As a sex educator, Emily Nagoski sees her main purpose as “teaching people to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies.” Step one? Understanding what’s actually going on in there!

In this episode, Nagoski employs colorful analogies to illustrate the ways in which our minds and bodies react to stressful situations (spoiler alert: you'll have to use your imagination and become a gazelle) and to describe our physical responses to sexually relevant information (enter: car metaphor).

If you’ve been anxious about sex, are struggling to connect to a long-term partner, or just want to understand yourself better, this episode offers lots of calm, informed, empathetic advice on how you can find your way.

Stick around after the interview for when Ben Schuman-Stoler joins Caitlin Schiller to talk about the big ideas in this episode and help make a sexy book list for your nightstand.

For more info, including links to everything we discussed in the episode and a voucher to use Blinkist for free, go to

Let us know what you thought of the episode, or just give us some book recommendations on Twitter—we’d love to hear from you! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller and Ben at @bsto.

That excellent music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/niceaux) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/niceaux).