Triumphant return: Love Me podcast ends 5-year hiatus with a Tribeca-winning episode

The beloved and award-winning podcast Love Me has returned with a bang following a 5-year hiatus.

The series, which celebrates the beauty and messiness of human connection through personal storytelling, released its first new episode since 2019 this June — which promptly won the 2024 Tribeca Audio Nonfiction Award.

The winning documentary is called "Delejos", which translates to "from afar" and you can listen to it via Love Me — hosted by Lu Olkowski — right here. As creator and producer Julie Piñero puts it, "it's an ode to the power of processing grief through creating art. And it's a meditation on loss, and the many ways we strive to connect to those who have left us."

Piñero explains that "Delejos" was born of the sudden death of her boyfriend, Jose Zambrano. "It's a story about the impact he had on me — both in his life and his death."

She continues, "Jose's loss was traumatic, unexpected, unfair and confusing. 'Delejos' has been an incredible tool to help me process, find acceptance, and ultimately believe in something that resembles faith."

To celebrate Delejos and the return of Love Me (season 4 is coming early 2025; check out their call for pitches), CBC Podcasts spoke with Love Me creators and producers Mira Burt-Wintonick and Cristal Duhaime.

How are you feeling about bringing Love Me back after five years?

Cristal Duhaime: I'm feeling… calm and curious! Over the past few years away from the show, I feel like I've learnt a lot about myself as a maker by stepping outside of my comfort zone. So now, there's something really nice about coming back to something familiar where I have creative ownership with people I trust — like putting on an old pair of jeans! (But at the same time, I can't help but wonder: will they feel the same? Will I still look as good in these jeans after all these years?)  

Mira Burt-Wintonick: I think we've both been enjoying making other things the past few years. I made a few serialized shows, for example, which were a really fun creative challenge. But Love Me is such a sweet spot for us in terms of being able to tell really intimate stories. And there are very few homes for one-off audio documentaries these days, so we felt it was the right time to dive back in. Not every story needs to be a 10-part series! So we're happy to be able to carve out a spot again for stories that are important for their smallness, their tenderness.

Do you think personal connection is messier now that it was five years ago?

CD: Yes and no. At least politically, people are more polarized than ever and we seem unable to have constructive conversations with anyone who remotely disagrees with the way we see the world. Things are generally pretty bad out there on the global stage. But then at the same time, at least in certain circles, there is so much more awareness and knowledge available around our mental and emotional health. So that has had a really positive effect on interpersonal communication, I think.

MBW: It's hard to say. I think the pandemic heaped a lot of extra weight onto a lot of people's relationships. And people are still recovering from the mental and emotional challenges of that. There's also a lot of collective grief surrounding things like climate change, genocide, war; it all seeps into our interpersonal dynamics. Especially when people don't see eye to eye about the realities we're living in. 

How do you think your time away from the show will change the shape of this new season?

CD: On my end, because I worked at New York Times Audio for a few years in both Opinion and News, I can feel that I've developed a more ideas-oriented filter to my storytelling that wasn't there before. I'm looking forward to figuring out when to marry this approach or discard it vis-à-vis Love Me's personal storytelling style. 

MBW: I think we've learned that we like focusing on one story at a time. Previous seasons often had multiple stories in each episode, and we loved how those stories spoke to each other, but in terms of production it also made us feel a bit scattered, like we were trying to do too much at once. We might have an episode or two in the new season that still takes that shape, but we're more interested in diving into one story per episode in a deeper way. 

Has making this show changed how you feel about love? 

CD: I think it probably has on a subconscious level. The nature of the work is such that we spend a lot of time editing and so you get to examine something and someone very intensely in a way that most people don't. So I think you get to take on a lot of interesting feelings through the voices of others. That said, I don't think it has made me any more emotionally sophisticated in my own relationships though! 

MBW: It's helped me recognize how ridiculous it is that we hang so much of our expectations for love on romantic love. There are so many other ways to love and receive love, through lifelong friendships for instance. I think the show reminds us to put care and creative energy into the relationships that matter to us, no matter what form those relationships take.

What are you in love with right now?

CD: I really love the French reality show "L'Agence". It's set in Boulogne and it's about this family-run real estate agency that sells incredible old apartments and estates. In the latest season, the Kretz parents have just handed off the business to their four sons, so tensions are high! But the drama isn't manufactured, the resentments among family members are very relatable. There's something very wholesome about it; the Kretz family isn't driven by money, they're driven by a job well done. Considering the amount of money they're dealing with, they're a surprisingly lovable bunch of people (especially in comparison to the obnoxious characters on US-based reality real estate franchises).

MBW: Wildflowers, swimming, the wind.