Kaitlin & Natalie Prest

Photo credit: Tharanga Ramanayake

Kaitlin Prest's work in podcasting, performance and installation has been featured at audio festivals and conferences around the world. She is the founder and host of Radiotopia’s The Heart, where she explores intimacy through innovative approaches to sound and storytelling. Her latest series, Sisters, is made with her sister Natalie, a singer and artist who is a producer for The Heart. Follow Kaitlin on Instagram here, Natalie on Instagram here, and The Heart on Twitter and Instagram.

From what I know about you, you were broke and that's why you got into audio. Is that when you fell in love with audio or do you think audio found you? What is your relationship with it and why do you love it?

Kaitlin: It's true that I was broke and that I wanted to do theater or studio arts. I applied to do studio arts and I couldn't afford paint or canvas. I was just like, who has the money to buy this thing? What the hell is this? And radio just took hold of me. It just completely took over my heart, you know? It took over my whole life. Now it's been 14 years and I look back on that time and I realize that radio is the great love of my life. I chose radio over everything else.

Now when you think of an art project or something creative or beautiful, you want to make it audio. How long has it been the first place you go to? 

Kaitlin: Whenever you see people who are in love and they've been in love since they met and they’re still together, and they're like 90 and you're like, man. What the hell is that? Some people just get lucky like that. I feel like I got lucky like that with radio. I have a vocation. It even got to the point where it was unhealthy, I'll say. It always came first. Radio is the love that will never leave me. I can hang out with it any time. And I did. I used to be a total party queen, a social extrovert person. And little by little I would see creative people spending the weekend working on their art. And then I became that person. I think of the creative constraint of audio in a romantic way. Anytime I've ever dipped my toe into the idea of putting something image-first out, I feel like I'm cheating on radio. To me, sound is the language of the soul.

Every time I go through an adaptation process, I'm always trying to push for sound to come first. I'm just like, there has to be a voiceover. And we have to figure out a way for sound to work in a way that is surprising. 

I'm committed to trying to help everybody else fall in love with audio in the same way that I have fallen in love with it. And so, even in the early days, I tried to bring narrative recorded sound into performance spaces. I think it started with working so hard on an audio documentary. And back then when it was radio, you had worked for months on that thing, it played on the radio and it was gone forever.. And you're just like, oh my God, what just happened? I really wanted to bring this craft into the places that celebrate creative work. Like theater, film, or the art gallery.

Natalie, what’s your relationship with sound?

Natalie: You can't describe that feeling that you get when you sing together and the sound of the harmonies is just like a buzz. We grew up with music, so we were surrounded by our dad's high school band. It's just been so lovely that the first podcast that I got to work on was my sister’s. Her version of radio is the radio that I'm in love with. It's just so vulnerable and real. From a young age, she’d have the recorder on and we would just be like, oh, the recorder's on. Like, we just got used to being ourselves around a recorder. Kaitlin has so much musical talent. I think the reason she’s so good is because she has both musical talent and an innate sense of space.

Audio pairs so naturally with my love for music. It encourages me to play with my voice in new ways. The vulnerable aspect of podcasting has been a hard part of it. But I knew vulnerability was important. I have a lot of friends who say that sometimes it's difficult to talk about the real stuff with your family or your friends, even to have a crying moment. It can be awkward for people. We want to put all of that out on the radio.

Kaitlin gave me a gift by letting me share my side of the story. That meant being a bit vulnerable. We were just talking about how sometimes in a sister story, one sister is the bully, and Kaitlin allowed herself to be the bully in the series, which is hard. She usually has control of the narrative, but she allowed me to tell my version of her being this bully in my head from when I was a child.

So you've been sort of podcasting since you were little?

Natalie: When Kaitlin was seven, we had these Scholastic book orders with the Animorphs. She had a little tape recorder. She'd press record on it and narrate the Animorphs. And whenever they had sound effects, she took one of those children’s books that have buttons on the side. You know, like the Disney ones? She took the Aladdin book, made the Tiger sound, and recorded it into the little tape recorder. And we have all these little tapes. She made so many of these. She was always recording stories.

You have that audio?

Kaitlin: Yeah, there's no sound design in it.  I remember there was an explosion in one of the stories and I remember standing on top as high as I could get in my room on my desk. And I threw a chair down at the recorder, to make the sound of an explosion.

I played that tape for Brendan Baker from Love and Radio and he was like, wow. Your read was more natural when you were little. You were just rolling off the tongue. It was one of those compliments that's half a compliment, half a diss. I was just like, thanks, babe. 

In Sisters, how much behind-the-scenes work was there before you decided what you remembered? Were you disagreeing about that a lot? I feel like my biggest fights with my family are when we’re talking about how we remember things.

Kaitlin: Uh oh, okay. A little look of recognition. Originally for Sisters, I guess I had this idea early on that we would tell the whole story, five episodes of five different performances. The Jem Con episode was one of the ones that stayed like that. I wanted to set the story of our lives, these performance moments that are magical and fun to sound design. And everybody thought that episode wasn't gonna work, but I really was committed. I really wanted it to feel like a rom-com. And what do you do in a rom-com? You problematize something that is utterly trivial. I was just like, what's the conflict in this? And so we problematized what I thought was trivial but then it became obvious that it was not at all. We kind of unearthed this whole thing about the costume conflict. And things kind of came to the light. There was also a scene that we reenacted: the car fight. The weirdest thing is that we actually ended up finding the real recording of that. We found the clip and it was kind of intense because we had completely different memories of it. I remember her being mean to me and she remembers me being mean to her.

A lot of the things that you created have made me temporarily uncomfortable, and then it releases me. I can see how this whole thing would've just been a big therapy session. I don't have a sister, but I have people that I go there with. How did having each other change your relationship? I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing out on, not having a sister.

Kaitlin: I left home feeling like these people are not my people. I'm gonna create my own family. I will go home for mandatory events so I don't feel like a bad person. Cutting ties with your family wasn't really normalized at that time. I did kind of build my own family: my own sisters, my best female friendships. The thing about sisterhood that I discovered in my twenties when I started to really fall in love with Natalie as a best friend, was that it’s the history. It's that thing when you turn 40 and you realize how meaningful it is to have a history with people. When you see people around you that you still love that you knew when you were 20. Natalie has seen different versions of me. But to have that go back all the way to when you were born is really beautiful. I remember the first time when I really realized the meaning of that. We were just talking on the phone about indecisiveness. And I realized that we had the same illness around decision-making. No one has it exactly the way we have it. Being able to bond over that is really special. 

Natalie: I never had a question about family. I loved Kaitlin so much and I love my mom and my dad so much. We all have our own relationships with each other. And what I got from sisterhood that really came through after doing this series together was how much you could just get through so many difficult things because you have that commitment. I think you could have that with another relationship as long as you felt that commitment to it. But with the blood, it's just so much easier. To know that whatever you're pouring into this relationship will come back in some way. We saw each other through really difficult times. Both of us experienced our deepest, darkest pits during these last two years and we helped each other out of it and were able to see it through. I have a couple of relationships that I ended up not being able to commit to in that way. And it's just so beautiful that we got to see the other side. Having a sister allowed us to go to those deep dark places and then come out on the other side. Even fighting, we knew we’d be okay.

Kaitlin always knew that if we had a fight, we'd be able to get through it. But I never had that faith. When we were younger, she thought I was lame. I was always on tenterhooks, worried that she would discard me. I thought that any fight we had might be the end, but now after these two years, she’s taught me that yeah, I'm gonna blow up and call her a cunt. But I still love her and know we're gonna get through this. It’s forever like that. 

Kaitlin: I guess something that I've been thinking about, and something we've been asking that doesn't get talked about in the series at all, is whether or not it’s okay to be awful to your family. For many years I was like, I don't like the way we talk to each other. I don't like it when we get that way. We learned anger in our family and it's normal for us. But I don't want it to be normal. I want us to treat each other with kindness and patience and calmness and to move through conflict in a really mature and evolved way. I started thinking about how anger just has no place in our lives. Especially as women, we internalize all the things that we're supposed to be angry about. We direct the anger inwards. But there's no safe place to get angry in our lives.  I saw anger as violence and as something I tried to fix. And I'd started to ask myself, is it a beautiful thing to have a relationship that is strong enough to hold anger as well? To have one place in your whole life where you're allowed to get angry and be a cunt?

Honest.

Kaitlin: That's it. But more than honest. Mean. Mean and nasty and gross. And then expressing that anger, whether it's fair or not, and feel safe doing that. Not being afraid.

But there is beauty and goodness in anger. People that don't get angry are boring.

Kaitlin: I know. And repressed.

Okay. The final question is, who does your dad love more? Just kidding. Are you a listener of podcasts?

Kaitlin: That's a good question. No. There are a couple of reasons for that. This is kind of ugly to admit, but in the beginning, I think that I was really motivated by how mediocre the things I would hear on the radio were. I would turn on the radio and I'd be like, this is magic. You turn this thing on and people say things to you. I remember turning on the radio really late at night in my early twenties, and there was this CBC music show and this guy was saying things and it was very beautiful. I was like, he's in a studio somewhere right now, saying these things to me. Ugh. I loved it. But mostly I would turn on the radio and hear BBC World Service or the news. I was just kind of like, this is all you've got? It's a guy talking to his guy friends. It sounds kinda like This American Life. Like, what else do we have, you know? 

I didn’t hear me and my friends on the radio. I didn’t hear my weirdo diverse group of friends anywhere in there. And that motivated me a lot too. You say public radio, but this is not the public. When the podcast boom happened, there was this beautiful moment where there was a lot of really cool stuff happening and I got over my anti-establishment hate towards things that are too mainstream. And I was like, okay, I'm listening to Serial. I’m listening to This American Life. I allowed myself to enjoy it without criticizing myself for liking the thing that everybody else likes. But I always say that the thing that I love the most is listening to the work that my friends make. My favorite thing to listen to was like, Mitra Kaboli’s fifth draft of an episode. Hearing the people in my creative community was the radio I wanted. The last thing I'll say is that it’s known among people in audio that we don't expect each other to listen to anything. You get to a point where you're just like, I've been listening to things all day. I do not want to listen to anything else. You get tired of it. Or if it's really, really good, it makes you feel bad about what you're doing. And if it's really bad, you're like, why do they have money to do this? It makes me stressed out. 

Natalie: Since I started working with Kaitlin, the Heart was the only podcast I ever listened to. 

Your standards were high.

Natalie: Since getting into audio in 2020, we had these monthly meetings with Radiotopia and they were my only community of radio because everything else was a little jarring for me. And I started listening to some of Radiotopia's stuff because they do cross-promos. I was like, oh, well maybe I'll check this out, you know, and these people are in my meetings. I poured a little bit of love into listening to some of their stuff, like Radiotopia Presents Bot Love. I listened to their first episodes.

I love Radiotopia Presents. That's a safe place to go.

Natalie: There’s a part of Sisters that ends up more about mental health. And during those chapters is when we were really struggling with mental health. I found this podcast of a girl just sharing her intimate stories about her diagnosis, which was something that we were going through at the same time. And it was just her with a backing track of piano and raw and it was just so lovely. To feel like you're connected with somebody going through something at the same time. So I like that about podcasts, that you can tap into someone else going through the same thing as you. I also loved Dolly Parton’s America. I was crying listening to it, thinking about how I love the idea of words as painting. That show took me to places like how Kaitlin takes us to places. Everything I listen to goes up against high standards. Not many measure up.So I've dabbled. I have a high standard. I just want the rawness of real tape. 

I always ask audio makers if they should be listening. Most of them should be and they're not. But you, I really do feel like you invented so much of what was being. So it's like, what are you gonna listen to? You're gonna listen to Smartless or some celebrity show? Those are the people that should be listening. They need to learn. I get on the phone with so many people with podcasts and I'm like, have you heard of a podcast before? 

Kaitlin: When I was getting into audio, as annoyed as I was about the kind of stuff that was out there, there was a real dedication to craft in terms of narrative documentary. Like the Kitchen Sisters. I did worship at the altar of a lot of the American greats. In Canada, there was this guy named Chris Brook, who lives all the way in Newfoundland. And I went all the way to his house and looked at his door, and got really into that sound art zone.

I was interested in Glenn Gould and Pierre Schaeffer. I read this book by this guy who said the sound of a train was music. I liked John Cage’s Four Minutes and 33 Seconds. That was my education, learning about musicians and sound, electro acoustics. Every person I ever dated was an electro-acoustic sound nerd. I couldn't fall in love with someone who didn't feel the same way as I did about sounds.

Experimental music was the area that I studied. And public radio greats like Ira Glass. He changed it all. He took the idea of telling the personal story and making it political and brought it to radio using narrative. I've listened to different fiction things that pop up and most of the time I'm disappointed because I can tell that these are people who have not considered sound at all. It's like, why would you make a sound thing?

How should people listen to Sisters? Where should they be? Should they be alone?

Natalie: Listening with your sister and talking it out after sounds freaking adorable. That's what we want people to get from it. We want people to learn from our experiences and try to take whatever gems they can and apply them to their own sisterhoods or relationships or besties. Lie down on a bed, put your headphones on, and enjoy. It’s like a movie. 

Kaitlin: I like that. It's important to me that it creates dialogue. It's not just for pleasure or beauty, which is important to me, but also that it brings up questions in you that you feel the urge to talk about with people and then figure stuff out.  I think that discourse is one of the most important parts of what media does. It sparks conversations that change the way you think about things. I've accepted that people listen while doing other things. But maybe people could go on a walk while listening. A walk would be good.

Thanks, Kaitlin and Natalie!