Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr Joe Kort

Michael Pezzullo, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist, gay men’s therapist, relationship coach, speaker, and creator of Therapy for Gay Men. His work focuses on helping gay men understand the deeper emotional and relational patterns shaping their dating lives, sexuality, attraction, confidence, self-worth, trauma, addiction, intimacy, and relationships.

In this conversation, Michael Pezzullo and Dr. Joe Kort explo...

Master Arch is a fetish worker, pro dom, fetish creator, death escort, and financial fetishist whose work explores the deeper emotional and psychological sides of fetish culture. His work focuses on financial domination, emotional masochism, shame, power exchange, masculinity, vulnerability, and the ways people use erotic experiences to access feelings they may not be able to express anywhere else.

In this conversation, Ma...

Ray Aubel is a hypnotherapist, positivity coach, and founder of Intuitive Mind Hypnosis whose work focuses on helping people break free from anxiety, self-doubt, and deeply ingrained subconscious patterns. Through hypnosis and coaching, Ray helps clients understand how early experiences, shame, and social conditioning can shape the way they see themselves, relate to others, and move through the world.

In this conversation,...

Juliane Maxwald is a licensed psychoanalyst and AASECT certified sex therapist whose work focuses on the deeper psychological dynamics shaping sexuality, desire, and relationships. With over 15 years of experience, she integrates psychoanalytic theory with modern sex therapy to help individuals and couples understand how unconscious patterns, attachment, and past experiences influence their intimate lives.

In this conversa...

Jessica Levith is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and certified sex therapist whose work focuses on how life experiences shape sexuality. Trained in attachment focused EMDR and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, she helps clients understand their sexual identities through the lens of personal history, culture, relationships, and emotional development.

In this conversation, Jessica and Dr. Joe Kort explore the idea...

Justin Depow is the inventor of C*ck Block, the first sex tech product designed specifically to combine penetration and frot in one shared experience. After leaving a successful corporate career in product management, Justin took a personal challenge and turned it into a bold entrepreneurial journey. Following years of struggling with undiagnosed pelvic floor dysfunction that made anal sex painful and anxiety producing, he began qu...

Dr. Paul Benson is the founder, owner, and Medical Director of Be Well Medical Center in Berkley, Michigan, a family medicine practice established 45 years ago. He is proud to share he was the first LGBTQ physician to open a medical practice in Metro Detroit, creating a safe, affirming space for patients of all backgrounds, especially those too often overlooked or mistreated in healthcare. While he did not set out to become an HIV ...

“I often am asked, ‘why on earth would you want to run for office in such dangerous political times?’ My response is simple: if we back down now when we are afraid, we’ve already lost.” Kali Scales is running for State Representative of District 5, which encompasses Oak Park, Royal Oak Township and Northwest Detroit. If she wins, she will be the first transgender person elected to an office in Michigan. The question that naturally ...

Patriarchal expectations of men remain strongly embedded in our society and culture, but it’s time to break the guy code.

Men are stuck in a bubble internally; they are supposed to be stoic, strong and masculine, and uphold rigid norms placed on them from the past several generations, reports Dr. Christopher Wilson, a certified sex therapist who works with cishet and non-cishet men who are struggling with the patriarchal negative a...

For many years, researchers categorized sex as a biological drive like thirst, hunger, sleep or temperature control. But the question lingered, “what if you don’t have sex? What will happen to you?” Unlike thirst or hunger, individuals will survive without sex, says Dr. Adrienne Rowland, an AASECT-certified sex therapist specializing in sexual health and LGBTQIA+ affirming care. During this Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast, she discus...

A New Zealand-born, Australian-raised writer, director, actor, model and fetish content creator, Julian Shaw began his filmmaking career in his teens. When COVID dried up his earnings, a friend suggested he explore Only Fans, an app that is redefining the sex industry. He found he could make easy money and get back on his feet monetarily, but he learned far more. In 2020, Shaw launched a subscription site, and to his amazement, som...

An internationally renowned champion for saving marriages, best-selling author and marriage coach Michele Weiner-Davis has written eight books, covering topics such as divorce busting, sex-starved marriages, and her most recent one – “Healing from Infidelity,” a topic we delve deeply into during this Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast.

“If it weren’t for the kids, we wouldn’t be trying to save our marriage,” is a statement Weiner-Da...

We can't simply squeeze ourselves into expected heteronormative structures and find happiness. It’s not going to happen! That’s why Tom Bruett, a therapist and founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, wrote the book, The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment, a guide that provides the tools to build a rich, deep gay relationship. In any romantic relationship or friendship, there will be...

“I am promiscuous because I am curious,” reads an introduction to Soulmates: A History of Our Fetish for Feet,” a book authored by Adam Zmith, a writer and podcast producer whose work focuses on sex, queer identity, LGBTQ+ lives, history, art and desire. In my Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast, Zmith shares that fetishes with feet are a centuries’ old pleasure that most cultural groups have explored. In fact, one in 6 people have fanta...

In this powerful episode of Smart Sex, Smart Love, Dr. Joe Kort sits down with world-renowned trauma expert, psychiatrist, and author Dr. Frank Anderson. Together, they explore the many forms of trauma—relational, cultural, global, and more—and how our responses, not just our experiences, shape our healing journeys. Dr. Anderson opens up about his personal transformation, the writing of his memoir To Be Loved, and the deep belief t...

You can build the body you want and live a healthy lifestyle with a few simple changes, says Amadeo Aram, a sports and exercise professional, certified personal trainer, and online fitness coach who works with gay men all over the world to help them build the body they always have dreamed of. It’s not complicated to achieve your goals, he emphasizes.  

Born and raised in Berlin, Germany, Aram conducts trainings online with his “trib...

In this insightful episode of Smart Sex, Smart Love, host Dr. Joe Kort welcomes Dr. Ronald Hellman, a distinguished psychiatrist and pioneer in LGBTQ+ mental health advocacy. Together, they delve into the concepts of "homosexism" and "sides," challenging longstanding cultural assumptions about gay male sexuality.

Dr. Kort and Dr. Hellman discuss the evolution of the term "side"—coined by Dr. K...

In this episode of Smart Sex, Smart Love, Dr. Joe Kort interviews Dr. Lauren Fogel Mersy, and Dr. Jennifer Vencill dive into the complexities of sexual desire discrepancies between partners. They discuss the differences between libido, sexual desire, and sex drive, emphasizing that sexual desire discrepancies are common and should be normalized rather than pathologized. The episode highlights two types of libido: spontaneous and re...

In this episode of Smart Sex, Smart Love's fifth season, Dr. Joe Kort talks with Jay Kaplan, an attorney for the ACLU of Michigan’s LGBTQ+ Project. Jay shares insights on the Trump 2.0 administration’s executive orders affecting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly policies targeting transgender individuals.

They discuss the removal of LGBTQ+ references from federal websites, restrictions on gender-affirming care, and the reinstatement ...