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 with this vibrant woman. She was a woman of a certain generation

of the 50s, who was someone that wanted to be a lawyer and her father said, no, you

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 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 five 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. Then

three years ago, the wheels came off. My stepfather died very suddenly. And we took her

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