On this week’s live recording of the podcast Emma’s joined by the founder of The Stack World, Sharmadean Reid, ahead of the publication of her new book, New Methods for Women.

True to form, this book is the culmination of everything Sharmadean’s learned from over 10 years of healing and self-development work, laying out her tried and tested approaches to dealing with all of the most important things in life. From setting boundaries to defining what you want in life, to questioning and rewriting the stories you tell yourself about yourself, it is rich with insights and learnings.

The topic of sex and relationships is not one Sharmadean has ever talked about publicly before, so think of this conversation as a mega exclusive as we hear her explain how we can apply the methods laid out in her new book to the way we think about, and approach, sex and dating.

You can purchase tickets to the event here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

On this week’s episode we’re talking about men. Specifically, masculinity, male sexuality and the myths surrounding it.

To that end, Emma was joined by Men’s Dating, Relationship & Intimacy Coach, David Chambers, and the Director of Facilitation at Beyond Equality, an organisation that is rethinking masculinity and engaging men and boys in the gender equality conversation, Ben Hurst.

From the impact of Andrew Tate and why his messaging has become so insidious, to the ways in which hit tv show, Baby Reindeer, highlighted how men often feel unable to talk about sexual abuse and harassment and the reasons behind that, to Ben and David’s own relationship to sex growing up and the impact growing up in the church had on their respective feelings of sexual shame, we covered a lot in this discussion.

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did.

The next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast is on June 19th and will see us turn our attention to men once again as we discuss what a positive notion of masculinity looks like today and how shedding reductive gender stereotypes can help us all have a better relationship to sex, intimacy and relationships.

You can purchase tickets to the event here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

On this episode of the podcast, Emma sits down with porn performer, director, editor and producer, Vex Ashley, to find out how she went from cam-girl to running her own independent porn platform, and why she considers sex such an interesting and important topic for us to discuss.

After rejecting being demoted to ‘muse’ while at art school and then getting naked online as a cam girl, Vex started up the independent porn platform called Four Chambers back in 2013 in order to expand the idea of what sex on film could do, be and say.

The platform explores the intersection between sex, psychology, technology, art history and well everything in between and Vex is both behind and in front of the camera, something she sees as key to the way she works.

"I'm pretty hardline on this", she told us previously, “if you're making money off of asking people to fuck on film, you should yourself have fucked on film.”

Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

So we’ve all heard of attachment styles right?

Attachment theory tells us that the emotional attachments we form with our primary caregivers in infancy can influence our interpersonal relationships later in life.

Whether we’re anxious, secure, avoidant or disorganised, our attachment style can have a pretty big impact on how we show up in our romantic relationships.

Since attachment styles have of late been getting a lot of airtime on social media and we wanted to understand more about the science behind the theory and delve a little deeper into the research underpinning the internet’s favourite relationship theory.

To help us do just, Emma was joined in the podcast this week by psychotherapist and author of ‘Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love’, Jessica Baum.

You can take the attachment style quiz here; find out more about Jessica's work here and buy her brilliant book here.

Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

In this episode, Emma sits down with writer and author, Elise Loehnen, to discuss her best-selling new book, On Our Best Behaviour: The Price Women Pay to be Good.

Together they unpack the web of myths and cultural expectations that prop up patriarchy and keep women chasing an ideal of perfection that is neither achievable nor really desirable.

"Women," Loehnen explains, "'have been trained for goodness. Men, meanwhile, have been trained for power.'

Elise is the former chief content officer of Gwyneth Paltrow’s company Goop, where she oversaw its blog, newsletter, book imprint and podcast as well as its Netflix documentary series, “The Goop Lab.”

In 2020, Loehen decided to step down from her position with the company and On Our Best Behaviour is her firstly solely by-lined book. She has ghostwritten 12 other titles.

Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

What does the number of hours women spend doing housework have to do with the orgasm gap?!

According to bestselling author and the founder of the Everyday sexism campaign, Laura Bates, a lot.

In this episode, Emma sits down with Laura to discuss the systemic ways in which gender inequality remains entrenched in our society - from the social pressure on women to deprioritise their pleasure, to the routinisation of casual sexism, to the rise of extremist, misogynistic ideologies.

But it is not all doom and gloom, they end the discussion looking at the reasons for staying hopeful and what we can all do to fix the system, not the women.

Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

In this episode, Emma sits down with award-winning comedian and best-selling author, Sara Pascoe, to discuss the topic of her recent book, 'Sex, Power, Money'.

Together they explore how capitalism shows up in the bedroom, how money shapes modern day relationship dynamics... and why some women still want men to buy them dinner; why there remains so much stigma around those who work in the sex industry and why Sara is still is still afraid of men.

Did writing the book help her overcome her own sexism towards men? Listen to find out.

Book tickets to the next live recording of the Sex Talks podcast here.

And subscribe to the Sex Talks Substack here.

*TW: This episode discusses eating disorders and sexual assault.*

"If your experience of pleasure happens in your body, but you're in a body that you hate.... how are you supposed to access pleasure? You have to pick whether you're going to punish your body forever or if you're going to forgive it."

In this episode of the podcast, Emma is joined by her (former) sex therapist, Aleks Trkulija, to chat through some of the key issues they covered in the therapy room, including:

• Should you have sex when you don't want to?
• How do body image issues affect sexual function and desire?
• Why does shame play such a prominent role in sex?
• What are the most important things we should be unlearning when it comes to our relationship to sex?
• What is a pleasure journal?!
• And how can we improve the relationship we have with our bodies?

If you are affected by any of the themes discussed in this podcast Samaritans are open 24/7 for anyone who needs to talk. You can visit some Samaritans branches in person. Samaritans also have a Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123 (7pm–11pm every day).

116 123 (freephone)

jo@samaritans.org

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