Pride month is almost over, but before it is we wanted to speak to Kane Sarhan, one of the hosts of Messy Situations here to help with your wellness…

Who are you and what’s your podcast about?

My name is Kane Sarhan. I’m an entrepreneur, creative, husband, dog dad and messy human. I’m the cofounder of THE WELL, your one-stop-shop for wellness.

My podcast is Messy Situations, the Top 30 Self-Improvement show on the Apple Podcast charts. The podcast provides a radically new take on “self-help” by boldly embracing the messy sides of life: parenthood, menopause, romance, entrepreneurship and beyond. Produced by Lola Media, Messy Situations empowers people to exercise their shame by bravely revealing those unfiltered parts of their lives.

Each week, my co-host Michele Promaulayko (former Cosmopolitan Editor-in-Chief) and I reveal Messy Situations—big and small—submitted anonymously and through in-person guests, and then call in our Clean-Up Crew of wellness experts, mental-health pros, spiritual guides, energy healers, messy-life survivors and more to start mopping things up. We invite anyone who is willing to confess their own mess—even science says it’s good for the soul.

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?

My first podcast was Serial, kicking off a true obsession with murder and true crime podcasts.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

I have been writing a book (coming soon) about my personal messy situations, and as I told my friends and family about the project, I started to realize I wasn’t the only mess in my life and, in fact, we all have messy situations. I wanted to create a platform for people to share their messes (without shame or judgment) so we could all learn and grow and find common ground.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

So many. I love We Can Do Hard Things and The Happiness Lab.

Who’s your dream guest for the podcast?

I’d love to have Ellen on to discuss what really went down on her show.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a podcaster?

Get the logistics together! Making a great show happen requires planning and prep, not just sitting down and showing up. I have also learned to really just enjoy myself as it makes for the most engaging and honest conversation.

Which episode would you say is the perfect introduction to your podcast?

Episode #5 My Biz Partner and BFF stole my husband

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

All over the place:

@messysitch, @imkane or @thewell on Instagram

@twogaysandahouse on TikTok

Listen to Messy Situations on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps.

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Season 3 explores the day-to-day impact on LGBTQI+ people made by shifts in technology and attitudes from 1992 to 2003. As the internet changed how LGBTQI+ people found each other, this series also explores how more people created queer families, how a nail bomb ripped through the community in 1999, and how changing attitudes and a government focus on human rights led to significant improvements in the lives of many queer people.

But before we open the Log Books for the last time, we asked the team to reflect on their top 5 episodes from the past two years. If you haven’t yet listened, these are a great place to start. And if you’re already a fan, these episodes will be sure to get you returning to the back-catalogue…

Adam Zmith, Shivani Dave, Tash Walker, producers of The Log Books – photo by Imogen Forte

S2 Ep 1 – Please Be Gentle

All: In our second season we covered the years from 1983 to 1991, which included the memories of the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as it has never been told before. Hearing from those who nursed, loved and supported those diagnosed with HIV, as well as the volunteers who spoke to thousands of people who were terrified of this very new virus. We all were incredibly touched and impacted emotionally by what we read and heard, such an important time in our shared LGBTQI+ history that has to be shared.

S1 Ep 3 – Let’s Not Shy Away From Sex

Adam: The pages of the log books at Switchboard are filled with endless questions about what we can do with our bodies as queer people — so this episode was a real pleasure to make! Lots of laughs and plenty of serious business too, thanks to how non-inclusive sex education has been in the past.

S2 Ep 6 – Right On Sister

Shivani: This episode allowed us to look at the nuance of religious and LGBTQI+ life, an area that is too often dismissed and overlooked. This episode has a delicate balance of light and shade in the stories told – with moments that repeatedly made me laugh and break my heart over and over in a trademark The Log Books way.

S2 Ep 11 – Would Like to Stay

Tash: So many people reached out to Switchboard for advice on how to live, love and work in the UK throughout the 80s and 90s but what struck me about this episode is how current these issues are still today decades later. With conversations around borders, cultures and LGBTQI+ identity, this episode hears from a lesbian who helped a gay immigrant to stay in the UK and a gay refugee who recently fled Syria – pushing us to reflect on the LGBTQI+ rights globally that we still have to fight for today.

S3 Ep 1 – Multiple paradox net files

All: The first episode in final season telling untold stories from Britain’s queer history exploring the day-to-day impact on LGBTQI+ people made by shifts in technology and attitudes from 1992 to 2003. This first episode explore the internet, its impact on our communities and how it has evolved throughout the years. With the rest of Season 3 exploring stories from lesbians starting queer families in the 90s with sperm donors, kinky club nights such as Sadie Masie, the groundbreaking legal fight to equalise the age of sexual consent for men having sex with men and stories from transgender teenagers who reached out for help from Switchboard.

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Listen to all episodes of The Log Books now on ACAST, SPOTIFY or other podcasts apps.

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With inspiration taken from the work and stories that have come from Switchboard, an LGBT+ helpline that’s been in operation since 1974, The Log Books podcast has had quite an auspicious start. Natasha Walker, co-chair at Switchboard and producer of The Log Books, chats to us once again about re-opening the Logbooks for season 2 of the show.

So, what’s it been like making the podcast?

We absolutely loved working on The Log Books podcast. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, reading and listening to all these amazing stories and memories. We have all learnt so much about LGBTQ+ history, which is of course our history with all three of us (Producers – Tash, Adam and Shivani) identifying as LGBTQ+. I think it would be fair to say that this is one of the best things we have ever worked on and Season Two has been even better! We started as colleagues but are now the best of friends!

From left to right, Shivani Dave, Tash Walker and Adam Smith from The Log Books podcast celebrating their British Podcast Awards win.

It may not have been a surprise to many of us – but it did prove to be a shock for the team – The Log Books won Best New Podcast at the British Podcast Awards.

It was so amazing! We were completely overwhelmed and not expecting it at all, when they announced we had won and then the doorbell rang we just didn’t know what to do. It felt so amazing to win the Best New Podcast 2020 award not only because we are all independent podcasters and freelancers, but also because we are sharing LGBTQ+ history, which is so often ignored and untold. To have the podcast recognised as the Best New Podcast of 2020 meant so much to us and shows a really positive shift in society – this isn’t just Britain’s LGBTQ+ history, it’s Britain’s history full stop.

Can you give us a bit of a recap of what the podcast is about and what’s in the first season?

The Log Books is a podcast all about the history of LGBTQ+ life in Britain as noted by volunteers at the helpline Switchboard. Each episode centres around log book entries made by the volunteers who staffed the phones from the charity’s very first day. As a helpline for anyone who wants to talk about gender identity and sexuality, Switchboard has been hearing about, and helping, queer life since 1974. We have spoken to over 50 contributors for the podcast, who have memories and lived experiences of the themes we cover. Season One covered 1974 to 1982, with stories ranging from police entrapping gay men meeting for sex in toilets, to women losing custody of their children for being lesbians, to people kicked out of pubs for wearing pro-gay badges and those struggling with their gender identity before anyone had the right language to help them.

The log books laugh and cry with the real lives of runaways and disco-dancers, with isolated fishermen phoning to chat and people unsure about how to have sex.

The first Switchboard log book – photo by Imogen Forte, Switchboard’s Archive at Bishopsgate Institute

Given the subject matter, there may have been an inevitability to a second season. Thankfully we do have one! What can we hear in this much awaited second season?

Season Two runs through the years 1983 to 1991 and takes up eleven episodes, including a three-part series focusing on the HIV/AIDS crisis. As the country was gripped by growing HIV infections, calls to Switchboard reached unprecedented volumes and intensity. The log books at Switchboard are a unique chronicle of this major health crisis — containing stories from those years that have never been told before.

In this season you hear interviews with patients and healthcare professionals, such as Leigh, a young gay man who began caring for people with AIDS-defining illnesses as soon as he started to work as a nurse.

Also, long-term survivors with difficult but uplifting stories, such as the life-affirming wisdom of George who has spent 35 years trying to keep his infection at bay by calling it ‘sleeping dragon’.

A Switchboard volunteer on a call – photo courtesy of Switchboard’s Archive at Bishopsgate Institute

We also have memories of Switchboard volunteers who took the hardest calls and faced down people who did not want to step into the Switchboard offices for fear of ‘catching AIDS’.

But so much more than a health crisis happened from 1983 to 1991. Britain’s LGBTQ+ communities felt more and more under attack from tabloids and social hostility, with Margaret Thatcher’s government capitalising on this by passing legislation that banned the “promotion of homosexuality”. We’ll hear from a young lesbian teacher, Catherine, whose students scratched insults into her car, and others who were watching the Six O’Clock News when lesbian activists invaded the BBC studio to call for an end to persecution. Other stories in the season include migration to the UK of people fleeing more homophobic countries, state clampdowns on obscenity including a Customs raid on a bookshop, and how Switchboard volunteers used humour to get through these dark times.

Adam Smith, Shivani Dave, Tash Walker, producers of The Log Book – photo by Imogen Forte

What’s the reaction been like to the podcast, both from audiences and also from you all who work on the show?

It’s been so positive, which means so much to us and it’s wonderful to hear people’s thoughts, see their reviews online and read their messages. We felt a real responsibility to not only share this LGBTQ+ history, but also do justice to all the wonderful contributors we interviewed who shared their memories and all those who have called and volunteered for Switchboard. We wouldn’t be here today because of them, their lives and stories live on in the log books and now in the podcast too.

Like any cause and podcast with a social conscience, finding new audiences is key, so why do we all need to listen and take part in this conversation?

As a society we all have to strive to be better allies, to not make the same mistakes that we have made in the past, to learn to evolve so that we move towards a more equal society for all. Looking back through the log books, we learn so much about how the LGBTQ+ communities have got to where we are today, the discrimination, the victimisation, the love, the support, the strength – it’s all part of who we are today, as queer people, as allies, as people. You have to learn from the past, to understand what community, allyship and support really mean. The stories will make you laugh, cry and some… from sex, to police raids, to censorship – it’s all there!

Find season one and two of The Log Books on Acast, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts from.

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