Heart Reacts – Details, episodes & analysis
Podcast details
Technical and general information from the podcast's RSS feed.

Heart Reacts
Craig Gent and Sarah Jaffe
Frequency: 1 episode/19d. Total Eps: 35

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the feels.”
We are HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for everyone trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism. We’re here to answer all of the questions about love, friendship, family, and even work that you might want to ask two people who have spent adulthood trying to apply their radical political analysis, more or less successfully, to their personal lives.
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Recent rankings
Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.
Apple Podcasts
🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
25/01/2026#95🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
24/01/2026#70🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
23/01/2026#60🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
22/01/2026#47🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
25/08/2025#66🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
20/08/2025#62🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
19/08/2025#56🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
18/08/2025#52🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
11/07/2025#89🇬🇧 Great Britain - relationships
25/01/2025#98
Spotify
No recent rankings available
Shared links between episodes and podcasts
Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.
See allRSS feed quality and score
Technical evaluation of the podcast's RSS feed quality and structure.
See allScore global : 84%
Publication history
Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.
Episode 10: Hope Is Not a Strategy
Season 1 · Episode 10
mercredi 30 octobre 2024 • Duration 01:08:57
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
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 9: Is Non-Monogamy Bourgeois?
Season 1 · Episode 9
jeudi 17 octobre 2024 • Duration 01:01:14
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 8: Advice is a Way we Love Each Other, with Brandy Jensen
Season 1 · Episode 8
jeudi 3 octobre 2024 • Duration 59:42
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
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 7: Obligations of Care
Season 1 · Episode 7
jeudi 22 août 2024 • Duration 58:28
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 6: To What End?
Season 1 · Episode 6
jeudi 8 août 2024 • Duration 50:01
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 5: Bandwidth is a Bad Metaphor
Season 1 · Episode 5
jeudi 25 juillet 2024 • Duration 48:46
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 4: What Makes a Good Man?
Season 1 · Episode 4
mercredi 10 juillet 2024 • Duration 58:37
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 3: Lies Heterosexuality Tells Us
Season 1 · Episode 3
jeudi 27 juin 2024 • Duration 53:53
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 2: The Metrics of a Good Life
Season 1 · Episode 2
mercredi 12 juin 2024 • Duration 55:25
Hello and welcome to HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism.
Thanks to everyone who checked out our pilot! We’re hoping to be out every two weeks from now on, and if you want to help us to do that, supporting us on Patreon is the way to go!
On this week’s episode we talk about the travails of platonic soul mates through major life changes, and we offer some advice to someone who’s been devastated by their partner’s self-discovery.
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Pilot: A Wager on Shared Experience
vendredi 19 avril 2024 • Duration 01:10:51
Hello and welcome to the pilot episode of HEART REACTS, an advice podcast for all of us trying to remain emotionally functional through the collapse of late capitalism. We’re here to answer all of the questions about love, friendship, family, and even work that you might want to ask two people who have spent adulthood trying to apply their radical political analysis, more or less successfully, to their personal lives, with pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the feels.
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.









