Modern Love

This week on Modern Love, we’re bringing you a conversation we liked so much that we’re envious we didn’t get to have ourselves. In a raw but deeply heartfelt and compassionate conversation with “The Interview" host David Marchese, author and poet Ocean Vuong talks about the real reason he became a writer.

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When we asked Modern Love listeners how location sharing is affecting their relationships, the responses we got were all over the map. Some people love this technology. Some hate it. But either way, it has changed something fundamental about how we demonstrate our love and how we set boundaries around relationships. Today, we’re sharing a few of our favorite listener responses. Then, Host Anna Martin talks with Arlon Jay Staggs, a Modern Love essayist who has wrestled deeply with whether to share his location.

At first, location sharing wasn’t a big deal for Staggs and his mother. He took a lot of long drives, and it made sense for her to keep tabs on him. But when he realized his mother was watching his little blue dot too closely, and it was causing her stress when she needed peace of mind, Staggs decided the sharing had to stop. He just couldn’t figure out how to tell her. And when tragedy struck his family, the stakes of his decision to share or not share became a lot higher.

Today’s episode was inspired by the essay “Every Move I Make, She’ll Be Watching Me.”

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

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The director Celine Song won over audiences and critics alike with her first feature film, “Past Lives,” the semi-autobiographical tale of a married Korean American woman meeting up with her former childhood sweetheart. Now Song is back with another story about love called “Materialists.” This time the main character is a matchmaker, a job that Song did briefly in her early 20s.

Today on the show, Song reads Louise Rafkin’s Modern Love essay “My View From the Margins,” about a relationship columnist who can’t figure out love in her own life. And Song tells us how neither falling in love at age 24 nor making a career of writing about love has brought her any closer to understanding it. “It’s the one thing that makes me feel like a fool,” Song says.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

For Father’s Day, the Modern Love team asked for your stories about fatherhood and emotional vulnerability. We heard from listeners who told us that their dads rarely expressed their emotions, from listeners whose fathers wore their hearts on their sleeves and from fathers themselves who were trying to navigate parenting with emotional honesty and sensitivity. Your stories had one thing in common: even just a peek into your father’s emotional world meant so much.

On this episode of Modern Love, we hear your stories about your dads. Then, Terry Real, a family therapist, returns to the show to offer his advice on being a father while also showing kids what it means to be emotionally vulnerable and available. He offers his philosophy around parenting through a combination of techniques.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In last week’s episode, the Modern Love team shared the songs that taught us about love when we were young. But in this week’s episode, we hear from you, our listeners, about the songs that helped shape your ideas about love.

We heard from present-day teens streaming their anthems on repeat, and we heard from listeners who have been with their partners for over 50 years. There were stories of jazz and rap; adrenaline rushes and loneliness; and many hard-won lessons in matters of the heart. (“Don’t let your friends choose your boyfriends,” Amy from St. Louis said.) We share a compilation of some of your songs and stories in the first half of our episode.

And we finish our episode with an essay about the end of love. After more than 50 years of marriage, Tina Welling decided that she wanted a divorce — a decision that turned out to be liberating.

Thank you to all of the listeners who sent us their teenage anthems. We’ve compiled them into one glorious Spotify playlist.

[You can listen to this episode above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.]

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode of “Modern Love” features Lisa Selin Davis’s essay “What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love.” She writes about how the song “I’ll Be Your Mirror” became the soundtrack to her summer romance with a floppy-haired “rocker kid” who inadvertently helped her find healing. Then, we hear from some members of the “Modern Love” team about the songs that influenced them as teenagers and about the memories — funny, empowering, nostalgic — that they carry with them.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we’ll hear from our listeners about the songs that taught them about love.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Elizabeth and Jeff were best friends. They did everything together, from early-morning runs to late-night karaoke sessions. They came up with secret code names for each other and went on undercover missions in their neighborhood. They fought, and made up, and fought some more.

Beneath their playful dynamic, an attraction was growing between them, but Elizabeth never wanted to risk the friendship by exploring it. Then Jeff got sick, and things changed. In this episode, the story of a once-in-a-lifetime friendship, from the very beginning to the very end.

This episode is adapted from Elizabeth Laura Nelson’s 2025 essay Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

A session with Terry Real, a marriage and family therapist, can get uncomfortable. He’s known to mirror and amplify the emotions of his clients, sometimes cursing and nearly yelling, often in an attempt to get men in touch with the emotions they’re not used to honoring.

Real says men are often pushed to shut off their expression of vulnerability when they’re young as part of the process of becoming a man. That process, he says, can lead to myriad problems in their relationships. He sees it as his job to pull them back into vulnerability and intimacy, reconfiguring their understanding of masculinity in order to build more wholesome and connected families.

In this episode, Real explains why vulnerability is so essential to healthy masculinity and why his work with men feels more urgent than ever. He explains why he thinks our current models of masculinity are broken and what it will take to build new ones.

This episode was inspired by a New York Times Magazine piece, “How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” by Daniel Oppenheimer.

The “Modern Love” podcast team is planning a second episode with Real, focused on fatherhood. He has agreed to give our listeners advice on fatherhood, whether you’re an experienced dad, an expecting dad or otherwise dad-adjacent. For example, maybe you want advice on how to parent in a world filled with so many mixed messages about how men should be or on how to repair a mistake you made as a dad. Maybe there are elements of fatherhood you’re still figuring out or are unsure of. Record your questions as a voice memo and email them to [email protected].

Tips for recording: Please avoid recording where there is a lot of background noise. If you are using your smartphone to record your voice memo, please speak into your phone’s built-in microphone from a few inches away. Your recording may not be usable if you use Bluetooth earbuds or if you are too close or too far from the phone. It works best when you tell us your story as if you are speaking to a friend rather than reading it from a written statement. Be as concise as you can, and please listen back to it to make sure the recording is complete. You can find further tips for recording here, and find our submission terms here.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In honor of Mother’s Day this week, we revisit the story of one mom who went to extraordinary lengths to make sure her daughter always felt her love, even after she was gone. 

Each time Genevieve Kingston reached a milestone — a birthday, her first period, high school graduation, she’d reach into the box her mom had packed for her and pull out the note and gift that went with that occasion. Her mom had known she was dying of cancer, so during Kingston’s childhood, she’d poured an incredible amount of care and creativity into the project. Today we hear Kingston’s essay about the discoveries the box held for her, from her first birthday without her mom at age 12, into her 30s.  

We also hear a mother’s "Tiny Love Story" (a Modern Love essay in miniature) about trying to connect with her teenage son, and get his surprisingly thoughtful reaction.

Listener Callout:

How did your dad express his feelings? Tell us your story in a voice memo, and you might hear yourself in a future episode. For Father’s Day, the Modern Love team is looking at different ways dads show their feelings, and we want to know about a moment when your dad opened up to you. Where were you? What did he do or say? How did you react? Did it have a lasting impact on you? And if you’re a dad, how do you think about showing emotion or vulnerability when you’re with your kids? Is it something you do intentionally? Does it feel easy? Hard? The deadline is May 15. Submission instructions are here

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to the New York Times

How to submit a Tiny Love Story

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It’s been almost a year since Miranda July released her hit novel, “All Fours.” The novel features a woman in her mid-40s who heads out on a solo road trip across the country, only to stop at a roadside motel 30 minutes from her home. She winds up staying there for three weeks, exploring and questioning what she actually wants and needs out of midlife, things she can’t really focus on when she’s busy being a wife, a mom and a working artist. In the motel, she redecorates the room, designs her days the way she wants to and gets in touch with her changing desires.

In the past year, this book has become a touchstone for how our culture addresses women in perimenopause. It’s expanded beyond the page to a kind of movement. Soon after the book’s release, women started writing to July with their own stories. She started a Substack to keep those conversations going. People organized discussion groups all over the world called All Fours Group Chats. Hats were made. “All Fours” was shortlisted for the National Book Award, and it’s currently being adapted into a limited TV series. The paperback version of the novel will be released May 13.

In this week’s episode of Modern Love, July talks about the anger and desire that shaped the writing of “All Fours.” And she reflects on why this novel is inspiring to some, and threatening to others, in this cultural moment.

Listener Callout:

How did your dad express his feelings? Tell us your story in a voice memo, and you might hear yourself in a future episode. For Father’s Day, the Modern Love team is looking at different ways dads show their feelings, and we want to know about a moment when your dad opened up to you. Where were you? What did he do or say? How did you react? Did it have a lasting impact on you? And if you’re a dad, how do you think about showing emotion or vulnerability when you’re with your kids? Is it something you do intentionally? Does it feel easy? Hard? The deadline is May 15. Submission instructions are here.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.