How do you feel about revenge? Do you ever crave it? When my colleagues, it's late,

announced a big series of essays in reporting called Revenge Week, I thought, eh, that's not really my thing.

Revenge seems a little, I don't know, unhelpful and unprocessed. But then I talked to my colleague Isabel Khan about her revenge fantasy,

which she started developing after she was seriously wronged by someone. She told me what

pleasure it gave her and how it soothed her feelings of helplessness. What was so exciting about it was hallucinating that I have power and I have control and that I could exact a plan with intelligence and cunning and forethought, and that I could be 10 steps ahead of somebody.

I talked to Isabel in a Slate Plus conversation this week about when she'd find herself

adding details to this revenge fantasy and also what she learned from science about how

revenge shows up in our brain and how it's different than forgiveness.

Isabel even prompted me to start free associating about my own revenge fantasies.

Here's a little preview. Somehow, I end up talking about watching someone getting buried alive

while I stand by smoking a cigarette. Who knew that was in there? You can hear our conversation if you are a

Slate Plus member. If you are already, thank you. If you aren't yet, just go over to the Death,

Sex, and Money Show page on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Or you can sign up at slate.com slash

DSM plus. And remember, when you sign up for Slate Plus, you not only get these special extra

drops we make for Slate Plus members, you also get access to add free listening to death,

sex, and money, and all of Slate's podcast. Now, on to this episode, it's wedding season.

And though I, in my mid-40s, am in a slower wedding pace than when I was attending my peers, my sisters, and my own weddings, it has been a wedding-y few weeks for me.

Like, I recently went to a beautiful outdoor ceremony. It was a second wedding for both the bride and the groom, that was just full of lovely reflections about finding the faith to try again.

And then I whipped through the novel The Wedding People, which revolves around a plot of a suicidally depressed, recently divorced professor who shows up at a hotel that is otherwise totally reserved

by a wedding party. She's horrified at first, and then bit by bit, she gets pulled into all the

unspoken relationship dynamics between family generations and old friends that play out at a wedding.

Now, in that book, the wedding is a lavish affair.

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