Modern Love

The New York Times

For 20 years, the Modern Love column has given New York Times readers a glimpse into the complicated love lives of real people. Since its start, the column has evolved into a TV show, three books and a podcast. Each week, host Anna Martin brings you stories and conversations about love in all its glorious permutations, dumb pitfalls and life-changing moments. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp read less

Our Editor's Take

The original seasons of the Modern Love podcast featured a star-studded lineup of celebrity guests. Listeners were regaled with stories (from the New York Times) of relationships by the likes of Kristen Bell, Emmy Rossum, and Amber Tamblyn.

In 2020, the Modern Love podcast was relaunched with a new sound and feel hosted by New York Times editors Miya Lee and Daniel Jones (creators of the original column). Lee and Jones' relaunch peels away the celebrity element and re-focuses the attention on stories themselves, letting listeners revisit old loves—as it were—with renewed perspective. Adding expert narration to these tales of love lost and found brings them to life in brand new ways. The extra commentary brings further context to these timeless tales.

In 2022, the podcast torch passed to Anna Martin, who came on the podcast as a host and producer. Continuing the tradition of sharing the glorious highs and gut-wrenching lows of what it means to fall in love, Martin also answered a brand new question: What does it mean to love during a global pandemic?

The episodes often feature interviews with the very people that lived these visceral experiences of love and life. Listeners will learn about and experience all the shades of love, including the "ham sandwich" effect and the levity of dating deal-breakers. Laugh, cry, and blush from embarrassment and pure joy as Modern Love dives into love stories of all kinds.

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Society & CultureSociety & Culture

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Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation

Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation

Laufey, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter, has risen to prominence by taking the trials of today’s dating world — casual relationships, no labels and seemingly endless swiping on apps — and turning them into timeless love songs.Today, Laufey reads Coco Mellors’s essay, “An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill,” which is about a woman trying to work through her deep-seated relationship anxieties and attachment issues in an on-again, off-again situationship. Laufey says she, too, has been an anxious partner. While she thinks a toxic relationship, like the one in the essay, can make for a great love song, she now knows secure relationships can make beautiful music, too.

Episodes

Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation

Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation

Laufey, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter, has risen to prominence by taking the trials of today’s dating world — casual relationships, no labels and seemingly endless swiping on apps — and turning them into timeless love songs.Today, Laufey reads Coco Mellors’s essay, “An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill,” which is about a woman trying to work through her deep-seated relationship anxieties and attachment issues in an on-again, off-again situationship. Laufey says she, too, has been an anxious partner. While she thinks a toxic relationship, like the one in the essay, can make for a great love song, she now knows secure relationships can make beautiful music, too.

Why John Magaro of ‘Past Lives’ Could Never Love a Picky Eater

Why John Magaro of ‘Past Lives’ Could Never Love a Picky Eater

The actor John Magaro is picky about whom he goes to dinner with. Magaro is an adventurous eater. So whether he’s buying offal from the butcher, making stews from the 1800s or falling in love over a plate of rabbit, he says it’s important to him that the people he shares a meal with are willing to be curious. For Magaro, it’s about more than personal preferences. Sharing a meal and connecting with other people, he says, is the bedrock of society.Magaro played Arthur in “Past Lives,” one of our favorite movies last year. His character is constantly working to understand his wife on a deeper level. And Magaro sees that quality in “My Dinners With Andrew,” by Sara Pepitone, a Modern Love essay about food as a love language, and a series of dinners that make, and break, two relationships.

Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows

Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows

Over the last two decades, Esther Perel has become a world-famous couples therapist by persistently advocating frank conversations about infidelity, sex and intimacy. Today, Perel reads one of the most provocative Modern Love essays ever published: “What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity,” by Karin Jones.In her 2018 essay, Jones wrote about her experience seeking out no-strings-attached flings with married men after her divorce. What she found, to her surprise, was how much the men missed having sex with their own wives, and how afraid they were to tell them.Jones faced a heavy backlash after the essay was published. Perel reflects on why conversations around infidelity are still so difficult and why she thinks Jones deserves more credit.Esther Perel is on tour in the U.S. Her show is called “An Evening With Esther Perel: The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire.” Check her website for more details.

The Second Best Way to Get Divorced, According to Maya Hawke

The Second Best Way to Get Divorced, According to Maya Hawke

When Maya Hawke’s famous parents got divorced, she was just a little kid trying to navigate their newly separate worlds. Paparazzi aside, Maya’s experience of shuttling between two homes was still more common than the arrangement described in the essay Maya reads: “Our Kinder, Gentler, Nobody-Moves-Out Divorce,” by Jordana Jacobs.By staying under one roof, Jacobs and her ex-husband spared their young son the distress of having to go back and forth. But this “dad upstairs, mom downstairs” arrangement also meant that Jacobs had to overhear her ex falling in love with his new partner.Today, Hawke reflects on the bittersweet family portrait in Jacobs’s essay, and on divorce’s role in Hawke’s own upbringing.Maya’s latest album, “Chaos Angel,” drops May 31.

How to Be Real With Your Kids

How to Be Real With Your Kids

Penn Badgley has made a career out of playing deeply troubled characters. From his role as Joe Goldberg on the Netflix series “You” to Dan Humphrey on “Gossip Girl,” Badgley has shown many times over how obsession and delusion can destroy love.In his personal life, though, Badgley says he’s not doing too much brooding. He’s a father and a stepfather, and he opens up about the importance of being vulnerable with his kids. Badgley reads “Watching Them Watching Me” by Dean E. Murphy, an essay about a father who can no longer hide his emotions from his sons after they all experience a devastating loss.

Why Samin Nosrat Is Now ‘Fully YOLO’

Why Samin Nosrat Is Now ‘Fully YOLO’

The chef Samin Nosrat lives by the idea that food is love. Her Netflix series, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” and the James Beard Award-winning cookbook that inspired it, were about using food to build community and forge connections. Since then, all of her creative projects and collaborations have focused on inspiring people to cook, and eat, with their friends and loved ones.After the recent loss of her father, Samin has gained an even deeper understanding of what it means to savor a meal — or even an hour — with loved ones. This week, she reads an essay about exactly that: “You May Want to Marry My Husband” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It’s one of the most-read Modern Love essays ever.

Brittany Howard Sings Through the Pangs of New Love

Brittany Howard Sings Through the Pangs of New Love

Brittany Howard, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, makes vibrant, dynamic music about love.As the frontwoman of the band Alabama Shakes, she was celebrated for the power and emotionality of her voice. When she began her solo career in 2019 with “Jaime,” an album named after and dedicated to her older sister, who died at 13, Howard revealed new dimensions of her songwriting and herself.Her latest album, “What Now,” captures the intensity of processing the past and starting anew. Today, Howard reads a Modern Love essay about the courage it takes to fall back in love: “Was She Just Another Nicely Packaged Pain Delivery System?” by Judith Fetterley.

Novelist Celeste Ng on the Big Power of Little Things

Novelist Celeste Ng on the Big Power of Little Things

Before Celeste Ng became a best-selling author, she had a side hustle selling miniatures on eBay — dollhouse-size recreations of food were her specialty. Even after the publication of “Little Fires Everywhere,” “Everything I Never Told You,” and, most recently, “Our Missing Hearts,” Celeste still makes tiny things — now, as a hobby. She’s come to realize the parallels between making small things and writing: Both give her a chance to look closely at the world.Today, Celeste kicks off our special podcast series, which celebrates 20 years of the Modern Love column, by reading Betsy MacWhinney’s essay “Bringing a Daughter Back From the Brink With Poems.” She discusses her own deep-rooted relationship to poetry — and the lessons, large and small, that poems can offer parents and children in uncertain times.

Three Powerful Lessons About Love

Three Powerful Lessons About Love

When Daniel Jones started the Modern Love column in 2004, he opened the call for submissions and hoped the idea would catch on. Twenty years later, over a thousand Modern Love essays have been published in The New York Times, and the column is a trove of real-life love stories.Dan has put so much of himself into editing the column over the years, but as he tells our host, Anna Martin, the column has influenced him, too. Today, Dan shares three Modern Love essays that have changed the way he thinks about love and relationships in his own life.Also, Anna announces the beginning of a special series of episodes celebrating Modern Love’s 20th anniversary.The Modern Love essays mentioned in this episode are:One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, PleaseNursing a Wound in an Appropriate SettingMy First Lesson in Motherhood

Modern Love at the Movies: Our Favorite Oscar-Worthy Love Stories

Modern Love at the Movies: Our Favorite Oscar-Worthy Love Stories

The New York Times’s film critic Alissa Wilkinson has a theory about movies: They’re all about relationships. No matter how big the action, the suspense and tension we experience when watching a film is often really about the feelings between the characters.But romantic relationships often fall back on old tropes, like the long-suffering wife of an ex-cop who can’t resist that one last, risky case. (We all know her; she leaves teary voice messages urging him to be safe.) Some of this year’s Oscar-nominated films give us fresher portraits of love. Alissa and our host, Anna Martin, discuss the relationships that defy convention or easy definition, and push us to reconsider how we think about human connection, in three of those movies: “Poor Things,” “Maestro” and “Past Lives.”

A Politics Reporter Walks Into a Singles Mixer

A Politics Reporter Walks Into a Singles Mixer

The New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon went speed dating in a swing state to ask daters fun questions like: How early do you tell a prospective date whether you lean red or blue? When do you talk about your stances on issues like abortion or gender equality? It’s hard enough to find someone you click with. Then add election-year tensions into the mix, and things get even more complicated.Today: Our host Anna Martin speaks with Astead Herndon, host of the weekly politics podcast “The Run-Up" about the not-so-distant worlds of politics and dating.

Author Read: Un-Marry Me!

Author Read: Un-Marry Me!

Dave Finch reads his Modern Love essay, “On the Path to Empathy, Some Forks in the Road."To hear our conversation with Dave, listen to the episode: “Un-Marry Me!”

We’re kicking off our new season this Valentine’s Day with a story from a Modern Love veteran.David Finch has written three Modern Love essays about how hard he has worked to be a good husband to his beloved wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical woman, he found it especially challenging to navigate being a partner and father. To make things easier, Dave kept a running list of “best practices” to cover every situation that might come up in daily life. His method worked so well that he became a best-selling author and speaker on the topic.But almost 11 years into their marriage Kristen suddenly told him she wanted to be "unmarried." Dave felt blindsided. He didn’t know what that meant, or if he could do it. But Dave wasn’t going to lose Kristen, so he had to give it a try.Valentine’s Day Bonus: How does politics affect your love life? Hear Anna Martin discuss this tomorrow on “The Run-Up,” a weekly politics show from The New York Times. You can search for “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts.

I Married My Subway Crush

I Married My Subway Crush

Zoe Fishman couldn’t stop thinking about the man she called her “subway crush.” For years, she saw Ronen on the train and admired him from afar.When they finally connected, it turned out Ronen felt the same, and they began a blissful life together. But when their story took a devastating turn, Zoe had to grapple with longing for Ronen at a distance again.For the final episode of our season, we hear about the joy and loss that showed up in Zoe’s life, and the remarkable way she learned to live with both of them.Zoe Fishman is the author of several novels, most recently “The Fun Widow’s Book Tour.”

Author Read: I Married My Subway Crush

Author Read: I Married My Subway Crush

Zoe Fishman reads her Modern Love essay, “The Subway Crush Who Crushed Me."To hear our conversation with Zoe, listen to the episode: “I Married My Subway Crush.”Zoe Fishman is the author of several novels, most recently “The Fun Widow’s Book Tour.”

Author Read: Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did

Author Read: Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did

Sonja Falck reads her Modern Love essay, “Our 34-Year Age Gap Was Showing."To hear our conversation with Sonja, listen to the episode: “Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did.”

Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did

Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did

Sonja Falck was immediately attracted to Colin, the professor who was renting her a room. He was intellectual and lively, with bright eyes that drew her in. It was only after they were already dating that Sonja found out Colin’s age: He was 34 years older than her.Their age gap didn’t give them pause. Sonja and Colin got married, had kids and built a fulfilling life together. But when Colin reached his 80s, and Sonja was in her mid-40s, Sonja realized she was craving a level of physical intimacy that Colin could no longer provide.So Sonja and Colin had to make a decision: Could they transform their relationship into something that gave both partners what they wanted? Or had their age gap finally caught up to them?

Author Read: Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love

Author Read: Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love

Eric Darnell Pritchard reads their Modern Love essay, “Two Boys on Bicycles, Falling in Love."To hear our conversation with Eric, listen to the episode: “Two Boys on Bicycles, Falling in Love.”

Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love

Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love

Eleven-year-old Eric Darnell Pritchard was a solitary kid. They preferred reading romance novels to playing sports, and watching soap operas to hanging out with the neighborhood kids. Although they were obsessed with love, they felt too different to find a romantic connection of their own.Then, a cute boy moved in across the street. To Eric’s surprise, they both “like liked” each other. But when Eric told the wrong person about their new boyfriend, things quickly spun out of control.

Author Read: He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him

Author Read: He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him

Jessica Slice reads her Modern Love essay, “He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him."To hear our conversation with Jessica, listen to the episode: “He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him.”