I'm starting today's show a little differently by introducing someone who is part of every episode, but whose voice you don't typically hear.

Why don't you just introduce yourself? Tell me who you are.

My name is Joanne Levine. Right now, I'm the executive producer for Slate What Next and Slate What Next TBD. But I am also someone who's a mom and a daughter and a caretaker.

Tell me a little bit about your mom as much as you want to share. Sure. My mom, my mom, growing up was this vibrant woman.

She was a woman of a certain generation in the 50s, who was someone that wanted to be a lawyer,

and her father said, no, if you're going to go to college, you're going to be a teacher or nurse.

So she did that.

But she was of the generation that was marching in the streets for women's rights.

And I grew up with her telling me, you can do anything you want to do.

You can be anyone you want, and you can be a mom, you can do anything you want to do. You can be anyone you want and you can be a mom,

you can be a professional. And yeah, so that was who my mom was. She was this vibrant New York

City dynamo. And I would say about 10 years ago, we really, actually more, gosh, 12 years ago, we really started

noticing that her memory was slipping in a profound way.

Joanne's mom, Eileen, has Alzheimer's.

And as with most people with the disease,

the path to that diagnosis was not linear.

First, she struggled with memory,

then slightly more complicated cognitive stuff.

When my daughter was five, she's now 15.

So yeah, it's more than 10 years.

We were playing Uno, which is a very basic card game. It's not that hard. My daughter at 5 used to beat us all the time. And my mom, without my stepdad at her side, could not do it.

Joanne's stepdad was protective, and she says, in denial about what was happening.

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