Must Listen: Podcasts about love and relationships

Whether you're loved up or single this Valentine's Day, we've got some podcasts to delight your ears.

Hannah J Davies, freelance culture journalist and Guardian podcast reviewer, has chosen four of her favourite podcasts about love and relationships as part of 5 Live's Must Listen, on air every Monday at midnight on the Sarah Brett show.

She has picked: Modern Love, The Receipts Podcast and This Is Love. At the end of the article you can hear an interview with Hannah Witton from the podcast Doing It.

Have you heard any of these podcasts? Comment below to let us know what you think.

Modern Love

Modern Love is a podcast classic, it's from the New York Times and is based on their successful essay series of the same name.

Different people send in these incredible essays about something joyous or depressing in their lives. One was from a woman who was dying of cancer and was about her hopes for her husband finding love again after she dies, another was the story of two gay black women being out and standing up to societal prejudice.

What I love is that all the stories are read and brought to life by famous people, they've had Greta Gerwig, Alicia Keys and Jake Gyllenhaal, to name a few.

Right at the end of some episodes, they catch up with the writer of the essay to hear what they thought about it, which means you get to hear the context behind why they wrote the essay and what happened next.

The Receipts Podcast

This podcast is so fun. Often with podcasts you can be listening to two or three people having a conversation and feel a bit excluded, but with The Receipts it feels like you're actually involved in their chat.

It's hosted by three young women of colour, Tolani Shoneye, Audrey Indome and Milena Sanchez, who give unfiltered and funny advice to their listeners, usually on relationship-themed problems.

Another great thing about this podcast is the episode titles, they're hysterical! My favourite is "How do I tell my boyfriend to clean his toilet?", which is just beautiful.

This Is Love

This Is Love is a series made up of off-kilter love stories, it describes itself as an investigation into life's most persistent mystery, love.

It's just really touching and is the only podcast that has made me feel emotional about cats finding a home in an ancient Roman ruin.

Each episode tells a different story of love, I recommend the episode "A Private Life" which is about two men, Nino and Drew, who have been in a relationship for over 40 years.

They didn't think gay marriage would ever be made legal so they decided to embark on an unconventional arrangement to be in a legal relationship. Nino adopted Drew as a son so they would be legally related.

When gay marriage was decriminalised, they found it wasn't possible for them to get married because they were legally father and son. I won't spoil the ending, you'll have to listen to the episode to find out what happens.

Doing It