Paul Price shares what he has learned about how to make the most of the time we have left. Then Max talks with Dr. Diane Meier, a geriatrician and founder of Mount Sinai’s Center to Advance Palliative Care, about what she has learned from helping so many people make meaning of the end of their lives, how to have hard end-of-life conversations with people we care about, and why 70 feels exciting and unknown.
Special thanks to Agnes Firth and The Golden Wattle Cafe, “a regular cafe event for people living with dementia, their carers, and others who would like to join us.”
Do you know someone who should be on 70 over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and your “70 over 70 story.” Our only rule: to be on the show, you have to be over 70.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Paul Price: I am Paul Price. I am 73 years old and I'm living in Tasmania, Australia.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Paul: To be with someone who has dementia is initially...is heartbreaking. It almost seems worse than losing a partner to mortality because they're still there, but not there. There's no way to talk it through. It's simply a...one’s gone and the others, you know, the others carrying on.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Paul: So I came to Australia from the UK because I lost my wife and, uh, I hate the English winter and thought, “Well, I've got the I've got the health and the time to travel.”
I came to Tasmania for the first time in the Tasmania summer of 2010, and I am a great theater buff, I enjoy going to concerts. So I called into the local ticket office and, uh, Gillian was one of the staff. So we met by kismet. It was just sort of a yes as sort of a wholeness to it that was there and, uh, we arranged to go out for coffee and then the rest is history as it were.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Paul: We both had an interest in international travel. We had a three to fourth month European tour. We had a week in Vienna, then flew to Barcelona and we then flew to Ireland so it was it when in Ireland, when-when I first became aware that Gillian was having some sort of problem. Just the basic thing of going into a cafe. I would order my coffee, and she started becoming hesitant about ordering her coffee. Perhaps I might have been a little slow there, but I just never even considered the possibility that she was suffering or showing the early signs of dementia.
[MUSIC CONTINUEs]
Paul: Well-well before Gillian began with dementia, we had a really full on lifestyle. We were doing something different every day. But Gillian's life now is totally within the home that she is in. And I visit her six days a week, but I have this dilemma about my relationship with Gillian because the situation with-with visas is constantly changing because of COVID and I may be compelled to go home to England, so it could be our last six months together.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Paul: I can still see her enjoying life when we are together. She still understands me. She still laughs a lot when I go on to one of my little spiels. And I think that probably that memory, if I’m away for six months, that memory of that will have simply disappeared from her life. So I'm hoping that at least I'll be able to spend the time with what we've got left before that happens.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Paul: Now Gillian is unaware of what's happening to her. Makes me feel that I've lost another partner, of course I've lost, it's like a bereavement.
[MUSIC STOPS]
Paul: But I wouldn't have not have the relationship, you know, because you-you come on to the project, you know, I'm not going to be involved with that because it might lead to this. It’s just part of life isn’t it?
[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]
Paul: And you realize you have to get the most out of what you have left.
Max Linsky: That was Paul Price and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I'm Max Linsky.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
Max: So, here’s a thing: we’ve actually hit 70 people over 70 on the show. And while this isn’t our last episode — there’s one coming next week that feels pretty personal— this interview is the last one I’m going to do for a while. And it felt right to end by talking to someone who’s at a kind of beginning.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: My guest this week is Dr. Diane Meier. And I should tell you: Diane isn’t 70, not quite yet anyway — her 70th birthday is in a few months. but she is at the end of one chapter of her life: she just retired as the director of the center to advance palliative care, an organization she founded more than 20 years ago. And she’s still figuring out what she’ll do next.
Diane started her medical career in geriatrics but after residency switched to then little known field of palliative care, which focuses on providing relief from the symptoms and stresses of serious illness, both for patients and their families. At the time, only five percent of hospitals in America had palliative care programs. today, in large part because of the work Diane has done, over 75% of hospitals do. And because of her, an incalculable number of people have had better lives … and better deaths.
I wanted to know what working in palliative care taught her about what all of us really need in the most difficult moments, and how to talk to each other when we’re in them. And i also wanted to know how she’s thinking about this next period of her life, how she plans to make the most of it, after spending so long helping other people answer those questions themselves.
Diane Meier is 69 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Diane, thank you so much for doing this.
Diane: Thanks for inviting me.
Max: You are unique among our guests. Show is called 70, over 70. You're in fact, sixty nine.
Diane: Yeah, but coming up on 70.
Max: How's that feel? You ready for 70?
Diane: Yes, 70. Sounds young to me. I'm a geriatrician. You know, a 70 year old wouldn't get into my practice.
Max: 70's young. I feel like if there is a single motto for this show, that would be it.
Diane: Yeah, yeah.
Max: To start, can you define palliative care?
Diane: What a great question. Thank you for asking.
Max: That's not that great a question.
Diane: It's a great question because you didn't take for granted that everyone knows what it is and understands it, and most people really don't.
Max: Well, where that question is coming from is that, you know, I've read a lot of your work over the last couple of days, and I thought that I understood it before I started doing that. And then over the course of the last couple of days realized that I definitely didn't.
Diane: Right, and you're in very good company. Don't feel badly.
Max: All right. So what's your definition?
Diane: So, palliative care is a new medical and nursing specialty. It's actually only about 10 years old, focused on maximizing quality of life for patients and families who are living with a serious illness and that serious illness could be curable, it could be chronic or it could be progressive. The point is that we owe each other more than just a narrow focus on the disease itself. The whole person experiences that disease. The whole family experiences that disease. And we're ranging from things like pain and shortness of breath and fatigue and difficulty sleeping and loss of appetite all the way to questions of existential purpose and meaning and legacy and rebuilding one's identity when a bolt from the blue like a serious illness happens,
Max: In practice, what is palliative care look like?
Diane: So in practice, it's getting to know the human being with the serious illness and saying to that person, you know, tell me what your experience has been like since you were diagnosed with this illness. What's bothering you the most about it? What are you hoping for? What are you worried about? People are very distraught that when bad things happen to them as if they didn't deserve it. Bad things happen whether you deserve it or not, that's just a fact of the human existence. So there's coming to terms with that for as long as it lasts and then do it again when there's another setback, which is why it is such gratifying and fascinating work
Max: And difficult work.
Diane: People always say, Isn't it depressing? Isn't it hard? And I think we certainly confront joy and love and connection to despair and sadness. But I practiced in an era when there was no palliative care, when what we did was focus on the left atrium of the heart, or the anemia or the kidney problem, or more frequently, all of those things with a different specialist for each and the human who contained all those diseases and organs was completely lost in the process. And I saw a tremendous amount of suffering that wasn't due to anyone's ill intent or desire to cause harm. But it was for lack of seeing the patient as a person. And the field of palliative care grew up in an attempt to rebalance that.
Max: Right, and the scale of that balance when you started was completely lopsided. It's not like it was 60, 40.
Diane: Yeah, 91 - 1.
Max: 99-1. There's a story that I've heard you tell that I wonder if you could share about your first day as an intern, which I feel like informs that scale a bit.
Diane: So I was an intern in Portland, Oregon, back in '78. And on the very first day, which is terrifying because when you're a medical student, you're under supervision every second You have no autonomous responsibility for patients and then overnight you're an M.D., and everything is your responsibility. So every starting out intern is terrified that we're going to hurt somebody. So on my first day, I met my resident, a, a spitball redheaded guy who was I had to run to keep up with him. And we were starting to go down our list of the patients that were on our service when he got paged to the CCU, the coronary care unit and started running. It was a cardiac arrest. So I ran after him, ran up the stairs, got into the room where there was a whole team of fellows and anesthesiologists and nurses conducting CPR on a roughly 89 year old person who had very advanced heart failure. So his heart muscle just wasn't pumping and they were doing chest compressions and you could hear the ribs cracking and they were ventilating him with a balloon on the breathing machine and giving electric shocks to the heart. And someone said, put in a central line. And they looked at me. I'd never put in a central line. I had no idea how to put it in the central line. And I said, I don't know how. And all my worst fears were coming true.
Max: In your first hour of your first morning?
Diane: My first hour of my first morning, I was worthless. And so somebody else stuck this big needle under his clavicle to get a central line in so we could administer drugs more efficiently. And this this went on, and after about 40 minutes, the cardiology fellow did what we call called the code. And he said, Stop, we're going to stop. Everybody took their gloves off in their gowns off and threw everything on the bed and literally walked out of the room and walked out of the CCU. And here was this half naked man with needles and lines and catheters and a tube in his throat just left there. And I didn't know what I was supposed to do. And I felt like, we shouldn't leave him. He had just died. But everyone left, so I left, and as I walked out, I saw an older woman sitting on a chair just inside the door of the unit. And that was his wife. And we just walked by her. No one spoke to her, and that was my introduction to being a doctor. And what was the message? There was no chance that this man with very advanced heart failure was going to come back, but dammit, we were going to try if he has a family that cares about him, that's not our job.
Max: Your job is only what's happening inside that man's body.
Diane: My job is only to prolong life. That is my only job.
Max: And how did that stick with you?
Diane: I think I was traumatized by it, and I have never forgotten, it's just burned into my memory, that experience and. This even deeper way I we had completely failed him and his wife as a human being. And I think it just planted a seed that germinated slowly over the subsequent months and years of training you know, initially I just wanted mastery. I just wanted to learn all these things I was supposed to know how to do. Damn it, I was going to learn it and I was going to be good at it. So I was competitive and I was going to, you know, beat them at their own game. But you can't stop seeing what is happening to the patients. You can't not see the suffering. And so you kind of put it away and repress it while you're going through the training process. And so as a medical resident, you have to decide what you want to specialize in. And I decided to specialize in geriatric medicine at the time when that field was brand new and was not considered respectable. And I vividly remember having people say to me, Why would you specialize in geriatrics? You could be a cardiologist like focusing on the needs of older adults was for idiots, right? And obviously not intellectually compelling or important. So there was a real value judgment.
Max: And is that about the stakes? Or is it about the fact that people could be uncomfortable around old people?
Diane: Well, I think it's the latter. I think aging, aging is failure. Aging is failure.
Max: What does that mean?
Diane: It means that if we were doing our job right, no one would ever have to get old and no one would ever die. You know that that is the implicit and articulated goal.
Max: That's prolong life.
Diane: Well, prolong life, eliminate death. Now, in some cases, pediatric leukemia, various cancers have been converted from death sentences to chronic diseases because of research. This is a good thing.
Max: Yeah.
Diane: But then we also are looking to see what we can do to prolong life in people who are really at the end of their life and where their developmental stage is getting prepared to leave, but were too busy doing more things to them. You know, death is what makes life sweet. The fact that it is finite is a gift in terms of understanding how precious our time on the planet is and how we do have a choice on how we spend that time and what we do with that time and knowing that it's not infinite helps us take a hold of our lives and pay attention.
Max: And why is medicine as it's practiced in this country, seemingly so out of touch with that idea?
Diane: I think we got caught up in particularly in the 20th century, in all of the miracle cures and technologies that the research investment was allowing us. And I think it it's like if with enough research, death itself could be defeated. And it's not questioned as to whether this is really the highest social good. Is it the highest social good that everyone live forever? And, you know, I'm the first to admit that if I was faced with a serious, life threatening illness, I would want to do everything I could to prolong my life because I love my life and I want to be here. I hope that I would have the courage to know when enough is enough. But I've seen many people who, when they were well, definitely had that courage and when they were sick and facing death, it went away.
Max: So even though you've spent all of this time thinking about working with living in that moment for other people, one of the things that's taught you is that you can't really know how you're going to react.
Diane: You can't really know how you're going to react. I will say that it is a very deeply evolutionary fact that we fight death and we want to live. It's biological. And all the intellect in the world probably can't overcome that desire. And a hundred years ago, the, you know, most people died around age 50 of infection. Now, in a blink of an evolutionary eye, most people live into their 70s, 80s or 90s if they get past infancy and childhood.
Max: Right. So if you think about it as the goal is like prolong life at all costs. There's this sort of correlated part of that which is that the hope is to be cured. And one of the ways that I understand palliative care is an attempt to shift that hope away from cure to, I don't know, I guess something else, but, how do you get people to shift what they're hoping for? That seems so hard to me.
Diane: It is very hard and you do have to trust to time and trust to the process and trust to the remarkable resilience of people adjusting to new realities. So the hope for the cure is very persistent and very deep. But when it becomes clear that what we're doing is not curing, we are living with, this serious illness. It is remarkable how people adjust.
Max: What has to change in their minds for them to be able to adjust that way?
Diane: When finitude becomes visible. Things that our younger selves would have said would not have been a life worth living. We change our minds. I had a friend with ALS early on in the disease, we would talk a lot. And he never, never would want a ventilator and never would want a feeding tube. He wanted to, you know, be whole.
Diane: Couple of years later. Oh, absolutely. He agreed to a ventilator and a feeding tube because that additional time with his kids and his very functioning mind became infinitely precious. As a younger person, I would never want to live like that, which is the problem because we cannot know how we're going to feel in the future when we might need a wheelchair or we might need a cane, or we might need dialysis. What seems completely unacceptable to our younger, healthier selves becomes acceptable when the alternative is death.
Max: This might be a stretch, but psychologically, how do you connect that to the way that medicine is practiced in this country, I think for many Americans like health care is experienced as a very transactional practice.
Diane: Absolutely.
Max: And very short term --.
Diane: And fragmented, yeah. I see a connection. I see people willing to traffic with all these specialists in hopes that they will provide something that will give them more time, the right way to do it would be every patient has a primary care clinician who is the quarterback. Who is constantly in dialogue with the patient about what's important to them and what's worth doing and what's not?
Max: Doesn't that seem so far away, like can you see a world in which that's possible?
Diane: We need a revolution. We need the American people, to rise up and say, we're not going to take this anymore, this health care system. It's so it's all profit driven. It's a medical industrial complex, and transactional is the word, you know, patients are means of income and profit.
Max: How did you stick it out in the system that you clearly have so many grievances with? I mean I understand that you've dedicated your professional life to changing or at least rebalancing but there also have to be compromises that you have made along the way.
Diane: Of course, I mean, compromise is adult life, right? So we can say I refuse to engage in this or you get in there and ameliorate what you can and try to make it better, you know, in the United States, palliative care is spread very broadly for the millions of patients that we now are able to help. A lot of people are getting care that is so much better than what they were getting before that. In spite of the health care system, we were able to do something really countercultural by speaking to something that is so obvious and it was so obvious that lots of people gave us money to do it, to spread it. And we created a new specialty, so now doctors coming out of residency are choosing to train in palliative medicine. So I have hope for the future just from seeing these young people that really care about their patients and really want to make things better and are really smart and capable. And they will.
Max: Is that why you retired?
Diane: Yes, actually, it is why I retired, I retired to make room for the next generation. That was explicitly my reasoning because I wasn't having any trouble doing my work.
Max: You seem like you're doing great.
Diane: Yeah, you know, I was I stepped down at the top of my game.
Max: Was that always your plan?
Diane: I had to get myself there at the when I turned, I don't know, 65 or something, I started doing succession planning in a formal way and meeting with people and like, was talking myself into it because I I want the organization that I started to thrive and survive long into the future. And the worst thing you can do is stay too long and sort of concretize things in the, you know, charismatic founder kind of M.O. I just didn't want to make that mistake. And I look at the next generation and it gives me hope because they are going to take over.
[[ MIDROLL]]
Max: Doing this work, what have you learned about? What humans need that you didn't know when you started?
Diane: I'm by nature, kind of a loner, like if I was offered a choice between going to a cocktail party and staying home with a book and a glass of wine, I would stay home with the book and the glass of wine. So I think it wasn't immediately obvious to me how fundamental human connection, human relationships love is to thriving.
Max: How do you square those things that this is like what you dedicated your life to --
Diane: As a professional?
Max: As a professional?
Diane: Yeah.
Max: Do you think the fact that you don't want to go to cocktail parties is about how you're spending your days or how are you?
Diane: It could be. It could be that when I'm spending my days taking care of patients, I'm talking and listening all day long and I don't want to do more. I want to be quiet. I guess I'm shy a little bit and maybe a little awkward, but it really hit me during the pandemic, the exponential increase in suffering that we caused by not letting people visit, that is something they will never get back. And we were wrong.
Max: I haven't heard that at all.
Diane: Yeah, I think it was the wrong choice, I think we should have just masked people up really well. And the price of taking away that human connection is so high, not only for the patient, him or herself, but for their survivors and their family.
Max: Do you have advice for people who are not practicing medicine for how to have the kind of conversations that you have in palliative care, how to talk to people about the end of their lives or the realization that their lives will end. LIke how do you help people have those conversations?
Diane:Well, first of all, you can't make someone have the conversation unless they're ready and they want to. So the first thing I do is ask if it's OK if we talk about what's going on. Most people say yes, but a substantial minority say no, I don't want to talk about it. And if you push one, they've said no, they will never trust you again and never listen to anything you say again. So the person you're talking to has to set the guidelines and the tone, and so the first skill is learning to understand what that person wants to talk about. And asking open ended questions that don't make them feel badly if they don't want to talk about it. So I'll say something like, if it's patients, some of my patients really like to know all the details about what's going on with them medically and others of my patients prefer a more general outline or want me to talk to someone in their family, which kind of person are you? So there's no bias. I'm not saying you're you're lesser if you don't want to talk about it, I'm just saying some people do A and other people do B and I would use something similar if I were talking to a family member. I'd say I went through this with both my parents. You know, hey, do you want to talk about what's been going on? With your health? And my father was someone who definitely wanted to, and my mother was someone who definitely did not. She just took each day as it came.
Max: And did you keep asking your mom versions of that question? Or did you let it go?
Diane: I let it go. I I let her take the lead because it's her life
Max: Is that hard?
Diane: By the time I needed to confront these stages in their lives, I was older and wiser and much more aware of how much I can't control.
Max: How did you get more connected to the idea that you're not in control through this work, like it feels like it's so designed to provide some --
Diane: Illusion of control.
Max: It's a good way to put it.
Diane: Well, I think if if your eyes are open and you're practicing medicine, you learn pretty quickly how little control we have.
Max: I guess you learned in like the first hour of your first day?
Diane: Yeah, exactly. And that in our zeal to have control, we may be throwing out the baby with the bath water, which is what what is important to this person, what is a good life for this person? How can we help this person make the time they have left on the planet, whether it's decades or days be the best it can be?
Max: Are there universal things that for everyone are encompassed in a good life?
Diane: I would say in general that when people are forced to realize finitude, they very commonly think about what's most important. And very commonly, think about their families and the people that they're closest to, the people that they love, people that they have often taken for granted or never told how grateful they are to them, how much they love them. Never asked forgiveness, all those things suddenly become so obviously important. It's like, duh, how did I not realize how important this was? The frame of the serious illness allows much better vision into the things that are important because reality is sitting on our shoulder.
Max: Is there like an example that you're thinking of when you say that, are there things that you hold on to?
Diane: Yeah. So there was one patient I vividly remember that we took care of that palliative care was called in to see after he had been in the hospital for six weeks on a ventilator with an advanced pneumonia that wasn't getting better. But conscious and alert spoke only Spanish had no one visiting him. No next of kin listed in the chart. No phone number and the primary teams, the interns and residents kept trying to understand what was important to him and did he want to stay on this ventilator? And he just refused to engage and decisions that would have allowed for any planning for his future. And about six weeks into it, they threw their hands up in the air and called palliative care because, you know, we're the Hail Mary team, the one nobody can get through to somebody. So. Our social worker had several conversations with him in Spanish. He communicated by pointing to letters on a board because he couldn't speak because he was intubated. He kept saying Mi Hijo. My son, Mi Hijo. And there was no name of a son or phone number anywhere on the chart, and the social worker did an incredible research job, like tracked down his landlady, tracked down all kinds of distant connections and found his son, who was in Arizona. And called him and asked him to come. And the son was estranged from the father because the father had been an abuser. He had beaten up the son, he was an alcoholic, son wanted nothing further to do with him. But when asked to come back because his father was on his deathbed, he did. He came back. And they spent time together at the bedside, and I think the father asked forgiveness. And the son gave forgiveness, and he died the next day.
Max: Wow.
Diane: But he could not die until that was done. And he willed himself to stay there, I don't know. To me, that is unbelievably gratifying work. That story exemplifies what this is really all about, right? It's to, it's to make room for patients to do the things that matter most and to make it possible for them to do those things.
Max: Do you know what those things are for you now?
Diane: What do you mean?
Max: Well, I think I mean, having thought about this work for as long as you have, having witnessed experiences like that for as long as you have. You know, has it fast forwarded things for you?
Diane: I would like to say yes, but. It's hard to keep your focus on the things that really matter in the press of the day. It's hard when your husband comes home from work to say, you know, I need to tell you how much I appreciate you and how lucky I feel to have you as my husband and how much I love you. We don't do that. Enough. And. There's probably no better way to use 30 seconds.
Max: Do you wish you did it more?
Diane: Yeah.
Max: Have you found more space now that you've retired?
Diane: I think I'm struggling to figure out what my highest and best use is at this stage of my life
Max: Because it was so clear to you for so long?
Diane: Yeah. So now I'm almost 70. Oh, I'm healthy, so I probably have another good 10 to 15 years in me. What? What do I want to do? And I don't know, do I want to do water watercolors and gardening?
Max: Doesn't sound like it.
Diane: I don't know. I just don't know. So I'm trying not to jump to any conclusions. I'm trying to be open to the uncertainty and let a direction emerge. As opposed to impose, intellectually imposed one.
Max: How's that going?
Diane: It's hard. It's hard to be in that space of uncertainty, and I like to be certain and I like to have a clear direction and, but the times when I have tolerated its absence have been, in many ways, the most fertile times for me in the times when I changed direction in really generative ways because I allowed myself not to know for a period of time.
Max: That not knowing is that something you can practice?
Diane: Yeah, well, I say this a lot to mentees that not knowing is not a bad thing, it's a generative thing, if you stay open to it starting to work in the field of palliative care was after a 10 year period of not knowing whether it was going to even stay in medicine. And it took me getting back against the wall before the vision for doing something different was something I could act on. And if you look at the literature and surveys and you ask patients, what do you value most in the health care system, it's the relationship with their clinicians, it's that human connection that makes people feel seen.
Max: And do you think that's a key to making the most of the time that you have left? Like, is it essential to that time as well?
Diane: That's a really good question, because one of the things that has been a consequence of COVID has been being alone most of the time. And I think that I've been struggling with that. I thought I was a loner, as I said, and I've been lonely and I'm thinking about what to do about that and how to, how to correct that.
Max: Do you think you'll start going to cocktail parties?
Diane: I don't think that part of me is going to change, but I probably will make more effort to be with people and spend time with people and prioritize it in a way that I didn't used to, and I didn't need to, perhaps. Because I was busy, busy, busy all the time.
Max: I have a feeling that this question is going to drive you crazy, but I’m going to ask you anyway. You have won all these awards. Genius Grant. There have been moments of celebration for this incredible accomplishment and work you have done. But are there ever moments, particularly now that you got a little bit more time when? You know. You're pouring yourself a glass of wine and you're about to open your book and you think, holy shit. I have changed a lot of people's lives. Do you have access to that?
Diane: Yeah, I do, I feel really good about it.
Max: I'm so glad to hear that
Diane: Yeah, I feel really good about it. I can't help but see. How much more there is to do. How broken the system is, how hard on patients and families it is. And I keep thinking about what can I do about that? And if I could see a way to make a contribution there other than money and doing tax banks and phone banks and sending postcards, and I do all that, but it's just it feels too indirect and too small.
Max: Do you think you’re hoping to give yourself space to see what emerges?
Diane: Exactly, I have to find my way.
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel. Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Elliott Adler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like a Dream by Francis and the Lights and the music you’re listening to now is by Arthur Russell, who would have been 70 this year. Original music by Terence Bernardo.
Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman who is 72, and our episode art is by Lynn Staley. She's 74, and she’s also my mom.
Thank you, Paul Price. And thank you, Diane Meier.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.