The Daily - Presenting This American Life: “The Daily”

Episode Date: May 22, 2021

When our friends at This American Life made an episode called ... wait for it! ... “The Daily,” we knew we wanted to share it with you. It’s about life’s daily practices, and what you learn from doing a thing every day. Wait for the end. There’s a little surprise. And if you want to hear more episodes of This American Life, you can find the show wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Hey, it's Michael. From time to time in this space, we recommend other podcasts from The Times and our partners. Shows and episodes that we love, and that we think you might as well. Today, I want to tell you about the latest episode of a show that needs no introduction. This American Life.

The episode is called, wait for it, The Daily. Yup, The Daily. But that's not the only reason we're recommending it. It's also because the episode is a smart meditation on the things people do every day, besides listening to The Daily, and what that everydayness means. Take a listen, and be sure to get all the way to the end. There's a little Easter egg there for daily listeners. Thanks, and see you on Monday.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. The people on 118th Street in New York City are doing this thing that almost nobody in New York or around the country is doing. And to figure out why, like what's it about their block, I asked a longtime resident, Yvette Rodriguez, to tell me about the place. And she told me that when she and her mom moved to the block back in 1965, this is the very neatly kept 400 block of East 118th Street, with brick houses and low iron fences where the property line hits the sidewalk. Back when she moved here, the south side of the street was mostly Latino. Her side of the street, the north side, was mostly Italian. And I got in, we got this apartment because I told my

mother, don't say a word, let me talk, because if they would have found out that we were Puerto Rican, they would not have rented to us. So I just kept really quiet. I mean, she kept quiet. So you guys were passing as Italian? Yeah. Yeah. Her mom now owns the building. These days, Yvette says, most of the old Italians are gone, and the block is a mix of Latino, white, and black. There were lots of retirees, people who arrived decades ago, like Yvette.

And younger people are moving in. So we're talking, and I glance at the clock in her apartment and realize the time. Oh, Congress, don't worry, my husband has an alarm. We're just like two minutes before 7 now. No, this is 10 minutes fast, just in case. Oh, it is? Okay. I was worried about the time because I was there to record something

that starts at 7 o'clock. Remember early in the pandemic how people would lean out their windows or go out at 7 p.m. and cheer for the health care workers and other essential workers? Okay, most blocks around New York City, most blocks everywhere, stopped doing that long ago. But for some reason, not this block. They've stayed at it for over 400 days, every day. Yep, we got to get ready, Ira.

Okay. What do we do to get ready? I got to put on my jacket. Okay. Because I stay out there a long time. Soon enough at 7 o'clock, we head outside, where some very prompt neighbors have already gathered with pans and noisemakers they use every night. Whoa!

Woo-hoo! Want to guess at how many people it takes to make this much noise. Okay, get a number in mind. Eight. From windows in the apartment across the street, some kids wave flashlights. Standing just inside her fence is one of the neighbors who comes out to watch this every night. Frances Mastroda, 83 years old. I came on this block in 1959 as a bride. I've been a widow since 1975.

And I have a granddaughter that is the class of 2019 of Harvard and now is in Chicago. After Frances introduced herself to me in such a deeply grandmotherly way, I actually had to ask a bunch of questions so I learned that Frances is Dr. Frances Mastroda, a retired oncology researcher. Happy to tell me about her work. Then as we got better and better,

we began to do HLA, human leukocyte antigens, and then look at the genetic code. I'm an old bird. In fact, this is one of the reasons that this block is still doing the 7 o'clock appreciation of health care workers. A bunch of them on the block worked in health care, including Frances and the neighbor who organized the nightly noise party, Vivian, and Yvette and Yvette's husband.

But there are bigger reasons, I think, that this has continued here every night with all the retirees on the block. Because we are a very special block and we watch out for each other. If they don't see I come out at seven o'clock, they look for me. So is one of the reasons why it's still going on because people are checking on each other? If I don't come out, this lady comes, that lady comes, the people over there come. Someone will knock on your door to see how you are. If I don't come out at 7 o'clock, if I don't stick up my New York Times paper at 6 o'clock,

they look for me. They know I'm alone. Some nights, do you just feel tired and you don't want to come out? I have to. I have to. They will come here. In fact, Yvette and Vivian, who organized all this, do use it to keep an eye out for their neighbors, to make sure they're doing okay. And when things quieted down, Yvette ran through her little mental checklist of neighbors for me.

I saw Mastroda, I saw Severina, Paul came out from next door. That's Sugar. Beverly is here. Arlene is the one that I didn't see. One neighbor who Yvette checks on every night is her next-door neighbor, Josephine, who got COVID and went to the hospital for a while. She's back at home now, but still bedridden, so she doesn't come outside. Josephine waved through the window, so she's not angry at me today. And that's which window was that? This window right here.

It's hard to see. I know because I know what I'm looking for, but I can see her when she waves, you know? She doesn't even raise the drape. No. You're obviously seeing her through the drape. Right. Wow, that's very...

You really have to know the neighborhood for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just starting to get dark. A pretty night. And people hung out on the sidewalk, chatting, in front of Monica Lehman Gonzalez's house. She's a school teacher and the mother of three school kids. I think the beauty of this is that after all the banging is done, that there's conversations where we just linger

and talk and kind of catch up. And I think that's so nice. What will be the sign that the pandemic has gone away enough that you can stop? We have no idea. We really have no idea. I don't want it to end, though. I don't want it to end. Now I'm imagining, like, COVID's going to end and you guys are just going to be coming out after COVID. I think that's a possibility. I think it's a possibility. It's the dailiness of the 7 o'clock get-together.

The fact that it happens every single day. That's what's made it mean so much to all of them. It made this part of the day a little life raft that they gathered on during this terrible, dangerous last year. They made it like a daily prayer. I personally haven't prayed every day since I was a little boy, but somebody who does it as an adult told me that it's the fact that the words and rituals never change day to day that gives comfort. He has days when the prayers mean less to him and days when they mean a lot more.

And feeling that difference from day to day also tells him something. Today, we're devoting our program to other things that we do, whose dailiness is what is important about them and gives them meaning, helps us see things more clearly. From WBZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Taekwon, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? So usually, if we do something every day, like exercise or boss or keep a diary, it's because we decide we're going to do it.

But other times, it's because the world has chosen for us. This first story is a little bit of both of those. Ben Calhoun tells what happened. The way this story started, Lindsay was in the middle of changing her whole life around. She'd been living and working in Ireland, but she decided to take a leap. She was going to start a new chapter, move to the other side of the world. I had actually just accepted a job and I was meant to move to Australia in April. Oh, so you were like getting

ready to leave Dublin. You were like on your way out the door. Totally. I was actually like almost all the way packed, like truly ready to move. And I was dating an Australian guy who had just moved to Australia and I was meant to follow him like a couple of weeks later. And then the pandemic hit. Lindsay couldn't leave, and she had to scramble to find a place to stay. Eventually, she got an apartment on the south side of Dublin. It was actually this great place.

One bedroom in a really pretty row house. Looks like it was pulled out of 101 Dalmatians or something. Place was cozy. Had these pretty bay windows that looked out onto the street and a sunny little breakfast nook in the kitchen. Not that things were going super great for Lindsay otherwise. She and that Australian guy broke up. Her move, her new job, new life, all that got called off

in slow motion. And Lindsay, she was alone in lockdown. She says this was actually one of the more depressing times she remembers. And it was in the middle of all of that that she started to hear music three or four times a day. I would notice when I was like, you know, I'd be doing the dishes or I'd be doing something so mundane and then, you know, it would, it would like happen. Yeah. The music was coming from nearby. It was a saxophone. Somebody practicing.

Pretty clearly a beginner. But the most notable part of it was the song. It was the same one every day. Again and again and again. It was the Pink Panther theme song. What you're hearing is actually the sound of a video montage Lindsay put together. And the funny of this, it was not lost on her. In the video, you notice the range of timestamps.

Morning, afternoon, 10.30 at night. The Pink Panther theme always in the background. You'll hear it as Lindsay eats at her kitchen table or leans against a doorframe in her living room holding back a smile as she lays on a yoga mat or walks through her hall. When he picked up the horn and you first heard the notes come out, you were like, oh, I'm in for how long? I'd say 45 minutes or an hour. 45 minutes to an hour?

Wow. Or maybe, oh God, now I feel like, is that crazy? Maybe 20 to 30 minutes? I mean, maybe it was 20 to 30 minutes. It felt to me like it was never ending. It felt to me by the end that I was just, it was all day, all night. So it like became like a staple of your existence. Yeah. Like, and it was to the point where like, like I was trying to work during the day. I was trying to get things done. And then,

you know, I'd be in a meeting and all my coworkers could hear. Lindsay was now working remotely from this Dublin apartment and all the pink panthering became a running joke for the people that she worked with. It was so audible that Lindsay found herself constantly having to mute during video meetings. Because mics on phones vary so much, like I couldn't totally grasp how loud it was in person. Like how loud was it? Oh, I mean, loud it was in person. Like how loud was it? Oh, I mean, it sounded like it was in my house. So when I posted this on Twitter, people were like, you know, I got all kinds of responses, but people were, you know, wondering if I, you know, if, if I was playing a recording of it in my house, but it was so loud that it will, it did sound like it was coming from inside the house.

And I don't know if he knew how loud it was. Yeah. And I don't think he did. Lindsay says this went on for weeks and weeks, several times every day. Just to point out, most days, this was actually her only real-life human contact, the saxophone coming through the walls.

The video montage that Lindsay made of all this, she eventually tweeted it and it accumulated 5.4 million views. Just for scale, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue has sold 5 million copies. The internet responded, like the internet, some of the 4.7 thousand comments. Interesting how they got further from nailing it the longer they practiced. Your neighbor's horrible playing should be a crime. My condolences. 4.7 thousand comments. Interesting how they got further from nailing it the longer they practiced. Your neighbor's horrible playing should be a crime. My condolences.

You'd think that the performance would at least improve over time. Someone chimes in. Sounds like he's still shite too. The insurance company, Geico, responded. We feel your pain. For a long time, Lindsay didn't know who the Pink Panther was. So when she'd see people in the halls of her building, it was a little like, is that them?

Wait, is that them? Though eventually, her suspicion snagged on this one guy. I would see this guy outside drink. He would always do this thing where he would like walk outside to drink his coffee, kind of like in his pajamas. And I had a feeling it was him, but I wasn't sure. For some reason, I feel like drinking coffee outside in your pajamas is kind of saxophone behavior. Yeah, he had a vibe. It was a saxophone vibe. He had a saxophone vibe for sure. vibe, for sure. So come with me, if you will, to the other side of Lindsay's wall, to the other end of the saxophone rainbow, where there was a young man named Rajat. At the time, he was 23,

like Lindsay, who's living and working in Ireland. As far as Rajat knew, his only audience was inside his apartment, at this window where he would practice. I had a large window, and on the windowsill, I had three plants. A basil plant. I just randomly had a potato that was going off, and I put it into a pot, and it started to grow. So that was my potted potato plant. And there was a coriander plant as well. So I would play to them. Like, you know, that's my potted potato plant. And there was a coriander plant as well.

So I would play to them. Like, you know, that's my audience every day. And I still believe that that potted potato plant grew. It took off. So I think I had something to do with it. No joke. It was like, it was super tall. Rajat told me, for the record, he had no idea people could hear him like this.

He said, some people in the building had remarked on how he was learning the saxophone. But he just figured, this building's old. It's got to have thick walls. Maybe they hear me like faintly off in the distance. Lindsay did eventually come over at some point. She introduced herself and she asked him to stop because she had a migraine. Rajat says Lindsay was super nice.

Lindsay says Rajat was genuinely surprised and very sweet. For my fellow rom-com fans, I will note that they are not engaged. But the point is, Rajat actually had no idea how loud his saxophone playing was for her. Until he saw Lindsay's video later. When I saw the video, I was like, wow, that's really loud in her house. I did not think it was that loud in her house. That was like almost how loud it was for me, like when I was playing. And so when I heard it for the first time from her perspective, I was like, yeah, I would have had a problem as well if I was there.

Rajat felt like, oh, shoot, I did not know I was bothering anyone. He asked Lindsay what would be a good time to play, and he started practicing during his lunch hour. Though an hour was barely enough, he told me. Because what was unfolding on Rajat's side of the building was a love story. A budding romance with the alto saxophone that had started just a few months before this. Turns out, before COVID hit in December, Rajat was visiting India. He's from Bangalore. And he was visiting old friends.

One of these friends lives on a farm. Rajat says this place is just beautiful. So all these friends, they're there and they're hanging out. And one of them picked up a saxophone, right? And it was Alto Sax, who's a nice, cute little guy. And like, we were all just like, we were working and like, he has a little wood shop, then we were working. And from the like background, I hear like someone playing the beginning riff of Ain't No Sunshine. And I look out, and it's my friend. He's wearing slippers, flip-flops and shorts, sweating because the sun's out, even in December in India.

And he's just like, it's kind of like the Pied Piper. It's like a few dogs walking behind him, and he's playing the tune. And I looked at him, and I was like, yo, that's amazing. What? Rajat's friend was like, hey, you should try it. He was like, okay. Almost immediately, he was able to get a sound out of the horn. So his friend taught him the first line from Ain't No Sunshine, and Rajat was off and running.

And I was just off by myself, playing out into the fields. Like, literally, I would say for like a good, like, if not 45, at least 30, you know, 30 minutes or so. I was just constantly drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling. And that was a moment. Like I was getting into a flow. And I think also with the saxophone, because you keep blowing so much. There's some degree of like, and then you like, and then you blow again. So there's a high degree of like, you know, when you like rapid breathe, when you meditate,

there's some degree of like you're getting kind of like whoa what's happening so I was getting into this flow state with that and I was like wow this is so good like getting that sound to come out of the saxophone right away did you feel a little bit like oh oh, like I'm kind of a natural? Like, look. Yeah, yeah. For sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. When he got back to Ireland, he researched carefully, and he bought a saxophone, an alto.

And then he set about learning to play it. He made this little notebook for himself. On the first page, all caps, he wrote, Consistency is key, meaning practice every page, he made a list of songs that he wanted to learn, including, of course, the Pink Panther. Rajat told me this was the song he maybe most identified with the saxophone. And so he found a video tutorial of it online, where a guy walks through the song phrase by phrase. And so I would have drilled that video

like 80 plus times, like just like, like, you know, just again and again and again and again, and just keep going, keep going, keep going. You're like, I'm going to get this into my muscle memory. Like, yeah, exactly. And because it was something I really wanted to get good because it sounded so cool like the final product at the end of that video that I was like I need to get this um and I was not going to move on to anything else till I got this done so at one point in time it was not in heavy rotation it was the rotation you know later yeah but i was not getting tired of it like it was it was entertaining and it was so nice to see because like at the end of it as well there's this beautiful riff that oh that's so cool like it's so funky when you get it right so So like it would give me glimpses. Like I do the first three phrases horribly,

but I'd like, I'd say, okay, play to the end. And just the one time, one time, if I get the nice little riff properly, I'd get like, oh, this is going so well. The thing I love about this situation is just how different the same song, played day in and day out for months, could feel in these two neighboring apartments

by two people in their own little bubbles, like some kind of musical Rorschach test. Like, for Lindsay, whether it was irritating or funny, it was an artifact of her confinement. But for Rajat, it was the exact opposite. It was an artifact of her confinement. But for Rajat, it was the exact opposite. It was an escape. Yeah, because there's only so much Netflix you can do until you start feeling sick of doing that, you know?

And yeah, so this was genuinely, like I got up. I was like, oh, I'm going to get to practice saxophone today. Like that got me through, you know? Looking back on this little chapter, for Lindsay's part, she told me, the main consequence of all this has been that months after leaving that apartment, moving back to the United States, she's still hearing the Pink Panther theme all the time. It's just coming through the walls of her memory now, like a phantom limb, a pink phantom limb. All of this has also stuck with Rajat. So believe it or not, but this 5 million view thing has scarred me to a certain

extent. Because honestly, because I've now moved to Italy, right i'm staying here and i i live in like these apartments where you share a courtyard so i have a balcony right here and it opens out in this beautiful courtyard you can see the sky birds on top lovely but there is everybody around here and it echoes so i cannot play the saxophone here because at least in Dublin, if someone had an issue, I could speak to them and try to diffuse the situation. I cannot do that in Italian. So I can't.

So I actually found a spot in, you know, the storage rooms are super like dank, like in the cellar, everything is musty where they keep the suitcases. I managed to go there once and cleared out some space. I was like, this will be my saxophone room. Rajat says, though, it's just so out of the way. He hasn't done it.

For Rajat, lockdown in Dublin, he'd really been in this bubble where, true or not, he was so convinced no one could hear him. It was like he got to spend swaths of his day singing in the shower, dancing like no one was watching, loving the Pink Panther theme like he'd never been hurt, if you know what I mean. That became his every day. And since then, well, he's been a little unsure how to get back to that spot where he can play and feel quite so free. He's been chasing that feeling.

Aren't we all? Ben Calhoun is one of the producers of our show. Act Two. So nice to hear your voice. We now turn to somebody who had one daily routine that changed to a different daily routine. And I don't want to get ahead of the story too much, but just to say what a vast effect it had on her and how quickly those effects kicked in.

The person with the daily routine in the story is Dee Brown. She moved into long-term care five years ago. And for four years, somebody would visit her every day. Family or her best friend would come nearly every day. They'd go out to eat, go on long drives into the mountains. Then COVID hit. And the facility she was in, following national guidelines, didn't allow anybody to have any visitors.

Communal dining and group activities were also canceled. So Dee's family invented a new routine, daily phone calls. Basically, they made a schedule for everybody in the family to phone, and that way Dee would get calls every single day. They would chat. they would socialize, they'd try to keep her spirits up, try to keep her from getting bored. Dee's granddaughter, Celia Brown, was one of the callers,

phoning once a week or so. And she put together this story. When my family started this, we figured, naively, we'd do this for a few weeks, maybe a month, until things got back to normal. And the calls were fun. Hello? Dee? Can you hear me? for a few weeks, maybe a month, until things got back to normal. And the calls were fun. Hello? Dee?

Can you hear me? My first call, March 27th. We were still getting used to the phone. Dee, I think you put me on hold. But Dee was pretty happy. She'd start most calls by telling me about how nice her apartment was. She took her calls from her favorite lounge chair. Hello? Oh, that was weird. Cecilia, yeah. Oh, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. What's up? Dee loved to say the unexpected thing. Make fun of herself if it meant making other people

laugh. Oh, I have a real problem right now. I got some like underwear, the kind that stretches only. It's too tight. And I sit down and they go, oh, my stomach. Those are big problems, right? Yeah, I have that, too. Yeah, well, you just think of me as you're trying to pull your underwear down, so it's a little more... It makes you feel very graceful. Growing up, Dee wasn't what I thought of as a typical grandma. For one thing, we called her Dee, not Grandma. She also dressed like an old Colorado hippie.

Tons of turquoise jewelry and tie-dye. She always smelled like coffee, which she drank all day, even at midnight. She never did the normal grandma stuff with my sister and me, like take us out for ice cream or whatever. Dee was a talker, so that's what we'd do. Sit in the backyard and talk for hours. Didn't matter how old you were. And she was funny, though my dad said she sometimes disguised something as a joke, just to get what she wanted. In her 40s, after raising three kids and getting a divorce, she ended up in AA. It became a huge part of her life. So much so, she ended up sponsoring

over 100 people. She'd still go to meetings a few times a week. Now, of course, all that was gone. Yeah, there's been kind of a boring day because I haven't been able to go to the store and call my Now, of course, all that was gone. I taped these calls with her permission. Dee was going on 88. I'd done the same thing with my other grandmother when she hit her late 80s. It was just something to capture a little bit of their lives on tape while I still had them. Dee had dementia, but it was pretty mild. She'd forget small things like where I lived, tell me stories she'd told me before, but she was still pretty with it. This was another reason for the frequent calls. Isolation is really bad for anyone with dementia.

You've probably heard people say the brain is like a muscle. You need to use it to maintain it. With dementia, this is especially true. The more you use your mind, use words, the more those things stick with you. But when you're isolated, you stop practicing. Your mind starts to slip away. And once it goes, it usually doesn't come back.

In those first calls, I didn't worry too much about that with Dee. She had worked as a therapist for decades and would still kind of do informal therapy on everyone, including me. Without my asking, she'd just start working out my options with me on the phone. Okay, what you do is you get a big piece of paper and you write down every one of them that you like to do. What do I want? What do I not want? I just finished grad school and wasn't really sure what to do with my life. See if you can find where you want to be and what you want to do when you grow up. I hate that one. It's fun. Yeah. That makes fun. Just like that. Yeah. Yeah.

I just have to figure out what I want. Yeah, what do you want? You know, you find out what you want to, and then you keep in touch. Because I love talking to you. I love talking to you, too. When I called her the next week, April 5th, she was still joking about things. But 11 days after that, my third call with her, she seemed much worse. She'd always liked her apartment before, but now I got the feeling it was starting to feel oppressive. I mean, we've got some sunshine today.

I guess we didn got some sunshine today. to pay attention to. And my mouth is so dry, and the air is so dry, and my whole body is going, I'm just antsy, awful. I'm really just stuck here, it seems like. seems like. Two weeks after that call, Dee started needing round-the-clock care. And by May, it was clear to me parts of Dee were drifting away. Things she'd explained to me weeks ago no longer made any sense to her.

Like they were swirling together in her head, and I had to explain them back to her. I'm trying to find out where my mind went sideways or something, you know. I know where I am. It's just nothing anybody's saying is making any sense. And I can see some people walking along, and they're going up and down and I don't know who's what or why or yeah yeah I mean I think I think one of the things that is happening is that because people are everyone's stuck in their apartments they're walking up and down the hallway so it's the only place they can go to get exercise. Yeah. I think that's probably what's happening.

That's why it seems so weird. It does. Everything seems weird. And I don't know. I'm just going to try and get some orientation or something. Hmm. And I have a television thing up in front of me, but it doesn't make any sense.

What do you mean? Like the things that people are saying doesn't make sense? Yeah, yeah, and the people in there. And I don't know. It just seems like I'm in a strange world, but I will work on it. That's so Dee. Always sure there's a way to fix things if you just organize your thoughts correctly. Even if the thing she's trying to organize is her own dementia.

I hated that she had to work this out alone. So I tried to work on it too. But I was kind of grasping at how to help. Okay, well, why don't we just talk about, let's talk about something that might feel grounding. Like, why don't we talk about when you were living in Kansas City? Oh, boy, that goes way back. Yeah. Will you tell me about your house in Kansas City. Oh, boy, that goes way back. Yeah. Will you tell me about your house in Kansas City?

Oh, I don't know if I can remember much about it. It's just like, oh, God, I just really feel like I don't know what they're expecting of me here. I don't know. I'm just off center. That's all there is to it. It was so hard to comfort her. And it wasn't just her confusion.

It was also that the worse she got, the more physically uncomfortable she got, too. There were basic things she needed that would have been so easy to do in person, but not over the phone. My mouth is so dry that if I try and move my lips, it's just hurtful. It hurts? Yeah.

Yeah. Have you drank, what about water? Do you have some water you could have a sip of? I have some water right here. a sip of? I have some water right here. I've gotten a sip of water, but Oh. Now I can't get any water

through the straws. I can't get any water to come through the straw. Oh, boy. Are you sucking? Yeah. Trying to. Mmm. Mmm.

Finally got a little water. Around this time, my family started talking about Dee's progression. Even though it should have been obvious to me what was happening, I didn't want to believe it. When I talked to my sister, we'd make excuses for Dee, say she was just having a bad day, or that it was her medication, which was always changing. We wanted to believe the old Dee would come back. My dad didn't think she would. didn't think she would. By a few months into the pandemic, the toll of isolation on people with dementia was clear. Medical examiners started listing social isolation related to

COVID-19 restrictions as a cause of death for people in long-term care centers. Someone from the Alzheimer's Association told me people with dementia have been wandering more, that maybe they're looking for the people who no longer visit. Dee started doing this too, opening people's doors in the middle of the night. Hello? Hello? June 2020, just three months into lockdown. Hello? Can you hear me? And who am I talking to? June 2020, just three months into lockdown. Yeah, your granddaughter. Uh-huh. Oh, and she's off somewhere, right?

I've thought a lot about whether it's okay to play these recordings on the radio. Talked about it with my family. Back when she was with it, Dee knew I might make a story out of these calls and knew she had dementia and was game to record. And I'm sure she'd want me to tell the true version of her story. That's Dee. By June, COVID death rates were starting to dip and people were starting to meet up outside, emerge in small ways. Dee, though, felt almost completely out of reach.

What would you like to know that I might know? Oh, nothing. I just wanted to talk to you. I don't have any idea what's going on. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh. What happened? Oh. Oh. Ugh. What happened?

What? What happened? Oh, I'm trying to swallow things and look at things, and I don't know what I'm doing. Because everything's in the dark. Oh. It's all kind of pitch dark. Are you having trouble seeing? I'm sorry, I'm having awful hard trouble talking.

It's okay. Why don't I call back later, okay? Well, I'm trying. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing here. I absolutely don't know what I'm doing. Okay. So, is that sounding silly? No, you don't sound silly. You don't sound silly. It sounds like you're having a tough day. So you can just put the phone down and then it'll be over and I'll say goodbye, okay?

Okay. Okay, I love you, Dee. I mean, it tastes okay. Okay, I'll put it down. Okay, I love you. Oh, it's hot. Sitting on the table. you. Oh, it's hot. Sitting on the table. Ow.

Ow. Ow. I hung up. I was standing alone on the street and cried. I decided to stop recording all my calls with Dee after this. She was changing so quickly. I just wasn't sure it felt right anymore. And I also, around this time, began to wonder if my calls were doing her any good at all, or if I was just calling to try to convince myself I was helping. I could tell from talking to her that my calls were making her more disoriented, more agitated. Everyone in my family felt that. To be honest, the calls were also pretty painful.

So I started calling less and then stopped altogether. The Alzheimer's Association found that 46,000 more people died from dementia this past year than on average in each of the last five years. They call these excess deaths, people who might not have died if it had been a normal year. We could have predicted this. We've known for years that isolation can lead people living with dementia to rapid deterioration and death. And we isolated them anyway. Another term that's been used is collateral deaths. People who didn't die directly from COVID but as a byproduct of it.

I hate those terms. Excess death. Collateral death. Like these deaths somehow fall outside the bounds of the deaths we care about. Like these deaths somehow fall outside the bounds of the deaths we care about. Eventually, in September, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reversed their guidelines to allow in visitors in cases where people really needed them. For people who were having trouble eating or drinking, and people in emotional distress. People like Dee. I think it would have helped her.

I think her dementia wouldn't have progressed so fast that she wouldn't have gone from where she was in the spring to where she got to by summer in just three months if she weren't so isolated. My whole family thinks so. Dee's nurses think so too. But that change in guidelines came too late for her. Dee died just a few weeks before it, on August 18th.

She died alone. I ended up deciding to record one last call with Dee, in late July, a couple weeks before she died. It was the last time we ever spoke. Yeah, so what is it that you're trying to do? Oh, I'm just, it's Cecilia, your granddaughter. I'm calling to say hi. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay, though. It's good to hear you. Oh, it's good to be here, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have to walk outside here and see what the temperature is. Okay, so you have to hang up the phone? Yeah. Okay. All right, well, I love you, Dee. Okay.

Love you. Love you. Bye. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. Cecilia Brown. She's a documentary filmmaker in Portland, Oregon. Coming up, a vast theater with a daily show, but there's a catch.

That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's American Life from Ira Glass. Today on our show, The Daily. Stories about the things that we do every single day and how their everydayness is what's important about them and can reveal things that we might not notice otherwise. We have arrived at Act 3 of our program. Act 3. It had to be YouTube.

So Johnny Dark is somebody with a very specific, very unusual, labor-intensive practice that he does every day, more or less. Each day he shoots and posts a video on YouTube. Calafasene writes a lot about music and about other things for The New Yorker and watched a bunch of them. The first thing I noticed about Johnny Dark's YouTube page is that it goes on forever. An endless scrolling grid of thumbnail images, the same face, row after row. An older guy with an unnaturally brown pompadour.

There are hundreds and hundreds of videos, going back more than five years. Each one is Johnny Dark singing a song. And for all that work, all that music, there's no one watching. You can see it in the view counts. 10 views, 23 views, 7 views. I almost felt guilty clicking on them. Like, by increasing the numbers, I was spoiling this pristine place, leaving footprints in practically unfootprinted terrain. I only ended up there because an old friend of Johnny's told me about it. He knew I had a taste for stubborn visionaries,

for bodies of work that defy easy explanation. There's a simple formula to each video. Johnny Dark is all by himself, no instruments, nothing to sing along with, looking into the camera, dressed in a tuxedo, smiling, as if he were working a casino or a cruise ship. Except he's standing in what might be a living room, though it might also be an antique shop. It's full of framed pictures and little statues.

Often he's singing a classic, maybe a Sinatra song. I've got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow. I've got the string around my finger. What a world, what a life, I'm in love. Sometimes he'll do something that swings, like Mack the Knife. But it's a lot of ballads. Hank Williams. Did you hear that lonesome whip of will? He went through a carpenter's phase.

Why do birds suddenly appear? In the most recent videos, he's not wearing a tuxedo anymore. It's even more surreal. Now he's tightly framed in a shadowy room, a floating head singing into a mirror. Still smiling, but now his smile seems kind of intense. And he's dressed in dark colors, often black. You can see his hands in black gloves holding the iPhone that's recording the video.

The scene looks less like a cruise ship and more like a seance, which makes the song sound that much spookier, especially the sad ones. If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you? The whole project seemed obsessive and haunted, as if some club had shut down in the 1970s, but the performance had kept going. Who was this for? Why do this? Why wake up every morning, get dressed, do your hair, and send another video out into the world? Out into the void.

So I called him up, and I was nervous, to be honest. The video seemed so compulsive, they made me wonder about his state of mind. But he was friendly, happy to explain. What is that room that you're in in those videos? That's actually my living room. Okay. And there's all these statues and things? Yeah, statues and stuff.

That's sort of what I like. Nothing's real expensive. It looks expensive. Yeah, it does. It does. I always modeled my place after Buckingham Palace. You were dressed, what, in a tuxedo? The tuxedo was just a way of giving respect to what I thought the older folks would like to see. It's like wearing a tuxedo working in Las Vegas when you're opening for Tom Jones.

It was just a way of giving respect. Johnny Dark has never actually opened for Tom Jones, the hit-making hunk who sang It's Not Unusual. But he has worked with lots of other legendary acts. Long before he was singing on YouTube, Johnny Dark was performing for real audiences, on stage and on TV, a busy actor and comedian. And so watching those videos,

it's kind of like being visited by the ghost of show business past, specifically Johnny's show business past. He kept dropping all these names, household names, many of which weren't quite as household as they used to be. In the course of a two-hour conversation, he told me about shining Tony Bennett's shoes in Wildwood, New Jersey,

being best friends with Fabian, the 50s heartthrob. He toured with Ginger Rogers and also with the Righteous Brothers. At one point, he found himself up against Michael Keaton. They were both competing for a spot on Donny and Marie Osmond's variety show. And I got to Donny and Marie's show, and I don't know whatever happened to Michael Keaton. A spot on a variety show. That was kind of the perfect gig for a guy like Johnny Dark.

He's an entertainer, which is a job that maybe doesn't even exist anymore. It means you get up in front of an audience and do whatever it takes to keep them happy. Songs, jokes, skits, dancing, impressions. Here he is on TV in the 1970s. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to give you my impression of a rodeo auctioneer. Imagine this guy coming home to his wife at night. Hi, honey, how about a kiss? Son of a kiss. Make that three kisses on a right cheek

by the little lady with the checkered apron. What's for dinner? I said, what's for dinner? I hear hot dogs. I hear hot dogs and beans. Do I hear baked beans or lima beans? I hear baked beans. Make that baked beans some butter.

Make that Boston baked beans some butter. Do I hear bread? I hear brown bread. But by this point in the 1970s, entertainers in tuxedos were going extinct. And Johnny Dark had that old-school style, even though his career really began in a club where a new sensibility was emerging, the Comedy Store in L.A.

The regulars there were not all-purpose old-school entertainers. They were performers with a point of view, unpredictable stand-up comics like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, but also a young David Letterman and Jay Leno. Johnny Dark got a job there as an emcee, introducing the comics. He'd open with a song, and eventually he started telling jokes, too. We were all part of one peer group, but we weren't all geniuses, you know? Robin Williams, people of that genre.

I mean, how could I compete with those guys? They were geniuses. I mean, Robin Williams, I used to pick him up in front of chases to drive him out to the Newport Laugh Stop, Newport Beach Laugh Stop. And I was the closing act. Well, he would get up and in the middle do 30, 40 minutes. It was killer stuff. I couldn't compete with that. It's true. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Robin Williams and you've probably never heard of Johnny Dark. But he built a successful career, had small roles on a bunch of popular sitcoms, made good money on the road,

supported a family. His most memorable role might be this one. Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to Johnny, the world's oldest page, I think. In the 2000s, David Letterman pulled his old friend Johnny Dark into the spotlight for a series of guest appearances on The Late Show, giving Johnny a little bit of the fame and recognition he had always wanted. The bit was that he was the world's oldest CBS page, an intern basically, who'd been killing time in the bowels of the Ed Sullivan Theater for 38 years. The character was crappy and defiant.

He had no interest in the show and mainly wanted Letterman, the big shot host, to leave him alone. Oh, I'm sorry, Johnny, you can't, you're not allowed to smoke in the theater. I'm sorry. Well, remind me to bring that up next time you blow smoke up a celebrity's ass. Before I talked to him, I sort of assumed that Johnny Dark was going to be a lot like that character, that he'd be a lot like that character. That he'd be bitter about his long and miscellaneous career. About never achieving real stardom. Like maybe it had driven him crazy, and now he was sitting at home,

compulsively making these videos every day, creating his own lonely private Hollywood. But he said it's not like that. He told me over and over again, in different ways, that he wasn't bitter. No, no, I was grateful. I was thrilled to be with David. He told me he was glad to have had the chance to entertain so many people. He said he was happy. He's 80 years old, living in L.A. in a house full of little statues,

spending time with his grandchildren every day, wandering around the park, cooking them dinner. There was one moment, though, when he finally admitted that it has been frustrating sometimes. I feel sort of a love-hate relationship with children and the fact that I've been close to so many big things, but at the same time, you know, that didn't come true, didn't come through. It's really tough. Shogunates are tough, but it's fun initially, and then it gets tough, and it gets tougher.

I wouldn't want my grandkids in Shogunates. I really wouldn't. I mean, I was born to it, but if you're not, if you can do anything else in the world, do that. Don't get in showboats. So you're saying you didn't have a choice but to do this. Why? Just because you loved it too much? It was in my heart, just like my wife. When I met my wife, I had no choice. I didn't want to get married, but that's what love is. Love doesn't give you a choice, I don't think. And neither does showboating. Love doesn't give you a choice, I don't think. And neither does show business.

I was always fascinated by guys that were so smart, like Jerry Seinfeld and people like that, that could put the show and the business together. I always had trouble with the business. You know, even now, everything that I do, over like a thousand songs I've sang on YouTube. Will I be paid for that work? Will I be paid for that effort?

No. Why do I do it? Because I have no choice. The word entertainer sounds maybe kind of casual. You do a little of this, a little of that, do it well enough, everyone's happy. But Johnny Dark is not a casual guy, and he's definitely not a casual singer. Thanks to these videos, his life is nonstop rehearsals, nonstop singing. I made it sort of a discipline thing for me. I have to know exactly every line

every single day. So every morning I get up, and it's just like I'm taking a gig, you know. I get in the shower, I go over the song, I listen to the it's just like I'm taking a gig. You know, I get in the shower. I go over the song. I listen to the song on tape while I'm shaving. Then I get. But don't forget, I've listened to that song for 24 hours, you know, off and on with the kids. When I'm with the kids at the park, I sing the song aloud in a certain area where I don't bother anybody. But, no, I rehearse all the time. I've got it down.

So yesterday, me singing lollipops and roses didn't exist. Today it does exist. Bring her nice things, sugar and spice things, roses and lollipops and lollipops, and lollipops, and roses. Basically, I'm thinking about the song. I'm thinking about doing it right. I'm thinking about how I was terrible. I'm thinking about how that was good.

I'm just thinking about the art. And sometimes I'll do a song four or five times. I'll even post it on YouTube. And then I'll listen to it, and'll go, I don't hear it. I don't hear the music. And I'll delete it. And then I'll do it again. And if I don't hear it, I'll delete that.

And then I do it again. If I hear it, then I'll post it. I mean, is there a sense in which these songs are more for you than for anyone else? There is much for me as for anyone else. There is much for me because I want to keep this working as good as it could possibly work. I made my brain by that. I was pointing to my brain. He also posts the videos on Facebook, and he gets more engagement there. Not a massive amount, but 30 or 40 likes per video.

And people show up in the comments section, reminiscing about the old songs they loved growing up. But Johnny still directs people to his YouTube page. He says that's his personal archive, the thing he's building. He wants to leave it behind for his grandchildren. I like to picture them, decades from now, sitting around a laptop, listening to Grandpa singing Me and My Shadow, or The Very Thought of You. But there's one last reason Johnny makes videos every day. He still has showbiz ambitions. He's currently pitching a sitcom,

in fact, with a friend of his. But on YouTube, he doesn't have to pitch. And I think that might be the main reason he's been doing it for so long. Like, maybe there aren't many people there watching. But at the same time, there's no one there to stop him. I think the fact that I could sing and not have an audience and not depend upon anybody, I don't have to rehearse with anybody. I don't have to rehearse with anybody. I don't have to ask anybody's permission. I can green light myself every day. You know how hard that is to do after waiting for somebody to say, okay, we'll green light you.

Let's go with Johnny Dark. Okay, let's go with Johnny. Of all the things that I've done, and there are tons of things, there are tons of other things I haven't done. You know, we go, oh, I wish I had that part. I came close to it. And that's what singing is. So I keep my self-esteem. I don't have to say, well, you walked away from it, man. You walked away from it. Well, I didn't walk away from it. I may not be getting big bucks for it, but I didn't walk away from it, man. I'm entertaining every day. I didn't walk

away from it. I'm in the business. My toes are in the water. You see Johnny smiling in the videos, eager to please. But underneath it, this whole project is kind of aggro, defiant. He's going to decide when it's over, and it's not over yet. Like, I don't need any of you. Sure, I want an audience, but I don't need one. I'm here to entertain, and I'm going to be here, whether you're entertained or not. What a world Man, this is the lie.

Hey now, I'm in love. Kala Fasene, he's a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Act four. So the title of today's episode, The Daily, is also the title of a podcast that, if you're hearing us, you've probably heard them too. And so with them in mind, we end today's show with this. Here's what else you need to know today.

The atoms in your body replace themselves. So you are not the same person you were a year ago. Or anyway, around 98% of you is not the same person. The only atoms in our bodies that seem to stay with us our whole lives are buried in the DNA of some of the cells in our brain and our heart and also in our bones and teeth. Here's what else you need to know today. Fruit loops.

They're all the same flavor. The yellow ones, green ones, red ones, all the same. Here's what else you need to know today. We spend 10 minutes a day looking for stuff we've lost. That's, you know, the average person on the average day, of course. The number comes from a survey of 3,000 adults. 14 people in the survey said the amount of time for them searching for lost items was over an hour a day.

Here's what else you need to know today. One million species are on the verge of extinction. It's a fourth of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, a sixth of all birds. So, as we fix our hair and scroll through Twitter and try to figure out what movie we're going to watch next, that's still happening.

Here's what else you need to know today. And by you, this time I mean you. You need to know that last night, when you put that plate of food in front of me, it was hard not to stare at it like a character bonked on the head in a cartoon. An average Thursday, you take cabbage, onions, carrots, coconut milk, I don't know what else, the most ordinary stuff in the world, and somehow give me something that is better than anything I could have imagined. Like you always do with everything you do. Our life is so different from anything I thought would ever happen to me. Here's what else you need to know today.

When I was a kid, at night, sometimes after dinner, my mom and I would sit in the kitchen and talk, and I don't remember about what, but I remember the feeling of it was just, you know, we were really listening to each other and hearing each other in that way that doesn't always happen. It felt close. In my memory, the room is dimly lit. Sometimes my dad would come to the door of the kitchen,

lit from the hall light behind him, and see us there talking quietly and not join in, but just stand there apart from us. And I remember a little panic, like, oh, I hope he doesn't feel left out. I hope he doesn't feel jealous. I hope he won't get mad. I was, I don't know, seven or eight,

feeling this mix of protectiveness towards him and fear, which, I don't know, it's funny to think about today. My mom, long dead. My dad, getting up there, needing help with stuff that he never needed help with before.

All that's left of that feeling is the protectiveness part. The atoms of our bodies have replaced themselves so many times over that things between us have become very simple. Which, I suppose, is the best case for what can happen between parents and kids. But it doesn't always feel that way. Thank you. I got the grief that's given. It's the same every day. Face in the mirror just keeps on staring. It's the same every day.

I said, hey man, what's that silly suit you're wearing? It's the same every day. Same, same, same. Well, today's show was produced by Diane Wu and Tobin Lowe. The people who put together today's show include Bim Adelouni, Elna Baker, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivas, Sean Cole, Aviva de Kornfeld, Damian Grave, Andrea Lopez-Crusado, Mickey Meeks, Doan Nelson, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia Raymond,

Ari Saperstein, Alyssa Shipp, Laura Storcheski, Lily Sullivan, Krista Rosatala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editors, Sara Abdurahman. Our senior editors, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Noreen Rizvi, Farah Abbas, Xiang-Chiem Wu, Emmett Newlin, Sam Donick, Chris Wood, Stuart Pym, Logan McCarty, Janelle Haymaker, Eric, Tony, Laura,

and the rest of the Brown family, Bruce Shapiro, Michael Lynch and the Alzheimer's Association, Don and Kerry Cole from the Gottman Institute, and thanks to Matt McGinley for covering the Pink Panther theme for us. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 700 episodes for absolutely free. Also, there's videos,

there's lists of favorite shows that we recommend. There's tons of other stuff. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tony Malatia. You know, he and I were out at dinner, and I got up to go to the restroom.

When I came back, he was eating my burger. I was like, Torrey, what the hell? He said it was my fault. You walked away from it, man. You walked away from it. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.