Deviants

We’re told that freedom is the goal: more choice, more autonomy, more ways to build a life that actually fits us.   But going off-script can also come with a cost. What about everything we leave behind?   In this episode, Nyla and Cole and ask what happens when breaking free from inherited rules leaves us with too many choices, too few anchors, and the exhausting responsibility of designing every...

The older we get, the more we’re supposed to know about love. We know our attachment styles, our patterns, our needs, our boundaries and our dealbreakers. We learn from heartbreak. We get wiser. But can we become so wise about love that we make it harder to fall into? In this episode of Deviants, Nyla and Cole reopen one of humanity’s oldest cases: what is love, and how much can we ever really kno...

Ten years ago, Feeld launched as a home for people exploring relationships, sexuality and desire beyond the mainstream. A decade later, what can the ways we use the "dating app for the curious" tell us about how culture itself has changed? In this episode of Deviants , Nyla and Cole sit down with Alexandra Kilpatrick, Feeld’s Head of Research and a digital anthropologist , to look back at ten year...

When Fox&Badge created Shakti Rising , an immersive event inspired by Ancient India, they hoped to create a celebration of South Asian culture that brought together music, sensuality, spirituality, art and ritual. But before the event had even taken place, it sparked a difficult debate: can we meaningfully celebrate cultures that aren't our own, or does cultural appreciation inevitably risk be...

Most people hear the words rope bondage and picture something extreme, painful, or intimidating. Sophia Rose has spent over a decade proving that assumption wrong. In this episode we sit down with London-based BDSM practitioner and rope bondage specialist Sophia Rose — founder of Venus Hour — to explore what actually happens when you slow everything down. We get into what Shibari is and where it c...

Most of us were never taught how to design a relationship. We inherited a template, followed the script, and hoped for the best. Ally Iseman has spent over a decade helping people do something different — actually decide what kind of relationship they want, and build toward it intentionally. As a relationship coach, erotic lifestyle consultant and founder of Passport to Pleasure, she works with co...

We tend to picture dominance a certain way. A powerful man. A compliant woman. The script writes itself. But what happens when that script is flipped? In our season finale, we're joined by Dr Ruthless — doctoral researcher, lifestyle Dominant, and someone who has spent years holding power that most people assume belongs to men. Together we explore what female dominance actually looks like, why so...

When most people hear kink, they think extreme, risky… maybe even a bit broken. But what if most kink isn't really about pain, or even sex? In this episode, we’re joined by Tim Richardson, House Dom at Killing Kittens, to explore what actually happens inside the world of kink, and why it might be less about extremes and more about power, trust, and the relief of letting go. We get into myths vs re...

What happens when the word that once set you free starts telling you how to behave? POC. Queer. Divorced. Childless. Child-free. Single mother. Co-parent. Labels can build belonging and give language to lived experience, but they also come preloaded with expectations. In this episode, Nyla and Cole explore how labels shape how others treat us — and how we begin to internalise them. When does ident...

In a world where political disagreement can feel like living in completely different realities, curiosity is becoming a lost skill. What happens when we stop trying to win conversations and start trying to understand them? Drawing on Cole’s “News Swap” experiment with his conservative brother, Nyla and Cole unpack how algorithms, outrage, and purity tests are quietly eroding our ability to stay co...

Is AI replacing human intimacy? Or is it merely exposing how lonely and connection-starved we already are? At the centre of the episode is an extraordinary conversation with K, an AI researcher who formed intimate relationships with multiple AI companions. His experiences brought him new insight, relational complexity, and eventually a psychotic episode. His story challenges easy assumptions about...

We inherit more than habits and beliefs. We inherit emotional scripts. In this episode, Nyla and Cole explore how our emotional inheritance shapes the unwritten rules we live and love by: what’s considered attractive, what feels risky to express, and which parts of ourselves we learn to keep hidden to stay safe or accepted. They unpack how desire, fear, and conditioning intertwine and what happens...

What if the people society shames for wanting “too much” actually have something to teach us about honesty, boundaries, and self-trust? In this episode, Nyla and Cole unpack what ethical non-monogamy - and those who practice it - reveal about communication, desire, and emotional responsibility. This isn’t an argument for one relationship structure over another, but a bold look at what happens when...

What if the most meaningful love in your life isn’t romantic at all? In this episode, Nyla and Cole question why romantic partnership sits at the centre of everything and what we lose when friendship is treated as secondary. From the loneliness epidemic to relationship anarchy and platonic soulmates, they explore what happens when we de-centre “the one” and start valuing the relationships that act...

Dropping December 17! Should we romance our friends just like we do our significant others? What can we learn from so-called 'ethical sluts'? What if the sexiest things about us are the things we're terrified of? These are just a few of the questions Nyla and Cole tackle as they explore what it means to be a cultural deviant: to question the systems, the stories, and the identities that shape us,...