Slow Love Podcast Lisa Portolan Co-host Met At Film Event May 2026

They recorded the first episode in Arlo's cramped apartment, surrounded by microphones and tangled cables. Lisa spoke into the foam windscreen like she was confessing to a friend. "I'm Lisa Portolan," she said. "And I used to think love was fast. Then I met a man who taught me about whale songs."

Arlo leaned forward. "So why don't we make something slow instead?"

"Is that an insult?"

Lisa Portolan had stopped believing in cinematic meet-cutes long before she started her PhD on intimacy in the digital age. She had dated through three apps, two heartbreaks, and one algorithmic catastrophe that matched her with her cousin’s ex-fiancé. So when she dragged herself to a small independent film festival on a rainy Tuesday, she was there for the movie—not the magic.

Episode 47 was titled "The Meet-Cute Reconsidered." In it, Lisa told the story of the broken projector and the cold fries for the first time publicly. Arlo, editing the episode that night, left in the moment where Lisa's voice cracked—just slightly—when she said, "I didn't know I was looking for slow. I thought I was just looking for a film." slow love podcast lisa portolan co-host met at film event

That night, over more wine and a napkin that would later be framed, they sketched the outline of Slow Love . The podcast would be an antidote to the dopamine churn: episodes on longing, on waiting for a text back, on the three-month "talking stage," on the beauty of a friendship that took years to become something more. Each episode would open with the sound of a kettle boiling—for exactly seven seconds, never seven minutes.

She turned. The man had kind eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and was holding a notebook filled with frantic, illegible scribbles. "I'm Arlo," he said. "And I think we just survived a war crime of cinema together." They recorded the first episode in Arlo's cramped

Lisa laughed. Not a polite, stifled laugh—a full, shoulders-shaking, tear-inducing laugh. And from the row behind her, a warm, dry voice said, "I was about to start timing the kettle scene with my watch. I had money on twelve minutes."