The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

1. 1
   Number 1: Ep 439 Sex as a Hobby, Not a Test You Have to Pass

   Zach steps out of the host chair for this one. In a swap with Heather Shannon of Sex for Couples, Zach is the guest, and the conversation goes straight at a question most couples never ask out loud: what is sex actually for, and does that answer change over the life of a marriage? Zach, who's been married almost thirty years, and Heather dig into why frequency becomes the default target when quality and clarity would serve couples better. The conversation moves through the different eras a long marriage passes through, the anthropological reasons couples tend to hit a reset every few years, and the idea that any long marriage is really four or five different marriages stitched together. Zach shares specific, practical scenes from his own relationship, including a three hour float down a river with his wife where they talked about sex without ever touching, and describes a couple in his practice who solved their standoff by simply negotiating who gets what on which night. Heather brings in patterns she sees in her own client work, particularly the tendency to take sexual disconnection personally and the exhausting decision fatigue around initiating. Together they name two questions Zach uses to open nearly every session on this topic: what's it for, and what counts. The takeaway isn't a technique. It's a shift in framing, from sex as an obligation or a performance with a pass or fail outcome, to sex as something couples can actually get better at on purpose, the same way they'd get better at any skill they cared about. For anyone who's felt the pressure of "we should be having more sex" without ever stopping to ask what sex is supposed to accomplish, this conversation gives language for that gap, and permission to define it differently. Key TakeawaysFrequency is the wrong target. The better question is whether the sex you're having is actually good, and whether you're willing to get better at it on purpose.Sex is a skill, not a talent you either have or don't. It can be learned, practiced, and improved the same way any hobby can.Ask "what counts?" Narrow definitions of sex (intercourse only, simultaneous orgasm only) create a lot of ways to fail and very few ways to succeed.Intimacy is broader than sex. Physical closeness that isn't sexual, and sexual conversation that isn't physical, both count and both matter.Spontaneity is a myth for anything you actually care about. Couples plan meals, workouts, and sleep. Sex deserves the same intentionality.When you don't want sex, get specific about what you don't want. It's rarely your partner. It's more often boredom, exhaustion, or feeling obligated.A long marriage isn't one marriage. It's several different eras, and checking in roughly every three years, with a therapist or a trusted person, helps couples pivot into the next one.The most durable relationship habit isn't avoiding conflict, it's getting good at repair, and doing more of what your partner likes while doing less of what they don't.Guest Info This episode centers on a conversation between Zach and Heather Shannon, LCPC, CST (she/her), an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and host of the podcast Sex for Couples. Heather refers to working directly with clients around sex and communication in relationships throughout the conversation. Listen to Sex For Couples: podfollow.com/askasextherapist Website: HeatherShannon.co See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   August 25, 2026·39min
   Play
2. 2
   Number 2: Ep-443 An NPR Journalist, Her Audio Engineer Husband, and the Negotiation That Never Ends w/Yowei Shaw & Kyle Pulley

   Zach talks with Yowei Shaw and Kyle Pulley, a married couple who make the podcast Proxy together, a show that investigates "emotional mysteries" by connecting people who feel alone in a specific conundrum with a stranger who has lived through something close to it. Yowei spent about seven years creating and hosting the NPR documentary series Invisibilia before she was laid off in 2023. Kyle co-owns a recording studio in Philadelphia and plays a hands on role in Proxy, mixing episodes, managing the spreadsheets, and generally functioning, in his own words, as Yowei's bedraggled podcast spouse. They met on OkCupid, where Yowei used a flimsy pretext (she asked Kyle, an audio engineer, for help recording a narration she had already written an article about how to do herself) to get to know a guy with cute band photos. Most of the conversation traces how that early flirtation turned into a real, ongoing negotiation. When Yowei's NPR job pulled her to DC, Kyle stayed in Philadelphia with his studio and his music scene, and for years the two of them lived split lives, with Yowei commuting by Amtrak and Kyle rearranging his schedule, his living situation, and his role in the house to make it work. The bigger shift came when Yowei's income outpaced Kyle's and she became, unexpectedly, the breadwinner. She's candid that this new power showed up in their fights as an unfair trump card, and just as candid about how getting laid off in 2023 flipped the dynamic again, sending her into what she calls a complete mess of a stretch that Kyle met with support instead of shame. They talk through what stuck from couples therapy, and the concept from Yowei's individual therapist about not letting one partner absorb all the worry in a relationship, a framework they still use today around money, the future of the show, and the question of having kids. What makes the conversation land isn't that Yowei and Kyle have solved any of this. It's that they've built small, repeatable structures, a weekly "proxy meeting" to keep the podcast's business from leaking into date nights, permission to have a real blowup about once a quarter and then let it go, honesty about which gender roles still sneak up on them even though they don't believe in them, that let two strong willed, creative people keep choosing each other. It's a warm, funny, unusually honest look at a relationship that runs on ongoing negotiation rather than a moment when everything got figured out. Key TakeawaysNegotiation isn't a phase a couple moves past. Kyle says what convinced him he wanted to stay was that they always came back to the negotiating table, not that they stopped needing to.A sudden shift in who earns more money changes the emotional balance of a relationship, not just the financial one, and both partners have to consciously renegotiate power along with the budget.A recurring check in meeting, even a literal business meeting with a whiteboard, keeps one source of stress (in this case, the podcast) from leaking into every other part of a relationship.Learning your own rhythm for conflict, how often you blow up and how you repair afterward, matters more than trying to avoid conflict altogether.When one partner absorbs all the worry or responsibility for the future, there's no room for the other to step in. Deliberately pulling back can invite a partner to show up.Gender roles a couple has rejected intellectually can still resurface underneath old fights, especially around money and caretaking.Unconditional support through a layoff or career setback, without shame or pressure to hurry up, can become the turning point that redefines who carries a relationship's weight.Couples therapy can feel like it's taking sides when it's actually just holding both partners equally accountable, and that discomfort is often the useful part.Guest Info Yowei Shaw, creator and host of Proxy, an independent, mostly listener-funded podcast that investigates specific, private emotional conundrums. She calls herself an emotional investigative journalist. Before Proxy she spent years at NPR as a producer, co-host, and editorial lead on Invisibilia, with earlier stints as a temp on Fresh Air and stories for This American Life. Invisibilia was canceled and she was laid off from NPR in 2023, after which she built Proxy independently from Philadelphia. Website: https://yoweishaw.com Show: https://proxypodcast.com Instagram: @yoweishaw (personal), @proxypodcast (show) Kyle Pulley, Philadelphia music producer, audio engineer, and bassist. Co-founder and co-owner of Headroom Studios (with Joe Reinhart). Production and engineering credits include Dr. Dog, Alex G, Hop Along, Jay Som, Adult Mom, Diet Cig, Shamir, and Kississippi, among others. Also plays bass and co-writes in the band Thin Lips. He's the mixing engineer on Proxy and married to Yowei Shaw; Proxy's about page credits him as Mixing Engineer / Bedraggled Podcast Spouse. Website: https://kylepulley.net Studio: https://headroom.studio Instagram: @kylepulley (personal), @headroomphiladelphia (studio) Threads: @kylepulley See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   September 22, 2026·39min
   Play
3. 3
   Number 3: Ep 441 The Women Who Cheat And The Betrayed Men w/Adam & Judith Nisenson

   Zach sits down with Adam and Judith Nisenson, a husband and wife who both work in the betrayal space from opposite sides. Adam is known online as the betrayal shrink and works almost exclusively with men who have been cheated on. Judith works with women who have cheated, and hosts her own podcast, Women Cheat Too. They're four years into their second marriage together, and Zach opens by asking who they are as a couple before getting into the work. The conversation moves through their own story first: seven years of friendship before their first date, and Adam telling Judith he was all in before their first weekend together was even over. From there they get into the parts of betrayal that rarely get said out loud. Judith argues that women almost never cheat for sex itself, that it's usually a transactional stand in for validation and attention they aren't getting at home. Adam pushes back on the double standard that lets men off the hook for cheating while women who cheat get treated like the lowest part of the earth. They also talk candidly about their own healing: Judith describes losing her voice in her first marriage and slowly rebuilding it through yoga training and years in Landmark Worldwide, and Adam traces his own change back to the Mankind Project and the fear he carried into his first marriage of ever speaking his truth. Where the episode really lands is Adam's phrase for it: the gift of betrayal. He tells the men in his groups that if they aren't willing to look at their own part, not the affair itself, but the avoidance or unconsciousness that made room for it, there's no gift in going through it at all. Judith and Adam agree on something bigger too: betrayal is betrayal, whether it's an affair or a partner who quietly checked out of the marriage years before they said so, and nobody gets to rank whose pain counts more. For a couple listening who suspects they're further along in this than they want to admit, or for anyone bracing to hear that their own version of betrayal doesn't count because no one physically cheated, this episode makes the case that the work is the same either way: find your voice, stop pretending, and do the far harder job of understanding what happened instead of just surviving it. Key TakeawaysWomen rarely cheat for the sex itself, it's usually a stand in for validation, attention, and feeling seenSociety punishes women who cheat far more harshly than it punishes men who cheatAn emotional affair can do as much damage as a physical one, sometimes moreLosing your own voice in a relationship is its own quiet form of betrayalHealing starts with the individual work, not the couples workReframing an affair as "the gift of betrayal" only works if you're willing to look at your own partBetrayal isn't only an affair. A partner who checked out long before they said so counts too, and the impact isn't a competitionSmall, consistent rituals, like a monthly love letter, keep a relationship honest over the long runGuest Info Adam Nisenson, LMFT, CSAT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex addiction therapist known online as The Betrayal Shrink. His own betrayal journey started 13 years ago, and out of it he created the Masculine Betrayal Trauma (MBT) framework for how men uniquely experience and process partner betrayal. He wrote A Man's Guide to Partner Betrayal: Overcoming the Pain and Repercussions of a Cheating Partner, hosts the podcast Men Get Cheated On Too!, and runs private coaching, men's betrayal groups, and Brotherhood in Betrayal retreats. Website: betrayalshrink.com Instagram: @betrayalshrink Judith Flores-Nisenson is the founder of WomensWRK, an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and APSATS Certified Partner Coach (CPC) who works with women on every side of betrayal, including women who've betrayed a partner. She hosts the podcast Women Cheat Too!, now more than 50 episodes in, and runs coaching groups including an 8-week Women Cheat TOO track. Also known professionally as Judith Nisenson. Website: womenswrk.com Instagram: @womens.wrk Adam and Judith are married, and often present complementary sides of betrayal work, Adam with men who've been cheated on, Judith with women who've done the cheating. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   September 08, 2026·42min
   Play
4. 4
   Number 4: Ep 438 Faith, Addiction Recovery, and Rebuilding a Blended Family w/Darryl and Tracy Strawberry

   Zach sits down with baseball legend Darryl Strawberry and his wife Tracy for a conversation that has almost nothing to do with baseball. Both are on their third marriage. Both are in long term recovery, Darryl more than two decades sober, Tracy twenty five years clean. And both point to the same turning point in their story: faith. Zach wants to know what actually sits underneath a phrase couples say so easily, Christ is at the center of our marriage, especially since, as he points out, scripture itself says very little about marriage directly. What follows is unusually candid. Darryl and Tracy talk about the difference between humility and humiliation, and why fighting dirty means trying to shame your partner instead of solving the problem with them. Tracy describes watching Darryl in active addiction and reaching the point where loving him didn't mean rescuing him anymore, a moment she names plainly: he was too painful to love, not unworthy of it. Darryl traces his own turning point back further than the drugs, to the rejection of his father and the bitterness he carried underneath the addiction itself. And Tracy explains how she knew his recovery was real, not because he said the right things, but because his actions stayed consistent over time. They also get into raising nine kids across a blended family, the moment Tracy told Darryl to take his baseball uniform off and figure out who he was as a man, and what it actually looks like to stay married to someone you see only a few days a month. The reason to press play is that this isn't a highlight reel of two people who fixed their lives. It's a working theory of how repair actually happens: naming the wound before you can heal it, choosing consistency over grand gestures, and refusing to let ego, which Darryl defines simply as Easing God Out, decide who wins the argument. Anyone piecing a marriage back together after addiction, infidelity, or just years of distance will find something to hold onto here. Key TakeawaysHumility and humiliation aren't the same thing. Humility invites you both to the same level to find a solution. Humiliation is fighting dirty, trying to wound your partner instead of working with them.Trust isn't rebuilt with an apology. It's rebuilt through consistency over time, doing the same right thing again and again until it becomes believable.Unhealed wounds from your past don't stay in your past. Left alone, they bleed into your marriage and erode it from the inside.Recovery isn't only about quitting a substance. It's about dealing with whatever is underneath it, for Darryl that meant confronting the bitterness and rejection wound from his father.Loving someone in active addiction can reach a point where stepping back isn't giving up on them, it's refusing to keep enabling the behavior that's killing them.Blended families take a village. The Strawberrys say it takes nineteen people, across both sides of two divorces, to make their family work.You don't have to make love complicated. A home cooked meal, a card, or a phone call can matter more than a big gesture.Adult children still carry the wounds of a divorce they never chose. Being a great listener matters more than being right.Guest Info Darryl Strawberry, former Major League Baseball player who spent much of his career with the New York Mets. author of the book Another Life. In long term recovery from addiction, more than two decades sober at the time of this conversation. Tracy Strawberry, Darryl's wife, a pastor who works at the Dream Center in St. Louis, a recovery home for men and women. Twenty five years in recovery herself. Book: Another Life, out now, available wherever books are sold. https://amzn.to/4cqjAAs See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   August 18, 2026·50min
   Play
5. 5
   Number 5: Ep 435 Should You Even Be in Couples Therapy? Zach Answers on The Bomb Life w/Melissa Vogel

   Zach trades chairs this week. Instead of interviewing a couple, he's the one being interviewed, sitting down with Melissa Vogel of The Bomb Life for a wide-ranging conversation about what actually makes relationships work. Melissa is a health and fitness coach who works with individuals, often watching one partner transform physically and emotionally while the other stays stuck, and she brings that exact tension to Zach directly: what do you do when you're doing the work and your partner won't join you? Zach doesn't soften the answer. He tells her that healthy relationships require two functional adults, and that if one partner is investing in their growth and the other refuses, sometimes you leave them behind, not necessarily by ending the relationship, but by refusing to shrink yourself to keep the peace. From there the conversation moves through Terry Real's "good day, bad day" math for mismatched effort, the idea that couples should recalibrate roughly every three years the way you'd see a dentist or a financial advisor, and Zach's own admission that he and his wife Rebecca are technically on their fourth marriage, just to the same person. Melissa shares her own story of a 17-year marriage that ended when she kept growing and her husband didn't, and the two of them sit in how rarely anyone teaches couples to check in on whether they're still aligned. The back half gets into the mechanics: what the Gottman Method actually is (friendship, conflict management, shared meaning) versus Relational Life Therapy, which Zach calls "Relationship 501" for people who need more than tools. Zach also talks openly about his own sobriety, five and a half years in, and why he couldn't hear the truth about his drinking until he was ready to hear it. This is Zach without the therapist's chair, talking about his own marriage's near-misses, and it lands harder because of it. Key TakeawaysTwo functional adults are the baseline. If one partner is growing and the other refuses to, that's not a fixable math problem, it's a decision point.Sometimes the healthiest thing you can say to a partner is "I'm not coming back over there," while still leaving the door open for them to join you.Terry Real's framework: both partners at their best is a great day. Both at their worst is a bad day. One at their best and one not is just an okay day, and okay might be the best some seasons offer.Relationships benefit from a check-in roughly every three years, the same logic as seeing a dentist or a financial advisor on a schedule rather than waiting for a crisis.About two-thirds of relationship conflicts are perpetual and unsolvable. The goal isn't resolution, it's empathy and workable compromise.The Gottman Method breaks a relationship down into three buckets: friendship quality, how you manage difference, and shared meaning or values.Sobriety, like readiness for any change, can't be forced from the outside. Zach knew alcohol was the problem for years before he was actually ready to quit.The whole secret, per Zach: be a grownup, then do more of what your partner likes and less of what they don't.Guest Info Melissa Vogel hosts The Bomb Life, where she coaches individuals on health, fitness, and relationships. In this episode she works with Zach in reverse, bringing her own coaching experience and her own divorce (after 17 years of marriage) into the conversation. website: https://www.itsmelissavogel.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   July 28, 2026·48min
   Play