Katie Couric suffered an episode of what doctors told her was “transient global amnesia” on June 27, according to an article on her Substack titled “A Day I’ll Never Remember.” The post recounts what little she could remember of the incident, which took
place in Aspen just before lunchtime, before her husband, John Molner, fills in the gaps.
On that day, she expected to speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “John drove with me to the campus of the Aspen Institute and was excited to go to the hot dog stand for lunch. (They’re really good hot dogs!)” she wrote. “That’s the last thing I remember.” When the episode set in, however, and she entered medical care, she could no longer discern the year (2024, she told doctors) or who was president (Biden, for her in that moment.) Doctors, Molner wrote when he took over the post, suspected she’d suffered a stroke.
“She reintroduced herself to the nurses every time they came into the room,” Molner wrote (via Variety). “I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day as she repeatedly asked me the same questions: ‘What was I doing before we got to the hospital?’ ‘Why am I at the hospital?’ Over the course of the next several hours, she asked me a version of those questions dozens of times. I’d answer, and a few minutes later (sometimes sooner), she’d ask the same question! Wash, rinse, repeat.”
An MRI and other tests ruled out a stroke, at which point doctors diagnosed her with transient global amnesia. The Mayo Clinic describes this diagnosis as “an episode of confusion that comes on suddenly in a person who is otherwise alert” but the confusion “isn’t caused by a more common neurological condition, such as epilepsy or stroke.”
To help Couric understand, before she repeated herself, Molner wrote her a note explaining this and left it beside her. “You need to rest now but you will be 100% fine tomorrow! XOXO,” he wrote.
Couric now has no idea what triggered the episode. “So why did this happen to me?” she wrote. “Was the altitude an issue? Was I dehydrated? Tired? Stressed? The literature doesn’t seem to indicate that these are contributing factors, but the cause seems to be as mysterious as the brain itself. All I know is that those hours will be forever lost.” Even though she doesn’t know the cause, she says she’s relieved it’s over.
The reporter, who now very likely knows who is president, spoke out against the media’s “capitulation” to President Trump in April. A former anchor of CBS Evening News, which has come under scrutiny this year, Couric described the way the administration has gone after newscasters as “a good old-fashioned shakedown.” She added, “I haven’t seen a lot of profiles in courage during this really perilous time.”
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