The Intimacy Inquiry

Andrew Phipps
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Sexuality

Welcome to The Intimacy Inquiry. Join us for open, curious, and non-judgmental conversations exploring the vast landscape of intimacy and sexuality. We delve into everything, including but not limited to, the value of good sex education to the importance of exploring and understanding our own bodies, overcoming trauma, and how to forge deeper connections with your partner, . Our expert guests include sex therapists, adult content creators, sexologists, authors, somatic healers, porn addiction specialists, marriage and family therapists, intimacy therapists, trauma-informed counselors, and many more. Using explicit language with respect, we fearlessly tackle topics like love, desire, passion, relationships, sexuality and gender, BDSM, tantric sex, massage, touching, kissing, and masturbation – essentially, anything and everything related to intimacy. If you're ready to explore the complexities and nuances of human connection and desire in a respectful and insightful way, you've found your space. Subscribe to The Intimacy Inquiry and join the conversation.

  1. 1d ago

    Kori Strobl: Why Setting a Boundary Isn't the Same as Holding One

    Kori Strobl spent two decades doing the emotional labour of people-pleasing before learning to hold boundaries instead of just setting them. A self-leadership and relationship coach with a master's in spiritual psychology, she works with couples both individually and together, a combination most therapists are trained to avoid. In this conversation, Andrew and Kori talk about the real difference between a boundary and a request, why chemistry so often gets mistaken for compatibility, how victim/villain thinking keeps couples stuck, and why some differences between partners are simply irreconcilable, without either person being at fault. They also cover ethical non-monogamy, the modern loneliness epidemic, and why the body often knows what the mind hasn't caught up to yet. Guest: Kori Strobl, self-leadership and relationship coach https://www.koristrobl.com/ https://www.instagram.com/koristrobl/ Host: Andrew Phipps, Intimacy Inquiry

    Kori Strobl: Why Setting a Boundary Isn't the Same as Holding One

  2. Aug 11

    Dr. Anna Elton: Desire Doesn't Fade, It Redirects

    Dr. Anna Elton is a licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical sexologist with over 15 years of clinical experience. She's the author of Couples Therapy in the Digital Age, and her new book, The Formula of Desire, draws on research with over 700 couples to explain what actually sustains attraction over time. Andrew and Anna talk about why desire in long relationships doesn't disappear, it redirects, sometimes toward parenting or career, sometimes toward AI companions, and what that means for couples who feel like they've simply "gone flat." They cover the relationship shift model that predicts how couples drift from positive to neutral to negative, the research behind pre-terminal and terminal stages that quietly precede a gray divorce, where the modern lines of cheating actually sit in a world of OnlyFans and AI chatbots, and the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire. Anna also shares the one simple practice she recommends to every couple she works with. Guest: Dr. Anna Elton, licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical sexologist, author of The Formula of Desire Host: Andrew Phipps, Intimacy Inquiry https://annaelton.com/https://theformulaofdesire.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaelton/https://www.facebook.com/drannaelton@drannaelton@drannaelton

    Dr. Anna Elton: Desire Doesn't Fade, It Redirects

  3. Aug 4

    Shoshanna Blanca (AKA Jesus Christ Pornstar): Psychedelics, Sex Work and Female Desire

    Shoshanna Blanca, known publicly as Jesus Christ Pornstar, is a sex writer, adult performer, sexologist and PhD candidate in clinical sexology. She talks with Andrew about how psychedelic experiences, from MDMA and mushrooms to ayahuasca and iboga, helped her recognise and work through patterns of workaholism, disordered eating and self-rejection. The conversation covers why she believes many men are unsettled by a woman who openly knows and states her own desire, the double standards sex workers face in dating, how she uses image and persona to reclaim control over how she's seen, and her concerns about AI, from generic AI-written communication to the ethics of submissive sex robots. She also discusses reconciling her religious identity with her work, and her ongoing PhD research on religious sex workers. This episode discusses sex work and sexuality in explicit terms and is intended for a mature audience. Guest: Shoshanna Blanca (AKA Jesus Christ Pornstar), sex writer, adult performer, sexologist, PhD candidate in clinical sexology Host: Andrew Phipps, Intimacy Inquiry https://linktr.ee/shoshannalovesjesus1

    Shoshanna Blanca (AKA Jesus Christ Pornstar): Psychedelics, Sex Work and Female Desire

  4. Jul 28

    Sex Begets Sex | Caroline Hood on Reclaiming Desire, Pleasure, and Long-Term Love

    Caroline Hood grew up in a religious family and religious school, learning virtually nothing about sexuality except that it was something to be ashamed of. What stayed with her was a nagging suspicion that it couldn't be right: something so universal couldn't also be shameful. That suspicion became a career, a book, and a practice she calls Desire in Real Life, dedicated to the conversations women wish they could have with a trusted friend who happens to be a sex therapist. In Sex Begets Sex: Reclaiming Desire, Power, and Pleasure in Long-Term Love, Caroline challenges the assumption that desire must precede sex. Drawing on Emily Nagoski's research into spontaneous and responsive desire, she argues that physical and emotional intimacy form a loop, not a hierarchy, and that maintaining physical closeness is itself a buffer against the drift toward roommate, co-parent, and coworker that so many long-term couples experience. In this conversation with Andrew, Caroline covers a lot of ground. Why the gender archetypes around desire are serving nobody, including men. Why women's desire always seems to require an explanation while men's is validated without question. Why defining sex as penetration creates unnecessary barriers and diminishes female pleasure, given that around 80% of women orgasm through non-penetrative means. Why the most pleasurable sex reported by many people is not spontaneous but planned, communicated, and intentional. They also explore: the difference between touch that is a request for sex and touch that simply is; how to start the desire conversation outside the bedroom and before things reach crisis point; why mismatched libido is better understood by asking what need is actually being met; why the high and low libido labels are too static to be useful; and whether monogamy is a natural human state or a relatively recent social construct, drawing on Esther Perel and recent research from the Kinsey Institute. Caroline also talks about what writing the book did to her own relationship (spoiler: only good things), and why she believes the mundane, imperfect, ten-minute version of sex is just as important to a relationship as the two-hour tasting menu. Warm, practical, and genuinely freeing. Sex Begets Sex is available now. Caroline writes at Substack under Desire in Real Life. https://www.desireinreallife.com/

    Sex Begets Sex | Caroline Hood on Reclaiming Desire, Pleasure, and Long-Term Love

  5. Jul 21

    Functioning Is Not Thriving | Dr. Stephanie Zwonitzer on Hormones, Menopause, and Sexual Wellness

    Dr. Stephanie Zwonitzer is a doctor of nursing practice, certified nurse practitioner, and the founder of Revive Institute of Sexual Health, a cash-based clinic dedicated to hormone optimisation and sexual wellness. She also hosts the podcast Between the Sheets with Dr. Z. Her path into this work began in cardiac, surgical, and geriatric nursing, but it was urology and sexual medicine that changed everything: saving relationships, addressing erectile dysfunction and vaginal pain, and realising that dramatic change was possible for patients who had simply been told their bodies were done. In this conversation with Andrew, Stephanie traces the thread from a rural Wisconsin upbringing where sex education meant abstinence and essentially nothing else, through a clinical career that repeatedly exposed the same gap: nobody in mainstream medicine was connecting hormonal decline to quality of life, and nobody was treating sexual wellness as the essential part of overall health that it is. They cover a great deal of ground. Why erectile dysfunction is often one of the first signs of heart disease, and why it is always multifactorial. What happens to testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone from your 30s onwards, and how those changes affect everything from cognition and mood to pain during sex. Why hormone replacement therapy is still not taught in standard medical school training. Why women were not required to be included in US research studies until 1993. And why early hormone replacement may reduce the risk of dementia, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease. Stephanie and Andrew also explore what it means to redefine sex as pleasure rather than performance; the value of wellness tools and a self-pleasure practice; what providers can learn from the BDSM community about ongoing consent; and why a single yes is not a yes for life. She explains why she walked away from corporate medicine and ten-minute appointments to found Revive, a clinic where she takes as long as each patient needs, examines hormones in combination rather than in isolation, and has no intention of franchising. Practical, warm, and long overdue. Revive Institute of Sexual Health: revivish.com Between the Sheets with Dr. Z: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-the-sheets-exploring-sexual-health-wellness/id1760176031?uo=4 https://www.instagram.com/betweenthesheetswithdrz/

    Functioning Is Not Thriving | Dr. Stephanie Zwonitzer on Hormones, Menopause, and Sexual Wellness

  6. Jul 14

    The Opposite of Love Is Indifference | Amanda Montoni on Trauma, Bipolar II, and Breaking the Cycle

    Amanda Montoni describes herself as the kind of person strangers tell their life story to in a grocery queue. At 32, married, newly sober, raising two children, and several months into her decision to go no contact with her mother, she has more than earned that description. Raised between South Carolina and El Paso by a young single mother, Amanda learned early to adapt herself to whatever environment she was in. Outwardly confident, top of her class, socially fluent; inwardly fighting an eating disorder and self-harm she kept hidden from everyone around her for five years. Her sense of identity was fragile, her sexuality was uncertain, and at 14 she was sent without warning from South Carolina to El Paso with no phone, no explanation, and no one who knew where she had gone. In this conversation with Andrew, Amanda traces the events that shaped her: the bullying that made her push down her attraction to girls; the older men who groomed her as a teenager and the distorted sense of power that made her believe she was in control; the unplanned pregnancy at 19 that changed the direction of everything; and the inpatient psychiatric treatment in 2017 that eventually led to a bipolar II diagnosis, and with it the most profound relief of her life. She describes the years that followed: the medication that finally stabilised her, the husband who did not flinch, and the slow, painful recognition that her mother was not going to change. She reflects on what it meant to go no contact without a confrontation, to notice the silence from the other end, and to arrive at something she simply calls indifference. Because the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. The conversation also moves through pansexuality and ethical non-monogamy; parenting as a third-generation estranged child who is actively choosing to do things differently; what it feels like to like yourself while still trying to meet yourself fully; and what she is building towards: finishing her degree, switching to zoology or biology, and eventually opening an animal rescue with her husband. One of the most unflinchingly honest conversations The Intimacy Inquiry has had.

    The Opposite of Love Is Indifference | Amanda Montoni on Trauma, Bipolar II, and Breaking the Cycle

  7. Jul 7

    Why Everything You Were Told About Female Sexuality Is Wrong | Natasha Senjanovic

    Natasha Senjanovic is an award-winning journalist, gender violence reporter, and the host and creator of Women Like Sex, a myth-busting, research-driven podcast dedicated to dismantling the misinformation, biases, and taboos that have long distorted understanding of female sexuality. A co-creator of the media training course I Wish I'd Known, she holds a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for feature reporting and spent years reporting from Rome before specialising in domestic and sexual violence journalism at Nashville Public Radio. In this conversation with Andrew, Natasha traces the thread from her European upbringing, free of puritanical religious shame, through years of reporting in Italy, to the pivotal moment in a Nashville newsroom when a rape retrial changed the direction of her career. She reflects on the chronic failures of media coverage of gender-based violence: the staggering gap between the statistics (Nashville alone sees 25-30,000 domestic violence investigations per year, against roughly 10 domestic homicides) and what actually makes the news; the loaded language that alibis perpetrators and re-traumatises survivors; and why terms like "she snapped," "monster," and "violence against women" are not neutral, but actively harmful. The conversation moves through the Epstein case and what it reveals about power protecting power; the criminalisation of marital rape (UK: 1991, Tennessee: 2012); how Saint Augustine helped reshape the church's definition of sex as procreative only; and why the anatomy of the clitoris was not fully mapped until 2005. Natasha and Andrew also explore how hypersexual myths about men damage male sexuality; why "foreplay" is a term worth questioning; the gendered double standards baked into everyday language; and the inextricable link between sexual inequity and intimate partner violence. Natasha shares the personal toll of gender violence reporting, how the Women Like Sex project helped her step back without stepping away, and her plans to train as a certified sex health educator, because she wants to do more than funnel expert voices. She wants to become one. Topics include: sexual shame and cultural conditioning; domestic violence statistics and the media blind spots that hide them; coercion as the most prevalent form of sexual assault; the Madonna-whore complex and its religious roots; consent education; unconscious bias in journalism; privilege, race, and newsroom culture; and what it will take to flip the script. Women Like Sex podcast: https://womenlikesex.com/ I Wish I'd Known: https://www.pmja.org/contacts/natasha-senjanovic

    Why Everything You Were Told About Female Sexuality Is Wrong | Natasha Senjanovic

  8. Jun 30

    Jennifer Douglas: Modeling at 43, Fighting Human Trafficking, and Embracing the "I Don't Give a F*ck" Attitude

    Jennifer Douglas, known as Inked Mom 3 to her many thousand Instagram followers, is a South Carolina-based model, wife, and mother of three who launched her modeling career at 43 after a boudoir shoot for her husband took an unexpected turn. She won the 2025 Best New Model award for a style she describes as raw and authentic: tattooed, entirely natural, and unapologetically herself. Jennifer's path to the camera ran through a childhood defined by emotional neglect and sexual abuse. Molested at 10 by a family friend, raised largely by herself from the age of six, she grew into adulthood carrying those wounds without ever being taught how to process them. What she did instead was pour herself into others: 13 years of passionate anti-human trafficking work, sparked by watching the film Taken, which led her to join a local task force, educate college communities about the signs of trafficking, and focus specifically on the protection of minors. polarisproject.org This conversation is honest about all of it. Jennifer talks about managing vicarious trauma through repeated breaks, about the reality that trafficking most often involves people the victim knows and trusts, and about the fact that no amount of education fully protected her own family: her eldest daughter was raped at 16 by an older boy at a party, a disclosure she shares with quiet candour. The modeling story is equally candid. She describes saying yes immediately to photography offers that followed her boudoir photos, with one significant exception: a terrifying experience with a fake photographer early in her career, involving an empty house, a husband locked outside, and a stranger banging on the door, that she shares as a direct warning to younger women navigating Instagram casting calls. Body image runs through the whole conversation. Jennifer is self-conscious about her breast size, wakes at 3am worrying about bookings, and admits she has cried over the gap between what she looks like and what the most heavily booked models look like. She also shares what her tattoos mean: each one tells a chapter of her life, and the one that reads "I am set free" came after she finally, through law enforcement contacts made during her trafficking work, found out what happened to the man who abused her as a child. The episode closes on her goals: more tattooed women in mainstream fashion and branding, and a platform that inspires women of any age and any body to embrace, in her words, an I-don't-give-a-f**k attitude toward who gets to be seen as beautiful. https://www.instagram.com/inkedmom3/ https://inkedmomshop.printify.me/ Note: this episode contains frank discussion of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and via RSS.

    Jennifer Douglas: Modeling at 43, Fighting Human Trafficking, and Embracing the "I Don't Give a F*ck" Attitude
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About

Welcome to The Intimacy Inquiry. Join us for open, curious, and non-judgmental conversations exploring the vast landscape of intimacy and sexuality. We delve into everything, including but not limited to, the value of good sex education to the importance of exploring and understanding our own bodies, overcoming trauma, and how to forge deeper connections with your partner, . Our expert guests include sex therapists, adult content creators, sexologists, authors, somatic healers, porn addiction specialists, marriage and family therapists, intimacy therapists, trauma-informed counselors, and many more. Using explicit language with respect, we fearlessly tackle topics like love, desire, passion, relationships, sexuality and gender, BDSM, tantric sex, massage, touching, kissing, and masturbation – essentially, anything and everything related to intimacy. If you're ready to explore the complexities and nuances of human connection and desire in a respectful and insightful way, you've found your space. Subscribe to The Intimacy Inquiry and join the conversation.

Information

  • Creator
    Andrew Phipps
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    135
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Andrew Phipps
  • Show Website
    The Intimacy Inquiry