I haven’t posted much since April. I had no motivation during the quarantine. I was stressed, and my body reacted strangely. For a brief while, my attention span was too short to do much else than work.
Fortunately, I feel better in most ways and have dived back into my favorite podcasts and discovered new authors. So there are plenty of books, podcasts, and videos that I can recommend for anyone who wants to fill some time or learn more about the world they live in. They’re mostly about sex, but race has played an important role in my media consumption due to current events and my own efforts to read more black authors.
As always, I’d love to hear what you found entertaining, sexy, or provocative in the comments!
Watch
Radiolab’s Molly Webster discusses how the sex chromosomes became ever-so-important in her TED talk.
Misty Gedlinske took on the issue of bisexual erasure in her TEDX talk, and boy did it hit home!
Read
I don’t have any book suggestions that are related to sex because I’ve been continuing my 2020 goal of reading more black authors. Thus far, I’ve been enjoying Michelle Obama discuss her life in Becoming, which she narrates in the audiobook version.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is ostensibly about mass incarceration but is really about so much more. Aside from being the best book I read this year, it’s the book on race that I was looking for, having found a few other books a bit basic at this point in my journey; although, others may want to read one of those books before working up to it. In fact, this is the one book I would recommend to everyone about being black in America over any of the others I’ve read this year.
I was hesitant to read Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers after hearing some criticism with the way he discussed the Brock Turner case, but I did. The audio version is more than a little pretentious but some of the points he made, especially those about race and policing, have really stuck with me.
Listen
In this entertaining episode of American Sex, Sunny and Ken talk to OnlyFans star Savannah Solo.
Jessie and PJ invited Allie Knox and Kiara Skye on the podcast to discuss the future of sex work and payment processing. They make an excellent example of why sex work is the perfect case study for blockchain payments and talk about developing the technology behind it.
I wasn’t expecting a podcast about “masculinity and memoirs” to make me reflect on some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past, but Tristan and Cooper’s recent discussion on Sex Out Oud Radio did just that.
On the theme of podcasts-I-might-have-skipped-but-I’m-so-glad-I-didn’t comes this podcast about breaking out of the gender binary and its powerful words by ALOK that made me cry and catch my breath in places.
Hopefully, everyone is still thinking about black lives. If you want to know more about the interaction of race and sex work, Phoenix Calida gives the lowdown on Peepshow Podcast.
Tristan eloquently navigates a conversation about blackness, sexuality, and more in her interview of Gene Demby from Codeswitch.
I found the recordings of each of the 16 different sex workers included in this episode of Peepshow Podcast to be incredibly evocative.
Ologies if one of my favorite podcasts, and I’ve been making my way through the archives, so I have several recommendations. Two of them are most recent: Neuroendocrinology (sex & gender) with Daniel Pfau and BlackAFinSTEM, which wasn’t about sex but gave black voices in STEM a chance to speak. You can also check out the sexology episode with ShanBoody and Ali’s talk with Philippa Ribbink about gynecology. Philippa has a great voice and mentions a need for more anatomy education that The Vagina Bible has since provided.
Jad and the crew at Radiolab thought about blackness through the filter of Nina Simone’s music. Incredibly powerful.
I have read two of Emily Nagoski’s books, listened to her own podcast, read her blog, and shared her articles. Yet, she still manages to say things that blow my mind like she did when talking to Nicolette of Sluts and Scholars.
