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Carl Kasell Has Died
- fencepost 9y agoI suspected his health had declined when WWDTM changed to having the voice of anyone currently on the show as a prize, but as good as Bill Kurtis is sometimes I miss Carl Kassell's voice.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y agoReminds me of how Car Talk quietly stopped recording new episodes once Tom Magliozzi's Alzheimer's became a problem. Dang, I miss Tom and Ray.
- acjohnson55 9y agoMe too. I spent so many wonderful hours listening to that show on the road. It's funny how radio/audio sticks with you.
- crcsmnky 9y agoBummer. I loved his read of the news segments during Morning Edition. So much so that I asked he record the voicemail message doing a similarly styled opening.
- jessaustin 9y agoDo you still have it?
- melling 9y agoHe had Alzheimer’s. I heard on a podcast that 10,000 Americans are retiring a day. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/health-care-dilemma-10000-boomers-retiring-each-day.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/health-care-dilemma-10000-bo... Underfunding research into Alzheimer’s is going to be a costly mistake as the baby boomers retire.
- chisleu 9y agohttps://www.alz.org/documents_custom/historic-funding-2017.pdf https://www.alz.org/documents_custom/historic-funding-2017.p... I couldn't believe the numbers when I read them. I fully expected that we were doing more. Breast cancer is over funded, and Viagra is about $70/pill but this debilitating disease is forgotten about until individuals are themselves forgetting. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
- hprotagonist 9y agoit is not for want of trying. Eli Lily bet the farm and lost, and they aren’t alone. At this point, we’re beginning to think previously unthinkable thoughts like “what if the hypothesis the last 20 years of research was based on (beta amyloid plaques)is just totally wrong”. we’ve made drugs that reduce plaques. they don’t ameliorate the disease.
- caycep 9y agoAnd even if said amyloid hypothesis was correct; I suspect by the time you see plaques, a lot of neurons have already died, i.e. horses have left the barn.
- malnourish 9y agoNPR recently (in the past few months) ran an interview where the guest compared Alzheimer's to a "Type III Diabetes" of sorts
- slfnflctd 9y agoI just read this yesterday: https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2018/04/11/Researchers-find-genetic-cause-for-Alzheimers-possible-method-to-reverse-it/4661523454194/ https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2018/04/11/Researchers-find-... I know we all see at least half a dozen of these a year, but nobody can say in advance how they'll turn out (unless it's just obviously badly designed research). This line of inquiry certainly seems to have some promise.
- 9y ago
- petercooper 9y agoI wonder why the title has been edited away from the actual title "NPR Newscaster Carl Kasell Dies At 84, After A Lifelong Career On-Air"? Normally titles get edited to the original on HN and not everyone is going to know who he was (I didn't) :-)
- Bud 9y agoOP here. I wondered that too. I don't mind either way, but thought the original title was suitable.
- heartles 9y agoI agree, at least "NPR Newscaster Carl Kasell has died" would've been appropriate
- inteleng 9y agoI would ask dang. It seems somewhat like the style here is now to title the post "Firstname Lastname Has Died" to be as neutral as possible, but I could be wrong.
- jjeaff 9y agoI've noticed that. It seems rather blunt and unfeeling to me.
- clircle 9y agoCarl Kasell was a low-key American national treasure. RIP
- codewritinfool 9y agoCarl was great to listen to. Instantly recognizable.
- fixermark 9y agoI see that they fixed the URL. Original URL ended with "npr-newscaster-carl-kasell-dies-at-XX-after-a-lifelong-career-on-air", I assume because NPR of course knew of his condition and had an obituary prepared and ready-to-go in a celebrity file; they updated the headline but forgot to update the URL. ... Oddly, that makes me smile. I had the privilege and pleasure of volunteering with public broadcasters in my hometown as a kid; it was an amazing bunch of people. Talented, smart, and always finding ways to do more with less and skin-of-their-teeth their way into quality productions (live and pre-taped) with a dozen SNAFUs the public almost never saw. I like to imagine Carl would have smiled to see that error sneak through in his sendoff story.
- acdanger 9y agoYes, almost certainly they had his obituary prepared years ago. I was an intern at NPR HQ and was once tasked with updating prepared obits with additional news. Later, as a production assistant, I wrote an obit for Billy Graham. This was in 2008. No idea if this ended up being the one that would eventually air 10 years later.
- dale14 9y ago:(