In our last episode, we look at how estrangement changes shape over the course of a life: how it can bend or harden, and how it affects new relationships, old memories, and the idea of family. Siobhan hasn?t seen her children since 2008 and has slowly built a new identity; Juliet seeks to reconcile with her mother at the end stages of her life; and Kristen, who has been estranged from her mother since she was a teenager, is now pregnant, and thinking about how to have a relationship with her child that is different from what she experienced.

When we first asked for your stories on estrangement, we wondered if it was like a slow pulling away, or like a flipped switch? In episode two of our three-part series, we talk to four listeners for whom estrangement might have been a long time coming, but the choice to cut ties was recent and abrupt: Juan was kicked out of a group chat; Dinona sent a text to her siblings; Megan received a surprise note on her doorstep from her daughter, and Sonia blocked her parents? numbers.

Brian is on the fence. On the one hand, he no longer believes in the religion he was raised in. ?It?s high control,? he told us, ?rules on everything from what to watch on TV," and "what you do in the bedroom.? On the other hand, leaving the religion would mean losing contact with his parents and wife. ?If I told my mom and my dad where I was, the phone would simply go dead.?

In our first episode of Estrangement, we talk through the stakes?what could you gain by cutting ties, and what feels impossible to lose?

Earlier this year, Anna interviewed writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz onstage at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California. But for most of her adult life, Fran?s lived in New York City, where she found early success with her first two books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the years since, she hasn?t published much, citing a decades-long writer?s block. So she?s become a professional talker, which you may recognize from Martin Scorsese?s multi-part Netflix series, Pretend It?s A City, and which you?ll definitely hear in this conversation as Fran never misses an opportunity to make her audience laugh.

In front of a live audience in Berkeley, Anna and Fran talk about her early years in New York, her strategies for navigating all types of parties, and why her 40+ year old sofa is her favorite place to read.

In Death, Sex & Money?s new three-part series about estrangement, we talk to listeners about cutting family ties, leaving religion, and ending friendships. We also talk to listeners on the other side of estrangement, still desperately wishing for contact, and about what happens after the break.

In January 2020, we released an episode with our listeners? stories about when race became a flashpoint in their friendships. Today, we?re holding a reunion of sorts ? checking back in with those same listeners about the way race, identity, and racism have impacted their friendships since.

Antoinette told us she would have handled an interaction with a white coworker much differently today. ?It's kind of like with kids? when they're upset with each other, you want them to talk it out and then hug it out and then everything's okay,? she said. ?And I think I'm making more peace with the fact that everything might not be okay."? 

Since 2020, Matt has met other people who share his background as a Korean adoptee, and a new diverse group of work friends has also made him feel more comfortable. Chrishana and Sarah have grown even closer, despite changes in their personal lives that could have pulled them apart. And Devan, like Antoinette, told us he?s more quick to disengage with people who don?t share his values.

Check out Matt?s photo series of other Korean adoptees, Where are you really from?. And Chrishana and Sarah talked about reading Big Friendship, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman?s book ? we recorded an episode with them in the summer of 2020. Plus, the Pandemic Toolkit we mentioned, full of activities and coping mechanisms for stress and isolation, still lives here.

*This episode originally ran in 2020

A text message gone wrong. A bachelorette party exclusion. A racist comment during the 2016 debates.

When we asked you all about moments when race became a flashpoint in your friendships, we heard about awkward, funny, and deeply painful moments. "The fact that she could drop me so easily really stung," one listener, Ashley, told us about a childhood friendship that suddenly ended because her friend's parents didn't want her "hanging out with Black kids." Another listener, who we're calling Kathleen, wrote in about the regret she felt about not confronting an ex-friend who posted a racist comment on Facebook. "I don't know if I could have changed her mind," she told us. "But at least [I could have] let her know that what I thought was so wrong about what she was saying, instead of just quietly clicking 'unfriend.'" 

Today, we're sharing your stories about how race, identity, and racism have impacted your friendships. And listen to the episode from our partners at the NPR podcast Code Switch, featuring expert advice on navigating those flashpoint moments around race?and explaining why it's so hard to make, and maintain, cross-racial friendships.

*This episode originally ran in 2015, with an update recorded in 2017.

Anna first talked with a woman we're calling Emma in 2015. At the time, Emma was supporting her family as a sex worker and wrote Anna an email ? she wanted to share her story about how she got into sensual massage and why she didn't feel any guilt about working with married clients. Am I facilitating cheating? ?I guess so," she wrote. "Can I sleep at night? Mostly."

After Anna spoke with Emma that first time, Emma called her back, saying their interview made her realize how much she needed to get away from her job. She canceled her appointments and took some time off. She also asked us not to use her interview. But after a few months, she started seeing clients again ? and told Anna that she wanted to talk. She said she was trying to figure out a way to go back to school and put sex work behind her, but wasn't sure how she'd pull it off.

Then, in 2017, Anna reached back out to Emma to check-in and hear about what had happened in Emma?s life since they talked. As it turns out, a lot had changed.

Sandra Cisneros is one of America?s most celebrated coming of age writers. Her book The House on Mango Street is a staple in American classrooms and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Her latest book is a collection of poetry called Woman Without Shame. Sandra brought that same shameless spirit to this conversation, including everything from finding birth control and a mode of sexual freedom that worked for her as a working-class Mexican American in the 1970s, to her questionable taste in romantic partners and her decision to move across the border in her late 50s to start a new life for herself and her dogs in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

A powerful intuitive sense has guided all of these choices, Sandra told Anna. She says she?s been sensitive to the world around her since she was a kid ? it?s something her mother saw as a weakness. But as Sandra puts it, ?I just have a big radar disc.? Over the years, that radar disc has helped her translate natural beauty into poems and receive spiritual messages. It?s been a little less helpful in pointing her away from disastrous relationships, but she?s taken those in stride. ?When I was young, it was more like, ?Where is that other half? Where is he??? Sandra says, ?[But now] I feel a sense of joy and completeness that I didn't feel when I was younger.?

Hrishikesh Hirway is a musician and the host of one of Anna?s favorite podcasts, ?Song Exploder,? which describes how a song is built track by track by the artists who made it. Music has always been at the heart of Hrishikesh?s life as his mother, Kanta, loved to sing (and to hear Hrishikesh sing). Kanta married his father when she was 24 and they moved to the US from India that same year.

Hrishikesh remembers his mother as the bubbly, social center of her friends and family, but towards the end of her life Kanta developed a degenerative neurological condition ? PSP, which stands for progressive supranuclear palsy ? that limited her mobility, and eventually, her ability to communicate. Kanta died in the fall of 2020 and Hrishikesh has been releasing new solo music this year about the grief of losing his mother when she was in her early 70s, and in the years leading up to her death. Anna talks to Hrishikesh about Kanta, about the eight years it took to get her a diagnosis, and about her life before her illness.

Elaine Mitchell came of age in the counterculture of second wave feminism. When she was diagnosed with likely curable rectal cancer at age 66, she decided to exclusively pursue alternative cures, instead of conventional medicine. Rachel, Elaine?s kid, was 30 at the time, and they spent years trying to convince her to get surgery. But Elaine never wavered. Despite all their painful disagreements, Rachel became Elaine?s primary caretaker as she was dying.

Rachel and Elaine?s dynamic never followed a typical mother-child script (if there is such a thing). Elaine modeled independence and self-reliance for Rachel, always letting Rachel make their own decisions ? including when Rachel dropped out of high school to become a traveling hippie. Eventually, Rachel started working as a radio producer for the CBC. There, they created an award-winning audio piece called, ?Dead Mom Talking,? which first aired on The Sunday Edition (and which is excerpted in our conversation). Rachel also released a memoir, Dead Mom Walking: A Memoir of Miracle Cures and Other Disasters, which was just published in the U.S..

In this episode, Rachel talks about the ways autonomy drove both of their lives, and about the humor at the heart of their relationship, even as they argued about Elaine?s end of life choices. ?Our relationship wasn?t perfect,? Rachel says, ?but it was great.?

*This episode originally ran in 2019. 

Andrea grew up attending an evangelical church in Texas, where she was taught to abstain from sex until marriage and keep herself sexually "pure." That early sex education?and her decision to have premarital sex anyway?had long-lasting impact, well into her adulthood. 

This episode was part of our month-long series called Our Sex (Mis)Educations. Find the entire series here.

India Walton grew up in Buffalo, New York, a starkly segregated city, where 85 percent of the city's Black residents live on the East Side. She started a family there at 14 and then a career as a nurse in her 20s. In her 30s, she left a violent marriage, became a neighborhood organizer, and decided to run for mayor.

In June 2021, India shocked the political establishment and won the Democratic primary, beating the four-term incumbent mayor. She was shocked, too, and the jubilant video of her calling her mom that night went viral. But, the mayor did not concede, and he won the general election after he launched a write-in campaign.

Five months after India lost that election, a gunman shot up a grocery store on Buffalo's East Side and killed 10 people in a racially motivated attack.

In this episode, we talk about when government helped India and let her down, and how growing up poor and Black in Buffalo fueled her drive to change systems ? in healthcare, education and housing politics.

Want to hear more of DSM's past episodes with political leaders and public officials? Listen to Anna chat with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and way back, in one of the show?s very first episodes, former Wyoming Senator Al Simpson.

John Waters is the writer and director of such cult classics like Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom, and his biggest mainstream success, Hairspray. He?s been making movies since the 1960s and this year he released his debut novel, Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance.

The novel is an incredibly dirty romp filled with the kind of taboo storytelling that John Waters revels in. In his work, he shines a light on the worst of us but rarely to ridicule, more as a reminder of how gloriously sinful we can be, as we discussed when I spoke with him in his Manhattan home. His interest in the carnal, though, has its limits. ?When I got a colonoscopy, they said, do you wanna watch? No!? he told us. ?Why do I wanna go on a fantastic voyage up my a?hole?? 

We also talked about money management, aging, and his secret to maintaining his many long friendships. ?I do stay in touch and if anything bad happens to you, I call. If you get a bad review, I call. If you go to jail, I definitely am your first visit,? he laughed. ?I never don't come visit you if you're in jail.? 

For many of us, the last few years of the pandemic has given us time to reflect on different aspects of our identities and how we show up in the world. That's meant more room to explore what silhouettes, colors, and textures feel good, what haircuts work or don't, and what you love?and what you hate?about getting dressed up in the first place.

And for a couple of listeners, ruminating on their personal style has also meant thinking about community, and how clothes fit us into social spaces. A listener named Stephen told me he can remember what he wore in most social interactions. "The clothing in all of these memories is like the set of extras that don't have any lines." For another listener, Bill, fashion allows him to recognize himself as a trans man, and who he wants to attract? or avoid. "I think about what I wear a lot," he told me. "It takes up space in my brain that doesn't always feel good." This week, your personal style transformations: the good, the bad, and everything in between.

*This episode originally ran in 2016. 

When Lucinda Williams was in elementary school, all the other kids brought rock collections and other standard fare to show-and-tell. But she brought a folder. "I put this notebook together of seven poems and a short story by Cindy Williams," she remembers. Decades later, she's still documenting her impressions of the world, now in raw, often mournful songs that explore death, heartbreak, abandonment, and love. Many of her them are based in the American south, where Lucinda grew up?including those on the album The Ghosts of Highway 20. "I know these roads like the back of my hand," she sings on the title track.     

Lucinda was close to her father, poet Miller Willams, throughout her life. He encouraged her interest in words and writing, even taking her to visit Flannery O'Connor when she was a little girl. So it was especially hard for her to see him go through Alzheimer's disease. He died a year before our conversation, less than six months after the summer day when he told Lucinda he couldn't write poetry anymore. "I just sat there and just cried," she remembers. "That was when I lost him." 

In her sixties, Lucinda says she's more successful than ever, selling out shows on the road and happily in love with her manager Tom Overby, whom she married on stage during an encore in 2009. But, she told me, getting older can still feel like a drag. "I don't like the aging process. I don't like getting older because of all the loss. It just gets harder and harder."

See the video on Lucinda's Facebook page of her performance of "Compassion" at her father's home before he died. Miller Williams reads his poem, and Lucinda follows by singing her musical interpretation.

Even before becoming Big Freedia, Freddie Ross was known around New Orleans. Her "signature call"?an operatic bellow that she lets out when I ask to hear it?was legendary in the city. "They'd be like, 'Oh that's Freddie in the club'.... The signature call comes very loud. And proud."

Freedia came out to her mom as gay when she was 13, and soon came out to her classmates as well. She tells me she "had to do what every other gay kid had to do: fight for their life, and let people know that you are not no joke." She eventually started performing as part of New Orleans' queer bounce music scene, and became a local celebrity. 

Then, in 2005, Freedia got shot. "What the motive was, I don?t know to this day still," she says. After finally mustering the courage to start performing again, Freedia also moved into a new place, to get a fresh start. Hurricane Katrina hit about a week later. She and her family were together at her duplex during the storm, where the water rose to the second floor. They cut a hole in the roof to signal for help. Days after being evacuated, Freedia made her way to Houston, where she lived for two years. 

In Houston, Freedia met her boyfriend, Devon. After years of dating men who weren't openly gay, Freedia says Devon's openness about their relationship has made a difference. "When your love grows for somebody and y?all get closer you wanna...feel more appreciated, and you wanna feel loved," she says.

Freedia eventually returned to New Orleans, where her career continues to expand. ?A lot was happening after Katrina. I mean money was slinging everywhere,? Freedia tells me. ?You know everybody had FEMA checks, girl!? I talk with Freedia about what's happened in her life in the years since she returned to her hometown: publishing a memoir, starring in a reality TV series, and losing her beloved mother to cancer. 

* This interview is from 2015 and part of a series about New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Big Freedia performs her song "Excuse" before she and over 300 dancers set the Guinness World Record for most people twerking simultaneously:

 Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce Season 4 Trailer:

When talking about the death of his husband, Terry Kaelber doesn't use the word suicide, "I tend to say he took his own life out of deep distress about the environment through self-immolation." Terry says it's out of respect for David that he chooses his words carefully ? "It was a rational decision on his part." 

In 2018, David Buckel doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Minutes before, he sent a note to prominent media outlets. He wrote, ?Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result?my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.? David was 60, an environmentalist, and a former LGBTQ rights lawyer.

In this episode I talk to Terry about how he thinks about David's death now, and how grief still connects them. "I would never want the grief to go away," he says, "It's always a reminder of how important we were to each other." We also talk about moving on and finding new adventure and joy ? "If somebody had said to me within the first year of David's death, that this would happen, I would've said you're crazy."

For more Terry, listen to him on Vox?s Today, Explained, along with Tim DeChristopher who was imprisoned for his climate activism. And if you are experiencing climate grief, we encourage you to go back and listen to our episode with researcher Britt Wray about our emotional reactions to the reality of climate change where we also link to resources. 

If you lived in Columbus, Georgia in the 90s, you might have spent time in a queer club called Sensations. But Bob the Drag Queen knew Sensations by day, not night ? she was in elementary school when her mom owned the place. As a kid, Bob would try to help clean or bust a move on the dance floor.

A couple years into college, Bob left the South for New York City. She performed in drag for the first time, turned her big ideas into iconic side hustles, and auditioned for, and eventually won, season 8 of RuPaul?s Drag Race. But, that schedule didn?t leave her a lot of room for romance. Bob and I talked about making time for her first boyfriend in her 30s, trying to move her family into a bigger home, and supporting and collaborating with queer and trans people in small U.S. towns as a co-host of the HBO reality show We?re Here.

Here we are again: Just weeks before the federal pause on student loans is set to expire, with indications that the pause will be extended, and hints at debt forgiveness, but no concrete course of action as of recording this episode in early August.

With so much uncertainty, we decided to invite our favorite expert on the topic, Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, to take some of your questions. Maybe not surprisingly, we got a lot of them. Some of you dreaded budgeting back in loan payments after the pause ends (for that Betsy suggests trying a loan simulator), and many of you had questions about Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), and whether the changes the Biden administration made to the program are here to stay. Betsy says, "I have researched the Higher Education Act back to the seventies, and Congress has never, ever retroactively removed a benefit from existing student loans. There is practically as close to zero of a risk of PSLF going away."

If you have a question that was not answered in this episode, you can contact Betsy by going to her website where you can also find all sorts of helpful resources, like a guide to forgiveness, and where to start when thinking about a repayment plan. 

In the weeks leading up to and after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which ended almost 50 years of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, we asked you to tell us how you?re feeling, and how you?re thinking and talking about family planning and access to reproductive care. Some of you told us about your anger, your fears, and we also heard stories about difficult conversations with loved ones, or a sense of clarity about the options in front of you.

And as the post-Roe landscape continues to shift state by state, we wanted to hear from someone in Mississippi, the state at the center of this landmark Supreme Court case. "There's no getting around that the impact is on everyone," said Laurie Bertram Roberts, co-founder and executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. I spoke with Laurie about the ways this moment was expected, how their work has changed post-Roe, and why they feel both rage??and a sense of hope??about what's to come.

It can sometimes feel like alcohol?whether you're drinking it or not?is an intrinsic element of navigating adulthood. After all, over 70 percent of American adults drink. We take drinking so much for granted that we often fail to really engage with the role it's playing in our lives. "It?s been a piece of everything since we?ve turned 21, or 18," a listener named Cari told us. "We've always had a drink or been drinking when we?ve been at parties. And it?s so funny that I?m 34, and that is a worry: that if I weren?t drinking, maybe the party would move to someone else?s house."

We asked you to share your experiences with alcohol?why you drink or don't, the strategies you use to manage your consumption, and what alcohol brings you besides a buzz. And we learned that our feelings about alcohol are much more complicated than we tend to acknowledge. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with alcohol or seeking more information about alcohol consumption, check out these resources.

When we called Jacob Lawson, a 23-year-old Starbucks worker from Utah, he was on his way to another Starbucks store in Idaho to help them start a union. "It?s not too far from Utah. It's 150 miles, but I?ve driven further to help a store unionize," he told us. 

By now, you've probably heard that the Starbucks union is having a moment. Since the first store successfully voted to form a union in 2021, more than 175 stores in 30 states have followed suit. The reasons for the union's success are varied ? support from the established union, Workers United, and small store sizes make getting a majority vote simpler ? but the Starbucks unionizing drive is also extremely collaborative, made up of mostly young people who talk to each other from stores across the country and share tips. For this episode, we invited a few of these workers to tell us what their experience has been like. I met Jacob Lawson, 20-year-old Laila Dalton from Phoenix, Arizona, and 33-year-old Benjamin South from Ithaca, New York over Zoom. When we talked on a Friday in early June, they were all experiencing different turns in the unionizing story, some victories, some defeats, and some very real consequences of going up against a multi-billion dollar company.

On July 16, 2022, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline becomes a 3-digit number: 988. This switch means that many local call centers across the country are preparing for a higher volume of calls. And for someone in crisis, it means a lot to hear someone on the line who knows the community they're calling from.

In Wyoming, that sort of knowledge can be helpful, and also a deterrent to accessing mental health services. "We?re very rural. Everybody knows your business," Karen Sylvester told me. She's the director of training and fundraising for the Wyoming Lifeline, one of two new call centers in the state that began operating in 2020. "And so when it comes to somebody struggling, the last place that they want to have their car parked is outside the mental health office. So that everybody in town can whisper or try to decide what they think is going on with so-and-so."

Wyoming had the highest suicide rate per capita in the US in 2020, and while that impacts people across all demographics, white men 25 and older account for most of the deaths by suicide in the state. I talk to suicide prevention advocates, as well as a suicide attempt survivor, about the changes ahead in the state.

When actress Niecy Nash and R&B singer-songwriter Jessica Betts first met in 2015, they struck up a deep friendship. So when they began to fall in love a few years later, they were both caught off-guard. Niecy was newly divorced and had never been in a relationship with a woman before, and Jessica didn't think she could find love again. But they took the plunge, and when they announced their relationship and marriage publicly in the summer of 2020, they didn't expect the outpouring of love and support.

Almost two years into their marriage, they're still learning about each other's habits and quirks, and are just as in love and hot for each other as ever. They joined me from their Los Angeles home to tell me about their love story, how they learned to live together during the pandemic, their faith, and the surprising ways their age difference shows up in their marriage.

Want to hear more Niecy? Listen to our 2017 episode, "Life in Our 20s: Advice from Niecy Nash, Alia Shawkat & Terri Coleman," or my 2015 interview with her for NPR's Fresh Air.

When Nan Bauer-Maglin was 60 years old, her husband left her for his 25-year-old student. "I thought about suicide. You know, there?s a great feeling of rejection especially if you?re older," she told me. "You just feel ugly and invisible and sad and quite gray."

Nan wrote a book inspired by their breakup and called it Cut Loose. "First I was gonna call it 'Dumped.' But that?s so negative," she told me. "Cut Loose is also about freedom."

Nan is one of hundreds of listeners who shared their breakup stories with us, after we asked for them last year. And she's not the only one who mentioned a potent mix of rejection, liberation, and confusion at the end of a relationship.

A listener named Drew remembers when his boyfriend went on a trip, left his dog at Drew's house, and never came back. Thomas*, who got married right out of college, is 25 and unsure of what his life will look like after his impending divorce. Mia sent in a voice memo about leaving her boyfriend behind, and struggling with the decision years later. Identical twins Matthew and Peter Slutsky realized they needed to break up after years of living parallel lives: attending the same college, working the same jobs, living with their families in the same neighborhood. Creating some distance was part of growing up, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hurtful.

In your breakup stories, you also described how hard it can be to know when it's over. Steve* knows he's not happy right now, but isn't sure if the problem is him or his long-term boyfriend. "I love him and I don?t want to hurt him," he told me. "This just seems like kind of a way to wipe the slate clean and start over."

Sometimes, though, breaking up can also feel like a long overdue exhale. Beth, a listener in Philadelphia, recalls the day when she was riding her bike on her commute and choked out the words, "I don't want to be married!" She was divorced within a year, and looking back now, wishes she hadn't waited so long to be honest about her feelings.

Whether you're in the middle of a breakup or you've been through one in the past, check out breakupsurvival.guide, a website our listener Emily Theis built from your best suggestions about what to read, watch, listen to and do after a split.

*Name changed for privacy reasons

We're re-airing this episode from 2017. Listen to the end for some relationship and life updates. 

One of the first things Mary Gundel told us about her childhood was that the Florida foster care system left her with a persistent sense that she was invisible. "Nobody cared, nobody wanted me," she said. Pregnant at 16, then again at 18, and with a third child diagnosed with autism a little while after that, Mary and her husband worked many low wage jobs on opposite schedules so someone could always be home with the kids. But despite feeling unseen, Mary told me story after story about how she changed the lives of her coworkers and loved ones, from taking in a friend's kid, to staying late at the register when a coworker called out, no questions asked.

These sorts of stories might have stayed confined to Mary's small Tampa network had she not become an overnight TikTok celebrity. Her viral moment? A 6-part series documenting her day-to-day frustrations managing a Dollar General, one of America's largest convenience stores, where she worked for three and half years. We talked about what led her to speak out about working conditions on social media, getting fired, and igniting a national workers? movement. Invisible no more, Mary concedes, ?They?re listening to me now!?

When Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein was growing up in New York City in the 60s, he was surrounded by the beginnings of the gay rights movement, and protest art and avant-garde theater was the norm. "I didn't know that being gay was sad until I got out into the world and they told me that," he said in our interview. "All the gay people I know are really kind of happy."

And writing from that lens has informed his work ever since. In his new memoir, I Was Better Last Night, Harvey shares the six year journey to get his breakthrough play, Torch Song Trilogy, on Broadway, and shares other behind the scenes stories from hit Broadway plays like Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, and La Cage aux Folles. He also told me about his relationship with his younger brother turned business manager, why he's happily single and sober, and how he thinks he'll be remembered.

At the beginning of the calendar year, when Omicron was surging across much of the country, we asked those of you that are educators to tell us what led to your profession in the midst of another difficult pandemic school year, and how you were coping with it all. You told us about burnout, navigating confusing and changing rules about safety and politics in the classroom, feeling undervalued as workers, and why some of you were leaving education altogether.

As the end of the school year approached, I followed up with four teachers in school districts across the country, from a middle school librarian in rural Wyoming, to a teacher navigating their first year of in-person teaching in New York. They told me about how the year has gone, the effects on their personal life, and what they're most excited about for this summer.

Journalist Maria Hinojosa and the staffs of Futuro Media and PRX recently won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting for the podcast "Suave." For Maria, winning this accolade took years of hard work.

Maria is best known as the host of the public radio program Latino USA, a role she's occupied for over 25 years. But before then, she had to navigate newsrooms at CBS, NPR, CNN, and PBS at a time where she was often the first and the only Latina journalist there. As she wrote in her memoir, Once I Was You, that meant having to walk with confidence and believing in her work when, she says, her mostly white colleagues didn't.

But, as Maria told me when we spoke back in 2020, the confidence she built while working in media didn't totally translate to other parts of her life. "You know, my marriage almost broke up because of my ego," she said. And as her career became more successful, she told me about the times she says she didn't prioritize her husband and her kids, about the crisis point that led her to reevaluate her role in her relationship and as a mother, and about how, these days, she is practicing listening and self-love. Plus, I catch up with Maria and she tells me about the significance of the award for her.

If you're like me, you might have a hard time getting to the end of articles that predict climate catastrophe. You might put a lot of faith in technology to save us, and you certainly don't want to think about an unsafe climate future for any young children in your life. If you're more like my guest for this episode, Britt Wray, you may have had periods of time where you can't stop thinking about climate catastrophe, times when your climate anxiety became so unbearable you couldn't function.

Britt?s new book is all about our emotional reactions to climate change. She says, "these abilities to sit with the emotions and allow them to be there is actually really crucial to climate action at all." We met for a hike through the Santa Cruz mountains and we talked about how she emerged from debilitating climate dread, and how she grappled with the question of whether or not to have a child. "In the end the decision to not have a child felt like a commitment to fear. And then on the flip side, deciding to have a child felt like a commitment to joy."

Do you want to lessen your climate anxiety while also helping the planet? Britt says, "It's a crucial step to find community with others who can stand in the fire with you, who get it, who will mirror and validate the concerns and will never say you're overreacting." Here are some resources she suggests:

The Good Grief Network, modeled off of a 12-step program, hosts in-person meetings around climate anxiety and climate action. Conceivable Future hosts parties for people to talk about family planning in a warming world, and The All We Can Save Project offers a how-to guide on starting your own community talking group. Subscribe to Britt Wray's news letter Gen Dread, which is all about staying sane in the climate crisis. 

Britt Wray is a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and author of the new book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis  

Back in 2021, we asked you to tell us about the hard conversations you were struggling to have in honor of the release of my book, Let's Talk About Hard Things. One of the people I talked to was a listener named Fey. Fey is 27 and lives in Maryland, and she has a degenerative eye condition. Eventually, she will probably lose her eyesight completely. She'd written us an email about her "tricky sense of disability identity." 

As Fey's sight worsens, she struggles to know how and when to open up to people in her life about it?friends, dates, coworkers. Over the course of several conversations in the last year, I talked with Fey about how and when to disclose her disability, gaining independence, and relying on others. Plus, she gets a pep talk from a fellow visually impaired Nigerian American, EDM singer Lachi.

Come sing along with me at a special sing-a-long karaoke party in honor of the paperback release of Let's Talk About Hard Things. We'll drink, talk and SING about hard things in NYC on May 6, at 7pm at The Greene Space. You can email us any time to share your stories at [email protected]. 

Anna talks with her WNYC colleague Nancy Solomon about her new podcast, Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery.

New Jersey politics is not for the faint of heart. But the brutal killing of John and Joyce Sheridan, a prominent couple with personal ties to three governors, shocks even the most cynical operatives. The mystery surrounding the crime sends their son on a quest for truth. Dead End is a story of crime and corruption at the highest levels of society in the Garden State.

EVENT: Come sing along with me at a special sing-a-long karaoke party in honor of the paperback release of my book, Let's Talk About Hard Things. We'll drink, talk and SING about hard things. 

For all the things we share with our brothers and sisters -- parents, genes, a childhood -- most of us have also wondered at one point or another how we could possibly be related to our siblings. As we grow up, it can be hard to update those relationships that were forged so long ago. You were children together; it can be hard to act like adults together.

More than 200 of you reached out to tell me your sibling stories. I heard from Alix, whose twin sister, Katie, has cerebral palsy. ?Every time I reach another milestone in my adult life,? she said, ?it feels like something that [Katie] can?t ever get to.? Mike told me about sobering up at 50?and losing the thing that brought him and his drinking buddy brother together. Paul* reflected on why he feels angry at his big sister, whom he used to look up to. Consuello debated whether or not to let her younger brother come and live with her, after she found out he was homeless. And Megan* opened up about the brother she decided didn?t exist anymore, 30 years ago.

We also heard from people without siblings -- like Sabrina, who cared for her mom when she got sick last year. And, I called up my four sisters, all at once, in four separate time zones.

*Name changed

This episode first aired in 2015. Listen to updates from most of the siblings here. 

EVENT: Come sing along with me at a special sing-a-long karaoke party in honor of the paperback release of my book, Let's Talk About Hard Things. We'll drink, talk and SING about hard things. In San Francisco: on May 3rd, at 6:30pm at Manny's. In NYC: On May 6, at 7pm at The Greene Space.

Carson Tueller became paralyzed from the chest down after an accident in 2013. "I absolutely know that there is a sense of loss and grieving that comes when you lose physical function," he told Death, Sex, & Money, our colleagues at WNYC. "If you could previously have an erection and have penetrative sex with your partner in a really fulfilling way and you can't anymore, the grief and the loss from that is totally legitimate." However, Carson adds, "that doesn't have to mean that something's wrong with you. It just means it?s time to learn how to have sex differently." 

In this final part of DSM's series Hard, we hear from Viagra users past and present whose ideas about sex have shifted?from being a goal-oriented pursuit to one that is much more about pleasure and acceptance. 

This is the third episode of a three-part series. Listen to the first episode?about the impact of ED and Viagra on relationships?here, and the second episode?about the surprising origin story of the drug?here. 

When Dr. Irwin Goldstein started his career in urology in the 1970s, he remembers asking his mentor?an early pioneer in penile implant surgeries?"How the hell does an erection occur in the first place?" His answer: 'We have absolutely no idea,'" Dr. Goldstein recalls. "So I said, okay, well, this is what I'm doing." 

In this second episode of our three-part series, Hard, we dive into the medical and scientific advancements that led up to Viagra's FDA approval in 1998. From an unforgettable conference presentation...to an overnight drug study where an unexpected side effect kept popping up...we hear about the strange twists and turns that eventually led to a little blue pill, from some of the people who were there along the way. Plus, we explore the intentionality around the early marketing of Viagra?when former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole encouraged men to summon the bravery to talk to their doctors?and we hear how that message has shifted over the years.

This is the second episode of a three-part series. Listen to the first episode, about the impact of ED and Viagra on relationships, here. And look out for our episode next week, where we meet people for whom Viagra sparked deeper exploration about the meaning of good sex. 

Bob first started experiencing erectile dysfunction in his 50s. "The erections wouldn't last," he told me, "and that became kind of a frustration." Bob and his wife, Joanne, tried asking their doctors for help?but it was the mid-1990s, and medical interventions were limited. "I think back then [ED] was kind of looked upon as, you're getting older and this is going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it type thing," Bob told me. "That?s life, guy!"

A lot has changed since then. In 1998, Viagra was approved by the FDA, suddenly opening up new sexual possibilities for people like Bob and Joanne. The drug also sparked a very public conversation about erectile dysfunction?one that, despite beginning earnestly, quickly veered toward late-night punchlines. "There's just so many memes and so much pop culture reference in a joking manner," a woman we're calling Louise told me, whose husband has prostate cancer-related ED. "[Viagra is] for the couple, it's for the marriage, the relationship, the partnership. It isn't just about a guy getting a boner." 

And while millions of Viagra prescriptions have been written during its almost 25 years of existence, for some, Viagra has not been the quick fix they hoped it would be. A listener named Brandon takes medication for depression and anxiety, and found that for him, erections when taking Viagra are "very much a roll of the dice." Yet in a world where ED drugs are readily available?he feels a lot of pressure to perform. "This oversexualized culture doesn't say anything about having sex and not being able to get an erection as being okay," he told me. "It's very much big hard dicks flying everywhere." 

This is the first episode of a three-part series. Look out for our episode next week where we go back in time to tell the story of how medicine, science, money and marketing collided to create a Viagra explosion. 

At the start of this year, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage achieved a feat. Three of her works?Clyde's, the musical MJ, and an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel?were playing on New York City stages simultaneously. But three decades ago, during the height of the AIDS and crack epidemics, Lynn almost stopped writing plays for good. "I was watching many of my classmates and my professors get sick and die or succumb to drug addiction," she told me about her time at drama school. "And it was really hard to stay focused on writing and figure out, well, why am I writing? And what is it that I want to write about when there's so much trauma?"

Lynn grew up in Brooklyn, where she now lives in her childhood home. She spoke with me from her living room about how bombing a test in college led her to theater, how quitting her day job and cashing in her 401(k) helped her return to it, and how she shares "marriage miles" with her filmmaker husband.

We recently asked you to tell us about the decisions weighing on you about your romantic lives. The strangeness of the past two years has impacted all of our relationships?in both negative and positive ways?yet in this time of not-normalcy, it can feel especially hard to make decisions that bring big change into our lives. 

So, we gathered a panel to help you sort through it all: Foreverland author and "Ask Polly" columnist Heather Havrilesky, Gawker editor and co-host of the podcast Straightiolab George Civeris, and Tuck Woodstock, host of the podcast Gender Reveal.

Listen as Heather, George, and Tuck give advice to listeners contemplating long-distance relationships, coming to terms with betrayal, navigating the fallout of a throuple, and more.

Many of the marriages in producer Ian Coss? family have ended in divorce. His parents? marriage, his grandparents?s marriage, as well as some of his aunts and uncles? marriages. Ian is married, but he?s spent a lot of time thinking about the legacy of divorce in his family, about the failures and successes of those marriages, and what came after they ended. So he sat down with his relatives and talked to them about those relationships and ending them, which he turned into the critically-acclaimed podcast Forever is a Long Time.

As someone who?s been divorced myself, I wanted to know more about Ian?s family, and what he?s learned from his relatives about commitment, self-determination, and how he applies that to his own marriage.

Lisa Fischer has sung backing vocals for Dolly Parton, Bobby McFerrin, Luther Vandross and Beyoncé. She's also toured with the Rolling Stones since 1989, going from one swanky hotel to another, "eating caviar for breakfast" and playing sold out stadiums. ?I feel like a normal girl,? she says, ?visiting for a very long time in the not-normal world.?

It wasn?t the world she came from. Lisa grew up in Brooklyn. Her mom was pregnant with her at 15, and had two more children by the time she was 19. Money was tight, and when Lisa was 14, her father left. Her mom started drinking heavily, and died three years later after complications from seizures. 

By her mid-twenties, she was touring as a backup singer, and in 1991 she won a Grammy for her first solo album, So Intense. But soon after, she lost her record deal, and returned to singing backup. The 2013 documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom highlighted some of the glory, and struggle, that came with her years on the road. "When I think about the money that I have gone through I have to laugh to myself," she told me during our conversation. "I don?t like to look at how much I have because it?s never enough."

This conversation took place in 2015. Listen to the end to hear an update from Lisa, about getting back on stage during the pandemic and the financial realities of being a musician during COVID. 

Below, watch Lisa Fischer on stage with the Rolling Stones, and singing with Luther Vandross. 

Brendan Paul never meant to become an Elvis impersonator. He wanted to play in rock bands like Kiss and was an art major in college at UCLA. But one day in his early 20s, he got a haircut?one that left his dark hair a little shaggy on top, with sideburns. "And then the next day at UCLA a girl came up and said, my roommate in my dorm is a huge Elvis fan. If I give you a hundred dollars, can you come sing happy birthday?" he recalled. "I said, absolutely."

Today, Brendan co-owns the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, which claims to be the site of the world's first Elvis-themed wedding. Dressed in sparkly jumpsuits, Brendan marries sometimes as many as 75 people a day?in back to back 15 minute appointments. But while his portrayal of Elvis generally leans into the kitsch, his view on The King's life goes deeper. "That loneliness, that despair, that unsatisfied inside," he told me about Elvis near the end of his life. "A lot people go, 'I bet you wish you were Elvis,' and I always go, 'Not really.'"

This episode is a collaboration with Condé Nast Traveler and their new love and travel series. Read more about Brendan and find other essays about love and travel here.

Self-proclaimed ?professional charmer? André De Shields has performed on stage for more than 50 years. Today, at 76 years old, he brings his Tony Award-winning portrayal of Hermes to the Broadway musical Hadestown eight times a week. ?I?m the slowest moving entity on the stage, which mesmerizes people,? he told me. ?They want to know, ?Why is this person moving so monstrously slowly? He must know something.??

André shared some of his immense knowledge with me: stories about his coming of age sexual awakening with a woman twice his age, words of wisdom he learned from Sammy Davis Jr., and the lessons about learning to live with your shadow. Since his diagnosis with HIV and the loss of his life partner, André has had many conversations with death, but he has determined that the only way to live is to ?enter the darkness. And if you persist, if you will be determined, if you will be hardy, if you will have sufficient stamina, you will enter the light.?

When her kids were young, Jaimie Seaton and her family lived overseas in Asia while her husband worked as a high-ranking executive at a bank. "We lived in a huge house with a pool and staff and a driver," Jaimie told me. "We always traveled business class. We always stayed in 5-star hotels. We always had a lot of parties."

"From where I sit now and how I have to economize, I just kind of shake my head at the amount of money I wasted." 

Jaimie's financial picture looks quite different today. A year after moving back to the U.S., her marriage suddenly ended. At that point, Jaimie hadn't been working much. "I never made much money during my marriage," Jaimie said. "I never needed to." She quickly got a temporary job, but says her spending habits didn't immediately change. "I think of it like a large ship," she said. "It takes a while to turn."

Now, Jaimie brings in some money as a freelance writer, and receives monthly alimony and child support payments. But much of that will end when her children leave the house. "I?m really afraid of being old and being poverty stricken," Jaimie told me. And, she says that she and her kids feel uncomfortable now in social situations where they used to feel that they belonged. "I feel uncomfortable partly because of the money, but mostly because they?re all still married and their families are intact," Jaimie said. "It?s hard to be around it." 

This episode was part of our 2018 collaborative series with BuzzFeed called Opportunity Costs: Money and Class in America. To hear more episodes in this series, go to deathsexmoney.org/class. 

Jaimie wrote a piece for BuzzFeed about her class transition after her divorce. Read it here.  

For people who love Peloton, the company's head instructor Robin Arzón is an inspiration. I know quite a few people who swear by Robin's tough love teaching style and confidence-boosting mantras.

But there was a time when Robin wasn't always confident, or even into athletics. "When I identify with feelings of anxiety, it is the younger version of myself," she told me. "Being picked for kickball or something like that is like my worst nightmare." But in the aftermath of trauma, she started running, and it changed her life.

Robin and I also discussed how she envisioned the home and marriage she has now, the ways becoming a mother changed her relationship to her body, and the limits she places on her time. 

Alice* lives in a small town, where the work dries up in the winter. She and her husband have jobs at a seasonal restaurant, where she says they each make about $500 a week. When it gets cold, they go on unemployment to support themselves and their young daughter. Alice supplements that income by shoplifting. "I do have rules that I follow," she explained. "I don't ever lift from small mom-and-pop kinds of stores. When you lift from somewhere like Walmart they already have it built into their insurance...I would say it feels more like maybe a paper cut, as opposed to stabbing someone."

We first learned about Alice through Tumblr, where there's an active community of people who say they shoplift. They post pictures of their "hauls," as well as tips for other lifters. For Alice, finding that community was huge. "It felt like I had people that I could talk to about it," she told me. "Because it is such a huge part of my life, and to have people that I could talk about it with like it was normal, that felt great. It just sort of opened up a whole new world of possibilities." 

Alice told us she keeps her shoplifting a secret from her husband. And while she used to steal while her daughter was with her, stuffing groceries and makeup into her diaper bag, she says she stopped once her daughter was old enough to understand what was happening. "I don't want her doing something that's obviously dangerous," Alice told us. "I don't ever see her like being a tag team. I don't really want that for her."

Since first talking with Alice in 2017, a lot has happened in Alice's life. We called her back to find out how she and her family fared during the pandemic?and to find out if she's still stealing today. 

Thanks to Tasbeeh Herwees for her help with this story. You can find Tasbeeh's article for GOOD Magazine about the shoplifting community on Tumblr here. And to listen to our 2017 episode featuring your responses to Alice's story, click here. 

*Name changed

For the last couple years, we?ve produced special year-end episodes where the entire Death, Sex & Money team shares moments we?re proud of, and looks back at the year we've been through. But after another difficult year, I'm sharing a concept that's helped me get through it: savoring.

I talk with some of the people and artists who've shared ideas or made work that I've savored this year: including my therapist; Kendra Adachi, host of The Lazy Genius podcast; and Saturday Night Live's Ego Nwodim. Plus, I share more of the TV shows and movies I savored this year.

Looking for The Favorites File from Kendra Adachi? Find it here!

If you're able to give right now, and would like to support our work in 2022 and beyond, visit deathsexmoney.org/donate to make a year-end contribution. Thank you!

Recently, we asked for your stories about how weight and body size has affected your romantic relationships. We heard from single people who are dating, couples who have been together for a long time, and from people who described their bodies as fat, thin, overweight, plus size, and everything in between.

In this episode, I talk with listeners about how navigating weight and body size inside a relationship has sometimes made their partnerships stronger...and sometimes broken them apart. 

Alan Cumming has a favorite Australian mantra: "Shouldn't be a drama." And he told me that he first came across it after a tumultuous period in his life. It was the mid-'90s, and he was struggling with an eating disorder, coming to terms with the abuse he endured from his father as a child, and his first marriage had recently ended.

But as he was navigating those changes, he was also on the cusp of fame. Alan was learning what he liked about living alone in London, and exploring what he called his "debauched phase," which eventually led him to his now-husband. He wrote about this chapter of his life in his new memoir, Baggage: Tales From A Fully Packed Life. "What I'm trying to do is normalize being a hot mess," he told me.

Now 56, Alan and I talked about why non-monogamy works for him and his marriage, what he likes about getting older, and how he stays motivated during his at-home workouts.

If you or a loved one needs support around an eating disorder, you can call or text the National Eating Disorders Association's helpline at (800) 931-2237.

On weekdays between 10 and 3, Yesi Ortiz is the warm, flirty host for the popular Los Angeles hip-hop station Power 106. But off the air, she?s a dedicated single parent of six adopted kids.

Her kids' biological mom is Yesi?s older sister, who had her first child as a teenager. "She had baby after baby after baby," Yesi told me. "She didn't really know how to go out and find a job." When Yesi was in her early 20s and her nieces and nephews landed in foster care, Yesi stepped up, taking parenting classes and eventually petitioning for custody. And when she was 25 years old, the kids came to live with her.

By that point, Yesi was already establishing her broadcasting career, and balancing her roles as a parent and a media personality wasn?t easy. "Every day was a game of chess," she says. "I wouldn?t miss a parent teacher conference or back-to-school night, but I would miss dinner." One thing she didn?t want, though, was a man around the house. Her first date after getting the kids was on her front porch. "I didn't want the kids to hear a man's voice in the house," Yesi told me. "I didn't want them to feel like, 'Oh, my aunt is leaving us now too.'"

Now that several of the kids are grown and out of the house, she?s had a little more time for herself, and for her new boyfriend. She spoke with me about how her faith was challenged by her family's struggles, how her new relationship has brought religion?not sex?back into her life, and why being a single parent is the hardest job in the world.

This episode is originally from 2015.