Podcast appearances and mentions of Erika Moen

A man's wife had to quit drinking due to a medical condition. They used to get tipsy and have wild sex. Now that she can't drink the sex has become rote and inhibited. They plan to go on vacation together, but the caller feels that if they can't have their free-wheeling sex, he doesn't want go on vacation at all.  Don't you want to hear Dan's conversation with an adult baby/diaper lover? Yes, yes you do.  On the Magnum, a gay man is looking for the most penis-like sex toy he can find that doesn't leak toxic, hormone-disrupting chemicals. Dan brings on our resident sex toy expert, Erika Moen to go over the possibilities. And...pineapples! What do they REALLY mean? Q@Savage.Love     206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at Squarespace.com/Savage and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by the Meridian Trimmer, the very best tool to trim your body hair. Go to MeridianGrooming.com and use the code SAVAGE for an exclusive 15% off.  Foria is an all natural health & sexual wellness company with product lines using the power of plant actives & CBD to effectively enhance intimacy, sexual pleasure, daily wellbeing, and relief from discomfort. Get 20% off your first order by visiting ForiaWellness.com/Savage

Where mental health entwines with sexual expression, desire, and identity - Erika Moen of Oh Joy Sex Toy and Lorrae have a candid conversation about self-acceptance, embracing our quirks and differences, and complexities of navigating pain in a world where we seek to build more pleasure.Self-acceptance and community support are often vital elements in cultivating self-compassion and coming back home to ourselves. In this episode, we shed light on the challenges of learning to see ourselves more lovingly, navigating social media and its impact on mental health, and living an authentic life as we embrace the nature of our own changing relationship to Self over time.We take a personal deep-dive into our own experiences seeking mental health care through IOP/PHP treatment, DBT and IFS therapy, and as we recover, how we can regain our sense of selves AND our relationship to pleasure, eroticisim, and identities as a sexual being. Get my favorite vibrator, the Magic Wand Rechargeable and the Magic Wand Mini! You can also get the authentic Magic Wand Original - available at my favorite sex-positive shop.Follow Lorrae:On Instagram at @sluttygrlprobs | @Lorraejo | @thepleasureprovocateurSGP on Twitter | Facebook | TikTokLorrae on Twitter | Facebook | TikTokResources:Join our Patreon for bonus content + extras!Download my free sex-magic ebookApply for 1:1 coaching with Lorrae and visit Lorrae's site for courses and workshopsVisit Slutty Girl Problems for articles on pleasure, intimacy, and connectionConnect with Erika:Instagram and Threads: @FuckYeahErikaMoenTwitter and Substack: @ErikaMoenOh Joy Sex ToyLet's Talk About It BookOJST's Patreon | Erika's PatreonCelebrate 10 Years of Magic Wand

Where art meets pleasure, inhibitions fade, and self-discovery reigns supreme – join us on a captivating journey with Erika Moen, the brilliant mind behind Oh Joy Sex Toy, in an intimate conversation as we unravel the tapestry of sex-positive art and it's intersection with our own self-expression.Erika is a trailblazer in the realm of sex positivity and a champion of pleasure, inclusivity, and unapologetic self-expression. We explore the inspirations that ignited the creation of Erika's Oh Joy Sex Toy, a unique comic series that redefines sex education, the exploration of pleasure, and demystifying taboo topics – from niche kinks to myths about reproductive health care. Voyage through the heart of unlearning shame and embodying sex positivity, where Erika shares her personal odyssey in shedding the weight of societal narratives and embracing a world filled with pleasure, while navigating personal identity and how we relate to ourselves as erotic beings. Erika's art dares to illuminate the taboo, sparks curiosity, and invites you to explore the corners of your desires, too. It's a journey that transcends boundaries, inviting you to embrace the joy of toys and their power to become instruments of self-expression. Get my favorite vibrator, the Magic Wand Rechargeable and the Magic Wand Mini! You can also get the authentic Magic Wand Original - available at my favorite sex-positive shop.Follow Lorrae:On Instagram at @sluttygrlprobs | @Lorraejo | @thepleasureprovocateurSGP on Twitter | Facebook | TikTokLorrae on Twitter | Facebook | TikTokResources:Join our Patreon for bonus content + extras!Download my free sex-magic ebookApply for 1:1 coaching with Lorrae and visit Lorrae's site for courses and workshopsVisit Slutty Girl Problems for articles on pleasure, intimacy, and connectionConnect with Erika:Instagram and Threads: @FuckYeahErikaMoenTwitter and Substack: @ErikaMoenOh Joy Sex ToyLet's Talk About It BookOJST's Patreon | Erika's PatreonCelebrate 10 Years of Magic Wand

Erika Moen is a queer cartoonist based in Portland, Oregon.  With over two decades in the comics industry, she has co-created the sex positive series ‘Oh Joy Sex Toy' and the sex nd relationship book for teens ‘Let's Talk About it' with her husband Matthew Nolan.  Erika is a frequent guest on Dan Savage's beloved Savage Lovecast and is currently or king on her autobiographical graphic novel about mental health You can find Erika and her work at Patreon.com/erikamoen

A GGG wife wants to give her man the thing he most wants: his tongue in her ass. But she's so ding-dang ticklish down there, it's a no go! How can she learn to suppress her (not sexy) giggles?  A former stripper now has a “straight” job. But her co-workers are a nest of slut-shaming, sex-negative, misogynistic vipers who don't know that she did sex work before. Should she keep her mouth shut, or tell them off?  On the Magnum we are always so happy to bring on our favorite sex toy expert- cartoonist Erika Moen. If you must buy things over the holidays, let those things be sex toys. We hear from a diabetic man who has learned that COCK RINGS are here to save his erections. And a large woman wants a toy to help her better enjoy doggity style. Pragmatic solutions abound.  And, an Australian erotic masseuse hopes that the copious layer of oil he applies for his “nude slides” will protect him against STIs.  There's always hope.  Q@Savage.Love     206-302-2064 Foria is an all natural health & sexual wellness company with product lines using the power of plant actives & CBD to effectively enhance intimacy, sexual pleasure, daily wellbeing, and relief from discomfort. Get 20% off your first order by visiting ForiaWellness.com/Savage This episode is brought to you by Dipsea: an app full of hundreds of short, sexy audio stories designed by women for women. Get an extended 30 day free trial when you go to dipseastories.com/savage.  This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep-the best mattress for your individualized comfort. Right now, get up to $200 off ALL mattress orders at HelixSleep.com/SAVAGE.

Prayer ghouls and pay goblins, get ready for a spooooky halloween night of tales from beyond the geocities grave. Listen in terror as Kendall and Ceres describe Marvel Cinemasins creepypastas, haunted queer coffeeshops, and possessed sex dolls owned by Erika Moen. PatreonTwitterWebsiteCeres' TwitterKendall's TwitterMonkey's Paw by AustinLetter from a White Listener by StevenAnathemy inspired by Anatomy by Kitty Horrorshow

The Turn On uses literary erotica to explore the intricacies of having sex while Black, via a mix of storytelling, humor and frank talk that centers the lived experiences of Black women, femmes and gender nonconforming people. In this episode of The Turn On, Erica and Kenrya read "His Only Wife" by Peace Medie and talk about family bullshit, the lessons we teach our children about love, the sexiness of confident decision making and refusing to make "the best" out of a bad situation.ResourcesBook, "His Only Wife" by Peace Medie | Bookshop | AmazonAuthor, Peace Medie | Website | Twitter | InstagramWhat's Turning Us On | "Let's Talk About It, Teens Guide to Sex Relationships and Being a Human Being" by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan| Bookshop | AmazonYou can find full show notes, a transcript and links to everything we mentioned on this episode at https://www.theturnonpodcast.com/transcripts/season-5-episode-9-saving-all-my-love-for-you.Connect With The Turn OnWebsite: http://www.theturnonpodcast.comInstagram: @TheTurnOnPodcastTwitter: @TheTurnOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheTurnOnPodcast/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTurnOnPodcastPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheTurnOn?fan_landing=trueMerch: https://teespring.com/stores/the-turn-on-podcastBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

You've been trusted with some new information about your tween and you've been over to Google to get help and come up short. What now? In this week's episode we're diving into the courage and growth pillars to learn how we can continue building our evolved communicating family. Connection is such an important piece of the foundation and will support the rest. Have a listen as this episode, although answering a question about how to handle your tween's sexual orientation provides information that can be used time and time again, no matter the topic. Tongue-tied parenting effect (2:37) Is giving the information more important than the connection with your kid? (3:59) How can we apologise? Is it necessary? (6:14) Book resources (10:43) Let's Talk About It by Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan Wait, what? by Heather Corrina Sex Educated by Grace Alice O'Shea & Sexual Health West The Evolve School Doors are open! You can learn how to build deeper connections whilst talking about sensitive stuff, really complex stuff, related to sex, bodies and relationships through The Evolved Family Method. With practical support & skills you'll get the tools to help you raise your confident, caring and respectful young person. Learn more here about what is involved and join us if it calls to you.

Rand Bellavia joins the crew this week to talk Oh Joy Sex Toy! We also review Sword of Hyperborea #2, Batman/Catwoman #10, Sky Captain and the Art of Tomorrow, and My Bad #4. It is an interesting show, so take the jump and listen now! Show your thanks to Major Spoilers for this episode by becoming a Major Spoilers Patron at http://patreon.com/MajorSpoilers. It will help ensure the Major Spoilers Podcast continues far into the future! Join our Discord server and chat with fellow Spoilerites! (https://discord.gg/jWF9BbF) OOKLA THE MOK Make sure you check out all of the music from Ookla the Mok! www.ooklathemok.com REVIEWS STEPHEN SWORD OF HYPERBOREA #2 Writer: Mike Mignola, Rob Williams Artist: Laurence Campbell Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Cover Price: $3.99 Release Date: February 16, 2022 The Sword of Hyperborea continues its trek through history, blessing the chosen ones who wield it with incredible power. When it appears at a pivotal moment during WWI, will the blade be used for good or for evil? Spies, supernatural creatures, and secret societies collide in this fast-paced continuation of the sword's saga! [rating:4/5] You can purchase this issue via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/34HcsA8 MATTHEW BATMAN/CATWOMAN #10 Writer: Tom King Artist: Clay Mann Publisher: DC Comics Cover Price: $4.99 Release Date: February 8, 2022 Don't mess with Catwoman! As our three storylines experience a rare moment of convergence, Selina fights for her life against The Joker and her own daughter, Batwoman. What secrets from her deadly friendship with the Clown Prince of Crime will cause this row between mother and child? Find out in an action-packed issue that proves this cat can fight! [rating:3/5] You can purchase this issue via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/3rTGtoY RODRIGO SKY CAPTAIN AND THE ART OF TOMORROW Writer: Kevin Conran Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Cover Price: $22.49 Release Date: February 22, 2022 SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW burst into the sky and onto theater screens in 2004. With it came groundbreaking methods and techniques that would change the way movies were made. The real story behind the film began many years earlier and in Kevin Conran's Art of Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow, fans will be treated to behind-the-scenes stories marking the movie's unique journey to the screen. As the first of its kind, this landmark film embraced the look and feel of the old serials even as it pushed the boundaries of modern filmmaking technology. The film would inspire a whole new generation of creators eager to adopt its innovative techniques―techniques that are now commonplace in every studio in Hollywood and around the world. Featuring the revolutionary artistic contributions of the film's principle visual architect, this stunning collection of Kevin Conran's trailblazing illustrations and designs includes incomplete, unpublished and never-before-seen work. This comprehensive retrospective is the first official collection of the film's artwork sourced from Kevin Conran's private collection and spanning over 20 years of the movie's history. [rating: 5/5] You can purchase this book via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/3sLdK5d RAND MY BAD #4 Writer: Mark Russell, Bryce Ingman Artist: Peter Krause Publisher: AHOY Comics Cover Price: $3.99 Release Date: February 16, 2022 There's still time to get in on the ground floor of the Important New Superhero Universe! After enduring 16 levels of torment in Emperor King's death trap, Rush Hour displays an unexpected superpower! PLUS: A day in the life of millionaire crimefighter Jamington (The Chandelier) Winthrop includes an unforgettable sandwich! AND: The spotlight falls on Acid Chimp! [rating: 3.5/5] DISCUSSION OH JOY SEX TOY VOLUME 1 Writer: Erika Moen Artist: Erika Moen Publisher: Oni Press Cover Price: $22.57 Release Date: 2016 Oh Joy, Sex Toy: Volume One is 268 pages of comics by Erika Moen about sex, sex toy reviews, sexuality, sex education, safer sex practices, interviews with sex industry workers AND MORE. Volume One collects the first year's worth of content from the weekly comic Oh Joy Sex Toy. Combining helpful facts with terrible puns and the occasional Star Trek joke, Volume One is an indispensable resource for fans of sex, fans of comics, and nerds of all stripes. In addition to Erika's work, Volume One also features the comics of nearly a dozen other cartoonists including Lucy Knisley, R. Stevens, and Amanda Lafrenais. Plus there's a bunch of bonus stuff too, if you've already been keeping up-to-date with OJST's weekly update online. Erika shares some brand new comics made exclusively for Volume one, as well as shares some behind-the-scenes information on OJST. CLOSE Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Call the Major Spoilers Hotline at (785) 727-1939. A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends!

Rand Bellavia joins the crew this week to talk Oh Joy Sex Toy! We also review Sword of Hyperborea #2, Batman/Catwoman #10, Sky Captain and the Art of Tomorrow, and My Bad #4. It is an interesting show, so take the jump and listen now! Show your thanks to Major Spoilers for this episode by becoming a Major Spoilers Patron at http://patreon.com/MajorSpoilers. It will help ensure the Major Spoilers Podcast continues far into the future! Join our Discord server and chat with fellow Spoilerites! (https://discord.gg/jWF9BbF) OOKLA THE MOK Make sure you check out all of the music from Ookla the Mok! www.ooklathemok.com REVIEWS STEPHEN SWORD OF HYPERBOREA #2 Writer: Mike Mignola, Rob Williams Artist: Laurence Campbell Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Cover Price: $3.99 Release Date: February 16, 2022 The Sword of Hyperborea continues its trek through history, blessing the chosen ones who wield it with incredible power. When it appears at a pivotal moment during WWI, will the blade be used for good or for evil? Spies, supernatural creatures, and secret societies collide in this fast-paced continuation of the sword's saga! [rating:4/5] You can purchase this issue via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/34HcsA8 MATTHEW BATMAN/CATWOMAN #10 Writer: Tom King Artist: Clay Mann Publisher: DC Comics Cover Price: $4.99 Release Date: February 8, 2022 Don't mess with Catwoman! As our three storylines experience a rare moment of convergence, Selina fights for her life against The Joker and her own daughter, Batwoman. What secrets from her deadly friendship with the Clown Prince of Crime will cause this row between mother and child? Find out in an action-packed issue that proves this cat can fight! [rating:3/5] You can purchase this issue via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/3rTGtoY RODRIGO SKY CAPTAIN AND THE ART OF TOMORROW Writer: Kevin Conran Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Cover Price: $22.49 Release Date: February 22, 2022 SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW burst into the sky and onto theater screens in 2004. With it came groundbreaking methods and techniques that would change the way movies were made. The real story behind the film began many years earlier and in Kevin Conran's Art of Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow, fans will be treated to behind-the-scenes stories marking the movie's unique journey to the screen. As the first of its kind, this landmark film embraced the look and feel of the old serials even as it pushed the boundaries of modern filmmaking technology. The film would inspire a whole new generation of creators eager to adopt its innovative techniques―techniques that are now commonplace in every studio in Hollywood and around the world. Featuring the revolutionary artistic contributions of the film's principle visual architect, this stunning collection of Kevin Conran's trailblazing illustrations and designs includes incomplete, unpublished and never-before-seen work. This comprehensive retrospective is the first official collection of the film's artwork sourced from Kevin Conran's private collection and spanning over 20 years of the movie's history. [rating: 5/5] You can purchase this book via our Amazon affiliate link - https://amzn.to/3sLdK5d RAND MY BAD #4 Writer: Mark Russell, Bryce Ingman Artist: Peter Krause Publisher: AHOY Comics Cover Price: $3.99 Release Date: February 16, 2022 There's still time to get in on the ground floor of the Important New Superhero Universe! After enduring 16 levels of torment in Emperor King's death trap, Rush Hour displays an unexpected superpower! PLUS: A day in the life of millionaire crimefighter Jamington (The Chandelier) Winthrop includes an unforgettable sandwich! AND: The spotlight falls on Acid Chimp! [rating: 3.5/5] DISCUSSION OH JOY SEX TOY VOLUME 1 Writer: Erika Moen Artist: Erika Moen Publisher: Oni Press Cover Price: $22.57 Release Date: 2016 Oh Joy, Sex Toy: Volume One is 268 pages of comics by Erika Moen about sex, sex toy reviews, sexuality, sex education, safer sex practices, interviews with sex industry workers AND MORE. Volume One collects the first year's worth of content from the weekly comic Oh Joy Sex Toy. Combining helpful facts with terrible puns and the occasional Star Trek joke, Volume One is an indispensable resource for fans of sex, fans of comics, and nerds of all stripes. In addition to Erika's work, Volume One also features the comics of nearly a dozen other cartoonists including Lucy Knisley, R. Stevens, and Amanda Lafrenais. Plus there's a bunch of bonus stuff too, if you've already been keeping up-to-date with OJST's weekly update online. Erika shares some brand new comics made exclusively for Volume one, as well as shares some behind-the-scenes information on OJST. CLOSE Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Call the Major Spoilers Hotline at (785) 727-1939. A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends!

Today's show is brought to you by Wacom! Wacom is the maker of the powerful, professional, portable Wacom One!  This week, Erika Moen joins us for a show dedicated to questions about creating NSFW comics! If you've ever wanted to make sexy comics for the 18+ crowd, this show is for you!Questions asked and topics covered...Erika Moen's new project focusing on her mental health journeyHow to build a comfort level with NSFW workThe importance of good art in 18+ comicsHow to draw a vaginal orgasmThe legalities of NSFW publishingAudience building for a sex oriented comicGetting feedback on your adults-only comicToday is a great time to bump up your ComicLab membership to the $10 tier! Patreon backers at that level will get exclusive access to livestream recording sessions — as well as an archive of previous livestreams!You get great rewards when you join the ComicLab Community on Patreon$2 — Early access to episodes$5 — Submit a question for possible use on the show AND get the exclusive ProTips podcast. Plus $2-tier rewards.$10 — Gain access to the ComicLab livestreamed recording sessions (including an archive of past livestreams), plus $5-tier rewardsBrad Guigar is the creator of Evil Inc and the editor of Webcomics.com Dave Kellett is the creator of Sheldon and Drive. Erika Moen's work can be found here. Buy her books here. Her book "Let's Talk About It" is a must-have for parents.Listen to ComicLab on...Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyPandoraStitcherComicLab is hosted on Simplecast, helping podcasters since 2013. with industry-leading publishing, distribution, and sharing tools.

Why was he such a bad lover? A woman hooked up with a younger man, and endured mediocre sex. He didn't reciprocate oral, for instance. She blew him off, and when he reached out to her, she was honest about his lack of skill. Later, he drunk-dialed her and confessed that it had been his first time. Now she feels guilty and wishes she had been more compassionate, knowing what she now knows. Does she owe him anything?  A woman has discovered that her new boyfriend follows porny, blonde bimbo types on Insta. She is dark complected and looks nothing like these women. She doesn't want to sex-shame him, but his taste seems really thoughtless and basic to her. Is it a red flag? Should she confront him?  On the Magnum, it's time to shop baby! Boost that economy with the gift of sex toys. Our beloved regular guest Erika Moen (of “Oh Joy Sex Toy,” and “Let's Talk About It”) is on to offer recommendations so you can stuff the right stockings.  And, ladies/vag-havers: how do you dispose of the jizz that comes a'tricking out after sex? Our caller is too busy to wait until it all flows out, and has heard that douching is a no-no. We're crowdsourcing this one.  voicemail@savagelovecast.com 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Allform- premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door. For 20% off your perfect sofa, go to Allform.com/Savage. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at Squarespace.com/Savage and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Calm, the #1 app for sleep and relaxation. For a limited time get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at CALM.COM/Savage.

Why was he such a bad lover? A woman hooked up with a younger man, and endured mediocre sex. He didn't reciprocate oral, for instance. She blew him off, and when he reached out to her, she was honest about his lack of skill. Later, he drunk-dialed her and confessed that it had been his first time. Now she feels guilty and wishes she had been more compassionate, knowing what she now knows. Does she owe him anything?  A woman has discovered that her new boyfriend follows porny, blonde bimbo types on Insta. She is dark complected and looks nothing like these women. She doesn't want to sex-shame him, but his taste seems really thoughtless and basic to her. Is it a red flag? Should she confront him?  On the Magnum, it's time to shop baby! Boost that economy with the gift of sex toys. Our beloved regular guest Erika Moen (of “Oh Joy Sex Toy,” and “Let's Talk About It”) is on to offer recommendations so you can stuff the right stockings.  And, ladies/vag-havers: how do you dispose of the jizz that comes a'tricking out after sex? Our caller is too busy to wait until it all flows out, and has heard that douching is a no-no. We're crowdsourcing this one.  voicemail@savagelovecast.com 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Allform- premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door. For 20% off your perfect sofa, go to Allform.com/Savage. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at Squarespace.com/Savage and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Calm, the #1 app for sleep and relaxation. For a limited time get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at CALM.COM/Savage.

It's the content WE wish we had as teenagers! Wonderfully illustrated, engaging content that teens are asking for. Check out this episode to see why we love it so much! Author(s) - Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan Illustrators - Erica Moen Publisher - RH Graphic Year Published - 2021 www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605726/lets-talk-about-it-by-erika-moen-and-matthew-nolan Additional Show Links: www.sexsmartfilms.com/premium/film/1169/0/0/the-true-story-of-how-babies-are-made www.link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-017-0314-9

Feeling better! We hope Trauma Interesting article I read about what it means to one's partner's sexual orientation identity when one transitions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/to-some-this-queer-couple-looks-straight-for-him-thats-okay-but-for-her-it-feels-like-a-lie/2019/08/22/098b83f2-c43b-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html Erika Moen talks about this a little bit too https://www.darcomic.com/2009/06/23/identity/ https://www.darcomic.com/2009/12/08/queer-marriage JoJo Siwa coming out and being supported. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lothie/support

This week, Liberty and Patricia discuss Meet Me in Another Life, White Magic, Dial A for Aunties, and more great books. Pick up an All the Books! shirt, sticker, and more right here. Follow All the Books! using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify and never miss a beat book. Sign up for the weekly New Books! newsletter for even more new book news. This post contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, Book Riot may earn a commission. BOOKS DISCUSSED ON THE SHOW: Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto White Magic by Elissa Washuta Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan Don’t Call it a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations by Jonny Sun Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders WHAT WE’RE READING: I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom Rejected Princesses by Jason Porath Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle Monster in the Middle by Tiphanie Yanique The History of Bones: A Memoir by John Lurie  MORE BOOKS OUT THIS WEEK: Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells  Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri The Other Side of the Door by Nicci French The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 by Jon Grinspan Good Night, Earth by Linda Bondestam and Galit Hasan-Rokem Trots and Bonnie by Shary Flenniken  Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Dusapin, Aneesa Abbas Higgins (translator) Buses Are a Comin’: Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person, Richard Rooker A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew H. Knoll Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West by Blaine Harden You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown Park Bagger: Adventures in the Canadian National Parks by Marlis Butcher The Groundhog Forever by Henry Hoke The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale Rescue at Lake Wild by Terry Lynn Johnson Ways to Grow Love by Renée Watson, Nina Mata (Illustrated by) The Others by Sarah Blau Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend: Notes from the Other Side of the Fist Bump by Ben Philippe Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur Anna K Away by Jenny Lee  Revelations by Mary Sharratt A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris, John Cullen Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be A-holes: Unfiltered Advice on How to Raise Awesome Kids by Karen Alpert Little and Often: A Memoir by Trent Preszler Slingshot by Mercedes Helnwein Everything Is Fine: A Memoir by Vince Granata How To Train Your Earl (First Comes Love Book 3) by Amelia Grey  The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird River Magic by Ellen Booraem How Y’all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived by Leslie Jordan See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan joined Teffer and Kadi to talk about relationships, sex, peer-to-peer education, and, of course, their new YA sex ed resource, Let's Talk About It! Join us for a conversation about taking the fear out of dating, who to talk to about what you want to do, and what to name your favourite beet! Donate to the Upford Network's Indiegogo Campaign! igg.me/at/upfordnetwork Resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hp7nlP5UcH63FEl1kpPgxdO7Qw7iagcCTBfOPfPLuMg/edit?usp=sharing Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/yapodcast Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/up-for-discusssion?ref_id=2539 To suggest a book, email theyapodcast@gmail.com or tweet at us @yapodcast Hosted by: Teffer Adjemian: @tefferbear Bailey: @thebailzasaurus Kadi Diop: @kadi__d Eunice Hong: @theeunicornreadsabook Great Bear Music! greatbearmusic.bandcamp.com/ www.andrewvannorstrand.com www.upfordnetwork.com Send us books! Upford Network ℅ Tom Zalatnai PO Box 22585 Monkland PO Montreal, Quebec H4A 3T4 Canada

A graphic novel/guide book for young adults explores the big questions about adolescence, sex, and romance. Authors Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan join us to discuss their book, Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human, and take calls from listeners. This segment is guest-hosted by Anna Sale.

Gather round. Hear the cautionary tale of the gaslighting vibrator thief. It's tough out there for a male gynecologist. A man in his Ob Gyn residency asks for tips on giving exams that put his patients at ease. Dan brings on Dr. Ian Fields, Assistant Program Director for the OBGYN residency at OHSU to discuss being a man in the mix. On the Magnum, our beloved, longstanding guest cartoonist/sex toy expert Erika Moen is on with her partner Matt Nolan to talk about their new book for teens: Let's Talk about It: A Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships and being a Human. It's fabulous, and if you have or are a teen, you are COMMANDED to buy it. And, rejoice! We have a new sexuality! "Freysexual." What's that, you ask? Why it's someone who is attracted to people until they get to know them better. Are you a freysexual? ARE YOU?   So what's the flag look like? 206-302-2064     This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase.   Today's Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .   This episode is brought to you by Doordash. Get breakfast, lunch, dinner and more delivered from your favorite restaurants right to your doorstep with one easy click. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code SAVAGE.

Gather round. Hear the cautionary tale of the gaslighting vibrator thief. It's tough out there for a male gynecologist. A man in his Ob Gyn residency asks for tips on giving exams that put his patients at ease. Dan brings on Dr. Ian Fields, Assistant Program Director for the OBGYN residency at OHSU to discuss being a man in the mix. On the Magnum, our beloved, longstanding guest cartoonist/sex toy expert Erika Moen is on with her partner Matt Nolan to talk about their new book for teens: Let's Talk about It: A Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships and being a Human. It's fabulous, and if you have or are a teen, you are COMMANDED to buy it. And, rejoice! We have a new sexuality! "Freysexual." What's that, you ask? Why it's someone who is attracted to people until they get to know them better. Are you a freysexual? ARE YOU?   So what's the flag look like? 206-302-2064     This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase.   Today’s Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .   This episode is brought to you by Doordash. Get breakfast, lunch, dinner and more delivered from your favorite restaurants right to your doorstep with one easy click. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code SAVAGE.

Growing up is complicated. How do you find the answers to all the questions you have about yourself, about your identity, and about your body? Let's Talk About It provides a comprehensive, thoughtful, well-researched graphic novel guide to everything you need to know. Covering relationships, friendships, gender, sexuality, anatomy, body image, safe sex, sexting, jealousy, rejection, sex education, and more, Let's Talk About It is the go-to handbook for every teen, and the first in graphic novel form. _______________________________________________   Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

When, and how, should you talk to your kids about sex? How do you make sure your kids grow up with a healthy, and accurate, view of sex and sexuality? Beatrice and Dante share their experiences as parents, in two different phases of their children's lives, and give some examples on navigating the sometimes murky waters of raising children with a healthy view of their bodies and sex.The Vagina Bible by Dr. Jennifer Gunther - Amazon.com, Amazon.caDrawn to Sex by -Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan Vol. 1 - Amazon.com, Amazon.caVol. 2 - Amazon.com, Amazon.caJensplaining on CBC Gem (trailer if you are outside of Canada)Callou Twitter Post - James FellIn the No - Radiolab - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Tea Consent VideoConsent for Kids VideoRoss is not a DoctorBorat 2 TrailerWAP - Cardi B feat. Megan thee Stallion (NSFW)Cheating on Fear has partnered with Café Hacienda Real to get this amazing coffee in your next cup. Visit GoldenBean.net and be sure to use the promo code COFCHR20 for 10% off your order!Motivate, and smarten, your ass with SmartAss Undies. Click the link to support the podcast, and don’t forget to use the code CHEATINGONFEAR10 for 10% off your order!www.cheatingonfear.cominfo@cheatingonfear.comInstagram & Twitter: @cheatingonfearwww.patreon.com/cheatingonfear

Today's show is brought to you by Wacom — makers of the incredible Wacom One! This week, our friend Erika Moen joins us to talk about one of the most important topics we've ever covered on ComicLab — Mental health. Coming soon from Erika Moen...Drawn to Sex Vol. 2: Our Bodies and Health. Have you ever wanted to learn exactly how pregnancy works? How about what to expect at your next doctor’s visit? Or even just really understanding what’s “down there”? Erika and Matthew are ready to help out with their second book in the Drawn to Sex series.Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human. How do you find the answers to all the questions you have about yourself, about your identity, and about your body? Let's Talk About It provides a comprehensive, thoughtful, well-researched graphic novel guide to everything you need to know.You get great rewards when you join the ComicLab Community on Patreon$2 — Early access to episodes$5 — Submit a question for possible use on the show AND get the exclusive ProTips podcast$10 — Record an audio question for possible use on the show AND get the exclusive ProTips podcast$50 — Sponsor the show! We’ll read a brief promo for your comic/product and read it twice during the show AND you get the exclusive ProTips podcastBrad Guigar is the creator of Evil Inc and the editor of Webcomics.com Dave Kellett is the creator of Sheldon and Drive.Listen to ComicLab on...Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyPandoraStitcherComicLab is hosted on Simplecast, helping podcasters since 2013. with industry-leading publishing, distribution, and sharing tools.

Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph, our opening sex during quarantine story is scorching hot this week, hoo boy. A woman is working from home with her boyfriend. He sets up his computer monitors with one screen always playing Twtich streams with young blonde hotties. Is the caller allowed to be annoyed by this? On the Magnum, sex toy expert and generally charming person Erika Moen is on to make a bunch of recommendations for gear to get you through these extremely challenging times. Also, what is up with sex dolls? A deep discussion ensues. A woman asked her man to dominate her. He responded "You suck at doing dishes!!" That's not what she had in mind. How can she teach him to boss her around sexily? 206-302-2064        voicemail@savagelovecast.com This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. Today's Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .

Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph, our opening sex during quarantine story is scorching hot this week, hoo boy. A woman is working from home with her boyfriend. He sets up his computer monitors with one screen always playing Twtich streams with young blonde hotties. Is the caller allowed to be annoyed by this? On the Magnum, sex toy expert and generally charming person Erika Moen is on to make a bunch of recommendations for gear to get you through these extremely challenging times. Also, what is up with sex dolls? A deep discussion ensues. A woman asked her man to dominate her. He responded "You suck at doing dishes!!" That's not what she had in mind. How can she teach him to boss her around sexily? 206-302-2064        voicemail@savagelovecast.com This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. Today’s Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .

The show begins with an insecurity vampire. You know the kind. A person who sucks you dry with their endless need for praise and reassurance. This man is dating one, but is she entirely to blame? It's complicated. And, it's a wedding battle royale! In one corner we have our caller getting married to a man who has a child by a previous marriage- living out of town. In the other corner is the fiancé's mother, who wants to minimize contact between the kid and the caller. Whose side are you on? Grab some popcorn and listen in. On the Magnum, Santa's rollin' up! What's he got this time? Well, if he listens to resident sex toy expert Erika Moen (and he does,) out tumbles a massive cache of marital aids, including a cock sleeve that spins! A bullet vibe! A dual density dildo! "Sex in a Can! " And a Sex Machine. Like an actual machine. Not Santa himself. Is it January yet? And finally, a lesbian is in a stable, joyful, poly relationship. But she is grappling with a new partner in the scene, who has a medical condition that causes her to burp and fart ALL THE TIME. It's driving the caller bonkers. She considers this a real torment. We consider it podcast gold. 206-302-2064 voicemail@savagelovecast.com This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to This episode is brought to you by Doordash. Get breakfast, lunch, dinner and more delivered from your favorite restaurants right to your doorstep with one easy click. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code SAVAGE. Thanks to for supporting Savage Lovecast. Native makes safe, simple, effective products that people use in the bathroom everyday with trusted ingredients and trusted performance. For 20% off your first purchase, visit nativedeodorant.com and enter promo code "Savage" during checkout.    

The show begins with an insecurity vampire. You know the kind. A person who sucks you dry with their endless need for praise and reassurance. This man is dating one, but is she entirely to blame? It's complicated. And, it's a wedding battle royale! In one corner we have our caller getting married to a man who has a child by a previous marriage- living out of town. In the other corner is the fiancé's mother, who wants to minimize contact between the kid and the caller. Whose side are you on? Grab some popcorn and listen in. On the Magnum, Santa's rollin' up! What's he got this time? Well, if he listens to resident sex toy expert Erika Moen (and he does,) out tumbles a massive cache of marital aids, including a cock sleeve that spins! A bullet vibe! A dual density dildo! "Sex in a Can! " And a Sex Machine. Like an actual machine. Not Santa himself. Is it January yet? And finally, a lesbian is in a stable, joyful, poly relationship. But she is grappling with a new partner in the scene, who has a medical condition that causes her to burp and fart ALL THE TIME. It's driving the caller bonkers. She considers this a real torment. We consider it podcast gold. 206-302-2064 voicemail@savagelovecast.com This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to This episode is brought to you by Doordash. Get breakfast, lunch, dinner and more delivered from your favorite restaurants right to your doorstep with one easy click. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code SAVAGE. Thanks to for supporting Savage Lovecast. Native makes safe, simple, effective products that people use in the bathroom everyday with trusted ingredients and trusted performance. For 20% off your first purchase, visit nativedeodorant.com and enter promo code "Savage" during checkout.    

A reasonable woman is about to visit her over-the-top Christian family. Her sister has invited her to join a book club when she's there. Guess what the book is! Should the caller sit through her sister's stealth Bible study, or find a way to politely decline? Or perhaps there's yet another way... A man used to be the cartoon editor for his college newspaper. This was before he got woke, and he is now mortified to recall some nasty anti-gay comics that he published. Should he apologize? Submit new cartoons reflecting his newly enlightened views? Speaking of comics, Dan brings on the ever-delightful comic artist Erika Moen (co-creator of "Oh Joy Sex Toy") to discuss hot summer sex toys. And, on the Magnum, a man recalls how his ex-girlfriend had an abortion. He was there to help her the whole time, and it effected them both. Now that time has passed and he has a wife and kids, how should he talk about the experience, without betraying his ex-girlfriend's experience? 206-302-2064 This podcast is brought to you by . Click on the microphone and enter "Savage" for postage, a digital scale, and a 4 week trial. ThredUP is the world’s largest online thrift store with over 35,000 brands at up to 90% off retail price. Get an extra 30% off your first order at .   Today’s Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .

A reasonable woman is about to visit her over-the-top Christian family. Her sister has invited her to join a book club when she's there. Guess what the book is! Should the caller sit through her sister's stealth Bible study, or find a way to politely decline? Or perhaps there's yet another way... A man used to be the cartoon editor for his college newspaper. This was before he got woke, and he is now mortified to recall some nasty anti-gay comics that he published. Should he apologize? Submit new cartoons reflecting his newly enlightened views? Speaking of comics, Dan brings on the ever-delightful comic artist Erika Moen (co-creator of "Oh Joy Sex Toy") to discuss hot summer sex toys. And, on the Magnum, a man recalls how his ex-girlfriend had an abortion. He was there to help her the whole time, and it effected them both. Now that time has passed and he has a wife and kids, how should he talk about the experience, without betraying his ex-girlfriend's experience? 206-302-2064 This podcast is brought to you by . Click on the microphone and enter "Savage" for postage, a digital scale, and a 4 week trial. ThredUP is the world's largest online thrift store with over 35,000 brands at up to 90% off retail price. Get an extra 30% off your first order at .   Today's Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 15% off your first order when you go to .

Sex ed cartoonist Erika Moen joins us to talk about queer lust, erotica, and dealing with the pressures of online notoriety.

Sex ed cartoonist Erika Moen joins us to talk about queer lust, erotica, and dealing with the pressures of online notoriety.

In this episode of Our Nonstandard Life listen to Eclipse and Mom talk about relationships types, red flags, maybe dead music artists and more. Mentioned: 'Drawn to Sex, The Basics' by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. The Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russel and a bunch of other stuff Mom is forgetting right now because she's tired.

Dear Australia, Hi! This is the Savage Lovecast. Listen. Do you guys refer to the very common sexual position where a man enters a woman from behind while she is on all fours as ..."Doggity Style?" No? We didn't think so. (Both Dan and Nancy are gobsmacked by this call.) A man's friend has been accused of sexual assault from when they were both in a pseudo-Christian cult. The caller believes the women, but also wants to support his friend and help him to become a better person. How? Strap-ons...for MEN??!! Well, sure! So says Erika Moen, our resident sex toy expert, and co-author of a new sex ed book called Drawn to Sex: the Basics. And, on the Magnum version, does enjoyment of spicy food correlate to being a sub?   Oh, for Christ's sake. 206-302-2064 This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Rothy's: everyday flat shoes for women and girls. Machine washable and made from recycled plastic bottles. For free shipping, go to and enter Savage. This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Boll and Branch: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage.

Dear Australia, Hi! This is the Savage Lovecast. Listen. Do you guys refer to the very common sexual position where a man enters a woman from behind while she is on all fours as ..."Doggity Style?" No? We didn't think so. (Both Dan and Nancy are gobsmacked by this call.) A man's friend has been accused of sexual assault from when they were both in a pseudo-Christian cult. The caller believes the women, but also wants to support his friend and help him to become a better person. How? Strap-ons...for MEN??!! Well, sure! So says Erika Moen, our resident sex toy expert, and co-author of a new sex ed book called Drawn to Sex: the Basics. And, on the Magnum version, does enjoyment of spicy food correlate to being a sub?   Oh, for Christ's sake. 206-302-2064 This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Rothy's: everyday flat shoes for women and girls. Machine washable and made from recycled plastic bottles. For free shipping, go to and enter Savage. This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Boll and Branch: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage.

What do you do when you like sex way more than your partner? This episode goes places this mother-daughter duo never imagined when they are asked to answer a listener letter from Sexless Sourpuss. How will Rebecca deal when a show topic threatens to end her 27-year moratorium on talking to Momma B about S-E-X? We are so excited for you to meet our guest for this show, Erika Moen, the talented cartoonist behind “Oh Joy Sex Toy” and co-author of the upcoming book, Drawn to Sex: The Basics, coming out on Nov 6! Buy it on Powell's https://www.powells.com/book/-9781620105443&partnerID=43976 or Amazon: amzn.to/2y105LL. .·:*'`*:·..·:*'`*:·.·:*'`*:·..·:*'`*:·.·:*'`*:·. A SEXY GOODIE BAG OF HELPFUL LINKS Momma B makes book recommendations! Divorce Busting: A Step-by-Step Approach to Making Your Marriage Loving Again by Michele Weiner-Davis https://www.amazon.com/Divorce-Busting-Step-Step-Approach/dp/0671797255/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1 Erika makes amazing sex-ed comics! Vaginal Penetration: https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/vaginal-intercourse/ Sex positivity: https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/sex-positive/ Come as You Are book review: https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/come-as-you-are-2/ Wanna buy that book? Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski Ph.D. https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform/dp/1476762090 .·:*'`*:·..·:*'`*:·.·:*'`*:·..·:*'`*:·.·:*'`*:·. Advice from Mom is a production of Wise Ones Ones Advice Services. It was produced by Juliet Hinely & Rebecca Garza-Bortman. Hosted by Michael Austin Sui. Editing by Juliet Hinely. Erika’s interview was recorded by Jeni Wren Stottrup. Mixed and mastered by Jake Young. Audio assistance by Bryan Garza. Our theme music is by Love Jerks. Join us for our rock opera album premiere. Buy tickets: bit.ly/2OtRyug This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to offer diagnosis or treatment of any medical or psychological condition. All treatment decisions should be made in partnership with your health professional.

Come hear the sordid tale of the couple who invited a woman over, only to have her wet the bed so thoroughly that she soaked right through to the mattress. Bad unicorn! Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy?" is on to review her husband's fave new toy. What could it be? On the Magnum, a woman dislikes her parters the instant she has sex with them. How can she yank out that bad wiring? And, pineapples. They are laden with meaning. 206-302-2064 This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Boll and Branch: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage. Thanks to Aaptiv for supporting our podcast. Get 30% off annual membership plan featuring unlimited workouts at . This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to

Come hear the sordid tale of the couple who invited a woman over, only to have her wet the bed so thoroughly that she soaked right through to the mattress. Bad unicorn! Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy?" is on to review her husband's fave new toy. What could it be? On the Magnum, a woman dislikes her parters the instant she has sex with them. How can she yank out that bad wiring? And, pineapples. They are laden with meaning. 206-302-2064 This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Boll and Branch: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage. Thanks to Aaptiv for supporting our podcast. Get 30% off annual membership plan featuring unlimited workouts at . This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to

Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar are thrilled to welcome Erika Moen, creator of OhJoySexToy. They talk about her currently running Kickstarter to launch a collection of sex-education cartoons. She has a decidedly different approach to the "soft launch" for Patreon backers discussed on an earlier ComicLab podcast — and her strategy is worth strong consideration.   Then, the gang tackles some great topics like the uncomfortable relationship we artists have with photo reference. Why is there a stigma around using it? And what's the best way to use it? Then Brad and Dave marvel over Erika's participation in Helioscope studios. She assures the two crusty hermits that working in an office full of other cartoonists can actually be a positive experience.   Finally, they grapple with the complexities of character design, and discuss the importance of diversity and inclusiveness in building a comic.   BUT FIRST... Dave and Brad catch the Bonjoro bug. It's either an incredibly powerful tool for cultivating Patreon backers or it's a good way to send poorly lit videos of your not-ready-for-primetime mug to a recoiling patron. Or both. Is it a good choice if you have a face like Brad's? Is it an effective tool to build longterm patronage? Could it possibly be worth $25 a month??   Show notes 0:00 — Using Bonjoro to cultivate Patreon backers 11:55 — Erika has a decidedly different approach to a Kickstarter launch than the one promoted in an earlier ComicLab show 20:47 — Using photo reference wisely 32:01 — Working in a studio 43:16 — Savvy approaches to character design 54:19 — Diversity and inclusion. It's tricky, it's complicated, it can lead to misunderstandings... and it's really, really important.  

After 10 years of marriage, a man is dismayed to admit that he married a jizz-hater. His wife detests the stuff and doesn't want to be anywhere near it. What is the solution? The ever-delightful and intrepid Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy" is on to discuss a sex toy that will send you packing. A woman's boyfriend wants to get a $2000 anatomically correct sex doll. The caller, and (as you will hear) Dan Savage are super-squicked. Finally, gather round dear listeners, and hear the story of the neighbor and the négligé. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by #Open- a NEW, inclusive approach to social networking and MODERN dating. #Open needs Savage Lovecast listeners to test their app before they “come out” to the rest of the world. Test now at and earn “Community Founder” status for life. This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to Thanks to Audible for supporting the Savage Lovecast. For a free audiobook with a 30-day free trial, go to or text savage to 500-500.

After 10 years of marriage, a man is dismayed to admit that he married a jizz-hater. His wife detests the stuff and doesn't want to be anywhere near it. What is the solution? The ever-delightful and intrepid Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy" is on to discuss a sex toy that will send you packing. A woman's boyfriend wants to get a $2000 anatomically correct sex doll. The caller, and (as you will hear) Dan Savage are super-squicked. Finally, gather round dear listeners, and hear the story of the neighbor and the négligé. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by #Open- a NEW, inclusive approach to social networking and MODERN dating. #Open needs Savage Lovecast listeners to test their app before they “come out” to the rest of the world. Test now at and earn “Community Founder” status for life. This episode of the Savage love cast is brought to you by Everlane: Luxury basic clothing and accessories, made at ethical factories without those retail markups. For free shipping, and to support the Lovecast, go to Thanks to Audible for supporting the Savage Lovecast. For a free audiobook with a 30-day free trial, go to or text savage to 500-500.

A man is into being tied up and pegged. But his wife finds it dull, tedious, boring and stultifying. Should he give up on the idea, or find a way to convince his wife that she could have some fun here. Oh no! More S&M trouble! A woman had a great date with a hot dom who dommed her so, so right. But now she feels nothing but shame. How can she clear out all the kink-phobia from her naughty brain? On the Magnum, our resident sex toy reviewer Erika Moen has found a toy to help you DO YOUR KEGELS. Do them now. And, can we accurately gauge how good a parent someone will be based on how they treat a cute, little puppy-dog? 206-302-2064 Thanks to Aaptiv for supporting our podcast. Get 50% off annual membership plan featuring unlimited workouts at . Today's Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 20% off your first order when you go to . This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by BollandBranch.com: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage.

A man is into being tied up and pegged. But his wife finds it dull, tedious, boring and stultifying. Should he give up on the idea, or find a way to convince his wife that she could have some fun here. Oh no! More S&M trouble! A woman had a great date with a hot dom who dommed her so, so right. But now she feels nothing but shame. How can she clear out all the kink-phobia from her naughty brain? On the Magnum, our resident sex toy reviewer Erika Moen has found a toy to help you DO YOUR KEGELS. Do them now. And, can we accurately gauge how good a parent someone will be based on how they treat a cute, little puppy-dog? 206-302-2064 Thanks to Aaptiv for supporting our podcast. Get 50% off annual membership plan featuring unlimited workouts at . Today's Lovecast is brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 20% off your first order when you go to . This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by BollandBranch.com: luxury, affordable fair trade certified sheets. Get $50 off a set of sheets plus free shipping by going to and enter Savage.

How do you separate fact from fiction when it comes to creating and sustaining sexual desire? In this episode of Relationship Alive, our special guest is Emily Nagoski, author of the New York Times bestseller "Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life." Her work has been cited by both John Gottman and Esther Perel as a must-read for understanding how desire works, and how to nurture a sexual connection over the long term with your partner. Emily Nagoski and I dispel some modern-day myths about sexuality, and then we reveal some of the new science to help you create more pleasure in your life. And, as Emily says, "Pleasure is the Measure!" Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. What if everything that you've been told about sex and desire was wrong? Or maybe not quite wrong, just missing really important bits of information that would help you understand the big picture. As it turns out, there's a lot that we've come to know through science about what turns us on and what turns us off. But this information is relatively new and hasn't quite made it out to the mainstream or the cover of Cosmo, at least not yet. How do you know if what you're experiencing is normal? And what can you do to discover more about who you are as a sexual being and to find more connection and sex in your relationship, without creating pressure on yourself or on your partner? Today's guest has many of the answers to these questions. Neil Sattin: Her name is Doctor Emily Nagoski and she's the author of the New York Times bestseller "Come as You Are", which John Gottman says is the best book he's ever read on sexual desire and why some couples stop having sex. Esther Perel also refers to Emily's work. So, if John Gottman and Esther Perel, who, at the moment, come from different camps on the question of sexual desire, if they can agree on Emily Nagoski's work, then you know that she's done something truly magnificent. There's gonna be a lot to cover and, as usual, we will have a detailed transcript and action guide for this episode available to you at neilsattin.com/normal. Or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get your copy. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Emily Nagoski: I'm so excited to talk to you. Neil Sattin: So let's start at the very beginning. Emily Nagoski: Very good place to start. Neil Sattin: Exactly. Where did this book come from for you? It's about desire and it's about understanding what makes us tick. And in particular, it's written for women and about women's sexuality, though there's so much relearning for men to do as well. And I'm wondering if you can just create our garden here for us for this conversation. Where did this book come from and why was it so important for you to write it? Emily Nagoski: Sure. I'd been teaching sexuality in some form and some context, for at least 15 years when I started teaching a class called Women's Sexuality at Smith College. Smith is a women's college so I had a class of almost entirely women, 187 of them. And Smith students are not ordinary human beings. Smith alums include Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan, and Catharine MacKinnon, and my favorite, Julia Child. And so the very first day, I'm teaching the anatomy class, of course, I just start with the anatomy. And a student raises her hand and says, "Emily, what's the evolutionary origin of the hymen?" And 15 years I'd been a sex educator, I had never even wondered the answer to that question. So I knew it was gonna be an intense, interesting semester. And it really was. They pushed me really hard. I shoehorned in as much science as I could into this beginner level class. After a semester of really hard work, my last question on the final exam was just tell me one important thing you learned. It can be... Just take the question seriously, you can have your two points no matter what you say. Just tell me one important thing you learned after all this cutting edge science. Emily Nagoski: And I thought they were gonna say the evolutionary theory, or attachment theory, or arousal non-concordance, or responsive desire, or any of these other things. And more than half of them, of 187 extraordinary students, more than half of them just wrote something like, "I'm normal. I learned that I'm normal. Just because I'm different from other women doesn't mean I'm broken. I can accept my sexuality as it is, and my partner's even when it's different from mine." I'm grading final exams with tears in my eyes thinking, I don't know what happened in my class, but I think it must have been something extraordinary and I wanna do it again, and I wanna do it on a much bigger scale. And that's the day that I decided to write "Come as You Are." And five years after that is when "Come as You Are" actually got published. Neil Sattin: And I love these... There's so many quotes from your book, and one thing that I really enjoyed about reading "Come as You Are" is that literally every chapter revealed something new. So while it all builds on itself, at the same time, I felt like I was walking through a labyrinth and around every corner I found some amazing gem, which is just so exciting when you're reading a book. But this quote toward the end really was powerful for me. And all it is, is this, "The sexuality you have right now is it and it's beautiful, even especially, if it's not what you were taught it should be." Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Neil Sattin: And that really hit me hard because I think so often we do get lost in thinking it's supposed to be some other way. And when we learn to tune in to what is actually happening in our bodies and accept that, and then use that as the springboard for what happens next, there's so much power in that moment. Emily Nagoski: And in one way it's really obvious that the fastest, easiest way to shut down your sexual well-being is to judge and shame your own sexuality as it - is like is that gonna be a turn on in your brain? For you to hate what's happening in your sexuality, obviously not. But if you can release the judgement and shame and be like "Oh, look, here's my sexuality. Being what it is, doing what it does, I know that I've been given a sort of like phantom sexual self of what I'm told I should be, what I'm supposed to do, what it's supposed to be like, and I know I'm supposed to beat the shit out of myself until I meet that standard, but what if? What if just hypothetically I stopped beating the shit out of myself and just enjoyed my sexuality as it is?" It turns out our ability to stop demanding that our bodies be different and allowing them to be as they are, is maybe the single most powerful thing we can do to maximize our sexual well-being. Is it easy? Nope. But it's almost magical in it's power. Neil Sattin: And this might be a good time to start with talking about the dual control system. This is something that probably most people don't know about in terms of how they think about their own sexual operating system. Can you speak a little bit to what is the dual control's mechanism and how does that affect whether we're into sex or not into sex, or feeling desirous and aroused or not feeling desirous and aroused? Emily Nagoski: Yes, absolutely. This is the fundamental hardware between our ears in the way our sexuality functions. It's a model developed at the Kinsey Institute starting in the late '90s, early 2000s, by Erick Janssen and John Bancroft, and it basically posits that sexuality works the way every other system in our central nervous system works. Which is a dual control mechanism. If there's a dual control mechanism, how many parts are there? Neil Sattin: Two. Emily Nagoski: There's two parts. Exactly, right? The first one is the sexual accelerator. And if the first part's is the accelerator or the gas pedal, the second part must be? Neil Sattin: The brakes. Emily Nagoski: Brake. Exactly. The accelerator is the part most of us are already sort of familiar with... It notices everything in the environment that it codes as sexually relevant. This is all the things that you're seeing and smelling and tasting and hearing and, crucially, imagining, that your brain codes as a sexually relevant stimulus, and it sends that turn on signal that activates arousal and desire. But at the same time that that's functioning, there is also a brake that is noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now, everything you see and hear, smell, touch, taste, or, crucially, imagine, that your brain codes as a potential threat, a reason not to be sexually active right now. And it sends the turn off signal. So your level of arousal or desire at any given moment is this balance of how many ons are turned on and how many offs are turned off. Sexual well-being is maximized, that is to say, sexual pleasure in the moment is maximized, when you're turning on all the ons and all of the brakes are turned off. And when I was talking about self-criticism and contempt for your own sexuality being a turn off, obviously, if you're judging your own sexuality, is that hitting the accelerator? Almost certainly not. That's one of the very common things that hits the brakes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And I think what is confusing is that it's common for us to idealize one and to completely ignore the other. Or, one thing that was really enlightening in reading about these, is that we come with our own set level for these things. So some of us could have an accelerator that's really sensitive and easy to turn on, whereas others may not. And that doesn't necessarily represent a problem that needs to be fixed. And same with the brakes. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that and why that... Why that's so. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, there, there are individual differences in the sensitivities of the brakes and the accelerator in each person's brain. As far as we can tell from the science so far, they seem to be pretty set. They're not as set as IQ, but we don't know of any specific interventions to change their sensitivity. Let's just assume they're like personality traits like introversion and extroversion, they are what they are. Most of us are heaped up around the middle. We're just sort of all about the same, but a handful of people, for example, will have really sensitive accelerators, and a person with a sensitive accelerator, vroom, right? That's a person who is easily activated, which can be great under the right circumstances and can be pretty dangerous under the wrong circumstances. If a person is experiencing a lot of negative effects, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, helplessness, repressed rage we've all got it, and they don't have good mechanisms in place for coping with that negative emotion - they may begin to use sex as an outlet, a way to avoid experiencing those negative emotions. Emily Nagoski: And that's where sexual risk taking and sexual compulsivity can come into play, in those folks who have higher sensitivity accelerators. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the folks, for example, who might have really sensitive brakes, where the least stray thought, stray fingernail, stray noise in the hallway can just shut everything right down. And those are the folks who struggle most with sexual dysfunction, desire disorders, desire differential in their relationship. For most of us though, it's not that our brakes are overly sensitive. It's that we have just a truck load of stuff hitting our brakes all the time and it's much more common. The usual party line about sexual issues is that, well, you should try adding more stuff to the gas pedal. Try role play, and lingerie, and toys, and porn, and fantasy, and all the things, and those are great and you should try them if you like them. Great. And most people when they're struggling with sexuality, it's not because there's too little stimulation to the accelerator, it's because there's too much stimulation to the brake, which is gonna be - some of it - is that self criticism and body shaming. Emily Nagoski: For some people, it's a trauma history. For some people, it's straight up stress. 80 to 90% of people find that stress and other mood and anxiety issues negatively impact their sexual desire. For some people, it can actually increase it, but that's a different story. And relationship issues, of course are the major factor in things that hit the brakes. Neil Sattin: What's a good way for someone listening right now to get a sense for themselves of what we're talking about and how it impacts them? Like how do I identify what my brakes are and what my accelerator items are? Emily Nagoski: Yeah, most people have a good sense - if they just sit down and think about it... I'm interested in sex when these things are happening and I am not at all interested and don't experience pleasure under these circumstances. You can start in a general way with just lists, like what are the things that stress me out that prevent me from being interested in sex? What are the relationship issues that get me stuck so that when I get in bed with my partner, I'm not just getting in bed with my partner, I'm getting in bed with this laundry list of crap, that's just like gunking up the pipes, and you gonna clean out the pipes before you're gonna be interested in sex. Another concrete specific way rather than just generically...if you could think about one really awesome sexual experience you've had, doesn't have to be the best one you ever had, just like a really great sexual experience. Consider what the context was that might have been hitting the accelerator and keeping the brakes off. So what was your own mental and physical state? What were your partner's characteristics? What were your relationship characteristics? What was the setting? Was it in person? Was it in public? Was it over skype? Was it texting and photos? Emily Nagoski: Was it in the closet at a stranger's house, at a party, against a wall of other people's coats? Or was it in your own bed with the door shut and the kids over at somebody else's house? What was the setting that worked? Other life circumstances is a really important factor. How stressed out and exhausted were you from work and impending nuclear holocaust? What was your overall stress level? And then my favorite relevant factor is that called ludic factors. Ludic related to the word ludicrous. It just means play, how curious and playful and fun could you be? What games were you playing with your partner that were really working for you? There's actually, if you go to my website, there's worksheets, the worksheets are in the book and you can also just download them for free, that walk you through these contexts. I recommend that you think through three great experiences and three not so great experiences, not three terrible sexual experiences just three like, "meh" kind of experiences and look for what wasn't working for you. And when you actually... It takes some time. But when you sit down and take the time to think through what contexts were really working for me. I don't know why that made that sound. Could you hear that? Neil Sattin: No, what did you hear? Emily Nagoski: Oh, sorry, my sister is texting me and the alert came on. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: Sorry. Neil Sattin: That's okay. Emily Nagoski: It distracted me. Let me go back. It takes a little time to sit and actually think through six different sexual experiences, but people really do have surprising insights. People who really feel like they know a lot about their own sexual functioning, when they sit down and think in this concrete, specific way, will notice things they never heard before. A friend of mine went through it and what she realized... She's in a long distance relationship, and when she actually did get together with her partner, what she noticed was that the expectation that, "Now that we're finally together, we should be having sex." That expectation, that sense of obligation, was absolutely the key to her shutting down her sexuality. And she only figured that out by thinking critically through the factors that were hitting the accelerators and hitting the brakes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And that's huge, you talk about that particular one like how you feel about whether you are or not having sex, or how you feel about whether or not you should want to have sex in this moment as being another really important factor in whether your accelerator's on and your brakes are out of the way, or your sexual car's coming to a screeching halt. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: I'm curious to know from, yeah, from your perspective. One thing you just mentioned was the people who do have a really light touch accelerator and the danger for those people that sex could become a compulsion if it's that's easy for them to get turned on and to potentially use it as a way to mitigate and cope with the stress and things that are going on in their lives, and in my experience with my clients, and people I talk to, and in my own experience as well, sometimes that those people tend to find themselves in relationships with people who do not have as light touch of an accelerator, and in fact often have quite the opposite. I'm wondering what do you do, and I think part of this is maybe in what you were just talking about with that, the way that you think about whether you should or shouldn't be having sex, but what do you do to give someone hope who is in a situation - and you describe in your book one of the amalgamated characters, someone named Olivia, a woman who it's really easy for her to get into the mood to have sex and she's with a partner named Patrick for whom it's not so easy. And how do you give a couple in that situation Some hope around shifting that dynamic in a way that, that feels positive for both people? Emily Nagoski: This actually touches on what has turned out to be one of the most important ideas in the book, which is the nature of desire itself, how desire is supposed to function in our bodies and our relationships. In the case of Olivia, who is the composite character with a sensitive accelerator, she represents about 15% of women who have pretty sensitive accelerators, it means that she also happens to be a person who, when she is stressed out, her interest in sex actually goes up, which is true for, again, about 10-20% of people. And there's not a gender differential on that one. And she's with a partner, as so many of these folks are, for whom the opposite is true. So if they're both stressed out at the same time, Patrick's interest in sex hits the floor and Olivia's hits the ceiling. And that's not in and of itself a problem, but if they start having opinions about which one of them is doing it wrong, that's when things can get really tricky. Because it's... If you don't have a judgement about who's right and who's wrong and you're just like, "Well, our brains are wired differently. That's how it is," And you can rationally negotiate a compromise, great. Emily Nagoski: But if you start feeling bitter and resentful towards your partner for either being too demanding or too withholding, and you're judging and shaming yourself for wanting too much and being too much, or you're judging and shaming yourself for not wanting enough and not being enough, that's when things get really sticky, which is why the "You are Normal." Mantra comes back over and over the book, You are normal, nobody's doing it wrong. Both people are right and healthy and fine. The emotional weight that we attach to different experiences of sexual desire is just a social construct that we're laying on top of it. You get to feel again, totally normal about the way you're experiencing desire. And the practical solution is just to negotiate. What are we gonna do about the fact that I would like to have the sexy sexes and you are not interested in having the sexy sexes right now? How about we compromise in some way that works for both of us, where you stay with me and put your hand over my heart while I masturbate to orgasm? That way you don't have to do anything you're not into and I get to have the connection and the sexual release. Emily Nagoski: How's that sound? If we can let go of our judgments of what sex is supposed to be and what desire is supposed to be, that's a perfectly reasonable compromise. That's a really helpful compromise. It's only not helpful compromise if you're like, "But it doesn't conform with my expectations about the aspirational culturally constructed ideal of what my sex life is supposed to be." Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so this is great because I'm wondering if you can suggest a good way to notice that in oneself. How do I know whether what I want is culturally constructed, or what I actually want, and what would be really important to have on some level? Emily Nagoski: Dude, I don't know. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: That's the million dollar question, right? I would say that the distinction we're thinking about here is not so much what I want, versus how I feel. The word that I use in the book, that comes from John Gottman's research is meta-emotions. There's how you feel. There's how your sexuality... And this is also language I came up with after I finished Come as You Are. I was traveling all around the country and I was talking to students all over, and a student raises her hand and says, "You say in the book, Emily, confidence and joy. Over and over, you use these words, confidence and joy. Can you tell us what you mean by confidence and joy?" And I was like, "No, I have no idea what those words actually mean." And I had to think about it for a long time. And I finally realized that confidence is knowing what is true, knowing that you have a sensitive accelerator and your partner doesn't, or you have a sensitive brake and your partner doesn't, knowing that the context that works for you is one that is really safe, and familiar, and calm, and quiet, whereas the context that works for your partner is one of novelty, and adventure, and risk. Emily Nagoski: And okay, now you know what's true. Joy is the hard part, and that's loving what is true. Even, as I say in the book, when it is not what you were taught, it was supposed to be true. Even if it's not what you wish were true. Boy, would things be simple if two partners always all the time wanted the same level of sex. Desire differential is the most common reason why people seek sex therapy. Desire differential is also really universal. There is no such thing as two people whose desire tracks the same day-to-day. Emily Nagoski: Sometimes you have a rough day and your partner doesn't, so you're not interested in sex and your partner is. Some days the opposite is true. There is no such thing as people with exactly the same desire all the time. Just being like, "Hey, that's cool." That's what's true. Fortunately, I also love my partner, and so, we're gonna work it out together. We're gonna have conversations that can be calm and loving and affectionate, because we understand what's true about ourselves, about our accelerator, about the context that work for us, and we love each other and the things that are true about our two different sexualities. There are no judgement, there's no shame, there's just accepting that we are two different people, and it's not just that people vary from each other, it's also that people change over time. When you're in a relationship that lasts over multiple years, you and your partner's sexualities are gonna change and they may not necessarily change along the same trajectories. Joy is loving what is true about both of your sexualities and the ways that they change, whether that feels comfortable and easy or not. Neil Sattin: And this conversation, I appreciate that you brought up the requirement to as much as possible have it in a loving way, because those desire differentials can create a lot of stress. And as you just mentioned, for most people, no matter where they are in terms of brakes and accelerator, I think somewhere between 80% and 90% of people, that stress it's going to turn the brakes on. Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Can you talk a little bit about this... How the stress that we're carrying around with us every day... What can we do about that? Why is it so important to do something about it, rather than just sweeping it under the rug or pretending it doesn't exist? Emily Nagoski: Right. Neil Sattin: And what's on the other side of doing something about it? Emily Nagoski: There's a whole lot of telling ourselves not to, in a lot of aspects of our lives. We tell ourselves not to feel that way about sexuality. We try to force ourselves to feel a different way than we actually feel. We fight against the truth and reality, and we do that with our stress too. We tell ourselves that we're supposed to experience, "No, I don't need to be stressed out about that." You try to tell yourself, "Relax, just relax." When your partner, if you're stressed out and your partner is like, "Why can't you just relax? Just relax." Is that helpful? Does that help? Does that make things better? Neil Sattin: No, right. Emily Nagoski: No, it doesn't make things better, right? No, obviously. What has to happen is, instead of trying to just like not be stressed out, you have to move in the direction of the stress, sink down into it, and allow your body to experience it. Stress is a physiological process. It's like digestion. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. And if we don't interfere with it, our bodies will move through that entire cycle in a healthy, normal way that doesn't interfere with our lives. But as human beings with giant prefrontal cortexes and massively social tendencies to wanna control our emotions in order to make other people feel good, we tend to keep the brakes on, on our stress in the same way they keep our brakes on, on our sexuality. And so, we're walking around with all these activated stress response cycles, stress is the adrenaline, and the cortisol, and the hypervigilance, and the muscle tension, and the digestion changes, and the cardiovascular changes, and like your whole body, and your immune system is suppressed. Emily Nagoski: Every body system is influenced by the fact that these stress response cycles have been activated. And if you just tell yourself not to feel it, those stress response cycles will stay spinning inside your body waiting to finish and they will wait forever. Most of us are walking around with decades worth of incomplete stress response cycles, just sitting like rocks somewhere in our body waiting for us to let them go. Fortunately, there's lots of research that tells us what the effective strategies are for completing the stress response cycle. For example, physical activity. This is the obvious one, because the stress response cycle is designed for us to survive threats like being chased by a lion. When you're being chased by a lion, what do you do? Neil Sattin: Right, you get the hell out of there. Emily Nagoski: You run. Yeah. Our bodies do not differentiate between stressors, so your body responds basically the same way to a lion as it does to your boss or to your partner shaming and guilting you about sex, right? It's basically the same physiological stress response. It turns out, dealing with the stress itself, the physiology in your body requires basically totally different things from dealing with the thing that caused the stress. There is the calm, rational planning and negotiating that you have to do with your partner and then there is the dealing with the physiological stress itself. Just because you've dealt with the stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress. Physical activity is the single most important thing that you can do - when people tell you that physical activity is good for you, that's for real-sy, every day, 20 minutes if you possibly can, literally any form of physical activity, even if it's just like jumping up and down in your bedroom, any form of physical activity is helpful. Emily Nagoski: We know that sleep is effective, creative self expression, writing and painting, music. We know that sleep is effective, did I say sleep already? Oh, and affection. So, calm, trusting, especially physical affection, but it doesn't have to be physical affection, it can just be the loving presence of another human is great. You know what's also great? The loving presence of a dog. You know what's also great? Loving presence of a God. If that's what makes sense for you. Whatever counts as a loving presence for you sitting and being with that presence helps to return your body to a state of calmness so that your body knows this is a safe place to live. I am safe right now. But it takes doing something for real, not just telling yourself. Neil Sattin: Right. And if you're doing that over and over, especially finding a way to regulate with another with your partner, then that brings about its own level of healing in terms of your right brain coming back online and your ability to operate from the parts of your prefrontal cortex that... Emily Nagoski: Right. To think critically, to be curious and creative, all of that comes back only when you have reduced the adrenaline and cortisol levels and reduce the threat level so that the creativity can expand instead of being so focused on just survival. Neil Sattin: Exactly. Just for your reference listening, if you want to learn more about healing trauma and ways modalities that can help with that we did have Peter Levine on the show, the creator of Somatic Experiencing, that was episode 29. So it's something for you to bookmark and listen to later, and he'll be coming back on the show as well. But somatic experiencing is just one. There are all kinds of modalities if you wanna work with a practitioner to help you... Emily Nagoski: Pat Ogden is another really key person in body based therapy. Pat Ogden and somatic... I forget what it's called. Pat Ogden is amazing and great, and does really, really good work around healing trauma through the body. What I love about body based strategies for dealing, not just with stress but with a trauma is that you don't ever have to have insight. You don't even necessarily have to think about whatever it is that caused the stress or the trauma. It's a different process. You can choose an insight process if you want to, but if you don't wanna go there, if you don't wanna think about it, sometimes you can release this shit from your body without ever having to think about the event that activated the stress. You can just deal with the stress itself without dealing with the event itself, especially if the event is in the past and there's nothing you can do about it now. Body based therapies are wonderfully gentle, indirect, tremendously effective strategy for helping to return your body to a safe state. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm, big recommend from me as well. Emily Nagoski: There's a chapter on stress and love, and the stress section is pretty much entirely based on the polyvagal theory and Peter Levine's work, somatic experiencing, and Pat Ogden's work in the body-based approach to stress. Neil Sattin: Great. Yeah, and if you wanna learn more about the polyvagal theory, which Emily just mentioned, check out our episode with Steve Porges, which is episode number 34. Emily Nagoski: And so you've just interviewed my entire shelf of reference books. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Basically. That's my goal, Emily. [chuckle] You shouldn't have sent me that photo of your bookshelf, and actually send me more 'cause I don't wanna run out of people. I'm curious if we can talk now about the... 'cause one of the concepts that you discussed that was so fascinating for me was how you broke apart the process of arousal and desire into these different systems in our brain, and there was the enjoying system, the expecting system, and the eagerness system. And I felt like taking it apart like that made it so much easier to understand in a way that's actually practical for people. Can we dive in and just give a little bit more information to our listeners about what I'm even talking about? Emily Nagoski: Yeah. When you read sort of mainstream popular science journalism about brain science, they'll refer to this thing, the pleasure centers of the brain. And if they do that, it's a pretty good cue that they either don't know what they're talking about or they're simplifying it in a way that's really unhelpful, because it's not just the pleasure center of the brain. And calling it the pleasure center is like calling your vulva the vagina, like there's so much more to it, and if we ignore the other parts, we're ignoring some fundamental aspects of how the thing works. So if we break it down, yes, there's the pleasure part, which is just the part of your brain that responds to whether or not stuff feels good, and that's a little more complicated and we can talk about the ways that your brain responds differently to different stimuli as pleasurable or not depending on the context. Should we do that now? Or should I wait? Neil Sattin: Sure. Yeah, let's... Emily Nagoski: Okay. Neil Sattin: And I'll bring us back. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, the pleasure piece of it is slightly complicated because the nucleus accumbens shell in your brain has an affective keyboard. Everybody's asleep now, sorry. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: So the deal is, if you're in a sort of a neutral mental state and somebody tickles you, meh. If you're already in a fun, flirty, sexy, positive, playful, trusting state of mind and your certain special someone tickles you, that even if tickling is not your favorite, in principle, like that could feel fun and lead to other things happening, right? 'Cause your brain interprets that stimulation as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure because you already feel safe, and trusting, and playful. But if you are pissed off at your partner and they tickle you, you wanna punch them in the face. It's exactly the same stimulation, right? The same tickling stimulation but the state of your mind is different, your brain state is different and so your brain interprets the sensation entirely different, not as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure, but as a potential threat to be avoided or even attacked. Neil Sattin: Right. Emily Nagoski: And the only thing that is different is your state of mind, so pleasure is not simple. Pleasure is sensitive to the context in which you're experiencing it which is why hot and heavy early on in the relationship, you're in the middle of making dinner and your certain special someone comes over and starts kissing on your neck or whatever. And your knees kinda gets off and you're like, "Oh, that's cool." And things happen. 10 years later, you're trying to make dinner and you've got kids waiting for food and screaming at you and you got 10 years of accumulated frustrations in your relationship. Your certain special someone comes over and kisses on your neck then. You're like, "I'm trying to... Get away from me. What are you doing?" And again, it's exactly the same stimulation, but because the context is different, you experience that sensation in a totally different way, and that is a normal way for us to experience sensations. Emily Nagoski: The problem is not the way we experience the sensation, the problem is that the context changed. And it's not that the context is broken, that's just life. There's always the solution, we don't have to change us in order to find a solution, we just notice what it is about the context that's hitting the brakes and making our brain interpret the sensation as something that makes you wanna smack the person in the face and change the context if you possibly can to something that makes you interpret this person's sensations as something pleasurable to be approached with curiosity. That's the pleasure component of it. The nucleus accumben shell, woohoo. The second part of this pleasure center is actually the desire part. Eagerness, I called it in the book. Kent Berridge, who's... Have you interviewed Kent Berridge? Neil Sattin: Not yet, no. Emily Nagoski: Oh my God, that's the next guy on my shelf. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: Kent Berridge or Morten Kringelbach. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: They're the two key authors on this batch of research that distinguishes between wanting and liking. We talked about what liking is and the ways that it's dependent on context. Wanting is moving toward, is the actual activation, the desire, approach piece of it, not just the liking of, like, "Woo!" Or "Gleh!" Right? The classic example, that I actually cut from the book, so this is a thing that you will not read in the book, just to differentiate between wanting and liking, in an experiment, they gave... I always imagine it as one of those beer hats where there's a bottle on one side and a bottle on the other side and straws going into your mouth, do you know what I mean? Neil Sattin: Uh-huh. Emily Nagoski: So they gave one of those to a rat, it's not really like that, but just imagine it's like that. And in one of the cans, there's sugar water, which is delicious to the rat, and in one of the cans with a straw going into the mouth, there's salt water with the salinity of ocean water. How does that taste? Neil Sattin: Salty. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, it's gross. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: It's just a really innately disgusting flavor, because it's a dangerous flavor, it will give you way too much sodium and make you sick. They teach the rat that certain bells are associated with the sugar water coming in. When they get the sugar bell, they get excited. "Yay, here comes the sugar." And when the salt bell comes on, they go, "Ah! - gaddigah - I don't want the salt." But then they give the rat a drug that reduces their salt level. Now, so this is an animal that has zero pleasurable experience with the salty water. It's gross, they don't like anything about it, but when you deplete their salt levels, they will go over to the salt bell and start pushing it and gnawing on it and trying... Be like, "Make this... " They want the salt desperately because you've depleted the... You have a sodium drive that makes you desperate for salts if you don't get it. If you don't have the right sodium levels, you can literally die. So their whole body is in this huge activated, "I want the salt." Though they have zero experience of liking the salt. Does that distinction make sense between wanting? Emily Nagoski: So pleasure, liking is the pleasure part, enjoying. And then there's eagerness, there's desire, there's moving toward and they're overlapping certainly, but they are not identical and it is really important that we distinguish it. And then the third component of this mechanism that we usually just call the pleasure center is associative learning, is basically what it is. When I do PowerPoint presentations, I represent it with a drooling bulldog because of Pavlov's dogs. He trained them to drool with a ring of the bell, all you do is you put food in front of the dog, it automatically starts drooling and you ring a bell. Food, bell, drool. Food, bell, drool. And eventually, you just ring the bell and that's all it takes to get the dog to start drooling. Does that mean that the dog wants to eat the bell? Neil Sattin: No, of course not. Emily Nagoski: Does it mean... Right, of course not. Of course not. Does it mean that the dog finds the bell delicious? Neil Sattin: No. Emily Nagoski: Of course, not, right? It just means that the bell has been made food-relevant. It's associated with food stimuli. So it's now a food-relevant stimulus. Our genital response, blood flow and all the rest of that, is the associative learning component where if you're presented with a sexually relevant stimulus, you will get genital response. This is your activating, this is a sexually relevant accelerator response. It turns out there is a not very relevant overlap, there's not much of an overlap, between what counts as sexually relevant stimulus and what is actually liked, particularly in heterosexual women, so that a person's body can respond to sexually relevant stimulus... In the research, it's almost always different kinds of porn, sometimes it's visual porn, sometimes it's like they're being read an audiobook of an erotic story, sometimes they're even watching bonobo chimpanzees copulating, right? And women's genitals will respond to this, not as much as to the human porn, but significantly above baseline. If their genitals are responding, does that mean they find the bonobo sex like they really want to have sex with the bonobos? Does that mean they like monkey sex? Neil Sattin: This is so important. This is like one of the things in your book that... Not about bonobos necessarily, but... [laughter] Neil Sattin: But this question of how does our genital response correlate to our actual desire, and this might be a great time to talk about non-concordance. Emily Nagoski: Right. And for a lot of people the answer is, it doesn't - particularly for women. There's about a 50% overlap between genital response, and perceived arousal, or subjective arousal in cisgender men. And about a 10% concordance overlap between genital response, and subjective arousal in heterosexual woman. One of the pieces of research that's come out since Come As You Are was published, is the distinction that this arousal non-concordance appears to be a factor really just in straight women. We have no idea why there's a difference sexual orientation, why there's a difference in gender. It doesn't matter why there's a gender difference. We do have this tendency, like is anybody who's sitting here and thinking right now, "Really, there's that much of an overlap for guys, what's the matter with men? There must be... I mean, that's so strange that they have so much concordance between their genital response and their subjective desire. What's going on with that?" No, everybody automatically thinks, "Really, women have 10% overlap. That's really - what's wrong with women?!" Emily Nagoski: That's the patriarchy, that's the androcentric model of sexual desire, arousal, and response that all of us got raised in, assuming that the way a man works is the way a woman is supposed to work. And the extent to which a woman differs from a man is the extent to which she is broken, and needs to be fixed. And that's just not true. When a person's genital response doesn't overlap with their perceived arousal, when their genitals are responding, and they're like, "Nope. Not doing it for me" - what that means is that they've been presented with a sexually relevant stimulus that they do not want or like, which we can only understand if we know that this pleasure center of the brain does have these three separate channels that interact, of sexual relevance, sexually pleasurable, and sexual desire. They're related to each other, but they don't necessarily overlap. And we live in a pretend... In a fucked up enough culture that we're presented with plenty of sexually relevant stimuli in contexts where we neither want nor like what is happening. Neil Sattin: Right. And I would think that another way of looking at the statistic for men, the 50% concordance, is that men have the potential to be victimized by their sexual... By their genital arousal, basically. Emily Nagoski: Yes. Yeah. This narrative shows up a lot in stories of sexual violence against people of every genital configuration. The typical model is a person with a vulva being sexually assaulted, and the perpetrator says, "Well, but you were wet. So obviously, you wanted it or liked it." I cannot tell you how many students have told me, "Oh my gosh, this explains that experience I had where I was like, "Eh, this isn't doing it for me," and my partner was like, "No, you're turned on. You're wet." As though a person's genital response tells us more about what they're experiencing than the person does. And the same thing happens when a person has a penis. If blood is flowing to their genitals, they've been taught that that's an indication of who they are. Like their whole identity is tied to that, and it certainly indicates that they must want or like what is happening. But no, it's a reflex. We would never tell someone, if they bit into a wormy old apple, "Well, your mouth watered when you bit into that wormy old apple, so you must have actually really wanted or liked it. We would never do that. When your doctor taps your patellar tendon and your knee kicks out, nobody is like, "But deep down though, you really wanted to kick your doctor." We don't make this assumption with any physiological reflex, except for genital response. And we do it no matter what a person's genitals are, and it perpetuates a lot of myths around sexual violence. Neil Sattin: Yeah. In fact, I loved your rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Which I can quote here. In the next edition, Emily thinks that Grey should say to Ana instead of... 'Cause he, right, he spanks her, and she gets wet, is what basically... Emily Nagoski: Yes. She consents to it. She doesn't want it. She doesn't like it. There is not a single word about pleasure. Her face hurts 'cause she's squirming so hard to get away. And then, Christian Grey, the spanker/hero/douche bag, puts his fingers in her vagina, finds that she is wet, and says to her, "Feel this, Anastasia. Your body is soaking just for me." Neil Sattin: Right. "See how much your body likes this." Emily Nagoski: "See how much your body likes this." Likes this. "See how much your body likes this, Anastasia." Neil Sattin: Yeah. So, you're... Emily Nagoski: And I wanted to say. Neil Sattin: Yeah? Emily Nagoski: I want the next person to say, "See how sexually relevant your body finds this. Which tells me very little about whether you want it or liked it." [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: Did you want it, like it? No? Double crap! Double crap is a thing they say a lot in Fifty Shades Grey. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: Let me say that I am a romance reader. I read it with an open mind. It wasn't for me. I value a lot of things the Fifty Shades did for opening up a conversation about erotica and sexuality for women, and it also sold many millions of copies and perpetuated this myth that genital response... 'Cause here's the really bad thing about the book, about this particular aspect of it, is that even though she, in an email, goes on to describe the feeling of being debased, degraded, and abused, still, because he said, "Your genitals responded. Feel how much you like this." She believes him instead of believing what her own internal experience was telling her. 'Cause isn't that what we all get taught, is to believe other people's opinions about our bodies, what they are and what they should be, more than we trust and believe what our bodies are trying to tell us? Neil Sattin: Yeah and that theme runs throughout your book, of learning how to shed the messages that you've been given and the ideas about how things should be, and learning to more deeply trust what comes out of you, what you know about yourself, and what does give you pleasure and what doesn't, and to bring that to the conversation. Emily Nagoski: And I'm remembering the question you asked about how do we tell what's socially constructed and what's what you actually want and like. And sort of almost everything is socially constructed. Nobody is born with any innate sexually relevant stimuli other than just plain old genital sensations. Like nobody is born being turned on by cars, or high-heeled shoes, or smoking cigarettes, or power play. That's all learned from culture. That doesn't mean that it's not real for you and it's what you really do want, it just means that that is what you learned, it's what your culture taught you. And some of those things are just sexually relevant. Like your brain has been taught that those are sexually relevant stimuli. And some of them are things that, in the right context, really do give you gigantic pleasure, and you really do desire them in the right context, in one that facilitates pleasure. Somehow my go-to example of this has been if you fantasize about being cornered by five strangers who just want you sexually and so they take you. Emily Nagoski: If you're alone, safe in your bed, masturbating to that fantasy, in reality, the context is you are 100% safe and in control of that. Whereas if, in reality, five strangers cornered you and wanted to have you sexually, that would be physically unsafe, your stress response would kick in, you would only want to get away, it wouldn't actually be sexy. And the difference is the context. You can, if you wanna create that fantasy for yourself, you can ask five friends to participate in the role play, and communicate really clearly about what everybody's limits are. But that's, again, a really different context from five actual strangers. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so it's important to revisit for a moment... When you were describing context at the beginning, you were talking about all the factors that shape context. It's not just like, "Oh, well, the context is the bedroom's messy and the kids are knocking at the door, so I'm gonna send the kids to Grandma's and clean the bedroom." There's more than just the physical context, there's all of that... Emily Nagoski: Yeah. The stuff in the here and now tends to be the easy stuff to fix, the easy stuff to address. I heard someone joking at a romance writers' conference, "Characters in romance novels have sex when they're being chased and shot at by the Mafia, and I can't have sex if there's still a dish in the sink." [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: That's the easy stuff. The difficult stuff is when what you're bringing to bed and bringing to the context is years of shame, or years of judgement and blame, or relationship conflict, or a trauma history, or body shame, or gendered roles and ideas about how sex is supposed to work and if it's not working that way then it's working wrong. Those are longer term projects. And most of them can be undone through simple, daily mindfulness practices. It does take time. In the same way that it took time to get you to this place, it takes time to shift you out of that place and into a different, more neutral, self-accepting, partner-accepting place. But noticing the gunk, as I call it, the gunk that gets in the pipes, and making a decision to consider the possibility that you could live without the gunk and maybe clean it out is the way to clear up the channel, so that when you get to bed, the context is not one that's bringing with it all of this historical shit. Neil Sattin: Yes. Emily Nagoski: I've been swearing a lot. Neil Sattin: You have! Emily Nagoski: I don't know if that's okay. Sorry. Neil Sattin: This is an explicit show. It's totally fine. Emily Nagoski: Oh good. Neil Sattin: I'm wondering if, before we go, since you just brought up mindfulness, if you could offer just a simple approach to how you've seen mindfulness work. What's something that someone can do that, over time, will effect that great kind of change? Emily Nagoski: The simplest version is simply... So when you're in the process of a sexual experience, you will notice that maybe body-critical thoughts, or sexuality-critical thoughts, or partner-critical thoughts will enter your mind. You just notice them and are like, "Oh, hey! There's that critical thought. I'm gonna have that critical thought literally any other time that I want. For the moment, I'm gonna put it in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And another critical thought will float through your mind, and you'll be like, "Oh, hey look! There's another critical thought. I'm just temporarily, I'm gonna put that in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And with practice, over and over, we become really skilled at noticing those emotions before they dig deep, and even reducing the frequency and intensity with which they float into our minds. It makes a tremendous... There's a huge body of research. Another person for you to interview, Lori Brotto, does all this research on the impact of mindfulness on women's sexual well-being, especially women who are in recovery from gynecological cancers, and breast cancers, and other diseases, the impact it has on their relationships and their sexuality, and how to use mindfulness and sex education as a way to maximize sexual well-being in the recovery process. Neil Sattin: Amazing. Amazing. And I loved how you brought that in your book as well, not only in how you just described, but also in talking about how important it is to see the ways that you do judge yourself and you're critical of yourself, and how all of those responses are turning your stress inward. You're creating more stress for yourself, which is putting the brakes on for yourself and gets you in that negative feedback loop. Versus... Emily Nagoski: And it takes... Neil Sattin: Being able to heal it through your mindfulness. Yeah? Go ahead. Emily Nagoski: It requires the decision to prioritize turning off the brakes. You have to decide that it matters to you and to your relationship that you access your own sexual well-being. The couples who... What we learn in John Gottman's research is that the couples who sustain strong sexual connections over multiple decades are not couples who, hot and heavy, can't wait to stuff their tongue down each other's throat all the time. They are the couples who, one, have a strong foundation of friendship for their relationship, and two, prioritize sex. So they decide that it matters for their relationship that they set aside this half hour when they stop dealing with the kids, and work, and family, and friends, and Game of Thrones, and all of the other things that they could be paying attention to. They stop all that and they just pay attention to each other in this, frankly, pretty silly, fun way that humans do, because it matters for their relationship that they have that time to play, and touch, and connect. It's not the case for every couple that connecting in this way matters for their relationship, but the couples who sustain strong sexual connections, it's what they do. They make the decision that it matters that they cultivate sexual pleasure and curiosity. Neil Sattin: Well, you're blessing us with a great way to end our conversation, while at the same time reminding me of all the things that we could have talked about. I just wanna say... Emily Nagoski: We could talk about responsive desire, oh... [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah, oh my goodness. Well... Emily Nagoski: Read chapter seven. That's all. Just read chapter seven. They know enough for that to make sense now. Neil Sattin: Do you have time to give a quick blip on that before we go? Emily Nagoski: Okay, really quick. Yes. Neil Sattin: Thank goodness. Emily Nagoski: The standard party line about desire is that it's spontaneous. It just sort of comes out of the... You're walking down the street. You're eating lunch and... Erika Moen, who is the cartoonist who illustrated Come as You Are, she draws this as a lightning bolt to the genitals. Just kaboom! You just want the sexes. And so you go to your partner with, "I have a kaboom. Can I have the sex? Uh?" And your partner's like... [vocalization] Emily Nagoski: So, that is, absolutely, one healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, is to have it just be... Feel spontaneous and kinda out of the blue. And there is another, totally healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, it's called responsive desire. See, spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure. Responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure, bearing in mind that pleasure is sensitive to context and not simple. The way this works, there's really sort of two narratives of how it works. One is the sort of cuddle, snuggle narrative, where you're just sitting on the couch watching Netflix and your partner comes over and starts touching you, and your body's like, "Ah, that feels really nice." Emily Nagoski: And your partner starts doing other, more interesting things, and you turn and maybe start kissing on your partner, and your brain receives all this stimulation, it's like, "Ah, that feels really nice." And you turn and do maybe some more things, and there's a hand that goes up a shirt, and your brain's like, "That's... You know what, how about the sexy times?" Right? It's kaboom that emerges in response to pleasure. The cuddle, snuggle model. And then there's the Liz Lemon, "Let's do this," model, Where you dump the toys in the toybox, it's 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, you'd said that you would. "You, me, and the red underwear, here we go. Let's just get in the bed and go." [laughter] Emily Nagoski: And you put your body in the bed, and you put your skin against your partner's skin, and you remember that you like this. You like this person. You enjoy these sensations. And you allow your body to remember that this is fun and good. That's responsive desire. And all three of those are 100% normal... Neil Sattin: Normal. Emily Nagoski: Healthy ways. Right? That's... Many people feel that if you have to set appointments, if you don't already crave it when you get in bed, then there's something wrong. Nope. That's how it works sometimes. Most people will experience all of these different kinds of desire in their life. Some people never experience spontaneous desire. Some people have no experience of responsive desire. What matters is that you just notice that there are differences, and there are changes, and they are all 100% normal. And you can maximize responsive desire. The main way to maximize responsive desire is not to judge or shame it, but simply allow it. You allow desire to emerge from pleasure. My three-word... It rhymes and everything, so you can remember it and tell your friends, is, "Pleasure is the measure." Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. It's not how much you crave it, it's not how often you do it, or where you do it, or what you do, or how many people, or even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you like the sex you are having. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Emily Nagoski: There's this sex therapist in New Jersey named Christine Hyde, who uses this party metaphor, she says to her clients, "If you're invited to a party by your best friend, of course you say yes 'cause it's your best friend and it's a party. But then as the date approaches, you start thinking, 'Ugh! There's gonna be all this traffic. We gotta find childcare. Do I really wanna put on pants on a Friday?'" [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: But like, you go because you said you would and it's your best friend and it's a party and what happens? Most of the time you have a good time at the party. If you are having fun at the party, you are doing it right. Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And just as a quick addendum because I love how you suggest this in your book and it's something we've talked about on the show before, sometimes in that context taking sex off the table or making it okay to... That this isn't leading to sex, this is just about exploring pleasure that can, I think... That's one of those things that takes the brakes off. Yeah. Emily Nagoski: It reduces the performance demand. Yes. Absolutely. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So... Emily Nagoski: I have actually started recommending that couples, when they... If they set an appointment, they set a date of like Saturday at 3:00, you and me, we're gonna do something, they set very firm limits on what they're allowed to do. Sometimes, it means not actually touching each other. Sometimes distance is... And this is the reason why I find both Esther Perel's model and John Gottman's model to be helpful, because people vary a lot in what works for them. Some people crave the closeness in order to facilitate desire and some people really long to have distance to have a bridge to cross to move toward their partner. People just have different strategies in the same way our brakes and gas are different. So figuring out what to do in that chunk of time that you set aside for you and your partner to do something or other that feels good, is gonna be different for you versus from everybody else that you know. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So take the time to get to know yourself and what you might actually want in that circumstance. Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Right. Neil Sattin: Oh, so many things, and yet we have run out of time. Emily Nagoski, it is so great to chat with you. I think your book, Come As You Are, is really required reading for people to just come to understand themselves as sexual beings in a totally new, actually based on science and not based on fable, way. And especially if you're a woman, especially if you're in a relationship with a woman, and even if you're a man and not in a relationship with a woman, there's just so much in here that I think will help you... Neil Sattin: And non-binary people too. Neil Sattin: Yes. And anyone, wherever you are on the spectrum, this will help you come to understand yourself and how that all works within you. I'm so appreciative of your contribution through writing the book. And if people wanna find out more about you, where can they find you on the interwebs? Emily Nagoski: The main place to go is my website, which is just emilynagoski.com. Neil Sattin: Great. And we will have a link to that, along with a detailed show guide, if you visit neilsattin.com/normal, though I'm tempted to make it Pleasure is the Measure, but neilsattin.com/normal, or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Emily Nagoski, thanks so much. Hope to have you back again sometime! Emily Nagoski: Thank you so much! Resources: Check out Emily Nagoski's website Read Emily’s book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform Your Sex Life www.neilsattin.com/normal Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Emily Nagoski Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out  

Neil Gaiman's CORALINE was adapted into a film by Henry Selick and Laika studios in 2008... and why doesn't anyone talk about it? Erika Moen (OhJoySexToy.com! ErikaMoen.com!), DEAR friend of the show, joins us to discuss her time working on the film (!!!) and how its coming-of-age story connected to her own coming-of-adulthood. Plus, we talk about Coraline's AMAZING art style and visuals, compare it to Gaiman's original novel, and wonder why Wybie exists. We hope you enjoy this fun episode as much as we did! Let us know all your Coraline thoughts on Twitter at @TTYLshow. And if you have time, please leave a rating and review, and subscribe, won't you?

Darling? Whatever shall we do at our coming trip to the Bondage Bed & Breakfast? A married woman gets busted by her husband for camming. She doesn't consider it cheating, and it gets her so, so horny. How can she reconcile with her husband and still get her camming rocks off? On the magnum, Dan brings back our regular guest, Erika Moen to go over a HEAVY sex toy you all should add to your arsenal. And, a man's sister is a former prison guard who started dating one of the inmates. He doesn't seem like the best person, and the caller is very worried about what will happens we he gets out. Yikes. This episode is brought to you by Blinkist: over 2,000 of the best-selling nonfiction books, transformed into powerful packs you can read or listen to in just 15 minutes. Go to to start your free trial today. This podcast is also brought to you by . Click on the microphone and enter "Savage" for postage and a digital scale. This episode is also brought to you by Audible. Get a free 30-day trial at .

Darling? Whatever shall we do at our coming trip to the Bondage Bed & Breakfast? A married woman gets busted by her husband for camming. She doesn't consider it cheating, and it gets her so, so horny. How can she reconcile with her husband and still get her camming rocks off? On the magnum, Dan brings back our regular guest, Erika Moen to go over a HEAVY sex toy you all should add to your arsenal. And, a man's sister is a former prison guard who started dating one of the inmates. He doesn't seem like the best person, and the caller is very worried about what will happens we he gets out. Yikes. This episode is brought to you by Blinkist: over 2,000 of the best-selling nonfiction books, transformed into powerful packs you can read or listen to in just 15 minutes. Go to to start your free trial today. This podcast is also brought to you by . Click on the microphone and enter "Savage" for postage and a digital scale. This episode is also brought to you by Audible. Get a free 30-day trial at .

A man gets turned on by the sight of his girlfriend smoking. The problem is, she doesn't smoke. We get our monthly sex toy review by the delightful (and knowledgable) Erika Moen. This week: a big ole vibrator called The Doxy. On the Magnum, Dan interviews Dr. Terri Conley in a "What You Got?" about the relative happiness of monogamous vs. non-monogamous couples. And, how to break up with a dumb, religious bigot. Quick answer: Immediately. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by , the subscription streaming service that delivers the very best comedy. Sign up for one month free by going to Seeso.com and entering the promo code Savage. This episode is brought to you by NatureBox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get 50% off your first order by visiting

A man gets turned on by the sight of his girlfriend smoking. The problem is, she doesn't smoke. We get our monthly sex toy review by the delightful (and knowledgable) Erika Moen. This week: a big ole vibrator called The Doxy. On the Magnum, Dan interviews Dr. Terri Conley in a "What You Got?" about the relative happiness of monogamous vs. non-monogamous couples. And, how to break up with a dumb, religious bigot. Quick answer: Immediately. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by , the subscription streaming service that delivers the very best comedy. Sign up for one month free by going to Seeso.com and entering the promo code Savage. This episode is brought to you by NatureBox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get 50% off your first order by visiting

"Boyfriend, boyfriend, there's a lump in your testicle!" Should the caller deliver this news bluntly or keep her discovery to herself? A mother's 9-year old son wants to be a stripper when he grows up. How can this mom advise him and keep her cool? Erika Moen from "Oh Joy Sex Toy!" is on for our monthly Sex Toy Review to talk about a whizzy little toy that will make you happy, and won't bankrupt you in the process. Her boyfriend's uncle just served Hamburger Helper. It's the first time she's met the man. Should she politely decline, or choke it down and smile wanly? Dan has some strategies. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by NatureBox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get 50% off your first order by visiting Today's Lovecast is also brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 20% off your first order when you go to . Today's episode is also brought to you by Rocket Mortgage from Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage brings the mortgage process into the twenty-first century with a fast, easy and completely online process. Check out Rocket Mortgage today at .

"Boyfriend, boyfriend, there's a lump in your testicle!" Should the caller deliver this news bluntly or keep her discovery to herself? A mother's 9-year old son wants to be a stripper when he grows up. How can this mom advise him and keep her cool? Erika Moen from "Oh Joy Sex Toy!" is on for our monthly Sex Toy Review to talk about a whizzy little toy that will make you happy, and won't bankrupt you in the process. Her boyfriend's uncle just served Hamburger Helper. It's the first time she's met the man. Should she politely decline, or choke it down and smile wanly? Dan has some strategies. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by NatureBox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get 50% off your first order by visiting Today's Lovecast is also brought to you by MeUndies.com: High quality, super-comfortable, good looking undies. Get 20% off your first order when you go to . Today's episode is also brought to you by Rocket Mortgage from Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage brings the mortgage process into the twenty-first century with a fast, easy and completely online process. Check out Rocket Mortgage today at .

A poly woman is very happy with her much older dom. But ever since her mother saw some photos of her daughter all trussed up and naked, the boyfriend is totally not invited to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Is it the age difference? How can our caller convince her mother that her lover is a good guy?   A hand-wringing, feminist, good-hearted man wants to try rape-play with his wife. How can he delicately, tenderly suggest he pretend to rape her. You know, if she wants him to.   Welcome to our first installment of the Monthly New Sex Toy Review. (We'll think of a clever name for it later.) Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy" is on to tell us about a piece of furniture you JUST MIGHT NEED.   A woman is about to get married. Her bestie just confessed that she is having an affair with a married man. How could she?! The caller was going to ask her to be her bridesmaid, but now that she has besmirched the sanctity of marriage, well... huff! She's having second thoughts! Dan schools her real good.   206-302-2064   This episode is also brought to you by . They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl, and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% discount and free web domain registration.   This episode of the Lovecast is brought to you by Winc- the wine club that helps you to choose wine that suits your taste and ships it right to your door. For $20 off your first order, and complimentary shipping, go to .   The Savage Lovecast sponsored by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price -- because everyone deserves a great night's sleep.  Get $50 off any mattress purchase by visiting  and enter the promo code savagelove.

A poly woman is very happy with her much older dom. But ever since her mother saw some photos of her daughter all trussed up and naked, the boyfriend is totally not invited to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Is it the age difference? How can our caller convince her mother that her lover is a good guy?   A hand-wringing, feminist, good-hearted man wants to try rape-play with his wife. How can he delicately, tenderly suggest he pretend to rape her. You know, if she wants him to.   Welcome to our first installment of the Monthly New Sex Toy Review. (We'll think of a clever name for it later.) Erika Moen of "Oh Joy Sex Toy" is on to tell us about a piece of furniture you JUST MIGHT NEED.   A woman is about to get married. Her bestie just confessed that she is having an affair with a married man. How could she?! The caller was going to ask her to be her bridesmaid, but now that she has besmirched the sanctity of marriage, well... huff! She's having second thoughts! Dan schools her real good.   206-302-2064   This episode is also brought to you by . They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl, and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% discount and free web domain registration.   This episode of the Lovecast is brought to you by Winc- the wine club that helps you to choose wine that suits your taste and ships it right to your door. For $20 off your first order, and complimentary shipping, go to .   The Savage Lovecast sponsored by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price -- because everyone deserves a great night's sleep.  Get $50 off any mattress purchase by visiting  and enter the promo code savagelove.

This episode is sponsored by HotelsByDay. Use promo code SGR5off to save 5%! Alex was the first person to ever share an Oh Joy Sex Toy comic with me. I was immediately enamored. Erika Moen's weekly sex education comic is full of so many wonderful topics, reviews, and done with such an approachable spirit. I've shared TONS of her stuff on social media because who doesn't love a comic about watersports featuring cute wolves or a fat-bodied review of the latest vibrator? In this episode, Erika and I talk about how she got started as an artistic sex educator, and roll around in some of her favorite issues and guest artists. We talk about visiting a porn set, why reviewing sex toys is so damn difficult, how sometimes you have to sacrifice nuance to get a conversation started, and pole dancing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook. It's true. Oh! And Dawn is on Instagram. Resources from this episode StripSearch, the reality TV show Erika was on, can be found here. The water sports comic on Oh Joy Sex Toy that Dawn loved. About Erika Moen Erika Moen is the co-writer and artist behind the creation of the strips. She has been doing webcomics since she was 15 years old and has been a full-time, professional crtoonist and comic book creator at Helioscope Studio in Portland, OR since she was 25. She is a cisgender, white, able-bodied, queer lady who was born June, 1983 and has been happily married to Matthew Nolan since October 2008. Her work has been published by Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, Villard, BOOM! Studios, Penny Arcade and Scholastic, among others. You can check out all her amazingness at OhJoySexToy.com, on Twitter @erikamoen, on Instagram, and support all her work at Patreon. Listen and subscribe to Sex Gets Real Listen and subscribe on iTunes Check us out on Stitcher Don't forget about I Heart Radio's Spreaker Pop over to Google Play Use the player at the top of this page. Now available on Spotify. Search for "sex gets real". Find the Sex Gets Real channel on IHeartRadio. Hearing from you is the best Contact form: Click here (and it's anonymous)

Whoops sorry for getting busy again, but we have a backlog of episodes recorded. Today's episode was recorded a few months ago, so there are some audio footnotes at the end. In Episode 20 we talk about our experiences publishing porn with our special guest Erika Moen! Relevant topics: Oh Joy Sex Toy! Patreon's new NSFW policies

Erika Moen of Oh Joy Sex Toy and Dan Berry get together to talk about the importance of sex education, where money comes from and getting your sex comic into bookshops. 

STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel is a post-apocalyptic novel with a twist - After the world ends, what good parts of humanity would survive? Friend of the show Erika Moen (OhJoySexToy.com! erikamoen.com) joins us for our first ever book review episode, and it's a great one! We talk about Mandel's beautiful themes, the exciting, deeply connected plot, and talk about what we'd collect if the world ends. Plus, we answer official book discussion questions! SURVIVAL IS INSUFFICIENT.

In this episode we cover a schism in digital media that traditional publishing has unwittingly played into. Baldur explains what it is that makes people the most angry at him. Moonshots versus Infrastructure. Digital media Reaganomics Brute force effort versus building automation Baldur agrees with a Nazi (von Braun). Changes require infrastructure. Trickle-down economics don’t build roads. Without open source and open standards we’d still be stuck in the CD-ROM model. Paradigm clashes are messy. Touchpress. Editions at Play. Creative people doing clever things. Reviewing the story, not the innovation. On not releasing the APIs. Preventing people from copying or building on Edition at Play. The danger of building one-off infrastructure replacements. Disposable scaffolding versus roads and waterworks. Praise for Inkle. Praise for FailBetter/FundBetter. Hybrid models are possible if infrastructure is the end goal. Baldur’s problem with Readium. What does this dichotomy mean for publishers? What is a publisher in print? What is a publisher in digital? End-to-end integration is very hard to pull off in digital. Choose a focus: author or audiences. Audience aggregators versus production aggregators. Publishers act as if authors were completely fungible. Foundation labour in publishing is brittle. Using Unbound as a case study: a social capital converter. Trade publishers don’t have that clarity yet. The two potential models. Authors, unfortunately, need social capital. The obligatory Craig Mod reference. Create a clear value proposition for either the author or the audience. Patreon as premium LiveJournal communities. Why it is big and getting bigger. Baldur forgot Erika Moen’s name despite reading her work for over a decade. Patreon as a pure audience aggregator that’s agnostic about the content format. Disconnecting the business model from the production model results in creative freedom. Bolting book retail model on web artefacts. Subscription requires a clear and concrete value proposition. How do you get to the point where you’re covering your costs? Patreon only works if you do like Dave Sim did with Cerebus: deliver on your promises, consistently and reliably. (All of Dave Sim’s other weirdnesses are decidedly optional.) The ‘Print is Great’ worldview hinders all digital efforts. How Baldur could fund the purchase of the cheapest iPad Mini. ‘Toxic’ is relative. Amazon’s asymmetric bet with the Kindle. Print is viable in the long term, just not interesting to Baldur. Warning! Contains ums, aws, and wobbly arguments. Play the episode in your browserYour browser does not support the audio element. Download episode nine Subscribe to the podcast feed directly Or on iTunes And, finally, on Overcast

What could be better than a candid conversation about comic porn, coupled with an extremely uncomfortable Brad Guigar? All of that plus an earful of this week's guest, that's what. Surviving Creativity is pleased to welcome to the show our favorite Erotic Artist and the purveyor of all things sex-positive, from ohjoysextoy.com, Erika Moen! WARNING: NSFW Unless you're some sort of independent contractor or self-employed entrepreneur who makes your own rules, works wherever you want, and can listen to whatever you please. NOBODY IS THE BOSS OF YOU!

The Guests: Greg Kirkorian http://gregariousstreak.com/ https://www.facebook.com/plumpbundt/ https://twitter.com/plumpbundt Madeleine Lloyd-Davies http://sothisallseemshorrible.tumblr.com/ The Books: “Classical Mythology” lectures of Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph. D through “The Great Courses” http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/classical-mythology.html, “On the Move” by Oliver Sacks, Kate Beaton, “Oh Joy Sex Toy” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan http://www.ohjoysextoy.com/, Tom of Finland, “Dune” by Frank Herbert, “Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person’d God” by John Donne, “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon, “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, Romanian Folktales, Harry Bush, “Massive” by Anne Ishii, Leah Wishnia, "Graphic Women" by Hillary Chute, “About Writing” by Samuel R. Delany The Music: “Buzzcut Season” by Lorde and “Sexual Healing” by My Bubba Actionable Takeaway: Explore something that hitherto-now you have not. Ask yourself why you read the things you read. Polari, Gay Dialect link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/07/28/polari_the_gay_dialect_can_be_heard_in_this_great_short_film_putting_on.html Jia's Jezebel: http://jezebel.com/damn-youre-not-reading-any-books-by-white-men-this-yea-1751094468 Cortez “Burn the Ships” #inkandworm #rfb #allbodiesaresexy #queereroticcomics #flamecon2016 #language #queernessnormalized #writingishard #greekmythology #greekmythologyisAMAZING #writersneedtherapists #writeaterriblenovel #writetheworstromancenovel #riverwriting #writethecrapout #wordswithpictures #benice #inheritedbeliefs #thosekids #digitalexpansion #onlinecommunities #littlegirlsneedcomics #womenincomics #anonymity #holisticsexuality #shock #burntheships #womentrendingincomics #madeupstoriesarethebest #spidersolitaire #cleanyourspace #rituals

For the month of December, Sean and Derek are back to discuss three very different, very distinct, webcomics. They begin with Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Otertag's Strong Female Protagonist, a title that has been going strong since 2012. As described by its creators, the story concerns "the adventures of a young middle-class American with super-strength, invincibility, and a crippling sense of social injustice." Although that may roughly encapsulate the premise, the webcomic is much more sophisticated than that. In fact, the guys spend a great deal of time discussing the creators' ambitions with the story, both in terms of the art and regarding its subject matter. Derek wonders if Mulligan, especially in the fifth chapter, may be trying to juggle too much at one time, making his narrative almost top-heavy with its intended messages. Sean disagrees, but he does see the philosophical ambitions embedded in the text. And it is on the topic of philosophy that the guys segue into their next title, Corey Mohler's Existential Comics. This webcomic is notable for two reasons: it's the first gag-based, done-in-one kind of comic that the guys have ever discussed on the webcomics series, and it's as funny as hell! It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the funniest titles ever discussed on The Comics Alternative, webcomics or otherwise. Mohler uses actual philosophers themselves, and the entire history of philosophical thought, as the grist for his absurd mill. In Existential Comics you'll find the ancient Greeks playing Texas hold'em, Franz Kafka at the DMV, Diogenes encountering a commie-killing Abraham Lincoln, Albert Camus thwarting Rudolf Carnap's barfly pick-up efforts, Søren Kierkegaard at a rave, a zombie God (animated by Arthur Schopenhauer) attacking Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir hosting her own cooking show, and a wide variety of philosophers trying to play Dungeons and Dragons. Finally, Derek and Sean wrap up with a look at Bucko, a short webcomic by Jeff Parker and Erika Moen that ran from 2011 to 2012. As the guys discuss, part of the fun of reading this title is seeing how Parker and Moen kept trying to outdo themselves with unlikely plot twists and characterization that built do an almost chaotic crescendo. Sean, however, isn't a fan of the story's ending, which he sees as too convenient and too predictably Scooby-Doo-like. Still, you could read Bucko -- along with Existential Comics -- as a freewheeling antidote to those holiday blues.

MAGIC MIKE! Continuing last week's stripper theme, Sandra and webcomic artist Erika Moen interview male strippers from Portland's new male strip club, Stag. On stage at Portland's Dante's, hilarity ensues. 

LAP DANCES! Recorded live at Portland's Dante's, it's a packed show. FIRST, enjoy stand-up comedy by Matt Kirshen. THEN comedian Kira Soltanovich joins for a rousing debate about whether strippers are like comedians. THEN, artist, cartoonist and guest co-host Erika Moen (OJST) and Sandra share their very different fascinations with strip clubs. FINALLY, lady strippers Hazel and The Baroness teach Erika and Sandra how to work in a strip club, give a lap dance and as a customer, how to behave. Listen in to Part 2 -MALE STRIPPERS!  

  BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! It’s been a while, but we talk about out ECCC experience and all the books we bought: Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue Deconnick, Oh Joy, Sex Toy by Erika Moen, The Legend of Bold Riley by Leia Weathington & … Continue reading →

Emily discusses 50 Shades of Grey, Secretary, and the portrayal of BDSM in the mainstream with Oh Joy Sex Toy creator Erika Moen. Emily's book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life is out in the USA on 3 March 2015, and in the UK on 9 April 2015. Already love Come As You Are? Rate and review the show in iTunes, even if you don't use iTunes!

If you or someone you love is considering coming out over Thanksgiving, you simply must listen to the Magnum version of the show. A lesbian's father is a religious leader, who begged her to stay in that deep, dark closet or he might lose his "job." He's gonna have a rough holiday this year. Stay tuned.  Dan welcomes Erika Moen, graphic artist and creator of "Oh Joy, Sex Toy," a must-read comic.  And, Dan issues a public service announcement for all you pee drinkers out there.  And so much more.  206-201-2720 The Savage Lovecast is sponsored by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price -- because everyone deserves a great night's sleep.  Get $50 off any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com/savage and enter the promo code savage.  This podcast is also brought to you by ExtremeRestraints.com. Go buy something, and be sure to enter SAVAGE2014 at checkout. This episode is also brought to you by Naturebox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get a free sample, by visiting Naturebox.com/savage

If you or someone you love is considering coming out over Thanksgiving, you simply must listen to the Magnum version of the show. A lesbian's father is a religious leader, who begged her to stay in that deep, dark closet or he might lose his "job." He's gonna have a rough holiday this year. Stay tuned.  Dan welcomes Erika Moen, graphic artist and creator of "Oh Joy, Sex Toy," a must-read comic.  And, Dan issues a public service announcement for all you pee drinkers out there.  And so much more.  206-201-2720 The Savage Lovecast is sponsored by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price -- because everyone deserves a great night's sleep.  Get $50 off any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com/savage and enter the promo code savage.  This podcast is also brought to you by ExtremeRestraints.com. Go buy something, and be sure to enter SAVAGE2014 at checkout. This episode is also brought to you by Naturebox: the subscription service dedicated to smarter snacking. Get a free sample, by visiting Naturebox.com/savage

THE ORGASMATRON! Continuing onward with the creator of the adorable webcomic “Oh Joy Sex Toy,” Erika Moen and comedian Amy Miller, Sandra ponders sex toys, workshops and the sexier side of Portland. TOPICS: Bad Dragon Toys, Clitoral Slumber, Sybian, Erika's First Sex Ed Workshop, Deep-throating, She Bop, Palates, Strip Clubs, Hypothesis, Culture of Excess, Courtney Love & Kurt Cobain, Being Vanilla, Horny All the Time, Ball Kicking, Sex Communities of PDX, Theories, 3nder Threesome App, So Many Holes, Eiffel Tower, Sex Party Decisions, Club Sesso vs Kinky Salon, Webcomic Advice, BDSM Stories and Vaginal Plugs.

WHAT’S UNDER THE BLANKET? Sandra flies to Portland to podcast live with the creator of the wildly popular webcomic “Oh Joy Sex Toy,” Erika Moen. BUT FIRST, comedian Amy Miller spills it about dating, sex and love in Portland. TOPICS: Casual Sex, Dating Younger Men, “No Worries,” Being a Sex Educator vs Cartoonist, Dar, Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo, The OJST Origin Story, The Dick & Vagina Crowd, Battle Hardened C*nt, Hitachi vs Doxy, Spontaneous Orgasms, Minna Limon vs Je Joue MiMi, 5 Mystery Sex Toys, Delivering “The Buisness,” Nipple Antennae, Dalek Roleplay, Bath House, Swinger Club, Butt Stuff and the toy that leaves Erika speechless.

Lucy Bellwood is a Portland cartoonist who started her working life with a crowdfunding campaign. She's a member of Periscope Studio, a loosely affiliated working space and collective of which I've interviewed other members. True Believer was the outcome of her Kickstarter project, and she's built a career from there. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Swiftly.com, a new service of 99designs.com, gets small design jobs done fast. For just $19, they match your small design job with a professional graphic designer and complete it in less than one hour. All designers handpicked from the talented community at 99designs. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our indie ads. CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: Bee, an issue tracker and timesheet app for the Mac. A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon, a look at objects that will define the 21st century. Thanks also to patrons Ben Werdmuller, Alex Bond, and Garry Pugh for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Jony Ive in an interview with the New York Times: "We all see the same physical object. Something happens between what we objectively see and what we perceive it to be. That's the definition of a designer – trying to somehow articulate what contributes to the way we see the object." In Tom the Dancing Bug, Pablo Picasso is told to stick to his popular clown paintings. Lucy's mentor during her formative pre-college years was Eben Matthews. Erika Moen's mentor was Lin Lucas. Erika appeared on Strip Search, a reality web TV show created by the folks behind Penny Arcade. The monthly comics newspaper Funny Times was an awesome window for decades for me into all the cartoons published independently, in alt weeklies, and beyond. It's where I first read Alison Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For, long before her Bechdel Test had become a popular trope. Savannah College of Art and Design offers a sequential art program that Lucy considered attending. She went to Reed College instead. We also talk about the Independent Publishing Resource Center's Certificate Program in Comics and Independent Publishing and her attendance at the Center for Cartoon Studies summer session. Here is my obligatory link to Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" essay. He and I had a great talk for this podcast in February 2014, of which there is a complete transcript. You can find Lucy's talks on cartooning in audio form on SoundCloud.

Dylan Meconis is a prolific cartoonist who lives in Portland, Oregon. She constantly labors away at a mix between her solo work and projects in collaboration with others, including writing the script for Scott Kurtz's popular PvP webcomic. She is part of Periscope Studio, which we've talked about in previous podcasts. We talk about building a career and learning from mistakes while keeping all the plates spinning. Sponsors New Relic helps everyone's software work better, and if you're in any business today, you're in the software business. Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs ecommerce sites and email programs. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what's happening right now. Visit newrelic.com/disruptors to find out more. Creative VIP is the exclusive membership club for creative professionals, writers, and designers. Membership includes discounts on world-class online services and apps, and access to a growing library of graphics, vectors, icons and themes. You can also get a regular goodie bag on your doorstep. Save 25% on your membership, forever, by visiting http://creativevip.net/disrupt What do Lil Wayne, Black Girls CODE, and Humans of New York have in common? They've all raised funds on Indiegogo! Indiegogo has hosted over 100,000 campaigns since 2008 and distributes millions of dollars every week around the globe. There is no application process or waiting period associated with launching a campaign; individuals can start raising funds immediately. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees. Show notes Dylan's books include Outfoxed, Bite Me! (a vampire farce); Family Man, a graphic novel being told pages at a time, and then collected into volumes; and Danse Macabre 2.0. My friend Alison Hallett recommended Dylan's work and the Bone series by Jeff Smith. Dylan mentioned the artist Ivan Bilibin as an inspiration for Outfoxed. Portland has a ton of creative people of all sorts, and cartoonists and comic-book artists rank high among them. Both Dark Horse Comics and Oni Press are based there. Erika Moen, a Periscope Studio participant, was on this show in August 2013. Bill Amend (Foxtrot) became internet famous. Dylan's Kickstarter campaign was successful, but she hit a bunch of snags we discuss. Her wife, Katie Lane, is a lawyer who advises freelancers at Work Made for Hire on making good decisions about their work and rights! Katie performs legal work for cartoonist Matt Bors, a previous guest on this podcast. I and Dylan listed off an oodle of conferences, which include Gallifrey One, Rose City Comic Con, Emerald City Comicon, PAX, the XOXO conference, MaxFunCon, and JoCo Cruise Crazy. Erika Moen is using Patreon to fund each cartoon she creates.

Erika Moen has been drawing comics since she was a teenager, and found online success with DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary while working full-time jobs. Fortunately, she was laid off, and moved into new chapters of her life, which included an appearance on the Web reality show Strip Search (from Penny Arcade) and the launch this year of Oh Joy Sex Toy, a regularly appearing comic that reviews and recommends adult paraphernalia. We talk about her career and how the Oh Joy project has consumed all of her time and some of her husband's. (This episode contains frank discussions of sex toys and sexuality, a few obscenities, and is marked explicit on iTunes.) On Twitter, find Erika at @ErikaMoen and her comic at @OhJoySexToy.

On this episode of Word Balloon, Greg Rucka returns for the start pf a new 2 part Rucka debrief. In part one, we talk about Rucka's latest novel ALPHA from Mulholland Books. Greg introduces a new action hero Jad Bell, and his challenge is a terrorist threat in a huge theme park with personal and professional stakes on the line. Greg talks about his world building here and creating this new hero who differs in many ways from Greg's past comic and novel heroes. (part 2 will cover Greg's comic doings)Jeff Parker is back to talk about the  transition form his run on Thunderbolts to the title becoming Dark Avengers with T-Bolt artists Kev Walker and Declan Shalvey . Parker's run on the Red Hulk continues with Haunted Hulk, featuring Red exploring the monster corner of the Marvel U. We also talk about Bucko Jeff and Erika Moen's webcomic, soon to be released in a September trade collection by Dark Horse Comics. Jeff's been busy with a diverse run of short works too like his work with Colleen Coover in CREEPY #8, an upcoming DC digital Batman story with Gabe Hardman, and a short feature in the BOOM! Planet Of The Apes Annual in August.Finally comic artist Sal Abbinanti is back to promote a live panel he'll be doing to benefit Chicago Public Radio this weekend. The subject: Have Hollywood and TV drastically changed the mythologies behind Superhero origins?

This week we welcome the team behind the webcomic Bucko to the show: Jeff Parker and Erika Moen! We discuss the often-raucous work environment at Periscope Studios, just how accurately Bucko depicts Portland, just what comics Juggalos are looking for these days, what Erika would most like to do if she was a guy, whether Bucko’s luck is going to change and much, much more! Plus, Chris and Matt answer a sexy question about Captain America!

Episode 26 ran so long we had to break it into two parts. Join us now for Part 1, as Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester discuss Siege, Dark Avengers, Lex Luthor, Flashpoint and Hot Pursuit, Joe Staton, Don Heck, and the webcomics Bucko by Jeff Parker and Erika Moen and Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. There's also several minutes of high-concept story-pitching but we promise we tried to make it as painless as possible. We hope you enjoy it, and thanks for listening!

Reviews: The Bulletproof Coffin #1, Joker's Asylum: The Riddler One-Shot, Serenity: Float Out One-ShotJimmy was at Heroes Con in North Carolin and got his interview on big time! He chatted with Erika Moen, Ben Templesmith, Ben McCool, Ming Doyle, Francesco Francavilla, Mike Maihack, Kevin Colden, Jeremy Bastian and Kirby Krackle!We also throw in one more interview with Lisa Wood (Thought Bubble) left over from MCM Expo. Put your seatbelts on because it's a long one! Great interviews with amazing cartoonists so it's totally worth it. News includes: Torchwood in the U.S., a Torchwood comic, Matt Kindt's 3 Story movie deal, Joe Quesada promoted, Thundercats animated series, Grant Morrison's new TV show and more!