Listen to Episodes

We’re closing out Mental Health Awareness Month with Dana, an introverted oncology nurse & parent - all this to say, she’s got many reasons to be fatigued. In a time where we’re more isolated than ever, Dana has experienced the opposite: she goes to work and is surrounded by people, she comes home and she’s surrounded by people (her husband and three adorable children we might add). With all of these humans around, there’s no opportunity for her to recharge her batteries. However exhausted she m...

This week we talked to Dr. Sadie Whittaker, the Chief Scientific Officer of Solve ME/CFS Initiative- a nonprofit whose mission is to find a cure for & end Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. The developments with ME/CFS are paving the way to understanding Long Covid. She is also the Chief Scientific Officer of You + Me: a registry and biobank that collects patient-recorded data & biological samples that are passed on to researchers to drive discovery & cure! Sweet! “I’m a big bel...

Continuing with the theme of Mental Health Awareness Month, this week we spoke to Chelsea, the Volunteer Resource Connector for L.A.Work’s TeleSocial Program — a program that our very own host Raymond started! What is TeleSocial, you ask? The L.A.Works TeleSocial Program is a great way to connect isolated & lonely seniors to buddies who will call and check in on them once a week. “During this time of self-quarantine, it is very easy for social distancing to become social isolation…especially for...

TW: death & grief This week we connected with Victoria Noe, an award-winning author, speaker and activist. She is the perfect candidate for Mental Health Awareness month because of her contributions to the AIDS community & her writing about grief, particularly her Friend Grief series which recognizes the importance of friendships in shaping our lives. A little background about Viki: her HIV/AIDS activism led her to write Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Communi...

Surprise: we’re our own guests this week! Both of us share our vaccine stories and experiences. At this point Raymond has received both doses and Caroline has gotten her first. (Hashtag Team Pfizer.) Unrelated but after staying home for a year with unlimited access to your toilet, has anyone else noticed their bladder’s capacity significantly decrease? We discuss that at length lol. We also talk about why we like our podcast and what we’ve learned from it, and we want to hear from you! What do y...

We've found a common theme among our April episodes: pivoting in the pandemic. This is exactly what our friend Jason has done (and quite well, we might add!). He owns The Long Room, a friendly neighborhood tavern in the Ravenswood Community of Chicago. Inspiration struck when all the bars & restaurants needed to close down, and he began selling bottled-up cocktails to go, which is not only cool but has kept his business thriving! It's also a great way to keep his staff safe which is a top priori...

Our guest this week is Jill, a compassionate & determined woman with a big heart and too many emotions for one person to contain. Her big heart led her to a position as an early childhood special education teacher in St. Louis, which has taught her a lot about herself: particularly that she's capable of pivoting on a dime to provide the education her students' need and protecting herself and other teachers in the process. She says, "It goes without saying that all of the success with virtual and...

Are you having difficulty locating a vaccine appointment? Do you wish there was a website that contained information for ALL your local pharmacies instead of having 20+ individual tabs open for each one? Well look no further! www.vaccinespotter.org is the one-stop shop for all your vaccine appointment needs! "A tool to help you track down COVID-19 vaccine appointment openings at your state's pharmacies. Updated every minute. Rather than searching around on each pharmacy's website, we'll automati...

We round out our Parosmia Series with Gemma who experiences parosmia and it's equally evil twin: phantosmia. For those who don't know, phantosmia is an olfactory hallucination that makes you smell things that aren't there. For Gemma it's a persistent smell of cigarette smoke (which was one of her least favorite smells to begin with). It makes mealtime unbearable and alienates her from sharing that time with her beautiful family. However, she's brilliant at turning lemons into lemonade: when she ...

In our fourth episode, we talk with Anissa - the self-described "cook of the family" who can barely bring herself to eat anything besides peanut m&ms. She spoke to us about how parosmia disconnects her from the rest of the world: she can't eat enough to keep up her fitness regimen, celebratory & holiday meals once full of connection and memory are uncomfortable, and she is left with the question "am I stuck like this?" In spite of her frustration, she has found a wonderful outlet: photography. ...

Chrissi Kelly is the founder of AbScent, a UK-based charity that is dedicated to providing support and trusted information to those affected by anosmia and other smell disorders. After her own struggles with smell loss, she has committed herself to the advancement of smell training and research. We found her perspective enlightening and, while we aren't personally experiencing parosmia, we imagine this conversation might provide some clarity and encouragement to those afflicted by this uncomfort...

Compared to Brooke's episode on Tuesday, this episode is a great example of "same virus, different stories." In the second episode of our Parosmia Series, we talk to Marilyn who had some of the weirdest and worst symptoms of Covid... yet never received a positive test. Not one. Without a positive test can she still claim to have had Covid? How else can she explain the acrid metal taste she felt in her mouth every time she consumed onions? Or the heaviness in her chest when she tried to breathe? ...

We're kicking off Season 2 with a series about parosmia, perhaps the most odd and startling long-hauler symptom to date. Parosmia is dysfunctional smell detection characterized by the inability of the brain to correctly identify an odor's "natural" smell. Instead, the natural odor is usually transformed into an unpleasant aroma, typically a "'burned,' 'rotting,' 'fecal,' or 'chemical' smell". Pre-pandemic this was a symptom often found in patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment or persons rec...