A Story For All The Parents Out There Who Are Trying

Modern Love is a podcast that features the popular New York Times column. Its format is pretty simple: well-known actors read essays written by other people. At the end of each episode we hear from both the actors, who tell why they chose to read a specific essay and how they relate to it, and the writers, who give more insight into what they wrote. It may not sound like much. It’s not the kind of podcast that follows multiple narrative lines, only to bring them together at some point, usually through some really smart and complicated editing work (I’m thinking Invisibilia, Radiolab, etc.). Modern Love is all about good old storytelling.

In this episode, Willem Dafoe reads an essay written by Bruce Eric Kaplan about his father whom he never really knew. The story starts like your typical television movie: Kaplan haphazardly meets with a psychic who tells him that he will find out something hilarious about his dead father. I won’t say what the hilarious thing is, but I will say that, as he looks back on their relationship, Kaplan makes better sense of it and of the person his father was.

As he himself puts it, Bruce Eric Kaplan has always been attracted to themes of “intimacy and the scariness of intimacy” in his work. He’s a cartoonist for The New Yorker and has worked as a screenwriter for Seinfeld, Girls, and Six Feet Under. So if you know his previous work, you’re already acquainted with his delicate, precise and humorous approach to relationships. If you don’t, this podcast is a good way to start.