Couric opened up about her experience with temporary memory loss in a new Substack post
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NEED TO KNOW
- Katie Couric experienced an episode of transient global amnesia during the Aspen Ideas Festival, temporarily losing memory of recent events, she shared in a Substack post
- Her husband John Molner initially suspected dehydration or altitude sickness before doctors diagnosed the rare temporary memory condition
- Couric’s memory returned the next day and she expressed relief the episode wasn’t more serious
Katie Couric shared her experience with transient global amnesia in a new Substack post published on Monday, June 6.
The journalist, 69, experienced the episode during the Aspen Ideas Festival on June 27.
Transient global amnesia, which typically impacts middle-aged and older adults, is “an episode of confusion that comes on suddenly in a person who is otherwise alert,” and is not caused by epilepsy or a stroke, according to Mayo Clinic.
During such episodes, a person is “unable to create new memory, so the memory of recent events disappears,” and may also not remember “where you are or how you got there,” per the clinic.
In a Substack post tiled “A Day I’ll Never Remember,” Couric explained that she did not recall the year or who was currently president.
“I wasn’t sure of the month,” Couric wrote. “I thought it was 2024. And I believed Joe Biden was president.”
She then recounted how the morning played out, during which her husband, John Molner, left his parents’ condo where they were staying to work out. Meanwhile, she took a walk to the local farmer’s market, where she remembered buying “beautiful peaches and nectarines, a big bag of kettle corn and a cute straw hat I really didn’t need.”
The last thing Couric recalled before her memory briefly went blank was Molner, 63, driving her to the Aspen Institute for her scheduled panels, writing that she “was excited to go to the hot dog stand for lunch.”
Couric moderated a panel on AI with futurist Amy Webb and served as a panelist on Journalism’s Next Chapter, which was moderated by Columbia University’s Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb, and featured independent journalist Aaron Parnas and The Argument founder Jerusalem Demsas.
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“I remember nothing from either panel,” Couric wrote in the Substack post. “I have met Jelani and know Aaron a bit, but right now, I couldn’t pick Amy or Jerusalem out of a lineup.”
She added that she has “no idea what we talked about, or of what occurred when the panels ended.”
In the next portion of the post, Molner wrote that he “noticed nothing unusual in the conversation or Katie’s role” in either of the panels. After stepping out to give Couric time to speak with audience members after the panel, Molner said an intern tracked him down to let him know that “Katie wasn’t feeling well.”
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“Having spent a lot of time in Aspen since I was a kid, I assumed Katie was dehydrated and suffering from some form of altitude sickness — something common among visitors to a town that’s about 7,900 feet above sea level,” Molner wrote, explaining his thought process while speaking with an internist and an EMT as they assessed his wife.
She was then brought to Aspen Valley Hospital, where she revealed to doctors that she could not recall the names of some of her grandchildren or her daughter Carrie’s boyfriend. Doctors promptly conducted an MRI scan on Couric to determine if she had experienced a stroke, and determined that she had not. Instead, they diagnosed her with transient global amnesia.
Couric shared that a doctor informed her that her memory would return to normal the following day, and that it did.
“While this was a freaky occurrence, it could have been much more serious,” Couric wrote. “So ultimately, I’m relieved — even though several hours of a Saturday in June will always be missing for me.”
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