NEW YORK — Emily Morse is the subject of an "In Her Words" column from Saturday's Style section of the New York Times that asks whether the notable sexpert and podcaster is "the Dr. Ruth of a new generation."
The story opens with Morse filming her own MasterClass webinar. "In many ways, Ms. Morse’s business — the business of sex expertise — was designed for a pandemic. Even before lockdowns began, she spent most of her workdays on her own in small recording rooms, answering variations of the same question: what to do at home when you’re bored," observed Alisha Haridasani Gupta for the Times.
Morse's burgeoning media portfolio includes her podcast, "Sex With Emily"; a daily two-hour satellite radio show on SiriusXM; and Q&A sessions on Instagram Live broadcast to over 300,000 followers, a count that has more than doubled during the pandemic.
"While Apple or MasterClass don’t reveal traffic or streaming numbers for a podcast or a course, Ms. Morse’s podcast is consistently highly rated, an average of 4.5 stars, and listener questions have increased significantly," the Times noted. "Her course has, since it was introduced in November, made it to MasterClass’s 'Most Popular' list, putting her next to Shonda Rhimes’s teaching writing for television and the French Laundry chef Thomas Keller’s cooking lessons."
On every platform, Morse's work is "focused on destigmatizing sex."
“The name ‘Sex With Emily’ is intentional because every time somebody has to say the word ‘sex,’ it takes away the stigma a little bit,” she said.
Morse started her podcast more than 15 years ago, at age 35, when she was still freelancing as a video producer, "at a time when podcasts were described by The New York Times as a 'primarily amateur internet audio medium' and at a time when not many people were talking on them about sex and different sexualities in an open way... She realized early on that she could leverage her platform to sell products, long before Instagram was founded or the word 'influencer' became common..."
The steady growth of her podcast "suggested to Ms. Morse that, despite a long line of trailblazing sex therapists before her — like the iconic Dr. Ruth — despite a growing sex toy industry, and despite easily searchable answers on the internet, people are still uncomfortable talking about sex, particularly when it comes to female pleasure and organs."
Although her audience has significantly grown during the pandemic, Morse noted the questions they ask remain largely the same as the ones she fielded 15 years ago.
“Every day someone’s faking an orgasm. Every day somebody is in a long-term relationship where they are not getting their needs met and they don’t know how to talk about it," she said. "(T)he more we talk about sex, the better sex we’re going to have.”
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Images: Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
