Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - An 84-Year-Old Nurse and a 67-Year-Old Entrepreneur Share Their Biggest Life Lessons | Respect Your Elders #1

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Andy Frasco and Nick Gerlach launch a new series, Respect Your Elders, with two unforgettable conversations from Kavod Senior Life in Denver. Vivian, an 84-year-old retired nurse and writer, reflects on surviving a life-threatening illness, reporting on Hurricane Katrina, and why compassion still matters. Michael, a former athlete, award-winning cannabis baker, cookbook author, and entrepreneur, shares stories about success, regret, reinvention, and the lessons he's learned over nearly seven decades. Two lives. Decades of experience. Plenty of laughs. And a reminder that some of the best stories come from people who have already lived several chapters.

All right, and we're live, Andy Frasco's World Series podcast. I'm Andy Frasco, has your heads, has your minds. Sorry, guys, I've been fucking super busy, just nonstop with it all. But we are doing a new segment. And I'm really proud about this one. Nick and I have been going to Assistant Living Home. Shout out the Cavad Assisted Living. And we've been interviewing some of the residents in these assisted living,

or the ages of like 65 to 90 years old and talking them about time and talking them about memories and talking them about just life and seeing how we get some advice from these people who've experienced the full life. And we're calling it, respect your elders. So I think you're going to really love this. We're going to try to put out a couple of these. I mean, we're going to try to put them out once a week. We did a bunch of them.

But for the first one, we're going to do two guests on this. And, yeah, it's not a celebrity. It's not a random artist, musician, comedian, actor. It's just people who've just lived life. And I think we can learn a lot from the people who have made it this far. And we shouldn't forget about them because they built the path to us being able to live as well. So I hope you like this new side quest on the podcast. podcast called Respect Your Elders. Enjoy the first episode.

Hi, I'm Andy. Hi, I'm Vivian. Vivian, how old are you? How old are I? Yeah. 84. You look beautiful. 84 years young. 84 years young. You have a twin? I have a twin. Does she live here or he live here? No. She is actually completely on the other end of this country. She's a New Yorker, a diehard New Yorker, but she lives in... That's her right now. Massachusetts, in Massachusetts now. Oh, nice. Cool.

Yeah. What do you see in her, as a twin, what do you, do you guys see a lot of similarities or see a lot of differences? When I want to know about my family history, then, or things that corroborate things that we may have done when we were young that I have memories of or something and I'm not sure. Then I go to her definitely. She remembers everything. But she is, she is the solid one. She is, she is the solid, the serious one. And I'm the adventurous one.

Uh-oh. Oh, if you're the Ventures, what is your favorite memory? Memories. When we went to camp together, we were summer camp. You know, send those poor children from New York to camp. That was us. Oh, nice. What, up in the Catskills?

There were different places. You know, there were summer camps, I remember. And they always wanted us, we said, we want to be separated. We always want to be separated. But unfortunately, when we were. get there, we'd say immediately, we don't want to be separated. We're going to be in the same bunk. And that was a continuous thing throughout the many years we went to summer camp, and it used to drive the counselor's crazy.

You couldn't get both of you in trouble, right? They couldn't get both of you in trouble, you know? They could. They could. They could. They could. They could. They turned. She ended up being a midwife. Oh, wow. I'm a midwife. Of course, she's retired now. and she's also a mojahelich, which is a Hebrew word for the moyal, the one that person that does the circumcisions. Right. So she's a female moel.

Is that rare? Yeah. Okay. Definitely not in the Orthodox. Okay. And we're definitely not Orthodox. Yeah. So, and I became a nurse because I wanted to be a doctor but couldn't afford it, so I became a nurse.

And one day I visited her Presbyterian Hospital in New York for lunch. and I got on the elevator and this very, very tall, huge, I still remember, it was hugely tall. It must have been 6-8 or something like that. And he grabbed my hand and he started shaking it violently. And he said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I said, you're welcome.

There's nothing else I could say. And we got up the elevator and I said, Anne, who was that man? You know, she said, she told me that she had just delivered his wife. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. That's great. Yeah. What have you learned about life from being a nurse?

I'm sorry? What have you learned about life about from being a nurse? Like the life lessons you learned from that? Well, I have three parts of my life. This first part, my life was in, I have three lives. Yeah. My first life, you know, growing up and, you know, becoming a nurse and that whole working life. and having children and so on.

And the second part of my life was so ill that I almost died. And I thought, my children thought they would be going to become orphans. And they didn't. See that? I told them they didn't become orphans. What happened? I got a brain disorder and collapsed out of nowhere. And, you know, fortunately, my sister was in a hospital in New York, got me to New York.

I was unconscious. And this doctor saved my life. And so, you know, this is just a leftover nonsense. And the third part of my life, which I think is the most interesting. I like this part of my life. And the third part is, you know, doing the things that I learned from the first part and want to be in this last part. And so this part's about wanting to contribute to the world because I've lost a lot of time, you know, and stuff like that. And I thought around the time that I moved west, I thought, you know, I physically have, you know, problems.

I can't do a whole lot. But, you know, I could still write. So I started to write. What did you write about? Well, I thought that it would be easy. Right? You could just sit and write. But to do the things that I wanted to do,

I had to go to the places where those things were happening. So one of the first things I ever wrote about was Katrina. I was in San Antonio. and they were bringing some people over from the stadium in New Orleans into a big base. It was not a very well-used older Army base in San Antonio, and I heard it on the radio, so I made a button. I made a cardboard button.

It said, world journalist. Oh, my God. You guys are kind of cut from the same. Oh, my God. I pretend like I'm such a journalist, but I'm just a musician. I can see sneaking in place. I knew my son that was in the military. He's out now.

But I knew I'd have to get in the gate. So I got in the gate. And then I came in and I talked to the people that were there. And it was part of what I wanted to do was to talk about people, I want to tell your story, about people who were struggling to, you know, make life better, make the world better, you know, in fighting, not giving up, you know. What advice would you give them? What advice would you give them?

I don't give them any advice. That's great. Don't give them any advice. They could probably give me advice. No, seriously, there was a woman, I mean, I was a bit younger, it's 20 years younger, woman there, what I would consider elderly at the time, who had been rescued off the roof of a hospital and had abdominal surgery. And I saw that the front of her dress was wet.

So I told her that I was a nurse, but I wasn't official. have to get the, there were Red Cross nurses there, and that I would, that we could go into a private place and we could check her dressing. And she had this enormous wound, which was about a week old, very much endangered infection, and it was just held together by Band-Aids.

Oh, wow. So, but her life was spared. Her life was saved, and she wasn't sorry about that. I mean, she was alive. And there were people from her community there, from, you know, from people that had been, in the stadium. And they actually, younger people, younger than me, younger than this woman,

who were actually helping, you know, and, you know, organize it with people to get them, you know, where they needed to go. And mostly people were just very stunned at that point. So they just needed, I told them who I was and that I wanted to write about them. And there weren't very many articles written at that time. There were a couple of people I knew from New York that had gone out on some boats and interviewed some people. But it was just before they had started writing a lot of... You're popular. A lot of...

Had started writing a lot of articles, taking pictures of what it was happening. So that was like the first really thing. And subsequently, I've written about the environment. I always wanted to write an environmental article that told people who knew nothing and wanted to know something. You know, the basics.

And so it was the article that I always dreamed of writing. I wrote the whole thing. And then I called the people that were... going to send it into, and I said, it's too long. It's way too long. You know, it's all the basic information. But she said, just send it. And they printed it in three parts. Oh, that's cool. Isn't that? I'm just so, you know, so thrilled. But I also talk about, you know, the effect on workers, because that's a very important part of what I write about.

Yeah. impact on workers when they're, it's very dangerous job, you know. So I gave some OSHA figures and other things that, you know, ended the article with some kind of understanding of what it means to do that kind of work. Why do you think we forget about our mental health and not, and we just worry about our physical health? Do you think we forget about our brain and how we see trauma and how we feel trauma? I'm not sure.

So I'm talking about, we take physicals, we back, back in the day like we no one's really worried about getting therapy for PTSD and whatnot do you think we're starting to figure out mental health and how we're how trauma how we deal with trauma you know how does life affect it with traumas

occur in our lives and they can sometimes be in the work that we do you know I think that was more in terms of my writing but I think um I don't think that I want to say that the people who run this country give a damn about the people who work in this country and whether they suffer physically or whether they suffer mentally. Maybe a long time ago, before I started writing on a regular basis,

I wrote a story. I was working in a factory. And one day, this one man, he just went crazy. He lost it completely. At that point, I couldn't step in because I was the only woman and I was already dealing with this woman question, which was, you know, but that the men, you know, deal with it, but it was largely because he was a relatively young guy with a family with no skills. And he was trying every which way just to make a few bucks, just to keep things together.

And just that day, it was just too much, you know. And, you know, so I've never forgotten that. Do you think we lost compassion in our society? Maybe some of the leaders have, but I don't think the people have. No, I agree. I agree. I think the people are compassionate. I think the people, you know, yeah.

I think it's the problem right now. You've perfectly articulated it. Yeah, it's the people running this thing that are not compassion. They don't care. The society is built so they make money. And so right now we're in a million wars. We're killing people. We're killing a lot of civilians.

Right. You know? I mean, even killing soldiers, you've got to think about that too. I raise my son. he was in the military, and he went to Iraq, and I can't tell you what that feels like. I mean, I didn't ever feel that way before. I was terrified. I was terrified.

And he flew in, and he was supposed to take the plane to Iraq. He flew into Texas in San Antonio. And so he spent the evening with me when we were in a restaurant, and everybody knew that these people, all his friends that were going to, including a woman, decided they had no family there. so I was their family and we all had dinner together. And the whole restaurant was like, you know, like wishing them well and everything because they knew they were headed for Iraq. So then my son, he went off and he was supposed to leave.

And I go home. He calls me back. I'm not leaving. It's the next day. I have another day delay. So it was like a rerunt, you know? I was terrified, you know. And then he eventually.

on the third day, he actually ended up going to Iraq. But I remember just before he was supposed to come home from Iraq, and I had those same feelings again. The same feelings in terror came back. And I went to a rabbi, and I said, I must be nuts. I'm getting crazy again because he's going to be home in a few days. And he said, it's a very normal thing, he said, because his time is almost finished in that dangerous situation.

And there's just a little more time, and yet he could still lose. his life in that little bit of time. So subconsciously, I mean, I didn't have it consciously, but subconsciously, I remember going through that. I remember my mom. She, uh, she never calls when I'm on tour with my band. But if I'm in L.A. for five days, she's calling me every 20 seconds.

Really? It's that, it's that it's like, you know that it's close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's almost time for you. She's like, you can get lunch. Yeah. Yeah. You know?

Well, that's a connection of soul, you know? You know, it's like, no. Mom's no. How many kids do you have? I'm sorry? How many children do you have? I have two sons. Two sons. And one just got out of the military. Cool. And you have grandchildren?

I'm going tomorrow to Mississippi. My granddaughter is graduating. Fun. And she's going to college. And then my grandson graduate a couple years ago from the same school. Yeah. Believe it or not, it's in Mississippi, completely integrated school. Any kid in Mississippi can go there. Last two years of high school, free. and all these kids, black, white, Chinese, incredibly integrated, living and together, studying together,

helping each other, because some of them have no families that can help them, they can go home on the weekend, but it can't go home during the week because it's too far, you know. Completely paid for by the state of Mississippi. Wow. Can you believe that? Yeah, I mean, it's like living together,

it's just exactly what it should be, you know, in the worst, most racist state in the union. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Of course, they're trying to get rid of the school. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have one more question, actually. You've been so wonderful.

Thank you so much. We're coming back every month to keep talking to you guys. Oh, my goodness. I want to know the idea of time and people take advantage of time until it's too late. Do you have any advice for people who aren't following their dreams now and waiting to follow their dreams? I don't like to give advice, you know. That's a great answer. Except to my children, only my children, other than that, and I don't give advice.

No, but you should try to do what you can, you know. What you see is the most important thing, and it may take a while. You may have to do some other grunt work or whatever jobs. You know, you may want to do something, you know, but work at it, you know. because that's what your heart is. Thank you so much. That was beautiful. Thank you.

You're the best. You guys are great. Thank you so much. I hear you're musicians. We're musicians. What kind of music do you play? I play in a boogie-wogie piano, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis-style music. I'm like a saxophone.

A saxophone. Yeah, we're going to play for the house next month when I'm back on tour. You're going to come here? You're going to come here and play? Yeah, me and Nick. If you'll have us. If you feel have us, yeah. I don't run the place.

I don't know. It kind of seems like you do. But you know what, but you know. Honolet says she runs the place. I know, yes, true. Ondelai didn't seem like she. You know, but I've been here 12 years. Oh, really?

So I have a way of influencing people. By the way, I don't share my writings except for one person in the administration. One person here that I share in the second person just recently. Because mostly I share with my friends, you know, and I share with. and I guess something published, which I do. I don't make any money, which I don't need anymore. I've learned so long to live without it. I would know what to do with it if I had a lot of money.

Well, thank you so much for your time, and I can't wait to talk to you some more. Thank you. Hi. What's your name? Michael Rubens. And how old are you? I am almost 67. Next month.

Two weeks. Dude, I'm aging like a prune. You're aging fantastic. Well, thank you. That's a good topic we could talk about. first. Okay. You're never too old to learn something.

Right. And when did you, is it fear that we are afraid to learn something? Or what do you think it is that people are afraid to learn something in their older age? I think we set our own obstacles that, you know, as far as something technical, my brain just doesn't have the patience. I just don't care. That's the hurdle. I'll clap to that.

I've been there a few times. That has become my new motto that I just don't care. I don't care what people think. I mean, I do care what people think, but I don't see myself through other people's eyes. I think I was raised right and I have a good set of sense of morality. But learning something new at the thing. stage can be really difficult.

Yeah. Really difficult. In fact, I was fired. I worked in the cannabis industry for many, many years, and I basically, I was a baker, a cannabis baker. I won Best Edibles in Denver in 2015. I wrote a cookbook, and then they closed the kitchen. There were a lot of people like my boss that worked fantastic at growing great pot, but didn't know shit about business.

And even though... You still smoke weed? We're not allowed to here. Oh, really? You almost caught me. Officially no. Officially no. No, I actually quit smoking.

I never smoked cigarettes, but I haven't smoked weed in almost 10 years. Smoked it. Because I had heart attack. You eat it? I do eat it. I was a baker, so... But I bake at my friend's house down in Parker, so I'm not trying to do anything illegal here.

Right, right, right. When did weed get strong? What generation did weed get strong? You need to buy my cook, but. It's called baking to get baked. Yeah. And I grew up in Vancouver, BC. Oh.

And any port city, there are lots of drugs. Yeah, yeah. We were getting uber potent weed by the mid-70s. Yeah. The first time I ever heard the word Sinsomian was when I bought some African Sinsomian. Oh, wow. Got so incredibly high. I mean, we were buying pounds of what we call Mexican commercial.

We called it Mogiweed. Yeah. You know, that lime green brick. That brick, baby. But it was better than that crap they have now. It wasn't brown. No, it was not brown. It didn't make you cough and give you a head.

headache. It just wasn't that strong. Oh, man. But then we started getting this stuff from all over the world. And yeah, it was crazy. But, like, do you remember when, like... But every kind of weed now is strong. Yeah. That's what I mean. Like,

back, I'm not... I mean, even in the 90s, weed was... More chill. It was chill. Now I'm having existential crisis on this on this fucking stuff. See, I basically quit... I quit using cannabis for 20 years. Yeah.

When I got to college, I'd been such a screw off in high school that I had something to prove to myself and I knew myself well enough that I knew that being high, I would not do my best in school. Yeah. And, you know, I was on the dean's list. I ended up moving to Denver to be in an honors psych program at DU where I wrote a senior thesis as an undergraduate. it and yeah I just and then I got back into I was a real big athlete when I was in high school bad student great athlete and then I really got into road cycling and skiing once I moved here and it just didn't click with how I was trying to make my body as strong as I possibly could it never even occurred to me to find some where did you get your sense of style because you might be the

best dress guy I see in six months Save some ladies for the rest of us. Jesus, Michael. Well, what's really funny about that is that only recently I've been able to afford to. I knew how to. When I worked in an office, I dressed really well. And my mom taught me how to shop really well. So I waited for these mega sales and would buy, save up my money and spend two grand

and get a ridiculously huge wardrobe. of all real quality stuff what modern invention uh do you wish you had as a kid what modern invention what could you have used back in the day this doesn't sound that modern but the remote there was no remote well you know modernity is relative you had to get up and walk across the room oh that rules adjust the rabbit ears yeah yeah yeah what is something that you think people massively under today? Massively underestimate. The power, and this sounds really trite and polyanish, but just smiling. That when you smile at someone of any age, you can sense them opening up and relaxing.

And yeah, it's just this, and it works anywhere in the world. Like if you're struggling and you're butchering their language, if you smile, it kind of eases everything.

And I've been accused of the beard, I didn't realize this, the beard hides a lot of my emotion. Yeah, yeah. And I never realized that until fairly recently. Show them pearly whites, dog.

Come on. I see them in there. And it is a great beard, though. And I got them whitened, too. Yeah. You're looking, you're a hot man. Thank you. I'm trying.

I'm a clap to that, being hot. I'm trying to be hot when I'm old. And get this. Last month or two months ago, I, the woman that I'd had a crush on, you know what Bond Me is? Oh, yeah. Yeah. My favorite Bond Me restaurant in Denver, this woman is just cool.

What is I want to write down? I can't pronounce it. It's like Vic Song. Cool. Asian bakery. it's off Alameda. Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Do you know Elizabeth?

That's the bakery. They only make Bonnese. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That place is effing rule. Have you ever seen Elizabeth there? Oh, the one, yes. Yeah.

I had a crush on her for 15 years. You sneaky dog. I've been going in there. And I went in there with my buddy Ray from here about two months ago. And she was so excited to see me. And we started talking to her about the music that Ray and I play. and she said, write your number down here for me. So I go, well, I don't know if she's like telling me she's interested or she just wants to pursue the music thing.

You got to shoot your shop, big dog. You got to shoot, you got a shoot, my brother. I got her number. There we go. I invited her to a Nuggets game. Let's go. And it turns out that she just got divorced after 15 years of marriage. Rebound Rubin over here.

Yeah. There we go. So it was going to happen. And then it didn't happen. We'll call you Kram Elizawan over here. But, yeah. Damn. Well, that kind of reminds me.

And she's a lot younger. So I'll clap to that by at least 20, 25 years. Well, you're young. Do you have any regrets in life? Yeah. What is the one that you think about a lot? The biggest one is I always knew from a very early age that I would be a great father. And I was married and I met my future ex-wife when I was, her son was like three and a half or four.

So I helped raise Noah, but I'm sorry I didn't have my own kids. The other big regret, and I think about this way too much. I was a sprinter and long jumper. I was at a huge international meet in Seattle. and I wish I could go back and move my mark back four inches because I fouled a jump that would have sent me to the University of Washington or Oregon would have been about 24 feet and also the 100 final

it was an old track with the lines with the yard lines and there were two groups of adults around the finish line Well, I blew out of the blocks and stopped running at the 100 yard line, but it was a 100 meter race. I was still going fast enough to come in third, but it would have been my first, by far, the best personal, my personal best, would have been about a 10, 7, 100 meters. Oh, you were right. And I was 15 at the time. It's like an Illinois Olympic. Yeah.

I was approached by two guys from a feeder high school in Olympia, Washington, that wanted my dad to let me go down there. It was a feeder school for you, duh. Right, right, right, right. What about, what would you, what kind of advice would you give someone younger wasting time? And I've wasted a lot of time in my life doing really useless, wasteful things. I would say, I know it seems like you have all the time in the world, but hunkered down, have fun, but try to get some focus and get some traction and figure out what it is you do best and how to go about doing it for a living. I lucked out, I found three things that I do extremely well.

I write really well. I make incredible sorbet I was at I love sorbet I got to come to you hang out with you Michael yeah yeah Jesus Christ I had my own sorbet companies

over about 20 years I won Best of Denver for that what I was in like seven states and 200 restaurants I love a good lemon sorbet hardest flavor to make really

hardest flavor to make a lot very high water content the best things in life take time, so might as well start now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Michael, thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it, bud. We're going to come back. We're going to be playing here next month. You should jam with us. Oh, yeah. Bring the harmonica. I play piano.

He plays sax, bring the harp. We'll do some. Can Ray come with his guitar? Fucking bring it. Of course. Tell Ray to come. Okay. What's the name of your band? Andy Frasco in the U.N. Andy Frasco in the U.N. Andy Frasco and the U.S. We're playing Levin' Pavilion in July. I'll give you. I'll give you. Thanks for be on the show, Michael.

You bet you. Thank you. Thank you. man.