It is hard to believe that we are already wrapping the year up! What an adventure 2024 has been for the podcast! We launched on January 1, and have been working hard all year to create the show that we wanted to listen to!
We have had charming and brilliant guests, delicious conversations with our After Party co-hosts, and a successful live event!
We also teamed up with The Social Good Fund, who became our fiscal sponsor, which now means that we have non-profit status and your donations to us are TAX DEDUCTIBLE.
What’s more, we received a $1000 mini-grant from the New Moon Network.
All in all, I’d say we’ve had a successful first year!
Episodes
For the rest of the year, we have a lot of great content coming your way!
On November 4, Lana Hart will be talking to us about her favorite hobby: bedrotting! This is a special crossover episode with Tryst Blog.
Those of you who have been following us this year know that Tryst has been our biggest supporter in terms of sponsoring the show. In addition to that, they have started a new series of essays called “Hobby Whores” that explores the hobbies of sex workers, something that is not identical, but very in line with, our mission. Once a quarter we will be putting out an episode that lines up with their blog on the same topic. Lana’s episode is the first in this series.
Additionally, these crossover episodes will come with a giveaway related to the episode! This time, one lucky listener will be chosen to get a package of things that they can do while bedrotting — or in other words, laying in bed for long periods for its own sake. We will be announcing this episode’s winner on the 4th after the episode comes out!
Lana Hart is a sex worker and content creator — a woman who wears many hats, and sometimes nothing at all!
On November 11, we will be dropping the recording of our first live event! On October 16, we hosted a book launch event for Working Girls’ Press’s debut book, The Holy Hour: An Anthology of Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine, at Stay Gold Books in Regent Square.
While the anthology itself is a collection of poetry, art, essays, and stories, we decided to focus on four of the essays.
The essays you will be hearing excerpts of on this episode are:
- Jessie Sage’s Altar of Ecstasy, read by Jessie Sage
- Britta Love‘s Dreaming the Revolutionary Sacred Whore, read by Nicci
- Elena Egusquiza’s The Sacred Prostitute, read by Melissa Milk
- Amber Délice‘s Sacred Integrity in the Kiln of the Client-Companion Experience, read by Ashley Ramos
Our producer Emily Foster emceed the event, wearing two hats and also providing music! We had a live panel that included host Jessie Sage, the co-founder of Working Girls Press Molly B. Simmons, and former guest Adrie Rose. After each reading, the panel discusses the piece, and we also take questions from the audience.
This event was also a formal announcement of Working Girls Press’s newest anthology project: I Hate My Job: Thoughts on Labor, Sex Work, and Capitalism, edited by Adrie Rose. Jessie Sage will be one of the contributors to that collection as well!
On November 18, the delightful Josie Oakley will be joining us to talk about the ethics and responsibilities of hosting a “No Boys Allowed” sex party, the organizing work that she’s been doing in Pittsburgh on local sex work ordinances, and the best snacks to eat in bed.
Josie is a Pittsburgh-based escort and a long-time fighter for spicy workers everywhere!
The last regular episode of the year will drop on December 2 and features an interview with Mistress Olivia Snow. We have a wide-ranging conversation that includes academia, Herman Melville, alienated labor, the whorearchy, and so much more.
Dr. Olivia Snow is a writer, professor, and dominatrix based in New York City. She’s currently a Visiting Assistant Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Department of Gender Studies and Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), where she studies sex work, labor rights, tech, and policy. She’s written for WIRED, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Nation, Slate, and Motherboard/VICE, and she’s been quoted in stories on sex work and whorephobia for Business Insider, Buzzfeed, CNN, The Daily Dot, Fast Company, Forbes, Glamour, The Guardian, Inside Higher Ed, Mashable, MEL Magazine, The New York Post, Paper Magazine, Polygon, Prism, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, and more.
After Parties
For our November/December After Parties, we have the pleasure of debriefing the episodes with former guest Emery Fields! If you haven’t yet listened to his episode, you are missing out! He talked about dancing and bird watching and so much more! You can listen to it HERE.
Jessie’s Updates
I’ll be traveling three times in November an December.
- November 12-13: Cleveland, OH
- November 22-24: NYC, NY
- December 6-8: Buffalo, NY
If you would like to see me in one of those three places, feel free to reach out at jessie_sage [at] proton [dot] me.
University Lectures
I’m also excited to be giving a talk at Oberlin College & Conservatory on November 12, 2024. I will be talking about sex work and feminism for the “Feminist Sex Wars” class in the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department.
On November 19, 2024, I will be giving a talk at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine about how doctors can better serve sex workers. Over the last several years, I have built a relationship with the medical school and have come in at least once a year to give these kinds of talks, building off some of the writing I have done on the same topic.
With my former Peepshow Podcast intern Bella Cowan, I wrote a piece for Kinkly that included interviews of many sex workers about what doctors could do better for sex workers, including Adrie Rose! You can read that HERE.
Similarly, for my Pillow Talk with Jessie Sage column at the Pittsburgh City Paper, I wrote about what Pittsburgh doctors are doing to eliminate whorephobia within medicine. You can read that HERE.
Support the Podcast
If you’re loving the season so far and want to help us reach more listeners, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
And as always, if you’re subscribed to our Patreon for at least $5/month, you get all episodes and After Parties a week before they drop!
Sponsors & Collaborators
As always, we want to express our gratitude to Assembly Four for continuing to support our podcast through sponsorship. We also want to make sure to shout out our collaborator Black Venom Digital. If you are looking for a website or branding services, make sure to check us out! And lastly, I want to remind everyone that we are not a 501(c)(3) fiscally sponsored project of the Social Good Fund. This means that you can set up a recurring tax-deductible donation to help keep us going. If you’re interested in doing that, we have made it easy on our website!
We hope you enjoy all of the content we have planned for you this month! As always, feel free to reach out with questions, suggestions, and comments!
xoxo