The Heart

Welcome to The Heart. We’ve been in operation for 14 years! What’s next? An overview for those new to the feed. And a window into what double double toil and radio we’ve been cooking up for 2022.

Support The Heart and …

Surprise, it’s a holiday special! Join us for a little queer holiday cheer as journalist America Stevens tracks down Santa’s older, gayer, drunker, …

“You don’t know what it means to be Black because you don’t know what it means to be one thing. Who is when you know you are a brother and a son, a lover and a friend. Sometimes you say you’re Ivorian. And other times …

A dreamlike exploration of depression in the underground.  Inspired in part by a bruised and beautiful looking cloud at sunset, we follow Axel …

Axel Kacoutié brings you into his mind and his heart through rich sonic universe building. In this audio journey, he conjures sensations: warmth, light, and the feeling of waking up after having a disturbing dream. This …

In Toronto’s downtown eastside, Moss Park’s encampment is home to a lot of people with deep ties to the neighbourhood. The site of the city’s first overdose prevention facility—a hard-won resource that started in an …

This story by Mitra Kaboli tells of a little bit of love found in an unlikely place: a natural disaster. As we cozy down and prepare to say goodbye …

From audio artist James T Green ft. C’ne Rohlsen. “With this piece, I was trying to get down to the bottom of why I felt anxious in a world where it …

start searching for transformative pleasure. In conversations with trans viewers and makers of porn, Mara investigates porn as a healing portal for trans people seeking embodiment. This episode was written, sound …

Ari's fumbles with homemade dildos as a teen dyke riot grrrl leave a lasting impression that doesn’t evolve until years later, with an experience of …

Tarot cards, The Musician vs The Scientist and a crossroads at 39.

Alone: A Love Story is an award-winning memoir podcast by Michelle Parise. Listen …

In the years after coming out, Vinh-Paul Ha searches for good sex, real love, and an elusive feeling of belonging as a queer Asian man on a series of …

Kamala wants to fill the empty spaces of her loneliness.

This episode was written by Kamala Puligandla, produced by Phoebe Unter, edited by Nicole …

Melanie, her family (the voices in her head), and her ill-fated lover discuss potentially having a baby, and her first pregnancy 9 years ago.

Appearances is an audio mindtrip by Sharon Mashihi and Mermaid Palace. …

Welcome to… Appearances, an audio mind trip into the fantasies and nightmares of Melanie Barzadeh and her quest for family connection, love and inner strength. It’s a new series written and directed by Sharon Mashihi.

…

An episode from Spark, a show about daring attempts to create masterpieces and the mysterious process of transforming trauma into art.

Chiquita Paschal returns to the beginning — and end — of her dream to become an …

At an erotic play party called Neon Touch, two friends — Meesh & Mercury — feel sparks.  

This episode was produced by Nicole Kelly and hosted …

A trailer for our Fall season.

Beginning August 12 and airing every other Wednesday for the rest of the year.

Featuring the work of Sharon Mashihi, …

When I have sex, I think of radio...

Part 3 of a 3-part summer series.

⚠️ You won’t find these sweaty Audio Smut stories anywhere else on the internet or airwaves ⚠️

Part one was written & produced by Meg Frances …

Gina Gold goes west in search of fame, freedom, and her first good lay. 

Part 2 of a 3-part summer series.

This episode was produced by Ana …

What would you sound like if no one ever told you that’s all a woman could be?

Part 1 of a 3-part summer series.

“The reallotment of material …

Phoebe has an idea of a white race traitor: someone who makes personal sacrifices for the betterment of humanity. Someone whose actions halt the patterns of white supremacy. She goes looking for one and meets Stephanie …

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 …

In a community with a strict “no new white friends” policy, Phoebe asks: how does my being white affect our relationship?

Part 2 of a 4 part series. …

Phoebe is surprised to learn that even she, an angry Jewish dyke, still participates in upholding white supremacy culture.

Part 1 of a 4 part …

So what’s the point of a crush?

This episode was produced by Nicole Kelly, with anise cinquepalmi. anise is a poet teaching in Los Angeles. Find …

What can a body do?

This episode was produced by Mara Lazer & hosted by Kaitlin Prest.

In the final episode of the Divesting From People Pleasing season, NK talks with her friends & Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis about some of the things that surround her personal narrative.

This episode was produced by …

Meet Goldie.

The cycle begins, in episode 1 of Asking For It, a new fictional series from Mermaid Palace.

When trauma is held in the individual and collective body, shame, grief, and rage are passed down for generations.

Part 3 of a 3 part series.

…

The body has information.

Part 2 of a 3 part series.

Divesting From People Pleasing is a mini series produced by Nicole Kelly, edited by Chiquita …

As NK gets older, she gets smaller, she gets more and more quiet. But the self loathing voice in her head just gets louder.

Part 1 of a 3 part …

How NK & Phoebe fell in art love.

After a long break, The Heart is starting up again.  Since we left, the world has changed. And we’ve changed too. 

At the core of the new Heart are …

Named after the very bedroom within which many of the episodes of The Heart were made.

In this ep you heard the singing of Sharon Mashihi and …

Our friends Cristal Duhaime and Mira Burt-Wintonick launched Season 3 of their amazing show LOVE ME. The story we are featuring from them is about a man who learned all about love while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

…

It’s here. Finally. All 6 episodes of The Shadows, presented by Kaitlin Prest and CBC Podcasts.

Subscribe to The Shadows.

Follow on Insta / …

~* Things are happening. *~

The Shadows, presented by Kaitlin Prest and CBC Podcasts, launches in late September.

Here’s a sneak peek.

Subscribe to The Shadows –> here.

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 …

In 2018, The Heart will be taking a break.

~* The Secret Link *~

Sharon is a weirdo and refuses to conform to cultural standards. Her mom does not approve. They confront their longstanding differences on a Persian …

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 …

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 …

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 …

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 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.

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.

Our new season, starting May 9th. Kaitlin explores her sexual boundaries from youth to adulthood.

Arranged marriages, although they sound scary to our Western ears, are considered extremely successful. Divorce rates are much lower. But those are …

Local Honey is a transfemme performance artist and musician living in New Orleans. Let her modulated voice and soft giggles croon you into her …

Some say there are as many genders as there are people.  And even more ways to creatively think about and claim them. In this story, Allen’s gender is complicated by a discovery he makes through meditation.

Ep 3 of …

Blake’s crushing. Hard. On his new best friend and favorite person: Korry. They spend every day together. They sleep in the same bed together. They plan their futures together. But there are signs that show that Korry …

Todd once loved a woman. And she loved him back, but there was one thing that she just couldn’t get over, he twirls. This piece explores what it …

“The first time I tasted her was the first time I felt like I could know her.” Rhonda spends their entire day relishing and re-living the sensation …

Featuring never-before-heard scenes and a post-award interview with Mariya Karimjee, this is an extended version of the award winning documentary, “…

Have you ever had a friend you thought you might be in love with? Have you ever slept in a bed beside this person, and wondered if your hand was grazing yours on purpose?

Sharon receives emails from Harry, a …

This episode is a rerun of Mouthwash, in honor of the late Helen Breger and all of our grandparents’ salacious histories.

Produced by Samara Breger with The Heart.

In a suitcase full of books and papers there is a little notebook with a bear sitting alone in a hot air balloon. This journal is one of the only …

In this episode we refer to Radiotopia’s own in-house diary experts, Mortified. The Mortified Podcast is a storytelling series where adults share the …

Ashley’s Livejournal features the angsty outpourings of a teenager from the early 2000s living in Southwest Florida. Just like many who came of age at the time, she flushed feelings out into the anonymous online public. …

At the back of a closet, in a cardboard box, writer Tina Horn’s diaries gather dust. In the box there are girlhood diaries covered in collages of …

Writer Molly Osberg has carried her journals to every house she’s lived in since 2007. They’re decorated with pictures of her and her friends’ faces …

Sophie Townsend has been a widow for a year and a half. She is too busy taking care of her children to entertain the idea of dating, until a man compliments her shoes.

Voicing by Andy Leonard. Produced by CBC’s Love Me …

A conversation between mother, Sophie Townsend and daughter, Anna about Mr. Fix-it, husband and father.

Produced by Sophie Townsend and Marty Peralta for The Hearsay International Audio Festival.

Episode four of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.

In the final episode of the Silent Evidence mini-season, Kaitlin and Tennessee sit down and talk about what happened and didn’t happen in …

Episode three of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.

In episode three, a court case unfolds. Tennessee decides to call the …

Episode two of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.

In Episode two, Tennessee tries to reconcile with the abuse that she suffered. From performance art to installations to hair-brained schemes, …

Episode one of Silent Evidence; one woman’s story of childhood sexual abuse.

Tennessee Watson is a documentarian and artist who has been struggling to speak out about something that happened to her when she was a kid, …

Based on the 2015 essay from The Big Roundtable, writer Mariya Karimjee takes us on a journey from her childhood in Pakistan, to her adolescence in …

We end our series with a final ghost; it’s you. Every time I hear that song, you’re next to me. Whether I like it or not. In a cafe, in my bedroom, when I watch that stupid vampire series. The ache pains me but what’s …

Kari is nothing like the actresses in the scenes that she films. She’s tall, robust, the kind of girl who can pick up a camera and take it where it …

Does love ever really die? Even though Kaitlin has a beautiful boyfriend she still hears the ghost of those she once loved ring in her ears. But, …

Powerful memories are like paused tapes in our minds – a hum barely heard beneath the noise of our everyday – ready to be played at any moment. This …

A personal account of the haunting absence of a lost love. This is a story about grief, loss and reaching for freedom. The sense of emptiness that comes after saying, I love you, every day until, suddenly, you don’t. …

Devon is one of Kaitlin’s oldest friends from high school. The two live in different cities now and occasionally see each other over the holidays. On …

At the beginning of a relationship, the small decisions feel like big decisions: When to text? What to wear on the second date? How naked to get. For Samara and Kelsey, the first decisions were a bit bigger. When …

You’ve got a squeeze on Christmas Eve? You know you’ll have their lovin’ — but what about ol’ Mrs. Claus? Her man’s out — she’s got nuffin! In our …

Idiot + Dummy met where many boneheads meet: in grad school. One night, they ran into each other on the subway. The two are alike in a lot of ways. …

Desiray felt a deep, human connection the moment she first heard his voice: Aaron Carter spoke to her through his music. When Desiray was down, Aaron always cheered her up. When she needed him, his music was always …

Poo might be the most embarrassing, shameful bodily function. So of course, there are lots of people who bring it into the sexual domain, because …

Vibrators have been the friend of the female orgasm for over a century now. Back in the 1800s you could only get access to one via a doctor’s …

The Heart is hosting a celebration of love, commitment and business, also known as…a WEDDING! Kaitlin and Mitra are getting married (well, sort of). …

Being naked can be scary. There you are, your whole self. No decorations, no cool skirt or shoes or shorts to look at instead of…you. This story is …

Once upon a time, Kaitlin went to a radical sex education workshop. At the workshop, the facilitators spent 45 minutes going into extreme detail of the complexities of the female system of sexual arousal. Then they …

Once upon a time, we did an episode about what happens when there is too much going on sexually. The Ethical Slut says that love isn’t finite. Loving more than one person means having more love instead of less. This can …

Most people remember the first time they got off, most of us conveniently forget the era before that when we have no idea what masturbation was. When all we knew is what felt good. We develop strategies that seemed very …

In the summer of 1960 Joan Nestle was 20 years old and in love. At the time she lived in a Lower East Side tenement apartment and the city was hot, …

At 5 years old, Gina was parading around the stage with a number pinned to her chest. But as the host of The Little Miss America Competition sang the …

Badger Clark is remembered for shaping the poetry of the Old West with striking impressions of the cowboy life. But his poem “The Lost Pardner” about the intimate love of two cowboys has a special kind of beauty. It …

Just after the new year, Kaitlin and Mitra take a business trip to small town Ontario to meet Steffy. At six foot two inches, Stefonknee is the …

Our friend Dr. Emily Nagoski debunks tired, widely held ideas about sex and replaces them with perfectly clear, scientifically sound explanations. One of those new ideas totally blew our minds, so we’re bringing you our …

The final story of our series is about two people who took a one day’s love and tried to make it last for ever.

Sarah and Kim were braver than most of us. Instead of leaving the one day’s love to linger in their …

A one day’s love has a life cycle. It’s born, it lives a very brief life, and then it dies. That’s it. It’s usually cut short by circumstance, often by time or distance. Sometimes there’s only enough magic for the one …

Eintagsliebe, a sort of real German word meaning one day’s love. Or, a fling. This can be analogous to the mayfly, eintagsfliege. The mayfly sneaks …

It was sometime in the early years of their marriage when Gerda Weganer asked her husband, Einar, to dress in women’s clothes and sit for a painting. The intended subject was running late, and suggested to Gerda that …

It’s fun to try to be beautiful when people are giving you positive attention for it. It hurts if you’re not meeting that standard and people treat …

Short and Sweet:

Mid month we bring you something short. Whitney Jones (producer at PITCH) tells us about his first love, and 27 other firsts in …

When we do something for the first time, we enter into a world with new rules. It’s the creation of a new path, a new possibility. We meet this …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Episode Eleven.

Audio Smut presents: a radio play. This episode was a documentary experiment, produced in collaboration with composer Shani Aviram. …

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 …

Episode Ten.

This episode is about growing up, becoming an adult, entering a stage of independence: shaving cream, tampons, driving, voting, doing …

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 …

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, how it came to …

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? …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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.

Audio Smut Experiments: ventures beyond radio into the realm of sound installation, performance and audio art work.

The Penn Hills Hotel and Resort was abandoned by it’s owner in the late 2000′s after failing to pay …

Audio Smut Experiments: ventures beyond radio into the realm of sound installation, performance and audio art work.

Audio Smut in collaboration with …

Audio Smut Experiments: ventures beyond radio into the realm of sound installation, performance and audio art work.

People sitting in a dark movie theater in Brooklyn sat and listened to a series of sound art pieces. …