About

Nick van der Kolk’s Love and Radio features in-depth, otherworldly-produced interviews with an eclectic range of subjects, from the seedy to the sublime. You’ve never heard anything like it before.

If you’re new to the show and don’t know where to start, might we recommend The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt or Fix?

In 2011, L+R became the first podcast to win the top prize at the Third Coast Festival Competition (often described as the “Sundance of public radio”). In 2013, it won an honorable mention at Third Coast, becoming the first podcast to win multiple TCF awards, going on to win two more times.

The show has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Nick Jr.

L+R has been produced intermittently since 2005, and began regular production in 2014.

Here are some nice things some people have said about the show:

  • “It has some of the most emotionally complicated stories and portraits of people that anyone is doing anywhere. […] I totally recommend it.” – Ira Glass, host, This American Life
  • “Love and Radio is a cosmic pollen cloud of audio awesomeness. I’m constantly amazed when I listen. As storytelling, it’s breaking new ground.” – Jad Abumrad, host, Radiolab
  • “My very favourite of the many US ‘real life’ podcasts. It doesn’t try to teach you anything, it just presents you with a story that unfolds as you listen. […] The show always feels out of time and space, in and of its own world. A world full of intriguing characters who aren’t quite who you think they are when you first meet them.” – Miranda Sawyer, The Guardian
  • “There is radio that makes you want to do radio, and that’s fine, and then there is radio that makes you want to quit […] Nick is one of the sonic innovators in the field.”- Roman Mars, host, 99% Invisible
  • “Love and Radio has long been my very favorite podcast, and, indeed, one of the great underground radio phenomena of recent years. The stories are great, strange, intense, the sound is a delight, and they have never tried to get me to accept a tote bag.”- Rick Moody, author, The Ice Storm

If you want to know more, read/listen to some features by the Nieman Journalism Lab, The Timbre, Howsound, KUER’s Radiowest, Flood Magazine, and Third Coast Audio Festival (check out the Extras tab).