There are really only three ways to approach Valentine’s Day: embrace it and fall in love with all things love, scorn it and attribute it to false sentiment, or ignore it completely—which is a tactic that I tend to employ most often.
But, as I have been known to do when I have been sitting at my computer for too long, I recently found myself wandering over to the TED website where they have conveniently compiled a whole set of videos on the subject of “love”. I was charmed by this story of photographer Alec Soth and photo editor Stacey Baker and their exploration of how couples meet—and what love really looks like. Their documentation of both the world’s largest speed-dating event (held in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day) and the residents of the largest retirement community in Nevada was a lovely mirror on how relationships begin and why they last.
And, since we have been talking about storytelling more and more lately, I thought I would compile a list of some of my favorite podcasts and stories about love—heartfelt, educational, and humorous:
Each year, This American Life puts together a Valentine’s Day show and it never disappoints. Here is one of my favorites.
My favorite storytelling podcast, The Moth, offers a couple of lovely stories—a tale of love, loss, and LBJ from Sarah Bird, and another of falling in love against your family’s wishes from Mary Lou Piland.
On Mortified, a podcast where adults share embarrassing childhood letters, journals, poems, or other artifacts, a storyteller reads a love letter to his high school crush that is equal parts hilarious and cringe-inducing.
And finally, with The Living Room, Love + Radio offers one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful podcasts I’ve ever heard and allows us to see the beauty of a relationship from the outside.
As much as I’ve tried to fight it, all of this love has taken a bit of the cynicism out of my Valentine’s Day outlook this year. Who would have thought?
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