The Boy Who Makes Waves | With Mykelti Williamson

FromModern Love

Start listening View podcast show

The Boy Who Makes Waves | With Mykelti Williamson

FromModern Love

ratings:

Length:

22 minutes

Released:

Jan 25, 2017

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

Mykelti Williamson of the Oscar-nominated film "Fences" reads an essay about a father's complicated love for his son.

Released:

Jan 25, 2017

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Modern Love features top actors performing true stories of love, loss, and redemption. It has included performances by Kate Winslet, Uma Thurman, Angela Bassett, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sterling K. Brown, and more. A collaboration between WBUR and The New York Times.

Skip carousel

Leaps of Faith | Modern Love Bonus Episode by Modern Love
12 min listen
Not So Simple Math | With Sarah Paulson by Modern Love
24 min listen
Introducing 'Modern Love: The Podcast' by Modern Love
2 min listen
'The Plunge' | With Dakota Fanning by Modern Love
22 min listen
In Darkness And In Light | With Patina Miller by Modern Love
20 min listen
A 'Modern Love' Audio Valentine by Modern Love
4 min listen
One Last Swirl | With Jason Alexander by Modern Love
23 min listen
Fighting Words | With Alysia Reiner by Modern Love
24 min listen
Modern Love Encore: 'Friends Without Benefits' by Modern Love
19 min listen
Magically Interrupted | With Michael Shannon by Modern Love
20 min listen
My First Lesson In Motherhood | With Connie Britton by Modern Love
24 min listen
Maddy Just Might Work | With Jennifer Finney Boylan by Modern Love
22 min listen
Where It All Started | Modern Love Bonus Episode by Modern Love
9 min listen
A Millennial's Guide To Kissing | With Emmy Rossum by Modern Love
18 min listen
A Faithful Leap | With Amber Tamblyn by Modern Love
21 min listen
Seesawing Libidos | With Stephen Bogardus by Modern Love
17 min listen
Missed Connection | With Lauren Molina by Modern Love
21 min listen
A Heart Outrun | With Colin Farrell by Modern Love
23 min listen
'An Interlude Of Clarity' | With Judd Apatow by Modern Love
19 min listen
Just Friends? | With Tony Hale by Modern Love
27 min listen
Friends Without Benefits | With Taissa Farmiga by Modern Love
17 min listen
Broken, Not Bound | With America Ferrera by Modern Love
20 min listen
Mom/Not Mom/Aunt | With Jesse Tyler Ferguson by Modern Love
20 min listen
Modern Love Bonus Episode: Near-Death Experiences by Modern Love
13 min listen
Modern Love Live at Town Hall by Modern Love
36 min listen
How I Got To Here | With Katie Couric by Modern Love
20 min listen
Between The Bars | With Joshua Jackson by Modern Love
21 min listen
The Wait | Modern Love Bonus Episode by Modern Love
14 min listen
To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This | With Gillian Jacobs by Modern Love
23 min listen
One Last Swirl | With Jason Alexander by Modern Love
24 min listen

More Episodes from Modern Love

Skip carousel

Emily Ratajkowski Can Take Care of Herself, But a Little Help Would Be Nice: Emily Ratajkowski is doing a balancing act many famously beautiful women have to perform. In her 2021 book “My Body,” she reflects on what it’s been like to build a career based on her public image, and her struggle to control that image in an industry largely run by men. Since getting divorced a few years ago, she’s been thinking a lot about gender dynamics and the type of agency she wants to have in dating, too. Today, Ratajkowski reads “Why I Fell for an ‘I’m the Man’ Man,” by Susan Forray. Forray is also a successful, self-sufficient woman, dating after divorce. She’s surprised to find herself falling for a man with old-fashioned ideas about who does what in a relationship. (He pays for dinner, handles the finances and initiates sex). As a single mom who handles everything, Ratajkowski says, she can relate to the desire to be cared for once in a while. And that doesn’t have to mean playing into a sexist s by Modern Love
30 min listen
Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation: Laufey, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter, has risen to prominence by taking the trials of today’s dating world — casual relationships, no labels and seemingly endless swiping on apps — and turning them into timeless love songs. Today, Laufey reads Coco Mellors’s essay, “An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill,” which is about a woman trying to work through her deep-seated relationship anxieties and attachment issues in an on-again, off-again situationship. Laufey says she, too, has been an anxious partner. While she thinks a toxic relationship, like the one in the essay, can make for a great love song, she now knows secure relationships can make beautiful music, too. by Modern Love
27 min listen
Why John Magaro of ‘Past Lives’ Could Never Love a Picky Eater: The actor John Magaro is picky about whom he goes to dinner with. Magaro is an adventurous eater. So whether he’s buying offal from the butcher, making stews from the 1800s or falling in love over a plate of rabbit, he says it’s important to him that the people he shares a meal with are willing to be curious. For Magaro, it’s about more than personal preferences. Sharing a meal and connecting with other people, he says, is the bedrock of society. Magaro played Arthur in “Past Lives,” one of our favorite movies last year. His character is constantly working to understand his wife on a deeper level. And Magaro sees that quality in “My Dinners With Andrew,” by Sara Pepitone, a Modern Love essay about food as a love language, and a series of dinners that make, and break, two relationships. by Modern Love
35 min listen
Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows: Over the last two decades, Esther Perel has become a world-famous couples therapist by persistently advocating frank conversations about infidelity, sex and intimacy. Today, Perel reads one of the most provocative Modern Love essays ever published: “What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity,” by Karin Jones. In her 2018 essay, Jones wrote about her experience seeking out no-strings-attached flings with married men after her divorce. What she found, to her surprise, was how much the men missed having sex with their own wives, and how afraid they were to tell them. Jones faced a heavy backlash after the essay was published. Perel reflects on why conversations around infidelity are still so difficult and why she thinks Jones deserves more credit. Esther Perel is on tour in the U.S. Her show is called “An Evening With Esther Perel: The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire.” Check her website for more details. by Modern Love
28 min listen
The Second Best Way to Get Divorced, According to Maya Hawke: When Maya Hawke’s famous parents got divorced, she was just a little kid trying to navigate their newly separate worlds. Paparazzi aside, Maya’s experience of shuttling between two homes was still more common than the arrangement described in the essay Maya reads: “Our Kinder, Gentler, Nobody-Moves-Out Divorce,” by Jordana Jacobs. By staying under one roof, Jacobs and her ex-husband spared their young son the distress of having to go back and forth. But this “dad upstairs, mom downstairs” arrangement also meant that Jacobs had to overhear her ex falling in love with his new partner. Today, Hawke reflects on the bittersweet family portrait in Jacobs’s essay, and on divorce’s role in Hawke’s own upbringing. Maya’s latest album, “Chaos Angel,” drops May 31. by Modern Love
25 min listen
How to Be Real With Your Kids: Penn Badgley has made a career out of playing deeply troubled characters. From his role as Joe Goldberg on the Netflix series “You” to Dan Humphrey on “Gossip Girl,” Badgley has shown many times over how obsession and delusion can destroy love. In his personal life, though, Badgley says he’s not doing too much brooding. He’s a father and a stepfather, and he opens up about the importance of being vulnerable with his kids. Badgley reads “Watching Them Watching Me” by Dean E. Murphy, an essay about a father who can no longer hide his emotions from his sons after they all experience a devastating loss. by Modern Love
31 min listen
Why Samin Nosrat Is Now ‘Fully YOLO’: The chef Samin Nosrat lives by the idea that food is love. Her Netflix series, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” and the James Beard Award-winning cookbook that inspired it, were about using food to build community and forge connections. Since then, all of her creative projects and collaborations have focused on inspiring people to cook, and eat, with their friends and loved ones. After the recent loss of her father, Samin has gained an even deeper understanding of what it means to savor a meal — or even an hour — with loved ones. This week, she reads an essay about exactly that: “You May Want to Marry My Husband” by Amy Krause Rosenthal. It’s one of the most-read Modern Love essays ever. by Modern Love
30 min listen
Brittany Howard Sings Through the Pangs of New Love: Brittany Howard, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, makes vibrant, dynamic music about love. As the frontwoman of the band Alabama Shakes, she was celebrated for the power and emotionality of her voice. When she began her solo career in 2019 with “Jaime,” an album named after and dedicated to her older sister, who died at 13, Howard revealed new dimensions of her songwriting and herself. Her latest album, “What Now,” captures the intensity of processing the past and starting anew. Today, Howard reads a Modern Love essay about the courage it takes to fall back in love: “Was She Just Another Nicely Packaged Pain Delivery System?” by Judith Fetterley. by Modern Love
30 min listen
Novelist Celeste Ng on the Big Power of Little Things: Before Celeste Ng became a best-selling author, she had a side hustle selling miniatures on eBay — dollhouse-size recreations of food were her specialty. Even after the publication of “Little Fires Everywhere,” “Everything I Never Told You,” and, most recently, “Our Missing Hearts,” Celeste still makes tiny things — now, as a hobby. She’s come to realize the parallels between making small things and writing: Both give her a chance to look closely at the world. Today, Celeste kicks off our special podcast series, which celebrates 20 years of the Modern Love column, by reading Betsey MacWhinney’s essay “Bringing a Daughter Back From the Brink With Poems.” She discusses her own deep-rooted relationship to poetry — and the lessons, large and small, that poems can offer parents and children in uncertain times. by Modern Love
32 min listen
Three Powerful Lessons About Love: When Daniel Jones started the Modern Love column in 2004, he opened the call for submissions and hoped the idea would catch on. Twenty years later, over a thousand Modern Love essays have been published in The New York Times, and the column is a trove of real-life love stories. Dan has put so much of himself into editing the column over the years, but as he tells our host, Anna Martin, the column has influenced him, too. Today, Dan shares three Modern Love essays that have changed the way he thinks about love and relationships in his own life. Also, Anna announces the beginning of a special series of episodes celebrating Modern Love’s 20th anniversary. by Modern Love
36 min listen
Modern Love at the Movies: Our Favorite Oscar-Worthy Love Stories: The New York Times’s film critic Alissa Wilkinson has a theory about movies: They’re all about relationships. No matter how big the action, the suspense and tension we experience when watching a film is often really about the feelings between the characters. But romantic relationships often fall back on old tropes, like the long-suffering wife of an ex-cop who can’t resist that one last, risky case. (We all know her; she leaves teary voice messages urging him to be safe.) Some of this year’s Oscar-nominated films give us fresher portraits of love. Alissa and our host, Anna Martin, discuss the relationships that defy convention or easy definition, and push us to reconsider how we think about human connection, in three of those movies: “Poor Things,” “Maestro” and “Past Lives.” by Modern Love
32 min listen
A Politics Reporter Walks Into a Singles Mixer: The New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon went speed dating in a swing state to ask daters fun questions like: How early do you tell a prospective date whether you lean red or blue? When do you talk about your stances on issues like abortion or gender equality? It’s hard enough to find someone you click with. Then add election-year tensions into the mix, and things get even more complicated. Today: Our host Anna Martin speaks with Astead Herndon, host of the weekly politics podcast “The Run-Up" about the not-so-distant worlds of politics and dating. by Modern Love
23 min listen
Author Read: Un-Marry Me!: Dave Finch reads his Modern Love essay, “On the Path to Empathy, Some Forks in the Road." To hear our conversation with Dave, listen to the episode: “Un-Marry Me!” by Modern Love
9 min listen
Un-Marry Me!: We’re kicking off our new season this Valentine’s Day with a story from a Modern Love veteran. David Finch has written three Modern Love essays about how hard he has worked to be a good husband to his beloved wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical woman, he found it especially challenging to navigate being a partner and father. To make things easier, Dave kept a running list of “best practices” to cover every situation that might come up in daily life. His method worked so well that he became a best-selling author and speaker on the topic. But almost 11 years into their marriage Kristen suddenly told him she wanted to be "unmarried." Dave felt blindsided. He didn’t know what that meant, or if he could do it. But Dave wasn’t going to lose Kristen, so he had to give it a try. Valentine’s Day Bonus: How does politics affect your love life? Hear Anna Martin discuss this tomorrow on “The Run-Up,” a weekly politics show from The New York Times. You ca by Modern Love
27 min listen
I Married My Subway Crush: Zoe Fishman couldn’t stop thinking about the man she called her “subway crush.” For years, she saw Ronen on the train and admired him from afar. When they finally connected, it turned out Ronen felt the same, and they began a blissful life together. But when their story took a devastating turn, Zoe had to grapple with longing for Ronen at a distance again. For the final episode of our season, we hear about the joy and loss that showed up in Zoe’s life, and the remarkable way she learned to live with both of them. Zoe Fishman is the author of several novels, most recently “The Fun Widow’s Book Tour.” by Modern Love
28 min listen
Author Read: I Married My Subway Crush: Zoe Fishman reads her Modern Love essay, “The Subway Crush Who Crushed Me." To hear our conversation with Zoe, listen to the episode: “I Married My Subway Crush.” Zoe Fishman is the author of several novels, most recently “The Fun Widow’s Book Tour.” by Modern Love
13 min listen
Author Read: Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did: Sonja Falck reads her Modern Love essay, “Our 34-Year Age Gap Was Showing." To hear our conversation with Sonja, listen to the episode: “Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did.” by Modern Love
13 min listen
Our 34-Year Age Gap Didn’t Matter, Until It Did: Sonja Falck was immediately attracted to Colin, the professor who was renting her a room. He was intellectual and lively, with bright eyes that drew her in. It was only after they were already dating that Sonja found out Colin’s age: He was 34 years older than her. Their age gap didn’t give them pause. Sonja and Colin got married, had kids and built a fulfilling life together. But when Colin reached his 80s, and Sonja was in her mid-40s, Sonja realized she was craving a level of physical intimacy that Colin could no longer provide. So Sonja and Colin had to make a decision: Could they transform their relationship into something that gave both partners what they wanted? Or had their age gap finally caught up to them? by Modern Love
33 min listen
Author Read: Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love: Eric Darnell Pritchard reads their Modern Love essay, “Two Boys on Bicycles, Falling in Love." To hear our conversation with Eric, listen to the episode: “Two Boys on Bicycles, Falling in Love.” by Modern Love
11 min listen
Two Boys on Bicycles, Falling in Love by Modern Love
24 min listen
Author Read: He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him: Jessica Slice reads her Modern Love essay, “He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him." To hear our conversation with Jessica, listen to the episode: “He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him.” by Modern Love
12 min listen
He Cared About Me, So I Broke Up With Him: When Jessica Slice started dating a man named David, there was a lot to like about him. They could nerd out about books and board games, he was thoughtful and kind. But Jessica had a problem. The more caring David was, the more she recoiled. "He’s the greatest!" She texted her sister. "But I doubt I’ll go out with him again." This wasn’t the first time she'd felt like fleeing from affection, but something about David made Jessica hesitate. Was she finally ready for a new kind of love? by Modern Love
30 min listen
Did I Fail as a Parent?: Rick Reiss was scared for his teenage son, Gabriel. Gabe was struggling with depression and mood swings, and no amount of therapy or medication seemed to work. But when Gabe became violent, Rick wasn’t just scared for his son; he was scared of his son. Rick and his wife felt as if they had to do something drastic. So they made the decision to send Gabe to a wilderness therapy program. Nearly 18 years later, father and son talk about the decision that changed both of their lives and how their relationship has grown now that Gabe is an adult. by Modern Love
29 min listen
Author Read: My Sweaty Revenge: Christi Clancy reads her Modern Love essay, “Revenge of the Friend." To hear our conversation with Christi, listen to the episode: “My Sweaty Revenge.” by Modern Love
12 min listen
My Sweaty Revenge: Christi Clancy had been avoiding her best friend’s ex-husband. He’d unexpectedly left her friend for another woman. After supporting her friend through the pain and heartbreak, Christi couldn’t help but resent the ex-husband for all the damage he’d done. So when the man walked into Christi’s spin class, she saw an opportunity to exact revenge in the best way she knew how: on a spin bike. by Modern Love
19 min listen
I Wrote This Essay, but Then Changed My Mind: Heather Sellers wrote her Modern Love essay in 2013, about reconnecting with her elderly, estranged father. Although their relationship was painful, Heather made sure that her last words to her father were “I love you.” And at the time, that felt like closure. Now, 10 years later, Heather tells our host, Anna Martin, that she would write a completely different essay today. She sees her father, and herself, in a new light — and realizes that “forgiveness” isn’t as simple a concept as she once believed. by Modern Love
26 min listen
Author Read: What Does It Mean to Be a Kept Woman?: Deanna Fei reads her Modern Love essay, “To Keep but Not Be Kept." To hear our conversation with Deanna, listen to the episode: “What Does It Mean to Be a Kept Woman?” by Modern Love
13 min listen
What Does It Mean to Be a Kept Woman?: Deanna Fei did not need a man. She was in her 20s, living in Shanghai on a Fulbright scholarship, writing her first novel: a book about fiercely independent Chinese women, very much like Deanna herself. Growing up as a first-generation Chinese American, Deanna resented the way some men, specifically white men, looked down on her. She refused to be anyone’s fetish. By the time she arrived in Shanghai, she had sworn off dating white men all together. But then, Deanna met a man: an older, successful white man, who offered to provide for her as she pursued her dreams. Was Deanna betraying herself, once she started falling in love with him? by Modern Love
27 min listen
Author Read: Don’t Hide in the Bathroom Stall: Susan Gelles reads her Modern Love essay, “Single, and Surrounded by a Wall of Men." To hear our conversation with Susan, listen to the episode: “Don't Hide in the Bathroom Stall.” by Modern Love
14 min listen
Don’t Hide in the Bathroom Stall: Susan Gelles was a lawyer in her 30s who was too busy to find love. But after finally admitting that she was lonely, Susan did something that went against all her best instincts. She started attending singles mixers. On this episode, Susan shares her disastrous mismatches, awkward flirtations and the story of how she almost missed her chance to meet the love of her life. by Modern Love
27 min listen

Discover this podcast and so much more

The Boy Who Makes Waves | With Mykelti Williamson

The Boy Who Makes Waves | With Mykelti Williamson

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from Modern Love