Ann Wilson, the legendary singer of HEART, has launched a new podcast, “After Dinner Thinks With Ann Wilson”. In the pilot episode, Ann sits down with her friend Criss Cain to talk work life, home life, the universe, movies, politics, music, dogs, magic and anything in between.Speaking about the challenges of having a conversation with someone across the political spectrum without it turning into an argument, Ann said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It’s just really hard to decide that you’re just gonna be quiet, with all the noise and confusion and chaos going on around us, especially surrounding truth and lies. It’s so hard to decide to be that person that just goes, ‘Okay, there are all these cool people here, but I can’t talk to them, because it would just open up this big ugly chasm of derision between us.'”Coming from Seattle, Washington and moving to the South, as I did ten years ago, it took me a while to learn that lesson,” she continued. “There can be really great, great people, but you don’t wanna talk politics. It’s like a minefield. And it makes you think differently about people, makes you think the worst of them, if you disagree that much. And you can’t really control those feelings.”Referencing U.S. president Donald Trump’s efforts to eviscerate the U.S. Department Of Education, Ann said: “The Department Of Education being shut down so that there’s time to buy all these new textbooks that don’t handle the uglier topics of our history. To teach the newborn little kids, ‘Hey, that never happened. What are you talking about?’ ‘Oh, don’t listen to your friends; they just gossip. There was no Holocaust, no slavery.'”Wilson added: “When [Ronald] Reagan was elected [president] — I’m old enough to have been there when he was elected — and I was an adult; I voted. I didn’t vote for Reagan, but he won. And at that time, I thought, ‘Well, this makes anything possible. You can elect a Hollywood star, who, okay, yeah, he was the governor of California for a while, but you can elect a Hollywood star, an actor, to be president. So that makes anything possible for the future.’ And sure enough, we’re still on the downward slope.”Ann also talked about the fact that millions of Americans chose to stay home and not vote in the 2024 presidential election, ultimately failing to turn out at the rate they did in 2020 when they ousted Trump.”One of the most beautiful things about democracy, I think, is that everybody pitches in,” she said. “You don’t just sit on your butt and let everybody else go to the band meeting and then bitch when you don’t like what they came up with. No — you have to go to the meeting and give your opinion.”That’s a hard one for me too,” she admitted. “And I did it too, myself, when I was younger. It wasn’t that I thought my vote didn’t matter. I was living in Canada. It was kind of harder, and I was just busy. I was trying to start a band, and it seemed like the whole voting political process was just a part of another world that I couldn’t identify with. I’m sure a lot of younger people feel that: ‘It’s just a bunch of old men lying to each other or trying to get more sales, more clients, more votes by being this way that has been carefully worked out by strategists.'”Earlier this month, Ann dropped $105,000 from the asking price of her home in northern Florida. The 74-year-old singer bought the property, which sits on 12.5 acres along the St. Johns River, 50 miles south of Jacksonville, for $885,000 in 2019 and originally put it on the market last September for $2 million. That price came down on February 11, 2025 to $1,895,000.Last July, HEART postponed its 2024 concerts due to Ann’s cancer diagnosis. At the time, Ann revealed she “underwent an operation to remove something that, as it turns out, was cancerous.””I’m feeling great but my doctors are now advising me to undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy & I’ve decided to do it,” she wrote in a post on social media.Ann added that doctors advised her to “take the rest of the year away from the stage in order to fully recover,” meaning the tour would need to be put on hold.Last September, HEART announced additional 2025 dates throughout North America as part of the band’s “Royal Flush” tour. The trek will kick off February 28 at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and include a second night in Las Vegas on March 1, with additional stops in Toronto on April 10 at Coca-Cola Coliseum, in Mashantucket, Connecticut on April 12 at Foxwoods Resort Casino and in Boston on April 13 at Agganis Arena. The 24-city tour will wrap in New York City on April 16 at Radio City Music Hall.Photo credit: Criss Cain[embedded content]