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The New York Times

For 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. 

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. 

Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp

Modern Love

Fake profiles. Unresponsive texters. Boring conversations. An endless stream of dudes on boats holding the fish they’ve caught. Talk to single people using dating apps, and they are likely to tell you that the experience is awful, but that they have to be there. Dating apps are just how singles meet one another these days. But what if artificial intelligence could fix modern dating? The Times reporter Eli Tan explored that hypothesis.

Eli joined several new dating apps that seek to duplicate a user’s personality via chatbot and let the A.I. clone do the dating. He also received flirting advice from a squadron of A.I. dating coaches. He used that advice on real dates, actually trying to find a connection, to see how the A.I.’s guidance held up.

On this episode of Modern Love, Eli tells us what happened when he revealed his use of A.I. to his dates, and whether the technology may actually push us toward more authentic interactions on the apps.

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times

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.

Dating Apps Suck. A.I. Clones Are Making Them Even Weirder.

It felt as if the dating world hit a breaking point this year. With news headlines like “Is Dating a Total Nightmare for You Right Now?” and “Why the Young and the Single Can’t Commit to Dating Apps” appearing frequently, it became clear that there was a lot of pent up frustration.

We gave you all the opportunity to let it out, and asked you to send in voice memos about your worst dates. We enlisted the help of the actor Joel Kim Booster, who hosts the podcast Bad Dates, to turn your worst dates into tidbits of wisdom for a brand-new year of dating in 2025.

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.

Your Worst Dates Ever: With Joel Kim Booster

This week on the “Modern Love” podcast, we’re sharing an episode from another New York Times podcast: “The Daily.”

For decades, breast augmentations have been one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in the United States. But in recent years, a new trend has emerged: the breast reduction. Lisa Miller, who reported the story for The Times, explores why this procedure has become so common with Rachel Abrams, the episode’s host.

This episode originally aired Nov. 20, 2024. You can find “The Daily” wherever you listen to “Modern Love.”

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times

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.

The Appeal of the Smaller Breasts: From ‘The Daily’

When Clare Cory was a young girl, she dreamed of love. But by the time she turned 50, Clare hadn’t found it. Still, she took a look around and found she was happy and was looking forward to the future. Clare fell in love with life. She saw a flower bloom, watched sunlight sparkle on the water and held her cat on her lap. Her heart was full. 

Then, to her surprise, as Clare faced cancer and was about to turn 60, romance arrived. 

On today’s episode, Clare explains how she fell in love and began sharing her life at a time when she least expected.

This episode is adapted from Clare’s Tiny Love Story from 2024, "Finally Finding ‘The Magic.'"

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York TimesHow 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.

Finding the Magic, Just in Time

Hank Azaria is used to putting on other personalities. You probably know him best from his work as a voice actor on “The Simpsons,” where he plays Moe the bartender, Professor Frink, Chief Wiggum and Snake Jailbird, among many others. His list of credits in stage plays, movies and TV shows is prolific, including roles like his Tony-nominated performance in “Spamalot,” Phoebe’s boyfriend on “Friends” and the dog walker on “Mad About You.” But at a certain point in his life, Azaria realized that he was using humor and acting to be anyone but himself, and that it was affecting his real-life relationships. After five devastating heartbreaks, he resolved to look inward, address his codependency issues and become his most authentic self.

In this episode, Azaria tells us how he found authenticity and reads the Modern Love essay “In Defense of My Emu Tattoo,” about an author who masks his true self by using humor but eventually finds love by learning to be himself.

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times

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.

Hank Azaria’s Advice for Overcoming Codependency

In a new memoir out next week, the singer-songwriter Neko Case shares some painful childhood memories. In the studio with Anna Martin, Case is open and unapologetically angry as she describes being treated like “an unwanted child.” Both parents, she says, struggled with trauma and addiction. They often left her with no food and only her pets for company. Case also reads a Modern Love essay about the complex heartbreak that comes with being estranged from a parent with an addiction, and the joys of finding love and acceptance in the wake of that pain.

Neko Case’s memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” comes out Jan. 28.

Caitlin McCormick’s Modern Love essay, “My Mother, the Stranger,” can be found here. McCormick, who recently published a short fiction piece in The Sewanee Review, is working on a novel.

Listener callout alert: For our upcoming Valentine’s Day episode, the Modern Love team wants to hear about a moment when you knew you were falling for someone. Whether it happened all at once or as a gradual process, we want to learn about how it happened. Where were you? What did it feel like? What did you do next? (You can tell us about a current relationship, a past love or something happening to you right now.)

The deadline is Feb. 5, 2025. The submission instructions are here.

How to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times

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.

Neko Case: ‘If I Didn’t Yell the Truth, What Good Was I?

When Robin Eileen Bernstein’s almost-ex-husband, Mark, died of a heart attack, she suddenly found herself comforting her husband’s grieving girlfriend. Robin and Mark had been living apart for two years, but legally she was still the wife, so it was up to her to make the burial arrangements. Would offering to buy the girlfriend an adjoining plot make her feel less alone?

On this episode of “Modern Love,” Robin explains how she ended up buying her soon-to-be-ex’s girlfriend a burial plot — and who might actually end up being buried there.

Robin Eileen Bernstein’s Modern Love essay, “Here Lie the Bickersons, Side-by-Side for All Eternity,” can be found here.

Listener alert: For our upcoming Valentine’s Day episode, the “Modern Love” team wants to know about a moment when you knew you were falling for someone. Whether it happened all at once or it was a gradual process, we want to know how it happened for you. Where were you? What did it feel like? What did you do next? (You can tell us about a relationship you’re currently in, a past love or something happening to you right now.) The deadline is Feb. 5. Submission instructions are here.

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times

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.

That Time I Bought My Husband’s Girlfriend a Burial Plot

When Jacob Hoff and Samantha Greenstone met, they became instant best friends. Then, even though Jacob was gay, they realized that their feelings for each other were evolving beyond the platonic, and they decided to give romance a try.

On this episode, Hoff and Greenstone tell Anna Martin, host of “Modern Love,” how their love gave him the courage to come out to his conservative family. They also explain that when they decided to get married, they realized they’d have to get used to clarifying their commitment again and again.

You can read Jacob and Samantha’s Mini-Vows profile in the Styles section.

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times

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.

He’s Gay. She’s Straight. They’re Newlyweds.

The Modern Love team asked you to share with us the moment you knew you were falling in love, and you delivered. Your stories took us to so many places — dinner dates, subway rides, sunsets, concerts — and showed us the many shapes of love. There were so many that we could not list them all.

In this episode, we listen back to your voice messages. Then, Daniel Jones, the editor of Modern Love, joins us to discuss the “36 Questions That Lead to Love” and what they reveal about how we fall in love. And Mandy Len Catron, the writer who popularized the 36 questions in her Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” reads her essay and tells us whether she’s still in love with the same man 10 years later.

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.

How to Fall (and Stay) in Love

For Kelsey McKinney, the author of the new book, “You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip,” spreading a good story occupied a morally gray zone throughout her childhood.

McKinney, who is also the former host of the podcast, “Normal Gossip,” talks with Modern Love’s Anna Martin about navigating the ups and downs of gossiping in her own life.

McKinney also reads the Modern Love essay “We Were a Party of Two, but Never Quite Alone” by Linda Button, who tells the story of how gossiping with her rich suitor’s exes brought the euphoria of her relationship back down to earth. While reading Button’s essay, McKinney fields questions from Martin so they can do some gossiping of their own.

How to submit a Modern Love Essay to The New York Times.

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.

Why Gossiping Could Help Your Love Life

“The only three men I had ever imagined a future with all told me that something was missing,” Oz Johnson wrote in her Modern Love essay. When Oz was 23, her boyfriend said she met 99 percent of his criteria, but she was missing 1 percent. Over a decade later, another man broke up with her via email. Their love was almost perfect, he said, but not enough to last.

What is this missing, unquantifiable feeling? Oz used to be haunted by these rejections, but now she has come to embrace the search for imperfect love.

After: Nancy Cardwell wasn’t looking for love — but then, at 58 years old, she fell passionately in love with tango. Her newfound zeal for the dance took her to Buenos Aires, where she fell in love again — this time, with a man named Luis.

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.

Stop Looking for the Perfect Partner

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