You Think You Know Elizabeth Gilbert. You Don’t.

Modern Love

The New York Times

Storytelling, Nytimes, Nyt, Redemption, New York Times, Society & Culture, Loss, Essay, Love

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When her wildly popular memoir “Eat Pray Love” came out in 2006, Elizabeth Gilbert suddenly found herself touted as an expert on self fulfillment, spirituality and love. Readers might assume that Gilbert had vanquished her demons as she settled into a life of fame and marriage to the man she fell in love with at the end of the book. But her struggle was far from over. On this episode of “Modern Love,” Gilbert talks about a new love story that almost destroyed her life. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and more.
0:03.1	Love was stronger than anything.
0:07.1	And I love you more than anything.
0:11.1	There's to love.
0:11.9	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:16.2	This is Modern Love.
0:17.8	Today I'm talking to Elizabeth Gilbert.
0:20.7	You probably think you know, Elizabeth Gilbert.
0:23.2	Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts played her in the movie, but I'm telling you, you don't.
0:28.7	She's got a new memoir out, and it gets dark. There were times when I was reading this where I put
0:33.3	my book down and I was like, this is the Eat, Pray pray love lady? So today, Liz is here to tell me about
0:40.3	how that woman, a woman who thought she'd found enlightenment and inner peace, almost destroyed
0:45.6	her own life. Here's our conversation. Elizabeth Gilbert, welcome to modern love. Thank you. I am so happy to be here. We are so happy you're here in the studio with us.
0:58.0	So, Liz, you are the author of the best-selling 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.
1:04.0	This is all about your search for inner peace following a painful divorce.
1:07.0	You ended up marrying the guy you wrote about and eat, pray, love, and writing a
1:11.1	second book about this decision to commit to marriage again. And now you have a new memoir out.
1:18.0	It's called All the Way to the River, and it tells the story of how you ended that marriage
1:22.6	to then start a romantic relationship with your best friend, Raya, right, as she was dying of
1:28.4	cancer, which, I mean, what a mix of emotions to experience at once. You must have been running
1:34.8	through journals, like, once a week. How were you processing all of that? Oh, God. Yeah, I was
1:42.4	running through journals once a week, and it was like the ground fell out from underneath me.
	...

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