The conversations on our show, it's not that every essay is about hurt, but every essay does have some sort of conflict at its core. And that conflict might be internal, like, do I deserve this affection? How am I going to heal from this breakup? I mean, I think love without work. Like Toni Morrison said, love without conflict and resolution is perhaps not the strongest type of love.

I'm Helga Davis and welcome to my show of fearless conversations that reveal the extraordinary in all of us. My guest today is Anna Martin, host of Modern Love, the New York Times popular podcast about relationships, feelings, betrayals, and revelations. In our conversation, we discuss how love is perceived and expressed across cultures with widely contrasted identities.

The role of host when people often share their most important formative memories. And we share our own personal modern love stories. I tried to do some voiceovers a couple weeks ago. And I was a mess, and I couldn't figure out, and I was all with the paper and everything, and I said, what is wrong here? I know.

Headphones are a Is this good? Oh, so fun. So casual without headphones. I love it. I just feel like it's such an instinct at this point. Our studios are like, um, they're less warm than this. There's less color, so this is nice.

Well, the fact of the matter is, I come in and pimp the room out before. You do?

I love that.

Wait, what do you add?

Well, the studio is the studio. What color it is. And the way it's set up, there isn't anything I can do about that. But the thing I can do something about is how the room is lit.

That is such an important point. I don't use the big light in my apartment. I don't turn on the overhead light.

I'm having soft ambient lighting everywhere. Why not for a conversation? You're so right.

And Even in my apartment, I've been in my apartment for 15 years, the bulb that is in my overhead kitchen light is the bulb from 15 years ago.

And this is like beauty light in here. I feel great. Like, I feel like, wow.

Yes. Really, it's helping my skin. I appreciate you looking out for that.

That is a very often overlooked. And I'm always shocked by how many people don't take care of it.

It's ambiance. Sets the mood. When I get Mark My Words, I go back to the office. I'm like, let's get some lamps. And they're like, we don't have the budget for that.

I mean, whatever. Let's see. Let's try.

I understand. I understand. And then just bring your own. Yeah. And put it on your desk and watch everyone envy. It's so true. How beautiful the light is from your area. Yes. And then they'll have to figure it out. And I'm going to do that. Mark my words. They'll have to figure it out.

Thank you.

I love it. Right? Yeah. I was thinking how many times during this conversation we're going to use the word love, and love to speak about more than love, but how many things we love.

I never anticipated in my professional life I would be using the word love in so many emails and conversations and pitch meetings and prep sessions with the team, but I'm writing sentences like, I love your love, and I'd love to explore your love.

I'm very lucky. I really am grateful.

We'll get back to this, but it's fascinating to me, too, that in English we only have one word for love. I agree with you. And we have to make it work, whether we're talking about a person, a piece of cake, a sunset.

Yeah, I mean, and also different types of love. The love you have for a romantic partner is obviously so different than the love you have for your sister or your brother or your parent or your friend or your dog or yourself.

So we say our show is like an exploration of all these different types of relationships But you're so right, I wish there was a different word for all the different types of love, but then I'm thinking that you'd have to have infinity words because everyone loves differently. Ooh. Maybe. Maybe. Ooh. Which could be exciting.

Ooh. I mean, I just, I don't know, perhaps. I mean, love for cake and

love for your mom is very different. Except that it's the same word. And when you say it, don't you feel the same thing? So you take a moment to divvy it out. And to parse it between the two things, dog and mom, or cake and mom, but your initial contact with the word, does it mean one thing?

That's interesting. And then you turn your head and look left or right?

That is so interesting. I mean, my gut would be there are definitely resonances between the two, but so many of the stories we hear about love for, again, Different types of relationships, love for family or romantic love or friendship love.

So much of that has to do with choices and frankly, sacrifice and difficult decisions and power dynamics. And I would say you probably don't have that with cake. So yes, I agree that there's an initial, well now, depending on who you are, absolutely.

A baker could say it. Everything. Totally. It's so true.

That there's jealousy,

which is a big component of love as well. Yeah, I have to think about that and sit with it just because I think there is something about the sort of initial spark or perhaps the like physical feeling. Mmhmm. But so many other languages, you're so right, have different words and you could see that as a hindrance or you could see it as a real opportunity to fill out the word love with so many different types of meanings.

Okay, so here's what happened. I went down the rabbit hole.

Great. Oh, that is so fun.

And look, all my paper is a mess here, which is absolutely right for a conversation about love.

Yes, can't wait.

The messy. So, if it's not quite correct, don't blame me. Blame the internet. Totally.

I always do.

Ancient Persian has 80 words for love. Wow.

Well, now I'm jealous.

Sanskrit. has 96 words for love.

Wow. I mean, I'm sitting here feeling very chastened and very sad for us that we only have one.

That we only have one. And we got to stretch it out.

We do.

Over a lot of.

That is so, and, and the different words, is it the different types of relationships?

Well, I think

in order to speak about that, let's look at Greek. And mind you, these are all the words that are used for love, and who knows if, as in English, they have these variations, but when you say the different word, the feeling gets attached and drawn to the meaning. Okay, so there's eros. Then one means affectionate.

There is unconditional and sacrificial love. There's a word for obsession or madness. There's another word that covers things like flirting, seduction, and casual sex. Ow! There is the unsexy love that's based on obligation. That's a sad word right there. Yeah. And there's a word for how a person views themselves, and I think when we think about that now in our contemporary language, we might think of someone who's a narcissist.

Right? Yeah. It makes so much sense. I also feel if we had those words in our language. There would be less miscommunication, but also maybe there's some amount of comfort in the fact that there's only one word for it, because choosing which label in ancient Greek of love to put on your relationship has been a little, like, when does it transition from the, like, romantic love to the love out of obligation?

What a sad linguistic turn to take, you know, and acknowledgement of the transformation.

And my feeling is that because we don't have more words for love. We spread it all over everything, and that it becomes a kind of impoverished word. So it's like parsley. It's everywhere. You put it, you spread it everywhere.

Yeah, I think that's a really fair point. The first time you say I love you to a partner, it's felt differently, it's said differently, it's received differently. It's physicalized differently, so perhaps because of the limitation of our vocabulary surrounding love, there's so much more importance on the physical embodiment and saying of it, which is perhaps hopeful.

Okay. So then what happens if you're blind or deaf?

Yeah. I'm sure there's a way that that feeling is communicated, if not through sight or sound in a different way. There's so much facial expression with folks who are using sign language, so perhaps in that way. With non hearing people, I'm not sure, but I just feel you need to get across this sort of authenticity of feeling if the word is cheapened than in through other means.

We banty about the word love on our show so much, but I haven't really plumbed the limitations of it. Yeah. Yeah. So now let's go back to the beginning. Where were you born? I was born in Washington, D. C. Both of my parents are federal government employees in the D. C. Maryland Virginia area. And are you an only child?

Mm mm. I'm the oldest of three girls. I have a middle sister who's two years younger than me, and then my youngest sister's eight years younger than me, so bigger age gap.

And do you think your parents love all of you differently?

I mean I actually think they've probably said that explicitly and never hurt me because, or I can't say it never hurt me, I'm sure it did when I was a kid, but I totally understand it.

My sisters, like people generally are, are so distinct and different from me and the way they like move through the world is different and I guess that intuitively made sense that my parents would love us in different ways. And they say the kind of thing that I think all parents say and I do believe it for my parents in different ways, but.

The same amount or like in different ways, but not one more than the other. And I do like, I mean, I don't want them to tell me if I'm not, you know, I'm sure that they love me a little less when I was like a pill when I was a teenager. But yeah, I saw them this weekend. They like came up for a speaking thing I was doing and they're just real fount of unconditional love.

So that I think is a real bedrock that I am so grateful for. I know my sisters are too.

And so how did you end up in this conversation about love? Yeah. And what I really want to know is, was there a thing, a person, an event? What's the mirror that you were looking into that said, Here it is. Here's how this is going to manifest itself in my life.

It's in conversation, and here's how I got here.

Yeah. There's the kind of unsexy answer, which is, I got into storytelling, and then I got into radio, and then I was hired at the Times, and then I got this gig. And I'm very grateful for that trajectory, too, that was not without work and without mentors and all these different things and luck, let's just say, being in the right place at the right time.

But in a more like emotional way.

Or not even a moment. What drew you to this conversation?

Yeah, I got my start at The Moth, which is a storytelling non profit, personal stories, and I was very much addicted to helping people hone a story using I, a story that comes from the self. And I loved what I remember one of my mentors saying when they were working with someone who's struggling with the story.

They were like, the amazing thing is that you are the expert. The amazing thing is you own this. It's your life. And it was so deeply intuitive and felt timeless to tell stories rooted in someone's experience. I just became hooked immediately. Helping people talk about themselves. Where does that come from?

I mean, I think it comes from growing up with a bunch of sisters in the home. Everyone was telling stories and sharing gossip and our dinner table was extremely lively. I think it comes from being Being surrounded by friends were our favorite activities to sit somewhere and sip something and talk. I just think it comes very naturally to me to chat and I think those are the qualities that drew me to the work.

In terms of love itself, I think that as we've spoken about, there's just so much included under that umbrella and really when we say stories about love, I think what we're saying is stories about what it means to be like a human interacting with other humans. And so I think you'll never run out of love stories because people continue to be human and do amazing things and mess up and figure things out.

I just think I've also kind of chosen a kind of unlimited sector in that way.

I think I'm still asking you a different question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is What problem were you solving, or what were you addressing either in your life or in yourself that made love the path?

I think that, and I hesitate to say that everyone asks this question, although I do think it's probably universal, but I'll say I feel like I spent a lot of time as a teenager trying Even still now, asking the question of, am I worthy of this unconditional love from my parents?

Am I worthy of this guy texting me back? Am I worthy of all these friends celebrating my birthday? Like, I do think there are moments where I've been like, what did I do to deserve this, either good or bad? You can say like, what did I do to deserve this horrible thing? What did I do to deserve this amazing?

And so anyway, I think that perhaps love or stories about love are kind of the vehicle for people discovering. Yeah, am I worth this? What did I do to deserve this? That kind of existential question, which I feel like I've pondered a lot. And frankly, the answer is yes, you deserve amazing things, and people don't deserve hard things, but people do deserve Yeah, anyway, I don't know if I can make a grand proclamation.

The tricky thing with this work is that every story is so different, so it's tough to make generalizations, but I do think a lot of the stories we tell are people grappling with what am I worth? Am I worth this?

One of the things you just said is that we all deserve love. And so I had to, again, go find the people.

You are so researched. But you know what happens? It is the thing of loving. I love what I do. I love being in conversation with people. I love loving. And so wherever that thing leads is where I want to go. Good.

I mean, you should come on the show.

Careful, I'll show up.

The lighting's bad.

We have time to work on that. It's true, you're right, you're right, you're right. So, here's Toni Morrison. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it.

You can only earn, by practice and careful contemplations, the right to express it. And you have to learn to love.

I mean, who can argue with Toni Morrison and yet I think it brings up such an important point, which is also kind of the subject to so many modern love stories, which is that love is work, love is effort.

There's a way to look at that work as a lifelong journey. It's very positive. And there's a way to look at the work of healing after a breakup or a divorce, let's say, as really tough work. And again, it's tough to sort of put your own philosophy up against Toni Morrison, but I do believe that everyone deserves love, but to incorporate what she's saying, I think that not everyone works for it, so everyone fundamentally deserves it, but perhaps it also is reflective of the work you put in.

I think my thing is that I think I can incorporate her philosophy into mine as well, because I don't want to say that she's wrong. And I never would. I just think it brings up a very important dimension, which is love is unthinking in certain ways, and love is very much effort and conscious and work in other ways.

So, I want to actually try and get you to do the same thing that you do with the people who talk about love, which is to use I statements.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's so funny. Because of the nature of our show and, and also the nature of journalism. Very rarely does it make sense for me to bring myself into the show.

I mean, I try to show up authentically in conversation because you want to be talking to a human, but yeah, it's funny. It doesn't make me uncomfortable because I talk about myself all the time. Which is different. Yeah, I mean, okay, I'll use I statements, but what was the in response to what?

I didn't have in response to what.

I just was curious to see as we continue to speak what it means for you.

And for me, yeah, you are holding up a mirror to me because so much of the work on the show is helping people tell their own stories, and I very much believe that the spotlight as it were should be on them. So it's funny to be asked to step into it a bit.

Not again that I am uncomfortable, it's just a new hat that I don't wear. I'm not at work very much. I'll do it. I'll put the hat on.

One of the ways in which I worry for myself about the word love is that often it feels like a reflex. And there's a way in in which, because it has to mean so many things, to use it all the time, as we were talking about earlier, impoverishes its meanings.

I have some very good people who live in Italy, and we're very close, and sometimes we're on WhatsApp or one of those platforms, and at the end of the conversation, they will say to me, I love you, and they say it in English. And when I hear it from them, it sounds like so much more of a risk for them to leave their language the way they are familiar with claiming and naming love to find me.

In my language and in my way of feeling and claiming love.

That is very resonant to me. One of my biggest regrets is, I mean I'm half Chinese, my mom's Chinese, my dad is good old Catholic boy from Pittsburgh, but my grandparents immigrated and they're, my mom's first language was Chinese and obviously my grandparents was as well and grew up with my grandparents on that side.

did not want to go to Chinese school, never learned it. And I think this is the story of a lot of mixed kids. It is a huge regret that they passed without me putting in any effort to learn their native language. So there are so many regrets I have with not being able to speak to them in a language they were fluent in.

I mean, they were amazing at English. One of the things I've thought about is us needing to express how much Either one of us meant to each other in English, and very often those conversations were very simple. It's kind of all you need. I could feel what they meant, and they could feel what I meant, I'm sure, but I'd hear you.

It is to this day my biggest regret that I was such a brat about going Chinese school, or not going rather, and didn't get the opportunity to have that kind of conversation and to express that kind of love in Mandarin to them.

And even when I say it to them, I feel so much more responsible. for what I'm saying, and that it is not casual.

Yeah, because of translation, sort of stepping outside your comfort zone or yourself. Yeah, I wish I could talk to them about it. I mean, both of my grandparents have passed again, but if I'd had the wherewithal to ask them, I know that I'm going to butcher it, but it's Waini in Mandarin, and what if I just said that?

You know? Like, what if I just tried? The thing about me as a teenager was I was thinking about a lot of stupid things that don't matter and not thinking about the things that do matter, which is like my grandparents who I love, you know?

What does it feel like to say it now? Will you say it again, just so we can hear it?

Well, I mean, part of me feels very embarrassed because I'm not getting the pronunciation right. My mom has also in recent years expressed real regret that she didn't push us. Even though we said we didn't want to go to Chinese school, she was like, I really beat myself up for not making you and forcing that bridge between a part of myself and my parents and my kids.

So I think about her. being the kind of only holder of the language in our family anymore. It definitely makes me feel good, but it also makes me feel very torn at the same time. And as I say this, of course, As many people have said to me, why don't you start lessons now? And still I haven't. It's tough.

It's like, well, if you want to do it so bad, then do it, girl. But it's like, what, I have like other things? It just, yeah.

And even when I say it to them, ti voglio bene. I know. And for a long time, it felt as though I were being a parrot for these three words. And then as we lived more life together, And we're together for Christmas and for work.

I felt that I needed to find another way to communicate with them in a language that is theirs to make that leap toward them.

Yeah, I think the embarrassment when I say it is my own and I need to get over that. It sounds like you did, which is good. Well, I don't know that I did. Yeah, well, you're committing.

I have made the commitment to trying.

Yeah, I admire that. Maybe I'll start saying it. My middle sister, she doesn't speak Chinese either, but she started sneaking little Chinese words that we do know like xie xie, which means thank you, into conversations with my mom. And the first time I heard it, I was like, how interesting.

And then I realized that she's probably doing what we're talking about. She's just committing to connecting in that way. And I think expressing love in that way. So perhaps I'll take a page out of Emily's book as my sister. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Emily.

What are you doing outside? Speaking about love, thinking about love, listening to stories about love.

How are you feeding your love?

Wow. I have a boyfriend who I love. His name is Brad. He is Amazing. He's deeply emotionally intelligent, very funny, super comforting. When I see him on a corner for like meeting from different places, I still am smiling all the way down the block, which I think is a good sign.

My family is a bedrock, a foundation, and I think I'm surrounded by so much love with friends, too. I feel lucky to have friendships from different stages in my life. I mean, that's kind of the universe of love that. Yeah, I exist in and I feel very grateful for it. It feels very present every day. Was that your question?

Yes and no. Interesting.

Love it. I was like, is that what she's asking?

I think I'm asking, so you have family, you have a boyfriend, and then what else do you do? Outside of being loved by these people and these relationships, what else feeds your love?

I feel like everyone who lives in the city says this, but I genuinely mean this, and I wonder if you feel this way too.

I just feel like walking around and being an open vessel to whatever the city is going to throw at you. It just is like the number one way I remain open to love and really the spectrum of all emotions. It was just snowy this weekend and I live right near Prospect Park. There were so many snowmen, all these kids around.

I mean there was everyone out bundled up, sledding down hills and joy. The light was Sort of ethereal. I don't know. It was just I felt so open to people's love and delight And I really do think that just walking around this city at different times of the year I mean it sounds so cheesy, but I think it's really true.

Just being open and Navigating New York is one of the ways I do it. Does that sound like an ad for the city? It's up to you To you!

I know what I want to do with you. Yeah, please.

I want to name love with you. Okay, wow. Both of us at the same time, but I don't know what that means. I have no idea what that means, but I wonder If we tried speaking at the same time, and I'm going to keep looking at you, and I'm not going to wait for you to say something, it's like we're going to make love.

Wow. We're going to name love.

Okay.

Don't, don't ask me. Okay. I have no idea. Okay,

cool. I love it. Okay. Sounds good. So just talk?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. I love sunset in California. Flipping the pillow,

the cold side, coffee,

giving to you in bed in the morning. I love that there are people who love me. Holding

hands. I love Love is

doing what I want

to do without fear

or judgment.

I love the subway, actually. I love the subway. Love

is Jones holding my hand and putting it on the piano when I was six years old. Listen, listen what's

happening in the other person's life? And at the end they say, what about you? And you're 10 up that, listen, a

white shirt and love is Daniel waking up alone in my apartment, Claudia, having

the morning to myself

and love is.

That was cool. I think I was kind of trying to listen to you and I think I went with images and I think I heard you saying names or a quicker list which was very interesting. But this is

the thing in conjuring love or finding ways to feel it or to express it that it is equally important to to have it be all the things at the same time that it is one thing.

I think that's such an, I mean, I can't believe you came up with that exercise right now, although I sort of can. I mean, I've read like all about love, and I've thought about this, and I've studied it in school in the sense that I took classes where we talked about it, but yeah, that's, I have never done this kind of thing rooted in myself, so.

It's given me a lot to think about in a very good way. I will say I'm very grateful for that.

Tell me one way.

What is it giving you to think about?

So much when we have the conversations on our show, I'm trying to figure out what love means to that person, essentially. Working out their relationships and their understanding of themselves as an actor in their own life.

So just doing it for myself is a very new experience. The joy for me really comes in holding someone's hand through their story or guiding them through. Very rarely has the, like, table been turned, you know, as you're doing to me, which is just like, of course, to be a good host or generative to them in conversation, I should do this kind of work, but I just haven't.

I think it's not obvious in a way, too. And I think part of my interest in the word love, in this conversation about love, is recognizing what love, or talking about love, or using that word, allows me to move away from as well. What do you mean by that? If I can say, Anna, I love you, there are 20 things I don't have to say, even if I'm feeling them.

And my assumption is that When I say it to you, anything that you might want to say to me that will make me uncomfortable is dissipated.

Yeah, I guess in certain ways, I mean, there's a certain unthinkingness in the reciprocity. Very often we think about this in terms of romantic love, but I think it can be extended to if someone says, I love you, it's like, I love you, too.

That's the knee jerk. I think this is a very, you know, Interesting exercise too because it's kind of dismantling that knee jerk reaction to just say it. I hear you in terms of the sort of wide usage cheapening it, and I don't know if I necessarily want to come out on exactly the other side, but I don't problem with that only because I think Just proliferating the word, perhaps, is net good.

Like, I think it's probably good to keep that concept very much alive at the front of our consciousness, even saying, oh my god, I love these trips, you know? Like, I think that it's kind of good to have it in our ether. in a very, like, everyday way. But yeah, in terms of what you're saying about love covering up for other stuff, yeah, I could see that.

That's a, not darker interpretation, but I guess that's a flip side to love is that you can love someone and really hurt them too. Like, these things are not Absolutely.

And if you really love them, you're going to hurt them. It's true.

Totally. Totally. Yeah.

You don't escape that.

No. I mean, yeah. On our show again, like, it's not that every essay is about hurt, but every essay does have some sort of conflict at its core.

And that conflict might be totally internal, like, do I deserve affection? How am I going to heal from this breakup? But there's always a conflict, and I think love without work, like Toni Morrison said, and love probably without conflict and resolution is perhaps not the strongest type of love.

She also said love is only as good as the one who loves, or as the lover.

I think, like, anecdotally, all of us can think about, like, someone that we've poured affection into and they did not deserve it. Absolutely. I mean, when I talk to a friend on the phone, or I always end with I love you, and I'm trying to think how And you say all three words? I love you, yeah. Or I might say love you sometimes.

Actually, I probably don't say I as much. I probably say love you.

This is what I mean.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So we take the I out. And there's a way in which saying love you tosses the coin into the fountain, and that the water is assumed. I think about when I say love you to people, and that behind that for me sometimes is I want to love you.

I may not love you. want to burden a person with, I, I love you.

I mean, I think you're right. Yeah.

And also myself.

Yeah.

I love you is such a commitment and it does feel like heavier in some way than love you or something more tossed off. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'd say love you to my family all the time, but I actually think I very rarely say, I love you.

I have some neighbors who kind of hang out. It's very old Harlem. They have their chairs outside. They don't even sneak. They have their little taste. of something. And I usually stop and just say, hello, and how are you? How's the day? What's going on? And right before it got cold, a couple of people were sitting outside in the same spot, but I knew that that time was limited, that everybody would have to go inside because it'd be too cold to sit outside.

And, um, It was just before Thanksgiving, and the weather was starting to change. And so I said, well, if I don't see you before Christmas, before the New Year's, happy holidays to you. And they said, same to you, baby. And I crossed the street, and I was almost at my door, and two of them yelled out, love you!

Love you! Oh! And I turned around and I said it back, Love you too. I don't think they were being flipped. I don't think that it wasn't imbued with real meaning and desire to connect. So I'm not saying that all the time I think if we don't put the I in it that we're hiding or we're not taking responsibility for what we're saying.

I'm agreeing with you that I also love the many ways it can show up. Even if they are the same words.

What a gorgeous story. I think that this speaks to like the fact that very often love means knowledge, deep knowledge of the other person, but sometimes it doesn't. I mean, that's what I'm saying about New York City is that everything and everyone is like a bit of a stranger, but I think it opens you up to a different kind of love.

I'm sure it exists in other cities, but it feels so particular. To hear, too. I love that story. That's a great story.

You're listening to Helga. We'll rejoin the conversation in just a moment.

The Brown Arts Institute at Brown University is a university wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown that creates new work and supports, amplifies, and adds new dimensions to the creative practices of Brown's arts departments. faculty, students, and surrounding communities. Visit arts.

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And now let's rejoin my conversation with Anna Martin, host of the New York Times Modern Love Podcast. Okay, If we don't talk about love anymore, what else interests you?

I spend a lot of time in parks where there are playgrounds, and one of my biggest joys is watching kids, like, bump and bumble and fall around spaces.

And I'm so jealous of their freedom of movement and their unselfconsciousness. I love the way they interact with each other and the world and their delight and how unabashed they are about how many different things they're feeling all at once. I'm a real kid person. I'm like obsessed with kids. So I think about that a lot and I think that there are ways in which I really do genuinely try to emulate the way too that kids act in conversation where just something occurs to them and it is apropos of nothing but they bring it up and how delightful to not feel like tethered to narrative or really like a coherent train of thought.

So I think about kids all the time. Do you want to have them? Oh, absolutely. That is like something my friends and I, I'm 29, so this is a point in my life where a lot of my female friends are talking about if we want to have kids, how, when, if they're partnered, if they're egg freezing, all these different kinds of very logistical and very urgent feeling conversations have popped up in the last two years.

I've always known it feels like bone deep. It's a fundamental truth about myself that I want kids. I want multiple kids.

This just occurred to me to ask you as well. I know we have a lot of language around love being a universal language. Do you ever think that love is a luxury?

I think that we have limited stores of energy, obviously, and especially, you now with the things happening in the world, and I don't mean to be euphemistic about it, just truly is like the way the world works right now and the constant barrage of violent news and these kinds of things.

I think that people really have limited stores of love and patience, and I do think that sometimes it's a luxury, like you have to have capacity to put in the work, like we were talking about a relationship. Is love a luxury?

Not for everyone, for some people, and for some people. situations. I wonder very often, let's say if I see someone who may be mentally not well.

Mm hmm. We have some stories on the show about single parents who are working a job that requires very late hours and don't have a ton of time to spend with their kids. Their love is expressed in a different way in the traditional ways we'd associate it with, like, expressing love, like quality time or, I don't know, gifts or something.

They're not able to afford love in that way. Yeah, yeah. I wonder, too, if then love is just redefined for that person who might be not totally mentally well or for that single parent, but it's a very good point. Because luxury is a word where it's like not a necessity and at the same time I also do believe that love is a necessity, so.

And I don't know if those ideas can't coexist, but.

I think what I was trying to get to is having the luxury to think about thinking about love.

Yeah, I feel grateful that I think my job mostly is that. Work that we do in the show doesn't totally feel like a luxury as much as it feels like a real kind of radical act of vulnerability on the other people's end because they're opening up to me very often about what they consider to be the biggest story of their life or the most meaningful moment in their life.

Maybe it's a luxury to be surrounded by all these people who are opening up to me, but it does genuinely feel like so incredible that these strangers trust me enough to go there with me. Perhaps that's a luxurious feeling, but to me, I mostly feel like overwhelmed by their openness and then their trust.

You know.

And so you hear all of these stories, whether they're complicated or very simple, whatever it is they're about. What does that do for you and your sense of love?

It sounds probably cheesy, but I feel so fundamentally assured that we're connected. And I also feel, even if the story someone's telling me is about a horrible divorce or the loss of someone way too soon, devastating stories, I feel so Comforted by them because I feel like we are all grappling with issues that are not at all the same.

Problems, sadnesses, happiness. We're all grappling with these things and we're connected to each other in that grappling. I feel very assured by our community, which feels interesting because I'm only talking to one person, but I just feel so connected to the person I'm talking to and to The broader universe of people who are figuring this stuff out at all times, like it's happening all around us.

And when you talk about community, who's your community or who's the community?

This is not the official community of the show, but what I mean personally when I have these conversations, I feel connected to the community of literally humans, which feels like so broad to say, but it really does. I feel very much like Tethered to this kind of common journey of figuring out what it means to love other people and what it means to love yourself.

Do you find that the stories are the same regardless of whether or not a person is Black? Does the ethnicity of the person matter? Change the experience.

I mean I think there are certain family structures that are inherent to a certain culture or certain ethnicity that, for example, like Asian culture, having homes with a bunch of generations living together is something that's very common and in the U.

S. not so much. And that creates all different types of parameters of love and different types of relationships and. Yeah. I had this interview with this person who, at the time, identified as a boy, right now goes by they and them pronouns, but about their first crush on a boy that they call Elle. This like cute, confident boy that moved in on the block.

And really the piece is about how the two of them, they're two young black boys, and the world did not want to see them together. or connect them romantically. It was just something that was politicized and people weren't ready for. And so that conversation was very much about their community. And so it did feel different than a, you know, an essay about a crush that we get from a white girl who grew up in Chicago.

That's completely different. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. But I also think that with those kinds of conversations, I'm very much curious, which is how I approach all the conversations. But Your identity shapes your approach to love, and so race is a huge part of that. And also the way people see you.

Yeah, I mean, that was kind of this person's point, the essay she wrote about their first crush. They just realized that anyone they would connect themselves to would view them as Black bodies in America, and that was a political resonance that other people don't have to deal with if they don't hold that same identity.

But it's a total different dimension to love that other people don't have to consider.

What's your love story? Your big love story?

My big love story? I don't know if I have one. I think one started when I was born to two parents who love each other so deeply and palpably even today. I think that that's one love story that I'll hopefully continue to live with them and with my sisters for So long.

I think I have my love story with my boyfriend and I feel like that's the deepest romantic connection I've lived so far. So that's one big one. But I mean, and again, You always verge on the side of G's, I think, when you talk about this kind of stuff. But I think the like fundamental love story is the one with yourself, right?

Like I think that that's when I'm still in a good, I don't want to say the best place, but I feel in a really good place. I feel very in touch with myself right now, which feels like delightful to be able to say. It's like not always been the case, but I think the rockiest love story in my life is my love story with myself.

I think it's tough to get to know yourself and love yourself. It's very tough.

What's a thing you do every day that every person can do? Whoa,

what's a thing I do? I mean, I sing. I grew up Singing in church, singing with my mom, who's an amazing piano player, singing in choir. When I talk about the kid stuff, you know, kids break into song at all times and are very unselfconscious about humming or getting a lyric wrong and very often they're making up their own song.

So yeah, I sing or I hum every single day. You get a lot of people who are like, I can't sing. And it's like, you actually can. Yeah, you can. If you don't care about how it sounds, you can. And to me, I don't know. I'd love to say I like moved my body and danced, you know, every day. But really, it's the like freedom of singing is something that I do every day, usually in the morning.

And I love it. Mm hmm.

Is there anything you want to ask me?

Well, can I ask you your greatest love story?

Um,

so I guess I would have at least two. The first one is the love that I felt from my piano teacher whom I met when I was six. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this piano business, but she met me at the door. And I felt completely seen. and safe and accepted. And long after I stopped taking piano lessons, she was a person that I was in touch with and that I stayed connected to until she died.

That's gorgeous. The second love story I think has to do with my first love, my first real, real Like, real, real, real love. And I'm thinking of the Sister Sledge song, because I met him in a disco.

That is so cool! That's way better than Hinge or something. That's so fun. In a disco.

And he came over to me, and he asked me to dance.

And I took one look at him. I knew everything in an instant. That's Wow. Everything. I knew that I was going to love this person, I knew that it was not going to work out, I knew We were going to destroy each other. Wow. And I looked at him and I said, yes, I'd love to dance.

I mean, way to show me up. That is the story.

That's what you get for asking. I know, I'm so grateful. Oh my god. You gotta write about that. You gotta write about her love essay. Come on the show. Done. You really do. How gorgeous. How long were you together for?

Oh, no time. So we met when I was home from school for a semester, and I knew that once I went back, there was a way that he would see me that would not allow him to believe I could love him.

Do you know where he is now?

Um, he's dead.

Wow. I'm sorry.

And he said that, too. He said that he was going to die. Like, he always knew that he was going to die young, which is very, very strange. And he did, and he was murdered, and he knew, he knew all of these things about himself. And I think in part, he shared those things with me because He loved me. And because he didn't want me to be attached to a longer story.

Do you still think about him? Is he present for you in your day to day?

I wouldn't say in my day to day, but every year when it's his birthday, I take a moment to sit down and think about him. I think about all the things he missed. I think he would have had a very different outlook on his life, for instance, if he were still alive when Barack Obama was elected president.

And it was just a very peculiar love because even after we broke up, I might pass something on the street, or I would just think about him, and then I would get on the subway, and I would miss the train, and I'd have to wait for the train behind it, and the doors would open, and I would step in, and he'd be sitting.

Wow.

That is so cosmic. I mean, I really believe in that. How incredible. How incredible. I mean, We have a lot of stories about people who love people who are gone too soon. That's a whole genre of modern love essays, and I really, really, really believe that after people pass, they are very much still present.

Some people see them in the sky, some people hear their voice, some people don't have any of that. It's just like a zip of a feeling at certain points, but I believe that they remain, but that's a love story. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you for sharing this time with me. Thank you.

That was my conversation with Anna Martin. I'm Helga Davis. Join me next week for my conversation with eminent crime fiction author Walter Mosley.

As far as fiction writing, it wasn't until I was 34, I was a consultant programmer for Mobil Oil on 42nd over on the east side. And I was there on a weekend, and so I was alone, and I was typing computer code, and then I got tired of it, and so I wrote a, you know, a line.

On hot, sticky days, in southern Louisiana, the fire ants swarmed. I wrote that line, and I went, wow, that could be, that could be a novel.

To connect with the show, drop us a line at helga at wnyc dot org. We'll send you a link to our show page with every episode of this and past seasons. And resources for all the artists, authors, and musicians who have come up in conversation.

And if you want to support the show, please leave us a comment and rating on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And now for the coda.

My middle sister is a teacher and she used to teach third grade to a bunch of high need students and they did a creative writing exercise a few years ago and she shared this one story from a particular student that I just like look at all the time to remind myself to be playful and free and then also Yeah, to remind me of the idea of time.

It's called Pineapple Boy. Once upon a time, there lived a pineapple boy who wanted to grow himself like a fruit plant. One day, every afternoon, the pineapple boy lived in a garden with his parents, his sisters, his brothers, and his grandparents, on a pink and white and soft flower that looked like a hive and a house.

It was just like the best weekend, especially how smart that is. even how wonderful it is. One evening, the pineapple boy said, can we go for a walk? But his mother and father said, it's about to rain, we're sorry. The pineapple boy groaned, and his grandfather said, don't worry, grandson, maybe we could go for a walk tomorrow, eventually.

And the pineapple boy said, Eventually, oh that won't take too long I hope, and the pineapple family laughed at the pineapple boy as the pineapple boy smiled. The next morning, the pineapple boy woke up in his PJs and he looked outside the window. As the sun shimmered, the plants shined up and laughed while they jiggled and giggled.

The end.

Season six of Helga is a co production of WNYC Studios and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. The show is produced by Alex Ambrose and David Norville with help from Rachel Arewa. and recorded by Bill Siegmund at Digital Island Studios in New York. Our technical director is Sapir Rosenblatt, and our executive producer is Elizabeth Nonemaker.

Original music by Michel Ndegeocello and Jason Moran. Avery Willis Hoffman is our executive producer at the Brown Arts Institute, along with producing director Jessica Wasilewski. WQXR's chief content officer is Ed Yim. 

 

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