The Agewyz Podcast
by Jana Panarites
Author and (now former) caregiver Jana Panarites engages with unsung heroes — people caring for family members, friends and relatives amid the demands of their own lives — plus experts in the field of aging, and artists who use media to creatively address major health issues and challenge widespread assumptions about aging. Laugh, cry, share and know you're not alone.Note from Jana: I stopped producing this podcast in 2020, but am leaving them here because as we know, caregiving is evergreen. I hope you find comfort in these stories. My latest: https://www.janapanarites.com
Episodes
-
Dr. Pauline Boss on The Grief That Has No End
The Coronavirus pandemic has forced many residential care facilities to go on lockdown and implement “no visitor” policies. As a result, family members with loved ones in care facilities are feeling a heightened sense of “ambiguous loss”—a term coined by pioneering educator and researcher Dr....
-
Nancy Picard: Caregiving in a Crisis
Like many adult children, psychologist Nancy Picard is determined to prevent her aging parents from contracting Covid-19. But Nancy and her parents live in separate states. So she's in daily communication with them, and has wired up their house with cameras placed at strategic locations - at foot...
-
Eugenia Zukerman: Like Falling Through a Cloud
Renowned flutist Eugenia Zukerman has performed in concerts and recitals all over the world. She was the artistic director of Colorado's Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival for 13 years, and the arts correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning for over 25 years. And then in her early 70s, Eugenia was...
-
Jason Resendez: LatinosAgainstAlzheimer's
Growing up in Alice, Texas, Jason Resendez didn't have any experience with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. But more recently dementia has started to become an issue in his family. Now the issue has come full circle: as Executive Director of the LatinosAgainstAlzheimer's Network,...
-
Leslie Gray Streeter: Black Widow
Veteran writer Leslie Gray Streeter established a loyal readership through her Palm Beach Post column, "That Girl." Now a general entertainment columnist at the Post, her writing for the newspaper began in the early 2000s and eventually included mentions of Scott Zervitz, referred to in Leslie's...
-
Medication Overload: Time For An Action Plan
In the last two decades the number of people age 65 or older who are taking five or more medications has increased 300 percent. A problem that is much bigger than America’s opioid crisis, the scope and impact of over-prescribing in older adults is detailed in “Medication Overload: America’s Other...
-
VIP Care Management With Sonja Kobrin
Geriatric Care Manager Sonja Kobrin was in her twenties when she began caring for the grandparents who raised her. She had no help and was traumatized by the experience, but it informed her approach years later, when she cared for the biological father who had been absent in her childhood. This...
-
Deirdre Fishel on her documentary film “Care”
Award-winning filmmaker Deirdre Fishel walked around in a state of rage during the making of her documentary film, “Care,” which delves into the world of paid care from the perspective of both workers and care recipients. Deirdre talks about the making of her film, and about how her vibrant but...
-
LGBTQ Sandwich Generation
Brent Wright is one of 64 million sandwich generation Americans who has simultaneously cared for an aging parent and his kids, all under the same roof. What made their setup unusual? His mom moved in with Brent and his husband, Sandis, and their two adopted daughters. Brent tells us how the...
-
Autism Village Founder Topher Wurts
One in 68 children born in the US today is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. The vast majority of them are being raised by single moms, and boys make up roughly three-quarters of those diagnosed. Faced with these and other alarming statistics, Topher Wurts decided to use his background…
more -
Shaista Kazmi: Serving Elderly Ethnic Minorities
Michigan resident Shaista Kazmi has firsthand knowledge of the isolation and guilt felt by millions of family caregivers. But as a Pakistani Muslim, she's had the added challenge of finding culturally competent home health aides for her elderly family members. To help caregivers like her avoid…
more -
Suzanne Garber: Unraveling Global Healthcare
Single Payer, Medicare For All, Universal Healthcare - as these phrases get tossed around the presidential debate stage we get real with Suzanne Garber, whose documentary film, "Gauze: Unraveling Global Healthcare" compares and contrasts healthcare systems around the world to determine what "best...
-
Cynthia Lim: Carving a New Path After Loss
LA resident Cynthia Lim, author of the book, "Wherever You Are: A Memoir of Love, Marriage and Brain Injury," returns to the show a year after our first interview to talk about how her life has changed since the death of her husband, Perry. Retired from working in the LA Unified School District,...
-
Elissa Altman on "Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing and Longing"
What happens when a gay, middle-aged daughter who has never gotten along with her makeup-addicted, former television singer mother is suddenly thrust into the role of her caregiver? That's the subject of James Beard Award-winning food writer Elissa Altman's new book, "Motherland: A Memoir of…
more -
Millennial Caregiver Adrienne Glusman
Adrienne Glusman always knew she would have to care for her mother at some point. It just happened 30 years sooner than she expected. An only child of divorced parents, Adrienne was 29 years old and traveling the world in between waitressing gigs in New York City when her mother was diagnosed…
more -
Contemplative Caregiving with Dr. John Eric Baugher
Pioneering educator and researcher Dr. John Eric Baugher was just eighteen years old when his mother was murdered. Filled with rage, John felt he was fated to join his mother's killer in life imprisonment. Not behind bars, but behind psychological walls of unresolved grief and anger. How he...
-
Valerie Bourdain: Finding Shelter in the Storm of Cancer
In a span of five years, Nebraska native Valerie Bourdain lost her daughter to adrenal cancer, her mother to lung cancer and her father to Chronic Lymphomatic Leukemia (CLL). Midway through their daughter’s cancer journey, Valerie's husband left the marriage. Valerie forged ahead. But as the sole...
-
Before It's Too Late
In 1996, Mike O’Krent became a volunteer interviewer for Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, the largest oral history project captured on video in the world. The experience of interviewing Holocaust survivors rocked Mike’s world and led him to found Life Stories...
-
Janet Elsbach: Caring, Connecting & Building Community One Dish At A Time
Janet Elsbach was raised by people who did a lot of cooking, but she didn't go to professional cooking school. A home cook inspired by seasonal food, the cravings of those she loves to feed and the idea of bringing people together at the table, Janet knows from personal experience that in times…
more -
What Would The Patient Want?
What happens when a family member or friend is incapacitated and they’re counting on you to make a healthcare decision for them? Do you take the doctor's advice for treatment? Or do you push back, knowing the patient would never want the treatment the doctor is suggesting? In high pressure...
-
Judith Henry: The Dutiful Daughter's Guide to Caregiving
When Judith Henry's parents became ill in 2007, not even her reputation as a pragmatist, a planner and responsible eldest sibling could prepare her for what lay ahead. But Judith had one advantage: around age ten she had played a caregiving role for her mother, who was in and out of hospitals....
-
Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke
Being able to speak and write were central to Debra Meyerson's career as a tenured professor at Stanford University, where her work revolved around diversity, gender, identity and organizational change. But when she suffered a severe stroke that nearly killed her, the career by which Debra…
more -
When Is It Time To Stop Driving?
Former Ohio state trooper Matt Gurwell spent 20-plus years delivering bad news to family members about accidents involving older drivers. Now instead of delivering death notifications, he’s helping to preserve family relationships and saving lives with a self-assessment tool called Beyond Driving...
-
Author Liz O’Donnell on "Working Daughter: How to Care for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living"
AGEWYZ PODCAST FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY EPISODE! There are lots of books on the market about balancing career and children, but where do you turn for advice on balancing career and aging parents? With 10,000 people turning 65 every day and employers slow to acknowledge the needs of their caregiving...
-
Jay Perry: Journeying Through Cancer
Award-winning Canadian photographer Jay Perry dodged burning cars in Haiti after the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, he’s had Haitian rebels point their guns in his direction and he’s driven across the country in a cramped van eating and drinking off four dollars a day. But watching his...
-
Aisha Adkins on Millennial Caregiving
Did you know that Millennial caregivers make up nearly a quarter of America's 44 million family caregivers? One of them is Atlanta writer and dementia care advocate Aisha Adkins. An only child and African American who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood near Seattle, Aisha was bullied…
more -
Photographer Robert Duron on "stages: 100 Over 100"
Did you know that in the United States there are over 80,000 centenarians? Those are Americans who have made it to age 100 and beyond. They were born at a time when the life expectancy was just 53-1/2 for men and 56 for women. Today, life expectancy is 76 for men and 81 for women. So what is it...
-
A Grief That Has No End: Dr. Pauline Boss on Ambiguous Loss
Pioneering educator and researcher Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term "ambiguous loss" to describe a form of grief that is common in caregivers of family members with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. It's marked by a never-ending grief for the person with dementia who is "there but not...
-
Military Caregiver Jill Armijo
We celebrate this Memorial Day with the story of a military caregiver whose husband returned from active duty alive but mentally wounded. Jill Armijo’s husband, Joe, served in the Navy as a machinist and was deployed to a ship in the Persian Gulf just before Operation Desert Storm. A gentle,...
-
CareGiving.com Founder Denise M. Brown
Chicago native Denise M. Brown founded CareGiving.com at a time when Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia didn't even exist. Everyone told Denise she was wasting her time. No one would be interested in a website like CareGiving.com. She launched the site anyway and now, over twenty years…
more -
Choosing Joy: How One Couple Reframed Alzheimer's
A few months after their 50th wedding anniversary, Helene Berger's husband Ady was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. When the doctor gave him the news, Ady replied, "I don't want to live anymore." From that moment on, Helene vowed to find creative ways to make their lives as joyful as possible...
-
Sky Dylan-Robbins: How Will Millennials Care For Their Parents?
In the next fifty years the population of Americans over age 65 will double. Where do millennials fit in? That's the question posed by filmmaker and visual journalist Sky Dylan-Robbins in her documentary short for NBC Left Field titled, “Millennials Stepping Up: How Will We Take Care of Our...
-
Trailer for The Agewyz Podcast
Caregiving expert and author Jana Panarites engages with unsung heroes — people caring for family members, friends and relatives amid the demands of their own lives — plus professionals in the field of aging and writers, performers and artists who are using media to creatively address major…
more -
Gayle Kirschenbaum on her film "Look At Us Now, Mother!"
If you’re having a hard time caring for a family member or friend, chances are there are lingering wounds in the relationship. But choosing the path of forgiveness can heal even the most fractured bonds. Take it from filmmaker Gayle Kirschenbaum, whose emotional abuse as a child made her feel…
more -
The Best Seven Years of My Life
George and Carol Shannon were on their last night of vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico when Carol had a stroke. A day later, in a hospital back in their hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, a million questions went through George's mind. He was still working. How would he handle this? How would he be a...
-
Medication Overload: America's Other Drug Problem
We hear a lot about how the opioid crisis is destroying families and communities. But the scope and impact of medication overload is much bigger: in the last two decades the number of older adults taking five or more medications has increased 300 percent. There’s also been a spike in the number…
more -
Jaime Estremera-Fitzgerald: CEO of South Florida’s Area Agency on Aging
Jaime Estremera-Fitzgerald is a CEO on a mission. As head of South Florida’s Area Agency on Aging (known locally as Your Aging and Disability Resource Center), Jaime leads a team that serves seniors, adults with disabilities and the people who care for them in Palm Beach, the Treasure Coast and...
-
Brian LeBlanc: Living Well with Alzheimer's
58-year-old Brian LeBlanc is an international Alzheimer's advocate who speaks at conferences, workshops, symposiums, and even on dementia-friendly cruises. He's got a sense of humor that will knock you over. But don't call him an Alzheimer's patient. And don't call him an Alzheimer's sufferer....
-
Ronni Bennett: Time Goes By
No one knows what it’s like to be old until they get there. That’s the view of Ronni Bennett, a former radio producer in her 70s who also spent over two decades as a writer and producer in network television in New York City. These days Ronni is busy with her acclaimed blog "Time Goes By," where...
-
Kalisha Bonds: African Americans and Dementia
Much of the research on dementia in the United States has overlooked African Americans, but the prevalence of dementia in this population is more widespread than you might think. PhD candidate Kalisha Bonds is doing a deep dive into the subject as a student at Oregon Health & Sciences University...
-
When Caregiving Is Rejected: A Mother and Her Son's MS
Wanting to care for your child is a basic instinct for most mothers. All the more so when that child has a chronic condition, like the son of today’s guest—a Wisconsin mother who asked that we not use her last name. Carol’s adult son has Multiple Sclerosis (MS), but he refuses to let Carol care…
more -
Kristi Horner: Supporting Mental Health Caregivers
In the U.S., as many as 8.4 million people act as caregivers to adults with emotional or mental health conditions. That’s according to a recent report co-authored by the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Mental health caregivers often have…
more -
Tamesha Keel: This Is What Normal Looks Like
Brooklyn-born attorney and empowerment guru Tamesha Keel was riding high in her career when her father died and she took on the role of sole caregiver for her mother. Years earlier her mother had survived a massive brain hemorrhage. She couldn’t live alone, so she moved in with Tamesha. Then her...
-
Katherine Summers: From the Heart
Florida native Katherine Summers stumbled into her career as a paid caregiver. She had some time on her hands, and friends from her childhood began asking if she could check in on their aging parents. Katherine found she liked being around the elders, and caring for them came naturally to her. So...
-
Alzheimer’s Advocate Lori La Bey
Alzheimer’s Speaks founder Lori La Bey is driven to help people with dementia and their care partners live positive and purpose-filled lives. The work of her Minnesota-based advocacy group has been recognized by Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Oz and Sharecare and Alzheimer’s advocate Maria Shriver, who named...
-
John Leland: Happiness Is A Choice You Make
In 2015, award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America’s fastest growing age group: people age 85 and older, or what gerontologists often refer to as “the oldest old.” What John discovered during his deep dive into the world of elders...
-
The Candia Shuffle
Candia, New Hampshire residents Kathy and Ray MacDonald vowed when they got married that neither mother-in-law would ever live with them. Then Kathy’s mother Simone developed Alzheimer’s disease. The working couple now juggles caring for 78-year-old Simone with fulltime jobs, getaways planned...
-
Kate Schutt: Nothing I Won't Bear
Singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer Kate Schutt was packed and set to leave for a gig in the Middle East when she learned that her mother had stage 3c ovarian cancer. Kate broke her contract, moved in with her mother and became her primary caregiver for the next four years. On the show she...
-
Journalist Paula Span on The New Old Age
Veteran journalist Paula Span has had personal experience with many of the issues explored in her twice-monthly column for The New York Times, “The New Old Age”—the only dedicated real estate at the Times that talks about aging issues and caregiving. On the show, Paula shares some of those...
-
Dr. Nicole Rochester: Your GPS Doc
Dr. Nicole Rochester has known she wanted to be a pediatrician since she was about eight years old. A Washington, DC native whose dad was a Redskins season ticket holder, Dr. Rochester has advocated for her own family members and given medical care to children in the DC Metro area for two…
more
About this show
Author and (now former) caregiver Jana Panarites engages with unsung heroes — people caring for family members, friends and relatives amid the demands of their own lives — plus experts in the field of aging, and artists who use media to creatively address major health issues and challenge widespread assumptions about aging. Laugh, cry, share and know you're not alone.Note from Jana: I stopped producing this podcast in 2020, but am leaving them here because as we know, caregiving is evergreen. I hope you find comfort in these stories. My latest: https://www.janapanarites.com
Hosted by
Jana Panarites