Meet the Australian podcast that will redefine your understanding of sex

The new six-part series is exploring the world of sex without trivialising it.

Of the hundreds of thousands of words that make up the English language, it’s strange to have just one for “the birds and the bees”. Sex can refer to biology, identity, behaviour and desire. It’s life creating, life-sustaining and for some, life-changing – and we reduce everything it encompasses to a tiny, monosyllabic word.

But those three harmless letters, completely innocuous when placed in a different sequence, are loaded with angst, controversy and embarrassment. Well aware of this, Caroline Moreau-Hammond manages to make the subject of sex very, well, unsexy (in all the right ways) to remove the taboo that usually clouds sex-centric discussions.

For more sex advice, head on over to our Life section.

Birthed as a byproduct of her sex toy subscription store, Becuming, Caroline’s podcast The Philosophy of Sex analyses and unpacks the polarising topic, approaching it with the same frankness and respect you’d pay to any other natural human experience.

Beyond just supporting Becuming, The Philosophy of Sex stands as something needed and worthy in its own right. On this, Caroline says “I didn’t feel like there was a podcast discussing sex without trivialising it… We have a tendency to look out for ‘quick tips’ or funny anecdotes that can minimise someone’s experience to humiliation, and I wanted something that felt more considered, bringing a degree of humility to allow people to unpack how they think about sex as a much deeper level.” And that she does.  

The six-episode series navigates some of the stickier and less talked about stuff like sexual ethics, BDSM, Tantra, and the fraught reality of pleasure for vulva owners. What is the ‘goal’ of sex? Who does hook-up culture actually serve? Why are relationships seen as ‘girly’ when men equally enjoy the care and companionship they provide? Why does the orgasm gap exist and how can we close it? These are all topics explored in the first two episodes of the series. 

With a background in philosophy and religious studies, Caroline explains “I’ve always been interested in how we think about things, how we frame things in our own mind and how that affects our behaviour and how we relate to each other – so that’s the lens I cast over everything in the podcast.” 

Having interviewed an incredible line-up of guests, from professors and philosophers (honestly didn’t know there was such a thing as a modern-day philosopher – very cool flex) to authors, researchers and pleasure coaches, Caroline and her co-producer, Zoltan Fecso, were mindful of including a myriad of diverse voices.

“The main thing for me when I was looking for guests was finding people who were genuinely interrogating the narratives that exist around sexuality. I found a collection of people that weren’t the people getting the most ‘air time’… we wanted to include people from different professions, and having voices of real people who’ve experienced the things that we talk about was really important as well.” 

But how do you cover all that sex is in only six episodes? Short answer; you can’t. “But I came into this hoping I would create many seasons,” she explains. “So for the first series I wanted to cover the foundational, theoretical ideas about sexuality, so we could explore the other, more specific topics later on. We wanted to give people a solid foundation to interrogate their own thinking around their relationship to sex and sexuality with a few specific examples peppered throughout that put the theory into context.”

In my unqualified opinion, I’d say that if you like podcasts that exercise critical thinking like After Work Drinks or The Daily and deep dives on a singular theme like Sentimental in the City, this one’s for you. 

You can listen to The Philosophy of Sex here.