Summer Fridays: Lessons from 102-year-old swimmer Maurine Kornfeld (re-release)

Maurine “Mighty Mo'' Kornfeld will soon turn 102 years old, and most days, you can catch her doing laps in a Los Angeles public swimming pool. And that’s not just because she regularly competes in – and wins – world swimming championships! It’s because she loves being in the water, despite only picking up swimming as a hobby well into her sixties. In this special episode, Maurine shares what she’s learned from doing something she loves almost every day, why it’s never too late to start something new, and the three things anyone can do to improve their life, no matter their age. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts http://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts (This episode originally aired in 2023 when Mighty Mo was 102 years old. Mighty Mo is still swimming and will soon turn 106 years old in November!) Vote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2:11Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better Human. This summer, we're doing something special. We're calling it Better Human Summer Fridays, and every Friday this summer, we are going to be dropping a special episode on the feed pulled straight from the How to Be a Better Human archive. These are conversations that I loved and that our team loved, and we think a lot of you may have never heard, and we think they deserve another moment in the sun. So, we're giving them that literal moment in the sun here in the summertime. This show has grown a lot over the years, so this is our way of making sure that if you found us recently, you're not missing out on one of the conversations that I am still thinking about, sometimes years later. And if you are a day one Better Human listener, well, first of all, thank you. Thanks for listening for all these years, and I hope that you will enjoy this trip back into our archive, back into some of

• 2:55Speaker 00

  the best conversations that we've had in the past. So, let's get into it. Here's Better Human Summer Fridays.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Before we get into the episode, a quick note. This is the last episode of season three of How to Be a Better Human, and after this, the Better Human team is going to take a few weeks off for the holidays, and then we will be back with new episodes for season four in the new year. And on a personal note, I am going to be taking parental leave for the birth of my first kid, which I'm very excited about, a little nervous, but mostly excited. And I feel really lucky to be hosting a show like this, where I get to have advice from all these brilliant experts about how to handle life transitions like the one that my family is about to go through. When it comes to this podcast, we have been pre-recording episodes, so you will be able to keep listening to our show in the new year as per usual, but I wanted to give you

• 3:47Speaker 00

  a heads up because I will be out changing diapers and feeding a baby and trying my best to get some sleep. You know, with this big transition that's coming up in my life, I have been thinking a lot about family these days. What family means, what it requires from us, how I want to show up as a family member. And today's episode is very near and dear to my heart because it's with a person who I consider to be one of my chosen family members. She's also someone who I have learned a ton about what it means to be a better human from. Maureen Kornfeld is many things. She has worked as a social worker, a teacher, a docent at an art museum, but the way that most people know her is as a swimmer. In the pool, they call her Mighty Mo, and Mighty Mo is a world record-setting

• 4:30Speaker 00

  competitor who was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. And at the end of this month, Mighty Mo is going to be celebrating her 102nd birthday, and she's still in the pool most days. In fact, that is how Mo and I met. I was swimming laps in the public pool, and Mo was in the lane next to me when she called me over to give me some pointers on what I was doing wrong in my strokes. We started talking, and then I started seeing her every time I went to go to the pool to work out. It felt like she was always there, and she always worked out harder and stayed in longer than I did. That is 100% of the time she was there for longer than I was. Eventually, as we started chatting more, she invited me to come over and have some iced tea on her porch. And I took her up

• 5:11Speaker 00

  on that offer, and long story short, now she is one of my dearest friends in Los Angeles and a person who I consider to be a member of my chosen family. There are so many reasons why I love Mo. She's interesting, she's curious, she's hilarious, she's always got an opinion about a book or an article she's read that she wants to share, and when we hang out, I am always laughing. Mo has a quicker, sharper wit than just about anyone that I know. One of the many lessons that I've learned from Mo over the years is that it is never too late to learn a new skill. I mean, Mo has dozens of world records. She's won world championships. She's in the Hall of Fame. But she only seriously started swimming when she was in her 60s. Until then, she didn't even know that there were different

• 5:55Speaker 00

  kinds of strokes. In fact, Mo only joined a master swim team, that's what they call the swim leagues for adults. She only joined a master's team because she wanted to take a dip in the pool on a Saturday morning, but it was closed to everyone except for competitive swimmers. And Mo wasn't about to let that stop her, so she basically bluffed her way onto a team.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  And I wanted to swim on Saturday morning because I worked all week, and they said, "You can't." And I said, "What do you mean, 'you can't'? And they said, "There's a swim team, a master's team." Well, that meant nothing to me. And after an argument with whoever was on the phone, she gave me a name and number and says, "Well, call the coach." And I called the number, and this grouchy guy answered the phone and asked strange questions like, "How long have you competed?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  So, I said, "Not long," which was the truth. And he says, "What's your stroke?" And I never knew that it was really any stroke. I said, "None in particular." And after this prolonged conversation, he says, "Well, you can come on Saturday morning, and I'll look you over." Like, that was the sight of beef.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  That was the start of a grand adventure and a chapter that would come to define Mo's life and friendships. We are going to talk a lot more about that in just a moment after these quick ads. Don't go anywhere.

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• 10:48Speaker 00

  Today, we're talking about swimming, life, and finding your passion with Maureen Kornfeld, also known as Mighty Mo. Mighty Mo is 101 years old, and she still swims almost every day of the week. She set her first Masters World Record in swimming when she was 90 years old, and she has competed in world championships everywhere from Montreal to Budapest to Italy, racking up gold medal wins and record times along the way. But people are often surprised when they talk to Mo to hear that she doesn't really care about the competitive part of swimming all that much at all. What she really cares about is just being in the water. What do you get out of swimming?

• 11:23Speaker 04

  A lot of fun. I like the people. I like the feel of the water. It's exhilarating. It's good for your mental health. It washes all the nonsense out for the moment.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Something that I've noticed, you know, we met because of the pool. And whenever I talk to you, you have such a wide network of people who are swimmers. You know, every swimmer in town.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  I know a lot of swimmers.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  So how has that contributed to you being part of a community?

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Oh, I love it. I love being part of a swim team. I've never been a groupie. I suppose because we have the same thing in common. And they're all interesting and of course, all different. So it's a wide range of people, obviously.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  And I enjoy them. It's nice knowing people different from oneself.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  And how do you think that that changes your life for the better?

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Oh, I think it enriches it beyond belief.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  I've heard you talk about getting your daily dose of chlorine.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, yes, yes. My chlorine fix.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Is that what it feels like? Like when you don't do it, you miss it?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  After a couple of days, yeah, I wanna go to the pool. I wanna see my friends. I just wanna be there.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Will you describe what it feels like to be competing in a meet? Like, what do you feel in your body when you get in the water and you're, and you're competing?

• 13:01Speaker 04

  That's a good question. It's an important one. I like the fun of swimming. I like to swim well. I like to do whatever I'm doing to do it well. So what I try to focus on is what I'm doing. How my arms are moving, how my legs are doing, is my head in a good position? It's nice if you win, but it's okay if you don't win if you swim well.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  And what does swimming well mean to you?

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Swimming well means you're doing what it, what you should be doing.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  What life lessons have you learned from swimming? What has swimming taught you?

• 13:45Speaker 04

  To get wet.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Okay, that's one.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't know if that's taught me any life lessons. Yeah, it has persistence, the value of routine, discipline, self-discipline. Particularly, you know, you win some, lose some. That's life.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Something that I find to be very meaningful for myself about swimming is that if you fight the water, if you push hard, you don't do better. The way to go faster is to be smoother and to resist less.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  That's your enemy.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, to me, that's a very important life lesson.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Yes, it is. Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  That if you work with it.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  With the water. If you're smoother and your stroke is well done, you're, you will move faster if you have faster turnover.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  What, what do you mean by turnover? You mean like the turn at the end of the wall?

• 14:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta keep moving.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not good at that part. I'm not good at keeping it going.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  That takes practice. It takes remembering. It takes thinking about while you're doing it. And I guess that's one of the things I do like about swimming is the concentration. Probably helps with other stuff too. But if you pay attention to what you, and really think about what you're doing, you're more likely to do it better.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Mo is a celebrity at pools all around town. In fact, anytime I hear that someone regularly swims in LA, I ask them if they know Mighty Mo, and you would be shocked at how often the answer is yes. In an LA Times profile that was written about Mo, the reporter discovered that swimmers in Glendale, Pasadena, and Sherman Oaks all claimed Mo as their own, and they were all convinced that that was her home pool. All of which is to say that Mo gets around town and she makes every single swimmer that she crosses paths with feel special. And I know it's not just me who feels that way. Jim Rainey, the LA Times reporter who wrote that profile of Mo, first met her in the pool too. And like me, he was charmed by her wit, but when he started asking around about Maureen for his reporting, he heard story after story about her kindness too.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  One swimmer told him how Mo had checked in on her repeatedly after there was a sudden death in her family. Another swimmer talked about how Mo had connected her with a friend who had become a really important relationship for her. And a third talked about how Mo started inviting him to see concerts together, and now they had a regular practice of seeing shows and operas and all sorts of other events together. Mo is a great listener. She loves to hear about other people's passions and interests. What she doesn't love to do as much is talk about herself. And as you can imagine, that made doing this interview with her for this show a little bit of a challenge. It seems like everything that you've done, or a lot of the things that you've done, you care a lot about community and being a part of, in community with other people.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  I don't know. Maybe.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  That doesn't ring true?

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Well, it, it hasn't rung any bells up to now.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Okay, but I guess what I mean is, you know, social work is about taking care of other people. And when I see you at the pool, and even I know this for myself, you're always reaching out, you're trying to build new relationships and friendships. That's something that not everyone does, but you, you really do that. You put a lot of energy into cultivating relationships.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Maybe idol curiosity. I don't know.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  What is that? Tell me more about that.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  I do care about people and I care about finding things that help people or helping them find that, whatever it is to help themselves.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  I will say that I really appreciate you doing this interview because I know how much you don't like for the focus to be on you. Whenever someone wants it to be about you, you're like, no, tell me about yourself instead. You'd much prefer to be interviewing than be interviewed.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  That's quite possible.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Since Mo would prefer for me to do more of the narrating rather than interrogate her over and over, I'll just tell you a few facts about her life that I think are important to know. Maureen was born in 1921. She grew up in Great Falls, Montana. Her dad owned a menswear shop and her mom stayed at home, raising her and her two brothers.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  I guess I grew up in a family where there was a fair amount of laughter. It was during depression years, so there wasn't much to really laugh about, but what do you know when you're a kid?

• 18:18Speaker 00

  In your family, even during the depression years, do you remember people laughing?

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  What kind of things were you laughing about?

• 18:23Speaker 04

  Who knows? I don't remember. I had two older brothers. One, the oldest of the two, older, was more serious, more introverted. The one younger than he, but again, older than I, was kind of a prankster. He was a redhead with all that goes with it.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Mo would often follow her brothers to the local library. She's always loved to read and she frequently lost herself in a good book. After high school, Maureen headed to the University of Chicago, where she got a bachelor's and a master's degree in social work. She loved her time at the University of Chicago. It's something she loves to talk about. But at first, she wasn't really positive that social work was going to be for her.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  At first, I wasn't sure what it was. And secondly, I wasn't sure it was what I was really wanting or interested in.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Why?

• 19:24Speaker 04

  I was kind of an egghead and it didn't seem very intellectual. And also, the people I saw enrolled in it at that time were all much older than I was. I went from undergraduate school, from age 20 into graduate school. And I had had classes with the president of the University of Chicago and a great books and as I say, kind of the egghead treatment. And social work is not very, it's more scrambled eggs.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  So what, what changed that made you actually like it and stick with it?

• 20:11Speaker 04

  It kind of grew on me and I saw and found more opportunities to do things that were of interest and I saw results.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  And I can't really tell you otherwise. And particularly after I moved to California in 1970, I began doing more social work in the community rather than in agencies that were more confined.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  In Los Angeles, Mo worked at a number of places and institutions, but two of her most memorable, longest lasting jobs were serving the LA Unified School District and Cedar Sinai Medical Center. We're going to hear more about Mo's life, her career, and her tips on aging well, right after this quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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• 24:13Speaker 00

  Today, we're talking with Maureen Kornfeld, a 101-year-old world champion swimmer, former social worker, and current, very good friend of mine. A lot of people are interested in you and your story, partly because of your accomplishments and partly because of your thing, but also sometimes it's just because of the age that you are. So what do you think it is that people don't realize about aging and aging well?

• 24:37Speaker 04

  I think they, people sometimes, maybe often, I don't know, think you're more competent and better shape, whatever, than you really are. But that's rather nice.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you are in really good shape and you are very competent. You don't feel like that?

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Well, I know all the foibles and all of the, the earth and mar, and things that aren't quite so as they were.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Hmm, of course. How do you handle that for yourself? How do you stay positive?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I think one of the ways I handle it is being involved with other people. You know, when you're involved with other people, you don't think of your, about yourself. And I think most of us tend to think more about ourselves than we need to.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  So what about for me? You know me pretty well. What advice would you give me?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Stay as you are, baby.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  That's nice. What do you mean? What is the thing that I should keep doing?

• 25:42Speaker 04

  No, I enjoy your smile, your humor, your devotion to Molly, your sense of adventure, and your steadiness.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Thank you. That's very flattering.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  What about, talking about sense of humor for a second? You have a great sense of humor.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  So do you, so there.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, so first of all, what's something that makes you laugh?

• 26:07Speaker 04

  I suppose it's something unexpected.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  And why do you think it's important? Why do you think humor is important?

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Oh, because it gives you perspective, and that big problem you were so worried about somehow just disappears. Because it's pretty easy to focus on things that aren't going well, feeling sorry for yourself, which we all do, and I do, too much. It takes you out of yourself and gives you a better, different perspective.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  So how do you, how do you get good at laughing at yourself? You're so good at laughing at yourself.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  Well, most of the situations in which we find ourselves that are miserable or self-inflicted pain, really, if you look at them from a distance, they're quite different. If you look at what happens in one's life and step away from the immediate, you begin to see with some perspective, oh, isn't that strange? Isn't that funny? Isn't that weird?

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Mo makes me laugh a lot. One of the most recent times she gave me a good laugh is when I was doing research for this episode, and I read that she had told a reporter who was researching a story about her that the profile was going to be, quote, "a terrible waste of newsprint," unquote. And then that Mo had self-described as "a chlorinated curmudgeon." That's how she described herself. I am sure that she feels similarly about this podcast, that it is a horrible waste of audio print. I'm certain of it because she has told me many times, "Why would you be doing this interview? Why would anyone want to listen to this?" Well, for one, I love talking to someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously, who is so uninterested in praise or attention that they try and convince a reporter writing a glowing profile about them that he is wasting his time.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  But more than that, I love talking to someone who truly embodies the spirit of this show. I mean, how to be a better human? To me, the answer is be more like Mo. Get out there, make friends, have fun. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't ever believe that it is too late to start doing something new. Set records, but also don't worry too much about them. Just do it because you like being in the water and do your best to love who you are in the water with. But enough for me. Let's hear some more advice from Mo herself. And what about if you were to give people three things to do to improve your life? What should you do?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Three things to do for what?

• 28:44Speaker 00

  To improve your life.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Laugh.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Okay, laugh's one.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Well, you can't get in too much trouble unless you laugh at the wrong time or at the wrong person. Then you might get into a little Dutch. Three things. Outdoors, I think, is important. I love the outdoors. I'm kind of an outdoorsy. Maybe because as kids, we played outdoors. Nobody had invented a computer, and we didn't own a radio, and they, no one had come up with a TV. So we were shoved outdoors to get out from under our parents' feet.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Reading, I think, is important. It has been for me. It broadens your world. It opens your world, and it develops skills. For instance, I was talking with a friend who teaches ESL, and I told her that as a kid, how I learned and memorized nursery rhymes and the whole set of poems by "In the Child's Garden" of Verses, Stevenson. And that developed the skill, which I didn't know at the time, and was I developing skills

• 30:18Speaker 04

  in my head, of memory. So there are many things you can do that are fun and that might improve your life. But they might not, but they might be fun.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so we've talked about reading, we've talked about swimming. What do you think about just the balance between being independent and taking care of yourself and building community and relying on other people? How do you think about that?

• 30:47Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, obviously, you need to take care of yourself or you become a burden for, for others. You know, you got to learn to brush your teeth and wash your face now and then. Doing things for others should just be kind of automatic. It's part of being a member of the human race of helping people. It was certainly part of our bringing up. It was just kind of automatic. You just did it. People didn't go around with a little phone in their hand, one hand, and fingers on it

• 31:27Speaker 04

  in the other, and their face down in it, preoccupied with themselves and with their own activity.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Well, that's all that I have. Thank you so much, mighty Mo. A pleasure.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Thank you for being true.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Okay, all right.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  Does anybody ever say that?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  No, you're the first.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Maureen Kornfeld. That is it for this season of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including what I'm up to when I'm not hosting this show, on my weekly newsletter. Sign up for free at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by the synchronized swim team of Daniela Balarezzo, Chloe Shasha-Brooks, and Joseph Dubry. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who assure me that Great Falls is the name of a real town in Montana and not just a review of me trying to ski. On the PRX side, our show is put together by a team of aquatic masterminds that includes Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course,

• 32:35Speaker 00

  thanks to you for listening to our show and making all of this possible. If you are listening on Apple, please leave us a five-star rating and review. And if you're listening on the Spotify app, answer the discussion question that we put up there. We would love to hear your thoughts. We will be back next year with even more episodes of How to Be a Better Human. In the meantime, stay safe, be well, and thanks again for spending your time with us.

• 33:01Speaker 00

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• 34:14Speaker 06

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• 34:44Speaker 01

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• 35:15Speaker 07

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