Hello, everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams.

Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

This is our final episode of 2025, and it has been a, let's use the word, wild year. So we thought it would be nice to hear from you,

our wonderful listeners, all about it. We're going to dig into the mailbag a bit and hear

from some of the guests who helped us make sense of the news this year. Our producer Courtney

Burke Seeker is here to help us out. Hey Courtney. Hey, Kimberly. Should we get into it? Yeah, let's get into it. Before we hear

some of our listeners' thoughts on the year, we heard from a lot of people about last week's series on

the care economy. Several folks shared their experience as a caregiver with us. So let's hear one of

those messages that we got from Sherry in Washington.

So I was a caregiver for my father who had dementia while working full time and raising a family.

And while I was caregiving, I was 100% in sight mode. And then when I lost my dad, the physical

and mental toll that showed up was frankly profound.

And I found myself in a space where there was so much information intended to help you

that it actually turned out to be no information.

And I ended up feeling very alone.

So I found a woman that had had a similar experience,

and we decided to write a book about our journey from the perspective of

people who actually did the work of caregiving. It's called With Love, a practical guide to

caregiving for aging parents to the end of life. Thank you so much to everybody who shared

their caregiving stories with us throughout this series. I've

definitely heard from a lot of folks in my own life as well as online about it. And I hope that

if folks take anything away from that is that you're not alone in the experience. And even if

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