The Love Drive with Shaun Galanos

In this 2019 replay, I tell the story of my first real sex party and then the woman I met that night joins me to share her side.

It’s explicit, funny, tender, and ultimately a story about attraction, assumptions, communication, and finding the courage to say what you want.

New episodes return in October.

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(Replay from 2020)

What happens when one person wants sex more often than the other?

In this conversation with sex educator Kai Werder, we talk about mismatched libidos, responsive vs. spontaneous desire, how to talk about sex without pressure, and why intimacy doesn’t always have to lead to sex.

We also get into scheduling play, creating the conditions for desire, and the three-part invite—one of my favorite ways to ask f...

I'm sharing some of my favorite episodes throughout September, and this replay is a peek into a part of my life I don't talk about very often: my time giving erotic massage to women in San Francisco. 

A friend asks me how it started, what actually happened in those sessions, and what it eventually cost me. About a third of my clients cried on the table. Most of them weren't starved for sex. They were touch-starved, and I don't ...

I’ve missed being here. The last month has taken me somewhere I wasn’t quite expecting, and I wanted to check in and tell you a little about where I’ve been.

This week is a little life update on what I’ve been building, why I’m giving myself a little more time before coming back with new episodes, and what this season of my life is starting to look like.

I’m also sharing what’s next for The L...

On July 13th, I lost one of my dear friends. Josh Kalven was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer in March and died four months later. He was a husband, a dad to a five-year-old, and a sweet friend.

This episode is a eulogy. I read Josh the letter I wrote him in June, back when we still thought he'd beat it. It's full of stuck ropes, bad slab, his famous hummus sandwich, and everything he taught me about climbing and friendship....

The manosphere thinks going down on a woman is gay, submissive, or a low-return waste of time. It's wrong on all three — so I brought in an expert to help me prove it.

In this crossover episode — Shameless Love — I sit down with sex educator Amy Baldwin from the Shameless Sex podcast for an honest, explicit, and useful guide to going down on women. We take apart the manosphere nonsense, then get practical: how to g...

A listener asks whether to move back to somewhere familiar or take a leap somewhere new. Shaun uses the question to explore something bigger: how do you make peace with a life you can't predict?

In this episode: finding community after a move, the "third space" concept, why it took two years to find his people in Montreal, what Flagstaff taught him, and why every choice — city, relationship, kids, career — requires you t...

Jess Janz is a writer, community facilitator, and the founder of Dinner With Strangers - a project that has brought over a thousand people together for a meal with one rule: no one talks about what they do for work. Her book, The Table Where We Meet, is out July 14th.

We set out to talk about platonic love and ended up somewhere more personal - about what it actually means to bid for connection with a stranger, what gets in the way ...

This week's episode is a tender one. I recorded this on Father's Day — three years after losing my dad — and I'm reading my Substack essay Living with a Broken Heart and riffing on what it means to keep showing up, keep feeling, and keep choosing love even when it costs you.

I also make a correction from EP17, share a few quotes that have been sitting with me, and offer some practical tips on how to actually live with a ...

I've been thinking a lot about why so many men end up looking for belonging in all the wrong places.

This conversation starts with the manosphere, but it quickly becomes something much bigger. Laura Ramadei and I talk about why so many boys and men are starving for connection, why "fix yourself" advice so often misses the point, and how loneliness can make almost anyone vulnerable to people selling certainty.

We get into emotional sa...

What is love? It's a question I've never seriously stopped to answer — and one that's surprisingly hard to get at.

In this solo episode, I share reflections from Love Camp, a retreat I hosted for 25 people, where only one participant raised their hand when asked if they had positive loving role models growing up. I explore what love actually looks like in practice — not the grand gestures we're sold, but the quiet, borin...

There is life after betrayal. It might not feel like it right now, but there is.

My guest today is Lauren LaRusso, a licensed therapist and the author of Beyond Infidelity, a book she wrote after living through betrayal herself. Then she discovered the infidelity, and everything split into a before and an after.

We talk about why infidelity is a trauma, not just a relationship issue, how being gaslit by someone you love can make you ...

What if the sex is awkward, but the connection is actually really good?

This week, I’m answering a listener question about dating someone new after years of being mostly single - someone kind, compatible, emotionally available… and a little nervous in bed. Fun! Humbling! Slightly confusing!

I get into whether sexual compatibility has to be there from the start, how to tell the difference between someone who’s shut ...

Most adults in the world carry the virus that causes herpes. Most of them don't know it. And the shame around it is doing more damage than the virus.

This week I sit down with Debbie Barish, DNP, MS, WHNP-BC — a board-certified women's health nurse practitioner with 32 years in sexual and reproductive health — for a no-shame, no-bullshit conversation about herpes (both HSV-1 and HSV-2). We get into what it actually is, h...

Someone recently told me I wasn't too complicated to love and it inspired me to explore the ways in which we keep ourselves small rather than dare to show up for love. 

This one's a pep talk about the lie we tell ourselves: that we have to lose the weight, get the job, finalize the divorce, heal more, become our "best self" before we deserve to be loved. The goalpost always moves. The waiting isn’t about the conditions, i...

This week, Shaun sits down with comedian, actor, writer, and host of That’s a Gay Ass Podcast, Eric Williams, for a conversation that’s hilarious, horny, and a surprisingly tender masterclass on queerness, straight male loneliness, flirting, consent, emotional intelligence, and what the straights can learn from the gays.

Eric and Shaun talk about Dan Savage, Grindr, gay panic, open relationships, non-monogamy, and why de...

This week, Shaun comes to you solo from Seoul, South Korea, for an episode that’s part travel diary, part dating debrief, and part emotional field note from the road.

After a muted-mic false start, a pastry reset, and some solo wandering, Shaun reflects on the strange clarity that can come when you’re alone in a new city. From there, he answers listener questions about sex, desire, independence, receiving love, and the c...

This week, Shaun sits down with his good friend, somatic therapist and sex & relationship coach Laura Griffiths, for a conversation that's part confessional and part masterclass on masculinity, grief, and the kind of intimacy most men are too scared to reach for.

Laura calls Shaun out on the charm he wears like armor, names his "performative" first-date energy that kept them from ever being romantic, and unpacks why women fully ...

In this solo episode, Shaun shares the story of Roger, his blind dog, and what loving him through loss taught him about trust, grief, and letting go. What begins as a response to a listener’s question about a dog losing its sight turns into a deeper reflection on resilience, adaptation, and how often we project our fear onto the ones we love.

He also checks in from Thailand, reflects on nicotine withdrawal and travel, and ...