This Is Love podcast
I listen to a lot of podcasts. From pop-culture to news to history to fictionalized stories to personal conversations, my tastes run the gamut. With so many good podcasts to choose from, it’s hard to keep up with what’s available. So when a new podcast comes along that I listen to nearly as soon as it downloads each week, I know I’ve found a gem. This Is Love is such a podcast.
From the makers of the widely acclaimed Criminal,* the producers have proven they know how to tell a good story. (I’m assuming their other podcast is the inspiration for their clever tagline: “An investigation into life’s most persistent mystery.”)
This Is Love launched, appropriately enough, this past Valentine’s Day with an episode about a mother’s life ended too soon and the widow who then lovingly, and sometimes awkwardly, raised their two young girls. Listening to the now-adult daughters share their memories, I felt as if I had been friends with the play-by-their-own-rules Alexander family for years.
The second episode was about a different kind of love: a teenage swimmer’s rescue of a baby whale-calf lost from its mother. The story was unique and spell-binding. But this latest episode, “Always Tomorrow,” might be my favorite so far. Partially because the interviewee, author Brenda Jackson, is a delight and partially because the sometimes good, sometimes bad ins-and-outs of the book-publishing industry are part of her story. I think I smiled during the entire episode. Brenda and her husband, Gerald, had a unique marriage, together for decades and always supportive of each other. She’s seen great success as a romance writer, and the inspiration their relationship gave her in her career is sexy, funny, and heart-warming all at once. The episode is not explicit, although I wouldn’t advise listening with children. At one point she admits that not only was her husband frequently seen at book fairs wearing a shirt that said “I am Brenda Jackson research,” but that she was the one who had the shirt made for him.
(The only episode I wouldn’t recommend isn’t an episode at all but the pre-launch teaser where they give the science of a spider’s “love” for her children. This arachnophobe was not pleased.)
Whether you’re new to podcasts or have a monster queue like me, This Is Love is definitely one to add to the top of your listening app. It’s 30 lovely minutes each week of humans being kind. And can't we all benefit from that?
You can subscribe to This Is Love wherever you listen to podcasts or stream the episodes at their site, where they also host photographs from each episode, including this one of the aforementioned delightful Mrs. Jackson and her husband.
*Although it’s been highly recommended to me on several occasions, I’ve never listened to Criminal. If I’m scared of spiders do you think I can handle true crime?
Header composite made from each episode’s image on This Is Love’s Facebook page.
