AGECRAFT After Dark

Send us Fan Mail This week I sat down with my oldest, most annoyingly-always-right friend, Mike Dressel — writer, plant dad, t-shirt auteur, and the reason I've seen approximately 400 things I wouldn't have otherwise seen. (He's almost always right. It's exhausting.) The man also accidentally coined what is objectively the greatest band name of all time, which you'll have...

Send us Fan Mail You know that thing where a fitness instructor grabs your knee without asking? Yeah, we're done with that. Sofia Engelman — owner of Brooklyn's Queer Body Pilates and genuinely one of the most thoughtful humans working in movement today — joins me to talk about what consent actually looks like in a Pilates class, why the word "burn" is doing a lot of dirty work...

Send us Fan Mail Surprise! The menopause industrial complex would like to pretend queer people don't go through menopause. So author, witch, activist, and certified gap-closer Lasara Firefox Allen did what any reasonable neurodivergent genderqueer person would do — if you can't find it, make it. They wrote the book, built the course, started the cohort, and showed up on this podcast to t...

Send us Fan Mail What do haunted linen, Victorian hair art, and the courage to blow up your entire life have in common? This episode, that's what. Julia is joined by Genevieve Manion — amateur Victorian historian, actual witch, host of My Victorian Nightmare , and we have extremely strong opinions about where dead people's hair does and does not belong. Spoiler: not in your sweater. Not...

Send us Fan Mail Mark Price is back, and we’re talking about everything from nervous system regulation to identity unraveling to why doing less might actually be the most radical thing you can do right now. We cover somatic work, Vedic meditation, the art of not spiraling during a stressful email exchange, and how to reclaim your time, attention, and sanity from systems that profit off your dysreg...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I’m joined by my dear friend and esthetician Jason Moyer for a conversation about midlife reinvention, non-binary identity, and what happens when your creative self kicks the door back open and says, “hi, remember me?” We get into turning 50 and somehow feeling more like yourself, the magical world of smut, good sleep, and nice d*cks, and why liberation makes some...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s guest is Zoë Bean , tattooer, artist, and general curator of beautiful oddities in South Orange, New Jersey. She co-owns Keepsake Studios and Keepsake Collectables with her partner, Sweetie, blending tattoos, antiques, and pressed botanicals into something entirely her own. She’s also the artist behind my alligator-and-bird back piece. We talk about our Baba Yaga vibes, th...

Send us Fan Mail Monique Cupid and Dixie Lincoln-Nichols are menopausal women who met up during the pandemic to talk about work for a project. Without fail, at every weekly meeting, the conversation drifted to menopause, the symptoms each of them was experiencing, and the frustrations they felt about the lack of support, resources, equity, and community. Together, they formed Life in the Pause , w...

Send us Fan Mail Lately, as we have gotten older and our preferences have changed, we have been wondering, "What is fun?" Robin Gelfenbien, the self-proclaimed Ambassador of Fun, is the perfect person to answer that question. Right out of college, Robin was chosen out of thousands of people to drive the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, and her experience provided excellent fodder for her acclai...

Send us Fan Mail Katie Fogarty will make you feel like turning 50 is the best thing that could ever happen to you. She is the host of A Certain Age , an age-positive podcast that helps you live your best evolving midlife—loud and proud. She is also the creator of the Age Out Loud movement, a platform which aims to spotlight as many stories of midlife awesomeness as possible. On top of all that, sh...

Send us Fan Mail How does a child of deaf adults who grew up in a tin shed with no running water or electricity witness her father commit a violent crime and then grow up to be the joyful owner of a comedy venue? Kambri Crews will tell you how! Author of the acclaimed New York Times best selling book Burn Down the Ground and sole owner and operator of Q.E.D. which was voted #1 comedy club in NYC b...

Send us Fan Mail We chose this episode with Dr. Rachel Rubin as our final encore of the year because she is the person who has given us the most practical, valuable, and easily shareable information to help women with their genitourinary functions as they age. Dr. Rubin is a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist who dropped so much knowledge and helpful information into one conv...

Send us Fan Mail For our first encore episode, we chose the inspiring pair of Michelle and Joan MacDonald. Not only are they glorious examples of what a healthy body can achieve after midlife, they seem to have an enviable mother-daughter bond that is beautiful to witness. These women broke the internet after Michelle, a body builder and transformation coach , guided her then 70-year-old mother th...

Send us Fan Mail Meghann Koppele Duffy is a cofounder of the Neuro Studio, a premier education and movement company helping people living with neurological conditions move better, and teaching movement professionals the best cutting edge techniques to work with people living with Neurological Conditions. Meghann is a fast-talking, zero BS practitioner who has been called the Larry David of Pilates...

Send us Fan Mail Germany-based comedian Abigail Paul says that co-host Ellie is her oldest friend. Not her most elderly friend, but the friend she has known the longest. She met co-host Julia a few years later, making all three of them VERY ELDERLY/OLD FRIENDS. That should entice you to listen to this episode, because richness of history makes for juicy conversation. Abigail moved to Germany as a...

Send us Fan Mail Blaire Postman is a comedian who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and then embraced it as a super-power. She created a solo show called Lady ADHD: Hilariously Mind Blowing Observations from a Hyper-Insightful Brain. Due to a current medication shortage, we got to interview Blaire ten days into "going commando", and we talked about emotional dysregulation, song-stimmin...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Kimberly Mangla is a reproductive psychiatrist who works collaboratively with the obstetrics department at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC. She is involved in the teaching and supervision of psychotherapy and medication management during pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. She also happens treat Julia's Adult ADHD, and in honor of ADHD Awareness Month, we asked her ALL of the...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Maria Uloko is fired up, and we are right there with her. As the first ever Black female Urology student at her university, she has been trailblazing for the entirety of her career. Dr. Uloko specializes in comprehensive sexual health which includes the medical and surgical management of ALL genders. She is considered a world leader in chronic pelvic pain and vulvar conditions...

Send us Fan Mail Rachel E. Gross is an award-winning science journalist who wrote an incredible book called Vagina Obscura which was a finalist for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Go ahead and be impressed, but do not be intimidated. Rachel will enthrall you with stories of outlandish treatments for ailments that plague people with female reproductive systems, includin...

Send us Fan Mail Leoh Blooms is a queer, fluid, and nonbinary-trans trauma-informed mentor and Pro Dom. Everything they do in their practice focuses on intimacy, mental health, gender, sex, and practical self-care. They help clients aged 21 and up to create lives they don't need to hide from by offering various levels of support in a power dynamic format, using kink for fun and as a healing m...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a professor of Neural Science and Psychology and author of two incredible books, Good Anxiety and Healthy Brain, Happy Life . Her TED talk, The Brain-Changing Benefits of Exercise , has more than 60 million views, making it the 2nd most viewed TED talk of 2018. In spite of our awe, we managed to pick her fancy brain about many things, like how hormonal changes...

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Aiesha Turman does so many things and she does them with JOY. She is the kind of teacher that students keep in touch with for the rest of their lives, which is a rare and special thing. We totally get the appeal, because we had the best time talking to her about Reiki, Afrofuturism, literature, her work on the incredible award-winning documentary Crip Camp , and the difference...

Send us Fan Mail Singlehood is not a broken state that requires fixing. This is the core message of our guest, Shani Silver, who deleted her dating apps in 2019 and has been infinitely happier ever since. Shani reminds us that dating apps are a for-profit industry that stand to benefit from keeping you single rather than helping you find love, and they often deplete your self worth and mental heal...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever heard of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) also known as "Tapping"? Sarah Louise Lilley became an EFT Practitioner after her husband's stroke, and she is here to tell us more about that life-changing day, to explain EFT, and dispel any misconceptions you might have about it. If you're looking for a simple tool that can help reframe negative mindse...

Send us Fan Mail Jamie Phillips is a mensch. A seasoned nonprofit professional, she is grateful to have had the opportunity to provide services to uplift immigrants, refugees, isolated older adults, returning citizens, people who are unhoused, those experiencing mental health challenges, and those recovering from addiction. She was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer five months into the pand...