Can AI help us find humor in painful things?
We experiment!
For years now, on our show, we’ve made a place where, together, we don’t flinch from the hard stuff in life. But we also have a good time.
I laugh a lot on our show, more than I maybe ever expected when I pitched the idea for something called Death, Sex & Money. So it was unexpected but fitting to get to be a part of the lineup for the 2025 Sketchfest, San Francisco’s premiere comedy and improv festival.
For our live show, we decided to do something kind of weird. We brought together comics, artists, and real-world practitioners to dig into hard life moments while studying when and how we could laugh about them.
Now, sometimes, humor can be a deflection, a way to keep you from really facing something. At this show, the humor we were looking for was the kind that’s a release after you look straight at something.
My guests were comedians Guy Branum and Carl Tart, musician Matt Nathanson, and Faith Albright, a Bay Area veterinarian who specializes in at-home euthanasia and runs a sanctuary for animals diverted from agricultural markets.
And writer Chanel Miller was there. You may know her books, her bestsellers Magnolia Unfolds It All and her memoir Know My Name. Even if you haven’t read these, you've probably heard of her. Chanel first became famous as the unnamed sexual assault victim on Stanford’s campus. She wrote about all this, including how she coped while going through a very long criminal investigation and trial.
One thing she did? Standup comedy.
Chanel and I talk about that, and she is really funny! (Also, if you haven’t read or listened to Know My Name, I *highly* recommend it.)
You’ll hear all this from our sold-out show in San Francisco — and because it’s the Bay Area — we also invited an AI voice in. And you know what? AI can help you laugh about hard things.
The prompt for AI-generated image above was: “a computer talks to a sad person and makes them laugh.” That didn’t work out so well, but the AI narrator who chimed in during our live show was at times impressively droll.
So…can AI pick out my outfit???
I have been experimenting more and more with AI at work and at home, and one of my go-to sources for the ethics and tensions at the center of its rapid infiltration of our lives is Kashmir Hill of The New York Times. She’s written about some very intimate relationships people are forming with chatbots and about how much AI might help with the onslaught of decisions that she faces every week as a full-time worker with kids at home. One tool? Letting AI bots decide her outfits.
On this week’s Slate Plus conversation, Kashmir and I talk about what happened next, with her looks and her existential angst about an AI-powered future.
Come on, jump IN THE RIVER with me!
About a year ago, I interviewed Rebecca Auman, the “pragmatic and devoted witch” who hosts the podcast Voices in the River, on Death, Sex, & Money.
In that episode, I shared excerpts of my year-ahead reaching with her from early 2024 to give you a sense of what Rebecca’s work with people sounds like. She also shared the upsides and downsides of being fantastically attuned to the people around her.
This week, Rebecca released an episode of her show in which we looked back together at that reading a year ago, comparing what she told me to expect with reality. It’s a really interesting conversation, where you also hear about the particulars of my anxiety spirals…. Listen here.
This is Rebecca and me together when we got to hang out in Berkeley last year. She walked into my home, saw all the assorted antlers, shells, and feathers that my wildlife ecologist husband has collected over the years, and declared, “It looks like a witch lives here!”
Until next week,
Anna
p.s. Remember my conversation last spring about caregiving of all sorts with
, author of When You Care? It’s coming out in paperback, and we’re celebrating the book in the Bay Area with the Department of Invisible Labor. Join us in Berkeley on April 19 if you can.
AN IMPORTANT REMINDER: If you like my work, the best way to support the Death, Sex & Money team is to become a member of Slate Plus. What do you get? Ad-free listening and special member-exclusive podcast drops, at least two per month! What does it give us? More of a handhold on financial security and self-determination during chaotic times! Please join us at slate.com/dsmplus or through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Listen to our latest Death, Sex & Money episodes
4/1 Laughing About Hard Things, with Chanel Miller, Guy Branum, Carl Tartt, Faith Albright and Matt Nathanson (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
4/1 Bonus: Can AI Help With Parental Decision Fatigue? (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/25 A Middle-Aged Couple Made Porn to Spice Things Up. Then One of Them Got Fired. (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/25 Bonus: Anna and Husband Arthur Play the Not-So-Newlywed Game (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/18 Life After Blowing It All Up: A Sugar Baby Story Revisited (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/11 Call It ‘A Midlife Awakening’ (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/11 Plus: Drop Everything and Watch This Music Documentary (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/4 From Uncertainty to Total Chaos, Your Stories About the New Trump Term (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
3/4 Plus: An Ode to Public Service (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
2/25 I Was Ready to Write About My Domestic Abuser—Then Lawyers Said No. (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
AI is incredibly dangerous to the environment. Please think twice before using it, especially for fun.