Horizontal With Lila

I often say that this show is about intimate relationships of all kinds. Not just romantic and sexual relationships, which tend to be the only ones that our society considers to be under the umbrella of “intimacy,” but also family relationships and friendships and mentorships, platonic love affairs and business partnerships, and all the rest of the meaningful relationships a human can have. We also deepdive into the one relationship that is intrinsic to all of these, and yet not always named as such: our relationship to ourselves. The lion’s share of this episode is about self-intimacy. How we think to ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, care for ourselves, how we mother ourselves, and how we pick ourselves up… In this episode, recorded on my trip to Los Angeles in early December, I lie down with Bevin, aka queerfatfemme, fearless torchbearer of body-positivity and positivity in general, warrior for self-love, creator of Fat Kid Dance Party aerobics, former lawyer, empress of tea, and

Horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. Think of it as consensual eavesdropping. Together, we’re making private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize human connection. Brene Brown, the world-renowned researcher/storyteller and expert on vulnerability, shame, and courage, states that shame (in a petri dish) needs 3 things to survive: secrecy, silence, and judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. I envision this podcast as a douse of empathy. In this episode, I lie down with Samia Mounts in my bed at Hacienda Villa, the sex-positive intentional community in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Samia is a singer, actress, voice-over artist, creator of music, and a polyamorous podcaster of political proportions, with a voice built for stadiums and arenas. Currently based in Korea, I was fortunate enough to get horizontal with her when she was in town to sing at the Kennedy Center. She is a bisex

Horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. I’m really glad you’re here. You can think of it as consensual eavesdropping.Together, we’re making private conversations public, so that we can dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize human connection. If you’ve been horizontal for a while, you know that each conversation is about 2-3 hours long, and gets divided into two episodes, released a week apart (by popular demand). For instance, this is episode #57. Next week’s episode, #58. the love drive, will feature part two of my conversation with Shaun. As I said in the last couple of episodes, I’m making a big shift in the way horizontal is released, and it just went into effect on Wednesday. All the part twos have now disappeared from your apps (unless you downloaded them, as I suggested! Thanks for being an early adopter!). They are now gated, and available to patrons at $5 a month and up. This is my first serious step toward making this work a sustainable career path. I intend to unt

This week and next week’s episodes are the last ones recorded on my horizontal does america tour, which took place in October & November of 2017. Lucid Studios NYC provided a car, and I went on a solo road trip adventure, circumnavigating the U.S., covering 10,700 miles and recording with people in their homes, in their cities. We recorded this episode in Austin, Texas, in a color-saturated cottage sanctuary filled with art and altars, called the Blue Star Temple. In this episode, I lie down with Epiphany Jordan. Epiphany is a nurturer by trade, a professional cuddler, aka the Chief Oxytocin Provider of Karuna Sessions, described as the “rolls royce” of cuddling experiences,” a 2-on-1 deepdive immersion in mothering energy and loving touch. Her forthcoming book, Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person's Guide to Nurturing Human Touch. Keep your eye out over the next few months for its release, by going to the website somebodyhold.me You can also find her on karunasessions.com and bluestartemple.com She is a r

Horizontal is a podcast about intimacy. It's recorded while lying down, wearing robes, sharing a single pillow. I take you into my bed (or in the case of these episodes, recorded while I was on the road across America, someone else's bed), and let your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations. The goal is to make private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize connection. In this installment, I lie down with Wry of Wry Polytalks, a nonmonogamy consultant,  a clear-talking, thoughtful advocate for alternative relationships and kinky stuff, an entertainer, a Dominant, a consent activist, public speaker, social justice warrior, and the host of many, many a panel. Wry Polytalks are panel discussions with relationship experts that he moderates on a web of topics related to nonmonogamy. I got to see his showmanship in action when he hosted the Ethical Slut social at Hacienda Studio (twice!), and lead two such panels in our event space. His ringmasterishness sure can co

This episode was recorded on my horizontal does america tour in November of 2017. I took to the road in a little blue car and drove solo around the country with two intentions: to feel as free as I could possibly feel, and to lie down and record as many episodes with fascinating humans as I could manage. In this quickie episode, recorded right before she headed in to therapize people in the morning, I lie down with the sex therapist Dr. Cat Meyer. Dr. Cat is a spritely, sensual whirligig, with big green eyes and big brown hair and a slender, bendable body. She’s a yoga teacher, a creatrix, a playful creature, a dancer of her prayers, a licensed relationship therapist, and a reiki practitioner. If you live in Beverly Hills, where Dr. Cat sees people in her private practice, she could be your sex therapist. Cat’s own podcast, eatplaysex, which just sounds like whipped cream in podcast form, doesn’t it? explores subjects in the very same wheelhouse as this one. On her Instagram, sexloveyoga, which I follow vorac

Welcome back to horizontal! I missed you. This is the podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down, wearing robes. It aims to make private conversations public in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize connection. After a hiatus, during which I went to Burning Man, also known as: surviving a giant art project in the middle of the desert, and then came home and felt very sad to no longer be out adventuring slash surviving said art project in the middle of the desert, and then questioned nearly everything about my life, as is, apparently, rather typical, I’m back on schedule! This episode marks a couple of horizontal milestones. And because I’m rewiring my nervous system for joy, I’m committed to celebrating successes of every size and volume. So… This is episode number 50! And in a bit of neat numbership, horizontal just surpassed 50,000 downloads. Thank you so much for listening, and for sharing this work with your people. Don’t stop. Keep sharing it. Let’s have a revolution! For all thi

horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. In this episode, I lie down with sexual folklorist Dixie de la Tour. Dixie is the founder, curator, and host of Bawdy Storytelling, the longest-running sex storytelling series in the United States. Samia Mounts, of the “Make America Relate Again” podcast, was the first to mention Bawdy to me in the late summer of last year, and she insisted that I SIMPLY MUST attend the RISK & Bawdy collaboration show at the Bell House last September. I did. I saw. I played Bang-o. I started courting Dixie immediately. She is a mesmerizing storyteller. Her Southern lilt, her flagrant nonchalance and nonchalant brazenness, her heart-o-gold, her heaving bosom. She’s not just a Connector, in the Malcolm Gladwell sense of the word, she’s a Super-connector, a Mmmega-connector. Her shows get people laid (it’s happened so often that there’s even a song for that!); her shows spark romance, start relationships, and, I believe may have even been tangentially responsib

horizontal is the podcast of intimacies that’s recorded while lying down. In this episode, I get the opposite of vertical with Marcia B., co-founder of Cuddle Party, creator of The Good Girl Recovery Program, and co-leader of weekend intensives like “Make Hot Play Happen” and “The Wanted Man,” that teach humans to have more fun, deeper connections, and hotter sex. Her co-teacher for these weekends is Midori, the renowned sex educator and doyenne of Japanese bondage. Marcia is an educator, a writer, a wild-permission giver, a generator of joy. She's funny and warm and lovely and clear. Marcia is a boundary expert, and the set of rules that she co-created for Cuddle Party have inspired a legion of hosts, including pretty much everyone who hosts an event at Hacienda Studio — the event space housed in Hacienda Villa, the community I live in. The Cuddle Party rules are so good, so simple and yet so profound, that I am compelled to share them here: Pajamas stay on the whole time. You don’t have to cuddle anyone at

In this episode, I lie down with one of my favorite humans, Lurleen. Lurleen lives in Portland, Oregon. Well, I still think of her that way even though she recently moved to the outskirts. Let's say she's Portland adjacent. When I first met Lurleen, I thought, "This is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in real life." And just as my envy started to kick in, she made a joke or a funny face and it was as if to say, "You don't have to do that. We can just love each other."I had just moved to Portland in November of 2008 (an ill-advised bit of scheduling on my part) and it was grey and rainy and I didn't own a car and I was biking around without proper rain gear and I was cold and my butt got soggy and damp and that made me very, very cranky. I tried to remind myself that the universe did not owe me a car.... The tango scene was pretty much my only social life in PDX. So I bought the Comme il Faut 3 and a half inch heels, and dove in. My initial joy gave way to the shame and frustration (recognized by partn

Welcome to horizontal, the podcast about intimacy of all kinds. It’s recorded while the opposite of vertical, but you probably know that. This episode was recorded in October, 2017, on horizontal does america, my 10,000 mile cross-country road trip and recording tour. Through a series of fortunate events which I will call “six laughable fortuities,” in honor of Milan Kundera, I wound up at the house of Dr. Lindsey Doe in Missoula, Montana. And Stevie was there. (Go back and listen to the intro of episode 40: sexplanations, for the full story.) Stevie, like Dr. Doe, is a huge ginormous YouTube star, but they both somehow agreed to put on robes, lie down with a stranger and record a spontaneous podcast. Stevie Boebi is the creator and host of the first Lesbian Sex Ed video series. She’s also a cat mom. (They make special guest appearances in her videos, including one in which she slightly annoys them for our amusement.) Stevie... is gorgeous. She has long purple hair. And luscious lips. And a thousand watt smil

Horizontal is the podcast about intimacy that’s recorded while lying down. Wearing robes. This episode was recorded on my horizontal does america tour, in October 2017. For two months, I circumnavigated the U.S. in a little blue Honda Civic. It was 10,000 solo miles of adventure with two intentions. 1) to feel free, and 2) to record with as many fascinating people as possible. I knew that I wanted to go to Montana. I’d missed the entire state on my first cross-country road trip, in 2009. A friend said, “Go to Missoula!” By the grace of my friends, go I. So. I went. How I came to be horizontal with Dr. Lindsey Doe goes like this: I drove the 6 hours from Billings to Missoula and arrived in a pile of yellow leaves next to a Ghetto Gypsy bus. (That’s what it said on the front.) I didn’t have a plan for Missoula. I didn’t know anyone who lived there or have any recordings lined up or really anything specific in mind at all. I just wanted to see Big Sky Country. After 4 years of living in a room at the Villa the

This is a special edition of horizontal, the podcast that takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations. horizontal aims to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and cultivate connections. This conversation was recorded last week at Hacienda Villa, the intentional community and center for sex education in Bushwick, Brooklyn: my home. In this episode, I lie down with Madison Young. Madison is a performance artist, an author, a sex educator, and a feminist pornographer. Last week, Hacienda Studio, our event space, hosted three performances of Madison Young’s one-woman show Reveal All Fear Nothing. It is literally like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Reveal All demystifies, illuminates, and celebrates the often-misunderstood worlds of kink, porn, and BDSM, through the words and body of an insider. It is important work. It needs to be seen. And it needs to be seen by you. I don’t want to reveal too much for her, because you should watch her reveal it yourself, but I must tell you this

This is horizontal, the podcast about sex, love, and relationships of all kinds, recorded while lying down. On horizontal, we make our private conversations public, for their shame-dispelling, loneliness-diminishing, and connection-cultivating properties. As listener ghostheart put it in their silver-tongued review, this is the podcast that takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations. In the second part of this episode, recorded in early October on my horizontal does america road trip, I lie down with Kennedy in Omaha, Nebraska. Horizontal does america was a 2-month long, 10,700 mile road trip and recording tour that I enjoyed during October and November of 2017. I miss being on the road! Kennedy is the young wife of my college friend, Thom. The last time I visited Thom was on my first cross country road trip, in 2009. He was single and frustrated and working as a bartender. Now, he has a two year old, a house, a truly delightful wife, and he teaches carpentry at a magnet

This is horizontal, the podcast about intimacy of all kinds that’s recorded while the opposite of vertical. Horizontal aims to make private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and cultivate human connection. To paraphrase my eloquent listener ghostheart, I take you into my bed and let your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations. In this episode, recorded on my horizontal does america road trip, I lie down with Kennedy. Kennedy is the young wife of my college friend, Thom. Thom and I went to theatre school together at NYU. I think he graduated one year before me, in 2002. I had a thing for Thom. I'm pretty sure we had sex. He's pretty sure we didn't. We're friends now. I visited him on my first cross country road trip, in 2009, when he was single and working as a bartender. And I visited him on my second, now that he has a two year old, a house, a wife, and works as a schoolteacher at a magnet high school. During October and November of 2017, I drove 10,700 miles in a Hon

Welcome in to horizontal, the podcast about intimacy that’s recorded while: the opposite of vertical. My guest and I wear cozy robes and lie down, shoulder to shoulder, with the microphone positioned above us. It’s as though we’ve talked all night, and we’re still stargazing, but the sun is just starting to make itself known in yellows and oranges around the horizon. Horizontal aims to make private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and cultivate connection. In this episode, I lie down with my friend Josh. Josh and I met at Circling, which is a sort of inter-relational meditation. Whereas in meditation with oneself, I will sit silently with my eyes closed, observing my internal landscape, the sensations In my body, my cloud-thoughts as they pass and my hamster-wheel thoughts as they come back around, In Circling, I have my attention not only on myself, but also on the others around me, how their presence and the shifts in the room affect me, the stories I make up about them (

Welcome back to horizontal, the podcast that makes private conversations public, or, in the words of listener ghostheart, “takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations.” In this episode, I lie down with my closest friend from high school, Joe McCue. I have a couple of guys who went to other high schools that I considered my “older brothers,” whom I'm still in contact with, but you might say that people from that time in my life are few and far between. Which makes my friendship with Joe all the more precious to me. Joe and I went to an arts magnet school at Gibbs, called Pinellas County Center for the Arts, or PCCA for short. His major was Visual Art; mine was Performance Theatre. He was one year ahead of me in school. Joe is now an osteopath. He spent eight years in undergrad, because he just adored the act of study, and kept starting majors and nearly finishing them, only to become swept away by another major and course of study (or at least, that’s how it seemed to me).

Welcome in to horizontal with lila, the podcast that makes private conversations public. We discuss the details of intimacy while the opposite of vertical, wearing robes. In this episode, I lie down with my dear friend of 11 years, Matthew Stillman. Matthew Stillman is a genius. Matt’s friendship, ingenuity, sheer breadth of knowledge and depth of compassion, keen interest, curiosity, and the ability to forge connections between seemingly unrelated subjects illuminates exactly what you were trying to unearth in essence but perhaps didn't have the cultural or historical vocabulary for ... He's changed my life. He's made my world bigger many, many times over. I owe my life at the Villa (and thus, this podcast) to his curiosity and insatiable desire to share. In 2012, Matt loaned me a series of books to read (sometimes I think of it as my independent study / book club of one in human sexuality) and made himself available for all sorts of conversations surrounding those books. Each one vastly expanded my percepti

Heyyy, Welcome back to season two of horizontal, the podcast that makes private conversations public, or, to paraphrase my listener ghostheart, the podcast that “takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations.” We record while the opposite of vertical, wearing robes. It’s a thing, the robes. It makes a difference! In this episode, I lie down with Bryony Cole. Bryony is the host of one of my hands-down favorite podcasts, Future of Sex, which explores the intersection of the “evolving worlds of sex and tech.” Her work grapples with questions like: how will VR affect relationships? Does sex with a humanoid robot constitute cheating? Bryony also moderates live panels with some of the most fascinating innovators and radicals in sexuality and technology. She organizes and hosts sex tech hackathons across the globe, seeding innovation in the field. She’s also, I must say, a stunningly gorgeous Australian beach babe, which would be a little difficult to deal with, if she wasn’t also

Welcome to the second episode of the second season of horizontal with lila, the podcast about intimacy recorded while lying down.  In this episode, I lie down with my sweet friend Fiona. Fiona is an architecture student, a first generation Nuyorican, a bisexual woman, and one of the most deliciously sensual humans I’ve ever known. At the time of this recording, she had recently trained as a tantrika and was giving erotic massage at a Tantric Temple, which is where she headed right after we finished recording … she was late! Since then, has retired that persona, feeling that, while she fully supports the rights of women to do tantric sex work, it wasn’t for her. However, she’s dabbled in educational sex work as well, and really enjoys being a demonstration model in an intimate environment — for instance, showcasing hands-on sexual techniques during workshops given by the sex educator Kenneth Play. This episode was recorded on a marathon day of podcasting in my friend Owen’s basement — which is far less creepy