The Heart

Kaitlin has a dream, and The Heart says goodbye (for now). Listen on headphones. Produced by Kaitlin Prest with help from Phoebe Wang. Thank you to all of the listeners who sent us your voices so KP could meet you on the moon. In this episode, you also heard the voices of Mitra Kaboli, Phoebe Wang, Jen Ng, Sharon Mashihi, Samara Breger, Meg Bell, Jessica Grosman, Pejk Malinovski, Sean Cole, Lulu Miller, Veronica Simmonds, Johnny Spence, Nancy Prest, Natalie Prest, Allen Watts and Brendan Baker. Music by Inne Eysermans, special thanks to Katharina Smets. If you wanna keep up with KP: ~*click here*~ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2018, The Heart will be taking a break. ~* The Secret Link *~ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sharon is a weirdo and refuses to conform to cultural standards. Her mom does not approve. They confront their longstanding differences on a Persian self-help cruise. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Growing up, Phoebe was a Jesus kid. In college, after Tinder-swiping her way to gayness, she comes out to Christians and hopes that they’ll accept her. In this episode, Phoebe goes on a mission to find out how people with fundamentally different beliefs, can be friends. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There is a way that these narratives are supposed to go. But life isn’t simple and linear, it’s messy and loud, and everything keeps coming back again and again and again. This piece by Dylan Gauche won the Best Student award at the 2017 Hearsay International Audio Festival. [Trigger Warning] Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Being a queer or trans person of color is hard anywhere, but can feel especially isolating if you’re living in Seattle, WA. A heavily fractured city that is undergoing massive gentrification. Darqness, an electronic music collective, is working to dismantle that and bring QTPOC together.  Producer Ellie Lightfoot, a Seattle native, spent the last year with this seven person crew to find out why these parties are so necessary. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“A man on the road is solitary,” the writer Vanessa Veselka said. “A woman on the road is just alone.” This is a spotlight episode via Bitchface Podcast, about a hitchhiked trip to Vegas and women with agency doing whatever the F they want. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Maria is a poet and activist living in Houston, Texas who Mitra spent a few days with.  Mitra got to meet some of Maria’s family, hung out with her pets and ate delicious food during her time with Maria. For Maria’s whole life all she has wanted was breasts. Big breasts to be specific. This story follows the poet, Maria from childhood to adolescence to womanhood.  In this piece you heard poetry from book Poetic Confessions Vol 1 and more.  To learn more about Maria’s work you can check out her website. Maria is also the co-founder of The National Women with Disabilities Empowerment Forum. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For years, Cassie has been plagued with an itch in her butt. The itch has travelled with her across the country, from one apartment to the next and transcended all of her major relationships. Cassie talks to past and present partners to see what they think she is up to when she is scratchin’ her bum late at night. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Meatis an international podcast created on the surface of a person’s skin. It is a vision of the world from the point of view of human flesh. In people’s everyday life, there’s a wall between their ideas, dreams and desires and the real world: our body. A cage for the human behaviour made by flesh and bones that affects the way we interact with the rest of the world: the sound of our voice, the line of our movements, the space we take up on a bus because of our weight, the dominant or submissive position we are forced to take when we argue with someone because of our height: our reality is a constant argument between what we have in our head and what the body we are born with is able to do. In the inaugural episode of Meat, Jonathan Zenti candidly and beautifully discusses his body and how he loves it despite the fact that not everybody else does. This episode was created for Radiotopia’s Podquest, by PRX and made possible with funds from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Learn about your ad choi

Abigail wants to have penetrative sex but it’s not working. She is worried it’s her fault or at least her vagina’s fault. In her quest to find out why she cannot have penetrative sex, Abigail finds an essay called Frigid and a community of women who have similar issues. In talking to them she realizes that her partner’s are contributing force to her pain and discomfort during sex. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Samara and Kelsey got hitched. We celebrate their marriage by re-releasing this episode (originally ‘Samara + Kelsey’) with a life / wife update.   This episode was originally produced by Samara Breger with The Heart. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. ‘Private family visits’ is the correct term for conjugal visits. Its purpose is not just for sex, but to help maintain strong relationships between inmates and their families. Studies have shown that private family visits can help reduce recidivism. Original interviews by Dee LaComte. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Episode Four: Many listeners were left with lingering questions and thoughts after the first three episodes.  What do I tell my kids? What if my no DOES mean yes? What role does alcohol play in consent? In this episode, some Heart producers and Samara Breger (our trusted sex educator) unpack some blind spots and larger themes around consent. [Trigger Warning]Part of “No”, a mini-season.Produced with the generous support of the IWMF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Episode Three: Kaitlin’s search for the answer to why coercion is so omnipresent lands her in one obvious place. Straight, cis-gendered men. In this episode, Kaitlin consults the men in her life that she trusts the most to see if they had ever pressured someone into having unwanted intimacy. But she knows she cannot end her search here. [Trigger Warning]Part of “No”, a mini-season.Produced with the generous support of the IWMF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Episode Two: We catch up to Kaitlin while she is in her mid-twenties, waiting to fall in love. [Trigger Warning]Part of “No”, a mini season.Produced with the generous support of the IWMF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Episode One: We meet young Kaitlin as she navigates her first sexual experiences and the confusions of girlhood. [Trigger Warning]Part of “No”, a mini-season.Produced with the generous support of the IWMF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our new season, starting May 9th. Kaitlin explores her sexual boundaries from youth to adulthood. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Arranged marriages, although they sound scary to our Western ears, are considered extremely successful. Divorce rates are much lower. But those are statistics. What about being in love with the person that you married? A Harvard study found that partners in arranged marriages, over time, end up being more in love than couples who marry for love. Our friend Ryan Kailath has known this his whole life, because he grew up with it. His parents met for 15 minutes before they married. *Includes the trailer for our upcoming season, “No.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Local Honey is a transfemme performance artist and musician living in New Orleans. Let her modulated voice and soft giggles croon you into her reality, where feminine sound is a weapon, a force, a celebration. Local Honey explores family, performance, noise, trauma and gender. Ep 4 of ‘Pansy’: A season where masculinity and femininity meet. Credits: Writing and music by Local Honey. Production support from Julia Alsop. Editorial Support from Cassie Wagler. Special thanks to Julia Serano. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices