How to Be a Better Human

How to be a caregiver (w/ Courtney Martin)

February 23, 2026

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  • Caregiving, especially for a loved one with advanced dementia, can serve as an "existential portal" that reveals profound truths about the human condition, stripping away ego and forcing presence. 
  • To make caregiving sustainable, the caregiver must actively seek and incorporate moments of personal joy and mutual activity with the person they are caring for, rather than viewing care as purely selfless suffering. 
  • Accepting help is a crucial, often difficult, practice that validates one's own humanity and keeps the virtuous cycle of giving and receiving care flowing within relationships and community. 

Segments

Introduction to Caregiving Role
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(00:00:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Caregiving is a universal role for which most people receive no training.
  • Summary: The host introduces the topic of caregiving and notes that nearly everyone will play this role without formal preparation. Guest Courtney Martin is introduced, highlighting her experience writing about care and currently living through it.
Courtney Martin’s Caregiving Life
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(00:00:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Martin is a ‘sandwich generation caregiver’ managing care for her children, mother, and father with advanced dementia.
  • Summary: Courtney Martin details her current caregiving responsibilities, including her two daughters, her mother living with her, and being the primary coordinator for her father in a memory care facility.
Caregiving as an Existential Portal
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(00:04:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Caregiving is described as the most meaningful, challenging, and beautiful part of the human condition.
  • Summary: Martin discusses how caregiving acts as a portal, especially through her experience with her father’s dementia, leading to profound spiritual and systemic questions.
The Paradox of Dementia and Ego
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(00:06:41)
  • Key Takeaway: Watching her father lose his cognitive self revealed a version of him free from anxiety and ego.
  • Summary: Martin reflects on her father’s advanced dementia, noting that he is now the most mindful and least egoic he has ever been, connecting through singing when words fail.
Solutions Journalism and Systemic Care
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(00:09:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Martin’s journalism focuses on effective solutions to problems, including systemic issues in elder care.
  • Summary: The host praises Martin’s solutions journalism approach, which she applies to her personal outrage over elder treatment by shining a light on effective reforms and coalitions.
The Rawness of Intense Experience
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(00:19:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Intense caretaking experiences, whether negative (illness) or positive (new baby), strip away one’s protective ‘skin.’
  • Summary: Duffy relates his experience caring for his ill wife, feeling intensely exposed, and realizing this raw emotional capacity is shared with the overwhelming love of new parenthood.
Rejecting Pity and Silver Linings
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(00:23:40)
  • Key Takeaway: It is important to acknowledge that suffering can simply ‘just be bad’ without needing a positive lesson or silver lining.
  • Summary: The discussion touches on ableism and the anger felt when people assume a disability or illness is inherently worse than an able-bodied experience, rejecting pity.
The Necessity of Accepting Help
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(00:27:08)
  • Key Takeaway: Accepting help affirms one’s ordinary humanity and keeps the sacred cycle of giving and receiving flowing.
  • Summary: Martin discusses the difficulty of accepting help, emphasizing that it is not reserved only for ’extraordinary suffering’ and that refusing it blocks the virtuous cycle of mutual support.
Advice for Sustainable Caregiving
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(00:31:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Caregivers must integrate their own joy into care activities and recognize that all seasons, good or bad, are temporary.
  • Summary: Martin advises finding mutual joy in care activities (like art or reading) and using the understanding of ‘seasons’ to cope with difficult or intense periods.
How Friends Can Best Support Caregivers
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(00:35:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Offer grace, avoid judgment, and take on the ‘boring’ administrative and logistical burdens.
  • Summary: Martin suggests that friends should not judge a caregiver’s methods and should offer practical help, such as researching or making difficult administrative phone calls.
Words vs. Action and Solidarity
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(00:39:39)
  • Key Takeaway: True connection comes from tangible actions like tenderness, food, and singing, not just perfect words.
  • Summary: Martin reads an essay passage emphasizing that words often fail in moments of deep intimacy or political struggle; what saves us are small, tangible acts of solidarity and making things.