Do You Need a New Podcast?

Of course you don’t!

Do you remember when podcasts were fun? When I first got into the medium, everything I listened to fell into the genre of "Comedians Talking About Movies." Then I added in a couple of true-crime shows. Then the news podcasts came along. Then the publishing podcasts. Suddenly I've found myself in this situation where I have, like, six hours of new content each day that I'm trying to keep up with. And it's not even fun new content--most of it makes me feel stressed or angry or helpless or afraid. So in the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to improve my mind-diet by winnowing out the podcasts that aren't actually pleasurable for me to listen to. Here's three romance-centric pods that made the keeper list!

Read Me Romance: Hosted by the bestselling authors who make up the pen names Alexa Riley and Tessa Bailey, Read Me Romance is a podcast that features a new short romance audiobook each week. The audiobooks are professionally produced and performed, and the featured authors are some of the biggest stars in romance today. These days they release the audiobook in two parts on Tuesdays and Thursdays in episodes that are about an hour long, but if you go deep in their back catalog (which I recommend!) you'll see it used to be a daily pod that split each book into five parts. If you are new to audiobooks, this is a great way to check out the medium without any commitment; if you're an audiobook aficionado, like me, you'll be jazzed to get access to so many great books for free. I've definitely discovered a lot of new authors and genres through this podcast. I try to save them for self-care Sunday nights, when I do my damndest to carve out an hour for bubble bath/face mask/romance novel time.

Learning the Tropes: A Podcast for Romance Novel Veterans and Virgins: Erin Leafe is a long-time romance reader who is introducing her friend Clayton Gumbert to the wide world of romance novels for the first time. Learning the Tropes is a weekly pod with episodes that typically run about an hour. Many of their episodes focus on "old-school" romance authors, such as Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn, but they also cover books by hot new authors like Ruby Dixon and Talia Hibbert. Their most recent episode covers one of my romance first-loves, "Faking It" by Jennifer Cruisie. They also cover movies and TV shows. That's how I discovered this show: I knew there had to be a podcast covering Netflix's trope-tastic "Virgin River" series, and I needed to hear someone talk about how bonkers that show gets in the later seasons. I'm not quite at the point where I am reading along with the weekly episodes, but I'm not far off. There are other book review podcasts that I enjoy, but this is my favorite that focuses solely on romance.

Modern Love: Modern Love isn't strictly a romance podcast, as it talks about all kinds of complicated loving relationships. However, it is the quickest way to mainline those squishy romance feels that I'm always craving. The stories are submitted by users and chosen by the New York Times Editorial Board, then read by a professional narrator in a highly-produced setting. If you dig into the backlist episodes, you'll find that most of the episodes pre-2020 feature famous narrators as diverse as Jake Gyllenhall, Tan France, and Marisa Tomei. Most of the episodes are 20-ish minutes, and they typically feature a short interview with the author of the essay. Even the stories that have a sad ending have something to say about how important love is, and they are often examples of people who had to reframe how they thought about relationships in order to have the kind of love they wanted. I have to be careful where I listen to this one, because it almost always makes me tear up and that's embarrassing at the grocery store.

What’s your favorite romance podcast? Let me know at lilycahillwrites@gmail.com.