And that, perhaps, is the most profound art form of the 21st century. Lisa Portolan is the co-host of 'The Cup Conversation' podcast and a regular facilitator of cinematic dialogue events across Australia. You can find her academic writing on intimacy and digital media at the University of Sydney.

Her "deep listening" style is the secret sauce. She doesn't wait to speak; she receives . This creates a safe container for guests—and audiences—to admit that modern love is messy, that sex is complicated, and that loneliness does not discriminate by age or success. "We’ve outsourced our romantic lives to algorithms," Portolan has noted in various interviews, "but we haven’t outsourced the emotional fallout. That’s where the real story lives." Her podcast doesn't solve dating. It validates the exhaustion of it. If the podcast is the intimate whisper, Portolan’s film event work is the communal roar. She understands a paradoxical truth: in a world of Netflix and chill, the movie theater has become a sacred space for collective emotional processing.

While many podcasts chase viral moments or celebrity gossip, Portolan treats the microphone like a confessional booth. The episodes dissect the mundane—dating app fatigue, ghosting etiquette, the quiet grief of a friendship breakup—with the rigor of an academic (she holds a PhD) and the warmth of a best friend.

This is the story of how one woman uses microphones and movie screens to answer the question of the century: How do we actually love in 2024? Portolan’s voice is familiar to thousands of listeners as the co-host of The Cup Conversation (alongside Dr. Tamara Cavenett). On the surface, it is a podcast about everyday life. In practice, it is a masterclass in vulnerable scaffolding.

Portolan doesn’t just talk about connection; she manufactures the spaces for it. By juggling two distinct yet symbiotic roles—co-host of a hit podcast and curator of a cinematic film event—she has created a unique ecosystem where digital and physical intimacy collide.

In an era where loneliness is a public health crisis and "swipe right" has replaced "how do you do?", we are starving for a new language of intimacy. Enter Lisa Portolan , a writer, academic, and storyteller who has quietly become one of Australia’s most incisive cartographers of the heart.