“Hal is one of the sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever met,” Ms. Root said, “and I really knew how much he loved her, and that he never stopped, despite what he had done to her.” A year later, Mr. Karp wanted to propose. Given the podcast’s role in reuniting them, Mr. Karp felt it…
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Erica Ingraham had her eye on Adam Koster from the moment they started working together in 2015 in the town of Bon Accord, in Alberta, Canada. This was not an easy thing to do, given the setting. Ms. Ingraham, 30, and Mr. Koster, 33, were youth leaders at Oak Hill Ranch, a therapeutic program for…
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In September 2016, Renate Hartman attended the Association for Women’s Rights in Development International Forum conference in Bahia, Brazil. Also called “Feminist Futures,” it drew 2,000 people from around the world working for women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. As Ms. Hartman,50, a manager of international projects at COC Nederland, a Dutch L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, entered a…
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Find an accountability buddy. Choose a friend who wants to achieve a similar goal and make a plan. Accountability might mean meeting each other once or twice a week for a walking date. Or it could be a daily text check-in to see how you’re doing on a diet or a Zoom call to work…
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In the early days of their relationship, Kayla McCulley and Matthew Spencer created a book club — for two. “We both love to read,” said Mr. Spencer, 34, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. He first met Ms. McCulley, 33, in November 2016, when both worked at the…
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At around 5 a.m. one day in the fall of 2016, Olivia Alexandra Barket received an unexpected knock on the door of her Brooklyn apartment. The knock came at a particularly hectic time. Ms. Barket was working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as its deputy director of Federal Election Commission reporting. The election was around…
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One Monday in 2014, Christopher Justin Hanson sat down for a job interview at the headquarters of Covington & Burling, a law firm in Washington. As the interviewer, who was stationed in front of windows overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, thumbed through Mr. Hanson’s résumé, he noticed that Mr. Hanson didn’t have any experience in Washington. Mr.…
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Darien Monk doesn’t wish a broken espresso machine on anybody, but once upon a time she wouldn’t have minded if the ones at the Coffee & Tea Exchange in Chicago, where she works, were out of order a little more often. “I would see Shane every once in a while at the store, and I…
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The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says she should stay. Being of use is important, it says. The fellowship of another alcoholic is crucial, it says. Still, I wish she hadn’t confessed. I wish she hadn’t told me over the kitchen island, in front of the children as they were eating spaghetti, as they were…
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We tried to soldier on but struggled. One afternoon, our good friends Kristen and Phil visited us in our backyard; for the first time, they understood the gravity of what we were dealing with. Not long after, they invited us to their place in Oakland for an outdoor dinner, but “their place” requires some explanation.…
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