LOVERS by Shan

Dr. Keeonna Harris was 14 when she got pregnant, and before her son turned one, his father, Jason Espinoza, was starting a 22-year prison sentence. For the next two decades she drove up and down California so her kids would know their dad, the story at the center of her memoir Mainline Mama. Jason came home after 20 years and now works inside prisons as a counselor with the Amity Foundation. Jerem...

Tony Gaskins got his start because a friend told him he was the biggest player she'd ever known. Today he tells millions of women to wait until marriage, and he's upfront that the message comes straight out of a life he wouldn't repeat. What actually protects people when it comes to sex: rules or education? Tony makes the case that most people are never taught how to vet a partner, so waiting is t...

Sabrina Zohar has built a career helping people see the patterns they learned before they could name them, and in this conversation she turns that lens on her own twenties. At 24, she met a 36-year-old man three blocks from her apartment who opened her up sexually in ways nobody had before. It was also where she learned what self-abandonment looks like: saying yes to things (including his one cond...

Shaun Ross was the first professional male model with albinism, and in this conversation he tells Shan about the breakup he refuses to call a breakup, because he was never in the room for it. Two hours into an 11-hour flight home from Europe, he watched his partner leave on the home camera, and he later learned that plenty of people had known how his partner felt (everyone except him). Shan explai...

I'm answering your comments on Via G's episode. Via G is a New Orleans creator (yes, the baby bangs) who spent her twenties moving from one 18-month relationship to the next, and the last one looked perfect on paper: he cooked, he could match her financially, and he carried the fatherly energy of a man who already knew how everything should be done. Her body figured it out before she did. Her cycl...

Via G is a New Orleans creator (yes, the baby bangs) who spent her twenties moving from one 18-month relationship to the next, and the last one looked perfect on paper: he cooked, he could match her financially, and he carried the fatherly energy of a man who already knew how everything should be done. Her body figured it out before she did. Her cycle unraveled over the year they were together, an...

I'm answering your comments on Kendrick Sampson choosing freedom over romance, and you did not agree. When Kendrick Sampson (the actor you know from Insecure and How to Get Away with Murder, and the activist behind BLD PWR) sat down with me and said he cares about freedom more than romance, I had a feeling some of you would feel seen and some of you would feel personally called out, and the commen...

Kendrick Sampson (founder of the racial justice nonprofit BLD PWR, actor best known as Nathan in Insecure and Quincy Jones in Michael Jackson's biopic) sits down with Shan to talk about loving widely. Kendrick grew up in a house where nobody said "I love you" after his parents divorced, so love turned into something you did instead of something you said. Love is choosing someone else's needs over...

Every couple of years, after a stretch that tested us, Jared and I climb onto the roof in the same outfit and talk honestly about what it did to our relationship. We did it in 2022 and again in 2024, and the second time a lot of people watched two exhausted parents be imperfect and decided that was the verdict on the whole thing. We're doing it anyway, because the hard years reach your love life w...

Brandi and Lawrence aren't a couple. He's a gay man, she's a lesbian, and they were best friends first, until they decided, in their twenties, to build a family together on purpose, with a legal parental agreement in place before they ever tried to conceive. They walk Shan through what that intentionality actually looked like. But underneath the logistics is the part nobody warned either of them a...

Drs. John and Julie Schwartz Gottman have followed 3,000 couples, some of them for twenty years, second by second, and in this conversation Shan brings them something that research was never designed to answer: what happens to a generation that has decided love isn't available to them, and has built community around that belief instead?  Julie's answer is that those groups are writing each ot...

Kamie Crawford (former co-host of MTV's Catfish: The TV Show, now host of Relationsht*) sits down with Shan to unpack what actually keeps a catfishing scheme alive long after the story stops adding up.  The conversation centers on Troi, who spent years believing he was in an email and phone relationship with a woman named Belly. His brother's boo, Tatiana, introduced him to her sister, Belly....

In this deeply personal episode presented by Bumble, singer Mario opens up about the profound impact of unresolved trauma stemming from his relationship with his mother. He shares how this pain shaped his early behavior towards women, leading to manipulation and broken connections. Mario takes us on his journey of self-reflection, healing, and ultimately embracing his inner feminine energy, a proc...

We've been on a short break the past two weeks, so we're revisiting one of our favorites: Lena Waithe on why she won't have sex with someone unless she can already picture what happens after, and why some of her deepest connections have never been physical at all. New episodes of LOVERS are back August 19. In this episode of LOVERS, I sit down with Emmy-winning writer, producer, and actress Lena W...

We're on a short break the next two weeks, so we're revisiting one of our favorites: Cree Summer on losing (and finding again) her sex drive after 50, and why emotional safety made all the difference. New episodes of LOVERS are back August 19. In this episode, I sit down with the legendary Cree Summer to talk about her journey through love, loss, and rediscovery in her 50s. Cree opens up about los...

#AD This episode is sponsored by Daré Bioscience. DARE to PLAY™ Sildenafil Cream is a compounded drug. It is not FDA-approved. This product has not been reviewed by FDA for safety or efficacy. It is manufactured in a 503B outsourcing facility under pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). Shan sits down with four women to talk about the low libido nobody prepares you for: the 26-year-old...

Naomi Sharon is an R&B singer-songwriter, the first woman signed to Drake's OVO Sound label, and the voice behind Obsidian — an album she wrote, she says, while stuck in a loop she didn't yet have a name for. Her new single is "No Sleep in Paradise," and it turns out to be a more accurate self-portrait than she realized when she wrote it. This conversation starts with that song title and follows i...

Tanerélle is a singer-songwriter whose voice sits somewhere between neo-soul and quiet revelation, with singles like feels like love and Nothing Without You building a devoted audience around the specific ache of loving someone more than they love you back. In this episode, she and Shan trace the song feels like love from its origin — a late-night phone call with an ex that felt like home until Ta...

There are three forms of intimacy every relationship runs on — and most couples only know two of them. Emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, and the one nobody has named yet: social intimacy, which is the degree to which your partner actively represents, claims, and advocates for you in the rooms and relationships that matter. Not just privately, when it's easy, but publicly, when it costs someth...

Ericka Hart (she/they) is a sex educator, author, and breast cancer survivor who has spent their career arguing that pleasure isn't a luxury — it's a right that's been systematically withheld from Black, brown, queer, and disabled bodies. In this conversation, Erica and Shan trace the throughline from childhood activism that was never a choice, to being expelled from Peace Corps for loving who the...

Thanks to Stasis for sponsoring this video. Hold your stimulant to a higher standard — go to https://yt.link/iD6LFRL and use code LOVERS for 15% off your first order. I'm sharing this in my personal capacity. Always speak with your own healthcare provider about what's right for you. #ad #StasisPartner *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is no...

Jared Brady and Jonathan Singletary sit down to talk about fatherhood, inheritance, and the difference between intention and what's already in the body. Jonathan Singletary is a Los Angeles-based musician, songwriter, and founder of Piano & Prayer, a musical meditation and community gathering practice featured in the LA Times that has grown into a meaningful spiritual presence for thousands of peo...

https://yt.link/quMC2B9 → thank you for the sponsor of this episode hers. Learn more about hers.  Inayah on what it actually takes to stop being someone who's always ready to leave. Inayah is a Houston-born R&B singer and songwriter who first broke through with her viral cover of Ella Mai's "Boo'd Up" in 2018 (a moment that grew her following by over a million people overnight) and has since built...

Sex Is a Skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Join Beducated today at https://beducate.me/loversbyshan.  Big love to the sponsor of this episode, CozyEarth! Head to https://cozyearth.com/LOVERS and use my code LOVERS for an exclusive 20% off. Head to www.penguinrandomhouse.com to get your copy of Caro Claire Burke’s new book Yesteryear, a gripping, darkly funny thriller about an influencer trap...

A few weeks ago I put out the Melissa Ford episode, and the comments told me something I already knew before I hit publish: I crossed a line I claim to stand against. This is me sitting with that. Chaos is a ladder. I've climbed it for twenty years. The only other ladder I know is love, and it's so much harder, because you have to actually feel your way up it. I also owe a more honest version of s...