• Episode 10: Hope Is Not a Strategy
    Oct 30 2024

    Welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    This week, we answer a question about despair, and solidarity with the people of Palestine, and consider the limitations of hope. Then we switch gears and muse on the issue of parenting while polyamorous, and whether people on the left should have more kids.


    Stuff We Talk About:

    Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment

    Gaza: Poetry after Auschwitz, Hamid Dabashi

    Rodrigo Nunes, Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal

    Stuart Hall Doing Childcare

    Sarah, Family Planning


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    Buy Craig's Book: Cyberboss

    Buy Sarah's Book: From the Ashes


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.


    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Episode 9: Is Non-Monogamy Bourgeois?
    Oct 17 2024

    Welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    This week, we take on a question on "polyamory? in this economy?" We muse about hierarchies within and around relationship styles, love when the rent is too damn high, and what it means to think politically around sex and gender and the economy. And then we look at a question that Sarah's been getting asked a lot on book tour: how do you grieve when the thing you're grieving isn't over, or never ends?


    Stuff We Mention:


    Ordinary Unhappiness Podcast, featuring Sabrina Strings on The End of Love

    Natasha Lennard, The Uses and Abuses of Politics for Sex

    Chal Ravens, Monogamy is Cool, Actually

    Sarah, Beyond the Nuclear Family

    Cara Daggett, Petro-Masculinity and the Politics of Climate Refusal


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Episode 8: Advice is a Way we Love Each Other, with Brandy Jensen
    Oct 3 2024

    Welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    We are back and we have a special guest with us! This week, in lieu of giving YOU advice, we asked one of our favorite advice-givers, Brandy Jensen, writer, editor, and "Ask a Fuck-Up" columnist, to talk to us about the whole business of advising strangers. We discuss being a romantic in 2024, how to tell when you're in love, the current media fascination with polyamory, and some of Emma Goldman's best takes.


    Stuff we mention in this episode:

    Brandy Jensen on Twitter and her Substack advice column.

    Brandy at the Yale Review: The Polycrisis

    Emma Goldman, Jealousy: Causes and a Possible Cure

    Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love

    Toni Morrison, Jazz

    Before Sunset


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    1 hr
  • Episode 7: Obligations of Care
    Aug 22 2024

    Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    This week, we're talking about what we owe each other as friends, as partners, as family, and as therapists. (We're still not therapists.) Our first question asks how to maintain close friendships when you're becoming a parent, and the second wonders if someone is using therapy to justify bad behavior.


    Stuff we mention in this episode: Power of Self Care parody instagram


    Eva Kittay, Love's Labor


    Hannah Proctor, Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat


    David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years


    Jonah Hill and Sarah Brady's Relationship Sparks Conversation About How to Set Boundaries


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    58 mins
  • Episode 6: To What End?
    Aug 8 2024

    Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    On this episode, we dive into the world of work, and talk about when and how to unionize your workplace to manage your bad boss. And then we dig into the thorniest of questions (particularly in an election year): when and how to have conversations with relatives, friends, acquaintances, neighbors who hold political views you just can't countenance. When is it worth it, and when is it time to walk away? We have thoughts.


    Referenced in this episode: British Trades Union Congress Find a Union page.

    AFL-CIO Form a Union page.


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.






    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    50 mins
  • Episode 5: Bandwidth is a Bad Metaphor
    Jul 25 2024

    Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    This week, we tackle two questions about difficult conversations and decide that talking about "having the bandwidth" for friends, lovers, difficulties, and all the rest of the struggles of life is a lousy metaphor. We suggest some other ways to imagine ourselves in community.



    Mentioned in this episode:


    Lily Scherlis, Boundary Issues. Note that this article is mentioned in the episode as being published in the Guardian, but that was actually a reprint and it was originally from our friends at Parapraxis Magazine.


    Hannah Proctor, Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. And if you're getting this on the day it goes out, you can attend a live virtual event with Sarah discussing the book with Hannah.


    Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures


    David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years.



    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.


    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!

    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    49 mins
  • Episode 4: What Makes a Good Man?
    Jul 10 2024

    Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    This week, we answer a question about election fatigue, trauma, triggers, and movement work: how much is too much? And why is election-related journalism so godawful, anyway?

    And then we dive into an advice column perennial: what do you do when your sex drive doesn't match your partner's--but with a sidebar question of what it means, anyway, to be a "good man."


    Referenced in this week's episode: Lester Spence, The Counterpublic Papers, Vol 8 No. 20

    Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men


    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.

    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts, and please do rate us on those podcast apps!


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show more Show less
    59 mins
  • Episode 3: Lies Heterosexuality Tells Us
    Jun 27 2024

    Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.


    We're back and (mostly) on a regular schedule now! Thanks again for all of your kind words, sharing, reviews, support, and most of all your questions!


    This week, we're addressing a question about shame, kink, and finding love, and then diving into the thorny issues that arise when money is an issue in relationships: how do we deal with financial inequality? And how do we avoid letting the fact that the rent is too damn high push us onto the relationship escalator?



    We are Craig Gent, a writer and researcher living in Leeds, and ⁠Sarah Jaffe⁠, a journalist and author based in New Orleans.

    You can send us your questions at ⁠www.askmeanything.cc/heartreacts⁠.


    This episode was produced by, well, us! We apologize for any inconsistencies in audio quality. If you liked it and want to help keep us going, and help us improve our recording process, you can support us at ⁠patreon.com/HeartReacts⁠.


    Our music comes from “Casual Outrage” by New Orleans-based Basher, featured on their new album May Day, coming May 31, 2024 to Sinking City Records. For more about the band, visit⁠ byronasher.com/basher⁠.

    Get bonus content on Patreon

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show more Show less
    54 mins