Probably the most fun I’ve had at Bare Marriage this year is doing the podcasts!

This week I’ve been looking back over the blog for the year, with the biggest traffic posts of the year, and the most debated posts of the year. I talked about my philosophy of blogging going forward–how we have to tear down the unhealthy stuff before we can build that which is healthy.

And today I thought I’d try to run the top 10 podcasts of the year, for those of you who may not have started listening yet and want a place to jump in!

Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Bare Marriage!

And we made two big changes this year:

• First, the last Thursday of every month we’ve been running a podcast geared more to the guys;
• and then we’ve started video recording the podcasts so they’re up on YouTube as well (thanks, Katie, for coming on and helping me by editing the videos!). So you can subscribe to me on YouTube, too!

To be totally honest, there’s no science behind this list of top 10 podcasts for the year.

My previous lists this week have been objective measures–top traffic; most comments.

For this list, we looked at download numbers, but that doesn’t tell us play numbers, so it’s not that helpful. So we asked on Facebook which ones were your favourites, and then I threw in some of my own favourites, and here’s our list! I’ve got it in order, but the order means nothing! It’s kind of like an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway--the game where the points mean nothing.

But all of these are great, and worth listening to, and I hope you got something out of them!

So let’s count up to #1 in a totally arbitrary fashion:

#10

Ep. 55: We Read The Act of Marriage So You Don’t Have To!

I read excerpts from the book The Act of Marriage, the biggest sex book for Generation X Christian couples, to Rebecca, and she just reacted to it live. And Aunt Matilda made her first appearance. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Aunt Matilda when The Great Sex Rescue launches, because SHE MATTERS. In fact, I even used my dedication in the book to Aunt Matilda, and all others like her. Marital rape is NOT okay. I can’t believe we even have to say this.

But though that sounds heavy, this was actually a fun podcast to record! We’ve had a lot of requests to do other books in the new year. Once The Great Sex Rescue launches, we may do just that. In our new book, we quote liberally from some of these sex and marriage bestsellers, and show how things got so off base. It would be great to delve further into some of the more egregious ones. 

#9

Ep. 57: On Marital Rape, Consent, and Obligation Sex

We recorded this one in April, when Rebecca and I were writing The Great Sex Rescue, and exploring how the obligation sex message seriously messes up women’s sex drives and sexual response. And one of the things that so disturbed us in reading Christian sex and marriage books was how consent was never mentioned–but all too often marital rape was excused.

We’ve thought about this even more since recording this, and we’ll be revisiting it in February!

#8

Start Your Engines Ep. 6: Do All Men Lust? Let’s Rethink Every Man’s Battle

Again, another podcast we recorded when we were in the thick of writing our manuscript! The “all men lust” message is one of those messages that isn’t just harmful to women; we can argue that it’s even more harmful to men (and we’ve looked at that in our recent survey of men, too, and we’ll be exploring it in our upcoming book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex).
We just need to find healthier ways of talking about this!

#7

Ep. 45: How to Draw Boundaries Around a Spouse’s Bad Behaviour

Here’s the very first podcast of 2020–which launched our iron sharpens iron series last January! I really enjoyed this series, and I find myself linking to it all the time when I write new posts, so if you missed it, this is worth listening to (and reading what goes along with it!). 

#6

Ep. 74: You Are Not Broken–You CAN Orgasm!

We spent two months this fall looking at the trouble many women have with orgasm, leading up to the release of our Orgasm Course (it’s a great one to get in this new year! Start your year with a bang! sorry I just had to say that). 

I know so many women feel broken, and in this podcast we go into why that is, and why we can have hope instead (plus some practical tips on what to do!). 

#5

Start Your Engines #14: On Emotional Maturity and Stonewalling

Here’s a podcast from our emotional maturity series, where we brought on Andrew Bauman, a licensed counselor, to talk about stonewalling and why it is that some men find difficulty expressing emotions. Really enjoyed this whole series, too!

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#4

Ep. 60: Splitting the Mental Load of Housework

So many women told me that they listened to the podcasts in June with their husbands, and were finally able to articulate what they were feeling about mental load! If you missed this series, you need to catch up, because it was important.

#3

Ep. 81: Churchianity vs. Christianity and our Year of Being Homeless

The top 3 podcasts for the year were actually our 3 last ones! I think we’ve honestly gotten better and a little bit more raw (plus having Katie on board behind the scenes helps!). But these last three really resonated. Even though more people listed the next two podcasts as their favourites, I have NEVER had as many emails as I did after airing this last one about our problems in finding a church as our eyes have been opened to the harm that is being done in so many evangelical circles. I’m glad this one resonated. I didn’t actually think it would–but I was overwhelmed with your stories. Thank you.

#2

Ep. 79: Can We Please Stop Talking about Girls Being Stumbling Blocks?

If you want to see Rebecca get passionate–you should actually watch this one on YouTube! But we had a lot of fun recording this one because we’re just so passionate about it. After a number of posts about modesty went totally viral on Facebook, and people kept blaming 13-year-olds for what they were wearing, rather than the adult men who were lusting, I just had to let loose and get real. So many people told me that this podcast gave them a way to talk to their kids about this. I even had some moms tell me that they watched the YouTube version with their teen boys!

#1

Ep. 80: Why Unconditional Respect Isn’t a Thing

Really, the stumbling block podcast was called out as often as this one, but THIS ONE was seriously BOOM. Major BOOM.

In a nutshell: the whole premise behind the “men need unconditional respect and women need unconditional love” is based on two things: Ephesians 5:33 and one study. So we looked at both. Dr. Cynthia Westfall showed how Ephesians 5:33, in Greek, insinuates something very different. And that study? Based on 400 men. Ambiguous question. They never asked women. When others did, women answered the same way as men.

In short, this whole thesis doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

So how about we put this all to rest now? What was sad about this podcast was how easy it was to actually do. Why didn’t anyone look into this beforehand, before this idea permeated EVERYWHERE in the church and hurt so many marriages? The information about the problems with the study was in the very book! Just very concerning about the state of intellectual honesty in evangelical circles.

Those were your favourite podcasts this year!

Or maybe you had another? Leave it in the comments and I’ll try to put a link to it in reply so others can see. 

And if you haven’t listened in, again, please subscribe! I’m finding that more people actually listen to the podcasts than read the blog, so next year we’re planning on reversing our blog a bit. We’ll START the topic in the podcast on Thursday, and then the next four posts will elaborate on that topic, rather than having the podcast summarize what we’ve already been talking about. And we’ve got about 10 all planned out already. I’m excited!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Did you find a podcast that didn’t make the list really spoke to you? Leave it in the comments! Or did you agree with these choices? Let me know why, too!

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