The Heart

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.”

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.

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 ‘Pansy’: A season about where masculinity and femininity meet. Credits:   Written and produced by Allen J. Watts. Production support from Julia Alsop. Editorial support from Cassie Wagler.

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 might not be feeling the same way about Blake. Blake begins to suspect it has something to do with the fact that Korry’s attracted to straight-acting, masculine-looking, manly men.   And Korry’s not alone. In this episode, we continue our conversation on gender and femininity and look at what happens when we move out of the heterosexual dating world and into the queer one. Kaitlin assumed that gay and queer life is one big femme-loving genderfuck. But flipping through gay hook-up apps, it’s easy to spot a “no fats, no femmes” trend. So what’s the deal? Ep 2 of “Pansy”: A season about where masculinity and femininity meet. Credits:   Produced with Julia Alsop. Editorial support by Cassie Wagler. Special thanks to the folks at the Food 4 Thot Podcast and to Julia Serano.

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 means to be effeminate when you’re a straight cis-dude. Kaitlin talks to men who embrace and resist their femininity. Ep 1 of “Pansy”: A season of stories about letting your feminine flag fly. Produced with help from Julia Alsop and editorial support from Cassie Wagler. Special thanks to Julia Serrano.

Featuring never-before-heard scenes and a post-award interview with Mariya Karimjee, this is an extended version of the award winning documentary, “Mariya.” A story about Mariya’s journey to figure out sex after FGM. Released in May 2016, “Mariya” received the Gold Award (Best Documentary) at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Mariya Karimjee is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. Read her original essay here. Editorial support from Brendan Baker, Allen Watts, Kelsey Padgett, Samara Breger and Nadia Bajwa. Additional support from Kari June. Another version of this story can be heard on This American Life.

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 not-so-secret admirer. It’s her best friend Kaitlin. Sharon is (mostly) straight, but could Kaitlin be the man of her dreams? Years after Kaitlin wrote those emails, the two friends sit down to talk about them and what they meant. They ask each other the questions that have always been beneath the surface of their friendship. This episode was originally produced by Kaitlin Prest and Sharon Mashihi for the Love Letters episode of Audio Smut in 2014.

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 things Alex saved when they got rid of all their possessions and moved to Ohio. The journal is filled with accounts of the life and the love they left behind. This episode was written by Alex DiFrancesco with production help from Julia Alsop. Alex DiFrancesco’s work has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The New Ohio Review, and Brevity. Their first novel, a radical acid western called [The Devils That Have Come to Stay](https://www.amazon.com/Devils-That-Have-Come-Stay-ebook/dp/B00T4VVCE4/ref=redirmobiledesktop?ie=UTF8&noEncodingTag=1&qid=1422649392&redirectFromSS=1&ref=tmmkintitle0&sr=8-1), was published in 2015.