Given today is Valentine’s Day, I think it is only appropriate this post be love-filled. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I enjoy clever, witty and smart web tools. Today I bring you a Valentine’s Day Google doodle featuring candy hearts. Six candy hearts are arranged where the logo used to be. There’s “Crush,” “Mr. Right,” and “Blind Date,” just to name a few. Click on any of them and you’ll hear a love story, taken from real people on public radio’s “This American Life.”Valentine's Day Google doodle

The story behind the stories

Google’s Jennifer Hom on the Doodle team is quoted saying “the project began a couple of months ago when This American Life host Ira Glass visited Google. Glass and his team contributed some archival audio clips and came up with some new ones for the Doodle project. The idea was to portray love in a host of different incarnations.”

I won’t spoil all of the stories in this Valentine’s Day Google doodle for you, as I believe they have the best impact when heard firsthand, but my favorite is “4Ever Yours.” Beware, the narrator even states “Warning: This one gets a little heavy.” This story has such a great outlook on love. It’s about a man’s marriage to another, at the age of 45. He talks about the thought of having the love of his life die one day – I dare you not to cry! Hearing stories like this give true meaning to this day of love.