Anna Martin interviews writers and couples about the real stories behind Modern Love essays.
Modern Love treats love as something tested in ordinary rooms: a spouse’s depression, a father’s disclosure, a marriage stretched by sexuality or parenthood. Anna Martin guides guests toward the moment when a practical story becomes an emotional reckoning.
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Modern Love is produced by The New York Times and hosted by Anna Martin, extending the newspaper's Modern Love column into audio interviews. The format is guest-driven conversation: Martin talks with one or two guests per episode about a specific, often previously published relationship story, sometimes reading aloud from the original essay as part of the discussion. Recurring subject matter includes non-monogamy and open marriages, parenting and masculinity, ambivalence about having children, domestic labor and equity within marriage, sex research and satisfaction, and age-gap relationships. Guests range from authors such as Lindy West and Jennette McCurdy discussing their own books, to academics such as Dr. Nicole McNichols presenting university research, to comedians and actors such as Jordan Carlos and Jessie Buckley connecting a public role to a private story. Some episodes compile listener-submitted voicemails around a theme, such as a Valentine's Day special built around long-married and long-distance couples. The tone is reflective and specific rather than prescriptive — Martin draws out concrete details, turning points, and disagreements rather than offering general relationship advice. Production is straightforward two-person interview audio, occasionally combined with essay readings or listener voicemail segments, without heavy narration or sound design. The show suits listeners who already follow the Modern Love column or who are interested in first-person accounts of marriage, parenting, and non-traditional relationship structures. It is not a call-in advice show or a panel debate format; each episode is anchored to one guest's documented experience.
Made for: Listeners who follow the Modern Love column and want first-person interviews about marriage, parenting, and relationship turning points.
What sets it apart: Each episode is anchored to a specific, often previously published Modern Love essay or a guest's own book or film, rather than general relationship advice.
For more than 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. 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...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Anna Martin makes love legible through precise questions about the decisions, habits, and private reckonings that shape relationships.
Modern Love turns intimate decisions into searching conversations, with Anna Martin asking guests to stay with the moment when a settled story about love stops holding. Marriage and parenthood recur, though rarely as abstract subjects.
Like relationship therapy by proxy, Modern Love lets you borrow someone else's impossible question.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A tender Modern Love episode about a gay man, a straight woman, and the marriage they keep choosing.
Modern Love revisits Jacob Hoff and Samantha Greenstone, newlyweds whose marriage resists the tidy labels people often reach for: he is gay, she is straight, and their relationship grows out of friendship, desire, and a shared decision to keep going.
Jessie Buckley and Modern Love sit with motherhood, inherited fear, and the fragile fact of being born.
Jessie Buckley's appearance on Modern Love ties her role as Agnes in Hamnet to the more immediate shock of becoming a mother herself. Anna Martin keeps the conversation close to that threshold: pregnancy, birth, performance, and the strange new scale of feeling that arrives with…
A candid Lindy West conversation about polyamory, self-trust, and the need for a bigger life.
Lindy West's Modern Love conversation treats polyamory less as a relationship model than as a test of self-knowledge. Anna Martin sets up West's marriage to Aham as a love story with an unresolved tension inside it, then gives West room to describe a shift from fear toward…
A tender Modern Love conversation about marriage, motherhood, grief, and the softer language Helena de Groot finds for regret.
Modern Love follows Helena de Groot through the question that kept returning to her life and marriage: whether to have a child when she usually felt motherhood was not for her. The episode is strongest when pregnancy and grief arrive at once.
A tender Modern Love conversation about bisexuality, family secrecy, and recognizing yourself through a parent.
Julia Stoller's conversation with Anna Martin turns a family revelation into something more intimate than a coming-out story. Julia grew up seeing her father as polite, punctual, and a little square, then learned in college that she had barely known him.
A warm Valentine's episode about private memories, public gestures, and the rituals that keep romance alive.
The Secret to True Romance uses Valentine's Day to ask a plain, durable question: what counts as romance when it shows up in actual lives? Anna Martin gathers listener stories about gestures people still remember, then turns to Anne Bolger Witherspoon and Lonnie Anderson, whose…
A funny, grounded Modern Love conversation about repair through one small, carefully made cup of coffee.
Modern Love finds its emotional center in a modest act of domestic care. Jordan Carlos describes being at odds with his wife, then remembering to bring her morning coffee for the first time: made with frothed milk, agave, and the right amount of sweetness.
A funny, tender Modern Love episode about fatherhood, toughness, and a son quietly resisting the script.
Modern Love follows Sam Graham-Felsen as he tries to turn a father-son road trip into a lesson in toughness, with Teddy Roosevelt, basketball, rough country, and longer hikes all folded into his idea of boyhood.
Knox and Jamie turn celebrity gossip, film deep dives, and streaming news into weekly comedy.
Two hosts revisit one film, show, or book a week, plus long personal tangents.
A Brazilian journalist spends years reinvestigating unsolved child disappearances in Paraná.
Cris Bartz and Juva Lauer alternate debate and interview episodes on Brazilian social issues.
Robert Wright interviews specialists on Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, and open-source AI.
A Baltimore bus driver's daily bus-seat reflections on money, faith, and family, signed "God's Boy."
This episode features an interview with Stephanie Gunning about navigating her husband's severe depression and her own breaking point, exploring how love sustains a relationship through crisis.
Anna Martin opens Modern Love with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, who star in The Drama as an engaged couple about to get married.
Modern Love returns to Jacob Hoff and Samantha Greenstone, newlyweds whose relationship first appeared in the New York Times Vows section.
Host Anna Martin interviews 82-year-old senior sex educator Joan Price about reconnecting with sexuality after losing her husband and the link between sex and grief.
Anna Martin talks with Jessie Buckley soon after Buckley gives birth to her daughter.
Lindy West tells Anna Martin how a marriage that once felt like a “classic happy marriage” changed when Aham said monogamy was not healthy for him.
Anna Martin talks with Helena de Groot about a question that has followed Helena for years.
Julia Stoller grew up thinking she had her father figured out: polite, punctual, solidly Midwestern, not the kind of man who kept secrets.
Modern Love's Valentine's Day episode opens with listener voicemails describing their most romantic moments — including a partially deaf person whose partner always silently reserves the best seat for them to hear, and a woman whose boyfriend offered to build a portable 'knocking block' for her wood-knocking superstition.
Anna Martin opens by asking listeners to send in their most romantic stories for a Valentine’s Day episode.
A father plans a road trip with his eight-year-old son to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, hoping it will make the boy a little tougher.
This episode of Modern Love explores the theme of romantic relationships, inviting listeners to share their most romantic experiences for Valentine's Day while hinting at a deeper story about marriage and connection.
Anna talks with Dr.
Anna Martin brings back a listener favorite while Modern Love is off for the holidays.
This episode features Robin Urien and Cheryl Huff discussing their women-only retirement community in Texas, exploring how it combats isolation and brings freedom and happiness to women over 60.
Anna Martin opens by linking Jesse Buckley’s new film Hamnet to the questions it raises about motherhood and loss.
Claire Corey, a 59-year-old woman living with stage four metastatic inflammatory breast cancer, tells host Anna Martin how a lifetime of romantic disappointment led her to fall in love with life itself — and then, unexpectedly, with a man named Don, a former partner from 27 years earlier.
Host Anna Martin discusses holiday relationship stress with therapist Nedra Glover-Tawab, offering advice for navigating family dynamics.
Host Anna Martin discusses money issues in relationships with financial expert Ramit Sethi, focusing on emotional conversations about finances.
Host Anna Martin discusses the awkwardness of paying on dates with essayist Janine Lin, who proposed opening a joint checking account on a third date.
Host Anna Martin invites listeners to send in family-related questions for advice, then introduces a conversation with Megan Fowley about losing her partner to ovarian cancer.
Host Anna Martin introduces an upcoming episode about money issues in relationships and invites listeners to share their experiences via voice memo.
Host Anna Martin introduces an upcoming episode about money issues in relationships and invites listeners to share their stories.
Host Anna Martin introduces a Thanksgiving advice segment and then interviews Malala Yousafzai about love and relationships.
Host Anna Martin discusses the anxiety of feeling like you've done something wrong with therapist Meg Josephson, exploring the fear of being a disappointment.
Actor Rob Delaney shares a humorous story about hitting his head and breaking an exit sign, leading to a discussion about love and messiness.
Host Anna Martin introduces a conversation from The Interview podcast between David Marchese and poet Ocean Vuong, exploring themes of compassion and authentic human connection.
This episode features an interview with U.S.
Host Anna Martin introduces a conversation with indie rock musician Lucy Dacus about love and relationships, inspired by the Modern Love column.
Listeners share the moment they knew they were falling in love, for a Valentine's Day episode.