Shows / The Heart
The 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 challenges what we think we know about love.
Episodes
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Car Privileges, Love, Leaves. It's Autumn.
The leaves change colour and things get real: a window into the actual happenings in the suburban home where father and daughter share a car in October 2026…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Bewilderment and a Bar Called Cassette
Summer is over. Fall begins. Out of a reverence, romance and preparation for Canadian winter: we go back in time to January when KP was trapped in the…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | The Hitchhiking Summer of '09
SUMMER ADVENTURE THROWBACK SPECIAL FROM ANCIENT HISTORY 2009. Circle K Max protection. Three women hitchhike across NewFoundland. Three…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | The Yellow Line, and the Rabbit Hole
Stealing the car to drive to a fancier suburb for yoga and coffee. Micro-dosing mushrooms. Reflections on rules broken and rules followed. Suicidal ideation…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Madness, Hell, and the Eternal Fire
One year ago in June 2025 wearing combat boots in bed I watch Man on the Moon. A mad genius performs as a mad genius. Mozart dies writing death music in the…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Water, Honour, Anger, Grief
The sound of the water in a river in Wissahickon, Philadelphia. An episode in honour of organizers. Greg aka my dad learns that most of the time we call…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Canada Geese, Perfect Circles and Crying Messes
Is done still better than perfect? Is the Canada goose a swan in less glamourous clothing? Are people who need people lucky or unlucky? The Queen of the Ducks…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | The Bike Ride, the Abortion and the Swans
A driveway moment. Time travel back to October 2020; the lover that Aliya Pabani once joked I was doing "straight womanhood" fetish play with; to everyone else…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | All Kinds of Blue
Typewriter ribbons, shutters, jays, french, dusty, periwinkle, the desk of a currently abandoned short film, a door that isn’t really blue. A non-practicing…
The HeartSuburban Paradise | Suburban Where-a-dise?
Parenthood vs Adulthood. Birds singing. Pen on paper. Play first work later. Admin avalanche. The customer is always right on hold. Daddy (age 68) saves the…
The HeartWelcome to Suburban Paradise
A series of episodes quietly created from her parents' garage in the sleepy government city of Ottawa. In an era of well-crafted tightly edited, lushly…
The HeartNO: Questions + More Questions
[Ep 4 of 4 and more to come] We were all left with burning questions after the first three episodes. In the final installment of the original ‘NO’ series from…
The HeartNO: Answers + Updates
[Ep 3 of 4] Answers: Kaitlin’s search asking why coercion is so omnipresent lands her in one obvious place. Straight, cis-gendered men. In this episode…
The HeartNO: Inheritance + Reality Check
[Ep 2 of 4] Why listen to this series now? KP's schpiel. And then: we catch up with our shero in her mid-twenties, waiting to fall in love. Over the years she…
The HeartNO: Advance + Advance
[Ep 1 of 4] Inside a locked diary are the hopes and dreams of a little girl who wants one thing more than everything else: this little girl wants to be wanted…
The HeartNO: Again? Again.
Revisiting NO: after 8 years and several disappointing hook-ups wherein KP found herself wondering if the world forgot the lessons that shook 2017; she decides…
The HeartEPILOGUE | Letter to Gaza
In 2024 Ashtar Theatre started a new project: letters to Gaza. When Tarneem sat down to write a letter to her home, this work of poetry emerged in only a…
The HeartAHMA-NOLOGUE | An Anniversary + A Birthday
This episode was named months ago: a prayer, a wish shared by one Tarneem Jaber and one Kaitlin Prest. "THE GENOCIDE IS A MEMORY, NOT AN ANNIVERSARY". The…
The HeartMONOLOGUE#10 | Whatever You Build + Empty Cans
Artist and business owner Doreen Toutikian, founder of Beirut Design Week (and many other beautiful things that she’s had to leave in her past due to war) sits…
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MONOLOGUE #19 | If the Sea Could Talk
Audio artist and organizer Aliya Pabani takes Gaza Monologue #19 and binaural in-ear microphones (be sure to listen for the 3-dimensional effect: listen in…
The HeartIN THIS MONOLOGUE | A Point in the Sea + Gaza’s Dreams
“Before, you could count how many buildings they destroyed. Now, you count how many buildings they didn’t destroy” — Tarneem Jaber Tarneem Jaber (19 yrs old)…
The HeartMONOLOGUE#22 | A Cup of Tea + The Horse of Jenin
Comedian Alaa Shahada talks about artist life in Jenin, West Bank. We hear a radiomagic excerpt of his one-man show "The Horse of Jenin". He talks about his…
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MONOLOGUE#1 | Electricity Complexes + Keys Around Their Necks
Ali Dajani grew up in Jordan and studied in Canada, where he met KP, the friend that sits down with him in his Amsterdam home to read Gaza Monologue #1: the…
The HeartTRAILER: Great Love | GAZA MONOLOGUES Revisited
"It's kind of corny, but I think about this quote from Che Guevara: "the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of great love." Aliya Pabani, artist…
The HeartPROLOGUE | The Best Valentine's Day I Ever Had
In this update-isode, we follow KP's whereabouts and goings-on since the Processing Palestine episode and the events that led to the genesis of our upcoming…
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Ode to Sound
KP says sweet nothings about the great love of her life: SOUND. A shared moment and meditation: recorded at 4AM in Athens Greece with the window open as the…
The HeartThe Shadows : End
The love story underneath the love story. We finally meet the real-life Charlie Park. Audio artist and friend Brendan Baker: the sound genius who inspired and…
The HeartThe Shadows: An Argument That Should Be Simple
The original unpublished title was “Anatomy of a Resentment”. This episode chronicles the era of a relationship wherein every minor annoyance is a symbol of…
The HeartThe Shadows: Decision
What is love? What is it really? bell hooks writes that love is something that we do. Not something that we feel. Not a story. So what do we do when we’re…
The HeartThe Shadows: Sweater
There are certain kinds of things a sweater spends its life dreaming about. Primarily: achieving the coveted position of: favourite. The story underneath the…
The HeartThe Shadows: Realist
A window into the set-up from which an audio heartthrob emerged: Charlie Park. A neurotic and immensely talented puppeteer conceived of by artist Phoebe Wang…
The HeartProcessing Palestine
As people all over the world grieve and struggle, KP invites you to take a moment to reflect, meditate, pray, manifest and grapple with the question of what…
The HeartThe Shadows: Romantic
The story underneath the story: what happened after we made “Movies In Your Head”. In a clawfoot bathtub moaning in agony, “The Shadows” was conceived. KP’s…
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Don't Make Movies In Your Head
Have you ever fallen a little too hard a little too fast in love with someone you’ve just met? Have you ever caught yourself imagining the beautiful house in…
The HeartDAD: Take the Bull by the Horns
In the final episode of the series Kaitlin isn't sure whether or not she truly wants to get into it with her father. Kaitlin is conflicted. Is having one last…
The HeartDAD: What Goes Around Comes Around
Episode 3: At age 33, Kaitlin is stranded living with her parents in Ottawa, living in their basement just like she did when she was a teenager. It's the first…
The HeartDAD: It Takes Two to Tango
Episode 2: Kaitlin's father, Greg, proudly claims the title of mister mom in 1986. He's always wanted to be a dad. When the apple of his eye enters her tween…
The HeartDAD: Forgive and Forget
Episode 1: Kaitlin and her Dad fought so much when she was a teenager that the family calls those years '“World War III”. She tells the story of what happened…
The HeartSISTERS: Debreif-isode
Kaitlin and Natalie Prest do a post-game analysis after creating the 5 episode series: SISTERS. The two sisters unpack all the things that didn’t get said in…
The HeartSISTERS: But Beautiful
Kaitlin and Natalie try to create boundaries for the first time in their lifelong relationship. They work to navigate their relationship together and…
The HeartSISTERS: What's Wrong-isode
We go back in time to before Kaitlin hired Natalie. She brings us inside of her uncertain world, and her journey to figure out what is wrong. TRIGGER WARNING…
The HeartSISTERS: Work-isode
It’s the pandemic, and KP hires her younger sister to work at her company. As an assistant producer. Natalie is having flashbacks to their youth, when she…
The HeartSISTERS: Jem-isode
Natalie and Kaitlin go into their 20s living separate and faraway lives. Kaitlin comes home from New York for christmas every year, and they hug and talk into…
The HeartSISTERS: Chapter One-isode
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…
The HeartSISTERS: A Preview
She’s the talented one. She’s the hard worker. She’s the pretty one. She’s the one that Dad likes more….SISTERS. A preview into our newest series coming to you…
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Welcome to 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…
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Sandy Claus
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, sister……
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Axel: A Sound Poem
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…
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Axel: How to Remember
“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…
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Axel: Paradise
A dreamlike exploration of depression in the underground. Inspired in part by a bruised and beautiful looking cloud at sunset, we follow Axel Kacoutié on a…
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Hurricane Boyfriend
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…
The HeartAppearances
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…
The HeartRace Traitor: what makes a mom a white mom?
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…
The HeartRace Traitor: can we be friends?
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 3 part series. Produced…
The HeartRace Traitor: who taught you to be white?
Phoebe is surprised to learn that even she, an angry Jewish dyke, still participates in upholding white supremacy culture. Part 1 of a 3 part series. Produced…
The HeartAsking For It
Meet Goldie. The cycle begins, in episode 1 of Asking For It, a new fictional series from Mermaid Palace. Learn about your ad choices…
The HeartDivesting From People Pleasing: Memory
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. Divesting From…
The HeartDivesting From People Pleasing: Power
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 Paschal…
The HeartDivesting From People Pleasing: Threat
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 series…
The HeartLesbian Separatism Is Inevitable
How NK & Phoebe fell in art love. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices