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What does it mean to feel powerful in a profession the world insists on seeing as degrading? In this episode, Isadora and Janine examine the complicated relationship between escorting and empowerment — and ask whether sex work can offer women a kind of control often denied to them elsewhere.

Isadora reflects on how escorting transformed her relationship with money. After years of low-paying jobs and financial insecurity, she discovered the freedom of earning enough to pay her bills without fear. But the empowerment went beyond income: clients valued her beauty, wit, talent, playfulness and intelligence — qualities that frequently went unseen in her romantic life.

A disastrous birthday date reveals the painful divide between Isadora’s professional and personal worlds. While one man can barely bring himself to call her beautiful, her answering machine is filled with birthday messages from clients telling her how much she means to them. The contrast raises a provocative question: Are transactional relationships necessarily less genuine — or can they sometimes make people feel more fully seen?

The conversation also ventures into pleasure, performance and the expectation that an escort should enjoy the encounter without ever forgetting whose experience she is being paid to provide. Honest, funny and unsettling, this episode complicates easy assumptions about prostitution — and explores the strange power dynamics hiding inside both paid sex and “real-life” romance.

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Welcome to NUTTY & SLUTTY
Where Mental Health, Sexuality and Unfiltered Truth Take Center Stage

NUTTY & SLUTTY is a bold, sex-positive podcast exploring the messy, complicated and often hilarious intersections of mental health, sexuality and real life — without shame, filters or pretense.

Hosted by Janine Noel (living with bipolar disorder) and Isadora O’Boto (ex-escort), this show brings together two radically honest perspectives for conversations that are as raw as they are insightful. From navigating mood swings and medication to unpacking the realities of sex work and desire, nothing is off-limits.

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Isadora O’Boto (co-host) is a Juilliard Drama grad. Under the pen name Sephe Haven, she is the author of two award-winning memoirs: My Whorizontal Life and A Someday Courtesan, and playwright/performer of the solo show: “My Whorizontal Life: The Show!” Isadora co-hosted the podcast My Index to Sex with Lynn Ferguson. Find her at: isadoraoboto.com

Janine Noel (co-host) is creator and host of Bipolar She podcast, where guests sh...