On this Living to 100 Club program, our guest is Joe Simonetta, a multi-dimensional humanist and widely respected author and speaker. He has written ten books, many about the mix of crises our world faces today and about solutions that implore us to understand and align with the reality in which we exist and its behavioral demands. Rather than always playing catch up with our health, finances, and education, Joe writes and speaks about the basic steps needed to be and remain healthy, be kind to one another, and respect the environment — the sum of our ecosystems — out of which we evolved and require for our existence. How to stay ahead of the 8-ball, so to speak.
We also discuss his first-place, gold medal finish in the sprint triathlon in the 80-84 age division in the U.S. National Senior Games held in July 2023 in Pittsburgh, PA. Because of the level of fitness he maintained through his life and continues to maintain, he was able to accomplish this — despite the fact that it was the first race in which he ever competed and that he used a rented bicycle.
Tune in to this compelling and thought-provoking conversation.
Mini Bio
Joseph R. Simonetta holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School where he studied ethics, global environmental problems, world religions, cosmology, and evolutionary biology. He also studied at Yale Divinity School. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Colorado. Joe also studied architecture at the University of Southern California. He holds a B.S. in Business Logistics from Penn State University.
Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he is the second of three sons of an immigrant blue-collar steelworker and his wife. He was raised in the shadows of the blast furnaces of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He has since lived for significant amounts of time in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, Greece, New Zealand, and Ecuador. As a young man, disturbed at the extraordinary amount of unrelenting suffering in the world, he vowed to himself to do something to alleviate it. He went on to live a very unusual life. He has been an Army officer, professional athlete, entrepreneur and businessman, architectural designer, real estate developer, home builder, environmental activist, author, senior editor of the World Business Academy, and twice a nominee for the U.S. Congress.
Intermittently, he wrote a mix of fiction and nonfiction books about humanity and the state of the world. He serves on the board of directors of The Secular Community. At the 2023 U.S. National Senior Games held in Pittsburgh, PA in July 2023, he won the gold medal in the Sprint Triathlon in his age division, 80-84. He is married to Susana Rojas Simonetta. They have a son, Russell, born April 22, 2013 (Earth Day) and a daughter, Fiorella, born October 12, 2015.
For Our Listeners
Our Guest’s Website and Books: Joe Simonetta