I was a teenager when Nikki Giovanni published her collection Love Poems.

She came over from across the border of Virginia Tech, where she taught, to speak in my hometown in West Virginia.

And I was so pulled in by her and these poems.

They were tender and generous, but never spineless. There was saltiness, humor, pain, wonder.

And when Nikki Giovanni died in early December, I listened back to our conversation on death

sex and money that we recorded in 2018. She came to New York City to talk with me on stage.

I was pregnant at the time, and we talked about love, romantic love, and familial love.

And as we end 2024 and start another year, I wanted to share some of that conversation with you,

along with some other moments about love from over the years on death, sex, and money. You'll also hear from Herrsula Ali

and his wife, Amatous, comedian Chris Getherd and his wife, Hallie Bullitt, and Jane Fonda. There's also

two disability rights activists who first noticed each other at a protest at the Minnesota State Capitol,

and two of the first listeners of our show, Krista and Lori, who told me about how they eased into sharing money after not being sure that would be safe.

Think of these moments as love poems. And if as you listen,

it makes you think back on a great story of your own about falling in love, send it to us.

What caught your attention about a particular person and made you decide to try.

Record a voice memo about what you first noticed about someone you came to love

and send it to us at death sex money at slate.com.

We may use it around Valentine's Day.

But today, as we think about love, we're going to start with Nikki Giovanni.

Okay, I'm a poet, but I come from a people who invented the spiritual, who found a way to tell

a story that if people thought they could read and write, that could cost them their lives.

And I'm not going to get killed for writing bad poetry, but there are people

...