From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.

I'm Meredith Goldstein.

A mixed tape or a breakup CD

is only partially about the breakup.

It's really a Trojan horse

for letting someone know that they're not

going through it alone, that they're

gonna get through it and they're going to be okay.

This is my friend Patrick.

He hosts a community radio show called Pop Culture Experiment,

and he is a master playlist maker.

This dates back to his childhood when his older sister made

him his first mixtape. It had some Madonna, some R.E. M. and some Smoky Robinson

and the Miracles. Patrick was hooked. Soon he began making mixes for his friends. Then as

he got older he took on a more solemn, more delicate task, making mixes for people who'd been dumped.

You're dealing with all sorts of emotions

and you're trying to figure out what buttons you want to push

and what buttons you don't want to push and what buttons you don't want to push.

I talked to Patrick recently about one of my big breakups. I wanted to know what he would have prescribed for me musically at the time. I was so miserable.

So I remember that when I first got dumped I got into bed and just wanted this like specific taco salad but I was like

too sad to get out of the bed to get the taco salad. What is the song for that mood?

I think

...