Most of us were trained to distrust our own pleasure — unless it came with a price tag. This episode takes that brand apart. Using the example of a feminist who loves imbalanced romance novels, Ella shows how fantasy is not a blueprint: the pleasure someone takes in a story is often precisely the pleasure of being in charge of it.
With coffee, bananas, and a butterfly sanctuary, she maps the point of diminishing returns — the moment pleasure changes — and why staying sensitive to that moment, instead of pushing past it, is what makes pleasure trustworthy.
“Pleasure is dynamic. Wherever it peaks, wherever it’s leading, whatever it’s stemming from — that is what is really trustworthy about pleasure.”
Ella Blackwood, The Pleasure Café
In this episode
- 0:00 — Aloha — is your pleasure trustworthy?
- 0:27 — How pleasure got branded untrustworthy
- 2:14 — Almost everyone says no
- 2:32 — The deconstruction work ahead
- 3:53 — The feminist’s romance novels: fantasy is not a blueprint
- 5:24 — Pleasure is dynamic
- 6:12 — Points of diminishing return
- 6:57 — The banana story
- 8:18 — Pleasure is observed, not controlled
- 9:03 — The butterfly sanctuary
- 12:17 — Integrity is a core pillar
- 14:23 — The pleasure flywheel
- 15:22 — Escaping starvation-binge cycles of pleasure
- 16:53 — What the examples reveal about values
This episode is the companion listen to Embodied Faith Transitions, our sister podcast on the thresholds of change.