Help Existing

This week on Help Existing: how your vibrator sausage is made. I have a lot of questions. Mainly, why can engineers send a man to the moon (decades ago), but I still can't find a toy that gives me handless orgasms? Seriously, wtf is that sexist shit? Rob Scott, the chief product designer for an ethical and eco-friendly sex toy company called Love Not War, was a great sport answering my questions. Surprisingly, I also learned a lot about recycling from this conversation. We dug into questions like what are the biggest challenges vibrator engineers face? Why is The Womanizer so far ahead of other suction toys on the market? Can you recycle your toys? What kind of charging habits ensure the longest life? And much more.

A note: this episode is not in any way sponsored content, though I am running a giveaway for a toy Love Not War donated on my Instagram @rachelkrantz. I'm trying to rely on your donations to keep this podcast going. Even a dollar or two is helpful! @Rachel-Krantz on Venmo. Another equally appreciated way to support me is to buy and/or review a copy of my memoir, Open. It's only $6.99 right now on kindle and is otherwise available wherever you get your books.

In honor of my fellow vegans and vegetarians getting shit from their families this Thursday (and also in honor of World Vegan Month), I wanted to do an episode to help those wanting to lean in a more plant-based direction. This episode was filled with vegan hacks, recs, tips, and heartfelt feelings.

I've been vegan for seven years now, and one of my first vegan friends was podcaster, activist, and author Jasmin Singer. She became one of my closest people because she's a compassionate, generous powerhouse and sister from another Jewish mister. Jasmin is the author of The Veg News Guide to Being a Fabulous Vegan, an excellent place to start if you want to learn more about everything we talked about in this episode. She's also the author of Always Too Much and Never Enough: A Memoir, and the editor of Antiracism in Animal Advocacy. She's also the co-host and creator of Our Hen House, an excellent podcast that centers around animal rights.

I hope this conversation is helpful to you, no matter where you are on your journey. Keep an open mind, and you might just make a new best friend too.

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Help Existing is listener supported...theoretically. Please throw a dollar in the hat through my Venmo, @rachel-krantz, if you can.

This episode is all about ketamine therapy: the most legally accessible psychedelic therapy. Ketamine has been used as an anesthetic for many years. But recently, it's caught on for treating patients with mental health issues--especially those who haven't responded to medication or are (content warning) suicidal.

To find out more, I spoke with Dr. Carlos De La Hoz. He's a doctor at the NeoMedicine Institute, where he administers ketamine therapy. We spoke about why ketamine's different than other psychedelics, the legality and cost of ketamine therapy, why we need to question long-term antidepressant use, where one might start if they want to try ketamine therapy, and lots more. I hope it's helpful!

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Help Existing is listener and host supported--please contribute anything you feel moved to at my Venmo @rachel-krantz. Thanks!

If you have a fantasy of being a digital nomad or retiring abroad, what steps should you take? What do you need to know when it comes to visas, health insurance, and money? This week we're tackling these questions and more with Nicole Gustas, a consulting expert for International Citizens, which helps people figure out how to live or retire abroad.

This was a super practical episode. I think there's a larger conversation to be had about the ethics of living abroad and being a digital nomad. We touch on that a bit, but I think that's a conversation best had with someone who specializes in thinking about that topic, and who is from a country more directly impacted by digital nomads. So I will try to do that sometime in the future.

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Help Existing depends on your donations. Please drop a dollar in the virtual hat on my Venmo, @Rachel-Krantz.

This week I'm talking with meditation teacher Jonathan Foust about the tendency of the mind to live in the future. Whether it's fantasizing or mundane planning, I know I often find my mind off in the future. Its underlying cause is an overdeveloped impulse to find pleasure and avoid danger and discomfort. Future thinking is impossible (and ill-advised) to avoid entirely --but I would like to learn to reign it in so that I can be more present in my life.

At the same time, as we talk about in this episode, future thinking has a purpose: it can alert us to what we're anxious about, where we might be headed in life, and what we value. What I got out of this conversation is that it's about learning how to work with it skillfully. This episode provides many practical tips for exercises that might help you do that.

You may remember Jonathan from last season's episode "Help Figuring Out the Most Important Thing." I often turn to Jonathan for some of life's biggest questions. He's so wise, and I've found his podcast and YouTube channel extremely helpful.

To find out more about working with Jonathan in a private session or otherwise, check out his website www.jonathanfoust.com

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Help Existing is host & listener supported. Every donation to my Venmo, @rachel-krantz, is appreciated. You can find out more about my book, Open, here.

This week I'm joined by my dear friend, Ashna Ali. Ashna is the author of the poetry collection The Relativity of Living Well, and they're joining me to talk about the effects of invisible illnesses on their life. After having long COVID, they now live with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

We talked about mitigating risk, the politics of masking, as well as how to be better towards people who have invisible illnesses. Ashna is a queer, agender, Bangladeshi diasporic poet raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. You can find them online at www.ashnaali.com and on Instagram @doctordushtu.

When I got the pitch "three steps to a mental orgasm" from the PR person representing sex therapist Dr. Chelsie Reed, I was skeptical.

But I was also intrigued by the idea of a mental orgasm, which is a scientifically-proven regular orgasm—only one induced by the mind, rather than any genital stimulation. (Think: wet dreams, only on command.)

In this conversation, Dr. Reed explains how to try to have a mental orgasm, as well as the different kinds of orgasms vagina-owners might be missing. I hope this conversation brings some interesting ideas into your orgasmic life—and also does not create any shame whatsoever if you are not able to have a mental orgasm. (I know I am going to try, but I am skeptical I'll be able to cultivate this Jedi mind trick.)

Dr. Cheslie Reed's book is Sexpert: Desire, Passion Sensations, Intimacy, and Orgasm to Indulge in Your Best Sex Life. You can find her website at www.drchelsea.com. You can also find her on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter @drchelsie.

Help Existing is listener supported. You can chip in @rachel-krantz on Venmo. If you feel this or other conversations have been helpful, it helps keep me going. Just throw a dollar in the hat if you can. Thank you!

My guest this week is Emi Nietfeld, author of the wonderful new memoir Acceptance. It's the story of her growing up in foster care, and at times without a home. Though Emi ended up going to Harvard, she struggled with self-harm, depression, thoughts of suicide, eating disorders, her bisexual identity, and sexual assault. We get into all of that in this episode.

I asked Emi what she felt she would most like to offer as helpful to listeners; what she felt she could best speak to (which is what I tend to ask most of the guests who come on). Emi wanted to focus on how to better talk with youth in crisis.

Even if you don't have any young people in your life right now, this conversation offers great advice on helping people in crisis in general, and was wide-ranging. I really admired how precise Emi is with her speech; how eloquent and measured and honest she is. I think this was a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it.

It's Bisexual Awareness Week, and I want to celebrate my people! In the fifth episode of Help Existing, I spoke with author Jen Winston about understanding bisexuality better. That's a great primer on a lot of the myriad serious (and sometimes fun) issues bi people face.

This week, I wanted to talk with a bisexual man about what his experience has been like. For men, it is often more stigmatized to be bi. While bi women are often infuriatingly assumed to "really" be straight, bi men are assumed to "really" be gay. This conversation about why that is should help you examine your own internalized biphobia (even if you yourself are bi!).

Aaron Aceves is the author of the new bisexual YA novel This Is Why They Hate Us. He's a Mexican-American-born writer who graduated from Harvard, received his MFA from Columbia, and is a teacher at UT Austin. He spoke with me about his new book, and also about his own experiences as a bisexual Chicano man.

I hope you enjoy this conversation and support any bisexuals in your life. Including if that bisexual is yourself!

Help Existing is listener (and host) supported! Any contributions you can my to my Venmo @rachel-krantz help me keep going and are very appreciated. Thanks!

How do you get better at imagining things, aka, making shit up? Today I'm talking with Bianca Marais, author of the new book The Witches of Moonshine Manner and host of The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast, about cultivating imagination when writing fiction.

I've written my book Open, but it's a memoir, and I'm trained as a journalist. It's hard to give myself permission to lift off into the imaginary, but I would like to try! So I wanted to really get into the nitty-gritty technical aspects of how Bianca does that—and she really had so many great tips. This is a great episode for writers, obviously. But if you're a reader, I think you'll get a lot of interesting insight into the way fiction writers actually create entirely new worlds.

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Help Existing is funded by donations (and me!) If you're open to contributing, my Venmo is @rachel-krantz.

$30 gets you a signed copy of Open.

$50 gets you a vibrator (only two left!)

$150 gets you an hour consultation with me on the topic of your choice.