The Heart
Kaitlin PrestThe Heart
Since 2014 this longstanding podcast favourite has been creating hard-hitting cinematic stories about love, bodies and all of the things between humans that we don’t know how to name. Creator Kaitlin Prest works with her friends, idols and all kinds of loved ones to bring you into an expansive sonic universe that is both tender and raw. From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia.
Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved.
Since 2014 this longstanding podcast favourite has been creating hard-hitting cinematic stories about love, bodies and all of the things between humans that we don’t know how to name. Creator Kaitlin Prest works with her friends, idols and all kinds of loved ones to bring you into an expansive sonic universe that is both tender and raw. From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia.
Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved.
In this series we hear archival audio of a sister relationship from birth until present day.
A love letter to the medium this podcast is made of.
“I pray that a loving memory exists for them too, the precious ones I overthrew, for an education in the world” - Leonard Cohen
The small sacrifices that felt so delicious to make. The lives we could’ve lived. Can you see them too? Or should we just turn off the lights…
Love is like hitchhiking. You wait until you catch a ride with someone going in the same direction, and enjoy the company until you get dropped off at the next place
Inside the lending of a sweater lies a secret message: I want to be spread across your bare skin.
You don’t f*ck a mermaid. A mermaid f*cks you.
Our humanity hangs in the balance as the crescendo of an atrocity unfolds. What power do we have to change the outcome?
The story underneath the story: what happened after we made “Movies In Your Head” and a walk into the fictional world it inspired.
“You’re in post production before you even know it...when the reality is, you don’t know this person.” –Ayinde Bennett
Is having one last conversation with Kaitlin's Dad on tape a good idea?
It's the pandemic and Kaitlin lives with her Dad for the first time since the period the family euphemistically calls 'the dark years'.
Greg proudly claims the title of mister mom in 1986.
A father-daughter love story about forgiveness. What does it give, and what does it take?
Kaitlin and Natalie debreif about making SISTERS
SISTERS: But Beautiful
SISTERS: What's Wrong-isode
SISTERS: Work-isode
SISTERS: Jem-isode
The trailer for the new mini-series of The Heart: SISTERS
An overview of our past and our future. (START HERE)
A surprise holiday special featuring Santa's older, gayer, drunker sister.
A little bit of love found in an unlikely place: a natural disaster. As we cozy down and prepare to say goodbye to 2020, The Heart is here to wish you all some pandemic love for 2021.
Meet Melanie, her family, and her ill fated lover.
All parents shape our identities. Phoebe’s affluent white parents made a particular set of choices to raise her in an all-white neighborhood with a sordid history. Phoebe investigates what she inherited as a result.
In a community with a strict “no new white friends” policy, Phoebe asks: how does my being white affect our relationship?
Phoebe is surprised to learn that even she, an angry Jewish dyke, still participates in upholding white supremacy culture.
The cycle begins...
Trauma is held in the individual and collective body. Shame, grief, and rage are passed down for generations.
The body has information.
As NK gets older, she gets smaller, she gets more and more quiet. But the self loathing voice in her head just gets louder.
How NK & Phoebe fell in art love.
Named after the very bedroom within which many of the episodes of The Heart were made.
An excerpt of The Shadows: Ep 1, "Romantic"
Kaitlin has a dream, and The Heart says goodbye (for now). Listen on headphones.
In 2018, The Heart will be taking a break.
Sharon is a weirdo.
Phoebe was a Jesus kid.
I still hear his voice. [Trigger Warning]
Darqness: where techno, party, and, protest all meet in one beautiful, sweaty night.
How Maria R Palacios became a woman.
Cassie has an itch.
Jonathan Zenti is fat.
When penetrative sex is painful or impossible.
A re-release of ‘Samara + Kelsey’ with a life / wife update.
This story is part of Radiotopia’s network-wide theme, Doing Time. In the early 2000’s, Kathleen reads through the personal ads of a magazine; on a whim, she writes to a man. Thus begins a relationship with the greatest love of her life.
A processing party. [Trigger Warning]
Kaitlin questions the men in her life she trusts the most. [Trigger Warning]
Episode two of No: We catch up to Kaitlin while she is in her mid-twenties, waiting to fall in love. [Trigger Warning]
Episode One of No: the story of Kaitlin's non-psychedelic trip through girlhood. [Trigger Warning]
Our new season, starting May 9th.
Ryan Kailath’s parents met for 15 minutes before they married.
transfemme artist + noise diva
A Meditation
No Fats//No Femmes
Kaitlin talks to friends, exes and her dad about what it’s like to be feminine as a cis-man.
An extended version of the story, Mariya, which took home the Gold at the 2016 Third Coast International Audio Festival for Best Documentary. This is a story about FGM.
Have you ever had a friend you thought you might be in love with? Have you ever slept beside this person in a bed and wondered if their hand was grazing yours on purpose? What’s stopping you?
Rest in peace Helen Breger.
Alex and Joan met at a bar in the East Village in 2012. At the time, they were drastically different people, strangers to even themselves
In the vast ocean of the internet there are thousands of diaries that are locked by forgotten passwords and AOL email addresses; Ashley’s Livejournal is one of them.
On a residential street in a working-class neighborhood of a major American city, there is a house with boarded up windows. The mistresses who work there call it The Big House.
August 31, 2004: Amelia and I hugged and said our goodbyes and now it’s just me.
A widow learns to grieve by dating her worst match.
A conversation between mother, Sophie Townsend and daughter, Anna about Mr. Fix-it, husband and father.
Episode four of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.
Episode three of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.
Episode two of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.
Episode one of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.
When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small, but significant part of me.
“I will listen to the song when I’m 80, a grandmother to children born of someone other than you.”
“It was April, unseasonably cold, cruelly wet. You were in a restaurant pumped hot with studio lights.”
“Her past loves are with her always, in the form of small objects that she keeps. Her boyfriend has his own objects.”
“Sometimes you can be in one place and everything seems right. And then the wind changes, even just a little bit, and everything seems different, or everything seems normal and that's terrifying.”
“Leaning over my shoulder, you cast a shadow on everything. Things are dark and blurry — and I am drowning.“
I didn’t really know her. I didn’t know why I called her. She came over and watched me watch ‘Sister Wives’ until we fell asleep.
“Oh, I do miss my husband,” she wailed. “Where is he? Why do all sweethearts cuddle tonight except me?”
This is the kinda-sorta-true love story of Idiot + Dummy — two boneheads in love.
For girls like us, famous boys aren’t really boys — they’re canvasses on which we may splatter the full spectrum of our feelings. They are a safe way for us to experience longing and love, because they’ll never hurt us. Not if we don’t meet them.
Probably thousands of different vibrators have come and gone over the decades but there is one that has outlasted them all.
After getting an ostomy, being naked was forever changed.
One Saturday night, Kaitlin ventured onto St. Laurent Boulevard in Montreal and asked strangers if they had ever had their P-spots touched.
After a night of performing intimate acts in exchange for cash, Gloria heads home. Once in bed with her own lover, she wonders if she can really keep personal life and work life separate.
There was a time when nothing had names and we were just kids.
It’s a hot, summer day and we are taking the train to Riis Park with Joan Nestle.
At 24, Gina Gold headed West in search of fame, freedom and her first good lay.
Going out west offered queers and transfolk a context outside of mainstream society. And there were a lot of people who were looking for that new context.
Stefonknee Wolscht has been on a life long journey for love and acceptance. At age 52, she has found a family - one who gives her freedom from all of life's rules and norms. She is finally a princess.
Being a sexual being is more than getting from point A (getting horny) to point B (having an orgasm). It’s a complicated, nuanced balance of desire and apprehension, and nobody knows that better than Dr. Emily Nagoski.
A Series: One Day’s Love. Is a one day’s love ever really dead?
A Series: One Day’s Love. The mayfly sneaks in through an open window, lives her little mayfly life to the fullest, perhaps even finding her true mayfly love. Then, before she knows it, death has overtaken her. She lies limply in the windowsill.
And I cannot deny, strange though it may sound, that I enjoyed myself in this disguise.
Pumping is getting injected with black market silicone. All the girls were doing it and they looked good. Rajee Rajindra went to get pumped. It changed her life forever.
Short and Sweet. The story of Whitney Jones’ first love.
The first time is a threshold. On one side is the world as you know it, and on the other side is the unknown.
A radio show is born. Again. We all go through phases and have an identity crisis or three. Audio Smut started as an hour long broadcast radio show at CKUT in Montreal, and has transformed into a delicately crafted podcast now part of PRX’s Radiotopia...
An Interlude. This is an interview about necking (or lack thereof). A kiss over time: at the beginning, in the middle, at the end. If you don’t like how somebody kisses, can you grow into it? Samara’s Grandma tells us her story.
Episode Twelve. Kaitlin and Kyle. They met at a kissing booth. On their first date they went on a recording adventure (for one of the early Audio Smut documentaries about the Drag Queens). They became obsessed with each other.
Episode Eleven. Audio Smut presents: a radio play. This episode was a documentary experiment, produced in collaboration with composer Shani Aviram. We set out asking questions about how perception is altered in early romantic relationships.
A Quickie. Behold the almighty power of the V. Vaginas can hold the largest and smallest of objects with barely the slightest uncomfort. So it just makes sense to stash your weed in there. Star reporter, Ruth Eddy tells us how she came to use her natur...
Episode Ten. This episode is about growing up, becoming an adult, entering a stage of independence: shaving cream, tampons, driving, voting, doing your own dishes, doing your own taxes and sex. This episode will take you on a path of rituals,
Episode Nine. The written word: a way to fuel a romance, a way to capture someone’s attention, a way to break up. We read people’s most private letters, and tell the story of the relationships that were made and broken by them.
A Quickie. In 1909, James Joyce wrote his wife, Nora Barnacle, a series of very sexy letters. While her side of the correspondence has been lost, we still have Joyce’s letters–and they’re really good. In this quickie,
(Welcome to Season Two) FU*K LOVE. Family. Responsibility. Survival. Economic Stability. These were once much more important to things to build your life on. This episode looks at the ideal of true love,
A Quickie: Do you believe in true love? Does it really exist, or is it just a mythology made up by Hollywood? How would you define true love? Jonathan Goldstein shares his thoughts on this Valentine’s Day special.
Episode Seven. Psychologist and sexologist, John Money came up with the theory of a lovemap. A lovemap is a template. It’s a template that we are constantly measuring our sexual and romantic experiences against. It’s the map of what we like,
A Quickie: This quickie is a history- a love map, if you will- of how Kaitlin manages to be such a productive person. Also, this is the reason why Kaitlin insists on holding our meetings in coffee shops. Here, the lines between public and private,
Episode Six Homelessness isn’t really something that can be easily defined. Sometimes people make choices, other times people have no choices. In this episode, we have three situations from three very different people about how they managed to get by.
A Quickie: Keith’s virginity story. Keith is and always has been an extremely charming man. I know it was the 90s, but there is nothing charming about a yellow jumpsuit. Poor clothing choices aside, Keith still proves to be a chick magnet.
Episode Five. It’s your highschool sex ed class. Mrs. Green is going to play a movie. You are very excited. The room goes dark, the movie begins. You’re already a little bit aroused; you’ve seen pornography before but never in public with all your frie...
A Quickie: What will people think? This story happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of Audio Smut Producer, Erin. When surfing the Casual Encounters on Craigslist one must be prepared to be surprisingly turned on.
Episode Four. The good times and the bad times of making babies. Babies being born is a topic we accidentally avoid on audio smut. But the fact is, we have bodies that make us babies and sex is involved, albeit in many different ways. In this episode,
A Quickie: The time that god punished you for having a threesome with my sister. Devon is one of Kaitlin’s oldest friends from high school. They now live in different cities and see each other yearly if they’re lucky.
Episode Two. Seriously, what’s the big deal. In this episode, we tackle one of the biggest taboos. We eat food, everyday and eventually that food has to come out. Yeah it’s gross and stinky but it is one of the most natural things that our body does.
A Quickie: We bring to you a surprising letter from Mozart.
Episode One. Experience more than sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Venture with us beyond the 5-way sense scape.
SISTERS: Chapter One-isode
February 14, 202344min 3sec
Kaitlin was Daddy’s little girl. And then: Natalie was born. The older and the younger sister: competing for attention, being bossed around, borrowing clothes, getting in petty fights and loving each other anyway. As little girls Kaitlin and Natalie fought because they were too similar. As teenagers Kaitlin and Natalie fought because they were total opposites. What does their adult future hold? Will they be friends or a family obligation?
TW: Light reference to abusive parental behaviour. No mentions of physical violence.
For resources on parental child abuse go to theheartradio.org/sisters