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0:04

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0:06

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0:09

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0:11

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0:35

Love now and tomorrow. Love

0:39

is stronger than

0:41

anything. And

0:43

they love you more than anything. They

0:46

still love you. From

0:50

the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This

0:52

is Modern Love. This

0:54

year marks the 20th anniversary of the

0:56

Modern Love column. 20

0:59

years, can you believe that? Two decades

1:01

of essays that have made us laugh,

1:03

made us gasp, broken our hearts, reminded

1:05

us of the fundamental goodness of people.

1:08

And let's be honest, a lot of

1:10

these essays should come with tissues. It's

1:13

kinda our thing here, making you cry. To

1:16

mark this big anniversary, we've got a

1:18

conversation with Modern Love founder Daniel Jones.

1:21

Dan has edited around 1,000 essays since

1:23

the first one ran back in 2004. And

1:26

when you spend all your professional time

1:29

contemplating human connection, that work

1:31

doesn't stay at the office. It

1:33

impacts you in profound ways. So

1:36

today, Dan shares the three essays that

1:38

have changed the way he approaches love

1:40

and relationships in his own life. And

1:43

at the end of the show, stay tuned for

1:45

a very exciting announcement about the rest of our

1:47

season. So

1:58

it feels strange to say what I say to... guest

2:00

on the show which is welcome because really

2:02

you welcomed me into this

2:04

universe. So instead of saying

2:06

welcome, I'm going to say Dan Jones, hello,

2:09

and thank you so much. It

2:11

is great to be back here. The

2:13

modern love column has been around for almost 20 years

2:16

which is a long time and I

2:19

do not say this in a rude way but that also

2:21

means that you are 20 years

2:23

older than you were when you started it.

2:26

Is there anything that's happened in your

2:28

life over those two

2:30

decades that has changed your approach

2:33

to the work or reframed

2:35

it in some way? I've

2:38

gone from being young to less

2:40

young over that time. Delicately

2:43

put. I

2:46

started the column with children

2:48

who are now very

2:51

much adults and have gone

2:53

through their own breakups

2:55

and traumas and all of that and

2:57

got out into the world and got

2:59

jobs. My marriage

3:02

of 29 years

3:05

came to an amicable end.

3:09

My father died two

3:11

months ago and there's

3:13

been a lot of tough family time

3:16

since then. I

3:18

feel like my life was pretty

3:21

stable during sort

3:23

of the family, child rearing

3:26

years and then oddly

3:29

timed to the pandemic I have to say. It

3:32

happened to many. It

3:34

just opened up and it was like the

3:37

column was saying to me, okay, you're

3:39

going to experience the whole range

3:42

of what you've been putting out

3:44

there. Funnily

3:47

enough, I feel like working on

3:49

the column for all these years has

3:52

given me sort of touchstones

3:54

and tools and not just

3:56

for me, for other people too, to be able

3:59

to... to navigate difficult

4:02

times in life. It feels

4:04

like this churning reservoir of human

4:06

experience that sort of

4:08

feeds into your veins if you are

4:10

open to it. I

4:12

love what you said that you gave so much

4:15

to the column and now you're in this place

4:17

in your career and your life or it's giving

4:19

back to you. I mean, what a- It's

4:21

like an annuity program. It's like, yeah, it's like

4:23

a 401k. Right, right. It's

4:26

like a Roth IRA. Modern

4:28

love 401k. That's a sexy way to say

4:30

it, right? No, I'm withdrawing. I'm

4:32

getting close to the age where I'm gonna be forced

4:35

to withdraw, so it's a good thing. People are loving

4:37

this metaphor, yeah. Okay, so that's

4:39

where you are now, but when

4:41

you were starting the column, did you see

4:43

yourself as an expert in relationships

4:45

or in romance? I

4:48

wasn't great at romantic relationships. I

4:51

was like, how does this work? How

4:53

does this work? I was really terrible at it

4:55

in high school. I was really terrible at it

4:57

in college. Still found

4:59

it really hard. My first girlfriend in

5:02

grad school. You're

5:04

wild. But very slow learning,

5:06

very shy, but

5:08

I think just the weightiness

5:11

of romantic relationships is a

5:13

scary thing. And I

5:16

wasn't paralyzed with fear or anything. Like I just, I assumed

5:19

I'd get married, I'd have a family. Like

5:21

all those things were just assumptions and didn't

5:23

seem all that hard to make happen in a way. But

5:26

the complications of relationships

5:29

and loss and

5:32

just all those big things, I

5:34

felt like those were things that happened to

5:36

somebody else. Those were out

5:39

there and were these deep dark wells that

5:44

I hadn't really experienced and didn't

5:46

have a sense of

5:48

how to navigate. How

5:50

did the people in your life react when

5:52

you told them like, hey, I got a new gig,

5:55

I will be covering love and relationships

5:58

the New York Times, did people? people, you know,

6:00

how do people react? Some people

6:03

were just, they were surprised that that

6:05

would be my subject. Huh. And

6:07

that would be my beat in a way. To

6:10

me, I don't think of love

6:12

and relationships as being a beat. I

6:15

think of it as being like the center of all

6:17

life. You know, it's like, it's

6:20

not off to the side. Say that. It's

6:23

the center of things. Honestly, I

6:25

don't like the word romance. It just feels like

6:28

shallow and... Schlocky. Schlocky

6:30

and whatever. But the

6:33

word love, like, has it

6:35

all. It's like, that's the

6:37

core of human existence, it seems

6:39

to me. It's the

6:42

stuff of life and loss and death

6:45

and yearning and dreaming and

6:47

all of that stuff. Have

6:51

you come to that understanding of

6:53

these stories about love or really stories

6:55

about life? Do you enter into

6:58

the column, the early days of this column, with

7:00

that understanding or has that been worked out over

7:02

20 years of editing these pieces?

7:05

We started that way a little

7:08

intentionally. We made it clear that

7:10

the stories were not just about

7:12

romantic relationships. It was of family

7:14

relationships and friendships and parenthood

7:16

and the whole sort of gamut

7:19

of human love and bonds. In

7:23

coming up with the title, Modern

7:25

Love, we wanted an

7:27

umbrella that was sort of wide

7:29

enough to encompass love

7:31

and the modern part of it could

7:34

mean a lot of things. To me,

7:36

it meant something that was contemporary,

7:38

like a way we connect that we didn't use

7:40

to, a way we use technology, the way we

7:42

have children that we didn't use to, all

7:45

of those ways that are now.

7:47

And we just thought modern would cover that piece

7:50

of it. Okay, so

7:52

another big part of the column is

7:54

that it's totally based on reader

7:56

submissions, meaning anyone can send in Their

7:58

idea for a story and you can do it. You select

8:00

the ones you want to edit and

8:02

then publish. Why did you go with

8:04

that submission model as opposed to like.

8:07

Commissioning stories from famous writers

8:09

or other well known people.

8:12

I. Just thought, let's just open the

8:14

floodgates and see what comes in. I

8:17

didn't realize the time. What a great

8:19

idea that one. I

8:21

realize later I'm a junior suffered frickin'

8:24

just is pursuing a flipper minutes and

8:26

I'm not much like it's some kind

8:28

of new idea, but for for this

8:30

kind of a forum. It

8:32

was essential and. As

8:35

an example, just a few weeks

8:37

ago, we published a story. By.

8:40

A Bangladeshi immigrants who'd been a

8:42

taxi driver who New York is

8:45

an arranged marriage from Bangladesh and

8:47

one of the visa lottery and

8:49

moved here than they settled in

8:51

Queens the had a daughter, she

8:53

became a doctor. And

8:55

I asked him what made you rights

8:58

dismissed for he a love story from

9:00

thirty years ago and making bring it

9:02

up to now yeah what made you

9:04

submit as we said oh I've been

9:06

reading Modern Love with her twenty year

9:09

and off you know everything at every

9:11

week and he he he wasn't a

9:13

writer he just been really Mccollum file

9:15

I have a story. All

9:18

these people who have stories. They read stories

9:20

to think, what about my story. And

9:22

that's something. I was a late and realizing

9:24

that it was just. It had

9:26

drawn stories out of people who otherwise would

9:29

not have told them. It

9:31

felt like a safe space for them.

9:34

They. Thought about other people have done it.

9:36

Totally know I could do it to. Let

9:42

me come back Dances. As the three

9:44

essays that taught him the most about

9:46

lasts with a little Help Subject Kill

9:48

Hall and Connie Britton. This

10:00

podcast is supported by BetterHelp Online

10:02

Therapy. Do relationships have to be

10:05

easy to be right? Of course

10:07

not. The best relationships with friends,

10:09

family, or partners happen when both

10:11

people put in the time and commitment to make them

10:13

great. Therapy can help. BetterHelp

10:15

offers convenient, affordable online therapy. Start

10:18

the process in minutes and switch

10:20

therapists anytime. Give your relationship some

10:22

love. What's BetterHelp? Visit

10:24

betterhelp.com/modern today to get 10%

10:27

off your first month. That's

10:30

BetterHelp, help.com/modern.

10:34

I'm Emily Badger. I'm a reporter with The

10:36

New York Times. Since the

10:39

pandemic, empty office buildings have become much more

10:41

common in many cities. Why can't we just

10:43

turn them into housing? It's actually

10:45

a really complicated question. To

10:48

answer this question, you have to find

10:50

a developer trying to turn an office

10:52

building into apartments. Ride a

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rickety elevator to the 30th floor of

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a construction site to see the interior

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gates of a building. Finds an

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expert in incandescent light bulbs who can explain

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to you how they fundamentally change office buildings.

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And that's just the beginning of what you

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have to do. When you

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subscribe to The New York Times, you are

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sending reporters like me out into the world

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to ask questions of dozens of different experts

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to go and visit places most people don't

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get to go, to try to come back

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with answers, and then turn all of that

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you'd like to become a subscriber, head

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to nytimes.com slash subscribe.

11:31

You need to see the animated floor plans in

11:33

this piece. All

11:43

right, so Dan, can you please kick us off with

11:45

the first essay you want to talk about? Yeah,

11:48

so this is an essay. It's called

11:50

One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please. And

11:54

the writer is named Alicia Gorder.

11:57

So this is a story that begins with a

11:59

young man. woman working in a

12:01

flower shop describing the kinds

12:03

of customers who come in, the kinds of

12:07

flower bouquets that they buy and for

12:09

what reason. And you think you're

12:11

in this sort of light, airy story

12:14

about a flower shop and then

12:16

about halfway through it takes

12:19

a plunge into this really troubling

12:22

backstory where her high school

12:24

boyfriend had died by suicide

12:26

at age 18

12:29

and throws this what

12:32

she's talking about at the flower

12:34

shop into a whole new context.

12:38

And in the end it turns

12:40

into a meditation of why flowers?

12:44

Why are these the things that people

12:48

rely on for these important transitions

12:50

and moments and life and

12:53

comes to a wisdom

12:55

at the end that has just stayed

12:57

with me ever since? And

13:00

longtime listeners will remember that this essay

13:03

was featured on the podcast years ago

13:05

back when we had celebrities and

13:07

voice actors read the essays. Let's

13:10

hear a part of this one performed I

13:12

think really tenderly by the actor Carrie

13:14

Bache. There's a picture

13:17

I took of him just days before

13:19

I left for college, two months before

13:21

he died. It

13:23

was the summer of chips and guacamole dinners

13:25

we shared sitting on the living room floor.

13:29

He's standing in the kitchen wearing a

13:32

white t-shirt and jeans, one

13:34

perfect half of an avocado cradled in

13:36

his hand. His

13:39

face is turned away, hidden from

13:41

the camera, but I

13:44

like to think he's smiling. I

13:49

remember the song we were listening to, the chatter

13:53

of frogs through the screen door, my

13:56

bare feet on wood, precious

13:59

moments made. all the more

14:01

precious by the fact that they have

14:03

already come and gone. Now

14:08

I measure months by what's in season.

14:12

Sunflowers in July,

14:14

dahlias in August, rose

14:16

hips and maple in October, pine

14:19

in December, hyacinth in March,

14:21

crowd-pleasing peonies in May. A

14:28

favorite of mine is tulip magnolia,

14:31

the way the buds erupt into blooms

14:33

and the blooms into a litter of

14:35

color on lawns, all in a matter of

14:37

weeks while it's smelling cherry blossoms. How

14:40

startlingly beautiful impermanence can

14:43

be. You

14:49

said that it's that ending and

14:51

in fact it's that final line that

14:53

really speaks to you. Can you tell me what you

14:56

learn or take away from that line? It's

15:00

sort of grown on me how startlingly

15:02

beautiful impermanence can be. It's

15:06

not that love or connection

15:08

is beautiful and

15:11

impermanent. It's beautiful because

15:14

it's impermanent. And the

15:18

fleeting nature of any connection

15:22

is what makes it precious and what makes it beautiful.

15:25

And the way that she saw

15:28

this in petals on the

15:30

ground that are soon to dry up

15:32

and go away, but the beauty is

15:34

in that it won't last. I

15:37

mean there's this section I think a

15:39

little bit earlier than that when she even poses the

15:41

question quite directly like, why flowers? Why do we give

15:43

these things that are going to shrivel and die? You

15:46

have to throw away, yeah. And I love what you're

15:48

saying. It's not despite the

15:50

impermanence. It's really loving because of

15:52

it, because our time is. That

15:54

is the arc of life. It's

15:57

shortened with flower blossoms but

15:59

that is it. It sometimes lasts

16:01

a long time, sometimes a short time,

16:04

but it will always feel fleeting in a way, that

16:07

level of beauty. What

16:10

does this essay make you think about in

16:13

terms of your own life or your

16:15

own relationships? To me,

16:17

it's about, I mean, it's a buzzword we always hear

16:19

about, but here it really comes home to roost as

16:22

presence, as being present. And

16:24

it's always the hardest thing for

16:27

me, for a lot of people, appreciating

16:29

what you have now

16:31

and not

16:34

thinking about what you're building toward

16:36

and what you're accumulating wealth for

16:38

and what's to come, but

16:41

the connections you have now that are

16:44

beautiful in the moment and not fearing

16:47

that you're going to lose them because you are.

16:51

It's a certainty, but just

16:53

being able to be present and

16:55

appreciate them. And the fact

16:57

that it's this young woman who

16:59

was able to artfully, in the

17:02

midst of grief, compose

17:05

such a beautiful piece that teaches

17:07

that was just miraculous

17:09

to me. You

17:12

mentioned earlier that your dad

17:14

recently passed. Did you

17:16

return to this essay then? Was it in the back of

17:18

your mind as you were processing all that? You

17:21

know, it must have been because I was

17:24

scrolling through the archive and saw

17:26

that illustration and clicked

17:29

on it. And

17:32

I did see it in sort of a new way.

17:35

I like remembered how

17:38

much I appreciated it at the time, but

17:41

I was able to hold it together here. When

17:45

I read it aloud to a friend who was

17:47

sitting there when I was rereading

17:50

it, I just couldn't get through

17:52

the final lines. I was really broken up by

17:54

it. It sounds like

17:56

this piece resonated with you and

17:58

spoke to you in... in a

18:00

different way years later, which is

18:03

really powerful. Do

18:05

you want to talk about the next essay? Yeah,

18:09

so this one is called Nursing a

18:11

Wound in an Appropriate Setting. It's

18:13

written by Thomas Hoeven,

18:16

who is a doctor. He's not a

18:18

writer, but you would never know

18:21

that. No, you would not. Reading this incredible

18:23

essay. And

18:25

I think about

18:27

this essay all the time. This was published in 2013.

18:32

He describes his relationship with

18:34

his longtime girlfriend before he goes

18:36

to medical school. They knew each other for 12 years. They

18:39

were both the children of divorce and of

18:42

unstable households that were scary.

18:46

And they gave each other a

18:48

sense of safety. He describes

18:50

their relationship as being no fighting. Fighting

18:54

was what their parents did. Fighting would threaten

18:56

their equilibrium, yeah. Fighting would threaten their love.

19:00

And so it was sort of

19:02

a flat, safe relationship. They

19:05

were together for 12 years. They

19:08

got engaged. He was about to head

19:10

off to medical school. And

19:15

then she abruptly broke

19:17

up with them. I think there were only a few

19:19

weeks from their marriage. I

19:21

think three. Three weeks. Three

19:23

weeks, okay. Wow. And he

19:26

was just devastated. Doesn't

19:29

begin to describe it. And

19:32

he goes off to medical school

19:34

for his residency. And

19:36

it's sort of his boot camp in feelings

19:40

and complications

19:42

and devastation and

19:45

real life. Like real

19:48

life. And

19:51

then after this sort of time in

19:53

the wilderness in his residency and going through all

19:55

this, he learns what real

19:58

love is. Yeah,

20:00

I mean his idea of what real love

20:02

is at the end of the

20:04

essay is so powerful. This

20:07

essay was also featured on an

20:09

early season of the podcast. So

20:11

here's Jake Gyllenhaal reading Thomas Hoovin's

20:13

essay, Nursing a Wound in an

20:15

Appropriate Setting. Yeah,

20:17

this one is so great. My

20:20

ex and I are not in touch. Our

20:24

relationship so long in the

20:26

making and so quick to end was

20:29

like an ornamental piece of crystal.

20:33

Aesthetically pleasing but lacking

20:35

resilience and once

20:38

shattered, irrecoverable.

20:45

Looking back at the various romantic and not

20:48

so romantic dating experiences I

20:50

had afterwards, it's

20:52

hard to separate my growth as an

20:55

emotionally conversant partner from my

20:57

development as a capable physician. Both

21:01

happened simultaneously

21:04

and gradually through

21:08

stretches of triumph and sorrow. There

21:12

were no eureka moments and

21:16

neither ever really ended.

21:21

The turmoil I experienced as an intern left

21:23

me with a deeper understanding of how pain

21:25

works, how

21:27

it feels, how it

21:29

ends, and how

21:31

it leaves you less naive. I

21:35

also learned to open up to important

21:37

facets of life that my previous relationship

21:39

had locked out. Unhappiness,

21:44

uncertainty, regret,

21:49

comfort around feelings like

21:51

these is crucial in

21:54

both medicine and

21:56

intimate relationships. basis

22:01

of empathy. I

22:05

didn't understand that before my ex left me,

22:08

and I learned it the hard way. By

22:16

the time I met my wife, I

22:18

was a changed man, and

22:20

a real doctor, and

22:23

our love developed differently from any

22:25

I had ever experienced before. Just

22:30

like a crystal vase, more

22:32

like a basketball, our

22:35

relationship is made for bouncing, for good

22:38

and sometimes rough play that

22:41

modern professional lives generate. We

22:44

do have fights, oh yes we do,

22:47

but they do not threaten our

22:49

foundation, they deepen it.

22:54

Tell me what you take away

22:56

about Thomas's articulation of what

22:58

real love is, what is he saying? Well,

23:02

this is one of these essays that

23:04

I feel like mirrored my experience in

23:07

a way. I

23:09

didn't come from a family of turmoil, but

23:12

I'm afraid of conflict, total fear of

23:14

conflict, don't like to fight, like to

23:16

argue. My

23:18

idea of a successful

23:21

romantic loving relationship

23:24

was being in a harmonious space

23:26

all the time. Or not

23:28

all the time, sometimes you'd be bored, but you wouldn't be fighting.

23:32

So this idea

23:35

that fighting can

23:37

bring you closer is revolutionary

23:40

to me. It

23:42

still is revolutionary to me, not only that

23:45

it can bring you closer, but it's the only

23:47

thing to bring you closer and the only thing

23:49

to deepen your relationship. Fighting

23:51

can lead to end the relationship, definitely, but

23:54

the only way forward and

23:57

the only way deeper is through

24:00

conflict and resolving conflicts to a

24:02

new understanding of the relationship

24:04

and who you're with and the person you're with and getting

24:06

to know them better and all of that. And

24:10

I don't know what business he has writing

24:12

this well about. It's

24:14

not fair to be like a doctor.

24:16

And I know and also to be

24:18

able to write this well about and

24:21

understand love this well and

24:24

loss and conflict and

24:26

depth. It's

24:28

remarkable. So

24:30

are you like fighting all the time now? No.

24:35

I still need to learn how to fight better. Let's

24:39

talk about the final essay. This

24:41

is an essay by Elizabeth Fitzsimmons.

24:44

It's called My First Lesson in

24:46

Motherhood. Can you tell me what that essay is about?

24:50

Yeah. So this is a piece that ran on Mother's

24:52

Day way back in 2007. And

24:57

it's yet another one that takes a

24:59

really dramatic turn, several dramatic turns. And

25:03

it's an essay about bravery

25:05

when you didn't think you had

25:07

the capacity for it. It's

25:10

a couple who are having trouble

25:12

getting pregnant and decide

25:14

to adopt the baby girl in China.

25:18

And they specifically

25:21

fill out forms

25:23

saying like we're new parents.

25:25

We don't want any any

25:28

disabilities. We can't deal with

25:30

anything basically except for

25:33

just a perfect little healthy baby. And

25:36

they get a baby who's

25:39

chosen for them by

25:41

the time they get there and meet

25:43

with the baby and are

25:45

alone with her for the first time. They

25:48

discover sort of alarming physical

25:51

problems, a really

25:54

bad rash and a scar at the base

25:56

of her spine. And

25:59

he's a really good person. hear a

26:01

horrifying diagnosis that the child will

26:03

be paralyzed from the waist down,

26:06

will be in the continent, will

26:09

have serious, serious

26:12

problems. And unbelievably,

26:15

they talk to the agents

26:17

from the adoption agency and they say,

26:19

oh well, you know, we're

26:21

sorry about this, and

26:23

essentially offer a swap for

26:26

a different baby. Yeah,

26:28

that's a moment that is kind of unbelievable in

26:30

this piece. The view

26:33

of human life in that circumstance.

26:36

So this essay was read by

26:38

the actress Connie Britton in 2016,

26:40

and you can just hear the

26:42

emotional stakes of the story in

26:44

her performance. Let's listen to it.

26:46

Yeah, she's really perfect for this one. I

26:50

pictured myself boarding the plane with some

26:52

faceless replacement child and then explaining

26:54

to friends and family that she wasn't

26:56

Natalie, that we had left Natalie

26:58

in China because she was too damaged, that

27:01

the deal had been a healthy baby and she

27:03

wasn't. How

27:05

could I face myself? How

27:07

could I ever forget? I would

27:09

always wonder what happened to Natalie. I

27:17

knew this was my test. My

27:19

life's worth distilled into a moment.

27:23

I was shaking my head no before they

27:26

finished explaining. We didn't

27:28

want another baby, I told them. We wanted our

27:30

baby, the one sleeping right over there.

27:33

She's our daughter, I said. We

27:36

love her. Yet

27:39

we had a long fraught night ahead, wondering

27:41

how we would possibly cope. I

27:44

called my mother in tears and told her the news. There

27:48

was a long pause. She said, Oh

27:54

honey, I thought. She

27:58

waited until I caught my breath. It

28:00

would be okay if you came home

28:02

without her. Why

28:05

are you saying that? I

28:08

just want to absolve you. What

28:10

do you want to do? I

28:13

want to take my baby and get out of here,

28:15

my dad. But,

28:17

my mother said, then that's what you

28:19

should do. I

28:28

mean, I'm tearing up. Me too. So,

28:31

the lesson in

28:33

this piece to me is sort

28:35

of about a test. It's really a

28:37

test. It's like, what are you

28:39

capable of? Like, what kind

28:41

of devotion? What kind of sense

28:44

of responsibility? What

28:46

are you going to take on? And

28:49

they have to decide in the moment, are

28:52

they going to, you know, stick

28:55

with this child with this horrifying

28:58

set of health complications that

29:00

could control their lives

29:03

forever? Are

29:05

they going to push that baby

29:08

aside and accept a healthier

29:10

baby? And then, you know, how do they live

29:12

with themselves if they do that? Neither

29:14

choice is an appealing choice. No.

29:18

This essay, I mean,

29:20

all of these essays bowled me over. And this one

29:22

just made me, I mean, I quite literally

29:25

called my mom after this. It is

29:27

such a moving

29:30

testament to

29:32

just the completely inexplicable

29:34

immediate bond of between

29:37

parent and child. I just like, I... Yeah,

29:40

I'm still not crying. I mean, it's just,

29:42

it's remarkable. Tell me what you're taking. I

29:44

mean, you are a parent. Like, tell me

29:46

what you're thinking about when you read this

29:49

essay. Well, first

29:51

of all, I'm thinking, I think

29:54

anyone reading these things, what

29:56

would choice what I have made? Of course. And

29:58

you would like to think that you... would make the

30:02

choice of keeping the child. But

30:04

honestly, one of the most moving

30:06

things and tragic

30:08

things that happened in the wake

30:10

of publishing this essay is we

30:13

got emails from people who'd faced this

30:15

choice and made the opposite choice and

30:17

either left with a healthy baby and

30:21

struggled and struggled and struggled with having

30:23

done that. More common

30:25

was giving up on adoption entirely and

30:27

just walking away, walking away

30:29

from that child or any child. But

30:32

she's just like, I'm going to walk

30:34

into this, like I'm going to just

30:36

walk forward into this and it's going

30:38

to be what it's going to be.

30:40

And miracle of miracles, like

30:43

within a year or so, all that stuff has

30:45

gone away. I know the kid

30:48

is fine. I'm going to cry again. It's like

30:50

after making this decision, they go

30:52

home and she heals. Yeah.

30:56

And she recoiled it thinking that

30:58

was a reward for making the right choice. Like

31:01

she said, it's not about that. It's not about

31:03

like we were generous or

31:05

we were good and therefore our child

31:07

turned out fine. It's not that

31:09

at all. It just happened

31:11

that way. But it's yet another lesson

31:14

in you can't

31:16

predict the smooth path. You

31:18

just have to sort of walk

31:20

forward and be brave. I

31:24

often say with modern love stories

31:26

that are really

31:28

about choices and hard choices

31:31

and how it's sort

31:34

of ordinary people being incredibly

31:37

brave. I mean, I often wonder

31:39

what creates the

31:41

person who can make the

31:43

brave choice versus the person who shrinks from

31:46

it. Like, well, what is that magic sauce?

31:48

Or what is that childhood experience? Or what

31:50

is the parenting that they have? Because

31:53

there is a divide. Like there is a divide

31:55

often in those circumstances that

31:57

we saw in the outpouring after the

31:59

essay. We

32:02

see instances of bravery in all three

32:04

of the essays that you've shared today.

32:07

Bravery to embrace the brevity

32:09

of love, bravery to engage

32:12

in fighting in a relationship, bravery

32:15

to make a choice. Would

32:17

you define bravery as

32:20

like a core act of love?

32:24

Yeah, a core act of love and

32:26

a core act of life. People's

32:29

bravery has been my biggest takeaway

32:32

over 20 years of doing this work. It's

32:36

never a person who says, I am brave.

32:38

It's almost the opposite. It's people

32:40

who say, I'm not brave. I'm a

32:42

coward. And

32:45

the lesson, just sort of the lesson

32:47

of that, like life,

32:49

it's going to be a mess

32:51

one way or the other. Like you just sort of choose

32:53

your mess, but that is what

32:55

it is. That is life. You're

32:58

not going to avoid it. There's

33:01

such a school of life that

33:03

is about trying to make your

33:05

life as clean and tidy as

33:07

possible. And it's really

33:09

a struggle to do that. And

33:12

I'm not sure it's well-directed energy.

33:16

What do you think we should direct our energy to?

33:18

And now this is just truly me asking you because

33:20

I want you to give me life advice. If not

33:22

to cleaning up our life. I'm not an advice

33:25

giver. I know, but just please put on

33:27

the hat for one second. Like if not

33:29

to direct our energy towards cleaning up our

33:31

life in your 20 years of doing this

33:33

work, like what is the more worthwhile thing

33:36

to direct energy towards? This is not

33:38

exactly new advice, but

33:41

it's really the wisdom from

33:43

Alicia Gorder's essay, which is

33:46

be in the moment. Value

33:48

the people you're with now. Don't

33:51

think I'm planning for 10 years from

33:53

now. Put your 401k

33:55

out of your mind. Contribute to

33:57

it, but put it out of your mind. It's now.

34:00

It's the now, that is

34:02

the work. Dan, I love that.

34:04

It's the now. You

34:07

know, I feel like so

34:09

many listeners right now are clinging to every

34:12

word you've said, trying to figure out what you're looking

34:14

for in a modern love essay pitch. And

34:17

by the way, you can

34:19

send those submissions to modernloveatnytimes.com.

34:22

Dan, can you give us a few quick tips

34:24

on what makes a story stand out in your

34:27

inbox? Well, like

34:29

a bad subject line is modern love submission.

34:31

You're like, you know, 80% of people who submit. And

34:37

a good subject line would include

34:39

sort of an attempt

34:41

at a title, which would be like,

34:43

please, Lord, let him be 27. Please,

34:46

Lord. And I read that, yeah, I read that

34:49

subject line. It was

34:51

funny, it was smart, it was vulnerable.

34:54

I just prayed the essay would deliver on that

34:56

promise. And it did

34:58

deliver, we actually featured it on the podcast a

35:00

few seasons ago. So

35:02

a good subject line is very practical advice,

35:05

but what about the essence of a

35:07

story? Like, what are you looking for there? Harder

35:11

to define quality is a

35:13

sense of humility. Like, there's

35:15

a sense that you're not the smartest

35:17

person in the world, but you do have something to offer. And

35:20

in the world of pitching and

35:22

of trying to get published, there's

35:25

an overriding sense that you have that

35:27

confidence, you have to sell your

35:29

product, you have to say,

35:31

this essay is going to be perfect for you. And

35:34

that's just the wrong approach. That

35:37

kind of confidence is not what

35:39

a hard experience leaves you with. It

35:41

can leave you shaken, it can leave

35:44

you wise, but it doesn't leave you

35:46

cocky. And I think it's

35:48

important that the stories aren't really about answers, they're

35:50

about a search for answers, and

35:52

they don't need to come to a conclusion, but

35:56

they need to present a problem in an interesting way that

35:59

makes you think about it. Well,

36:01

now you're going to get even more

36:03

submissions that can fuel the next 20 years of Modern

36:06

Love. Dan, thank you

36:08

so much for the conversation today. Thanks,

36:11

Anna. That was a lot of fun. So

36:18

listeners, at the beginning of this episode, I

36:20

told you we have an announcement about the rest

36:22

of our season. In honor

36:25

of 20 years of Modern Love, we're

36:27

launching a special series that's really an ode

36:29

to the early years of the podcast that

36:31

so many of you love so much. Starting

36:34

next week, our favorite actors,

36:36

musicians, writers, and artists will read

36:38

hand-picked essays from the Modern Love Archive and

36:40

we'll talk with them about how those essays

36:43

relate to their life and their world. We've

36:46

got a truly incredible lineup that we can't

36:48

wait to share with you. So

36:50

happy anniversary, Modern Love listeners.

36:52

We are so excited for

36:54

this season-long celebration. See you next

36:56

week. Modern

37:01

Love is produced by Julia Botero,

37:03

Christina Joseph, Reva Goldberg, and Emily

37:05

Lang. It's edited by

37:07

Jen Poient and Paula Schumann. Our executive

37:10

producer is Jen Poient. This

37:12

episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show

37:14

is recorded by Maddie Maciello. The

37:17

Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Digital

37:20

production by Mihima Czablani and Nell Gologli.

37:24

All thanks to Larissa Anderson, Kate

37:26

Lapreste, Davis Land, and Lisa Tobin.

37:29

The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel

37:31

Jones. Mia Lee is the editor

37:33

of Modern Love Projects. I'm Anna

37:35

Martin. Thanks for listening.