The Best Karaoke Songs For This Moment

Plus, when do you disclose a disability on the dating apps?

A Gift for Your Future Self: DSM Live in SF! Can you be in San Francisco on the evening of Friday, January 31? Then come out for a night of Laughing About Hard Things with me and comedians Guy Branum and Carl Tart and writer and artist Chanel Miller and more!

I’m pumped to be a part of SF Sketchfest for the first time and want you to join me. Get your tickets here.

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This week on Death, Sex & Money

Listen in the Slate Plus feed this week for a karaoke holiday party with my Slate colleagues from Mary Harris and the team at What Next, Slate’s news podcast. And I loved this conversation about karaoke. Because I love karaoke this much.

This is me belting out “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in a private karaoke room in Koreatown in Manhattan in 2015, just before I got married.

As you hear Mary and I discuss in the Slate Plus episode, my other long-time go-to’s over the years have been “Easy” by The Commodores, “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & the Pips, and “I Want to Break Free” by Queen. You’ll also hear the top picks of many of our Slate colleagues.

I need to expand my repertoire in 2025. Please comment with your top karaoke picks below.

And in our main Death, Sex & Money feed this week, Carvell Wallace is back. If you’re a regular listener, you heard my conversation with him about his memoir Another Word For Love — we called that episode “Sex Parties and Shakespeare with Carvell Wallace.”

Carvell is also a cohost of the Slate podcast How To, which I consider a reported advice show. Listeners share dilemmas, and the hosts bring in an expert or two to discuss them.

This week, I talked with Carvell about some of the gems he’s picked up from hosting the show, and we listened in on an episode he hosted from earlier this year about how to handle a disability on dating apps and what to disclose when.

Listen here.

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Estrangement letters

Since we shared an episode about estrangement a few weeks back, there has been a steady stream of stories about your experiences with estrangement.

Some of you are resolute in your choice to maintain distance and no contact, while others of you have landed in a more ambiguous space of polite but limited engagement.

Here are two letters from listeners who were willing to share:

I listened to your estrangement episode a week or so ago and can't get it out of my mind. In short, I have been estranged from my biological father for most of 20 years.

When he contacts me (every 3-4-5-6 years or so) I have always responded, not because I believe anything about our relationship will likely change, but because I can see his humanity and that he tried. I have 4 kids (16, 15, 12, 9) and now understand intimately how relentlessly demanding, stressful, heartbreaking, and exhausting parenting can be.

My dad immigrated to the US in his early 20s from Iran. I was born almost in lockstep with the Iranian revolution. He is the oldest of 10 kids, so went back for 18 months to be with his family. When he returned, my parents went through a terrible divorce including him stealing $10K from my grandparents (in 1980s $), severely beating my mom (in front of me), threatened to murder my grandparents (credible enough to go to jail for a couple months), threatened CONSTANTLY to kidnap me (to Iran), visited a couple times a month, but was otherwise completely uninvolved--never went to a single school thing, didn't know a single friend, didn't come to my graduation, paid my mom almost no child support, never helped pay for college, has never met my kids--doesn't even know their names, ages, has never asked, etc.

AND. He made me pita bread with cream cheese and honey and walnuts for breakfast when I visited him. He brought me to the bookstore and let me pick out as many books as I could read, travelled with me to warm places over three Thanksgivings, told me he loved me and was mostly warm, made an effort to visit those two times a month, played Rumikub (a board game basically) with me, he came to my wedding. (Disowned me again immediately after, but still...). He was an immigrant from a wildly different culture, there is definitely some mental illness (hard to know what exactly, but significant), he had two other kids (all different moms, each about 10 years apart). He was self-employed and stressed. He was probably sometimes lonely. He was human. As am I in the ways I fuck up with my own kids day in and day out despite my best efforts and considerably greater resources.

This will probably not be a popular opinion, but honestly when I listened to your episode, I thought, "I hope my kids don't hold me to these kinds of standards. I hope their kids don't hold THEM to these kinds of standards."

…I saw something recently that said, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." I think that is really important and should be taken deeply to heart before severing ties (even temporarily) with a parent or any close loved one. I do definitely understand there are times when it is necessary, but I think it requires a great deal of deliberation and discernment.

-Heidi, 46

I have been estranged from my sister for over 5 years. The toxicity, hatred, and jealousy towards me have been present in our relationship throughout different stages of life from childhood to adulthood.

It was always just my normal growing up so I had never thought to cut off contact previously. In 2015 however, when she learned of my relationship with my now husband, she was furious. Simply because I was in a serious relationship. She had been married in 2010 and divorced very shortly after the wedding.

Soon after she learned of my relationship, she began to contact my now husband via email telling him how horrible I am, a terrible person, a terrible sister, selfish, and much more. Her biggest fear: me getting married before she had the chance to re-marry. At the time all of this was unfolding, all I could do was reach out to her to try and talk to her and assure her that this was still a relatively new relationship and marriage was not something we were talking about yet. I asked her numerous times to please stop contacting him, maintaining as calm of an approach as I could. It continued over the next 4 years. My husband didn't ever send a response and he knew some of the backstory from my childhood. He didn't let any of this affect our relationship and supported me throughout….

My sister continued contacting him and contacting me making threats if I decided to get married before she was married. I tried many times to talk with her, called her, suggested meeting for coffee so we could talk about how she was feeling, maybe so she could get to know my husband, etc., and nothing changed her anger, the hatred towards me….

I called her in July 2019, one month before our wedding to again consider meeting with me, talking things through. I even apologized for how she felt and told her I want her to be happy. Even after all of this, she was still invited to our wedding, had a seat and table assignment at the reception. I thought she may show up. She didn't show up to my wedding. I haven't spoken to her since the phone call in 2019. She hasn't met her niece, my daughter, a sweet 2 year old (who is currently fighting cancer).

It has been a lot of work, but I have made peace with the estrangement. I have blocked her phone number and email. My mom continues to enable and support her and I have thought many times about cutting off my relationship with my mom, but I don't want to take away a grandparent from my daughter. I no longer talk to my parents about my sister, and they no longer talk about her to me either. It's kind of an elephant in the room situation that is just completely ignored now.

—Name withheld, 37

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Recommendations

Finally, here are a few reads and listens I’ve enjoyed diving into over the last week:

• “Two Years After Losing My Mom, I’m Reclaiming Her Holiday Spirit” in Vogue — Many of us have a hole at the center of our holidays, sometimes from relationship ruptures and also from death and grief. Joanna Solotaroff wrote this beautiful piece about celebrating Christmas — and remembering her mom — this holiday season.

• Song Exploder — Over the last year, this newsletter has expressed fandom for Sabrina Carpenter, Jack Antonoff, and Hrishikesh Hirway. This podcast episode brings them all together! I loved hearing Sabrina, Jack and Hrishi unpack the making of the song “Please, Please, Please,” on Song Exploder.

• The Harvard Plan — Ilya Marritz is a master of crafting deeply reported and human-centered stories that get right to the heart of the threats to our pluralistic democracy. He did it with Will Be Wild about the January 6th insurrection and on Trump Inc., about the money-making conflicts of interest during the first Trump administration. Now is back with a review about the lead-up to the resignation of Harvard’s president Claudine Gay, and what’s happened since. He co-produced this series with our friends at On The Media and The Boston Globe.

• The Alley - For many years now, Shannon Lynch at the New America Foundation has been reporting on the history of a 1984 murder in Washington, DC, and the convictions of eight men who have long maintained their innocence. Each is out of prison after serving the minimum sentence, but they are currently pressing for a presidential pardon. (That’s their only route to clear their names, because unlike people who live in states and can appeal to governors, DC residents require the intervention of the White House.)

Until 2025,

Anna

p.s. We’ve got new tote bags! Look at these beauties, screenprinted just for you!

Thank you for listening and reading this year! If it’s added something to your life this year, please consider becoming a member of Slate Plus to support the Death, Sex & Money team’s work. We’ll thank you with ad-free listening and special Plus drops.

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12/24 Plus: The Best Karaoke Songs for This Moment (Apple|Spotify|Slate)

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12/4 Plus: Heather Havrilesky on The Transcendent Power of Low-Stakes Art (Apple|Spotify|Slate)

11/26 Why I Chose Estrangement (Apple|Spotify|Slate)

11/19 How a Betrayed Spouse Became an Infidelity Expert (Apple|Spotify|Slate)

11/19 Plus: Divorce is Illegal in My Country. Here’s How I Escaped My Marriage. (Apple|Spotify|Slate)