Spreading Love Through the Media: Grant Winners

In June 2025, the GGSC announced the 23 winners of our grants to support the production of innovative nonfiction stories on the subject of “love”—defined as a deep, unselfish commitment to another person’s well-being—even to put their interests before your own.

The grant winners were selected through a rigorous and competitive process. They responded to the GGSC’s request for proposals in January 2025, which generated 1,350 submissions. Then through several rounds of close review by an expert committee of distinguished journalists and love researchers, the field was ultimately narrowed to these 23 grantees. Through many different media—including podcasts, magazine articles, YouTube and TikTok videos, pieces of commentary, and radio stories—they will explore the topic of love from a variety of angles and for a range of audiences. Their projects officially kick off on September 1, 2025, and they are wrapping up by February 28, 2027.

"We're thrilled to partner with such a diverse mix of media producers on meaningful projects about love," says GGSC Executive Director Jason Marsh. "We're confident that they will create transformative projects over the next 18 months. At a time when violence, division, and loneliness dominate headlines, we urgently need more stories about love as an animating force to bring people together, resolve societal problems, and improve humanity's lot."

In addition to financial support, the GGSC will connect the grantees with scientific experts who will serve as advisors to their projects, guiding them to relevant research and supporting the scientific accuracy of their work. Supported by a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation and additional funding from Acton Family Giving and Unlikely Collaborators, this initiative aims to harness the transformative power of love to tackle social challenges like polarization and loneliness. The project seeks to expand the concept of love beyond romantic relationships, emphasizing its role in fostering compassion, altruism, and social cohesion.

Below is more information on the 23 grant winners, including the titles of their projects and a short description of what they intend to produce.

Jason Anthony
“Love Is a Game You Lose”
The greatest love story in Sri Lankan literature has been honored, for more than a thousand years, by a game. It's a game that's played to be lost. The act of losing on purpose is an intimacy with echoes across species in self-handicapping behaviors, and it plays a role in the benign deception that keeps a relationship afloat. A visit to the remote Sri Lankan villages where the ritual is still practiced will be the heart of at least one feature-length piece (to appear in a major publication) and the chapter in a book project.

Pauline Bartolone
“When Love Repairs Community”
This series of audio and web stories explores the unexpected ways that love for the commons can help strangers rebuild after tragedy. The project will revisit four places that have experienced a devastating event, such as a mass shooting, a climate catastrophe, or a hate crime. But rather than focusing on the event, the stories will focus on how expansive acts of love helped individuals recover collectively and create new social bonds. Listeners will learn about the science of altruistic behaviors and selfless acts through three media partners: National Public Radio, Wondery’s This is Actually Happening podcast, and KQED’s The California Report Magazine.

Boston Globe Media
“Love Letters: All Kinds of Love”
“All Kinds of Love” will be a Boston Globe Love Letters podcast season and editorial series (online and in print) focusing on the range of love that humans can experience, and how they find it. Through real personal narratives from guests all over the world, paired with feedback from researchers with relevant expertise, the project will show how people flourish by making a range of connections. The stories will give listeners tangible ideas for how to find these kinds of love and to grow their own communities.

Jessica Chomik-Morales and Scientific American
“The Science of Love”
A nine-part audio-only podcast series, produced by Jessica Chomik-Morales and hosted by Scientific American, will explore love through a scientific lens—uncovering its origins, mechanisms, and profound influence on human life. Through expert interviews and immersive, narrative-driven storytelling, each episode will transport listeners into laboratories, across cultural boundaries, and into the deeply personal moments where love is formed, tested, and transformed.

Rhaina Cohen
“Loving Outside the Lines: Lessons from Boundary Breakers”
A pair of standalone articles, likely for The Atlantic, will explore how people who challenge conventional categories offer insights about connection. The first traces how the growth of non-monogamy is prompting experts to reconsider what makes romantic relationships healthy. The second will focus on people with in-between identities (e.g. multiracial, bisexual, nonbinary) and how their experience of not fitting neatly into categories enhances their ability to love across difference.

Carla Colomé    
“Father Fabián”
Father Fabián, who runs a church in downtown Manhattan, has become the legal guardian of more than 200 underage migrants who have recently arrived in the United States. Despite not knowing them, Fabián is the person who accompanies the minors to immigration court, guides them, helps them with clothing and food, and acts as their legal guardian, at a time when the country is experiencing a crusade against immigration. This narrative profile for the newspaper El País will explore how to love and care for complete strangers.

Kelly Field and the Christian Science Monitor
“The Movement to Make College More Caring”
This story will take readers inside the movement to improve college graduation rates and shrink socioeconomic achievement gaps by creating cultures of caring. Ten years ago, the argument that colleges have a moral and financial obligation to meet their students' basic needs was controversial. Today, many college leaders can tell you the percentage of their students with food and housing insecurity, and the toll that it's taking on retention. There’s evidence that programs like food banks and emergency aid programs are helping to raise retention and graduation rates. Yet their future is far from secure. This story will address two key questions: What has the caring campus movement achieved? And can it survive the decade to come?

Gabriel Gaurano 
“Father Time”
Father Time is a short documentary that explores paternal affection through the stories of seven distinct dads across different stages of fatherhood. Structured as a series of vignettes, the film pairs vérité footage with intimate interviews to show how love is expressed through everyday routines–bedtime stories, school pickups, Sunday barbecues. As the fathers share their stories, these ordinary moments are reframed and reveal how they define paternal love based on their pasts and values.

Hasset Hailu
“#LoveBeyondTribes: Bridging Divides Through Social Media”
A social media campaign featuring one long-form YouTube video, 10 short TikTok/Instagram Reels, and a live TikTok panel discussion that encourage Ethiopians worldwide to share what they love about other ethnic groups, fostering unity and reducing polarization, grounded in research on intergroup relations and compassionate love.

Bonnie Ho and LAist 89.3
“Responding to the Fires with Humanitarian Love”
After the Eaton and Palisades Fires, the art community’s efforts to support one another and foster connections created a unique display of humanitarian love. This reporting will follow those practicing humanitarian love to understand their motivation, goals for the community, but also the challenges in sustaining support over time.

Valarie Kaur
“The Revolutionary Love Podcast”
In a time of rising authoritarianism, hopelessness breeds despair—and love is the medicine. The Revolutionary Love Podcast brings the love ethic to mainstream audiences as an antidote to despair and a catalyst for courage. Through riveting stories, conversations, and teachings, the audio and video podcast will empower people to harness the love ethic in their lives and communities. Led by civil rights leader Valarie Kaur, in collaboration with the Revolutionary Love Project, this is more than a podcast—it’s a multimedia engine to fuel the movement to reclaim love as a force for transformation.

KQED Public Radio/Mindshift
“Teaching with Love: How Educators Heal, Uplift, and Inspire”
KQED MindShift will explore teaching as a profession rooted in compassionate love–the selfless care, concern, and advocacy that define great educators. Inspired by research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the critical role of supportive relationships on children’s brain development, we’ll show how teachers foster belonging and resilience by showing up for students. In a time of divisiveness, this highly-produced series will highlight love’s transformative power, spark reflection, and offer tools to support student and teacher well-being in the classroom setting.

Tracey Marks
“The Science of Love: How Your Brain Shapes Connection”
This YouTube-based video series explores the neuroscience and psychology of love. The core series will feature five long-form episodes unpacking topics like self-love, attachment, gratitude, and the brain’s reward system. Each video blends research with actionable takeaways to help viewers understand and apply the science of connection in everyday life. Following this core series, the project will expand with 24 to 30 additional episodes that deepen each topic, ensuring long-term engagement. Content will be distributed primarily through YouTube and promoted across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and an email newsletter. This multimedia project aims to translate complex research into accessible tools for emotional well-being and relational growth.

Russell Nichols
“Brotherly Love”
Brotherly Love is a six-part digital series investigating the emotional and social lives of Black men through the science of love. In a society shaped by systemic racism, where Black men face brutal disparities in mental and physical health, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Published bimonthly on The Good Men Project, each article examines how strong bonds—from friendship to mentorship—drive healing and longevity. Rooted in scientific research and Black men's realities, Brotherly Love seeks to reframe love as a critical force that saves lives.

Proxy, with Yowei Shaw
"Healing Relationships, By Proxy"
Too often when our hearts get broken, we don’t get to ask questions or hear the other side of the story. But what if you could talk to a stranger who gets it? Award-winning journalist Yowei Shaw will produce three documentary chat episodes for her podcast Proxy, connecting guests with various kinds of heartbreak—not just romantic—for conversations with strangers who have relevant experience. The episodes will model how to have conversations with people who might be the “villain” in your story and explore the question: How do we sustain loving relationships when we hurt others and they hurt us?

Radio Ambulante Studios, Inc.
“The Queens of Queens”
In Jackson Heights, a community of undocumented trans Latinas navigates the brutal realities of life in Queens, New York—a borough where cultures collide. In this fight, they have each other, a chosen family forged through resilience, showmanship, survival, and love. At the heart stood their protector, Lorena Borjas. When she died of COVID-19, her absence left a void no one was prepared for. The podcast series The Queens of Queens follows these women as they navigate life after Lorena, each episode revealing a new layer of their struggle, not just to survive, but to thrive.

Religion News Service
“Love In Public”
This podcast series explores how love can be understood through religion and cultivated between strangers, aiming to upend the story of entrenched division in the U.S. and affirm our common humanity. The project includes guided conversations between strangers, modeled on sacred practices and questions that form the core of religion: listening, witnessing, and confessing. These conversations then act as fodder for discussions on the many facets of love that are hallmarks of the world’s religions and grounded in scientific research on love. 

San Miguel Basin Forum
“What Love Does”
This project will produce 52 stories—each week for a year— exploring “what love does” in rural Colorado, reflecting back to the community the thread of compassion, love, and positivity that is present already, with a hypothesis that a contagion will happen. These stories will appear in the San Miguel Basin Forum newspaper in print, online, and in a podcast. They will highlight people and events of a loving nature. Metrics, feedback, and impact will be recorded, including testimonials, emails, social media comments. Hypotheses include that readership will share suggestions or leads for additional “what love does” stories. The Forum plans to work with the school, animal shelter, farmers, food bank, and more to cultivate these stories, which will be timely and also newsy.

SciShow
“Where Does Love Reside in the Body?”
Where do humans feel love? Phrases like “heartbreak” and “butterflies in the stomach” may hint at certain locations, but does science have any answers to that question? It turns out, it does! SciShow will create a YouTube video that will discuss a few studies—including the design, results, and limitations—that have attempted to map where we experience different kinds of love in both the brain and the rest of the body.

Anna Louie Sussman
"The Great Heterosexuality Opt-Out has Begun"
As the divide between women and men deepens, how are people today finding companionship, love, and family? This long-form narrative project commissioned by The New York Times looks at how we live our lives today now that heterosexuality is no longer compulsory—and for many people, no longer as attractive or attainable as it once was.

Tumble Media
“Science of HEART (Hugs, Empathy, And Real Togetherness): A Tumble Science Podcast mini-series”
Science of HEART is a three-episode series from Tumble Science Podcast for Kids, exploring the science of hugs, friendship, and love through engaging storytelling. Designed for families with kids ages five to 12, the series fosters curiosity and science-based conversations around emotional connection. With an engaged audience, strong educational partnerships, and a decade of award-winning, research-driven content, Tumble is uniquely positioned to bring this timely, meaningful topic to life for kids (and their adults!).

USA TODAY and Humankind 
“Is Love Actually? A podcast/vodcast exploring the science and stories of love”
USA Today’s podcast team will launch a special audio and video series that speaks to the complexities of the human experience given the state of the world today, to underscore that at the heart of our existence is love. This project will complement ongoing USA TODAY wellness verticals, with a focus on understanding, expressing, and developing love in all aspects of our lives.

Jen Zamzow
“Slower, Closer, Human: Protecting and Supporting Human Caregiving in the Age of AI”
As AI and efficiency culture transform how we care, this five-article series will explore what we risk losing—and how to hold onto the heart of caregiving. Through storytelling and research, it will highlight what makes care meaningful, what’s worth protecting, and how we can use technology to support connection, not replace it.