Modern Love

Whether it’s Cher or Paul Mescal, Amelia Dimoldenberg can turn her “dates” at a fast-food restaurant into chemistry-fueled, revealing interviews. The dates may be fake, but viewers are always left with the impression that the celebrity guest would probably be game for a second one. Amelia reads a Modern Love essay from Rachel Fields, who is not sure how her last date has gone. After sending a risk...

In the new movie “We Live in Time,” the actor Andrew Garfield plays a newly divorced man named Tobias who falls in love with a chef named Almut, played by Florence Pugh. Their story feels epic and expansive, but still intimate. It focuses on the small, everyday moments that make up a love story: washing dishes together after a dinner party, sharing biscuits, smelling fruit at a farmers’ market. Th...

Courtenay Hameister worked hard to stop feeling shame about her body size, but she also had a cruel inner monologue that just wouldn’t leave her alone. At times, her internalized fatphobia was so powerful, she couldn’t think about romance at all. But when Courtenay started dating Jason, everything felt different. He was fat, too, as well as smart, funny, and handsome. When Courtenay realized she w...

On the HBO high finance drama “Industry,” basically everyone serves cruel insults. It’s part of the culture at their bank, Pierpoint. But Myha’la’s character, Harper Stern, goes after friends and enemies with deep, cutting verbal attacks. Myha’la reads a Modern Love essay by a woman with the opposite problem: Laura Pritchett and her husband have avoided conflict for so long, she writes, that the f...

The actor Gillian Anderson (“The X-Files,” “The Fall,” “Sex Education”) has become an advocate for sexual openness, whether through her on-screen personas, launching a libido-boosting soda brand, attending the Golden Globes in a vulva-embroidered dress or through her new book, “ Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous ,” which showcases the secret fantasies of anonymous women, curated by Ms. Anderson...

Actor Peter Gallagher ( Sex, Lies, & Videotape and The O.C. ) met his wife, Paula Harwood, over forty years ago in college in a stairwell meet-cute. Since then, they’ve maintained a loving marriage and managed to raise a family while navigating the world of show business. We talked to Peter on his 41st wedding anniversary, and he read us the Modern Love essay “Failing in Marriage Does Not Mean Fai...

On the Emmy- and Peabody-winning series “The Bear,” Liza Colón-Zayas plays Tina Marrero, a cook at the Chicago restaurant at the center of the story. Tina and her fellow workers are in a constant struggle for the survival of their restaurant, and they fight just as fiercely with one another. Only at rare moments do we see them drop the tough exterior and show one another love or respect. Today, Co...

John Paul Brammer writes the “¡Hola Papi!” advice column for The Cut at New York magazine, answering questions like, “ Why am I dreaming about sex with a man when I’m a lesbian? ” Or, “ What if my partner judges me for writing smut? ” This candor has given John Paul an intimate connection with his readers. However, as today’s episode reveals, he doesn’t think we necessarily need that level of open...

Emily Ratajkowski is doing a balancing act many famously beautiful women have to perform. In her 2021 book “My Body,” she reflects on what it’s been like to build a career based on her public image, and her struggle to control that image in an industry largely run by men. Since getting divorced a few years ago, she’s been thinking a lot about gender dynamics and the type of agency she wants to hav...

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...

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...

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-strin...

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...

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 bein...

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 o...

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...

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 th...

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...

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 cas...

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 complic...

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!” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher . For more podcasts and narrated article...

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 lis...

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 h...

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. ”  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.ny...

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.” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher . For more podcas...