Sanjana airs a pet peeve—the "didn't feel realistic" critique—and she and Tyler make the case that exaggeration is one of romance's best tools. Then Adrie Rose, a former sex worker and editor of the book of essays I Hate My Job, joins to talk about how the genre handles sex workers (not well) despite being kind of obsessed with writing them. And: Sanj completes her Tyler-assigned homework and comes back thrilled by The Pairing by Casey McQuiston, and especially by the line "the Kierkegaard of cock."

• Adrie Rose edited and contributed to I Hate My Job and cohosts the Pages and Prejudice podcast. Her recs: the TV show Harlots, Kathryn Moon's Monster Smash Agency series, and Charlie Amen's Hawk & March.
• Sanjana's homework: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston.
• From Sanj: For more on “realism” vs. “truth” vs. “performance” vs. “artifice,” here’s an interesting bit of writing from Vicky of the Chicky Substack from a more film-crit angle.

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Bring the steam: Sanjana and Tyler advocate that sex scenes count as character work and that too many books miss that opportunity. Then Kate Goldbeck—the author of You, Again and Daddy Issues—stops by to talk about what it's actually like to write romance in an era of chronically online readers and, well, Threads. To close things out, Sanj and Tyler make the case for messier, sillier plots: well-executed cheating and unhinged premises, please.

• Our two closed-door book picks are YA: Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert and Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood.
• Kate Goldbeck is the author of You, Again and Daddy Issues, and her Substack is a great BTS look at being a romance writer right now.
• The wishlist for messier romance: the kind of emotional cheating brought to us by You’ve Got Mail and the sort of ridiculous set-ups Susan Elizabeth Phillips delivered with Nobody's Baby But Mine.

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Hear us out: An awkward sex scene can actually be better than a frictionless one. Take the examples Sanj and Tyler cite from Business or Pleasure and Act Your Age, Eve Brown! Then, Riss M. Neilson shares her experiences writing chronic illness and disability and delivering romance to characters who deserve love and steam. Plus, a what-we’ve-consumed-this-month roundup ending with a wildly bad Italian accent courtesy of a rewatch of The Wedding Planner.

• Most-memorable sex scene mentions: Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon and Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert.
• Riss M. Neilson is the author of A Love Like the Sun and The Bridge Back to You. Her rec: Reel by Kennedy Ryan.
• What we’ve consumed this month: The Invite, Lisa Kleypas’s The Wallflower series, Fossil Feud by Maggie North, Chase Me If You Can by Heather Francis, and The Wedding Planner.

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Why an Emily Henry interview now? Sanjana and Tyler dig into Bloomberg’s recent piece on the author, where she discusses Hollywood adaptations and delivers the all-timer line: “A lot of actors think that it’s less humiliating to pretend to be a Beatle than it is to pretend to be in love.” Then: Naina Kumar joins to talk about heyday rom-com movies as novelistic underpinnings—see her latest, Just a Highland Fling!—and our hosts launch the Yearner Hall of Fame. Congrats to Ethan Hawke and Hanif Abdurraqib!

• The Bloomberg Emily Henry interview.
• Naina Kumar’s Just a Highland Fling (out this week!), Say You’ll Be Mine, and Flirting with Disaster. Her rom-com Mount Rushmore: When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Palm Springs, and While You Were Sleeping. Bonus: Kate & Leopold.
• Yearner Hall of Fame inductees: Ethan Hawke (his “the one who’s in love always wins” interview with Amelia Dimoldenberg) and poet/romantic/essayist Hanif Abdurraqib.

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Are you on the vertical-video bandwagon? Or perhaps you’ll be more persuaded by another phenomenon, the C-drama, once you’ve heard @tritney’s take on the Chinese romance boom that has finally hit America. (Of course, she brings her starter-pack picks for anyone who wants to see some of the best eye-acting in action.) Then: Sanjana assigns Tyler Sherry Thomas's Private Arrangements, and Tyler becomes a full historical-romance advocate, one devastating "you breathe, and I'll know it's you" line at a time.

• The ReelShort phenomenon and Nick Skonberg, vertical-vid star. Plus: Publishers Weekly on Harlequin microdramas.
• @tritney’s C-drama romance starter recommendations, all on Netflix: Pursuit of Jade, Love in the Clouds, Hidden Love, The First Frost, and the BL (boys’ love) classic The Untamed.
• Tyler's homework assignment: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas.

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Sanjana and Tyler open by making the case that the World Cup is a 48-country meet-cute machine (see: kilted Scotsmen throwing women over their shoulders in Boston bars). Then KT Hoffman joins to talk baseball in romance: why the minor leagues are more romantic than the majors, why slow-burn and baseball are basically the same thing, and what it takes to write queer and trans joy into sports. And: Tyler and Sanjana watch Bull Durham and Fever Pitch back-to-back—and discover that one is proto-Challengers.

• KT Hoffman is the author of The Prospects, a queer and trans baseball romance set in the minor leagues. His recommended reads: You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian, The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson, and the baseball romances of KD Casey.
• The baseball movie homework: Bull Durham and Fever Pitch.

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Tyler and Sanjana kick things off this week with their take on Netflix’s Office Romance: The Brett Goldstein–Jennifer Lopez movie that features Betty Gilpin delivering one of the great rom-com best-friend performances in recent memory. Then Lyla Sage joins to talk about cowboy romance: fantasy vs. reality, writing about rural communities with actual texture in this political moment, and how atmosphere and landscape do the heavy lifting in her books. And, at last, Tyler assigns Sanjana The Idea of You by Robinne Lee, a romance-adjacent cult favorite that gives them much to discuss.

• On Office Romance (streaming on Netflix): what J.Lo brings to the rom-com that almost no one else can, why Betty Gilpin’s supporting role is the opposite of window dressing, and what Brett Goldstein’s whole body of work tells you about the kind of story he’s obsessed with telling.
• Lyla Sage is the author of the Rebel Blue Ranch series and the Sweetwater Peak duology, Soul Searching and the forthcoming Free Falling. Referenced: Never Marry a Cowboy by Lorraine Heath and Cowboys of California by Rebekah Weatherspoon.
• Sanj’s homework assignment: The Idea of You by Robinne Lee—consider this your “no HEA” warning!

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Sanjana takes the stand as the self-proclaimed number one age-gap defender, arguing that the trope is really about power, that demanding moral instruction from romance is a fundamentally conservative impulse, and that “reverse age-gap” is not a thing. Then debut novelist Anna Maria Volkova joins to talk about Games, her romance about an economics grad student and a Soviet-born Wall Street banker: why his Russianness specifically matters to the story, the Hollywood villain problem, and what it looks like when a man shaped by political catastrophe becomes romantically persuasive. And: Tyler and Sanjana do a month-in-media check-in that includes both Cancer Ward and Kennedy Ryan.

• On age gaps: why power is the whole point, when the trope works versus when shock replaces substance, and why the demand for capital-M Moral fiction is more conservative than it sounds.
• Anna Maria Volkova is the author of Games, a debut romance about desire, grief, and neoliberal capitalism (out June 30). Referenced: Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid.
• The month in reading: Score and Reel by Kennedy Ryan, Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn, Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi, In Every Possible Way by Alicia Thompson, The Very Definition of Love by Sophia Benoit, The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn, and Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught.

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Let’s dive into the BookTok discourse, shall we? Specifically, how algorithms work and why dismissing the community tends to say more about the dismisser than the community. Then debut romance novelist (and longtime cookbook author) Julia Turshen joins to talk about her 831 Stories novella Down to Earth, why food is the fastest way to put a reader in a room, the formula that cookbooks and romance novels quietly share, and what it means to write competency porn about a lesbian farmer without realizing that's what you're doing. And: Sanjana and Tyler each pitch a queer romance recommendation…and somehow both pick historicals.

• On BookTok: why thinking of it as a monolith is lazy, how algorithms reflect what you engage with (and not objective taste), and the misogyny baked into most think pieces about genre fiction.
• Julia Turshen is the author of numerous cookbooks including Small Victories and Simply Julia, and her debut sapphic romance, Down to Earth, is out this month from 831 Stories. Referenced: “I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America” by Caity Weaver.
• The queer romance recommendations: Tyler picks An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera, and Sanjana picks The Companion by E.E. Ottoman. Honorable mentions: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi and The Pairing by Casey McQuiston.

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Is it off-screen chemistry, or is it just good marketing? Hosts Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall open with the Brett Goldstein and JLo Office Romance press tour—and what it means when a man manifests his lifelong crush into a co-starring role. Then scholar and author Nisha Sharma joins to talk about her research on dark romance and reproductive coercion, including how the genre’s relationship to consent has shifted alongside the political landscape, and whether dark romance could do better without losing what makes it so compelling. Plus: a listener voicemail sends Sanj and Tyler deep into Off Campus territory.

• Office Romance starring JLo and Brett Goldstein is streaming now on Netflix—clearly we’ll be discussing.
• Nisha Sharma, author of The Letters We Keep, is studying the intersection of law, politics, and culture in romance fiction. Her Substack post on dark romance and reproductive coercion tees up this episode’s conversation.
• A few dark romances for discussion: Lights Out by Navessa Allen, Brynn Weaver and Allie Oleander’s work, and Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
• It’s time for the Off Campus discourse! The correct answer to listener Lacey's question is Dean Di Laurentis.

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