Modern Love

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 chara...

Gail Rice, a writer and a therapist, was approaching her 70th birthday. She had given up on dating apps and hadn’t had a romantic connection with anyone in years. But for her 70th, she wanted a very specific birthday present: an orgasm.

So Rice decided to hire an escort. In this episode, she describes what went right, what went wrong and what she’s planning for her next birthday.

You can read Gail Rice’s essay about hiring an escort ...

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 i...

When her wildly popular memoir “Eat Pray Love” came out in 2006, Elizabeth Gilbert suddenly found herself touted as an expert on self fulfillment, spirituality and love. Readers might assume that Gilbert had vanquished her demons as she settled into a life of fame and marriage to the man she fell in love with at the end of the book.

But her struggle was far from over. On this episode of “Modern Love,” Gilbert talks about a new love ...

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 televis...

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 ...

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 di...

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,”...

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. Graha...

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 ...

“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.

O...

The pop singer and actress Reneé Rapp has a deep love for her friends. She maintains a nonstop group chat with more than 15 close friends every day. Their lives are so intertwined that the line between platonic and romantic can sometimes get blurry, particularly since many of them have dated each other.

Rapp, best known for her role in the Broadway musical and new film adaptation “Mean Girls,” has an upcoming album, “Bite Me,” which...

When we meet Rob Delaney’s character, “Neighbor Guy,” in FX’s limited series “Dying for Sex,” he’s scarfing down a burrito in an elevator, dripping food on his face and the floor. But Delaney’s performance reveals that under Neighbor Guy’s messy exterior is a man capable of deep vulnerability and empathy.

“Dying for Sex” follows a woman named Molly, played by Michelle Williams, who is dying of cancer and desperate to experience sexu...

The best-selling author and motivational podcast host Mel Robbins is known for her blunt advice and viral wisdom, from The 5-Second Rule to countless proverbs on relationships, confidence and everyday stuck-ness. Her most recent book, “The Let Them Theory,” has given her readers a fresh perspective for navigating disappointment, rejection and uncertainty in life.

Today, Robbins shares fives tips for letting go of control, and explai...

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.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app ...

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 ...

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 L...

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’...

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 lone...