Love, sex, current affairs and pop culture in the new podcast 'Embolicades' by ARA

BarcelonaLove and sexuality are eternal themes that have occupied and worried people since the beginning of time, but they can also be analyzed from a contemporary perspective and through current events. It is this intersection that Embolicades aims to explore, a new podcast launched by ARA this Friday with Beti Badia and Estela Ortiz to talk about sex-affective issues from the present, building bridges between culture, thought, current affairs, and personal experience.

The first season premieres this October and the episodes, lasting between 40 and 50 minutes, will be published on the first Friday of the month. Each chapter will address two or three topics based on cultural references, news, experiences and testimonies, or new editorial releases, with the aim of analyzing how we relate in an affective economy marked by capitalism, digital dynamics, and social changes. The goal is twofold: on one hand, to promote more conscious, healthy, and therefore satisfying sex-affective relationships. On the other, to provide tools for critical thinking, but always with the intention of making scientific knowledge accessible in an understandable way that can be applied to everyday life.

Beti Badia is a psychologist, sexologist, and popularizer. Direct and approachable, she presents Afers Interiors on the 3Cat channel SomEVA, in addition to collaborating on the radio programs Les gates, El loft, and La turra. She combines popularization with clinical practice. Estela Ortiz, for her part, is a cultural analyst. A communicator with a background in political science, fine arts, and contemporary philosophy, her work has consisted of connecting the analysis of the internet, pop culture, and trends with social and political debates. She has collaborated with leading media outlets, stations, and cultural institutions and directs the podcast Club de Serias on Radio Primavera Sound.

Embolicades is a podcast that, if you'll pardon the redundancy, gets tangled up with the ARA newsroom: the newspaper's journalists will contribute to some of the topics raised by the authors, based on their experience and knowledge covering areas where sex-affective relationships play a prominent role, that is to say, almost all of them. This cross-cutting perspective also affects the audience the program is aimed at: the more reflective dimension may resonate with older listeners, while the incorporation of pop culture and current events appeals to younger ones. In any case, it is a meeting space that broadens the conversation about relationships with a feminist, LGBTIQ+, intersectional, and inclusive perspective, attentive to diversities and inequalities.

A podcast to educate and inform

“The idea is to talk about the things that concern us regarding love between two people from different generations... no matter how much it may not seem like it,” explains Beti Badia. “It could be anything from taking pop culture figures and delving into their drama, to looking at what advice was given on television or in magazines years ago. We want to get into it, break it down, and understand what is happening, because that is key to learning, and many of us haven't had the opportunity until now.”

Estela Ortiz, for her part, will seek to move from anecdote to category: “My specialty is using pop culture examples to explain situations that are not individual, but rather an example of dynamics or phenomena that occur at a structural level. I perform sociological or philosophical readings of cases we all know, such as, for example, why Marge Simpson stays with Homer despite it being an absolutely unequal marriage and despite her having to look after Homer as if he were her own son,” she details.