Welcome to Dear Prudence, I'm your Prudence,

Janay Desmond Harris.

Today we'll be giving readers advice on how to turn down gifts that make you cringe and when it's too late to chase your dreams.

Helping me out today is Jamel Bowie.

Listeners may remember him from his time as Slate's political correspondent,

and he is now a New York Times opinion columnist.

Jamel, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

It's incredible to me that in all my years of Slate things, I've actually never been on an episode of prudence.

I don't think so.

That's exciting for me.

I know you have like well a lot of knowledge but also a lot of varied interests and hobbies so I feel like you have a lot to pull from when it comes to giving advice plus you've got two kids

I can't wait to hear what you have to say to these questions but first let's get your one piece of unsolicited advice.

I think my one piece of unsolicited advice is that you shouldn't give people uns much advice, a little recursive.

I just, I know I'm, I find it personally frustrating.

If I pose a question about something,

and then it's sort of like I get lots of responses that are sort of like

presuppose that I wanted like an answer to something I didn't actually ask.

Right. And I just I just think people should really make an effort to respond to the things that they're being asked whether that's on the internet

Whether that's in person try not to like make assumptions about what their mental state might be just like sort of like there's a question or

a request or something on the table respond to that and if you have other

questions about it you should ask those questions but I find that not just on the

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