A quick warning.
There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org hi, everybody.
This American Life.
So one of our producers read this book a few months ago and she was like, this story is really unusual and also happened to be written in a way that's perfect for radio.
Could we maybe just condense it down, run it on the show?
And so a few of us read the book, including me, and we agreed this is a story you really don't hear.
Basically the story.
There's this couple, he gets Alzheimer's.
And of course, so many of us know people with Alzheimer's.
I feel like it's like watching somebody who you love, I don't know, just drift slowly off into space.
The things that make them, them get taken away one after another.
And in this couple, the man, while he still had his wits about him, wanted some kind of assisted suicide before it got too late.
And so his wife looks around and finds this place in Switzerland to go to.
And what makes the book so special is that just, I don't know, the daily ness and realness of the way that his wife tells what that was like to go through.
And they're this interesting couple that you get to know, very specific people going through this thing that honestly, for everybody I have known with dementia or Alzheimer's, I have never met anybody who made this particular choice.
And you get to hear how that plays out.
It's very life size.
You see this couple after they realize he has Alzheimer's, but also you see them before when he's just kind of acting oddly and it's a little annoying.
But she doesn't know why just yet.