Some people really were touchingly brought closer and recognized things in their mates that, you know, they appreciated and revered. So some of that was quite moving to read. But, you know, other people just got really fucking sick of the person they were with,

like really, really fed up in, you know, detailing in minute, you know, anecdotes,

like noticing that the person counted out the number of blueberries they would eat at breakfast every morning.

You know, just noticing these things about the partner, they really had started to not be

able to stand.

And of course, I loved that stuff.

I'm kind of a button for bad relationship stories.

Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.

I'm your host, Megan Dowm.

My guest is author Laura Kipnis.

Laura is a revered and in some circles worshipped cultural critic and the author of seven

books.

She's here to talk about her new book,

Love in the Time of Contagent, a Diagnosis. It is in some ways a follow-up to a book she published

nearly 20 years ago now, Against Love, a polemic. And in that book, she sought to dissect

in her trademark frisky and counterintuitive style, the very concept of

romantic love. We live in sexually interesting times, Laura wrote back then, meaning a culture

which manages to be simultaneously hypersexualized and to retain its Puritan underpinnings

in precisely equal proportions. Love in the time of contagion was born out of the

emotional chaos of the pandemic and her own lockdown with her longtime boyfriend. Laura examines

how the cracks in interpersonal relationships can mirror the breakdown of political systems,

economies, and public trust. And in this conversation, we talk about what she learned from interviewing dozens of people

...