So Your Parents Are Old

Senior care advisor Neil Nagraj and podcaster Laura House join Vanessa to talk about the impossible math of senior housing: when aging in place stops working, what assisted living actually is, and why so many families wait for a crisis before making a plan. Also discussed: memory care, Medicaid myths, long-term care insurance, and Gen X’s grim future.

Learn more about Neil’s company, The Senior Housing Authority. For more from Laura, listen to How’s Your Boomer? or subscribe to the newsletter.

This is an episode where we get mad! Comedian ⁠Lewis Black⁠ cared for his late elderly parents, who lived to 101 and 104. He talks about something nobody wants to even think about: what he'll do when he's too old to care for himself.

Hear more from Lewis in his podcast, ⁠Lewis Black's Rantcast⁠, or read one of his ⁠books⁠.

Joan Lunden joins Vanessa to talk about her new memoir, JOAN: Life Beyond the Script, and the moments that forced her off-script: bringing her baby to work at Good Morning America, living through divorce in public, surviving breast cancer, caring for her mother, and deciding what she wants for her own later years. 

If you want to hear more about preserving brain health, listen to our episode with Dr. Majid Fotuhi.

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 soyourparentsareold@gmail.com. We want to hear from you! 

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