[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. And today, we're—I think we're offering stories where a person makes a small, subtle shift in their world, a little reframing.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: And suddenly, the world is a little less sad, a little less lonely. A better place for them. This is an idea that came from a producer we used to work with—or we still work with, really, Lulu Miller.

ROBERT: I know we used to work with her because she began this program.

JAD: Yeah, she told us this story about ...

ROBERT: Two guys who fell in love and then couldn't really solve their problems legally because you're not allowed to be, you know, that way.

JAD: So one adopted the other. It's a very clever little subtle move that suddenly changed ...

ROBERT: Their world.

JAD: Their world. Here's another clever reframing of things from Lulu. Different place, different outcome.

LULU MILLER: All right, so I'm gonna tell you a story. It takes place in Germany.

WOMAN: Guten tag.

LULU: At an old folks' home.

REGINE HAUCH: Guten tag.

LULU: Hello.

LULU: And that's not where we are right now, but we brought two of the people who work at the home into a studio.

REGINE HAUCH: We have to close the door, otherwise ...

LULU: Yeah, it sounds like you're having a party over there.

REGINE HAUCH: [laughs]

LULU: So the story really belongs to this guy, Richard Neureither.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Ja.

LULU: He's the director of the home, which is called Benrath Senior Center.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: In Dusseldorf.

LULU: But we've also brought Regine in.

REGINE HAUCH: Regine Hauch.

LULU: Who also works at the home ...

REGINE HAUCH: And ...

LULU: ... speaks more English.

REGINE HAUCH: I'll just help Mr. Neureither translate. Shall we do it like this?

LULU: Yeah.

REGINE HAUCH: Okay.

LULU: So Mr. Neureither has a problem.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German]

LULU: It's a problem most nursing homes face, which is that ...

REGINE HAUCH: Many people who develop dementia or Alzheimer's ...

LULU: They'll become disoriented and confused, and suddenly think ...

REGINE HAUCH: "Where am I?" and "This is not my world" and "I have to go back to my house. My children are waiting for me" and ...

LULU: And usually, you know, nurses will intercept them.

REGINE HAUCH: "Relax, you are living here."

LULU: But occasionally people somehow slip out the front door.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. Escapes, they happen.

LULU: And then they wander. They had one woman make it onto a bus.

REGINE HAUCH: And she escaped about how many kilometers?

LULU: She eventually made it to a town about 20 miles away.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah.

LULU: They've had people turn up at grocery stores, wandering in the forest. They've even had people make it all the way back to their old houses and find new people living there.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

LULU: And for the people who work at the home, says Regine ...

REGINE HAUCH: You'll get crazy not knowing where is the person and where did she go?

LULU: Test, test, test, test.

LULU: This is something we all know about.

LULU: Did you guys know I'm working on this story about the Alzheimer's?

LULU'S MOTHER: Yes.

LULU: And while reporting this piece, I was checking in with my parents about some stories like this, what happened to my grandpa.

LULU'S MOTHER: Well ...

LULU'S FATHER: Well ...

LULU: And they told me one I'd never heard.

LULU'S MOTHER: One morning ...

LULU'S FATHER: This was in February.

LULU'S MOTHER: Yes. This was on a very, very frigid cold morning.

LULU: My grandpa got up ...

LULU'S FATHER: Five in the morning.

LULU: ... left the house and walked to the train station.

LULU'S MOTHER: He probably got the earliest T.

LULU: Took it all the way out to Cambridge because he thought he had to teach a class at Harvard.

JAD: Did he use to teach at Harvard?

LULU: No, but he'd given lectures there.

LULU'S MOTHER: So anyway ...

LULU: It's pitch dark, early in the morning, frigid Boston weather.

LULU'S MOTHER: And he was only in his long underwear with his coat and hat and scarf on over that.

LULU: He didn't even have shoes on. He was just wearing his slippers.

LULU'S MOTHER: He was picked up by the police because he was, you know ...

LULU'S FATHER: Hypothermic.

LULU'S MOTHER: Yeah.

LULU: He was hypothermic?

LULU'S FATHER: He was hypothermic. I mean, his—when they brought him into the hospital, his temperature was too low.

LULU: I did not know that.

LULU'S MOTHER: It was the moment when I knew that—you know, that everything was gonna have to change, that he would have to move into a place that had a floor for people who were suffering.

LULU'S FATHER: A locked floor. That's what it meant.

LULU: So that essentially is the problem.

REGINE HAUCH: Some people have to—to be locked in.

LULU: Which just feels cruel.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah. It's horrible.

LULU: Yeah.

REGINE HAUCH: It is.

LULU: And then in walks a fellow named Mr. Gooble.

REGINE HAUCH: No, no, no! [laughs] Gerbel, not Gooble. Gooble sounds really awful.

LULU: Oh, really? Okay.

REGINE HAUCH: Try to make it more like Gerbel.

LULU: Gerbel.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah, bravo!

LULU: Okay, Mr. Gooble.

REGINE HAUCH: No!

LULU: No?

REGINE HAUCH: Gerbel.

LULU: Okay, we'll just use you saying it. We'll do your Mr. ...

REGINE HAUCH: Mr. Gerbel.

LULU: Okay. So ...

REGINE HAUCH: Mr. Gerbel

LULU: ... was an older gentleman. He sat on an advisory board of the senior center.

REGINE HAUCH: And one day he came up with this idea.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Ja, und ...

LULU: That's Richard Neureither again. And it's one of these ideas that's so out there and yet so simple that you think it just couldn't possibly work.

REGINE HAUCH: When Mr. Gerbel came into the office of Richard and presented his idea, Richard was just laughing.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German] [laughs]

REGINE HAUCH: [laughs] He thought it very funny. What a funny idea.

JAD: Well, what is it already? What's the idea?

LULU: Well, Mr. Gerbel thought that right in front of the home they should build a bus stop.

REGINE HAUCH: A bus stop.

JAD: What? Build a bus—I don't understand. What would that do?

LULU: Well, think about what a bus stop is.

REGINE HAUCH: When you see a bus stop, it's the first step into a wide world. From the little bus stop you get anywhere, yeah.

LULU: Regine says that in a lot of these wandering cases, the first place people often head is to a bus stop.

JAD: Ah!

LULU: And so back to our friend, Mr. ...

REGINE HAUCH: Gerbel.

LULU: He thought what they should do is build a bus stop right in front of the home that has just one crucially odd feature.

REGINE HAUCH: And there's no bus coming.

LULU: No bus?

REGINE HAUCH: Never. It's a bus stop to nowhere.

LULU: So his thought was it would be a way of catching people who happened to wander. They'd see the bus stop, go and sit on it, waiting for a bus that would never come, and then eventually a staff member could see them and bring them back.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Ja ...

LULU: So while Richard's first thought was this is ridiculous ...

REGINE HAUCH: Second thought was: "Hmm, maybe not that bad."

LULU: So they bolted in a bench ...

REGINE HAUCH: Made of iron.

LULU: Put up a sign ...

REGINE HAUCH: In yellow and green.

LULU: Just like every government-issue bus stop.

REGINE HAUCH: And when you get out of the home, you see it immediately.

LULU: And the staff ...

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German]

LULU: ... say Richard and Regine, just thought this was a stupid idea.

REGINE HAUCH: It's not appropriate, or it's even cynical.

LULU: And most of all, that it probably just wouldn't work.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: Yeah.

LULU: And at first it looked like they were right.

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German]

LULU: One by one ...

REGINE HAUCH: The neighbors, you know, normal people, they said, "Oh, a new bus stop!"

LULU: [laughs]

REGINE HAUCH: And they waited there for the bus.

LULU: Oh no!

LULU: And so one by one, Richard would have to run out and explain ...

REGINE HAUCH: "No, that's not for you." [laughs]

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German]

LULU: So there was this period of adjustment.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah.

LULU: And then one day ...

REGINE HAUCH: An old lady ...

LULU: ... an actual patient from the home started having an episode.

REGINE HAUCH: She was very troubled.

LULU: In her mind, she was a little girl and she needed to get home to her parents.

REGINE HAUCH: "My mother waits for me. I have to go home home home very quick." The nurses talked to her and tried to calm her down, but she began to cry.

LULU: So they thought well, let's just let her walk out.

REGINE HAUCH: It was fall. It was rather cold, so she went to the bus stop in her coat and her hat, and she sat there very patient and she waited for the bus in the fresh air, sun shining.

LULU: And eventually a nurse came over and sat with her.

REGINE HAUCH: And they waited together side by side.

LULU: And eventually, she forgot why she was there.

REGINE HAUCH: The nurse said, "We go in and have a cup of tea together." And then she came back and everything was fine. She was relaxed. She was in the present time, not longer in the past time.

LULU: It's been two years since the bench first went up, and Richard and Regine say they use it all the time.

REGINE HAUCH: Every couple of days.

LULU: Sometimes the nurses will take someone who's upset and wants to go home.

REGINE HAUCH: The nurses say, "Let's go to the bus stop. Let's see what we will do and how we plan the day."

LULU: Or ...

REGINE HAUCH: Sometimes the nurses, they don't see that somebody escaped, and they say, "Oh, where is Mrs. Smith?" and then they look out and go, "Oh, she's waiting for the bus," and then somebody goes there.

LULU: But one thing's always the same: when the people get to the bus stop, the mood is very dark.

REGINE HAUCH: "I'm feeling so lonely. I want to go home."

LULU: And also urgent.

REGINE HAUCH: "My parents wait for me. My children wait for me. I have to go there quick, quick, quick."

LULU: But then after a while, as they're sitting there thinking their escape is on the way, that urgent feeling ...

REGINE HAUCH: Disappears.

LULU: Do you know why? Or can—I guess, can you describe it disappearing? Like, does it go away slowly or suddenly?

REGINE HAUCH: [speaking German]

RICHARD NEUREITHER: [speaking German]

REGINE HAUCH: Richard says it's like another thought comes up, and then you forget what you wanted.

LULU: Yeah.

REGINE HAUCH: You know, it's like fishes coming up to the surface of the water, and then going down again and disappearing. Thoughts come up and they disappear and you don't know that they have ever been there.

LULU: Oh.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah, you'll forget.

LULU: Which is—it's interesting. It's the forgetting is both the problem and the solution.

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah.

JAD: But Lulu, I mean, isn't this maybe a little bit cruel because it is a lie that's happening here. I mean, they are lying to these people.

LULU: Well, sure. It's definitely a lie. There's no way around that. But what's the alternative? I mean, take that woman at the bus stop. What are you supposed to say to her? "I know that you're utterly convinced of this, but actually you're not a little girl. You live in a nursing home." As you can imagine, these kinds of conversations don't go well.

REGINE HAUCH: No.

LULU: They say sometimes they have to restrain the people.

REGINE HAUCH: Hold them back, call the police. They don't accept it because it's not their world. It's two completely different worlds.

LULU: And so, they say, why not just allow that other world to be true for just a beat and then gently coax them back.

REGINE HAUCH: That's the aim of the whole thing: to lead those memories very gently into this now, this today.

LULU: And this idea has sort of spread at the nursing home.

REGINE HAUCH: It changed the atmosphere in the home.

LULU: Now they try to do this sort of time shifting in all different ways.

REGINE HAUCH: Sounds a little bit complicated, but it isn't.

LULU: Like ...

REGINE HAUCH: For example ...

LULU: ... they had this guy who's a baker who always used to want to get up ...

REGINE HAUCH: At two o'clock in the morning.

LULU: And they used to say, "No, you know ..."

JAD: "Go back to bed."

LULU: "Go back to bed. We're working".

REGINE HAUCH: Yeah.

LULU: But now they just say ...

REGINE HAUCH: "Okay."

LULU: And they let them get up every day.

REGINE HAUCH: At two o'clock.

LULU: They take him to the kitchen and let him bake.

REGINE HAUCH: And then he says, "Well, I'm always in time, and I'm proud I never miss an hour of my work." [laughs]

LULU: And the interesting part for me is that I think about my grandpa wandering through the cold in his slippers, and here's this way in which people can be somewhat lost in their memories and yet exist in the present.

JAD: Safely.

LULU: Safely.

JAD: That's our producer Lulu Miller with the music choice. If you want to know anything more about the Benrath Senior Center in Dusseldorf, Germany, check our website, Radiolab.org. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message two.]

[MAN: I'll do this one more time.]

[WOMAN: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad and Soren Wheeler. Our staff includes Ellen Horne, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell, Pat Walters and Lynn Levy.]

[MAN: With help from Jessica Gross, Douglas Smith and Lewis Calvinetti.]

[WOMAN: Okay.]

[MAN: Thank you very much for your time. Good bye.]

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