“Am I in trouble?” “Am I secretly bad?” These are questions Meg Josephson, a therapist and author, grew up asking herself. She was constantly trying to anticipate other people’s needs, worried that she was letting other people down. And it wasn’t until she found herself standing in the aisle of a Bed Bath & Beyond, trying to remember her favorite color, that she realized her desire to please everyone was eroding her sense of self. On this episode of Modern Love, Josephson talks about how that realization led her to confront her tumultuous childhood, and what it took to stop “people pleasing.” She reads the Modern Love essay “My Three Years as a Beloved Daughter” by Erin Brown, about a woman who found a type of love in her best friend’s parents that she had never experienced before, and what that taught her about her own parents. Josephson’s book, “Are You Mad At Me?,” is available Aug. 5, 2025. Read more about Meg Josephson, and how to break the habit of people pleasing, in this article by Jancee Dunn. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

For her entire life, Grace Hussar has been an overthinker. No matter how much she wanted to be in the moment, she always felt as if she was just outside it. But when she took up endurance running, she realized something: Extreme pain turned her thoughts off. She wanted more of that feeling — more pain and less overthinking. As a mother of two with a happy partnership and a career in finance, what she explored next surprised her. On this week’s episode of “Modern Love,” Hussar talks about her essay, “The Kind of Pain I Wanted.” Hussar shares the story of how she discovered that rope play and kink were the keys to newfound presence and pleasure in her life. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Sam Graham-Felsen never imagined being lonely. Throughout his childhood and as a young man his life revolved around his friends. But when Sam got married and then had kids, going out with his friends almost felt like a luxury. After years of focusing on everything in his life except friendship, Sam began to realize he was missing something essential, and he decided to get his friends back. On this episode of “Modern Love,” Mr. Graham-Felsen describes how he went from being a boy with a wealth of deep friendships to finding himself feeling lonely as an adult, and what he did to bring friendship back into his life. Read his essay “Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?” in The New York Times Magazine. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Stories of romantic love are everywhere, but the actor, singer and comedian Bridget Everett says that friendships deserve our attention, too. Onscreen and in everyday life. Last Fall, Everett appeared on Modern Love to talk about her HBO Original series “Somebody Somewhere,” which centers on a close friendship. Now she’s nominated for an Emmy Award for writing the show, along with Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen. In “Somebody Somewhere,” Everett stars as Sam, a woman struggling with grief and self-doubt after losing her sister. As Sam grows closer to her friend Joel — played by Jeff Hiller, an Outstanding Supporting Actor nominee — the future starts to look more bearable. In this episode of Modern Love, Everett tells Anna Martin why she’s looking for a friendship like the one Sam and Joel have on the show. She also reads a Modern Love essay called “When Your Greatest Romance Is a Friendship,” by Victor Lodato. Lodato was in his 40s when he fell into a platonic life partnership with an artist in her 80s, who lived across the street. In April 2024, Lodato published “Honey,” a novel inspired by Austin Brayfield, the friend he wrote about in his essay. How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times How to submit a Tiny Love Story 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Olandria Carthen and Nic Vansteenberghe spent a lot of this past season on “Love Island USA” coupled up with other people, but in a last-minute twist they wound up together. Fans were divided. They read into body language, smirks, eye contact and passing comments to try to piece together whether Nic and Olandria got together out of convenience or their love was a genuine slow burn. Despite all that sleuthing, the two think viewers didn’t get the full story. In this episode of “Modern Love,” Nic and Olandria tell our host, Anna Martin, what their experience on the show was really like and what’s next for them. * Watch this episode on YouTube. * Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. * Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

When the writer E. Jean Carroll accused President Trump of sexual assault in 2019, she unearthed a memory she had pushed away for decades. She also admitted, for the first time, something she hadn’t fully reckoned with: She hadn’t had sex since. In this episode, Carroll tells Anna Martin what it was like for her to go from “man crazy” to someone who could not engage in even the slightest flirtation. She had always prided herself on moving forward with a smile and not dwelling on the past. But in recent years, as Carroll went public with her story, and as she took Mr. Trump to court twice, she began to realize that finally facing the loss of her sex life might be an important step toward getting it back. Carroll’s latest book, “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President,” came out in June. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Christine Woolley always knew she wanted to be in a plural marriage. She grew up in a fundamentalist Mormon community, loved having two moms and several grandmothers, and wanted to raise her own children in that environment. As an adult, and after Woolley married a man with two other wives, her family decided to share their lives on the TLC show “Sister Wives.” Woolley stayed in the relationship for 25 years, with much of it televised, but slowly she realized she needed to leave and go out on her own. On this episode of “Modern Love,” Woolley discusses what she loved about her upbringing, the joys and pitfalls of a shared marriage, and what she’s learned from her first monogamous relationship. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Jay Duplass knows the power of improvisation. Many years ago, an unscripted, cliffside interaction changed his life, helping to set in motion the events that would lead to his new movie, “The Baltimorons.” The film features a newly sober comedian and a workaholic dentist who meet on Christmas Eve during an emergency dental procedure. What follows is a surprising love story that unfolds over 24 hours in Baltimore. The movie itself is an exercise in being open to unexpected connections. In this episode, Duplass talks about what it means to “yes, and” your way through life and how that can lead to some of our most rewarding experiences. He also reads a Modern Love essay called “The Dentist Who Treated My Divorce,” by Hillery Stone, and reflects on how the power of dropping our assumed roles can make way for deep interpersonal connection. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Tessa Thompson’s latest role is an infamously chaotic one: Hedda Gabler. Adapted from the classic play by Henrik Ibsen, “Hedda,” in select theaters Oct. 22, casts Thompson as a 1950s housewife who feels snubbed by an old lover and stifled in a new marriage. For Hedda, the only exit strategy is to punish those who have hurt her and then destroy herself. In this episode of Modern Love, Thompson explains why she relates to female characters like Hedda and to the desire to define life and love on one’s own terms. She also reads a Modern Love essay about an unhappy marriage that helped the author find herself. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

When she was 15 years old, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban, targeted for saying that young women should have the right to an education. By the time she woke from the ensuing coma, the world had already cast her in the role of fearless activist. In the years that followed, she embraced the part, starting the Malala Fund and traveling the globe speaking truth to power. But now Malala has a new memoir out called “Finding My Way,” and she’s ready to reintroduce herself. Today, she tells us about navigating ordinary life — like making friends at university, finding her personal style, going to parties and … falling in love. “Finding My Way” comes out on Oct. 21. The Modern Love team also wants to hear your questions about dealing with family during the holidays. Read our submission guidelines here. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

In cities across China, there’s a special kind of consultant you can hire if you find out your spouse is cheating. They’re called “mistress dispellers,” and their job is to work their way into your spouse’s life, get close to their lover and convince the pair to break it off. When all goes according to plan, the cheaters end up believing it was their idea to end the affair. In this episode of “Modern Love,” the filmmaker Elizabeth Lo tells Anna Martin what it was like to embed herself with a mistress dispeller over the course of three years. Lo explains some of the secrets to the mistress dispeller’s success, and why working on the project played a role in her own breakup. Lo’s documentary “Mistress Dispeller” is in select theaters today. Listener call out: The Modern Love team wants to know how differences over money are straining your relationship. Tell us what’s going on, and we may get you some expert advice on an upcoming episode. Find out how to submit your voice memo 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. 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Natasha Cloud is a powerhouse. The New York Liberty point guard seems to have it all: a successful W.N.B.A. career, fierce confidence and a loving relationship with her girlfriend and teammate, Isabelle Harrison. On and off the court, Cloud radiates self-assurance and seems to know exactly who she is, but that sense of self was hard-won. In a conversation with “Modern Love” podcast host Anna Martin, Cloud talked about growing up as the only mixed-race child in a white family, and how one conversation with her mother shifted everything she thought she knew about herself. She discussed finding her identity in college, her family’s love and acceptance for the “new Tash,” and why professional pressure led her to publicly identify as bisexual even though she knew the label didn’t feel right. Listener call out: The Modern Love team wants to know how differences over money are straining your relationship. Tell us what’s going on, and we may get you some expert advice on an upcoming episode. Find out how to submit your voice memo here. Also: The Modern Love team wants to hear your questions about dealing with family during the holidays. Read our submission guidelines here How to submit a Modern Love Essay to the New York Times How to submit a Tiny Love Story 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 articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.