Episodes

  • Investigating An Alzheimer's Hotspot

    Investigating An Alzheimer's Hotspot
    Dec 24 2022
    In two Texas counties along the border with Mexico, 20 to 25 percent of seniors have Alzheimer's or related dementias. Those rates are among the highest in the US and represent a mostly Latino population. But Latinos are underrepresented in Alzheimer's clinical trials. Physician and neurologist Dr. Gladys Maestre is changing that at her NIH-funded Alzheimer's research center in the Rio Grande Valley, the first of its kind in Texas. She's using a "place-based" approach to dementia care, bringing her Latina identity and cultural knowledge to investigate the social, environmental, and biological factors that influence brain health.
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    39 mins
  • Autumn of a Patriarch

    Autumn of a Patriarch
    Nov 25 2022
    “Memory is my tool and my raw material,” author Gabriel García Márquez once said to his son. “I cannot work without it.” As the great writer’s memory began to fail him late in life, his family circled around. Rodrigo García relays those days of caring and loss in his poignant memoir of his parents’ final years, “A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes.”
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    36 mins
  • A Comedian Walks Into A Dementia Unit

    A Comedian Walks Into A Dementia Unit
    Nov 11 2022
    Arlieta Hall was a full-time caregiver for her dad with dementia when she started going to open-mic nights around Chicago for some relief. Then one night a manager suggested that she tell stories about her dad on stage. Now, Arlieta is making her name as a comedian and dementia educator. She’s a fellow at Chicago’s famed Second City comedy club, finishing a film about care and comedy, and trains families and caregivers to use the tools of improv to communicate better with people with dementia.
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    22 mins
  • Raising Money for Caregivers, One Joke At A Time

    Raising Money for Caregivers, One Joke At A Time
    Oct 28 2022
    What do Michael Che, Sarah Silverman and Kermit the Frog have in common? They're just a few of the celebrities who've helped Hilarity for Charity give direct aid to families caring for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia. HFC, as it's known, is the brainchild of actor Lauren Miller Rogen, who cared for her mom with Alzheimer's at a young age. Lauren enlisted her husband, comedian Seth Rogen, along with her family and friends to put on comedy shows to fundraise and lift spirits. On this episode, Lauren and her dad Scott Miller talk about their experience caregiving and how they're trying to lighten the burden for other caregivers today.
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    30 mins
  • The Memory Detective

    The Memory Detective
    Oct 14 2022
    Novelist Walter Mosley has written dozens of popular mystery and crime novels, but none quite like The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, in which a man with Alzheimer's must solve a mystery buried deep in his own fading memory. In this episode, Mosley tells Kitty how caring for his parents with dementia exposed him to the drama of caregiving and later informed his writing. His novel, recently adapted into an Apple TV series starring Samuel L. Jackson, stands out as a rare portrayal in media of the experience of Alzheimer's disease, while still delivering a thrilling crime story.
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    23 mins
  • What Caring Looks Like When There Is No Cure

    What Caring Looks Like When There Is No Cure
    Sep 30 2022
    Investigative journalist Esme Deprez was sitting in a diner in New York when she got a text from her dad, asking her to help him die. Less than a month later, she drove to a pharmacy in Maine to pick up the medicine that would allow him to end his life, using Maine’s new “Aid in Dying” law. Esme tells Kitty about what she learned caring for her dad, epidemiologist Ron Deprez. His experience with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, gave Esme an education into the choices we can, and cannot make, for ourselves and our loved ones at the end of our lives.
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    34 mins
  • Taking Care of Tasha: A Son Remembers

    Taking Care of Tasha: A Son Remembers
    May 6 2022
    On this Mother's Day bonus episode, writer Brian Morton tells Kitty about the difficulties and delights of caring for his mother, a beloved teacher with a fiery personality who remained stubborn and independent even as her health declined. Brian's memoir, Tasha, is both a portrait of his mother and an account of the complexities of dementia care.
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    34 mins
  • Who decides what kind of care grandma gets?

    Who decides what kind of care grandma gets?
    Apr 15 2022
    It was 1996 when journalist Howard Gleckman got "the call" — about emergency care for his mother-in-law. Soon he was managing care for three older family members, and found the system impenetrable. He’s since made a career of explaining how long-term care works in the U.S., and how Wall Street investors are helping decide the kind of care your grandmother gets.
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    25 mins