Bob the Drag Queen and J. Smith Cameron on Sharing Money

+ got any tips for reconnecting with friends?

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On Death, Sex & Money this week, we have two conversations about money and place.

I talk with Bob the Drag Queen in an episode we call “Bob the Drag Queen Says Polyamory Is Expensive.” We first ran this episode in 2021, and in the shadow of the 2024 presidential campaign, I liked listening again to how she talks about moving between very different American communities. Bob is currently on a tour of the US and Canada, fresh off of opening for Madonna.

Listen here.

And for Slate Plus members, I have a new conversation with actor J. Smith Cameron, who played Geri on Succession, about giving and asking for money. She’s raising money for state legislative candidates this year, and we talk about the particulars of raising money from people in the artistic community, where earnings can be irregular and quite varied.

You can listen here.

Also, if you haven’t caught up on the latest season of Hacks — the one that just won the Emmy for best comedy show — make sure you get through it to see J. Smith Cameron play Jean Smart’s sister. They have a complicated relationships and there are volumes of history communicated beneath their polite smiles.

Still from Hacks Season 4

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A Question: Reconnecting with Friends

We got this question this week in our email inbox and I thought you might have some thoughts.

Dear Death, Sex, and Money,

This evening, I found myself looking through your archives for episodes about friendship, especially any episodes about reconnecting with old friends. 

I'm 32 and navigating some of what I hear are the normal challenges of friendship at this age (finding time amidst partners, babies, work, etc.) but I'm also specifically dealing with the changes to my friendships as they weathered huge personal transformations: the pandemic, chiefly, and my own subsequent years of periodic unemployment and depression. I feel like I'm just poking my head out from my hermit crab shell after a long time away from my people, realizing how much I miss them and how badly I want to reconnect. 

I figured I can't be the only person in DSM's history who has wondered about this. Do you have any good recommendations of past episodes about how you come back to the people you love after a long time away? Or maybe there's a future episode in the works about reconnecting with your old friends even if you feel sheepish about your own past flakiness? 

—Ana, 32, Ann Arbor

If you have any stories to share with Ana about reinvesting in friendships that have gone into a sort of hibernation, please share in the comments. Or you can send us a note at deathsexmoney@slate.com and we’ll pass it on.

Here are a few Death, Sex & Money episodes about friendship transitions:

• Books We Love: A Big Conversation about Big Friendship 

• Between Friends: Stories of Race and Friendship 

• Race and Friendship after 2020: An Update

• Opportunity Costs: Friendship and Fertility

There’s also this classic episode (DSM Episode #5!) about a woman choosing to marry and build a family with a gay male plutonic partner.

And if you’re craving more, over on Slate’s site this week, it’s Advice Week: Friendship Edition.

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Update on my geographic identity crisis

Regular readers will know that chewing over place and identity is a hobby of mine. Over the summer, I got to know the journalist Olivia Weeks after I started listening to her series about rural issues this elections season called Backroad Ballots. She also writes a newsletter called Pathfinders where she profiles people doing cool things in rural communities and complicates tropes about rural people in the United States, or in my case, rural-ish people.

You can read my conversation with Olivia here on The Daily Yonder’s website.

I also got to talk with Leah Smart on LinkedIn’s Everyday Better podcast. Leah is a very thoughtful interviewer, and we talked about having tough conversations and navigating career transitions.

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Recommendations

Outside of work, the deep dive into Sabrina Carpenter is continuing over here. I wrote the other week about songwriter Amy Allen, and this week, I enjoyed the deep dive into Sabrina’s new album Short n’ Sweet on Switched on Pop. Their appreciation of her genre-hopping and sly rhymes kept making me smile. And it’s made me listen again and again to Sabrina’s song “Slim Pickins.” Whether you are a Gen Z-er worn out by Tinder or reentering the dating pool in your 60s, there’s something to connect to here:

Oh, it's slim pickings

If I can't have the one I love

I guess it's you that I'll be kissin'

Just to get my fixings

Since the good ones are deceased or taken

I'll just keep on moanin' and bitchin'

Speaking of genre-hopping, I really appreciated this conversation on the podcast Today Explained between Noel King and Billboard’s Melinda Newman about country music’s massive cultural moment right now. In particular, the extended aside on Post Malone’s good manners is great.

IRL, my friend Jim and I saw Bleachers at the Greek Theater in Berkeley last week. We had a real sink-into-midlife-cool vibe, as we sat in the grass atop the amphitheater on our fold-up camping mats for back support while a swarm of kids — people in their early 30s — rocked out in front of the stage.

Jack Antonoff and the band were tight and fun and aggressively entertaining in a Springsteen sort of way. I highly recommend seeing them if you get a chance. (Antonoff is also a credited co-writer and producer of “Slim Pickins”…full circle recommendations happening this week.)

There was also a From Somewhere moment during the show that I keep thinking about. At one point, Antonoff was riling up the crowd by asking us where we were from. Berkeley? Whoo! San Francisco? Whoooo! Oakland? Whoooooo! Sacramento? Whooooooo!

Then, he told us a story about playing a recent acoustic set in Sacramento where he’d wondered if Sacramento might be the New Jersey of the Bay Area. Some people took umbrage to this, and this mystified him. “They didn’t understand this was a compliment. Like, the best compliment I can possibly give!”

Until next week,

Anna

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Listen to our latest Death, Sex & Money episodes

9/24 Bob the Drag Queen Says Polyamory is Expensive

9/24 Slate Plus: A Succession Star’s Guide to Giving Away Money

9/17 Martha Wainwright on Post-Divorce Confidence and ‘Folk Tits’

9/17 Slate Plus: I Wrote About Getting Scammed. The Internet Wasn’t Kind.

9/10 One Man’s Meticulous Quest to Cure Grief

9/3 The Weight of Love

9/3 Slate Plus: Maddi’s Tough Stretch After Our Episode

8/27 Two Friends, at 35 and 95, Confront Loss and Find Hope

8/27 Slate Plus: My Father’s Worth $70 Million. I Disinherited Myself

8/20 Life and Death Inside the Playboy Mansion

8/13 Miranda July’s Perimenopausal Thriller

8/13 Slate Plus: Hot Flashes, Vaginal Dryness, More Confidence? What To Expect With Menopause