Five writers. Five letters to their libido. Equal parts filthy, funny, and unexpectedly profound - a bonus episode to balance out this week's heavier one.

This is a bonus episode with a different shape: five writers - Nadine Hura, Sam, Joseph Trinidad, Emily Writes and Melody - read the letters they wrote to their libido for TGSP's live launch event. Inspired by Jessie Casson's Letter to My Libido project, these are funny and tender pieces of writing about desire, identity, faith, grief and reclaiming your own body.

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Sexual trauma doesn't end when the event does. Its effects ripple forward - into how we see ourselves, how we move through intimacy, how we flinch or freeze or dissociate in moments that are supposed to feel safe. This episode explores the long aftermath of sexual trauma: the ways it reshapes identity, trust, and the body's relationship to pleasure, sometimes for years or decades. We speak with Jimanekia Eborn, sexual assault and trauma expert, who brings both clinical insight and deep personal honesty to the question of what survival actually looks like and what it takes to move beyond it. This isn't an episode about victimhood. It's about the slow, nonlinear, often surprising work of reclaiming yourself.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sex work is often called the world's oldest profession. It’s survived moral panics, technological leaps, a global pandemic, and endless political debate. This episode looks at the state of sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand - one of the few countries where it's fully decriminalised - and asks whether legal protection translates to real safety, dignity, and wellbeing. We hear from workers about the realities of the mahi: the parts that are misunderstood, the parts that are genuinely hard, and the disruption to old models of working. And we examine how stigma, even in a decriminalised environment, continues to shape workers' access to housing, healthcare, and community - and what it takes to live a full life when your work is still, for many, unspeakable.

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Social Psychologist and author Bella DePaulo is 72, single by choice, and has spent decades proving that single life isn't a consolation prize. In this conversation she shares the research on why married people aren't actually happier, how single people get quietly punished, and why "growing old alone" is her fantasy, not her fear.

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From Bridget Jones to #SoloGlowUp, the story of singleness has had a rebrand. But is it liberation - or just a better-looking waiting room?

Melody Thomas meets two people sitting with that question. Beth is 42, an extrovert, and someone who loves hard - sometimes too hard. After a five-year relationship that slowly stripped away her sense of self, she's reassessing what she actually wants from a partnership. Then there's Scott - non-binary, gay, and seven years into single life. Not always lonely, but not untouched by it either. Comparison creeps in. So does the ache of going without touch.

And threaded through both stories: the question of whether our structures - social, legal, cultural - are quietly penalising people for being on their own. Psychologist Bella DePaulo has a name for that. She calls it singlism. And she has an entirely different way of thinking about love.

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Tom Scott - musician, father, and one of Aotearoa's most compelling voices - joins Melody for a wide-ranging conversation about love, loss, and what it actually takes to change. Tom's album Anitya is the jumping-off point: a record split between the wreckage of a decade-long relationship and the unexpected arrival of new love. But the conversation quickly goes deeper, touching on addiction and sobriety, the cycles of trauma we inherit from our parents, what real accountability looks like (hint: it starts at the bottom of the well), and why yearning is severely underrated.

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What makes some relationships survive betrayal while others collapse over something small?

John and Anna built a life over fifteen years together - then nearly lost it all. Not in one moment, but slowly: new parenthood, creeping distance, alcohol, silence, and eventually repeated infidelity. This episode follows their story through the idea of rupture and repair - the quiet, unglamorous work of mending a relationship not all at once, but crack by crack. What does it take to stay, when leaving would be easier?

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You don't have to do anything to become a victim of image-based sexual abuse. AI can now fabricate intimate images from a single photo - and the shame, fear, and coercion that follow are just as real as if it had actually happened. Melody talks to Netsafe's Sean Lyons about deepfakes, sextortion, nudify apps, and the organised crime networks behind them. Essential listening - especially if you have kids online.

Make a submission to the deepfake digital harm and exploitation bill here

Get in touch with Netsafe here

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