Welcome to Dear Prudence.

I'm your prudence, Janay Desmeteris.

Today we'll be talking about how roommates should handle mismatched levels of COVID caution.

How to split a check when your friends seem to forget they had appetizers.

And how to settle a debate about going brawless around teenage sons.

Here to help me out is my guest, Brian Lehrer.

He's the host of the Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC Radio's Daily Call and Program,

where he and his guests take on the issues dominating conversations in New York and around the world.

Brian, thank you so much for being here.

It is so cool to be on your show, Janay, after you are on my show,

and I feel completely unqualified to give people advice.

So we'll put that out there as a caveat.

Let's not talk about qualifications because then we have to look at mine and it's just going to get uncomfortable.

So, anyway, before we get started, what's your one piece of unqualified and unsolicited advice

that you'd just love to share with our listeners?

All right, well, since my show so often deals with politics,

my unsolicited advice has to do with difficult relationships with friends or relatives over political differences.

And we've all been there, right? On one side or the other,

I just can't talk to that person anymore ever since Trump, ever since Bush versus Gore,

ever since the 60s, but never more intensely than in the Trump era right now for sure.

And my advice is spend 20% more time listening and 20% less time talking.

Come to Thanksgiving or whatever it is with at least two curious questions that you want to ask that person.

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