William Shatner has no plans to slow down as he gets older.

In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the 95-year-old actor spoke about how he is able to keep going, when so many others his age have already slowed down decades ago.

“That’s why they’re old,” he said. “Shatner’s law is speed up, do more and forget the pain, take a pill if it hurts. You get older, you hurt more. Two things. One is a weightlifter who told me, ‘When I lift three, four hundred pounds, it hurts. I’ve learned,’ he said, ‘to make the hurt my friend. Welcome, friend. The pain is here, welcome.'”

Shatner, who is preparing for his upcoming live stage show “The Universe is Absurd,” went on to say that his “advice to old people” would be to “befriend” and embrace the pain.

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The “Star Trek” actor then added that his second tip for those who are aging is to never stop moving, explaining that “if you stop moving, all you’ve got is the hurt.” He explained that one of his passions is riding horses, and competing in an equestrian event called reigning, which he described as “very physical.”

“The older you get, the difficulty is really getting on the horse. You have a mounting block, and you try to lift your leg up over it,” he said. “If I would have stopped that, half my life would disappear. So I don’t stop. I just go slower.”

Even after suffering an injury to his shoulder due to a fall off his horse, Shatner continues to ride, and will be hosting the annual William Shatner’s Hollywood Charity Horse Show later this month.

His busy schedule also includes his upcoming live show, “The Universe is Absurd,” which is a live, unscripted stage show with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that will explore cosmic themes through banter and storytelling. The show is scheduled for May 10 and 20 at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills.

WATCH HERE: WILLIAM SHATNER CALLS NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON ‘A CLOSE FRIEND’ AFTER WORKING WITH HIM ON NEW LIVE SHOW

Tyson and Shatner first connected when recording an audiobook, which eventually led to 20 hours of conversation between the two of them.

“I had to spend two days, 10 hours a day talking to a wonderful man who has become a good friend of mine now,” he said. “Those 20 hours have given us a foothold into conversation and that’s what we’ll have on stage. But in order for it to have energy, I have to disagree with them on many points, if not all.”

The worst thing that can happen at the show in Shatner’s opinion, is that “The audience walks out. We walk on, and they get up and leave.“

WATCH HERE: WILLIAM SHATNER ENCOURAGES OLDER PEOPLE TO ‘BEFRIEND THE PAIN’ IN ORDER TO STAY YOUNG

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In terms of what’s next for him, the “Boston Legal” star explained he doesn’t have a bucket list, but wants to continue doing the things he treasures, such as spending time with his dogs, riding horses with his wife and visiting his favorite coffee shops.

“I’m busy, and I’m vital and I’m riding horses and I’m taking care of business. And I just sold a horse,” he said. “I did a job on Friday and Saturday…I’m busy doing concrete valuable things, I don’t want to go anywhere. The least of all I want to do is die.”

WATCH HERE: WILLIAM SHATNER DOES NOT PLAN TO SLOW DOWN ANYTIME SOON

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When reflecting on his life, Shatner shared that he is “thrilled to see the world” when he wakes up every morning, but shares that is “something that’s grown on me through the years.”

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He explained that a person’s mindset changes throughout the different stages of life. He shared that around 20-25 years old, people are busy building their future and are “self-energized by your own needs,” but slow down as they get older.

“When you’re 70 and 80, you look around at the magic of the Earth,” he explained. “You look at the incredible beauty of life. No matter if you’re hurting, welcome hurt. You’re alive, for God’s sake. In no time at all, you’ll be interred with turds and so relish as much as you can of your life because it’s over.”

He continued: “I’m here to testify. One truth I know. It goes by so quickly. When I hear somebody utter the number of my age, I’m tempted to look around to see who he’s talking about, because that doesn’t seem real. It seems like some bad dream. I’m how old? No, I’ll wake up momentarily. That’s how I feel.”

WATCH HERE: WILLIAM SHATNER SHARED HOW HIS PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE HAS CHANGED AS HE GETS OLDER

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Shatner previously gave audiences the secret to his longevity in a tweet on his 95th birthday.

“At 95, I’m still smokin‘! I’ve learned two things: Never waste a good cigar. Never trust anyone who says you should ‘act your age.'”

Women’s tennis legend Martina Navratilova weighed in on the sudden trans athlete controversy in Gavin Newsom’s California, with the girls’ high school track and field championships coming up.

A trans athlete is set to compete in the girls’ tournament this year, after winning multiple state finals last year. California is continuing to let biological males compete in girls’ sports under Newsom’s leadership, prompting criticism from many activists.

Navratilova cheered on two gold-medal-winning women’s Olympians who spoke out against Newsom on Friday.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

The tennis legend shared a Fox News Digital article of women’s Olympic gold medalists Nancy Hogshead and Kaillie Humphries addressing the track and field controversy.

“Right on Nancy!!! We are just built different!!!” Navratilova wrote in an X post sharing the article.

In a response to the post, Navratilova argued to another user that Newsom could take action to protect girls’ sports in California.

“Newsom could overturn this in a second. No excuse,” Navratilova wrote.

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In a later post on Saturday, Navratilova re-shared news that the trans athlete, representing Jurupa Valley High School, is seeded first in the upcoming tournament.

“Cheating… which at the moment the rules allow. Thanks for nothing [Gavin Newsom],” Navratilova wrote.

Navratilova, like Hogshead, is a vocal advocate for protecting women’s sports despite supporting Democrats on other issues.

Hogshead responded to a statement from a source within Newsom’s office on the issue that stated, “The Governor has said discussions on this issue should be guided by fairness, dignity, and respect,” regarding the upcoming track meet and a planned protest against the trans athlete at the meet.

“Governor Newsom seems to exclude girls from his own standard of ‘fairness, dignity and respect.’ It is impossible to include a male — however they identify — into girl’s sports and have a fair competition, respecting and dignifying the unique biology of females. Females aren’t weakened males; males and females are built from different molds, so different that it justifies formal, government-sanctioned sex segregation,” Hogshead told Fox News Digital.

Hogshead, who represented the U.S. at the 1984 Summer Olympics, where she won three gold medals and one silver medal in swimming, has become a prominent activist in the fight to save women’s sports, despite being a lifelong Democrat. Hogshead is also a civil rights lawyer.

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“The government never segregates racially and religiously, but we do segregate by sex because of biology, material reality. Girls and women rely on that formal sex segregation to have the possibility of equality in sport. Governor Newsom needs to include the girls competing in track in his own analysis. As a law professor, this is a big fail,” she continued.

Humphries, who is a tax-paying California citizen and rising Trump ally in the effort to protect women’s sports, criticized Newsom as well. Humphries has won three Olympic gold medals in bobsled for the U.S. and Canada and six medals in total, making her the most decorated women’s bobsledder in history.

“There is nothing fair about allowing boys to take opportunities from girls in sports. It’s just the left’s thinly veiled misogyny. Governor Newsom should be focusing on California hosting the Olympics which actually knows the difference between men and women and quit pushing his woke agenda which is out of the mainstream of the American public,” Humphries told Fox News Digital.

The source within Newsom’s office responded to news that a “Save Girls Sports” protest will be held on Saturday at the site of a track and field playoff meet.

“The Governor has said discussions on this issue should be guided by fairness, dignity, and respect. He rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids. The Governor’s position is simple: stand with all kids and stand up to bullies,” a source within the governor’s office told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

“California is one of 22 states that have laws requiring students be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school sports consistent with their gender identity. California passed this law in 2013 (AB 1266) and it was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.”

After Jurupa’s trans athlete won first place in triple jump and high jump, and second place in long jump, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice launched a lawsuit against California state agencies for alleged Title IX violations last July.

Trump’s administration cracked down with a more targeted investigation of JUSD in January. The U.S. Department of Education announced JUSD specifically would be investigated for potential Title IX violations, along with 17 other institutions.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

This is part one of a series examining the challenges confronting the NATO alliance.

NATO has become a “bloated architecture” too dependent on American military power, former senior national security advisor Keith Kellogg told Fox News Digital.

As President Donald Trump pressures NATO allies to spend more on defense — ordering the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and signaling possible cuts in Spain and Italy — a deeper concern is emerging inside the alliance: despite years of rising European defense budgets, NATO still depends heavily on American military power, from missile defense and intelligence to logistics and nuclear deterrence. 

The growing gap between political commitments and real military capability is now fueling calls for structural changes inside the alliance as NATO confronts mounting threats from Russia and instability in the Middle East.

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NATO’s imbalance is not theoretical — and it is not new, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg told Fox News Digital, “I told the president… maybe you ought to talk about a tiered relationship with NATO,” Kellogg described conversations with Trump in his first term about the alliance’s future. “…we need to develop a new, for lack of a better term, a new NATO a new defensive alignment with  Europe.“

Kellogg added the alliance has expanded politically but not militarily — creating what he sees as a growing gap between commitments and real capability.

“You started with 12, and you went to 32, and in the process, I think you diluted the impact,” he argued, calling today’s NATO “a very bloated architecture.”

“They haven’t put the money into defense. Their defense industry and defense forces have atrophied. When you look at the Brits right now, they could barely deploy forces: they have two aircraft carriers, both under maintenance. Their brigades are like one out of six that work. And you just look at the capability, it’s just not there. So I think we need to realize that and say, well, we need something different,” Kellogg, who is the co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Foreign Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital.

But not everyone agrees the alliance is losing relevance.

“It has never been more relevant,” said John R. Deni, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College, who says NATO remains central to U.S. national security.

“The reason for that is twofold,” he said. “One, it’s our comparative advantage versus the Chinese and the Russians… they don’t have anything like this.”

“And the second reason… NATO underwrites the security and stability of our most important trade and investment relationship,” he added, referring to economic ties between North America and Europe.

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By around 2010, the United States accounted for roughly 65% to 70% of NATO defense spending, according to analysis provided by Barak Seener from the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank.

“They’ve always been dependent on the U.S.,” Kellogg said of the European allies.

“The allies overall rely upon one another for deterrence and defense by design,” Deni said, explaining that alliances exist to “pool their resources” and “aggregate their individual strengths.”

Deni pointed to ground forces as a clear example of what the U.S. gains from the alliance, noting that “there are far more allied mechanized infantry forces on the ground than there are Americans.”

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Still, he acknowledged that reliance has at times gone too far.

“In the past… it was fair to say that the European allies were overly reliant upon the Americans for conventional defense,” he said, pointing to the 2000s.

That, he said, was partly driven by U.S. priorities — as Washington pushed European allies to focus on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than territorial defense.

Seener describes NATO as “formally collective, but functionally asymmetric,” with the U.S. providing a disproportionate share of “high-end capabilities.”

That asymmetry is most visible in nuclear deterrence.

Seener said the U.S. provides the overwhelming majority of NATO’s nuclear arsenal — including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched systems and strategic bombers — meaning deterrence ultimately relies on the assumption of U.S. retaliation.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital that, “The U.S. nuclear deterrent cannot be replaced, but it is clear that Europe needs to step up. There’s no question. There needs to be a better balance when it comes to our defense and security. Both because we see the vital role the U.S. plays around the world and the resources that it demands, and also because it is only fair.”

“The good news,” the official added, “is that the Allies are doing exactly that. They are stepping up, working together — and with the U.S. — to ensure we collectively have what we need to deter and defend one billion people living across the Euro-Atlantic area.”

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Beyond nuclear weapons, the dependence runs through the alliance’s operational backbone.

Seener pointed to U.S.-provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — as well as logistics and command systems — as essential to NATO operations.

“Without U.S. intelligence and surveillance, NATO loses situational awareness and early warning capabilities,” Seener said, adding, “So that means that Russia, for example, can attack Europe. And theoretically, if there’s no NATO and the U.S. is not involved, Europe would not be aware, or it would take it too long to be able to defend itself.”

Kellogg also says that much of Europe’s military capability falls short of top-tier systems.

“For the most part, their equipment, if you had to grade it A, B, C, D, E, F, they’re kind of like B players or C players,” he said. “It’s not the first line of work.”

He pointed to air and missile defense as a key gap, noting that while European countries rely on U.S.-made systems such as Patriot and THAAD, “they don’t have a system that’s comparable.”

Kellogg attributed that to years of underinvestment, saying European defense industries “have atrophied,” adding that the United States is also now “relearning that as well.”

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Deni said the picture today is more mixed.

“Alliance defense spending has been up… and has spiked far more after 2022,” he said, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 as a turning point.

But he cautioned that capability gains take time, noting that many improvements are still years away from full deployment.

Deni pointed to recent European purchases of U.S. systems as evidence of growing capability, noting that countries including Poland, Romania, Norway and Denmark are acquiring the F-35 fighter jet from the U.S.

“You can’t build an F-35 overnight,” he said, adding that many of these improvements will take years to fully materialize.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital the alliance “needs to move further and faster” to meet growing threats, pointing to new capability targets agreed by defense ministers in June 2025.

The official said priorities include air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics and large land forces, noting that while details remain classified, plans call for a fivefold increase in air and missile defense, “thousands more” armored vehicles and tanks, and “millions more” artillery shells. NATO also aims to double key enabling capabilities such as logistics, transportation and medical support.

The official added that allies are increasing investments in warships, aircraft, drones, long-range missiles, as well as space and cyber capabilities, while boosting readiness and modernizing command and control.

“These targets are now included in national plans,” the official said, adding that allies must demonstrate how they will meet them through sustained defense spending and capability development.

The NATO official also noted that European allies lead multinational forces across Central and Eastern Europe, while the U.S. and Canada serve as framework nations in Poland and Latvia, alongside ongoing air policing missions and NATO’s KFOR operation in Kosovo.

Kellogg’s warning is direct: NATO’s deterrence depends on U.S. presence.

“The one you always have to worry about… is Russia,” Kellogg, who was Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia in 2025, said.

If U.S. forces are tied down elsewhere, NATO could face serious strain — particularly in areas like intelligence and logistics.

For Kellogg, the danger is delay. “We won’t know until it happens,” he said. “And then you won’t be able to respond to it.”

Deni, however, said the alliance remains a strategic asset — not a liability.

The question, he suggests, is not whether NATO still works. It is whether allies can adapt fast enough to keep it working.