The Heart

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 director's cut of Amadeus. Two films by one director doing studies of artistic madness. A mad genius of radio tells me about the Tibetan Book of the Dead and I reflect on heaven and hell, after returning from a festival in Ireland hosted by another mad genius. 

For all of y...

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 "activism" "organizing" now. We listen to an episode made by Yowei Shaw, the investigative journalist of emotion. Nicole is an organizer who’s afraid to stop being angry. At the same time she is afraid NOT to stop being angry. Yowei connects Nicole with what she calls a "prox...

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 (my bff Bekky) advises not to appear to be chasing the geese. The definition of sloth I printed out ends up being a diversion at the dinner table. "At least you're honest with yourself" says my Aunt Patti. The favorite podcast is not a podcast at all. It is: a VM from Yowei S...

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 it was just a conventional relationship wherein we performed traditional gender roles. We called him "the patriarch". A recording from the day of a breakup. Laurie Anderson inspired stasis. 

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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 coven, a shack full of runner ducks, and a massive malamute dog named Maple. A World Series weekend at the Chantecleer and the Fox Flower farm and Studio, where KP spends most of her time when she is not in Suburban Paradise.

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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 day with the anti-to do list. KP (age 38) gets a refund for a yearly subscription. Royal typewriter on loan from new bestie Bekky. The cement garden table after work. 

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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 designed and rigorously vetted (either by the network execs that hold the purse strings, by the powers of the algorithm, or by the monster of our own digital footprint-fueled perfectionism), these new episodes do more than just show the hand of the maker, they extend open palms, bow...

[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 2017, KP and the team play VMs and read letters from the audience and have a big 'ol processing party with Samara Breger, former Heart producer, sex educator and more recently: queer romance novelist. 

What do I tell my kids? What if my no DOES mean yes? How b...

[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, Kaitlin consults the men in her life that she loves, her friends, her father, her exes to see if they had ever pressured someone into having unwanted intimacy. But she knows she cannot end her search here. She must reach out to the men who have transgressed her to get their s...

[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 has become an expert at advocating for her own pleasure. She has learned how to say no to the sex that she doesn’t want to have with tact and grace. Just as she thinks she has figured out the art of sexual negotiations, another unsettling experience becomes a catalyst f...

[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.  [TW: SA]

When the little girl becomes a teenager and her deepest want comes to pass, it turns out she doesn't want it. She wanted. . . something else. Something more?  Something less? Something sweeter. She doesn't know exactly what she wants, but she learns the ha...

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 it's high time to listen again to the series that brings you inside of a 'no' that sounds like a 'yes', and all the 'yes's that really wanted to be 'no's. 

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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 couple of hours. We didn't edit a single word. 

It’s been 6 months since she left her home in the north of Gaza. Every day she watches the news and prays for her family, her friends, her people. She waits for the world to wake up. She waits to see her pain reflected...

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 genocide has gotten even more terrifying as we mark an entire year of slaughter, terror and complacency. Attacks are now zeroing in on the North of Gaza: the home of Ahmad Tarneem and Hamza. Every day, sometimes every hour they try to call their mother and oldest brother (and his...

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 down with KP on February 23rd 2024 and performs monologue #10: Taima Okasha. She reflects on growing up hiding from bombs, the “Palestinian exception” anti-Palestinian racism in the arts and her fears of what might happen to her own home, Lebanon, if Israel...

“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)  was starting her first week of med school on October 7th. Her brother Ahmad  (21 yrs old) was in his third year of dental school with only two remaining. Hamza, the oldest (24 yrs old), was supposed to graduate this June: He was a volunteer at...

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 dreams for the future of Palestine and performs Gaza Monologue #22 Mahmud Abu Shaa’ban. 

Alaa is a graduate of the Nobel prize nominated Freedom Theatre acting and the co-founder of the Palestine Comedy Club.

EASE ANY GUILT YOU FEEL ABOUT WHERE YOUR TAX DOLLARS GO BY S...

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 story of Ahmad El Ruzzi. Ali's paternal grandfather left Jerusalem in 1948. "What happened in 1948?" our radio friend asks. They both laugh. She apologizes for her ignorance. He begins to explain. 

Discussions of whether the cute-ass canals and oh-my-god-there’s-a-boa...