Cheryl Strayed, Cary Tennis, Emily Yoffe, and Lynn Coady Walk Into a “Bar”

Are there common threads or themes that you see over and over in the questions you get? Questions that seem to be real problems in a lot of people’s lives that they keep writing in about in variations?

Cheryl: Yes, a ton. There are a lot of people with broken hearts. And they’ll never get over so and so leaving them.

Emily: Yeah, I never run those because the answer is the same and it’s very boring. It’s just, “Move forward.” The guy I thought I’d kill myself over when I was 27 I can’t remember the name of now. There are some big general categories. One is cubicle land. The horrors of the farters, the breathers, the hummers, the eaters. I can only do a limited number of “My husband looks at porn.”

For Hazlitt magazine, Britt Harvey interviews four MVPs of the advice-giving world, and it is wonderful. “I answer a lot of questions that are unanswerable,” says Cary, “because I’m not really answering them. I’m like singing a song. I’m trying to say something comforting.” “I have no qualifications whatsoever,” says Lynn. Okay I’ll stop, but go read it!