In this encore, Emmy Rossum reads an essay about the complexities of millennial love.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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We're excited to announce that Emmy Rossum of the Showtime Series shameless will be performing at the event. She read a story for the podcast earlier this year
A twelve hour long relationship on an airplane, it became one of our most popular episodes, so we thought we'd listen back to it. This week, here's Emmy Rossum reading Emma Quartz essay, a millennials guide to kissing
When a total, stranger kissed me under the
official lights of an airplane cabin somewhere above international waters? My first thought was of the orthodox
woman sitting to my left. I hoped she was asleep. It was a twelve hour flight from TEL Aviv to Newark and I wanted to nap too. But how could I now the kiss
coming out of nowhere had turned me into the heroine of a bad romance novel heart. Fluttering weak need every nerve, electrified
my stranger and I were returning from birthright Israel trips with groups from our respective universities, Birthright Israel. As a free ten day trip to Israel,
for young jewish Americans and I had wanted to go before
graduated last winter, before my final semester of college. I finally had
Because there are so many young people on Birthright Israel trips, there often mocked as an attempt to spark a connection to Israel through the bedroom, and plenty of that had happened on my trip, but it hadn't happened to me
until that moment spoiling the perfect
I already have two strangers meeting on an airplane. I admit that we had met before just once briefly
when I bumped into a friend from high school during a stop in Jerusalem. One of her friends had been cute. I had remembered
here he was behind me as we boarded the airplane.
Bending his tall frame into the aisle seat. Next to me as he lifted his backpack into the overhead compartment,
I marveled at my luck.
between us.
Sprang, the kind of instant intimacy fostered by
when personalities in tight quarters. We spoken spurts about the gossip on our trip
and what we had done during the days spent in Israel. We flirted we kissed that first time and then we kissed again
splitting a pair of headphones
as we listened to the red, hot chili, peppers and Taylor? Swift? I liked how easy he was how ready to talk. I liked his laugh and his dark eyes
It seemed torn from the back of a Nicholas sparks Paperback, a southern
science, major from a small liberal arts school and in
and humanities. Major from a huge pre professional university meet in the sky.
Over the Mediterranean. The heat between them is palpable, but less
romantic details persisted
I was a senior about to start my second semester with plans to head to Dallas after graduation he was a sophomore
with the swaddling comfort of knowing where he'd be for the next few years, but it didn't matter anyway, did it
in twelve hours, we'd, be back on paths that lead us in opposite directions
This meeting was
just a romantic interlude from our real lives, and if it did mean anything, we were college students. We knew how to pretend it didn't on the
the lights came back on and the breakfast card appeared.
Reality set in as we sipped orange juice,
tin, foil, covered cups and for the first time had little.
say to each other
in the bumpy landing. He distracted me by talking about famous airplane crashes,
and then, with a final jarring thump, we were back on the ground.
As we gather our belongings from what had been our temporary home, I wondered what would happen next, we bought
At the train terminal lingering on the automated buttons, after as we were,
to board trains heading in different directions. We stared at each other.
He rested one arm on his rolling suitcase
bewilderment in his dark eyes. I hugged him
risk, no nonsense! Goodbye, we didn't exchange numbers,
I he shouted down the stairs at my back, see you never!
I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking
even embracing the more positive of the possibilities it still stung and that should have been it a story. I told giggling to friends until the details
did and he was just a boy whose name I didn't remember, but I saw his name on my Facebook news
in a batch of photos. Our mutual friend had uploaded and I couldn't resist. I clicked add friend and one day he messaged me: hey, hey, I typed back how's life.
It went like this for days, but talking to him made me feel like a time, traveler spice
between the snowy paths of my campus and the dark.
Airplane we had shared. I was so
in class or at meeting
at the local campus cafe doing my
things in the library and then
I said y'all my screen would tug me back. I didn't like the way
set my balance. How far
and powerless it made me feel
Mass media has a fascination with hookup culture among people around my age meriting in depth.
Castigation and contentious opining about what it all means
but they often miss a simple fact: there's nothing
particularly knew about trying to
we're getting hurt. It's just that
my generation has turned this avoidance into a science perfecting the separation of the physical from the emotional we truncate whenever possible, texting over calling meeting over
rather than in person, we leave in the early morning without saying goodbye, being casual is cooler than intimacy or vulnerability, or so we think
Having the last word was once a sign of one's wits and smarts, it meant that your comment had gravitas
staying power, but today having the last word is the ultimate weakness. It means
being the person who doesn't merit an answer.
Leave him hanging than risk the same happening to you. Keep it shallow to your heart, is in on the line,
the
Being aware of all this does not grant immunity from its effects. One night, my roommate
look up rolled over in the dark and asked her and a half murmur. Is this a special thing? Confused
rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She asked him to repeat himself.
in certain she'd heard him correctly, never mind. He said later.
She worried she had missed a crucial moment, one that she would never get back.
If she had misunderstood she
showing her hand by revealing that she wanted him to stick around in the morning. It was too scary a prospect, so she never said anything
was my era.
Interlude. A special thing with things have been different if one of us had had the courage to say something other than good bye before heading to our trains on the
that form walking away from him. I had decided that the whole affair was just one of many half
warmed, romantic liaisons. The trail
you and your use, but maybe that attitude was also the problem at the time I had had an
applicable comfort level with at all. I only realized later why it had been such
oddly familiar feeling.
My generation treats every liaison as if it's happening on an airplane, as if we have
only that one night and there is,
go tomorrow.
I don't know what else could have happened.
But I wonder what we collectively lose as we
I so hard not to care. He and I don't communicate anymore. He moved on and so did I. But in my head I go back to that train platform. I turned to him, say goodbye,
and then were calling his parting words. I say them right back, see you never Emmi Raw
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my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see, but you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry
they may have happened again to. I have one friend
who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words, then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that
me and my dad. We like a sponge together, and I wish to point out- I it said,
see, K, P, o t
Yeah now run nice,
I'm same as earth's sky, the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, slash games, Emma courts as
they a millennials guide to kissing,
see you never. He said, but was that really the case we'll find out from Emma Court after the break
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the science you are living proof we're back its modern love. The pod cast a magnet Accra body and now a post script from the
through this week's essay Emma Court and modern love, editor Daniel Jones, so Emma Quartz piece came in as part of our car
just a contest which bring in anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand essays from college students nationwide and what I think Emma did so well with how she compares every relationship that she and her friends have as being like a relationship that take
placed on an airplane as though there's no tomorrow
as though you're not talking about anything in the future and for them it filters down to.
We're not going to call this anything we're not going to have any expectations and that really takes a toll. So when I wrote the piece I think the place that I was coming from was this sort of
me and my friends eating brunch and complaining about guys sort of place where I felt like
so something that a lot of women were experiencing. But what really surprised me with the reaction to my keys was how many guys reach out to me and inside you know they understood
the same way, it used to be more of the same
typical man was the person who didn't want to commit,
The woman was the person who did, and now
I just see much more equality in that, but
is that no one can really make a move. So the sort of anti climactic part about my piece is that I did actually speak to see you never boy.
So before the peace came out, I thought that it was only fair to let him know that it was coming out. He asked if he could see it, so I sent it to him. I was pretty nervous about it, but she actually really liked the piece and he said that it had changed the way he had thought about relationships and perhaps
had been a little bit callous in sort of saying goodbye in the way that he did, and I think that he understands perhaps how the other person could feel- and I think that's something we could all stand to do a lot more of in relationships on the whole. The way that romantic relationships are portrayed in mass media does a real disservice to everyone, men and women alike. We don't see relationships in there like full complexity. We see them sort of boil down to something that makes an interesting plot right, which is this
of lake cartoonish version of how men and women behave what cultural influence comes up more in these college s eyes and anything else is Disney movies,
you find the right person
see each other your eyes get really big and then that's it and that's love
so when you're young and you're FED Disney,
Anna sees, you think, that's
I'm going to have you know
right now, I'm just doing this gritty mess of like trying to be with a guy or be with a girl
or whatever, and that's just because I haven't found real love.
And they think of real love as being something separate from whatever this experiment,
is it there in the middle of the aisle of spelling? Be my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together, I mean sitting next to each other
individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in
they may have happened again to I have one friend:
who, I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words, then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that
Me and my dad we like to play spy together, and I wish her out. I it J,
see K, P, o t
Yeah now run nice
I'm same as earth's sky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, slash games at Israel love. You know.
is what it is, and there is no one person out there where everything is going.
Easily. Perhaps people just need to talk.
little bit more openly. I think that's kind of that was the intent of my peace was to try to
something that I thought a lot of people felt and put it out there. In sort of
honest way,
I Emma Court.
On her essay millennials guide to kissing, and
Love editor Dan Jones Special.
thanks to Emmy Rossum for reading Emma's essay. You can see her now in the tv series shameless on Showtime she'll be performing
Modern love live at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston on Valentine's day, find out what's coming up next week after the break
the.
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next week. Seal a word from the epic series graze brings us a story about navigating the friends own later in life. These dates
My friends would ask what their date like
I would answer referring to jonathan- is my imaginary
boyfriend, my insignificant other, my friend, without benefits they,
never met him but thought he should be thanking his lucky stars and he wasn't
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Tucker, see you next week.
The.
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Transcript generated on 2022-04-17.