004: The Heart: Podcast Reccs from Sara A.

You may have a tv show that you’ve seen a million times (I’m looking at you, “The Office”), but that you keep re-watching it because it’s familiar, comfortable, or makes you feel some sort of way. I have two podcasts like that. Both are queer, and, sadly, both are no longer making new episodes. BUT! That doesn’t mean you, like me, can’t go back and listen to them if you used to, and if they’re new to you, I’m so excited that you get to experience them for the first time. 

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The first of my gone-too-soon-miss-you-lots podcasts is “The Heart”. “The Heart” describes itself as an “art project about intimacy and humanity.” This sounds lofty and artsy and vague and may cause an eye roll, but really, that’s an apt description of a podcast that covers incredibly varied but always personal, initiate, and human stories. 

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“The Heart” was one of the first podcasts I started listening to regularly (after The Moth). It was the first queer podcast I listened to. It was the first podcast where each season had a theme, but each episode was different that I had ever listened to; it still may be one of the only ones I’ve listened to in that format. It covered a lot of firsts for me, so maybe that’s why I have such a soft spot for it, but I think it goes beyond that. I can still remember the story of the gay man who has cerebral palsy who uses voice modification to chat to men he meets online because he doesn’t want them to know he’s disabled. His episode was his, and hearing about his experiences from him directly was incredibly impactful to me; I listened to that episode years and years ago, but I can still recall details from it as if I had listened to it yesterday. 

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In one season, called “no”, host Kaitlyn Prest, looks at her sexual boundaries from when she was a teen into adulthood. It’s a personal look at what the word no means, has meant, to someone as they navigate their sexuality and sexual experiences. Another, called “pansy”, looks at where masculinity and femininity meet. These stories were queer and raw and not made for a straight audience, which I appreciated immensely. 

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Most folks involved with the show have gone off and are doing other things or working on other podcasts, which they share on the page, so if you listened to “The Heart,” visiting the site is like seeing an old friend who you haven’t seen in forever but can see is doing well. 

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