Committed (iHeartPodcasts)

Marriage is full of challenges and tiny victories. Five years ago our host Jo Piazza decided to test her new marriage to her husband Nick by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro as a couple. It was harder than either of them expected and had an ending no one saw coming. Jo talked about the trip and the climb on iHeart Radio's new podcast “A Way to Go,” from iHeart and Fathom. We’ve got a little bit of that conversation for you right now, hope you enjoy. For the full episode, please go to: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/awaytogo

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Laura and her husband met in college. They got married quickly and had four sons. Laura’s husband was born a man, but always felt like something else, always felt like a woman. After thirteen years of marriage Laura's husband transitioned into a woman named Samantha. Now Laura and Samantha are navigating their new relationship as parents, partners and wives.

Manny struggled with porn addiction for years. He told himself that when he met the right woman he would be done. Then he met Becca and knew she was the one. But the night before his wedding he was still watching porn and he was so far gone in his addiction that he couldn't perform sexually on his wedding night. Manny and Becca struggled with Manny's porn addiction for years until both of them finally reached a breaking point. This is the story about how they made it out the other side.

Learn more about Manny and Becca's porn addiction courses at their Team Vulnerable website here.

Some of the best love stories come in small packages. That’s why we asked you, our listeners, to send us voicemails of your own love stories. We’ll be running a few of them before Season Four starts. So here are three mini love stories to tide you over until we launch Season Four in April. We’ve got a dirty dog that led to love on a camping trip, a couple that learned to meet in the middle over the course of two decades and a middle school relationship that persevered against all odds.

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Sarah and Eric became foster parents in the hopes of one day adopting. And when baby Coco came into their lives it looked like it could be for good. But that wasn't the case. Caring for Coco became much messier, more challenging and more difficult than Eric and Sarah ever expected, mainly due to the fact that the foster system continually told them that they would likely be able to adopt Coco and then completely blindsided Sarah and Eric by pushing for reunification with Coco's birth mother who they called a "bad prospect" for getting her child back. Sarah writes about this heartbreaking situation so beautifully in her book Stranger Care, the title of which was inspired by how the foster system refers to the non-relative men and women caring for the hundreds of thousands of children in their care every year. Sarah and Eric had to learn a new kind of love, not just a love for baby Coco, but also a love for her birth mother Evelyn, in order to give Coco the best possible life she could have. 

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Committed is back for Season Six on April 14th!

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Vince and Madison met the way a lot of millennials are meeting these days—on Hinge. 

Vincent Madison, it met in the way that a lot of millennials are meeting these days.  On hinge.  They went on one date and they've spent every single day together since then a year and a half ago.  

Vince and Madison are still young and they're still toeing the waters of this commitment thing, but they are in it! Not too long after they got together their relationship went viral when Madison posted a video of Vince crying on TikTok. It went viral and racked up more than 4 million views. 

In April of 2020 the writer Amy Bloom traveled to Switzerland to help her husband Brian die with dignity before he was plunged into the long term suffering of living with a dementing disease. She writes about their late in life romance and how she helped Brian to end his life in her gorgeous memoir In Love. This story hits close to home for any of us who have ever watched a loved one suffer and felt helpless to try to alleviate their pain. My own dad was bed ridden with muscular dystrophy for eight years before he finally passed in 2016 and I know that if I could have, I would have done anything to help him do what he wanted to do to have a more dignified death. That is exactly what Amy managed to do. Her story isn't always easy to hear, but I promise it will stick with you for a long, long time.

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In their first appearance on Committed, Mike and Nicole Conforto opened up about how Mike’s severe OCD turned their lives upside down. His obsessive fears for his infant son's safety spiraled into debilitating panic attacks and constant anxiety, straining their marriage and making parenthood an overwhelming challenge. The episode delved into Mike's diagnosis, their struggles as a family, and the long road toward managing his condition.

In this follow-up, Mike and Nicole share how life has changed since their initial conversation. They discuss the progress Mike has made in therapy, how they continue to navigate the ups and downs of OCD as a couple, and the lessons they’ve learned about resilience and support. This candid update offers a deeper look into their ongoing journey, providing hope and insight for families facing similar challenges.

Childhood friendships are often the most formative of our lives. But they change and evolve as we get older and enter different seasons.  Maureen, Anne and  Amanda have been friends since kindergarten. As adults, their friendships ebbed, and flowed as they went to college,  started careers, fell in love and got married. Amanda even became a pretty famous Hollywood actress. But then the three women found themselves pregnant with their first babies at the same time and it was a life change that brought them closer than ever.  That's when they decided to take their commitment to the next level.  They decided that the three of them would start a business together.  

Today we're talking about how to maintain a lifelong commitment, a lifelong friendship that starts at five years old and then evolves in so many different ways.  And how do you balance that friendship with launching a business together? 

Renee Montgomery is a basketball legend. She won two WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx. Today she's a part owner and Vice President of the WNBA team the Atlanta dream and a social justice activist. Renee talks a lot about the many, many ways that basketball has changed her life, including getting to meet her wife, the singer Sirena Grace. Meeting Sirena at an Atlanta Hawks game completely changed Renee's life in myriad ways and the two women wake up every day thinking about how they can each support the other's dreams, goals and personal brand. I love this story because Renee seems so tough on the outside, but when you get to know her she is a hopeless romantic who found her soulmate when she least expected it.

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Today's episode is something pretty magical.  Literally.  Today we're talking to Francis and Lindsey, a couple of married magicians who make magic together both on and off the stage.

What was supposed to be a few months of travel for Garrett and Jessica Gee quickly turned into a lifestyle and a career. The couple figured out how to become travel influencers, how to get brands to pay them and their young family to travel the world. Part of me wanted to find out that this wasn’t a dream...that traveling with three small children was actually exhausting and tedious, but the truth is that Jessica and Garrett make it seem easy, and beautiful. And in a time when we are all stuck at home for the foreseeable future, their nomadic family feels like the escapism we desperately need.

Today we're bringing you some of the highlights from our favorite celebrity interviews.  We've been lucky enough to be invited inside the homes of some of the biggest stars of the stage and of the big and small screens. And if I've learned anything from them, it's that love, marriage and commitment is hard and complicated and also beautiful and wonderful no matter how famous you are or how much money you have.

Peloton Instructor and international cycling champion Christine D'Ercole was not looking for love. She was focusing on her work, her sport and her daughter. And then one shout out on her bike led to some witty banter with a rider which led to a deep friendship which led too much, much more.

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Kate Pierson and Monica Coleman run the super hip Catskills motel Kate’s Lazy Meadow together. Kate is also a member of the new wave band The B-52s.

The two women have been up in the mountains since the pandemic began, taking care of the motel, bird watching, gardening, canning tomatoes, and hiking with their German Shepherds. This is also the longest amount of time they’ve been together now that Kate isn't off on tour.

Listening to the two of them you can hear how fascinated they each are with one another and how they support one another creatively.

Kate and Monica met in New York City back in 2000. At the time both of them were with other people and Kate had never been with a woman, but Monica wasn't just any woman...

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What was supposed to be a few months of travel for Garrett and Jessica Gee quickly turned into a lifestyle and a career. The couple figured out how to become travel influencers, how to get brands to pay them and their young family to travel the world. Part of me wanted to find out that this wasn’t a dream...that traveling with three small children was actually exhausting and tedious, but the truth is that Jessica and Garrett make it seem easy, and beautiful. And in a time when we are all stuck at home for the foreseeable future, their nomadic family feels like the escapism we desperately need.

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Today we have an update from an episode we did back in April of last year. In Season Two we talked to Samantha and her wife Laura. The two of them originally fell in love in college. They got married quickly and had four sons. Samantha was born a man, but always felt like something else, always felt like a woman. After thirteen years of marriage Samantha transitioned. When we spoke to Laura and Samantha they were navigating their new relationship as parents, partners and wives. It was an episode about what it takes to stand by your partner as your partner changes into a new person. But relationships are complicated. Marriage is complicated. Last summer the two women realized that they both needed something different from one another. I spoke to Samantha this month about what it is like now for her to navigate her life as a single lesbian woman.

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When Lindsey Jill Roth’s transatlantic romance faced uncertainty, she proposed something bold — a series of deeply personal questions designed to truly get to know her partner. Her thoughtful approach, captured in her book Romances and Practicalities, became the foundation of a love story that defied distance. Now married and living in London with their children, Roth shares how vulnerability, honesty, and meaningful conversations turned a budding romance into lasting love. Tune in for an inspiring tale of connection and commitment.

Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur met in college in 2002.  They bonded instantly.   Fast-forward to 2010 when they founded the popular fashion and design website Of a Kind.  Since then the two women have created many, many things together, most recently the publishing company, 831 Stories. 

They are business partners and lifelong friends.   This season we're expanding the scope of Committed.  Because not all commitment resides within a marriage.  In many ways a business partnership is like a marriage and frankly, a marriage is also like a business partnership. 

There's so much we can learn from all different kinds of commitment. And that's what we'll be exploring in the coming months. Today, we're going to talk to Claire and Erica about creating and building things together and the lessons a business partnership can give a romantic partnership.

Committed is back for Season Seven on June 8th!

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This week we are bringing you an old episode in celebration of our friend Doree Shafrir’s new book Thanks for Waiting. Doree and her husband Matt have been on the show twice to talk about their long struggle with IVF and what that meant for their family. Doree’s new book is all about hitting life’s milestones (like getting married and having kids) a little later than expected and it is a beautiful read along with her and Matt’s episode. 

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Jessica found out her husband Steve was gay a year and a half into her marriage. They broke up, got back together and tried to make it work because they were living in a very conservative Christian community. And in the midst of it all she met Matt and fell hard for him. Eventually Jessica and Matt got together and today they work with Jessica's ex-husband Steve on a podcast.

They share stories of love, marriage, coming out, divorce, remarriage, and co-parenting to help others know they are not alone. They are trying to break down stereo-types about what divorce and co-parenting look like every single day. It isn't always easy and it definitely isn't always perfect but they are constantly trying to find new ways to support one another.

Listen and subscribe to the Husband in Law Podcast here.

After 11 marriages and 28 engagements, Monette Dias still believes in love. In this special Valentine’s Day episode of Committed, she opens up about her journey—her whirlwind romances, heartbreaks, and the lessons learned along the way. From fairy-tale beginnings to hard-earned wisdom, Monette proves that love is never off the table. 

Committed is back for season five on October 14th!

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For Mike Comforto, the worry and the anxiety over his infant son completely took over his life and his marriage. He was constantly convinced that the baby was in near fatal danger and those fears only intensified when he and his wife Nicole had a second child. Once he was having panic attacks and anxiety episodes every single day Mike was diagnosed with OCD and his road to recovery was a long process that is still ongoing today. The term OCD gets thrown around a lot, but we rarely think about the impact that it can have on an individual, and their spouse and their children. Mike and his wife Nicole had to learn how to tame his crippling panic otherwise they'd never be able to thrive as parents of two children or as husband and wife.

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Sonya and Paul Kix have been married since 2007. She's a Black woman from Texas and he's a white guy from Iowa. There were zero black people in his graduating class. Living as an interracial couple, Paul living as the only white person in his household that now includes three children, that forces their entire family to have difficult conversations about race on a regular basis. It has been more than 50 years since Loving versus Virginia struck down laws banning interracial marriage. And some may take it for granted that that means life is much less complicated for interracial couples. It is in a lot of ways, but in the face of today's national reckoning on race and systemic racism couples like Paul and Sonya also have to figure out how to best navigate race in their relationship. How can Paul be empathetic to how Sonya feels watching a police shooting of a black man, how can he raise black boys in a world that already sees them as black men, how can he understand what it feels like to be pulled over by the police as a black person? 

Navigating all of this can be exhausting for everyone, but also completely necessary.

Music featured in Now That’s A Great Idea written and performed by Jeff Willett. For more information please visit: www.JeffreyWillett.com/

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Bestselling author Caitlin Moran has been married to her husband Pete for 25 years. When Caitlin first book, How to Be a Woman, turned into a global phenomenon, Pete stepped back from his successful career as a journalist to pick up the slack at home and take care of their two daughters. Caitlin credits Pete with helping her career thrive, for not being her glass ceiling. This episode is a beautiful portrait of the middle of a marriage, of how we sustain love over the decades, of how we support one another, of how sometimes we schedule sex in a calendar invite and why that is completely OK.

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Codie and Tommy Oliver met, got engaged, got married and created a blockbuster television show together in the time that most couples start leaving a toothbrush at one another’s apartments. Their show, Black Love, is about to start it’s fourth season on OWN. It is a beautiful docu series that shatters stereotypes and showcases incredible love stories. Creating something from scratch is never easy, but it’s even more challenging when you’re doing it with your partner.

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Skyler knew he was gay when he met Amanda. But he loved her and he wanted to start a family with her. Both of them are members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They believe that marriage is so much bigger than just the two of them and this life on Earth. And through countless difficult discussion they’ve found a way to build a marriage not in spite of Skyler’s sexuality, but in addition to it. They’ve started to try to build a family and both of them say that Skyler being gay isn’t the hardest thing they’ve faced in their marriage. The loss of their baby Milo at 24 weeks was much more difficult for them to get through and out of necessity they became even closer as a couple.

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Francis Cretarola and Cathy Lee opened their restaurant Le Virtu on Philadelphia's Passyunk Avenue right before the economy collapsed in 2008. This restaurant, one that serves Abruzzese Italian food is Francis and Cathy's passion. They survived 2008 and together they have created community and family for their staff and their patrons. But then the pandemic happened. And Cathy and Francis have had to hunker down and make some incredibly difficult decisions, decisions Francis says are way above his pay grade, to try to keep their staff and their patrons safe while keeping their restaurant afloat. Running a restaurant is like walking a tightrope. Margins are thin and the stress is high, but Cathy and Francis have powered through the pandemic with grace, compassion and humor. I love this story because it's here in my hometown of Philly and it shows just how hard we're all working together to get through this tough year.

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Shaun King has been advocating for justice as an outspoken Black Lives Matter activist since 2014. He’s incredibly outspoken about his work on Twitter. He’s beloved by some people and hated by others. Amidst it all he’s raising five children with his high school sweetheart Rai. And even though Rai steadfastly supports Shaun she never exactly chose to be married to the movement.

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In March of 2017 Andrew and Edward Senn received a call from a social worker that they were chosen to foster a set of premature nine day old twins who had been born with drugs in their system. The couple had been hoping to enter a long-term private adoption but they knew right away that these babies needed them. Becoming parents and going through the very slow roller coaster of the foster system, getting the family they always wanted in a very unconventional way has changed Andrew and Edward in ways they never could have imagined.

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The celebrated children’s book author Amy Krouse Rosenthal passed away from ovarian cancer on March 13, 2017, just 10 days after her essay looking for a new love for her husband Jason was published in the Modern Love section of the New York Times. Amy wanted to give Jason the chance to love again, to keep living life to its fullest after she was gone.

This episode focuses on the 26 wonderful years Jason and Amy were together, how they faced her mortality, and how Jason learned to grieve Amy and rebuild his life after she was gone. We also got to talk about Jason's wonderful new book, My Wife Said You Might Want to Marry Me.

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Jana Kramer and Mike Caussin had the makings of a fairytale love story. She had a successful acting and singing career...he was a professional football player...they fell in love hard and fast and had a picture perfect wedding. But fairy tales don’t exist. Jana and Mike learned that the hard way. It was only a couple of months into their relationship that Jana discovered that Mike was cheating on her. And then she learned about more affairs. Mike admitted that he was a sex addict, a story that was picked up by US Weekly. Jana and Mike had to live out the worst moments of their life in the public eye. But Jana and Mike were committed to trying to work through all of their crap.

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Erin and Jason's third date ended with Jason falling off of a roof and ending up in the hospital with a major spinal cord injury that left him in a wheelchair. The two of them have only been on a few dates, but both of them had felt a serious connection, maybe even the beginnings of love. But neither of them knew what could or should happen after an accident that completely changed Jason's life.

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Holly Frey, host of Stuff You Missed in History Cass, sits down with Siedah Garrett, one of the ten winners of Seneca Women to Hear: Search for the Next Great Female Podcasters

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Back in 2018 we talked to Kristy and Buddy Woodall. If you don't remember that episode, on March 16, 2001 Buddy Woodall was arrested for the double murder of Lavelle Lynn and Robert Van Allen which would be known in Georgia as the Labor Day Murders.  Buddy is currently serving three consecutive life sentences and still claims his innocence. This week are are catching up with Kristy to talk about how she still holds onto hope for Buddy's release even though it gets harder every single day.

With no previous climbing experience Harold Earls sets out to climb the world's tallest mountain right after marrying Rachel, the absolute love of his life. Rachel had been supportive. Harold's dreams were her dreams. But that year was one of the most dangerous years of all time for Everest climbers and at one point during the descent Harold was caught in a life-threatening snow and ice storm. Rachel hadn't heard from Harold and she just kept thinking, my husband might die, my brand new husband might die.

This bonus episode (brought to you in 3D audio) is about dreams and hope and how we help one another accomplish the things we could never accomplish alone.

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Three stories of love and commitment in the age of COVID-19. A Maine doctor moves out of his house to protect his wife, toddler and unborn child from the virus. A local cardboard factory steps up to make cardboard cutouts of the 120 guests who won’t be at a young couple’s wedding. And one couple who got married without leaving their apartment...in the Nintendo video game Animal Crossing.

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In 2017 a doctor told Brian Wallach he might only have six months left to live. He was only 37, but he’d started having trouble grasping a pen. His hands would shake. His wife Sandra was the one who told him he had to see a doctor. That’s when he learned he had ALS. Instead of turning inwards Sandra and Brian, both former Obama staffers, are using their unique skills from working on campaigns, as lawyers and with nonprofits to try to raise $100 million for ALS research in the hopes of finding a cure to save Brian’s life.  

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As a parent, how do you transcend the regular run of the mill parent/child relationship? How do you turn your bond into a real friendship? When Jessica's two kids were young, she pulled them out of traditional school, began homeschooling them and started traveling abroad.  They left the U S a decade ago in search of a more authentic path. Since then they've lived in an RV in Europe for three years, learned to sail and crossed the Atlantic together as a family.

This has been challenging and insane and also delightful and wonderful.

Today we're talking to Jessica and Largo, her 17-year-old son, about how this lifestyle has strengthened their bond. This is the first in a two-part episode. In the first episode we dig into the foundation of their relationship and next week are getting into the mother-son duo's decision to hike the Appalachian trail together.

Broadway actors Amanda Kloots and Nick Cordero were a young and healthy married couple with a new baby when Nick went into the ICU with COVID-19. Nick was only 41. He was strong and everyone thought he would be out of the hospital in a week or two. But Nick's health continued to deteriorate. He couldn't breathe on his own. His organs began to fail. Amanda did everything she could to stay hopeful. She rallied the entire world in song and prayer. We don't normally do episodes with just one part of a couple. But sometimes there is an exception to the rule and Amanda Kloots IS that exception. 

In her new book Live Your life Amanda is candid and raw and so incredibly honest about what it was like to watch Nick waste away from a disease that no one understood. She reflects back on their few years together and wonders whether she was a good enough wife to Nick at times, whether she did enough to support his dreams. She also painstakingly describes how she has committed to keeping Nick's memory and music alive for the world and for their toddler son Elvis. 

Her story is heartbreaking, but it also leaves you with hope that we can all get through our darkest moments.

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Janae and Tricia are sisters in law.  That means they're related by marriage, but they didn't have to choose each other. They didn't have to choose their bond or their commitment or their friendship. But they did. And for years, the two of them have been each other's rock.  Back in September of 2023, this bond helped them get through an unimaginable tragedy.  

Trisha was camping with her family in upstate New York when her nine-year-old daughter Charlotte was abducted from the campground. Over the next 47 hours Trisha and her family went through the worst possible thing that parents can go through. Janae, took over the reins of the investigation.She knew that she had to be the strong one. This is a story of courage and bravery and love. It’s also the story of the commitment between two women who would stop at nothing to bring a little girl home.

For the past five years, Alex and Christina had been running a bookstore that is both their primary income as a couple and their passion.  They opened A Novel Idea, bookshop in Philly, a year before the pandemic hit. And when the city closed all of its stores, they had to completely rethink everything about their small business.  They had no one to lean on, but one another. For better. Or worse. This is a story about perseverance and pivoting, about love and about following your dreams.  It's about how the things that should break us often bring us closer together. 

Learn more about A Novel Idea here.

Glennon Doyle was still married to the father of her three children when she saw Abby Wambach across a room and felt something that can only be described as love at first sight. Glennon didn’t think it would be possible to be with Abby, to be with a woman, to blow up the carefully curated life she had been taught she was supposed to have. But she did it anyway. And It wasn’t easy, because life isn’t easy or simple. But it was possible and once Glennon realized it was possible she began to live the truest and most beautiful version of her life. Glennon and Abby’s love story cracked our hearts right open and we couldn’t be happier to bring it to you to launch season four.

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Dr. David Fajgenbaum has been read his last rites five times. He suffers from the extremely rare and deadly Castleman disease, an orphan disease with no known cure or treatments. To buy himself more time to marry his college sweetheart Caitlin and start a family with her David embarked on a journey to find the cure and treatment for his disease on his own.

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After Alexei Brovarnik received a K-1 visa he had 90 days to marry his American fiance Loren. The entire engagement and lead up to their wedding was captured by the reality television show 90 Day Fiance on TLC. For better or worse they lived the beginning of their marriage under a media microscope, enduring constant criticism and judgement and watching their most intimate moments, good and bad, played back to them on the small screen and the Internet. It’s so easy to judge someone else’s marriage, especially a marriage that we’re watching unfold on television, like a soap opera. But Loren and Alex have no regrets about putting it all out there for everyone to see.

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Identical twins Cynthia Heyd and Leslie White are on a mission to change how we see aging. As founders of Twin-Agers, they challenge ageist stereotypes and celebrate the wisdom, resilience, and possibilities of life after 55. In this episode of Committed, they open up about their personal experiences with ageism, the power of their twin bond, and how love, purpose, and fulfillment evolve in the later chapters of life. Get ready for an inspiring conversation that proves aging isn’t about slowing down—it’s about thriving.

Emily and Matthew built a life—and a restaurant empire—together. They met in 2001, young and full of dreams, and by 2013, they had opened their first restaurant, Emily, in Clinton Hill. Success followed, with multiple locations and growing acclaim. But behind the scenes, their marriage was falling apart. Facing both personal and professional uncertainty, they had to answer an impossible question: Could they stay business partners while ending their marriage?

In this episode, Emily joins us alongside her new husband, Jeff, to share how he supported her through the painful transition, helped her process the past, and built a stronger foundation for their future. It’s a story about love, loss, and the courage to rebuild—both in business and in life.

Emily’s book of poetry, Divorced Business Partners, is available wherever books are sold.

Since we're all hungry for things to listen to we wanted to drop some old episodes in your feed. Bestselling author Emma Straub's new book All Adults Here was released today and it is the perfect quarantine read about the very real messiness of family life. Way back in season one we interviewed Emma and her husband Mike about following their dreams and launching an independent book store. It's just a nice listen right now as a reminder that we can and will create beautiful things out of our dreams again soon. 

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Committed is back for season four on April 15th. We have ten new stories of love and marriage, hope and fear, failure and success and all the other messy parts of being a human in the world right now. This season on Committed we bring you a wife who tries to write her legacy for her husband and children after she’s diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. We have the author and activist Glennon Doyle on leaving the husband of her three children for the love of her life, Abby Wambach. And we have a couple who tried so hard to blend their families and live together under one roof, but ultimately found that the secret of their success was in living apart...in houses next door to one another.

We've got these stories and much, much more, including what love and commitment looks like amidst the strangeness of a pandemic.

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When Nora’s husband died of a brain tumor she had a plan. She’d adopt more kids. She’d date. But she wouldn’t fall in love again. She wouldn’t have another grand love story. But then lightning struck. Along came Matthew, a handsome divorcee who made her snort wine through her nose when he fell out of his chair at a bonfire. Finding someone new was easier than she thought, figuring out how to make it all work...that was a lot harder. This is the episode for everyone who has asked us whether they can love again after losing love. Sometimes the answer is yes.

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For forty years Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas tried to keep their celebrity marriage out of the spotlight. But after being married for four decades, or what felt like a hundred years as Phil says, they got interested in researching what makes a marriage work and last and thrive over such a long period of time and they decided to put their own marriage front and center in a new podcast. Marlo never wanted to get married. But she was so smitten with Phil after appearing on his show in 1977 she finally took the plunge. Marlo became a stepmom to Phil's four boys, they lived long distance and figured out how to make it work. They survived Hollywood and cross country moves and jealousy over co-stars. Their wit and wisdom about commitment is unparalleled. We are so excited to share their long love story with you and introduce you to their incredible new podcast called Double Date. Fans of Committed will just adore the interviews Phil and Marlo do on double date with celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, Sting and Trudy Styler and so many more. 

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Leah was terrified of getting married. She didn’t want to give up her independence. But a terrible accident at a construction site changed everything Leah thought she wanted. Her longtime boyfriend Kelsey rushed to her bedside to be with her and she proposed to him from the hospital. The two of them have had to figure out how to navigate their first year of marriage during a pandemic and with Leah paralyzed from the waist down.

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Reverend Roxy and Reverend Joshua come from completely different backgrounds. He’s a white guy from Colorado. She’s a Black woman from Brooklyn. They met while they were both chaplains in the military. They fell in love fast and hard despite all their differences. Being in an interracial couple in America has never been easy, but right now, as our country deals with a much overdue racial reckoning, there is often even more of a learning process involved. 

Joshua had to learn how to grow and adapt and restructure his world-view in a multitude of different ways because he was raised in an environment where race or racial issues weren't really something he was ever confronted with. Roxy had to learn to educate Joshua, and also when to step back and let him educate himself. They both had to learn how to have an open and honest dialogue to express how they really felt.

They really enjoyed figuring out how to grow together. And after they got married they discovered they loved working with other couples to do the same thing. Together they created a premarital counseling and wedding officiated business. Reverend Roxy is something of a wedding celebrity these days. She’s performed ceremonies on shows like Love is Blind and Married at First Sight, usually in some fantastic designer gown that should be on a red carpet.

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Chris had proposed to Goldie when they were 18. He got down on one knee at Cinderella's castle. When you're that young you think marriage might be like a fairytale, that the prince being down on one knee is the one thing that will make it all better. 

But their first years of marriage were hard. They were totally broke and Goldie was dealing with trauma from past sexual abuse. She developed an autoimmune disorder where she was in pain all the time. Pain that made her want to take her own life. 

Chris never gave up. When Goldie tried to commit suicide he doubled down on his efforts to be by her side, to provide constant hope and optimism, to do anything and everything to save his wife's life.

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If you binge-watched Tiger King during the beginning of the pandemic like Nick and I did then you may think you know everything there is to know about Carole and Howie Baskin. You probably have an idea about them in your head, maybe even a suspicion or two. But there is so much that you didn't see on Tiger King. We got to interview Howie and Carole about it all -- the documentary, Joe Exotic, the murder for hire plot, the cat sanctuary, Dancing with the Stars -- but most of all about their beautiful love story filled with compassion, humor and dedication to a cause.

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COVID-19 has divided Americans in so many ways in the past year. Many Americans have completely opposite views on whether or not they want to be vaccinated right now. And those conversations are happening very close to home, sometimes within the same home. We were so curious to know what was said behind closed doors when one spouse was pro-vaccine and the other one was against getting the COVID-19 vaccine. We put out a call to the Committed community and got way more responses than we expected. Today's episode contains two stories of couples who do not see eye to eye on getting the vaccine and how they manage to get through being on very opposite sides of the issue.

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When Aimee Oates got pregnant with her first baby she told her husband John that the two of them were hitting the road with him and his band Hall & Oates. It wasn't a thing that usually happened. Wives, babies, they didn't usually come on the road with this old boys club. But Aimee was adamant. And they did it. They traveled as a family with the iconic rock group Hall & Oates. Their son took his first steps in a casino. They barely ever spent a day apart. I have always been curious about what it is like to be married to a rock star. I don't think Aimee and John's story is necessarily representative of all rock stars, but it is so beautiful how they found an unconventional way to nurture their family and their marriage all over the world.

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This is the story of a female police chief in Philadelphia and how she reacted to Floyd’s murder and how she managed her police force through what came next. But it’s much more than that. This is also about the woman who supported that police officer, her partner, now wife, Jackie. This is a love story. But it is also a story about policing and how things do have to change.

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Laura Stachel and her husband Hal Aronson save lives every single day through their work providing solar power to hospitals around the world. Neither of them ever could have done it on their own. Their marriage has informed their work and their work has informed their marriage. Laura is an OB-GYN and public health professional. When she traveled to Nigeria on a research trip she realized that women and children were dying during childbirth because hospitals had no electricity. When she brought the problem to Hal he saw the solution. He immediately began to design solar energy programs for these hospitals. Today We Care Solar is a vibrant nonprofit that has reached more than 6,200 health facilities serving more than 7.5 million mothers and newborns. Visit them at WeCareSolar.org

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Todd Tilghman had been a pastor for more than 20 years when he realized he wanted to do something new. Call it an itch, a calling, a midlife crisis but Todd knew he needed to do something else. And so he tried out for The Voice. This episode is about Todd’s journey from pastor to singing sensation but it is mostly about how his wife of more than 20 years, Brooke, pushed him and encouraged him to get there. Todd and Brooke have weathered so many seasons in their two decade marriage. They got married young, nearly got divorced, came back together, were blessed with eight children, two of them adopted from Korea. They dealt with Brooke’s anxiety and depression, with money ups and downs, raising a family of ten on a pastor’s salary. And when Todd needed that change it was Brooke who pushed him to follow his dreams.

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This is the first of one of our BEST OF COMMITTED episodes. We're going to be compiling different shows on various themes in the hopes of both inspiring you and perhaps starting a conversation.  One of the things that's amazed me about the couples on this show is the ability for love and commitment to withstand some of the worst tragedies that you could ever imagine. And it's these episodes that have personally given me hope in some really dark times.

What happens when a liberal falls in love with a conservative..... On the eve of this wildly contentious election day we wanted to bring you a short episode that proves love can cross the aisle. When Rick and Jeanne met in the seventies Jeanne was a liberal psychoanalyst and Rick was a writer for the National Review and William F. Buckley. Over the past forty years they've learned how to live with the other side. Their marriage and love story offers us advice for how we can all cross the aisle.

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We interviewed Shazi and Joe a couple of years ago and we are bringing their episode back into our feed because Shazi has a new podcast called The Healthy Baby Show. Shazi and Joe met while Shazi was building her company, the organic baby brand Happy Family Organics. Their storybook romance completely changed when their first child Zane was diagnosed with regressive autism. Shazi and Joe were forced to re-examine everything about their lives and their marriage to figure out how to parent Zane. But they did it; their family didn’t just survive, they thrived. Their family motto is “we win,” because they refuse to give up.

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This is a story of boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl, marries girl. But then…..girl falls in love with another girl. And boy….well he stays in the picture. We hear a lot more about polyamory these days than we used to, but we don’t hear enough about how it actually works, how a family can be crafted with three loving and consensual adults. Today Alex, Paul and Jackie live together and raise a child together and they want the world to know that this is their normal.

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Military wives are taught early on how to live without their soldiers. During their two decade marriage Anna and Mike have moved 12 times for Mike’s job as a lieutenant colonel in the army, all while giving birth to and raising seven kids. Sometimes Mike is with the family but sometimes he’s deployed far away in a war zone, place where it’s difficult to talk, places where Anna is often scared for his life. The distance makes you realize what's important very quickly. This is a story of how Anna makes their family work without Mike and how they've found ways to build a life together all over the world while Mike serves his country.

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Last year Brad and Matt Kirouac gave up their very comfortable and secure lives in a beautiful loft in a gorgeous neighborhood in Chicago to live as nomads in an RV with the goal of visiting all of 61 the country’s national parks. Their new lifestyle challenges every single part of their relationships and they’ve been forced to dig deep to see if they really want to be in this together.

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Neal had a classic mid-life crisis on his 50th birthday. He bought a Harley, got his first tattoo, had an affair with a women twenty years his junior. But there’s more to the story than that. He’d gotten caught up in a bad business deal and was sentenced to four years in a federal state prison. He and his wife Allison got divorced.

Allison was left to sell their home during the housing crisis since the great depression, take care of her ailing father and get their kids off to college.

But that’s just the beginning of Allison and Neal’s story. The real story is how they found their way back to one another.

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Every couple we know has this fantasy of quitting their corporate jobs and finding a way to make a living doing what they love. But for most people it’s just that— a fantasy. Rich and Sara Combs have turned that fantasy into a reality. They quit their big jobs in San Francisco to renovate and rent out two properties down in Joshua Tree. Now they’re working on a second property, an inn right outside of Saguaro National Park in Arizona. They’re living the dream. But is the dream as good as everyone imagines it is? Is the reality ever as good as the fantasy? Fixing these houses has taught them how to be comfortable when things go wrong...whether it’s with a home or with their relationship. 

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Buffy and Pat’s son Kevin passed away from a brain tumor when he was just nine years old. That was six years ago. The death of a child isn’t something you get through. It isn’t something that goes away. It’s something you live and grow with every day. And that’s...what Buffy and Pat are doing. They've walked through fire and come out alive but forever changed.

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At the age of 26, Katherine Wolf nearly died from a brainstem stroke. She was newly married and the mother of a six month old baby boy. The doctors performed a rare and complicated 16 hour surgery and removed 60% of her cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls most motor function and many essential nerves. Katharine spent two months in a coma, When she woke up she had to relearn how to breathe, talk, eat and move her body. From then on Katherine and her husband Jay were birthed into a new couple and a new family. They’ve had to redefine absolutely everything. But what they’ve come to realize is that on the other side of suffering, you learn that some things are better because of what you've been through. No one wants terrible pain, or suffering, or tragedy to come, but it can have this tremendous effect of informing the rest of your life.

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For this episode update we're going back to a show we did with Doree and Matt in season one. Their episode was called Hope is a Dangerous Thing. When we left them Doree and Matt were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t working for them. They were on their fifth round of IVF and they were both wearing a little thin.

That episode aired in August of 2018. Doree and Matt did do that fifth round of IVF and Doree got pregnant soon after we aired...She had a baby boy, Henry, in April of last year. We talked to them last week about what it's like to finally become parents after trying for so long and what they wish they could tell the two people they were when they started this journey.

Photo by Stephanie Entin.

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We’ve gotten so many voicemails from you that we had to run another episode of three minute love stories. This week we have a couple trying to work through their changing marriage as they adopt a foster baby born to an addicted mother. Another couple picked up their entire life and moved to Bali to open a restaurant...and, finally, a wedding singer who fell in love with a bridesmaid.

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Cecilia Latorre and her partner Gerry tried to blend their two families under one roof. But their children had very different lifestyles and everyone was unhappy. 

We often take for granted that living together is a hallmark of commitment. That couples must cohabitate if they’re serious about their relationship. But what if cohabitating actually makes the relationship worse? Cecilia and Gerry decided to stay together by purchasing separate houses that are side by side. They have their own bedrooms, their own bathrooms, their own lives…. and they’ve never been happier.

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When Caroline Wright was told she had a brain tumor that was so fatal doctors nicknamed it The Terminator and that she only had a year left to live she started writing…She began to write for her two young boys and for her husband Garth. She filled dozens of black and white marbled composition books.. And in those notebooks she wrote them a blueprint for what their lives might look like after she was gone. Writing just became this ritual, this hopeful landscape that was distanced from the craziness of being a patient. It gave Caroline this hopeful version of what motherhood and marriage could look like.

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It was fitting that we did today’s interview during the COVID-19 pandemic because it’s different from the shows we usually do, but it makes sense in the strange new world. Hannah and Kelty Luber aren’t married to each other….they’re twin sisters. Both of them are married to men, but they have chosen to live together on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon. On the farm they share their lives and their parenting duties. They’re twins...they’re incredibly close, but this decision wasn’t just about them—first they had to convince their husbands to join their families together.

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Nick and Hana met as Marines on active duty and got married fast. They hardly had a honeymoon or a courtship. Demanding military jobs and having young children took a toll on their relationships. But Nick was also suffering from the aftershocks of something that happened before he met Hana. He was a Marine in Fallujah, Iraq during Operation Phantom Fury and still suffered PTSD from it years later. Hana and Nick had to learn how to confront his PTSD and traumatic brain injury together in order to save their marriage.

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Pregnancy is difficult no matter who you are. But it can be even harder when society sees you one way, pigeonholes you, thinks they know exactly who you are. Spencer and Kelly’s journey to parenthood was a long one...and a beautiful one. Spencer identifies as a queer male. His husband Kelly also identifies queer. And even though Spencer is also transgender and had gone through a medical transition to present as a man, he was still able to carry their baby. Kelly and Spencer’s story first appeared on the website MotherMag.com and my friend Erin Fehrer did a beautiful job documenting the two of them becoming parents to an incredible little boy named Alexis. That’s how we found them. Today they’re dads, raising Alexis, living in Sydney, Australia and navigating the very real ups and downs of marriage after having a baby.

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Shazi and Joe met while Shazi was building her company, the organic baby brand Happy Family Organics. Their storybook romance completely changed when their first child Zane was diagnosed with regressive autism. Shazi and Joe were forced to re-examine everything about their lives and their marriage to figure out how to parent Zane. But they did it; their family didn’t just survive, they thrived. Their family motto is “we win,” because they refuse to give up.

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In 2016 Shapearl Wells was ready to end her marriage of 19 years to her husband Brent. Then her son was killed by gun violence in Chicago. In the worst moment of her life she realized that Brent was her safe place, the only person who could support her as she embarked on an investigation into Courtney’s death, an investigation that would eventually become the basis for the podcast Somebody. In the months and years following Courtney’s death Shapearl and Brent discovered a new way to be together that was shaped by their shared history, their friendship and their faith.

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You guys might already know our guests today—Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. Interviews with Megan and Nick usually kick off by talking about how they’re something completely out of the ordinary—a Hollywood couple that has stayed together for about two decades. I love these articles because they use language like they’re describing aliens or pandas mating in captivity in a suburban American zoo. In Hollywood terms, a love story that lasts longer than the production of a single movie is considered successful. But Nick and Megan do have a secret, a reason they think they’ve stayed together so long: They commit to truly being together. Also...they like one another. And liking your spouse tends to go a long way.

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The FBI came to Carl and Amy Nelson's house in the middle of the pandemic. That's when Carl found out that he was under investigation for a federal crime.  Over the next two years, the couple had most of their money and assets seized by the government.  What wasn't taken, they had to sell to pay for lawyers.

They lived in constant fear of the FBI returning one morning and arresting Carl in front of their four daughters.  And to this day, both Amy and Carl insist that Carl has done nothing wrong,  and he has yet to actually be charged with a crime.  But still the two of them have had their lives ripped apart in ways that could have completely destroyed their marriage.

People ask Amy all the time. Why are you still with him? People can't believe she stuck by his side. She can't imagine not doing it. 

Erica and Spencer met in an online widow support group. They’d both recently lost their spouses. Within months they were married and working to blend their eleven kids together into one family. Today’s episode is about blending families, learning to parent someone else’s children and finding ways to honor the spouse that came before you. It’s never going to be easy or perfect. It’s a journey and a beautiful one.

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Buddy Woodall is serving three life sentences for murder. In January he'll celebrate his 22nd wedding anniversary to his wife Kristy. When Buddy was sentenced he asked Kristy to divorce him, he begged her to divorce him. She refused. She says she will stay with him until the very end. This is their love story. It starts when they were 15 years old and Kristy hit Buddy in the head with a volleyball in gym class. It takes them through the difficult early days of their marriage when they were just trying to make ends meet and it follows them through Buddy's arrest, his trial, his sentencing and now his time in Telfair State Prison. Buddy and Kristy believe they have a love that transcends the prison walls. 

We have more little love stories for you...Three more stories that come from our own listeners. They’re short and sweet and all of them reminded us about the many ways we can commit to one another. In one a librarian meets a genuinely nice man online, in another moving into a camper van saves a couple’s relationship and finally two kids figure out how to make long distance work.

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Only 1% of the people who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge survive. Kevin Hines was that 1%. From the moment his feet left the bridge he knew he didn’t want to die. Surviving that leap sent him into a psychiatric ward. That’s where he met his wife Margaret. She loved him for his honesty and his bravery and how he wasn’t afraid to show the parts of him that were still broken. Kevin still lives with mental illness. He still lives with suicidal inclinations. But every time those thoughts even begin to creep into his brain he turns to Margaret and says—“I need help now.”

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Casey and Steven met on a study abroad program in Morocco when they were juniors in college. After school they traveled to Beijing to teach English and then to Mali to live in Timbuktu. Travel does something to a relationship. It creates intimacies and speeds up the way we learn about one another. Now, two decades later, Casey and Steven have opened an Inn together in the Catskills, they have two daughters and they have found a sense of balance and give and take in their relationship that allows the other one to thrive.

Follow Steven here to see more of his art and his wonderful children's books.

You can pre-order Steven's new book What is Color? here.

Check out The Spruceton Inn here.

VISIT BetterHelp.com/committed today to get 10% off your first month.

A near-fatal brain injury, a stroke and amnesia turned Gwen and Yasir into one of the most interesting and accomplished couples you'll ever meet.

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We all want answers. What happens when your wife has them all....because she's a psychic. 

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Emmy wasn't looking for love when a homeless man asked her out on a date. She said yes and got so much more than she ever bargained for. 

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Love is not a competition. Except sometimes it is. Susan and Dan are baseball reporters at rival newspapers competing for scoops and sources. Yet they still manage to kiss goodnight and drive each other to the airport.

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When Maryanne and Tommy first got engaged people didn't want them to get married....didn't think it was right. They've defied the odds and been together for 28 years. 

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Professional figure skaters Chris and Alexa Knierim shared the same dream when they fell in love and got married - get to the Olympics.....together. They didn’t let broken bones or a mysterious illness get in their way. Their love story is better than Jo’s favorite romantic comedy, The Cutting Edge. 

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How do you become an astronaut? You marry a hero of a woman who helps you get there. Chris Hadfield and his incredible wife Helene are frank and honest about what it really takes to get a spouse into space. And of course there's the bonus of hearing Chris sing David Bowie's Space Oddity...in outer space. 

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How do you define a marriage when your job involves having sex with other people? Mick Blue and Annika Albright are two of the top performers in the adult entertainment industry. They’ve built their four year marriage on a foundation of respect and communication. Throw out everything you might think about how a porn star lives, acts and loves before you listen to this week’s episode. 

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You May remember Gweneviere Mann from our second episode, Forget It. Shortly after we aired the episode Gwen was diagnosed with a rare and fast moving cancer. She passed away last week and we are running her episode again with these updates to show a commitment that truly lives on after a tragic death.

Please visit, https://www.gwenevieremann.org/, for more information regarding the foundation and how you can help.

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Running for political office is a team sport. Your spouse is a critical part of the campaign whether they like it or not. Lauren Baer is running for Congress in Florida’s 18th district. Her wife Emily is the support system behind the scenes. They’re two working moms trying to get Lauren elected. This is how they do it.

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Duke believes he was one of the most evil men on the planet. He was the co-leader of the largest Neo-Nazi organization in the world. He was also the bodyguard for a black woman named Catherine who loved him despite all of it. Duke says that Catherine's love is what rescued him. Their story - and their marriage - is raw and powerful and romantic. It was one of the most difficult stories we've reported and produced to date. Too many people have been harmed by the noxious things the National Socialist Movement represents. We had a difficult time reckoning with that. But we also believe that Duke and Catherine have a beautiful love story, one that is worth telling.

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