I can see clearly now.
**Psych!** The rain is temporarily gone but not the confusion.
First, here's a quick reminder: If you like my work, the best way to support it and 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! Sign up at slate.com/dsmplus or through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
How’s this week going for you? Watching the news? Burning up those comedy podcasts and quitting social media?
Yesterday, after days of rain in the Bay Area, the sky opened up for a moment.
Remember what clarity can feel like?
At Death, Sex & Money, we’re hearing from listeners affected by the change in federal policy and messaging. People are considering big moves. Different careers. Eyeing their neighbors with new weariness, like a gay man in San Diego considering buying his first gun for self-protection. An IRS lawyer wrote in to talk about her pride in her work and worries about what’s next. A foreign aid worker described a worst-case scenario bingo game going on with colleagues as they try to get some laughs as their professional work falls apart.
We are collecting stories about ways your life is changing right now, big and small, because of the leadership changes in Washington. If you are doing something differently in your life right now — because of a new executive order, policy, or just the messaging from the White House — record a voice memo to tell us about it and send it to us a voice memo at deathsexmoney@slate.com.
Our episode this week is with one person whose life has already dramatically changed since the inauguration: Tasha Adams. As I wrote a few weeks back, her ex-husband, Stewart Rhodes, is out of prison after Trump commuted his sentence for seditious conspiracy related to January 6.
On the Media’s Micah Loewinger and I talked with Tasha about how she felt after Trump’s reelection and what she worries about now:
We're probably not safe now, to be honest with you. I'd like to think he would try to stay on the straight and narrow for a little while at least to then focus on rebuilding.
He's already rebuilding Oath Keepers right now. He's doing interviews….but I think initially the worry is more about, um, him having access to his people, uh, more concerned about his. Some of his followers, you know, trying to harm us.
You can hear our episode with Tasha here. You might also want to read this piece that ran in USA Today back in October.
“…Let’s start this son of a bitch.”
That’s the end of the audiobook excerpt you’ll hear in our Slate Plus drop this week. I got to narrate Amy Gamerman’s masterful new nonfiction book, The Crazies: A Cattleman, The Wind Prospector and A War Out West. It tells the story of the battle between neighbors over a proposed wind project on a rancher’s family land. Then, his wealthy landowners sued to block the project.
Amy follows that drama and makes the regulatory hoops and political fights for a green energy project accessible — even thrilling. She sets it all against the history of settlement in this part of Montana, going back to the “Clovis Child,” the oldest known remains in the Americas “related to 80 percent of all indigenous North and South American groups from whom DNA exists for comparison.” You can read about that history in this excerpt of The Crazies, published by Montana Free Press.
In our Slate Plus drop, I talk to Amy about how she approached all this reporting on the history and contemporary interviews — “What’s this nice Jewish girl from New York doing in the calving barn?” — and you get to hear a bit of the audiobook.
Listener inbox: Sewing Patterns and A Suitcase of Porn
I want to share a few emails with you from the last week that read like short plays. I could see the scenes unfold before my eyes:
Listening to Gary Gulman on your latest episode as he describes his *almost forbidden* childhood interest in dollhouses reminded me of an experience I had while living in the Missouri Ozarks about 10 years ago. I had a good friend and co worker who was a middle aged Mennonite woman, she was tall and vibrant and an extremely skilled seamstress. One day she showed me a diaper bag that she had sewn for a friend, it was sturdy, elaborate with many pockets and as a novice sewer, I could tell it was an extremely complex design. She proudly showed me the bag and I said “wow! where did you find that pattern?” She replied “I made the pattern myself, I love to design patterns and if I were a man, I am certain I would’ve been a carpenter”. The way she said it, with a touch of whimsy and slight sadness, I imagined her in an alternate universe, designing and building beautiful work. Like Gary, there was an incongruity to her physical identity, cultural expectation and her deep truth. Still, I’m glad she works around all that with sewing.
—Shannon McCabe, 35, Central Florida
And this email came in to remind us how our stuff outlives us. Maybe you heard our episode about inheritance? This emailer wrote in about the detective work her family had to do before they even got to that.
My 78 year old father died suddenly of sepsis back in October. He wasn't a spring chicken, but he didn't seem close to the end of his journey either. It was unexpected, or sudden, and it has been pretty horrifying for the family.
My father was an attorney who spent most of his career as legal counsel for a non profit drug treatment organization. He was an alumnus of that place and the first attorney to get his license back after stealing money from his escrow in order to "put it up his nose.”….When he died on October 17, 2024, he was still working…In the hospital he was taking calls from folks he worked for telling them he'd get back to them "tomorrow when he got home." Sadly, that isn't how it went.
For years and years my dad had told my brother, mom, and I, that if anything were to happen to him, the first thing any of us ought to do was to go to the bank and empty the safety deposit box.
The day of his death my brother, mother, and I had been told that he was being moved to the ICU. All three of us were on our way when he went into cardiac arrest. My mom and I arrived while they were trying to resuscitate him. My brother arrived a few minutes later.
I had thought the safety deposit box would hold a will, some instructions, and maybe some cash. The only thing inside was $85,000 in cash, well organized in Chase bank envelopes. No notes, nothing else.
What ensued was terrible. My mom felt like a poor widow on a fixed income who did not want to hold a funeral. She said she couldn't afford it. When I mentioned my dad's estate she said "there is no estate, it's all in joint name, it's all mine!"
Two months of curt discussion, hurt feelings, avoidance by my brother, and we figured out a path forward, without a will. I scoured every paper in my dad's office but couldn't find the thing. I was told that there was no will; the will was old; the will was lost. Three different possibilities.
On December 30 I was visiting my mom with my husband and small child because we couldn't visit on Christmas. We were brought into the bedroom suite on the first floor to see a bathroom renovation when I noticed most of my dad's clothing neatly folded on the bed. I inquired about what was going on there and was told that she was beginning to sort through everything to donate items. I was told that if I wanted anything I ought to find it that day and take it with me.
I went to the closet, opened the door, and began to scan the organized space. On the floor in plain site was a briefcase. An older one, that had been used a lot and was all scuffed up. My mom was hovering behind my shoulder. I asked her what was in the briefcase and she reported: "That's where your dad keeps his PORN!" I laughed in disbelief. After a few beats I said, "Well, let's see what he's got!" She was shocked when I pulled out the case and rested it on the bed. I loved the idea of thinking of my dad as a person with desires and feelings, not the corpse we put into the ground the last time I saw him.
We were both shocked when I opened the briefcase and found, not pornogrpahy, but a collection of important documents, including his will, in triplicate, right on top. I was beside myself. All the pain and hurt of not having a will that we are trying to recover from, and there it was.—Sara
So, I have a new distraction for all of us who reported quitting social media last week or relying on music, novels, or comedy podcasts to avoid news overload.
This week, we work on the perfect hiding spot for our last wishes.
Until next week,
Anna
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2/4 Plus: Why I Narrated a Book About a Green Energy Fight (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/28 The Kind of Man a Bullied Boy Becomes (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/21 Babygirl Director Wants Women Not to Suppress Their Beast (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/21 Plus: What Was ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Really For? (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/14 Paid to Care: When Class, Power, and Caregiving Collide (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/14 Plus: More Estrangement Confessions (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
1/7 Paid to Care: The Magic, and Mess, of Care Work. (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
12/31 Love Actually: Real Romance From Mahershala Ali, Jane Fonda, and More (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
12/24 Should You Divulge a Disability in Your Dating Profile? (Apple|Spotify|Slate)
12/24 Plus: The Best Karaoke Songs for This Moment (Apple|Spotify|Slate)