Sex and the State Podcast

Watch me read this: Welcome to the 23rd TV Tuesday ! Perry Mason has picked up a lot. I’ll be writing about that later, don’t you worry. In addition, I’m watching Season 4 of Succession. I also started Love & Death, which seems to be HBO’s version of Hulu’s Candy. Maybe it’s the bumpkin in me, but I liked Candy way more. Then again, it’s not really fair to compare the two since I extra already kno...

Watch me read this: In the year of our Lord 2023 there are a few things we know about fertility. One, it’s down across the board. Two, pro-natal policies are expensive and don’t work (shoutout Elizabeth Nolan Brown ). And three, it’s not feminism’s fault. In fact, feminism is likely our best solution. Allow me to explain. For a long time, where female education and labor force participation increa...

Watch me read this: Listening to Alice Evans ’ podcast, I discovered a book based on a paper that seems to support my earlier contention that parents stress achievement to the extent that they’re afraid their progeny will end up poor . That is, the kind of intensive, authoritarian parenting that causes teen anxiety, depression, and loneliness stems from macroeconomic incentives. Once again, a mate...

Watch me read this: I finally listened to Man’s Search for Meaning and let me tell you, my babies, there’s a reason it’s sold a bajillion copies and been translated into a zillion languages. It’s very good. It’s short, concise, well-written (rare for a translation ime), harrowing, and extremely useful. In the decades since 1959, when it was published, researchers have validated his point that chas...

Watch me read this: Welcome to the 22nd TV Tuesday ! I watched the first episode of the Perry Mason reboot on HBO. First off, I never watched the original. Second, how dare HBO so despicably and utterly de-hottify Matthew Rhys? The way he went from The Americans to angry unshaven alcoholic. Why not hire a less-hot actor? Or, and maybe my Millennial is showing here, but I can’t help but wonder why...

Watch me read this: Not only is this NRO article wrong on nearly every point, but it misses that while teen sex is down, the reason for it — and the problem worth worrying about — is that teen loneliness is up. If there’s one thing I can count on in this topsy turvy world, it’s the National Review making demonstrably false claims about sex. What I didn’t predict is them switching directions. In th...

Watch me read this: I couldn’t stop thinking more about adultery after our last TV Tuesday . Honestly it’s such a fascinating topic to me. Another thing that’s interesting about cheating is that, empirically speaking, (and we do try to speak empirically over here) we don’t really know that much about it. It’s actually kind of hard to study. There are at least two aspects of cheating that challenge...

Watch me say this: Hello and welcome to another episode of Sex and the State. I am your host, Cathy Reisenwitz, and I'm trying a new thing where I record a podcast based on an outline and then write my posts based on the transcript, because I'm listening to a lot more things that I'm reading right now, and, yeah, we'll how that goes. I'm more comfortable writing than reading or talking. But, you k...

Watch me read this: Welcome to the 21st TV Tuesday ! I’m watching The Good Wife on Paramount Plus. As my fave The Good Fight is actually a Good Wife spinoff, I thought it made sense to study the source material. It’s… fine. I didn’t watch either show when they were on, but I remember The Good Wife in particular was a big fucking deal. I mean, this bitch has seven seasons. My ambivalence made more...

Watch me read this: I just finished The Long Loneliness . It was fine. As I said before , I’d probs have enjoyed it more if I’d had any idea who Dorothy Day was when I went in. By the end, I honestly still wasn’t sure. I am quite certain that she was a Catholic, a mother, and a writer. She goes back and forth on whether and to what extent she’s a Socialist. The funniest part of a very not-funny bo...

Watch me read this: I’m back on my decrim work bullshit. This time through an article by Hannah Cox on how South Carolina just passed a measure to prevent licensure boards from barring individuals with a criminal record from obtaining an occupational license. That licensure boards are barring convicts is actually a huge deal for economic growth, crime, and loneliness. First, as I learned from Hann...

Welcome to the 20th TV Tuesday ! Me reading this: Is there a world where I wouldn’t watch a docudrama series about sex and medieval monarchs? My babies, have you met me? Until recently, I only really knew anything about politics. So that’s what I argued with people about. But learning medieval and renaissance history means I get to argue with people about that too.  But before I take issue with th...

Watch me read this: I’ve loved Kevin Smith from the evening in high school when I watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back for the first time with some friends and laughed so hard that I cried. I was stone cold sober and had never smoked weed in my life. So I was super interested when Lux Alptraum tweeted a video from Mr. Smith. Watching it spurred many a thought and feeling. Perhaps not shockingly...

If you’d rather watch me read this: Listening to The Long Loneliness , another aspect of the perniciousness of precarity occurred to me. Author Dorothy Day quotes William James on the positive aspects of poverty. From The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902): Poverty is indeed the strenuous life -- without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and whe...

Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with Sex and the State Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about human connection. To support my life’s work, upgrade to a paid subscription , buy one of my guides , follow me on OnlyFan s, follow me on Twitter , support me on Patreon , or just share this post 🙏 ~~~~~ Research shows religious peo...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ Choice quotes: “I get hate mail all the time from people that are like, you're just a whore. Well, yes, but that doesn't make anything that I'm saying in...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ This post was originally published on Liberal Currents. If you’d rather watch me read this: Psychedelics ain’t all puppies, rainbows, and tree-hugging. S...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ If you’d rather watch me read this: This article originally appeared at Psychedelic Spotlight. One of my first serious considerations when contemplating...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ I spoke to Mischa Byruck about prison abolition, gender abolition, evolve.men, his new course called Beyond Consent , whether and to what extent white pe...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ I interviewed the amazing Maggie McNeill — dissident feminist, sex worker, writer , and speaker — about the ongoing Satanic Panic, human trafficking, sex...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ If you’d rather watch me read this: My friend Kyle sent me a recent GQ profile of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , aka AOC. (Check out my recent...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ If you’d rather watch me read this: This post originally appeared on Psychedelic Spotlight. What’s it like to combine sex and psychedelics? As with most...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ If you’d rather watch me read this: My friend MK (check out their substack, Florida Person ) had some thoughts about my latest interview , featuring Sam...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ I interviewed Sam Hammond, Director of Social Policy at the Niskanen Center, on native-born men, the feminization of economics, gender essentialism, and...

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I use evidence and stories to interrogate existing power structures to propose better ways of relating. To support my work, buy a guide ,  buy a subscription , or just share this post! ~~~~~ If you’d rather watch me read this: I wrote recently about the rise of lonely, single men . One thing I mentioned, but didn’t dive deeply into, was the r...