Podcasts cover a range of topics all the way from plumbing to aviation, but a niche listening audience is attracted to a slightly more personal subject – one that features titles like “Open Source Sex” and “Kinky Sex Radio“. One woman, calling herself “Cunning Minx,” decided to take advantage of this trend, taking the actual sex out of her podcast, but keeping in its raw, real-life lessons – that more often than not have to do with sex.
Minx started her podcast, Polyamory Weekly, in March 2005. She said it has been about “a cautionary tale; [a] tell-the-next-guy-what-killed-you kind of thing,” where she can be less preachy and more verbal exhibitionist, providing explanatory and narrative content on her show using previous experiences she has had as a basis to answer her listeners’ questions.
One of Minx’s main rules about hosting the show is that she doesn’t “want to give anyone advice.” She clearly states that over and over again, show after show. What she does instead, is provide a personal experience about how she dealt with a particular issue.
Polyamory is a term used to describe nonmonogamy, or having more than one life partner. Polyamory Weekly, now with over 170 episodes, has come up for new and different definitions for “polyamory” almost every week – whether it represents the standing of a relationship at a time or describes a lifestyle.
Minx had to learn the basics of syndicated podcasting as quickly as she was putting out episodes. With things like show notes, provided on the “Polyamory Weekly: LiveJournal” and on-air apologies for late episodes or technical errors, Minx tries to make the production of her podcast as open to the public as she can.
While she has managed to weed out these types of problems now, Minx said there were more than a few times she wanted to call it quits.
“About every other week [I was ready to quit],” she said. “Or every time I look at my email inbox in despair. I suppose it’s more that I wish I could do PolyWeekly full-time and really give it the time and energy it deserves. I never feel like the show is good enough.”
Armed with, “Many voices are more powerful than one,” a quote from the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Polyamory Weekly has become less about Cunning Minx and more about the Poly community that listens to her show. Some listeners aren’t even Poly themselves, or even pan/bisexual either.
One of the appeals of the show is its all-inclusive factor: love, which is honored in the PW tagline, “It’s not all about the sex.” With such a blatant exclusion on its own genre, Polyamory Weekly survives, not on the smut, but on the truth.
“A good percentage of my life and relationships, both mono and poly, have been about sex. About wonderful, kinky, sweaty, mind-blowing sex. And the other 80 percent of the time, they were about communication, laundry, text messages, lunch plans and Google calendar,” Minx said.
Already on episode 170, Polyamory Weekly is gaining momentum with the honest, brutal truth about loving more than one person at the same time.
Getting the word out about the show is the community of listeners themselves. In fact, Polyamory Weekly listeners are keeping the show running as much as Minx herself.
“Without [them] the show simply couldn’t have gone on this long,” Minx said,
With not one life-threatening email to date, Cunning Minx continues to interview notable Poly people like, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, the authors of the polyamory bible, “The Ethical Slut,” as well as, the always well-spoken Michelle Bellanger, and high profile Tristan Taormino, author of “Opening Up”, all the while maintaining grounded in everyday poly relationships by adding a new segment dedicated just to her listeners to provide feedback on the previous week’s episodes.
While emails are always welcome, audio-mail is much preferred, and encouraged, Minx is always giving a voice to her listeners. Without focusing on sex, Polyamory Weekly is more than a public airing of dirty laundry and tasty tidbits of self-help polyamory.
Minx has expressed that the show is less a flashy audio one-night-stand, and more “a personal instrument of public change.”
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