Modern.
The podcast is supported by from the New York Times and WBUR Boston.
This is modern love stories of love, loss, and redemption.
I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti.
Every relationship is new and unblemished at some point, but inevitable challenges that couples face change all that, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Or maybe those challenges result in something in between.
Cassie Underwood's experience is firmly planted in that in between territory.
Betty Gilpin, star of the Netflix series Glow, reads Cassie's essay a lost childhood, but not mine.
On the third anniversary of my abortion, I found out via MySpace that my ex boyfriend was having a baby with another woman.
It was none of my business, except I somehow convinced myself that his new baby was a replica of ours, and as such, I felt a sense of ownership, of responsibility for the child's well being.
My college roommate in Vermont had introduced us.
He was road weary that first night, having just driven up from a concert in Kentucky, my home state.
He was 20, a ski lift operator, a community college student.
I was a blonde, episcopal bred 19 year old studying literature and costume design.
Early on, he told me he was on probation for drug related offenses, which was forcing him to remain clean and sober.
It was easy for me to accept his blemished past because I had my own struggles with drugs and alcohol, making me feel like Nancy to his sid.
He and I talked textbooks and compared rap sheets in his ramshackle apartment.
We belted out Bob Dylan songs as he twirled me across the sloping floorboards.
He gave me piggyback rides up my dormitory steps and carted me around town on the handlebars of a bicycle.
Two months after we met, his probation ended without supervision.