When the Flames Go Up

There’s a whole cohort of full-fledged, 21-year-old adults—including many of our generation’s children—who were born after 9/11. And when you talk to them about that day, they can’t grasp how little we knew as it was happening, because somehow we existed at a time without a constant barrage of news alerts.

Two months after the attacks, then-CNN producer Alex Walker wrote this piece about his experience at Ground Zero, as crews sifted through the still-smoldering remains. His attention to the emotion he saw and felt painted a vivid picture of everyday life for New Yorkers like Magda and Doug, who were expecting their first child and suddenly wondering what kind of life lay ahead.

Alex left CNN for Facebook, so he’s had a front-row seat for the evolution of online journalism and the social media platforms that are eating it alive. After we swap our “where-were-you” stories, we discuss our lives 22 years later, where longform news is headed, and our gratitude that no footage of our college antics exists on YouTube.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our writing and podcasting and lugubrious longings for simpler times.

We also talk about his divorce and remarriage during the pandemic, co-parenting teenagers across two time zones, and how he would make CNN worth watching again. And will consumers of A.I.-generated content eventually be killed off by bad mushrooms?

Other links:

* That lunatic who tried to parachute onto the Statue of Liberty in August 2001.

* Why historians weren’t all that crazy about the Pearl Harbor movie of 2001.

* Watch Come From Away on AppleTV+.

* All about The Social Dilemma.

* Nonstop coverage of Malaysian Flight 370

* Ten hours of Harold chugging mayonnaise and Phil Collins’s drum solo

We were predictably discombobulated to have a Monday Check-In on a day that doesn’t feel like a Monday. Magda genuinely thought today was Sunday Again, which would be a watershed moment toward establishing a four-day work week and pumping the brakes on this country’s untenable workaholism. Labor Day is not for laboring, dammit!

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Please consider a paid subscription to support our work—and our controversial stance against murder.

We should warn you that we begin with more inane weather banter, because frankly we’re still not used to speaking from places far enough apart to have different weather. But we conclude that murder-mystery narratives should have multiple layers, and late-in-life residences should not.

Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our conversation with our first Canadian guest began with a lot of head scratching over American “healthcare.” But Stewart Reynolds — a.k.a. Brittlestar— doesn’t fluster easily, having embraced the “freedom and absolute terror” of supporting his family as an online creative since he began from literally nothing ten years ago.

That’s how he manages to pack his videos, his Substack Brittlestar's Really Great, and his new book, “Welcome to the Stupidpocalypse: Survival Tips for the Dumbageddon” with a reassuring voice of reason in flummoxing times.

“The internet’s favourite dad” has succeeded by committing to his work ethic and messaging with little regard for how it’s received. Try a bunch of things, put them out there as best you can, and if it sucks, try to suck less the next time. In the end, it’s your brand that will survive the platforms that come and go, the vagaries of your audience, and the threat of A.I.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! This post is public, so please share it among the legions of Brittlestar’s fans.

We also talk about his father’s Parkinson’s disease and dementia, working with his adult sons, searching for meaning among 100 billion poodles, and that time Magda was hit on by a ventriloquist’s dummy at the border.

Other links:

* Pre-order his book here until it arrives Sept. 19 (Nov. 25 in the U.K.)

* Catch him on his book tour, moderated by his wife Shannon

* Check out his viral video: Explaining Canada Day to Americans

Welcome to our first Monday Check-In that’s actually a check-in! Magda has made it to Massachusetts after 12 hours with a cat who refused to succumb to gabapentin and peep-whined all along the New York Thruway, where there are fewer functioning toilets than usual.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! Subscribe for free to receive our three posts per week and support our cat pictures.

The chaos our family paddled through over the past week may have been inflicted by Mercury in retrograde, or maybe it’s just garden-variety chaos. Based on a small sample of market research we conducted, the jury is still out.

It’s our last check-in while living in the same state, and our son has marked the occasion by buying a purple truck. Friends have suggested names including Hendrix, Darling Nikki, and Professor Plum, but he’ll need some time behind the wheel before the final decision is made.

Thanks for listening to When the Flames Go Up! This post is public, so please tell the world about our son’s new wheels.

We’re very happy the family is all together before all the big adventures to come during our off week. In the meantime, please enjoy this discussion about Pirates of the Caribbean, Dippin’ Dots, and musicals based on spending July 4th in a dive bar.

“If you’ve seen one person with dementia, you’ve seen one person with dementia.”

Emily Gavin is an occupational therapist who has counseled caregivers of people living with dementia since 2012. There are over 100 different diagnoses of dementia, which affects over 55 million people worldwide, and each case is different—as the 11 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. alone find out every day. So Emily’s primary recommendations for caregivers are to make peace with how little control you have, and to set up a system that affords everyone the most comfort possible.

Cognitive decline is “cognitive development in reverse," and there are no therapies (yet) to restore your loved one’s faculties. There are a ton of great resources, though (see below), and in the end the best thing you can do is make your person feel as content and safe as possible. Which means you can come up with all kinds of “therapeutic fiblets”—Gregory Peck is president! It’s your birthday again!—to make them feel happier in the moment.

Thanks for reading When the Flames Go Up! This post is public, so please feel free to share it with anyone who needs help and can use it.

One of our favorite revelations: Caring for a dementia patient is a lot like improv comedy: always agree, listen intently, stay in the moment—and when you find a stray sock filled with licorice jellybeans, just roll with it.

Resources:

* Find Emily at Philly Care Coaching

* What is a transient ischemic attack (TIA)?

* What is normal pressure hydrocephalus?

* Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD)

* Lewy Body Dementia—the second-most common form

* LBDA.org, ALZ.org, and Stroke.org

* Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)

* Details of the Skills2Care certification

* Laura Gitlin, PhD and Catherine Piersol, PhD

* Rachel Wiley’s Day by Day Dementia Consulting

* Teepa Snow’s Positive Approach to Care

* The Brain with David Eagleman

* The 10 Commandments of Dementia Care

* Follow Emily on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn

These are heady times for the two households, as Magda readies for her big move by attempting to order the drifts of her personal debris, and Doug is effecting his own personal reset by staging a Sympathy Move. So, naturally, we talk about our stuff—how much we’ve amassed, how little we need, and how things go missing, either when they’re lost in transit—or when they are not. (Cue suspenseful music.)

Join us as we discuss when Magda’s schemes and work ethic are sometimes at odds, whether Doug is fated at birth to become a Midwestern Dad, and if we should ask Seinfeld’s creative team for some kind of residual royalty.

Plus: Stay tuned for this podcast’s first-ever use of the P-word!

Pastor Emily Swan comes from Low Church. She doesn’t disrespect the “smells and bells,” but she sees more value in building an accessible, judgment-free community while preaching in jeans and Birkenstocks. She also knows the dangers of imposed uniformity of thought, having been fired from her previous pulpit for being gay.

As the face of Blue Ocean Church, Emily uses her training as a history professor to assess religion through a centuries-long lens, and to establish how religious teachings remain relevant to modern battles for social justice. She also encourages people to think critically and voice their doubts, because a healthy faith is a faith with questions.

We talk about the opportunity for Roller Disco Friday Worship, the overuse of “preachGPT,” and that time she bought an Anglican priest costume for an ordainment ceremony. Because if the average age of church attendees is 60, where are younger people going to go?

Some of the big names Emily dropped:

* Author, professor, and publishing consultant Phyllis Tickle

* Sociologist of religion Philip Jenkins

* Political scientist Robert Putnam

* Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by Kelly Brown Douglas

* And of course, her own book: Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance

Production note: This week’s episode was a bit of an adventure, since we recorded on the fly with unfamiliar equipment in unfamiliar surroundings. If anything’s inaudible, please refer to the transcript below. The best part, though, has to be when her dog barked exactly as we were discussing how religion shouldn’t center around humans.

After we’ve lived in proximity since 1996, Magda is moving 12 hours away at the end of the month. So we’ve decided to set up a weekly check-in for 10-15 (ok, 20) minutes every Monday, just to talk business, compare notes on the boys, and just bounce ideas off each other like we’ve done basically since Clinton was president.

And thanks to modern technology, you have a front-row seat to witness just how discursive these conversations are! This week, for example, we wonder why people fetishize coffee, the toll-free terror of driving on Route 80, the sunk-cost fallacy, the Motley Fool, David Brooks, killing the Twitter brand, Mark Zuckerberg’s pecs, building our cats’ vocabulary, the underserved stories of Sinéad and Pee-wee, and our upcoming interview with Emily Swan, coming out Wednesday.

We leave you with the burning question of the week:

If you’re a certain age and have the motive and opportunity for a life change but aren’t sure where and how to jump, Ann Imig has studied some data-driven techniques for getting unstuck. After careers in theater, writing, and ad sales led her to create Listen To Your Mother, Ann finally realized a long-held desire, marshaled her diverse skill set and MSW degree, and became a career and life coach.

Ann’s main takeaway as the youngest child in a multiple-marriage, “nutso family system” is that she had lots of adults who loved her. This helps explain her affinity for the Positive Intelligence program, which helps people assess their behavioral patterns and determine when it might be useful to try the opposite.

It’s especially helpful for those who over-rely on external validation or hyper achievement for their self worth, pin their hopes on the illusive thought that “I’ll be happy when,” and wonder if they’ll ever feel curious again. As she did.

To improve our lives, we fiftysomethings often need to shift five decades of obsolete instinct and get our brains out of our own way. We talk about how possible that is, along with the influence of Martin Seligman, drawing out celebrations in order to savor them, and life as a JewBu.

Other links:

* Robin Sheerer: No More Blue Mondays

* Uncoupling by Dianne Vaughan and Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix

* John Gottman and a research-based guide to relationships

* Karen Maezon Miller

* The darts scene in Ted Lasso

* The 36 questions that lead to love

* Rhythm and Booms pairs music timed with fireworks

* Follow Ann on Instagram