Strippers and Sages

Ismail Lourido Ali, JD is the current Interim Co-Director of Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He believes entheogenic consciousness is a crucial aspect of challenging oppression in all of its forms and has been doing vital work in the psychedelic space for over decade. We’re republishing this episode to kick off this week’s Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver, whic...

This is an interview I recorded in the winter of 2020 with the inimitable Tigre Bailando , a dear friend and collaborator who passed away on October 1st, 2022 of their own volition. Tigre dedicated their life to the joyful pursuit of dance, artistic creation, unabashed self expression and social justice. In this profound and revelatory conversation, we talk about archetypes, mythology, macaroni ar...

In this dynamic interview, the multifaceted Jet Setting Jasmine and I talk about liberation through erotica, dismantling white supremacy in the porn industry, and radical sex education. A psychotherapist with an emphasis on intimacy post injury and illness, Jet Setting Jasmine is the owner of and lead therapist at Blue Pearl Therapy and the co-owner, with her partner King Noir, of the award winnin...

Since 2019, Christine Soyong Harley has led SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), a national non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for comprehensive sexuality education in the United States. Founded in 1964, SIECUS promotes sex education that is comprehensive, evidence-based, and inclusive, aiming to help people of all ages make informed decisions abo...

Jimanekia Eborn is a Queer, Sexual Assault & Trauma Expert, Trauma Media Consultant, and Comprehensive Sex Educator. She is the host of Trauma Queen - a podcast for survivors of assault and our allies. The podcast focuses on uplifting voices in all communities and exploring our collective journey to healing. Jimanekia is the Founder of Tending The Garden- a nonprofit in service of sexual assau...

We go behind the scenes at NYC's hottest sex club, the New Society for Wellness (NSFW...wink, wink). Daniel Saynt is the founder and Chief Conspirator of NSFW, a private club for the adventurous in NYC. Designed to be a safe, judgement-free, cannabis friendly space for sexual exploration, the community has grown to over 6000 members, who connect virtually and at sensual get togethers at...

SEASON THREE IS HERE!  What does it mean to be an eco-sexual? How are sex, ecology, and climate change interconnected? And why is laughter a key ingredient in both activism and performance art? The legendary duo Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens explain it all!  Life partners and collaborators since 2002, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens are the authors of the Ecosex manifesto (along with...

In this episode, sex educator and pleasure educator Luna Matatas discusses threesomes, BDSM, sexual confidence and butt stuff, which you can learn more about on her podcast The Plug . Luna has over 10 years of experience teaching sexual empowerment workshops. She celebrates body confidence, self-adoration and building shame-free pleasure in and out of the bedroom. Her advice on sex and kink has be...

In this exciting episode, I interview Burlesque legends Jet Noir , Lou Lou la Duchesse de Rière , and Una Osato about the political, spiritual, subversive, and revolutionary aspects of this radical artform.   Lou Lou la Duchesse de Rière, known as the stripping sensation from the Mohawk nation, has been performing her brand of balls to the wall burlesque for well over a decade. Thrice  v...

Ze Royale (ze/they/them) is a writer, performance artist, sexual anarchist, social worker, and pleasure activist. Ze writes and performs in “post-pornographic” films for Aorta Films, performs chanting rituals in the musical duo Zoid^,  and curates erotic events at venues like Ps 1 MoMA as a part of the production team for KinkOut. They studied psychology and sculpture at Sarah Lawrence, and G...

Samantha Rose Hill  is the assistant director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, visiting assistant professor of politics at Bard College in New York and associate faculty at the  Brooklyn Institute for Social Research  in New York City, where she teaches courses such as Pornography: Aesthetics, Politics, and Pleasure , Sado-Masochism: Economies of Desire...

Today I speak with William Winters about inclusivity and diversity in polyamorous and sex positive culture, consent as care, and the intersection of activism and erotic liberation. In 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle named William Winters the "de facto king of the East Bay polyamory scene." He's been working to earn the title ever since. An activist, educator, and intimacy coach, William is the f...

In this brief hiatus from our regular conversation series, Lianne waxes poetic on Wittgenstein, vaginal secretion, Beverly Hills 90210, the Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality, and the importance of relanguaging our erotic consciousness,

I interview Lazlo (president emeritus), and Shade (current president of Consensuality), two of the wonderful, big hearted humans behind the Orgy Dome at Burning Man. The Orgy Dome is the playa gift of the camp “..And Then There’s Only Love”.  Originally formed in 2003, the theme camp started out with a small group of sex positive friends, a six person tent and a few air mattress. Since then,...

Michaelah Ivie, MA holds a masters in both Marriage and Family Therapy and Art Therapy and recently completed a year-long coaching program taught by Layla Martin at the Tantric Institute of Integrated Sexuality as a Love, Sex, and Relationship coach. She is a wordsMYTH, conscious comedian, relationSHIFT coach, and motivational speaker, using wordplay to re-program consciousness on and off the stag...

Dr. Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Environment. She is also a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellow and the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science . Building on her research on the role of technoscience in settler...

Misha Japanwala is a Pakistani artist and designer who creates stunning body casts of the female nude to critique and raise awareness about gender violence and the repression of female sexuality in Pakistan and around the world. Born and raised in Karachi, Misha moved to New York City to attend fashion school at Parsons School of Design. Her relationship to her own body and her complex identi...

Ayden LeRoux is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, critic, and educator whose work explores embodiment, eroticism, and illness, in order to complicate narratives about gender, sexuality, and family structures. Her essays, fiction, and translation have been published in Guernica, Catapult, Electric Lit, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cosmonauts Avenue, Palimpsest, edibleManhattan, and Alchemy, amon...

Leila Raven is a queer mama, organizer, and prison abolitionist from New York City. She is one of the creators of the #8toAbolition platform outlining specific, actionable steps that cities can take to move toward a world without police, and she has been a founding organizer with the DecrimNowDC and DecrimNY campaigns to end the criminalization of sex workers in New York and Washington, DC. She is...

Katherine Rowland , former publisher and executive director of Guernica Magazine , recently published The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution. In it, Katherine investigates everything from big pharma’s attempts to pathologize low female libido to the neoliberal underpinnings of the sexual self-help industry, arguing that women should take inequality in the bedroom as...

A quick teaser to you know about some of the remarkable conversations we'll be releasing over the next few weeks! Upcoming guests include activist, organizer, and queer mama Leila Raven of Decrim NY talking about abolitionism and decriminalizing sex work; author and medical anthropologist Katherine Rowland talking about her new book The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolu...

In this episode, I speak with B.K. Chan about how rejection resilience enables us to live more courageous and authentic lives. In the last episode of Strippers and Sages, Jamila Reddy spoke about the importance of being in touch with and brave enough to pursue our desires. That bravery involves being willing to face rejection ourselves as well as to reject others in order to remain in our truth. R...

 Ever wondered what it's like to have sex in the Orgy Dome at Burning Man? Jamila shares about their delicious sexcapade on the playa. Enjoy!

Jamila (she/they) is a dear friend who never ceases to inspire me. In this very personal and provocative conversation, Jamila talks about re-imagining intimacy, expanding their erotic horizons through gender-fluidity, navigating fear, and finding their "inner daddy". They share their experience dancing through grief and cultivating joy in difficult times, an art they learned while serving as their...

In this rich conversation, Eli talks about how spending time in the wilderness helps adolescent boys hone their inner voice, an essential tool when it comes to resisting and reprograming the toxic messages they receive from society around sex and masculinity.  Eli shares vulnerably about his own experience as an adolescent boy (including his stint as Stifler's little brother in the film Ameri...