Episodes

A man with Parkinson’s plays himself on screen, and it changes the entire temperature of the room. We sit down with writer-director Joe Burke to talk about “Burt,” a black-and-white indie film inspired by (and starring) his real-life friend Burt Berger, a singer-songwriter Joe met 15 years ago playing music near Malibu. Joe breaks down how they said yes to the impossible: a one-week shoot, a three-person crew, and a $7,000 budget, all to capture Burt’s spirit while he could still play and perfor...

The hardest losses aren’t always the obvious ones. Sometimes it’s the moment you realize you might never ride again, never rebuild the full set of tools you spent decades collecting, or never feel as fearless in your body as you once did. Travis opens up about a brutal stretch of life with Parkinson’s disease, the aftermath of a house fire, and how a DBS battery failure can spark a terrifying thought: is this a snapshot of my future? We talk about grief and mourning as something that can hit in...

Freezing can feel like your body hits a hard pause at the exact worst time, mid twist, mid bend, halfway to the thing you’re trying to pick up. Travis opens up about what freezing looks like for him, why it doesn’t always match the “feet glued to the floor” description, and how he learned to get unstuck without gadgets, panic, or waiting for someone to rescue him. We talk through a simple mindset shift: stop fighting the big movement and find the small part that can still move, then use it to cr...

A Parkinson’s diagnosis can feel like a trap door, but it can also become a turning point if you build the right kind of plan. We sit down with Steve Yellen, author of Living Parkinson’s, to trace his path from a small left-hand tremor to the life-changing words “I think you have Parkinson’s” and then to a decision that many people struggle to make: stop waiting and start steering. Steve explains how reassurance about life expectancy initially lulled him into passivity, and why research partici...

A wildfire can take your house in minutes. What it can’t take—if you fight for it—is your ability to choose what comes next. We open up about losing our Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, the chaotic evacuation with two poodles and two cats, and the gritty, unglamorous path to rebuilding when Parkinson’s is part of daily life. From “well begun is half done” to letting go of what can burn, this conversation moves from shock to action, and from paperwork to purpose. We break down the steps that tur...

A slipper, a sudden freeze, and a screen that reads “DBS unit failed.” That’s how our morning began—and how years of carefully managed Parkinson’s symptoms vanished in seconds. What follows is an unvarnished look at life when a single device holds up half your world, and what it takes to stand it back up when that device goes dark during the holidays. We walk through the cascade: dystonia locking all four limbs, a voice reshaped by stimulation, and the way DBS can both give back a life and comp...

Stress isn’t just a feeling—it’s your body mobilizing resources to meet a moment. We sit down with a neuropsychologist to map what stress actually is, how it differs from anxiety, and why chronic activation can make the “on” switch hypersensitive and the “off” switch hard to hit. From there, we wade into depression and apathy in Parkinson’s—two experiences that look similar from the outside but feel very different inside—and why apathy in particular is tough on families and tricky to treat. We ...