Episode 374: So Our Parents Are Old with Vanessa Grigoriadis

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Written By Forever 35 Podcast

What is it like to take on your aging parents' health management, finances, and the logistics of it all? Vanessa Grigoriadis, reporter and podcast producer, joins the show to get into it. She hypes her new show “So Your Parents Are Old,” that tackles the very real, very difficult stage of life when caretaking for parents is a subject that still has a sense of taboo around it. The ladies also gab about what makes today’s ultrarich — and famous — unique from other eras. 

Transcript

 

The transcript for this episode is AI generated.

Doree Shafrir (00:10):

Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise Hu (00:16):

And I'm Elise Hu. And we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,

Doree Shafrir (00:21):

And today we have a very special guest, Vanessa Grigoriadis, who I have known for a very long time. She was a longtime journalist magazine writer. She started writing for New York Magazine and her early twenties. She wrote some iconic magazine pieces that if you read New York Magazine in the late nineties and two thousands, you undoubtedly have read. She also wrote for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and all the Blue Chip big magazines. And then a few years ago she started a podcast company and she's done some amazing narrative podcasts and now she's a brand new podcast, so we'll get to her a little later in the show, but we had a really interesting conversation with her, a little bit about magazine journalism, but mostly about taking care of aging parents, which is also the topic of our new show.

Elise Hu (01:17):

And it's a topic on a lot of our minds right now, just by dinner of our age group. This is the generation women between 35 and 45 or up are trying to balance so much. It's like you often have children still at home and your parents are getting into that age where they're asking the same question over and over again. Totally. Or potentially leaving the stove on or maybe not being able to live on their own anymore. And we get into all of that and how difficult it can be and also how isolating it can make a lot of us feel who are going through it. And Vanessa is sort of speaking to that and that whole experience with her new show. It was cool though for me just as an observer. I didn't know Vanessa back in the New York Days, which is how Dory you knew her right? As New York media people, but I didn't know her back then, but I know that I have read her work because her beat was essentially fame

Doree Shafrir (02:18):

Rich people. Celebrities. Yeah. What percenters?

Elise Hu (02:21):

Yeah.

Doree Shafrir (02:21):

Yeah. She wrote a lot of celebrity profiles

Elise Hu (02:26):

And I think that there's always that voyeuristic element about that stratosphere

Elise Hu (02:32):

That

Elise Hu (02:32):

Both magazine editors like to assign, but then people also like to read or hate read. It's the same reason why people loved succession, and I loved succession too. It was just sort of comical that at a certain stratosphere of wealth, the rules don't apply anymore. There are no consequences or you don't believe there to be consequences. And everybody is friends. They all know each other

Doree Shafrir (02:57):

And

Elise Hu (02:57):

Go to the same Yellowstone to go skiing or whatever.

Doree Shafrir (03:01):

Totally, totally. But before we get to Vanessa, what's going on with you?

Elise Hu (03:09):

I am not in that stratosphere of wealth. So we're getting into that time of year where as a freelancer, and I know all the freelancers out there in the world will know this, I don't do the same thing as I did back when I worked for one single institution where they do all your tax withholding for you. It's like you get your check every two weeks or every 15 days or whatever it is, and then the taxes that you're going to owe and your Social security and FICA and Medicare, they're all like, they're already yed out of your check. Now as more of a freelancer or a contractor, I just get a full check. I host a podcast or I write an article. They just give me the money and I'm supposed to remember to take out a certain, I think they recommend 30% just to be safe if you get a thousand dollars to hold back 300 and put that away so that you can pay your taxes. But inevitably I get into around October and I'm like, oh crap, I was supposed to do that. No, I'm just, I'm doing that tedious stuff at this time of year is the answer, what's going on with me? We did get some of our Halloween decorations up.

(04:27)
Nice. Yes. I don't have any giant skeleton that's on my roof or anything, even though that is the dream. That's the dream. Right. I've been long wanting that and to be able to dress it, but the storage is the problem. The storage comes up every Rob really wants one too. He's like, what if we had a skeleton, but also the skeleton had a skeleton dog. You could dress the skeleton and the dog, we get really excited big. He has such a expansive imagination. I love that about him. But we have no storage. So I put up our scary scientist. We have kind of a life-sized scary scientist that's hanging out there, and then I have a bat and usually I hang the bat separately. It's kind of the scary bat. But Luna was very creative and she hung the bat from the skeleton hands of the crazy scientist, the mad scientist. And so it looks even more menacing and scary. So that's fun. That's fun. Yeah. Y'all going to do any Halloween decor or have you already?

Doree Shafrir (05:32):

We have some Halloween decor. Henry loves Halloween. He loves anything spooky. Yeah. We have some Halloween lights that go up in his room and his playroom, and we actually need to put those up. Yeah, it's about that time. Yeah. We don't really do that many outside decorations because we have a gate and a hedge, so you can't really see our yard, so it's sort of pointless. Yeah,

Elise Hu (05:58):

Yeah. But yeah.

Doree Shafrir (05:59):

But that's good for privacy. It is good for privacy, it's good for, and that was also with Bo, he can roam free in the yard and front and backyards because we have a gate. So that is

Elise Hu (06:16):

Nice. That is very nice. He has to get his afternoon sun.

Doree Shafrir (06:19):

He does. I mean, not today, but generally it's raining in Los Angeles today. So Bo will have to do without

Elise Hu (06:27):

His afternoon sun. Yes. And for those of you who are not subscribed to the Patreon yet, we go long on the topic of rain and just precipitation in general and Los

Doree Shafrir (06:35):

Angeles. We do. We do

Elise Hu (06:37):

In our latest casual chat that posts every Friday. So last Friday's has it. You can check that out. Join us there. Yeah. The precipitation is warm.

Doree Shafrir (06:49):

Oh my gosh. I'm reading Ioni Sky's memoir.

Elise Hu (06:54):

Oh, Ioni Skye, the actor she was in. Say anything, say anything. Say anything. Yes. What made you decide to read that one? There's so many memoirs.

Doree Shafrir (07:06):

There are so many memoirs. I always really liked her. She was such a iconic actress of my specific micro generation say anything came out I think when I was in middle school. And so it was a very cultural touchstone, cultural touchstone, important movie for me. And she was such a Gen X icon and was sort of in the mix in so many ways in LA and Hollywood. And I had heard that there was, she writes about her relationship with Anthony Kitas and she was like a teenager and I was just sort of curious what the deal was and I started reading it and I'm really enjoying it so far. And it's a real portrait of LA in the eighties and what it was like to be a teen

Elise Hu (07:59):

In the industry.

Doree Shafrir (08:01):

And I know every place that she's talking about, she lived not far from me. It's fun. She went to Hollywood High. Wow. Yeah, so I'm enjoying it. It's a good read.

Elise Hu (08:16):

Yeah. Okay, cool. There's one thing I remember from saying anything, and it's not the boombox thing, it's the party at the beginning of the movie where everybody puts their keys in a fishbowl. That's the first time I've seen that idea. I didn't know that you could do that or that people did that. So he collects a bunch of keys in the fishbowl so that nobody drives home drunk. I saw that movie. I must've been so young, and so I just didn't know that. Drunk driving or I don't know. But I liked that idea and it still sticks with me. And I guess now we just have Uber and Waymo and whatever else to prevent

Doree Shafrir (08:55):

Driving, and yet people still drive drunk. It's very strange.

Elise Hu (09:01):

No excuses. No excuses,

Doree Shafrir (09:02):

No excuses. Well, should we introduce our guest?

Elise Hu (09:07):

Yes.

Doree Shafrir (09:08):

Vanessa writes long form articles on pop culture, youth movements and investigatory topics. Some of her articles are weighty and some not at all. She's also the author of Blurred Lines, rethinking Sex Power and Consent on Campus, a book that answers many of the questions about sexual consent in national debate. She's the contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, and she also co-founded Campsite Media, a podcast company devoted to narrative nonfiction storytelling. We talked about her new podcast, so your parents are old. And it's a really interesting show that I think, like we said at the beginning, is really relevant for a lot of people around our age who we're kind of dealing with their parents getting older, and a lot of them have kids and it's the sandwich generation, and so she talks a lot about what it's been like now taking care of her mom.

Elise Hu (10:02):

Yeah,

Doree Shafrir (10:03):

It's a really interesting conversation. Before we get to Vanessa, just a reminder that you can visit our website Forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything you mention on the show. We're on Instagram at Forever35Podcast or Patreon is at patreon.com/forever35. You can shop our favorite products at shop my us slash forever five, sign up for our newsletter at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter and call or text us at five three. Email us at podcast. We'll, Vanessa, welcome to Forever35.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (10:49):

Thank you so much for having me on. Although I am nowhere near that age

Doree Shafrir (10:54):

Anymore, I mean, I'm getting farther and farther away from that age every single day. So

Vanessa Grigoriadis (10:59):

We all are indeed. That's the point. And now that we can get the perfect plastic surgery, that's $300,000 to make our faces look perpetually 35, nobody will

Doree Shafrir (11:10):

Know. Several people sent us that recent New York magazine article on staying Forever35, which we had nothing to do with for the records.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (11:19):

I know you guys could bring a trademark case or something and be like, that plastic surgery is our invention. Yes, exactly.

Elise Hu (11:28):

So how do you two know each other? Y'all go way back or

Vanessa Grigoriadis (11:31):

We're like Media World, New York City, media World before she moved out to la.

Elise Hu (11:36):

Got it, got

Doree Shafrir (11:38):

It. I have a very distinct memory of a night on the Lower East Side, I think when I was working at Gawker. So this was almost 20 years ago and you were there, it was just a bunch of people there. It was a time and a second floor bar maybe.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (11:55):

Yes. Does that sound right?

Doree Shafrir (11:56):

Maybe something like that. Yes, that does sound right.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (11:58):

Yeah,

Doree Shafrir (11:59):

It's like vaguely a blur, but I'm like, Vanessa is definitely there.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (12:03):

Yeah. I don't have great timing in general, which is why I'm now in my fifties with an 8-year-old son, but I do have to say that I got into journalism and magazines right before the door closed, late nineties, and then you guys all showed up and it was like, oh no. Now if I want to do this, I have to be in a sweatshop and blog all day. Little did we know that it was going to turn into 150 tweets a day, plus a podcast, plus a video thing, plus a TikTok, blah, blah, blah. That was just the beginning of the sweat shop. It was all very genteel. Oh, totally,

Doree Shafrir (12:41):

Totally. Now the thought of just writing three posts a day

Vanessa Grigoriadis (12:48):

Seems, and I'm sure you quaint complained about it so much back then and little did you know, but anyway,

Doree Shafrir (12:59):

On a totally different note, we do like to start off by asking our guests about any self-care practice that they have. So there's something that you personally do that you would consider.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (13:10):

I know I was thinking about coming on this show and how my life is so incredibly chaotic and I take no time for myself. So what exactly would I proffer? I mean, I do yoga. That is the one thing where I'm like, I will do this hour every three or four times a week. That is the thing I do, but I feel that the skin products and all of that, it just never really worked for me. I am blessed with having genetically relatively good skin and just being very dark skinned, which frankly just is a good thing to be and not a lot of wrinkles are coming, so I'm not like a serum lover, I have to be honest.

Elise Hu (14:00):

That's okay. I have a very limited routine myself regimen if I have one at all. Yesterday I showed up at soccer and my hair was down, not soccer for me, soccer for a kid. And this dad was like, did you get your hair done or get your hair cut? And I'm like, no, man. I just washed it. Well, from one end of the age spectrum to the other. Let's talk a little bit about your new show that's coming out. It's called, so Your Parents Are Old.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (14:31):

That's right.

Elise Hu (14:31):

And it's about a different kind of chaos. It's about the chaos of dealing with aging parents. What was the inspiration for this show? How were your parents doing?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (14:40):

I mean, my life? Yeah. No, my parents are not, well, my dad passed away, so he's definitely not well, and my mom is very ill and in New York City, and as her dutiful only daughter,

(14:56)
I am with no family closer than Chicago. I am the producer of her life in addition to the podcast. So yeah, it's an interesting experience when you thought things could, that's like that phrase of you think things can't get worse, of course they always can and things can always get more chaotic. I'm almost calling it the third shift where the first shift is maybe your kids, the second is work or maybe it's even reversed. And then in your feeling of what's most important. And then the third is taking care of your parents. It's just another eight hour a day.

Elise Hu (15:41):

What are the kind of vagaries of it, the tedium of it, that made you want to highlight this experience and have conversations with other people

Vanessa Grigoriadis (15:50):

About it? Do you guys have experience with this?

Elise Hu (15:52):

Not yet. My parents are far away. First of all, they went to Taipei in the middle of COVID, and then my mom is 69 and my dad is 81, so they are 12 years apart. So my dad is starting to get dementia and asking a lot of the same questions over and over, and my mom is exhausted

Elise Hu (16:15):

Having

Elise Hu (16:16):

To deal with it. So I guess it's my mom who's experiencing what it's like to have somebody who's forgetting.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (16:22):

I mean, being that far away is both a blessing and a curse in some ways. As it evolves, you're going to want to be closer, but you're not going to be closer, which means that you can't take on a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities. And in some ways that's sort of awesome. I mean, obviously there's lots of siblings out there where one is burdened with a lot of the care, and it's usually the person who's closer and it's usually the girl. And then the other one is living their best life someplace across the country. I mean, the great thing about having siblings is usually one person does the care and the other person does the finances. And when you're an only child, there's really nobody else who you can bring into this situation because there's nobody, unless I hired. And even if you're hiring, I'm not sure how this goes down.

(17:23)
There are women who are geriatric care managers. They're mostly women in New York City. They're like $250 an hour. And they'll basically, they work mostly for people whose families are really far away for rich biddies on the Upper East Side, and their kids are far away and they'll stock your refrigerator or they'll get your medications, they'll go with you to the doctor's appointment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that seems like sort of an extraordinary situation, and that's very, very, very rare. One of the greatest tips somebody gave to me is when my mom started having memory loss was she probably never opened online banking, which she had indeed never done because of the man and the man stealing your identity and whatever else that old people are always afraid of. But I just opened online banking for her and how to go to my phone. So a lot of the authentication and stuff like that goes to my phone now. But there's still more complicated stuff where you need to call, you need the person to be present.

Elise Hu (18:28):

Yeah.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (18:28):

Yeah. It's fully, suddenly I work at the DMV. And then in addition to that, it's the very intense emotional care of parenting your parent.

Elise Hu (18:44):

And you've had a lot of conversations with other folks who are going through this in this stage of their life. I imagine. Has anything struck you from all of these conversations? Yeah,

Vanessa Grigoriadis (18:54):

I mean, the reason I created the podcast is because there's really nobody who's talking about this. It's almost a taboo subject in some ways. I mean, you'll find as you guys get a little bit older that I do now occasionally go to dinner with my friends and it's like, whose parent is dying? My knees hurt 401k. And you're like, wow, we have turned into such squares. We never would've had this be the dinnertime conversation before. But I mean, I'm interviewing a lot of celebrities, so the concept is that it's a show for people who are going through this, but people who are not Hallmark card style folks where they want content that's a bit edgier. So we have Louis Black and a bunch of young comedians and people who are just like, can you believe it? Everybody's living to 104 years old demented out of their minds. We figured out how to make people's bodies last longer

Elise Hu (19:55):

For sure.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (19:55):

But then there's like 10 years of them not knowing what their name is.

Elise Hu (20:00):

I have seen the US Senate,

Vanessa Grigoriadis (20:03):

I mean, for sure, there should be an upper age limit. There's no question. And the idea that the framers wouldn't want that. They didn't even know anybody who's going to live beyond 50.

Elise Hu (20:13):

Yeah, people died at 45 or something. Right.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (20:16):

Biden, I think having now spent a lot of time around a lot of old people, including my parents, not, it's just so clear when you look at the way he shuffles, when you look at the way his voice was receding, just the way the mask of his face masking is sort of what they call it.

Elise Hu (20:33):

Oh, with his mouth agape when it was hanging kind of open during the debate.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (20:36):

Exactly. And that doesn't mean that he was fully demented. He might've had a little bit of a brain problem, but his body was giving out and it was only going one way. The idea they thought this guy could go for four more years was the tragedy.

Doree Shafrir (20:53):

Has the podcast kind of brought you any sort of comfort in talking to other people going through this? Or has it just sort of reaffirmed how difficult this all is?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (21:08):

I think it's fun to talk to people who are going through it because I'm so alone in it. Again, I have no siblings and nobody wants to talk to you about it unless they're in the middle of it. It's almost like infertility or something where it's like you're so obsessed with it when it's happening, and then when it's over, you're like, whatever. Was that bad? I don't even know. I have this kid now I'm moving on. Or I don't have this kid. I adopted a kid, or whatever it is. You're not like, let me jam out with you about early blood tests. The interesting thing is that when it's a comedian and we're just sort of riffing on all the ridiculousness of old people who are toddlers in a different form, I love that. The few people I've had on who are more inspirational style folks, it's almost makes me want to cry.

(22:03)
I feel very seen by 'em, but it's really done a number, I would say, on the way that I perceive my friendships. I mean, there a lot things that I've thought about for my own life. Well, because when you are a creative class, professional women as we all are, our friendships are kind of the most important thing. And there's people you lose. There's people where you're like, okay, we talk all the time now. We talk a couple times a year. Now we've decided we're just going to only see each other maybe at our funerals, I guess, but it's over. We're fine life happening and never seeing each other again. But the core group of people that you are friends with for 20, 30 years, you just assume that they are going to be with you no matter how sick and old you get. And then you realize they're not either because they're not emotionally equipped because they think, I mean, I've had people say to me, I saw your mom. It wasn't her. It wasn't her there. She's not there anymore. And I was like, okay, first of all, do you know who you're saying that to? I'm her daughter,

(23:14)
But also they're old and have weird, horrible things happening too. They have health problems. They have spouses who are sick. People just over 80 years old are mired in all sorts of issues. And you just, I think, realize that family takes care of family. That's just the truth. When people get sick, that's who actually calls and sticks around, and you just realize that those bonds are the bonds that matter in sickness.

Doree Shafrir (23:55):

So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.

Elise Hu (24:07):

How are you thinking about the decision of where your mom lives next? Because right now she's living on her own, right? In an apartment and on the 26th floor or something? Yeah. Okay. But she is suffering from Alzheimer's.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (24:24):

Okay. But she's not living on her own, not she's an aid there, but yes. Right,

Elise Hu (24:29):

But not with you. Right. She's not living with family.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (24:32):

I mean, thank God. Yeah. No, she cannot live with me. I mean,

Elise Hu (24:38):

That can't happen. That's not going to happen. Okay. Going to happen. So then what's next? Do you feel that she can stay there as her condition progresses, or how are you think about all this?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (24:50):

Okay, that is the 25 million question. What do you do? So I think you guys probably know this, but for anybody who's listening to this who doesn't know this, Medicare does not pay for any sort of assisted living. So retirement home memory care, basically, if you've never gone to one of these places, essentially there's nice places, not nice places, but a lot of them are staged. So you move in, you're all right, you're maybe a little weird, but you're fine. And you can live in an apartment and then, oh my God, there's another building on this property. And that's where you go where you're more messed up. And then eventually when you really have to be locked in and you can't do anything for yourself, they put you in a memory care or they put you in a nursing home, which is when you really need help. Medicaid, which is for people who are at poverty level, basically you have $30,000 to your name.

(25:57)
Medicaid does pay only for nursing homes. And I mean different, I think it goes state by state, but in New York state, I believe it's 40 patients to one aid is what's legally allowed in a Medicaid nursing home. So basically what you're looking at is bankrupting yourself. If you're middle class, which my mom is, you're looking at her spending all the money that she has to move into one of these places. Because crazy thing about having dementia is you also might need to hire another aide to be your personal aide within facility. So not only are you spending whatever, 15 to $30,000 a month on the facility, I'm making up 30. I don't actually know. I haven't been to any of these places. To be clear, I will explain why, but let's call it 15. I mean, I think 15 is a very normal number in a lot of the country. But then you also need to spend, let's call it seven, eight, something like that, for a personal aid also. So basically, I think it might be more expensive than having my mom at home. I think I'm still caught in the fact that my mom said to me, never take me out of this apartment,

(27:28)
Which I've moved past that emotionally in some ways because I understand from talking to people that a lot of people's parents say that, and you can't let that rule. Your life can't. I'm a highly functioning person, so for me to produce my mom's life, I'm just like, I produce a podcast. I produce two weekly podcasts. I do. I write, I do this, I two kids, I can produce her life. I have AIDS that I really like and I really, really trust, and they do all the heavy lifting, and then I'm there just sort of running the household. But there's a lot of other people who aren't like that, and it's for sure running me into the ground.

Elise Hu (28:14):

Yeah, I was going to say, what if you were a family that doesn't have the $15,000 a month or whatever it is that we're estimating for memory care? And

Vanessa Grigoriadis (28:23):

Well, you do what a lot of people do, which is you bankrupt your loved one loved parent and give these lawyers who are getting insanely rich off of this, the money to basically move everything out of your parent's name and you move it maybe into a trust or whatever. And then what a lot of people are doing is you keep some money. Let's say you keep a hundred thousand dollars or whatever, you move your parent into a facility and then you say, after six months, no more money. We got to go to Medicaid for this.

(29:03)
And then what I understand to be quite a few cases, the facility's like, fine, whatever. So then you've got person in. But again, that has to be nursing care. It can't be like it's a fun apartment on a golf course. Nobody's paying for that. Zero people are paying for that. So no, it's demographically the problem of our age, and it's just a matter of people waking up and learning about it and then experiencing it. And it sucks so hard that I feel like a little bit like the canary in the coal mine where I'm just like, does everybody else not realize what's happening?

Elise Hu (29:45):

And the boomers, were a giant generation, that's why they're called

Vanessa Grigoriadis (29:48):

Boomers. Exactly. They're a giant generation and we're a smaller, gen X is a smaller generation, and we're basically taking care of them, or the millennials are taking care of them. And the other interesting thing is a lot of those people are actually really wealthy and they have really big houses. The boomers have something like over half the houses that's crazy, and they just don't want to move out of them. They don't want to pay the taxes. They're like, I want to die in here so my kid can inherit it without paying these inheritance tax. You're just like, whatever. So that's the other part of it, which is like there's people who are going to be very motivated to figure this out because you don't want your parent to spend what you thought was going to be your money when they died. It's not like uplifting. I'm sorry.

Doree Shafrir (30:38):

No, of course. It's true. I mean, besides the sort of Medicaid issue and the cost of long-term care, I guess, what do you think people should know who are kind of embarking on this generational journey?

Elise Hu (30:58):

Yes. Stage of life, right?

Doree Shafrir (31:00):

Yeah.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (31:01):

I mean, I think what they should know is just you are sort of on your own and you have to just figure it out. And if you think it might be your problem, it's your problem. If your parent is starting to act weird and leaving the stove on or getting lost, driving someplace and getting lost is a real red flag. Someplace I've always gone before, if there's, the thing people always say is, if you look in the refrigerator and there's some food in there that's going bad, and this person was really meticulous or there's sort of

Doree Shafrir (31:40):

Variety, I couldn't do that with my parents because they have Costco syrup in their fridge from 2015, so that would not be a good PEs for

Vanessa Grigoriadis (31:49):

Them. Very true. The boomers are crazy hoarders. That's just the truth. I don't know why. What are they so afraid of? But they have all the money, all the houses and all the syrup. What? Anyway, sorry, I didn't need to cut you off. Need more and more and more. The most important thing to know is if your parents acting weird, don't just be annoyed and do what I did, which is just be like, I'm so annoyed by this. I'm going to ignore it and sort of ignore you and be like, okay, this could actually be signs of something worse. And it's the disease talking and not the person. And the best thing for old people, particularly if they're widowed, is just companionship. And there's, I think maybe Jany Dunn or somebody in the Times talked about the eight minute phone call versus the three and a half minute phone call, which is just like, hi, hi, how are you? I'm good, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are your kids doing? The weather? Bye. Like the eight minute phone call. You have to say a few things. Try to just do that. I mean, I sometimes schedule calling my mom as insane as that is, I just put it on my Google calendar. I'm just like, I have to do it at this moment.

(33:11)
A lot of people don't get along with her parents. The other part is like, you are, yes, you are. What if you're stronger changed? I really don't know what you do because they need your help. And there's so many old people out there without anybody to help them at all. And it's really heartbreaking. If they don't have family, it's really heartbreaking. So you're going to have to, I don't know, maybe you're just going to have to suck it up in some ways. I mean, obviously if it's an estrangement over sexual abuse or things that are so traumatic, egregious, there's no way. Maybe there's another family member you can reach out to and be like, I don't talk to my mom, but this is what I've been hearing is happening from cousin, whoever, and can you help me make a plan? Or I don't know. I don't know what you do because that's messed up.

Elise Hu (34:09):

Yeah. Okay. We have spent a lot of this conversation on the new podcast and the chaos of taking care of aging parents, but you have been a decorated magazine journalist

Vanessa Grigoriadis (34:24):

Turned whatever that is,

Elise Hu (34:25):

Podcaster turned now production company. So in the time that you are not working this third shift of taking care of your aging parent, we were just curious what you have found fascinating lately. Who are you curious about? What's interesting to you these days? What are kind of the questions that are constantly swirling at the back of your mind besides what happens when AI overtakes us?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (34:57):

Oh my God. Yeah. Well, I think I am interested in the idea of how you would make something that looks like the Cut, but could be for women in their forties and fifties, the idea of what is the next, how can you get in touch with people that, not through memoir, how can you get in touch with older women through stories they really want to hear? I'm interested in that. I'm interested in how do you create a magazine that has glamor in it at a time when I am very anti MAGA at a time when there's not a lot of glamor going on except for in this group of people that I find somewhat immoral. So how would you cover those people? Do you do that? So I've made my career really covering a lot of the 1%, and they're foibles. That's generally been my beat. And what do you do when you can't really meet these people where they are? But I don't really love platforming either, so how can you write things about them that feel really true? They can't just all be vicious.

Elise Hu (36:20):

Is there anything that's particularly notable or different about this era's 1% versus the 1% of the nineties or the 1% of the eighties? Is

Vanessa Grigoriadis (36:30):

There something Well, they're much richer, right? They've got much more, I mean, I think there's the idea that now you really need 20 million to be considered really high net worth to really be able to roll with that group. I mean, everybody is sort of wanting a private jet or the people who have a private jet. I mean, so why the Epstein story works so well, right? This idea in terms of just grabs people's consciousness is this idea that there's this band at the top of society where morality is askew and everybody sort of knows each other. It doesn't really matter if you're Democrat or Republican because all you love is sex and money. And I do think that the pursuit of the objects are more expensive, the art's more expensive, the homes are more expensive.

Doree Shafrir (37:33):

Vanessa, when we were scheduled to talk to you, I was rereading some of your old pieces that were so iconic and influential to me as a journalist. Thank you. Your Power Girls Girls's piece was like, I mean, if you haven't told to and tell what that's

Elise Hu (37:50):

About.

Doree Shafrir (37:51):

Yeah, we'll link to it. It was about a group of young publicists in New York City in the late nineties. And I don't know if Vanessa, do you want to say anything else about it?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (38:03):

Yeah, it was when I got out of college, I got a job at New York Magazine. The thing you could just do, you could just show up. I didn't do any journalism, never worked in a newspaper, really didn't write much. And they were just like, boom, here's a job. That's so different

Elise Hu (38:17):

Than even when my graduating year in 2004, because in 2004 it was like

Vanessa Grigoriadis (38:22):

The whole, no, you really had to be in there in the nineties for sure. And this was about, so one of the things I did in my job as an assistant is I covered parties, fancy, fancy parties. And at that point, they would just let you in. There was no velvet rope, stand behind it, take a photo, whatever. No, you were just inside the party with your notebook. And I was like, oh my God. Who are these people at the door? Oh, they're publicists. I mean, there's things you think when you're really young who are the people who are in control. And I started to report it on them, and they had done a very clueless style thing of making a random woman that they knew into an IT girl

(39:06)
And getting vogue to write about her highlights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she ended up having an affair with an AN'S husband. Husband still was in the nineties. Better story. If it was a better schedule, I would've been like, yes, exactly. And Aris husband. And then they did not like that. So then things like sort of devolved from there. So that was the through line of that story. But they said a lot of things they probably shouldn't have said. And the great thing about that story is the day it came out, they all sent me cookies and flowers. And then as they realized that they were sort of being made fun of, they were like, what? And I was like, you guys like this when you first read it. Really, to me, that's the standard of a great piece of writing. If the readers can be in on it and the subjects are just like, what? It was just what I said, that is who I am. Then you really gotten into the truth.

Elise Hu (40:07):

Yes.

Doree Shafrir (40:08):

Anyway. Well,

Elise Hu (40:09):

We're so glad that you had those opportunities.

Doree Shafrir (40:13):

Yeah, I mean, it was very fun for me to revisit that piece and your Britney Spears Rolling Stone piece, but thank you. It did make me kind of sad. Those pieces aren't being written anymore, but they're sort of being done in podcasting. Mark, I

Vanessa Grigoriadis (40:32):

Was

Doree Shafrir (40:33):

Wondering if you could talk a little bit about your shift to starting Campsite media. Are there similarities to how you go about finding stories for campsite side as in

Vanessa Grigoriadis (40:46):

Journalism? Yeah. I started a campsite with three guys, don't start a company with three guys. That is a very weird thing that I did, but two of whom were also mid-career magazine writers, and we basically pitched a bunch of magazine stories that we couldn't get funding from at that point. I did the downfall of Victoria's Secret, one guy did a thing about a bank robber. There's a lot of wrongful conviction stories that we do. So we do narrative podcasts, like serial investigative podcasts, which are also now sort of on the way out, which is very sad. Too expensive, too expensive. I got to get back in magazines. I, but I think that for me as a writer, I really emulated the style of a Tom Wolf, even sort of Charles Bukowski asked really visceral, really present style and that you can't do in podcasting because the problem with podcasting, to be totally frank, is everybody has to like you in the audiovisual medium. You can't be a writer who is really angry and really vituperative. You just can't, who would listen to that? I mean, other than an Alex Jones or something.

Elise Hu (42:21):

Yeah. The economics don't reward that. The incentives are, that's interesting.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (42:25):

Yeah. It's an eye voice and it's a subject voice, but it has to be a questing, curious, likable narrator. And so in that way, I think it's quite different. And the subject I wrote as you said, this big piece about Britney Spears, which in which I said a bunch of things I probably really shouldn't have said about Britney Spears because then we found out that she was very mentally decayed and I felt like such an asshole. But part of the point of that back then was like, look at how crazy our culture is that we are running after this woman who's shaving her head and doing all of these things.

Elise Hu (43:10):

Yeah. Before we let you go, who are you enjoying reading? Who's doing it Well these days,

Vanessa Grigoriadis (43:16):

I mean, I am reading a lot of books for my podcast, basically. So I read a book by Jill, I want to say her name is about her mom who died during COVID. I read a book actually by the publisher of MCs Sweeney's, Amanda Ell. Oh my God.

Elise Hu (43:37):

Ule,

Vanessa Grigoriadis (43:37):

UHLE, called Destroy This House about her parents who were crazy hoarders

Elise Hu (43:43):

In her. It's on my Kindle. I've heard so much great stuff about it. You read it already. Really

Vanessa Grigoriadis (43:48):

Interesting. I have read it. Yeah. And so I feel like The Wild is a great book, but the memoirs that are a bit more about complicated relationships with people's moms really speak to me.

Elise Hu (44:07):

Okay. All right. Vanessa, thank you so much for being so open with us. And I really enjoyed, I think we both really enjoyed just getting to Yeah,

Vanessa Grigoriadis (44:15):

It's really great to talk to you and catch up

Elise Hu (44:16):

With you.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (44:17):

So nice to talk to you too. We have to hear about all your traumatic experiences some other time.

Elise Hu (44:22):

Yes.

Vanessa Grigoriadis (44:23):

Your

Doree Shafrir (44:23):

Family trauma. Where can our listeners find you and find the show?

Vanessa Grigoriadis (44:32):

So you can go to, so your parents are old on any podcast player, you could just put Parents are old in and look for a yellow icon. I also make a weekly show called Infamous if you're interested in pod culture, which goes through in a sort of narrative way like Justin Bieber or what really happened on the Rust Set with Alec Baldwin, a lot of more recent sort of pop culture scandals.

Doree Shafrir (44:59):

Okay, amazing. Thank you so much. This really thank you. Like I said, that was I think a really important conversation that we had with Vanessa. So last week I kind of got ahead of myself because I know that our episode was airing the week of my parent visit, but we're recording this and it hasn't actually happened yet, so you can't reflect on your intention. So I can't really reflect on my intention, so I'm just going to keep my intention from last week. Yeah. Okay.

Elise Hu (45:35):

And then we will wish that it all goes smoothly just as we did last week. What about you? So my intention last week was movement and strength to go along with Cadence Deus, our guest on the show. And if you haven't heard that episode, please go back and listen to it. She's fantastic. And I have been doing pretty well. I made myself go and run and which I usually don't do. I like to run socially. And my running buddy has been out of town actually for a race. She went to go run a half marathon, but I actually went and exercised by myself. I also took a few Pilates classes inspired by Cadence. I went and took some Pilates classes and it felt really good, especially on mornings where I just didn't want to do anything at all. I really just wanted to sort of laze around.

(46:22)
I made myself do it, and then I felt so much better after. And I know that it's obvious, but in the moment that you don't want to do something, you really just don't. And so there was something just to having this intention out there and doing it. So anyway, my intention this week, I guess just to go in line with some of the stuff that we talked about on our casual chat, just about the kids being very programmed because they're playing sports, is just to have some unplanned, unstructured time as a family. Love that. Not doing anything or not having to be somewhere. So unstructured family time is going to be mine.

Doree Shafrir (47:03):

Love that. Alright, well everybody, thank you so much for listening. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everyone for listening. Talk to you next time. Bye.

 
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