This week, we’re sharing an episode from The Gratitudeology Podcast with Jamie Hess, featuring Jessie Buttafuoco. Jessie opens up about the shocking event that changed her family forever, the media storm that followed, and what it means to revisit a painful chapter with perspective, honesty, and compassion.

When Jonathan Penner’s wife Stacy Title was diagnosed with ALS, their life changed with shocking speed. He joins Vanessa to talk about caregiving, survival, and the hard-won wisdom of staying present even when everything is getting worse. 

Connect to resources through Compassionate Care ALS (CCALS). You can also read the Vulture article about Stacy’s fight to make one final movie: Walking Time Bomb.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Lily Houston Smith is our senior producer; music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.

How do you choose a hospital or senior living community when everything feels impossibly high-stakes? Vanessa talks with two U.S. News & World Report journalists — Ben Harder, managing editor and chief of health analysis, and Liz Pearce, director of senior living — about what those rankings really measure, and what they can’t.

See their rankings for Best Hospitals for Rehabilitation, Best Nursing Homes, Best Senior Living, and — their newest report — Best Home Health. Also check out our episode with Amara Walker.

When a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the grieving starts years before the end. In The End Is the Beginning, Jill Bialosky tells her mother’s story in reverse. Jill and Vanessa talk about what it means to “eulogize” someone while they’re disappearing, and how writing can be both tribute and survival. You can read Jill’s New York Times essay on losing her mother during the pandemic.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Lily Houston Smith is our senior producer; music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.

Elder care and childcare costs are rising fast, while wages and support for caregivers lag behind. Longtime care policy advocate Julie Kashen breaks down how we got here, what it would look like if we treated care as real infrastructure, and offers a surprisingly hopeful framework for what’s still possible.

Learn more about Julie's work at The Century Foundation.

Kim Elliott’s caregiving story includes a leukemia diagnosis, a stem cell transplant, and some truly deranged insurance battles. She talks with Vanessa about surviving all of it — and building Gray Monster so other caregivers don’t have to start from scratch.

Michelle Boyaner reflects on lives and relationships while sharing insights from her acclaimed film It’s Not a Burden: The Humor and Heartache of Raising Elderly Parents, which explores the joys and struggles of caring for aging loved ones.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Our production team is Shoshi Shmuluvitz, managing producer and editor; Lily Houston Smith, senior producer; Ashley Warren, production manager; Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan, studio recordist; and music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.

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In this episode of Infamous, Vanessa and her co-host Natalie Robehmed learn about a wild family drama from The Cut writer Angelina Chapin. It’s about Selena Gomez and her mother Mandy Teefey’s mental-health startup, Wondermind. They discuss the pressures created when celebrity and mental health advocacy become a business. Read Angelina’s story, “What Happened at Wondermind?”

Read Vanessa’s book, Blurred Lines: Sex, Power and Consent on Campus, and check out Natalie on Instagram at @natrobe

To connect with the So Your Parents Are Old team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you!

To connect with Infamous's creative team, join the community at ⁠joincampsidemedia.com⁠

Anna Holmes joins Vanessa to talk about the unnerving overlap between having a parent with dementia and experiencing perimenopause brain fog, and the terrifying question that raises: is this just aging, or the beginning of something worse? It’s a candid, darkly funny conversation about how to stay present, even when we’re afraid.

For more from Anna, you can read her New Yorker article, My Mother’s Memory Loss, and Mine or order one of her amazing books. Also discussed: read about the new AI dementia glasses.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Our production team is Shoshi Shmuluvitz, managing producer and editor; Lily Houston Smith, senior producer; Ashley Warren, production manager; Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan, studio recordist; and music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.

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Josh Carter, grandson of President Jimmy Carter, grew up in a family where caregiving wasn’t just a value — it was a way of life. He talks with Vanessa about caring for a grandmother with memory loss, supporting a father with Parkinson’s, and parenting a child with serious medical needs. Learn more about the VEO-IBD Foundation.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Our production team is Shoshi Shmuluvitz, managing producer and editor; Lily Houston Smith, senior producer; Ashley Warren, production manager; Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan, studio recordist; and music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Cody Delistraty joins Vanessa to talk about his book The Grief Cure, a quest narrative through loss, myth, medicine, and modern grief culture. From the controversial diagnosis of Prolonged Grief Disorder to the American obsession with “getting over it,” Cody argues against the promise of closure, for something far messier (and more human). Also discussed: Cody’s articles on mourning in America, the “magic” of AI, and techno-spiritualism; and How to Change a Memory by Steve Ramirez.

To connect with the team, find us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Youtube⁠, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

Our production team is Shoshi Shmuluvitz, managing producer and editor; Lily Houston Smith, senior producer; Ashley Warren, production manager; Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan, studio recordist; and music by Mark McAdam and Amber Devereux.