As you get older, you can start to feel like you'll never achieve your dream or receive recognition for your contributions to a field, or that your best work is behind you.

Mo Rocca has compiled stories that demonstrate that you shouldn't give up hope, and that no matter your age, the best may yet be to come.

Mo is a humorist, journalist, and the co-author of Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs. Today on the show, Mo shares the stories and lessons of entrepreneurs, artists, actors, and more who achieved greatness or adulation in their twilight years or had a new spurt of creativity when they thought the well had run dry, including KFC founder Colonel Sanders, the artist Matisse, a couple of guys who didn't receive their first war wounds until they were old enough to qualify for the senior citizen discount at Denny's, and even a virile 90-year-old tortoise.

• AoM Podcast #849: Live Life in Crescendo
• Samuel Whittemore
• John L. Burns
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum
• Henri Matisse's The Swimming Pool
• Documentary about Tyrus Wong
• Mr. Pickles the Tortoise

• Mo on X

Your relationship with your mother is likely the first and most foundational connection in your life. At its best, this bond can be a source of comfort, strength, and love that lasts a lifetime and changes in healthy, appropriate, and adaptive ways as you mature into adulthood.

But sometimes, the attachment between a mother and her son can become unhealthy, resulting in a phenomenon called mother-son enmeshment, in which a man can become a kind of surrogate husband to his mom.

Here to unpack this complex issue is Dr. Kenneth Adams. Ken is a clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career working with what he calls "mother-enmeshed men" and is the author of When He's Married to Mom. Today on the show, Ken unpacks the characteristics of mother-enmeshed men and how to know if you are one, and he explains what can happen in childhood that would cause a mother to enmesh with her son. We discuss the problems enmeshment can create in men's relationships and other areas of life and how it can lead to things like compulsive porn use. And we unpack what it means for a man to become independent and emancipate from his mother, how it's different from cutting her off, and what it looks like to have a healthy relationship with your mom.

• Overcoming Enmeshment website

You probably know your body follows a circadian rhythm, and probably think of it as primarily regulating your sleep/wake cycle, which it certainly does. But your body's internal clock also regulates many other physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur every 24 hours, and working with your circadian rhythm, rather than against it, can boost your health and happiness.

Here to unpack how to do so is Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience and the author of Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep. In the first part of our conversation, we discuss some science and background on circadian rhythm and its connection to light exposure. We then turn to the practical implications of having an internal clock, including whether you need to worry about viewing blue light at night, the significant mental and physical harms that can accrue from working the night shift and what can be done to mitigate them, what influences your chronotype and whether you're a morning lark or a night owl, whether you should be concerned if you're waking up in the middle of the night, why you wake up to pee in the night, the best times of day to exercise, and how the circadian rhythm can influence when you should take medication.

• Russell at the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute