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Music Hello and welcome back to another episode of Big Mood Little Mood. I am your host, Danny M. Lavery, and with me in the studio is Jeney Desmond Harris, Slate's Dear Prudence. She was previously a senior staff editor at the New York Times, where she is now a contributing opinion writer. Jenaet, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so glad to have you here.

I have been so excited to regain the joy of reading Dear Prudence, now that I no longer

write Dear Prudence, and I have been enjoying your turn at the helm immensely.

Although I will say I finally hit the point of like whether it's ADHD or pandemic inflected forgetfulness.

I can't quite be sure.

But occasionally there will now pop up like read a classic Dear Prudence and it will be from my tenure.

And I will think, well, I've never seen this letter in my life.

I have this is brand new to me.

Like I read it with fresh eyes and I have no memory of either reading or answering it.

I can totally imagine that just because there are so many letters and so many crazy situations

and a lot of them kind of just end up bleeding into each other and like feeling familiar.

It's a delight. Like I genuinely, as you know, as a fellow advice column

enthusiast, I read just about every Dear Prudence session that was available, like, through the

archives, you know, years ago when I was working a different day job. And so I loved it immensely

and I missed it. And I'm really glad that now, apparently, my mind is letting me forget all of my own answers so I can read them as if for the first time.

Well, yeah, like I told you, I think I, as soon as I got the job, I stopped reading your columns and I wouldn't listen to your podcast just because I was a big fan of yours and I was afraid that I would unintentionally just try to imitate you and be you. And now that I've been going for a couple of months, I felt safe. So I went and like listen to all the archives. So I'm good now. I think I shared that fear as well. Like I was really afraid of doing that. And I wonder now looking back, I'm like, I think I know how to stay myself. Like as you said that, I thought like, I bet you can remember you're you and I'm me.

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