DON'T LET THE OLD MAN IN
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DLTOMI is a podcast brought to you by Pod O’Sullivan, where he has real and candid conversations with experts, celebrities and ordinary men about navigating midlife. The ups, the downs, the surprises, the opportunities, the secrets and how to do it on your terms, gracefully or even disgracefully!
Pod will explore ways to take charge of your health, to divorce well, to reinvigorate your sex life, to find ways to lift your spirit, to join new communities, to make sure you have enough money for retirement, to laugh, to cry if needed, to change perspectives, and most importantly, to ensure your second act is even better than the first.
Pod O’Sullivan has been fascinated with transitions and personal reinventions for most of his life. His career has seen him in the medical industry, in sales and marketing, consulting industries, being self-employed, being an entrepreneur who successfully sold businesses, being an educator at Sydney Business School, an author, an Executive Coach to 100’s of CEO’s all over Asia, a podcaster, the owner of a failed tech start up and now the co-founder of The Wisdom Vault and host of this podcast.
Migrating from Ireland and England to Australia taught him many lessons. Divorcing with two young kids threw a few more his way. Remarrying and creating the ‘Brady Bunch’ with Carole, his two children and three new daughters, topped off many great life lessons. Pod knows the harsh reality of life’s ups and downs and firmly believes that mid-life, whilst tough on many levels, lonely on other levels and downright confusing on even others, can also include the best stages in life. He is here to explore and find those!
Latest Episodes
Don’t Let The Old Man In now has its own website – Click here for all the latest Episodes and Resources.
Pasco Ashton: Men's circles, male loneliness, and why real courage is honesty
What does it really mean to be a man in midlife? For many men in their 40s, 50s, and beyond, the loneliness epidemic hits hardest precisely when it should feel easiest — when careers are established, children are raised, and the world looks, from the outside at least, like it’s going well.
Merrick Watts: Purpose Is to Be, Not to Do
What happens when a comedian, radio star, SAS Australia survivor, and wine entrepreneur walks into a midlife conversation? You get one of the most honest, self-aware, and unexpectedly profound exchanges we’ve had on Don’t Let The Old Man In. Merrick Watts — one of Australia’s most versatile entertainers — has lived more identities than most men dare to imagine, and at 52 he’s more purposeful, more grounded, and more clear-eyed about what actually matters than at any other point in his career. This is a conversation about midlife reinvention, identity, legacy, and what it really means to grow up.
Naomi Cao: Divorce Coach · Refugee Survivor · Social Alchemist
Naomi Cao sits in a space that doesn’t exist anywhere else. She’s not a therapist and she’s not a lawyer. She’s a divorce coach and strategist — a project manager for the most difficult season of a man’s life. She’s also the evidence that starting over after divorce isn’t just possible. It’s survivable. And sometimes, it’s the making of you.
Peter Reek: SHIFT — 7 mindsets for men who refuse to drift through midlife
What if midlife career change wasn’t a detour — but the most deliberate design decision you ever made? Author and coach Peter Reek sold a successful business in his fifties, returned to university to study Applied Positive Psychology, and wrote SHIFT: 7 Mindsets for an Inspired Midlife. In this conversation, Pod goes beyond the framework and into the territory no other interviewer has reached — the real cost of starting over, the lyrical voice Peter kept hidden through a business career, and what radical acceptance actually looks like when it still stings.
From the corner office to community: Stephen Keys on purpose, philanthropy and the second half of life
What happens when a man at the top of his game walks away from it all — not because he failed, but because something deeper was calling? Stephen Keys knows that moment well. After a 25-year career in global IT, including a decade as a senior executive and group CEO, Stephen made the kind of decision most men quietly dream about: he chose purpose over prestige.
What followed wasn’t a straight line. There was divorce, loneliness, weekends without his boys, and the slow, humbling work of rebuilding. But there was also a charity transforming lives in rural Sri Lanka, unexpected lifelines found in volunteering, ultra marathons run on the mantra “my pain is my privilege,” and a growing conviction that the second half of life can be more meaningful than the first.
This is a conversation about what it really costs to choose significance — and what it quietly gives back.
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