There are all kinds of love. The hosts of the ‘This is Love’ podcast break them down.

Valentine’s Day, as we know and celebrate it today, is largely an invention of good old-fashioned American commerce. Originally a solemn religious observance, the holiday has been gradually co-opted by various industries who sell us flowers, candy and greeting cards. The sentiment-industrial complex, you might say.

Still, a holiday dedicated to love is a pretty good idea in principle, right? In an effort to explore the more noble impulses behind February’s Hallmark holiday, we turned to the creators of “This Is Love,” the critically acclaimed podcast produced at the studios of WUNC in Chapel Hill.

Created by storytellers Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer, “This Is Love” is dedicated to just that – the concept of love in all its weird and complicated glory.

The podcast recently completed its second season and now features an archive of episodes. As with its sister show, the thoughtful true-crime podcast “Criminal,” “This is Love” tackles a very big topic by telling small, specific stories.

Defining love is a tricky business, of course, and there are many different varieties. The quest to understand it all goes back quite a ways. In fact, classical Greek writings – especially those by Plato and Aristotle – identify seven different kinds of love.

Judge and Spohrer recommend particular podcast episodes based on the ancient Greek system for categorizing love itself.

Click through the “This is Love” archives, and you can find even more odd varieties on display, several of which are difficult to categorize at all. The one about snails, for instance. Or digital brain uploads.

There’s more to come, too. The podcast team, which also includes producer Nadia Wilson, engineer Rob Byers and illustrator Julienne Alexander, plan to keep exploring the wild world of love, with Season 3 slated to debut in late spring.

1. Eros: Passion

In Greek legends, eros refers to passionate or romantic love, the kind that the ardent prince Paris felt for Helen of Troy. This is the kind of love most closely associated with Valentine’s Day, and several episodes of “This Is Love” feature stories of traditional romantic passion.

Judge suggests Episode 3, “Always Tomorrow,” which profiles writer Brenda Jackson, author of more than 120 romance novels. Jackson’s story can be instructive for us all, Judge says.

“She writes a lot about passionate romantic love, but she also has a pretty wonderful love story herself with her husband,” Judge says. “They seem to have a pretty passionate relationship.”

Jackson’s love story features some practical elements, too. “She would get ideas to write sex scenes for her romance novels and test them out with her husband,” Spohrer says. Nice work if you can get it.

2. Philia: Mature love

Often translated as “brotherly love,” philia connotes friendship or goodwill. It can also mean a more mature and settled form of eros; passionate love that has settled into something more steady and stable.

“A Private Life,” Episode 5, tells the story of Nino and Drew, two gay men who had to keep their relationship a secret for more than 40 years. The couple also had to navigate some treacherous legal terrain before gay marriage was legalized in the U.S.

“They went to any length that they had to in order to take care of each other,” Judge says. “They really had a hell of a time trying to get married. I think it’s a perfect example of that kind of love.”

3. Storge: Parental love

The love between parents and children is typically cited as the third major kind of love.

Judge and Spohrer recommend Episode 4, “Eight Thousand Miles,” which tells the story of Vansana Nolintha and his sister Vanvisa Nolintha, siblings who immigrated from Laos and founded the popular Raleigh restaurants, Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana.

“It’s about parents who make a sacrifice for their kids so they can have a better life,” Spohrer says. “It’s really an incredible story.”

4. Agape: Universal love

Agape, sometimes associated with the Christian concept of charity, refers to universal or unconditional love – the kind one might feel toward God, humanity, or nature.

In Episode 12, “How To Be Alone,” Judge visits a man in Colorado who has lived on his own for decades in a mountainside cabin. His deep devotion to nature, and to solitude, tells a different kind of love story.

“He really fell in love with a place, a land that allowed him to survive during a very tough time in his life,” Judge says.

5. Pragma: Practical love

In various expansions of Greek writings over the years, the designation pragma has emerged to indicate a sort of practical love that grows from work, duty or circumstance.

Spohrer recommends Episode 11, in which audio technician Susan Rogers lands her dream job, working for her favorite musical artist: Prince.

“She just took a job as Prince’s sound engineer, and what formed between them was something very much more intimate and intense,” Spohrer says. “It all began with this practical pretense, then it changed.”

6. Ludus: Fleeting love

Meaning playful or fleeting love, ludus can refer to innocent flirtation or that kind of five-minute crush you might get spotting someone across the room.

Judge says that the podcast’s very first episode, “The Run,” chronicles a marriage that began with a single glance.

“It’s about a man named David Alexander who met his future wife and the mother of his children in inCentral Park,” Judge says. “He just saw her and knew. He was intrigued and wanted to be with her.”

7. Mania: Obsessive

In the 1970s, Canadian psychologist John Alan Lee developed a love classification system based on various Greek and Latin concepts. His interpretation of the term “mania” means the sort of love that can turn manic or obsessive.

Judge and Spohrer recommend Episode 8, “Message in a Bottle,” about a woman who tries to solve a very peculiar mystery in the name of love. It’s hard to talk about this one without spoiling the story, but Spohrer says it’s a good example of how obsession can creep up unexpectedly.

“This woman, because of her own curiosity, needed an answer to this story,” Spohrer says. “She was dogged for years, traveling to other countries and spending all her money.”

Details

To listen to episodes of “This is Love,” go to thisislovepodcast.com or your favorite podcast provider.

This story was originally published February 7, 2019 at 9:23 AM.