779: Ends of the Earth

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An exploration of the very upper limits of what you do for someone you love.

Prologue: Host Ira Glass explains what we’re doing on today’s show. (2 minutes)
Act One: Amy Bloom tells the story of her husband, Brian, getting Alzheimer's and wanting assisted suicide. Her search to find a way to do that led her to Dignitas, in Switzerland. Hear this intimate and frank account of the experience they go through, excerpted from her book, IN LOVE. (39 minutes)
Act Two: Comedian Zarna Garg tells jokes onstage about the extreme ways she tries to control her daughter Zoya’s life. Zoya explains, they’re not really jokes. Ira Glass talks to both of them about it. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.4	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.
0:11.1	Hi, everybody.
0:12.7	This is American Life.
0:13.7	So, one of our producers read this book a little while back and she was like, this story
0:18.1	is really unusual and also it happens to be written in this way that it's perfect for
0:22.4	radio.
0:23.4	But we maybe just condense it down and run it on the show.
0:28.0	And so a few of us read the book, including me and we agreed, this is a story you really
0:32.3	don't hear.
0:33.8	Basically, the story, there's this couple.
0:37.5	He gets Alzheimer's and of course so many of us know people with Alzheimer's or dementia.
0:42.5	It's like you watch so many things that make them them just get taken away one after another
0:47.2	and it's like watching them float off into space or something.
0:52.0	But in this couple, the man makes a choice that I've never met anyone who made this
0:58.0	choice.
0:59.0	He decides early on when he's diagnosed and still has his wits about him.
1:03.2	There isn't going to come a part that way.
1:06.3	He wants some kind of assisted suicide until his wife looks around.
1:11.7	And the lack of options is frankly fascinating.
1:14.2	And finally, she finds this place in Switzerland to go to and then she tells the story of what
1:19.7	that's like.
	...

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