So Your Parents Are Old

Cybersecurity expert and author of The Dark Side of the Boom Patrick Coughlin joins Vanessa to talk about the scams coming for our parents and their bank accounts. They get into AI voice cloning, spoofed numbers, why seniors are such major targets, and what to do when someone calls with an emergency that feels terrifyingly real.

Check out Scamwise for help spotting suspicious texts, emails, phone calls, and mail.

What can you actually do to keep your brain healthy — and what is just wellness noise? Vanessa talks with Dr. Silky Pahlajani of Weill Cornell Medicine about Alzheimer’s, women’s brain health, menopause, sleep, stress, depression, hearing, diabetes, and the small habits that may help protect cognition over time.

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.