Love & Its Discontents Introduction

Love & Its Discontents is a podcast on the topic of LOVE and LOVE STORIES.

Host: Adnan Mahmutović is Bosnian-Swedish writer and lecturer in English literature and creative writing at Stockholm University.

The podcast is based on his university module in which students travel through literature from the Bible and the ancient Greeks to contemporary stories, wrestling with notions such as romantic love and altruism, deep diving into ecstatic love and solidarity, asking, Can love be examined like an object? What on earth is love? Where in the world is love?

This podcast will ask if we are born to love, born with a natural sense of certain things like goodness, beauty, which the prophet of Islam called fitra, which is then distorted by our environments. Is it, like Rumi said, perfect thirst? But most importantly it will follow the question: can there be love without love stories?

The Greek-American author Jeffrey Eugenides, in My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead, claims, “Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.” Love stories are based on discontent: “When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. … Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart.”

This podcast will consist of two types of episodes: short talks on selected stories and theories by the host, Adnan Mahmutović, and longer conversations with invited guests and viewers who have an opportunity to pitch an idea they want to talk about.

Contact: [email protected].

This episode filmed and edited by Mosa Mian Instagram @mosa.mian

Music: Bacalao, "Trumpet Tune"

Title Sequence made by Esmir Prlja @esmalehorrible