GETSOME

Neuroscientist Dr. Nicole Prause grew up in Texas, where sex education served up a platter of abstinence garnished with jump-scare photos of untreated STIs. Now, she runs a basement lab where people masturbate... for science! Michelle and Nicole talk about why porn doesn't meet the scientific bar for addiction, how anxiety hijacks arousal in bed, and what her research is finding about the moments right before orgasm.

Find Dr. Nicole Prause
Website: https://liberoscenter.com/

Produced by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry Studios, now in her third season with GETSOME.

Portrait photo: Neal Preston.

Chapters
00:00 The shower question and the addiction label
03:01 Growing up with Texas sex education
04:28 Inside the sex-research lab
07:02 Masturbation and depression
09:08 What counts as addiction?
11:45 Why people use porn
13:41 When porn feels like a problem
16:50 Porn, dopamine, and human touch
18:29 When arousal feels like fear
19:50 Refractory periods and sperm health
21:50 The mystery of orgasm
23:12 Studying the brain before climax
26:44 The 3D-printed penis study
29:44 What research taught Nicole about her body
31:40 Closing and where to find Nicole

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Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

How do you flirt without being creepy? Why do men skip sex ed and consent talks, and where do they learn about sex instead? Sex and consent educator samantha bitty on rejection, the manosphere, and the questions men are too embarrassed to ask out loud.

samantha bitty is a sex and consent educator based in Toronto.

Find samantha bitty

Website: samanthabitty.com

Instagram: @samantha_bitty

Resources from samantha:

nixit: Menstrual and sexual wellness products. samantha discusses her work as a spokesperson in the interview.

samantha bitty’s media library: Articles, interviews and educational videos.

Sex Sessions: samantha’s educational video series.

Produced by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry Studios, now in her third season with GETSOME.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

03:21 Responding to nudes and checking consent

05:54 Flirting with someone, not at them

09:00 Inviting men into sex and consent education

12:56 Porn literacy and partnered sex

17:04 Safer sex, preferences and boundaries

19:09 Rejection resilience and the manosphere

27:26 The responsibility of teaching about sex

30:52 Sexual harm, accountability and power

35:53 The questions men ask in private

37:05 Erections, early ejaculation and staying present

39:41 nixit and live sex education events

43:19 Credits

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mel Woods is a trans nonbinary journalist (they/them) who grew up outside Red Deer, Alberta, next door to a semi-truck driver named Todd. Five years ago they started testosterone, and they think about that choice every week. Mel shares what reality TV taught a generation of queer kids, what testosterone does that nobody warns you about, and why some cis women take it too. They also get into reporting on anti-trans politics from inside the story, and why going to play Magic: The Gathering after a brutal news day counts as resistance.

About Mel Woods

Mel Woods is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor originally from the prairies and now based in Vancouver. Now investigating anti-trans hate in Canada with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, they were previously a senior editor at Xtra Magazine where they covered LGBTQ2S+ news and culture. Their freelance work has appeared in The Walrus, HuffPost Canada, CBC, Vice, Slate, The Tyee, and the Globe and Mail.

Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 Finding joy in your body
00:33 Meet Mel Woods
03:37 Recognizing yourself
04:33 Self-determination
06:19 Reporting on trans rights
10:41 Reality TV and queer identity
16:13 Gender-neutral clothing
19:39 Charlie Kirk coverage and anti-trans misinformation
26:27 Reporting when you are part of the story
28:38 Closing the laptop and living your life
29:41 What testosterone gave Mel
31:17 Living in a changing body
35:06 Community and access to care
37:52 Advice for starting transition
40:21 Five years on testosterone
40:57 Where to find Mel
41:51 Credits

Find Mel Woods
Website: melwoods.me
Bluesky: @melwoods.me
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Get Queer podcast

Mentioned in This Episode

• GLAAD
• Survivor (the show featuring Zeke Smith)
• Get Queer: Casually Queer (Mel’s interview with Zeke Smith)
• Get Queer: Trans TV (the conversation with Zeke continues)
• Get Queer: Housewives Get Queer (with Racquel Chevremont)
• Lorde’s “Man of the Year” and the permission to want (Mel Woods, Xtra)
• What “Gender-Neutral” Fashion Gets Wrong (Mel Woods, The Walrus)
• Trans people didn’t ask to get pulled into any of this (Mel Woods, Xtra)
• Charlie Kirk died a year ago. Trans people are still paying the price (Mel Woods, Xtra)
• Trans Journalists Association
• Magic: The Gathering
• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (a film by Jane Schoenbrun)
• I Saw the TV Glow (a film by Jane Schoenbrun)
• Trans Care BC (gender-affirming care information and support in British Columbia)

Produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios.

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Hot people get herpes. So why can a diagnosis make you feel like nobody will want you?

Courtney Brame remembers worrying that his sex life was over. In this episode, he joins sex therapist Michelle Fischler to talk about what happened after his diagnosis, the support that helped him, and learning to feel desirable again.

Courtney is the founder of Something Positive for Positive People, a nonprofit supporting people navigating herpes stigma and helping partners and healthcare providers talk about sex.

Michelle and Courtney get into the words that add shame, including “clean” and “dirty,” and why a diagnosis can feel like a verdict on who you are. They also try a second-date role-play: how do you bring up sexual health, find out whether someone is ready to talk, and hold a boundary without apologizing for existing?

They talk about what healthcare providers can say that helps, what can leave someone feeling dismissed, and why telling one person you trust can be a place to start.

If you’ve wondered how to tell someone, how to respond, or whether sex and dating can still feel good after a diagnosis, this conversation is for you.

Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 First symptoms
00:39 Introducing Courtney Brame
03:21 Life before the diagnosis
06:37 Diagnosis and family support
11:21 Telling the next partner
12:33 Inheriting herpes stigma
16:17 Challenging “my sex life is over”
18:42 The body as an apartment complex
22:59 Retiring stigmatizing language
26:47 Feeling desirable again
27:58 Second-date role-play: talking about sexual health
32:25 More than your diagnosis
35:09 Responding to disclosure
37:15 Stigma-informed healthcare
40:13 One thing to do after a diagnosis
41:44 Where to find Courtney
42:57 Credits

Find Courtney Brame:
Instagram: @CourtneyBrame
Something Positive for Positive People Podcast

Resources from Courtney:
Herpes Support Group
How to Disclose
Stigma-Informed Training

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Take two sex questions and call me in the morning. If only talking to your doctor about sex felt that easy.

You rehearsed the question in the waiting room. Then the doctor walked in, and you swallowed it.

Maybe it was about STI testing. Pain. Pleasure. A change in your body. Something you worried would sound strange, embarrassing or too personal for a medical appointment.

Dr. Sheila Wijayasinghe is an academic family physician, medical educator, Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, longtime health expert on CTV's The Social, and co-host of The Doc Talk Podcast. She and Michelle explore how shame follows us into the exam room, how a provider's tone can open or close a conversation, and why sexual healthcare should make room for pleasure, not only pain or problems.

Sheila offers a place to start when the words will not come: "I'm feeling embarrassed, but I'd like to talk about this."

You don't need a polished explanation. You only need an opening.

Instagram: @drsheilaw

The Doc Talk Podcast

• IWHC Toronto
• Hassle Free Clinic
• Bay Centre for Sexual Health

• Will Ladybug Hug? by Hilary Leung
• C is for Consent by Eleanor Morrison

• Don't Hug Doug (He Doesn't Like It) by Carrie Finison
• Yes! No! A First Conversation About Consent by Megan Madison and Jessica Ralli
• My Body! What I Say Goes! by Jayneen Sanders

• Consent (for Kids!) by Rachel Brian
• Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent & Respect by Jayneen Sanders
• Miles Is the Boss of His Body by Samantha Kurtzman-Counter and Abbie Schiller

• The Every Body Book by Rachel E. Simon
• Sex Is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg
• The Care and Keeping of You by Valorie Schaefer

• You Know, Sex by Cory Silverberg
• Wait, What? A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up by Heather Corinna and Isabella Rotman
• Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!) by Sonya Renee Taylor

• S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties by Heather Corinna
• Consent: The New Rules of Sex Education by Jennifer Lang
• Doing It! Let's Talk About Sex by Hannah Witton

Got a story you want to tell on GETSOME? Email [email protected]

Follow @getsome_podcast on Instagram.

Produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios.

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

You went to the doctor. The bloodwork was fine, the scans were fine, and you were told to live with it. So you assumed the problem must be you. But what if the pain, the softer erections, the coming sooner than you want were never in your head? What if the part of your body nobody named has muscles, nerves, and actual treatment options?

Dr. Susie Gronski is a pelvic health physical therapist and AASECT-certified sexuality counsellor and educator who built her practice around the gap nobody else was filling. Men have pelvic floors. Those muscles get tight, tense, and crabby, and they can be rehabbed. She also has a phrase she gives every client before they get on the table: bodies do body things.

With over a decade of expertise in men's pelvic and sexual health, Dr. Susie Gronski is a Licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy, Pelvic Health Therapist, AASECT Certified Sexuality Counselor and Educator, and founder of a multidisciplinary pelvic health clinic in Asheville, North Carolina. Through her clinic and Patreon, she helps men navigate taboo pelvic and sexual health concerns and works to make pelvic therapy more accessible.

Website: https://drsusieg.com/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/drsusieg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.susieg
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drsusieg

Pelvic Pain: The Ultimate Cock Block, Dr. Susie Gronski
https://drsusieg.com/pelvic-pain-book-for-men

Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer, Michelle Fischler
https://getsome.ca/coming-soon-book

Manhood: The Bare Reality, Laura Dodsworth
https://www.lauradodsworth.com/manhood

MakeLoveNotPorn, founded by Cindy Gallop
https://makelovenotporn.tv

Erika Lust
https://erikalust.com

Live Demo: Male Pelvic Floor Exam
https://www.patreon.com/drsusieg/posts/live-demo-male-159871249

Live Demo: Female Pelvic Floor Exam
https://www.patreon.com/drsusieg/posts/live-demo-female-148634739

Got a story you want to tell on GETSOME? Email [email protected]

Follow @getsome_podcast on Instagram

Produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

You promised yourself you'd stop. You didn't. And then you took that as proof of something about you. But what if the porn and masturbation weren’t the whole story? What if they were the strategy quietly keeping something much scarier in place?

A man reaching for porn instead of his partner may have found a version of sex that feels safer from shame.

Lisa Etherson, UK-based psychosexual therapist and the originator of Shame Containment Theory, offers another lens: performance anxiety can involve fear of shame, and the behaviour we call “compulsive” or “addictive” can serve as a shame containment strategy.

About Lisa

Lisa Etherson is a psychosexual therapist, researcher, trainer and co-founder of The Shame Training Company.

Connect with Lisa

• TEDx talk: If you want to change your life, change your relationship with shame
• LinkedIn

Produced by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry Studios, now in her third season with GETSOME.

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Shame doesn’t care how much it’s ruining your sex life. It just wants an audience. But instead of hitting up the concession stand, what if you sat in the front row and got curious? You might be surprised at what you learn (and how your body responds afterwards).

David Bedrick is the founder of The Unshaming Way and the author of five books. Instead of asking how to move past the shame, he asks what the shame is trying to say. Because you’re not a problem: you’re a person with a story whose symptoms carry lots of intelligence.

Content note: this episode briefly mentions childhood harm and sexual trauma.

Topics covered

• 00:00 Masculinity, erections, and cultural pressure
• 02:30 What shame is and why symptoms carry intelligence
• 04:28 How survival and cultural messages shape identity
• 07:58 Why fixing and technique can deepen shame
• 10:23 Listening to what erection difficulty and softness are saying
• 12:30 What an unshaming witness does differently
• 16:00 Gender, sexuality, and shame carried through silence
• 20:54 What to notice when shame appears during sex
• 21:50 Consent, “not yet,” and believing your body
• 23:24 Why you cannot technique your way out of shame
• 25:01 Healing as believing your own experience
• 26:36 David’s current trauma work, courses, and Substack

Find David Bedrick

• Website
• Courses
• Books
• Substack

Produced by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry Studios, now in her third season with GETSOME.

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

LITTLE MISS BEE IS LIVING A DOUBLE LIFE.

By day, she’s a high-powered working professional proudly shattering glass ceilings and climbing the corporate ladder. But off the clock, she’s a kink-positive, active member of the rope bondage community. 

In the final episode of the 3rd season of the GETSOME Podcast, we discuss personal authority, self-acceptance, and keeping it kinky. Our guest, Little Miss Bee, manages to keep her professional and personal worlds completely separate without losing touch with either side of herself. Ultimately, her openness and experiences give us the space to reflect on our own desires and boundaries, helping us find a path towards our own sexual, personal, and professional empowerment.

Show Notes:

Disclaimer

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Imagine being stuck in the “in betweens” of your sexuality.

You’re not “gay enough,” but you’re not “straight enough.” Your sexuality is constantly oversimplified, or oversexualized. You’re stuck wondering… “Am I bisexual enough???”

Though that may not be the reality for all bisexual men, it certainly is a struggle that a lot of people face. Our guest on today’s episode, West, is a bisexual man who learned to embrace his sexuality and accept that he is “enough” exactly as he is. 

In his young adulthood, West thought his bisexuality might just be youthful curiosity. But, as his life continued to progress and West continued to mature, he came to realize that his sexuality wasn’t a “phase” or “curiosity.” It was who he was. His journey to this discovery was filled with societal pressures, self-doubt, and uncertainty. But ultimately, West found acceptance, pleasure, and confidence in his sexual identity. 

If you have any questions, thoughts, or stories to share after listening to this episode, I’d love to hear from you. [email protected]

Show Notes

Guest: West

Host: Certified Sex Therapist Michelle Fischler

Production: Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios

Listener Note:

Engage with Us:

Disclaimer

Help bring GETSOME to more people

I’m in the Top Host competition, and I’d love your support. You can cast one free vote for me every 24 hours. The page also offers paid votes, but I’m only asking for the free one.

Vote for Michelle

Explore Michelle’s book, Coming Soon: The Unshaming Guide to Early Ejaculation and Lasting Longer: comingsoonbook.ca.

Has GETSOME given you something to think about? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.