Perimenopause and Brain Fog with Anna Holmes
So Your Parents Are Old
Vanessa Grigoriadis
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 soyourparentsareold@gmail.com. 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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this show. I hope you're getting something out of it because I definitely am getting something out of making it. So if you'd like to join our community, the so your parents are old community, please head over to join campside.com. That's C-A-M-P-S-I-D-E. |
| 0:21.3 | You'll find behind-the-scenes content there, bonus content for all of our hit shows. |
| 0:26.8 | So join campside.com. |
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| 1:01.3 | Welcome everybody back to So Your Parents Are Old. |
| 1:08.5 | I'm Vanessa Rigoriades. |
| 1:10.7 | So in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts. |
| 1:18.3 | There's the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas future. |
| 1:25.4 | And those three ghosts are there to convince Scrooge, to change his |
| 1:30.6 | Scroogeish ways, and to be kind and generous and love his fellow man and love Christmas. |
| 1:39.5 | One of the things that has been really hard for me as I take care of my mom is that it feels like I'm being |
| 1:46.5 | visited by the ghost of Christmas future. Except instead of the death of Tiny Tim, my future is |
| 1:54.7 | suffering something of her fate. My guest today, Anna Holmes, is a brilliant writer, editor, and creative executive. |
| 2:03.5 | She was the creator of the site, Jezebel, if you read that way back in the day. |
| 2:08.1 | She's worked with the Obamas on their production company Higher Ground. |
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