a section called, It’s About Time, about people who did achieve greatness earlier in life, but were only recognized, thank God, while they were still alive, but very late in life. And all three of the people in that section had marriages that lasted about 60 years and had spouses that really kept them going.
20:22.83
mo rocca
But I think ultimately, what really binds all these people together is that chromosomally, they’re the same as you and me.
20:33.19
mo rocca
Well, I guess, right. I mean, you know you get what I’m driving at that these aren’t super humans.
20:35.25
Varsity
Yep, absolutely.
20:37.81
mo rocca
They’re not a different species. These are people. And obviously, some of them like Matisse or Slenczynska had very particular outsized talents.
20:52.57
mo rocca
But others, their talents were grit and optimism and creativity, but they weren’t necessarily geniuses.
21:01.85
Varsity
Mm-hmm.
21:10.04
Varsity
Great point. I love that with Ruth Slenczynska how you were saying that she kind of rediscovered her childhood because she hadn’t really had at least a happy childhood and and, you know, fascinating, fascinating.
21:21.87
Varsity
Did any of the stories, go ahead.
21:22.14
mo rocca
Well, i think that, oh, forgive me, ah Derek, I think that that it’s important to point out also that this returned to childhood, it’s, you know, when Matisse begins doing those cutouts, he himself said that it was sort of a returned childhood, that it lacked complication.
21:26.23
Varsity
No.
21:48.36
mo rocca
And I think that, the and he was drawn by the big shapes and bright colors. So I think it’s important to emphasize that that what he’s describing is childlike, not childish.
22:01.12
Varsity
Mm hmm.
22:01.70
mo rocca
But I think there’s a lot to be said for that, for sort of the, you know, the brush sort of clearing away and being able to see with a kind of clarity that maybe you saw with, as a child,
22:02.26
Varsity
Great point.
22:17.17
mo rocca
But now you have all this other experience and talent and perspective. um So all to say, it can be a ah wonderful, wonderful time creatively.
22:29.69
Varsity
That’s great. That’s great. Did any of these stories particularly surprise you as you dug in?
22:37.97
mo rocca
to think in terms of particular I mean, so many of them were surprises to me because I didn’t know them. I think there were, I knew that there were kinds of stories that I wanted, and our researcher Zoe Marcus helped in a lot of cases, find these people to fit the bill.
22:45.22
Varsity
so
22:55.74
mo rocca
So, you know, I knew I wanted to include a civil rights figure who was elderly, because we think of the civil rights movement for good reason, is being led by young, very courageous people like John Lewis, you know, who’s 25. And he leads more marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge or the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being 34 when he delivered the I Have a Dream speech. But I knew vaguely that there were older people in the front lines. But I didn’t know anything about Mary Church Terrell, who was
23:35.01
mo rocca
86 when she led sit-ins at Washington DC lunch counters in the 1950s to fight the laws of that that allowed the segregation of public accommodations.
23:36.40
Varsity
Mm hmm.
23:49.69
mo rocca
Which, I mean, still, when you think about the Citadel of Liberty, you know the Washington DC having segregated public accommodations as late as the 1950s is just shocking.
23:58.85
Varsity
It’s remarkable.
24:01.93
mo rocca
right and you know and she was somebody and Part of what I found so powerful about that story is that someone of that age doing that is not fighting for a better world for themselves, because at best, she would enjoy that world if she were successful for a couple of years.
24:20.40
mo rocca
And indeed, she died at 90 shortly after the Supreme Court upheld you know or or conferred victory on her side. It’s her the case that that her protest so set the stage for, went all the way to the Supreme Court.
24:36.98
mo rocca
but So I suppose her story was a surprise because I didn’t know the details of it.
24:46.00
Varsity
That’s a great point.
24:46.37
mo rocca
I’ve not.
24:46.93
Varsity
Now, have you seen the musical Suffs?
24:50.69
mo rocca
I’ve not.
24:50.82
Varsity
OK, because you absolutely should.
24:50.90
mo rocca
Should I?
24:53.01
Varsity
It’s ah it’s a great show. It is actually closing January 5th. But Mary Churchill is certainly a character and in that, along with Ida B.
24:56.42
mo rocca
okay
25:02.21
Varsity
Wells and others. So it’s ah I really, really enjoyed it.
25:03.65
mo rocca
What?
25:06.22
Varsity
but
25:06.63
mo rocca
You know, I have to tell you, Derek, I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know that she’s a character in there.
25:07.06
Varsity
25:11.63
mo rocca
It’s been a busy time, but that really makes me want to see it because it’s an amazing story.
25:17.44
Varsity
It really is, it really is. So were there any stories that you particularly connected with that that that you were telling or that you uncovered?
25:26.77
mo rocca
I think that the, I think I found very, Boy, I connected with so many of them, I think in terms of hoping that I can emulate many of these people. I think one that I was particularly touched by was Frank McCord. I think that someone who struggles with whether his story is worth telling, I think is very, very poignant and Frank McCord
26:01.29
mo rocca
didn’t believe that his story was worth telling. He also was afraid and ashamed to tell it, ashamed of the poverty he grew up in. His students, to whom he told stories of his childhood, really just to keep them in the tent and focused in the classroom, urged him to write down his story.
26:11.93
Varsity
Mm hmm.
26:19.97
mo rocca
He was friends with successful writers who told him the same thing. But there was something telling him There was something telling him both, no, your story isn’t worth telling him, telling, but there was also clearly something urging him to do it.
26:34.19
mo rocca
He finally decided that he wouldn’t, in his own words, die howling if he didn’t get his story out. And did I connect with that? I certainly was very moved by that. And when he finally did write Angela’s Ashes, he said, it took me two years and all of my life to write this story.
26:44.35
Varsity
Sure.
26:50.90
Varsity
That’s beautiful. So you mentioned in the introduction of , Roctogenarians about meeting Chance the Rapper and coming to grips that you’ll likely never be a successful rapper. ah Maybe that’s true, but do you still have an unrealized dream?
27:05.49
mo rocca
Well, let me first say that I took away a slightly different message from my encounter with Chance the Rapper. It was 2015, and I was making an appearance on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR. And he was our guest, and the crowd was going crazy. And we were asking him, you know, it’s what we do on the show, kind of hopefully fun, goofball questions. And I asked him, I said at the time I was 46, I said, I’m 46, is it too late for me to become a rapper?
27:35.60
mo rocca
And then he said, without skipping a beat, he said, I don’t know. Some people might say it’s too soon. And people laughed, and the conversation moved on. But I really was kind of thunderstruck and embarrassed by the exchange, because I think every joke or jokey question comes from a real place. And I think, and I didn’t realize this until after the fact,
27:56.58
mo rocca
I think that I asked that question because I had begun thinking of myself as over the hill at 46, which is insane. And that’s not to say that I could become a successful rapper.
28:08.03
mo rocca
It’s not my ambition.
28:08.15
Varsity
Right.
28:08.99
mo rocca
you know And I think I point out my beatboxing is pretty lousy. But I think my question in his answer unearth the real truth that I in in my case that I’d fallen into the trap of thinking of myself as over the hill and his point I think which is kind of profound that you know sometimes even at what we think of as middle-aged we’re still not there yet we’re still too young we still haven’t developed a voice you know and to be a good rapper to be a good performer of any
28:45.96
mo rocca
in any medium, you need something to say. So, I found the whole exchange kind of caused me to hit reset, and, and snap out of it.
28:55.54
Varsity
Hmm.
29:00.85
mo rocca
, yeah.
29:02.13
Varsity
That’s interesting when it was probably just going to be a ah seemingly lighthearted moment that it had that kind of a profound effect on you.
29:08.81
mo rocca
I think, yeah. And I don’t think, I think the host of the show, my friend, Peter Sagle, I think that the co-panelists there, I thought nothing of it.
29:16.72
Varsity
Sure.
29:16.98
mo rocca
But he said it with such seriousness. And I thought, that’s real insight. That’s real insight. You don’t know. It’s sometimes too young. You’re sometimes too young.
29:28.50
mo rocca
You know, I’ve wanted for years, I thought I wanted to do stand-up comedy. And I’ve approached it. I’ve done versions of it. I’ve done short sets with other people. But that’s something where you really need to know what you want to say.
29:42.42
mo rocca
And that takes time.
29:45.15
Varsity
Great point.
29:45.31
mo rocca
So who knows? I might be doing stand up when I’m in my seventies. I mean, I mean that right.
29:50.39
Varsity
Hacks is one of my favorite shows right now.
29:52.64
mo rocca
And to realize terrific.
29:54.39
Varsity
Yeah. So you write in the book that when something ends, we must think that something begins, which is also really profound. Have you found that to be true? When something ends, we must think that something begins.
30:08.96
mo rocca
Well, I mean, it’s certainly true for people in in the book, people like Matisse or Borges, who wrote short stories before he lost his sight, and then began composing poetry because it’s something he could do in his head. So I think that’s part of what survival is about. or And I’m trying to think from my own life when something ends, something begins. I mean,
30:35.08
mo rocca
, well, a very dramatic example. I’m not sure that it quite fits in here. It might be a little bit of a stretch, but my late in life. I’m going to call it triumph is that my husband and I are now fathers to a baby girl to where we are our first time fathers.
30:52.11
mo rocca
And so, well, thank you so much.
30:52.24
Varsity
Congratulations.
30:53.93
mo rocca
And, and if you hear a little bit of crying in the background, it’s because she’s in the other room and she’s trust me, she’s, she’s being taken care of. I haven’t just left her there.
31:05.12
mo rocca
Let’s just say my life as someone without children has ended and boy, what a great thing to begin weeks.
31:05.87
Varsity
That’s fantastic. That’s great. That’s great. Well what well said. And how old is she, if I may ask?
31:21.77
Varsity
Oh, wow.
31:22.53
mo rocca
She’s fantastic.
31:22.98
Varsity
that’s
31:23.33
mo rocca
She’s got a keen sense of irony, a sly wit. I mean, she’s her personality is terrific. She and she’s great. And you know, in all seriousness, she’s a very logical crier, which is really great.
31:33.39
Varsity
So you can address it and it move on.
31:33.94
mo rocca
Like if she cries, it’s because she’s hungry, she’s tired or her diapers wet. And so there’s not. a Yeah, there’s not a lot of like sort of you don’t have to sort of divine why she might be crying.
31:47.53
mo rocca
There’s no like mystery crying. And I’m not, I mean, you know, I mean, that may change over time and she’s and entitled to cry just because she wants to cry by all means. And I might even love her more when she’s crying. I mean, she’s just, I mean, you know, my God. and But yeah, but right now it’s sort of like, oh, okay, I get why you’re crying. And then we deal with it and then we move on.
32:11.03
Varsity
That’s great. So I have to ask, are you running on fumes or are you well rested? Because 10 weeks that’s still
32:16.56
mo rocca
I’m pretty well rested, I have to say, because she’s a really good sleeper. But yeah, I mean, here’s the thing, people keep saying to me, and I get it, they’re like, Oh, get set to never sleep again. And it’s not that I’m annoyed by that. I’m not annoyed. But I but I have begun responding more bluntly, which is I haven’t slept in 20 years, I’m going to be fine. And I really have. i like I have i no longer, but at one point I have like six different jobs.
32:45.00
Varsity
Sure.
32:47.42
mo rocca
So I’ll be fine.
32:50.94
Varsity
That’s great.
32:50.91
mo rocca
And yeah, yeah.
32:52.02
Varsity
That’s great. Well What a joy. What a pleasure it is to have kids.
32:54.60
mo rocca
Well, thank you.
32:55.86
Varsity
So that’s that’s great.
32:56.39
mo rocca
Yeah.
32:56.78
Varsity
Thank you for sharing that.
32:58.10
mo rocca
Yeah.
32:58.91
Varsity
so getting back had look
32:59.64
mo rocca
You know, somebody told me today, somebody I ran into said to me today, ah talking about his son, he said, I’m so pumped. I said, why? And he said, Angelo lost the baby smell. He no longer has that baby smell.
33:11.69
mo rocca
And I said, oh, i’m so I’m sorry for your loss. He said, yeah, this is a bummer. And you know and he this kid this man adores his son, adores him. But, you know, so, so I mean, the baby, you know, anyway, the baby smells great.
33:24.63
Varsity
That’s great. That’s great. That’s great. yeah We have a 25-year-old son, and each of the stages are great. And you know you miss each one, but each new stage brings different joys.
33:34.63
mo rocca
Oh, I’m quite happy to hear that. And I believe that.
33:37.50
Varsity
Yeah. Yeah. So, , another question, , that I wanted to ask in the book, you talk about, Carl Reiner. I love how you call them the Norman Lear players. I don’t know if you coined that or if that was something out there, but I love that.
33:47.53
mo rocca
Yeah, I did yeah
33:50.86
Varsity
, but Carl Reiner said that the key to longevity is to interact with other people. Obviously you interact with people all day, every day, you know, throughout your career.
34:00.87
Varsity
Would you agree to that?
34:02.76
mo rocca
Yeah, I think so. And you know, it’s it I think it’s also a less cliched way of saying the key to longevity is laughter. I mean, or laughter keeps you young, which, by the way, I also think is true.
34:12.34
Varsity
Sorry.
34:13.84
mo rocca
And when somebody like Norman Lear tells you that you better believe it, it’s not like, you know,
34:17.59
Varsity
so
34:18.39
mo rocca
I mean, the person responsible for a good proportion of what we’ve laughed at in this in, you know, over the last 50 years, when you have to take what he says seriously. But I think it’s, while laughter is absolutely wonderful, I think really, it’s about engagement. And, you know, Mel Brooks, Norman Lear and Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks is still with us, but all of them really lived by that. I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re old age,
34:47.86
mo rocca
has been fruitful and happy, I think because of their just constant engagement.
34:54.81
Varsity
That’s great. That’s great. So how can we as a society change our perception of aging to see it more as a time for new beginnings rather than winding down? Are there are there any greater lessons that we can we can take away, in your opinion?
35:08.75
mo rocca
Well, I think when we’re my age and younger, I’m 55, we can help set the stage for ourselves by not being afraid of older people and not being afraid of interacting or learning from them. I mean, there’s a sort of insidious idea that they’re um that they are you know preventing younger people from you know gaining promotions, moving up the food chain.
35:38.10
mo rocca
And that’s just not how the economy works. That’s not how things work.
35:41.00
Varsity
Yeah.
35:41.73
mo rocca
And so I think by valuing what they can bring, and now we can help set the stage for ourselves to be valued.
35:52.75
mo rocca
That’s one thing. You know, I mean, do we quote Louise Aronson, who wrote a landmark, a gerontologist who wrote a landmark book called Elderhood in the preface. She had said, you know we’ve added these 20 years onto our lives and we haven’t figured out what to do with them. So if you can retire in your sixties, great, go for it. But there are so many people that aren’t ready to.
36:20.15
mo rocca
and shouldn’t because they don’t want to and they’re perfectly capable. And so there’s all this talent. And we actually really do need the talent, you know, the population may be aging, but it’s also tapering off, you know, and that’s which is ah a big fear that a lot of people have right now.
36:30.89
Varsity
Hmm. Mm hmm.
36:36.65
mo rocca
So the more the merrier to keep this society, you know, functioning. Yeah.
36:43.71
Varsity
That’s great. And that that’s an interesting quote. We’ve added 20 years to our life, but we haven’t figured out what to do with it. Is that that the quote, roughly?
36:49.88
mo rocca
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, look, at you know, I mean, granted, you know, when you say the greatest generation, their life expectancy was a lot shorter, of course, some of that is because of infant mortality, but it really was even it significantly shorter. And so they’re all these, the there’s these extra decades of life. And so I think we need to reassess, you know,
37:19.01
mo rocca
what it means to be, you know, 80 right now.
37:22.15
Varsity
Absolutely.
37:22.42
mo rocca
I mean, I have in my life, octogenarians and nonogenarians who are in very good health and are perfectly capable of contributing, of working, you know, and I can say this is just anecdotal.
37:39.94
mo rocca
You know, the much older people that I know tend to get a lot less distracted, tend to write emails, say, that drop a lot of fewer words because they’re not doing three or four things at once.
37:51.70
Varsity
Hmm.
37:52.13
mo rocca
So there’s a lot that that generation brings to the table.
37:52.64
Varsity
Interesting.
37:59.48
Varsity
Sure. but Well said. Well said. Well, as we talked earlier, you know I mentioned I’m a fan of presidential history. And I heard the biographer of James Garfield, C.W. Goodyear, when he was on his book tour recently, say that a biographer, as a biographer, you’re not supposed to necessarily like or dislike your subject. How do you feel about that? i mean when you’re Now, I know you haven’t written like a full-on biography, but you’ve interviewed, you’ve profiled, you’ve met a lot of people. you know Do you try to stay neutral, or how do you view your role as a yeah know as ah as a correspondent?
38:36.04
mo rocca
It depends on what kind of a piece I’m doing. And obituaries, which were my version of obituaries, I err on the side of generosity, just as most ah obituaries do in your newspaper. There’s so many different ways to tell a person’s story. And so if you’re going to err on one side or the other, on one side of the other being generous,
39:05.63
mo rocca
is just as valid as being more critical. I mean, you’re never going to get it when trying to sum up somebody’s life. You’re never going to get it perfectly right in, you know, in that many inches.
39:19.61
mo rocca
I think spiritually, I think there’s also something to be said for a kind of humility when you’re telling someone’s story, and not assuming, especially when you’re talking about the past, that you’re more enlightened, that we’re more enlightened. I don’t know that that’s true. And I don’t know that that’s true at all. And to remember that 100 years from now, people may look back at us as ah barbaric.
39:44.38
mo rocca
you know, how we treat cancer springs to mind, it may be and hopefully it will be that in 100 years, they’ll be saying they pumped chemicals into people.
39:50.90
Varsity
Hmm? Yeah.
39:53.42
mo rocca
What was that? You know, so we should really clip our own wings. I think I do think when I read presidential biographies, that whole cottage industry of presidential history, and I’m an avid consumer of it,
39:59.16
Varsity
That’s interesting.
40:11.06
mo rocca
I do think there is a danger of biographers falling in love with their subjects and this is related centering them too much. I remember, I’m going to get the names wrong here, reading a biography of Woodrow Wilson and granted it was a biography of Woodrow Wilson, he was president, but he was The paramount figure in every aspect, according to this historian, that it began to feel skewed. There was a really powerful Congress. That’s how the League of Nations, but why the United States even can joined the League of Nations. So the characters tend to become outsized, tend to become such above the title film stars that it starts to give a distorted view of what the world was like at that point. So I think that’s a related problem to falling in love with your subject.
41:08.52
mo rocca
is making your subject more important than he or she may actually have been. I work in shorter form. ah And I also gravitate. It’s a little bit quirky. And my CBS Sunday morning piece is towards lousy one term presidents from the past that are largely forgotten. And, and I certainly don’t celebrate them. If anything, I had to check myself against being too critical or even dismissive of the Millard Fillmore as the Franklin Pierce is the change of you cannons.
41:40.05
Varsity
Sure, sure. That’s interesting. I was at the it is interesting when you go to the James Buchanan House, Wheatland or Grover Cleveland’s birthplace, you know, the docents and Franklin Pierce, I remember, you know, the docents are all, of course, saying that they were the best president ever and and really advocating for their legacy.
42:01.53
Varsity
But, you know,
42:02.70
mo rocca
well i’ve always and Listen, I’ve always been far more intrigued by the docents at the marginalized history sites than, you know, I get that whoever is running tours at Monticello, at Mount Vernon, at Hyde Park, their top tier, probably, but come on, visitors are already in awe when they walk in.
42:19.69
Varsity
Right.
42:26.25
mo rocca
But if you’re working at the Benjamin Harrison House in Indianapolis on Delaware Avenue, You really got to sell because half the people walking in there are there to use the bathroom.
42:30.74
Varsity
Yeah.
42:36.36
Varsity
I remember being at Kinderhook up in Martin Van Buren’s home and you know talking to the folks from the Park Service and thinking, boy, this is quite a quite an assignment, but interesting.
42:39.18
mo rocca
Oh, beautiful house. Yeah.
42:50.16
mo rocca
But what a beautiful house in those trees.
42:51.74
Varsity
Oh, it’s gorgeous.
42:52.40
mo rocca
oh
42:53.46
Varsity
Yep, yep, absolutely. So, and by the way, Woodrow Wilson is a major character in Sufts as well because, of you know, he’s not treated very kindly in the whole suffrage, you know, suffrage history.
43:01.39
mo rocca
Right.
43:06.65
Varsity
But while we’re on the subject, what president do you admire most and why? If that’s a fair question.
43:12.10
mo rocca
Well, I mean, I’m a fan of Teddy Roosevelt just because of the enthusiasm. And to become a first-tier president without a war under your watch, like I said before, is ah you have to you have to be an invigorated and an invigorating figure. And so, how can you not love someone who loved the job that much?
43:33.67
Varsity
That’s great. That’s great. Well said. So what presidents have taught us lessons that we can learn from as we age?
43:44.14
mo rocca
Interesting, what presidents have taught us lessons You know, I guess the easiest answer, but the first that springs to mind is Jimmy Carter because it’s a a mixed single-term in office.
43:52.35
Varsity
I was thinking the same thing.
43:55.93
mo rocca
And I realize a lot of people want to want to say that the that his term in office was much more successful, but it’s not Mount Rushmore worthy, no matter how much you want to spin it.
44:10.78
mo rocca
um but Whatever motivated him afterwards, and we can only assume the best, to be a citizen of the world that way is remarkable. I mean, it’s just, it’s so admirable.
44:26.39
mo rocca
And you know, as somebody who is ah who has does hit his own version of obits, I always wonder about that all-important first line of his New York Times obit, how it’s changed over the years.
44:40.59
Varsity
That’s a great point.
44:41.51
mo rocca
Had he died in the 80s versus 1990s versus the early O’s versus the teens and now into the 2020s. That first line is going to, it will rightly be weighted much more towards his post-presidency than it would have been before.
44:59.16
Varsity
It’s a great point. Great point. So many of those listening you know may know you from CBS Sunday Morning while others remember you from The Daily Show. How would you contrast your experience from The Daily Show with your experience on CBS Sunday Morning?
45:13.36
Varsity
How are they different? How are they the same? I first really enjoyed your work on The Daily Show. That’s, I think, how I first became aware of of you and your work.
45:20.18
mo rocca
You know, those two gigs are much more similar than you’d think. And in my mind, yeah, not having anything in my mind, not just in my mind, I think that objectively they’re much more similar than you would think. You know, in one, in The Daily Show, a lot of what my work was about in the field pieces that you would do was satirizing,
45:48.08
mo rocca
bubble headed news correspondence and the whole format. Some would say pretty stilted, pretty brittle of television news. But in CBS Sunday Morning, I’m oftentimes and hopefully judiciously using humor where it helps to tell a story. But in both, you’re telling short form stories in the daily show. Those pieces were about three minutes, sometimes a little less, rarely more than four. CBS Sunday Morning, they’re anywhere between three and a half and 11., but it’s still about telling a story. And, and those are skills I learned from writing for a PBS kids show called wishbone. That’s where I really learned how to do that. That’s where that toolbox came from. So it’s about honing, chiseling, polishing, making sure you’re being as economical as possible and connecting with people at home.
46:45.34
Varsity
That’s great. I remember you talking about Wishbone on your podcast, Mobituaries.
46:49.66
mo rocca
Yeah. yeah
46:50.68
Varsity
Speaking of which, when is the when is the new season coming out?
46:53.65
mo rocca
We are on hiatus right now. It is, Derek, it is a very heavy lift. I hate, there’s something more boring than telling people how hard you work.
47:00.09
Varsity
Oh, I’m sorry.
47:01.44
mo rocca
And so I don’t, I want to make sure that I don’t give myself a pity party here, but it is hard work. So we’ll see. I mean I’d love it to continue because I’ve loved doing it.
47:12.87
mo rocca
It’s been a real passion project.
47:14.89
Varsity
Well, that’s great. And I do realize with that podcast, you there’s a lot of research. There’s a lot of you know a lot of background that goes because into it beyond just simply having conversations like we’re having today. Not that not that this is easy for you to to take the time to join, but it is a very different animal.
47:27.34
mo rocca
yeah
47:31.32
Varsity
but you know we’re just launching, yeah we’ve just had a few episodes now of Roundtable Talk. What advice do you have for me or for us as we’re embarking on this, you know from your experience as a storyteller, as a podcaster, et cetera?
47:53.33
mo rocca
You know, it is a more intimate medium.
47:59.24
mo rocca
Mobituaries, each is like not to sound too grand about it, but I don’t want to be mock humble about it. Their audio documentaries, however, keeping things personal, keeping the little sum of the rough edges so that it doesn’t feel too polished and manicured,
48:09.51
Varsity
Mm hmm.
48:24.37
mo rocca
i think is important. I think it’s that kind of grit allows gives people something to cling on to and sets set things apart. I mean, I think of that Sondheim lyric from Sunday in the Park with George, anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new.
48:46.20
Varsity
Hm.
48:46.39
mo rocca
So whatever the topic is, Even if the interviewee has been a thousand other places talking about it, my view is the interviewer and the producer are committed to making it special and individual. It’ll stand out. I mean, I think that’s.
49:08.29
mo rocca
That’s one thing I can say. And then the note that I always hate is when people say to keep it short. But I guess it’s true that people but I’m not sure I still don’t know about that because there are plenty of things like Joe Rogan isn’t that podcast that goes on for a long time and what a hit that is so um but I think trusting in your own individual instincts is probably
49:23.75
Varsity
Yeah.
49:33.92
mo rocca
a good thing because that’s what the audience may not consciously realize it, but they’ll glom onto it.
49:34.33
Varsity
That’s great.
49:41.83
mo rocca
If it feels real.
49:43.97
Varsity
That’s great. Thank you. I appreciate that.
49:45.88
mo rocca
Yeah.
49:46.54
Varsity
And at the beginning we were kind of chatting before we started rolling and you said, let’s just start rolling. This is, you know, this, this is some interesting stuff when we’re talking about cats and some of the other things.
49:55.70
mo rocca
Yeah.
49:56.07
Varsity
So I appreciated that, that advice.
49:57.73
mo rocca
Sure.
49:59.06
Varsity
So last question that we’re going to ask every guest, what have you learned that you wish you could have told your younger self?
50:09.12
mo rocca
Oh, I mean two things, I think. Just stop worrying, number one. It’s not going to get you anywhere.
50:25.40
mo rocca
The second thing I’m a little less sure of, I’m sure of that, but I just said, is taking time each day
50:41.23
mo rocca
to just enjoy yourself is vitally important. But the only reason I’m not, even though that sounds like irreproachable, the only reason I’m putting a little asterisk next to it is because there are so many different kinds of enjoyment. So there are days when I’ve worked myself to the bone start to finish and I’ve enjoyed it, which is different than the kind of enjoyment I get from walking all the way home from work and just listening to songs through my earbuds that I love. And that’s kind of a footloose and fancy, free, light feeling. It’s wonderful. So there are very different kinds of enjoyment. Yeah.
51:27.70
Varsity
That’s great. That’s beautiful. And it is important. you know I mean, it sounds trite, but you know stop and smell the roses.
51:33.61
mo rocca
Yeah.
51:33.69
Varsity
And you know some of those kinds of things are, I think, important lessons that we all need to learn as life gets busier and faster. um
51:41.24
mo rocca
Well, that’s why everybody should read the play Our Town or see a production of it.
51:47.47
Varsity
We’re going in in December. Looking forward to seeing Jim Parsons in it.
51:48.94
mo rocca
Yeah. Great. Good.
51:51.06
Varsity
So, interesting.
51:51.12
mo rocca
Good.
51:52.44
Varsity
Well, thank you again. Pick up the book, Roctogenarians by Mo Rocca. And the book, Mobituaries, check out the podcast. um I listen to it on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
52:06.14
Varsity
You know, there are four seasons out there and I hope there’ll be a fifth, but ah at least there are four to enjoy. So, can’t thank you enough. You’ve been very generous with your time today. Mo Rocca, thank you.
52:16.27
mo rocca
Thank you, Derek.
52:17.50
Varsity
I’d also like to thank ah Dave Shoffner, our producer, and Matt Campbell, our engineer, for putting this all together. um So we’ll see you on the next episode of Varsity Roundtable Talk.
