The Genius Life
548: The Science of Improving Sexual Pleasure and Intimacy | Nicole McNichols, PhD
04 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
What's going on everybody? It's episode 548 of The Genius Life. Let's go.
The Genius Life.
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today, I have a fun one for you. I'm your host, Max Lugavere, and today we're talking about sex, real sex, not porn, scripted, performative, algorithm hijacked sex, but the kind that actually leaves people feeling connected, confident, and fulfilled. My guest is Dr. Nicole McNichols, a psychologist and sex educator.
whose course on human sexuality has become one of the most popular classes at the University of Washington, reaching thousands of students every single year. In this conversation, we unpack how porn culture is reshaping expectations, why rough sex and choking have become normalized among young adults, and what the science actually says about pleasure, anatomy, desire, and long-term intimacy.
We also talk about mismatched libidos, why scheduling intimacy doesn't kill desire, and how better sex has far less to do with performance and far more to do with presence, curiosity, and self-knowledge. Listen all the way through to the end. You're not going to want to miss a beat.
And hey, if this episode made you think of someone in your life who could use better sex, feel free to send it their way. Consider it an act of service. And if you were sent this episode, just know that your friend loves you, supports you, and would very much like to see your sex life improve.
If you have a moment, we'd super appreciate if you consider leaving a rating and review on your podcast app of choice, the Apple Podcast app. You can now rate podcasts on Spotify. Super fun. And I really appreciate it. It's a free way to support what we're doing here at The Genius Life. Now, with all that out of the way, here's episode 548, Let's Rock. Dr. Nicole McNichols, welcome to the show.
How you doing?
I am great, Max. Thank you so much for having me.
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Chapter 2: What are the impacts of porn culture on intimacy?
I'm so excited to talk about one of my favorite topics, which we don't get to talk about enough, I guess, here on the podcast, but sex.
Yes, sex. Let's get into it.
Big, scandalous, all the taboo topics. I'm excited. It's a fun topic. And everybody, I mean, has sex in one form or another. And you wrote this incredible book, so I'm excited to dive in. But let's just, yeah, let's just jump in. So you teach thousands of students every year. Your course has become one of the most popular courses at University of Washington, right?
Yes, University of Washington.
Yeah, incredible.
Yeah, it's 1,200 a quarter and then a few hundred over the summer. So it's 4,000 undergraduates total each year that I have the pleasure of teaching all about sex.
Wow. Yeah. What would you say is the biggest lie that students come in believing about sex?
that the only kind of amazing sex that exists is what they see in porn, which tends to be really rough sex where it's portraying gender stereotypes to a dysfunctional level and with tons and tons of choking. I think students right now, that particular cohort, they have a hard time showing up in their sexual lives as authentic, whole, connected human beings.
We've really normalized some pretty out there types of sex. And I've seen it historically. Like when I was growing up, Jenna Jameson was like a household name. And I would say like the sex that she was probably known for, I mean, I don't really specifically remember, but it was probably pretty tame in comparison to who came next, who in my mind was Sasha Gray.
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Chapter 3: How can mismatched libidos affect relationships?
Yeah. So. It is, so the act itself involves like literal, you know, sexual strangulation is what we call it in the literature. And, you know, again, this is so hard for me because on the one hand, I want them to enjoy what they enjoy, but cutting off air, you know, to the brain, generally not a good idea.
And then many of them think that even if they're just squeezing the sides of the neck, but allowing the trachea to breathe, that somehow that's safer. But when you're cutting off blood supply from to the brain, we now have longitudinal data showing that with sexual choking, when you take women that say they engaged in that, that later you put them in an fMRI and their brain changes.
So I just want people to have information and data. And if you're gonna be engaging in choking, I don't wanna ruin choking for anyone, but you need to be aware of the risks, right? So, I mean, that's a very sort of specific concrete thing, but it's more just generally,
I feel like students' experiences, and many of older people's sexual experiences too, as I write about in my book, they're not connected, meaning they're not authentic, right? And so in my book, I write about this goal that we should have of connected sex, which is saying, look, you can have connected sex in a variety of different contexts, right?
It can be what we would term vanilla sex in a long-term relationship, but it can also be one night of casual sex with a person that you connect with,
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Chapter 4: What does scheduling intimacy mean for desire?
Or it might be a sex dungeon. But if it's not authentic, if it's not a place where you're showing up with presence and the sexual activity isn't being guided by what actually turns you on, what actually feels good, but just the script, I think that's leading to a lot of disconnection that's leaving a lot of people feeling unsatisfied.
Amen. Yeah. I mean, at one end of the spectrum, I guess you have like really repressed sex.
Yes.
Like really stigmatized sex, like the caricature of like sex through the bed sheet.
Exactly.
Right. And then at the other end, you've got like this really extreme sex, which seems to be getting only more extreme.
Yes.
Over time. Where do you think, I mean, do you think that we're ultimately as a society going to find a landing place?
Well, I wrote my book as a hope to find a landing place.
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Chapter 5: How can self-knowledge improve sexual experiences?
Oh, great.
Yeah, it was just... Human sexuality is so interesting.
It is.
Which is why I love your work.
Thank you. I mean, and that's the thing is that it's so tied into everything that we're all about as human beings, right? We... Again, in our culture, we tend to think of sex as being siphoned off into this domain that just kind of lives over there, right? But our sexuality, it's tied into our energy, our being, our identity, our expression, our fantasy, our wants.
It's really what makes us uniquely human, right? We are not evolved to simply have sex just for the purpose of procreation, right? It serves a social, emotional role as well.
And so when you're thinking about yourself as being a grounded, healthy person, learning to let go of that fear and stigma and embracing a sense of authenticity and connectedness in your sex life, I think can really help people feel a lot happier and more grounded in themselves.
Do you think that having better sex is mostly about technique or is it more so about increased self-knowledge?
It is about all of those things, right? Because an amazing pleasurable, an amazing sexual experience is really about pleasure, right? It's about feeling like you are experiencing sex in a state of ultimate presence and mindfulness.
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Chapter 6: What are the risks associated with rough sex practices?
giving them information about how their bodies work, I mean, that's just leaving people in the dark. And I mean, what's wild is that when we look at countries, for example, where they do have sex positive, comprehensive sex education, like in the Netherlands,
We might think, and people tend to think, well, if you give young people actual anatomically correct, medically accurate information about sex, it's going to make them promiscuous, or it's going to make them have all sorts of sexual problems. But the reality is that those countries that have access to that sex education, they have fewer rates of STIs, fewer unplanned pregnancies.
and less sexual assault and a higher rate of women who report a positive first time sexual experience. So I really wish we could undo this myth that denying people a sex education is going to keep them from getting in trouble when in fact the opposite is clearly true.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if there's one thing that listeners, viewers can start doing today, assuming that they're partnered to improve their sex lives, what what might that be?
I always encourage people to lead with the positive. If you're coming from this framework that curiosity is really what's going to be the goal here, I want you to sit down tonight with your partner and I want you to talk about the best sex you've ever had. You want to use that as a launching point.
Because we know from the literature as well as intuition that we tend to do better when we're hearing about what's working well for our partner, what they enjoyed, what they want more of. Maybe what they want more of that they're too afraid to tell us, right? Maybe things that they're curious about trying but are too afraid to ask, right?
So I would say for couples, it's to sit down and have that conversation so that you can build anticipation, right? And talk about, again, letting curiosity be your guide for, okay, well, we loved that position. So maybe we could try another position that's sort of similar to that, that gets at that same angle. Or, hey, I loved it that we had
sex after brunch and didn't try to do it when we're at home at night exhausted after dinner, maybe we could try planning intimacy earlier in the day again. Or, hey, that was really hot when we had sex in the shower or in the laundry room, wherever it was, someplace different than just the bedroom. What if we were to try that again?
So in other words, when you're thinking about concrete things that really worked, it can be helpful because, I mean, so many of us, if you say, what do you want? It can kind of lead us feeling, I don't know, right? I mean, especially when we're so used to not talking about sex, it can feel like a lot of pressure.
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Chapter 7: How does communication enhance sexual satisfaction?
Are there ways that you can, again, going back to this idea of planning intimacy, build other moments throughout your week when you could try to have sex, maybe not five times a week, but maybe once, maybe aiming for that target of once. And the idea could just be that
Again, when we know or anticipating a night or afternoon or morning of intimacy with our partner, we're more likely to do things to get ourselves into that mindset. We maybe do all the grooming habits that we would want to do, or we turn our laptop off earlier, or we get a good night's sleep the night before. If there's this planned intimacy, it just makes us less likely to turn off.
If our partner's trying to initiate at a time that's just not when we want sex. Because that's, I think that's what can really start to feel hurtful in a relationship is if one person feels like there's just sort of constantly being rejected, right? That's a really hard time.
Then the other partner starts to feel just a real sense of guilt as well as, you know, feeling like a resentment almost of their being nagged. So sometimes it's just as easy as, okay, let's plan intimacy and make sure that we are initiating in a way that makes both of us feel the most likely to want sex.
Beyond that, it could just be that one person needs it a whole lot more, let's say, every day, and is that more about sexual release? Normalize masturbation, right? That is okay. It is totally healthy for people in relationships to masturbate. In fact, studies show that people in relationships who masturbate report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than people who don't.
You have sex more, not less. So if it's just about needing that release, there are other ways to find that release that you just shouldn't feel ashamed of. Or maybe it's about one person feeling like they just need more connection in general with their partner. Are there ways?
I think particularly for men who are often not taught how to be vulnerable, not to be honest about the fact that they want to feel seen and heard and validated in a relationship, want to feel appreciated, want to feel respected and want to feel close to their partner. that sex can be kind of the only tool that they've been taught is sort of an acceptable way to seek that out.
So maybe it's about, okay, they don't need sex every day, but what if instead of sex every day, there were more moments of connection throughout the week where time was spent giving attention to those emotional needs? Because it could just be about, again, just that desire to be close to your partner because you miss them. Right.
So I think it's really getting at the heart of what's driving the discrepancy and just remaining committed to really trying to resolve it.
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Chapter 8: What role does curiosity play in sexual relationships?
That's totally valid. But for the vast majority of people, sex is important, right? And I think that at the beginning of any relationship, it should be talked about as, what's our life going to look like? What are our values? What are we want to do? How do we want to structure our lives? Part of that conversation can be, what do we want our sex life to look like?
Because I think that that's a commitment that absolutely is important and that people are entitled to. And by entitled, again, I don't mean that anybody should ever be forced to have sex with somebody else. I just mean that there should be a commitment to this idea that if sex isn't happening in the relationship or isn't happening in a way that's satisfying to both partners,
There needs to be a commitment to having a conversation about how to work your way through that. Yeah.
Amen. Does sex tend to get better or worse with age?
So I think that it gets better with age is the short answer to that. If you are in a position where you know your body, you know how your turn-ons work, you kind of have more confidence. There's sort of this idea in a relationship that, oh, over 20, 30 years, you're just going to naturally lose attraction for your partner. And that doesn't really have to be true.
In fact, the more you trust somebody, the more they kind of understand your body, the more relaxed you feel expressing what your fantasies and desires are to that person, the Like, the better sex can be, right? I mean, again, we see in the movies, we see in porn that the hottest sex only happens when you're with a new partner and it's someone you barely know.
But the reality, especially I'd say for women, is that sex is hotter when you're with someone where you can be honest about what really is going to do it for you. So I think that there's, you know, and it kind of goes along with this myth that the secret to desire in long-term relationships is mystery, right?
And I just, I really wish we could get rid of that myth because the secret to relation, you know, if you're, if you're, you know what I mean? If we were to look at like, well, is any aspect of that true? I suppose passion thrives on both individuals being committed to their own self growth. And so
I do believe that you need to keep changing and growing throughout your lives, whether it's through growing through career or through other interests or through other ideas that you're interested in in life.
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