In June of 2020, K moved back home to Canada, away from London where her partner, J, lived. Through the distance, K and J found a creative way to stay in touch with their sensual sides and each other: audio messages that played back like epic, erotic stories catered to each other’s pleasures. Fast forward to October 2020, the first of those audio messages wound up as the story behind their first installation of Cum With Us—an erotic audio podcast catered to female pleasure and emphasizing ethical pornography.

Since their first upload, they’ve released a new episode each Wednesday, never missing a week and putting out more than 70 episodes thus far. The stories bring fantasies to life, combining dynamic characters with pointed, descriptive storytelling. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and virtually anywhere else you might consume audio content, Cum with Us has racked up more than 840,000 listens since its inception. K and J are taking the audio porn world by storm, hoping to create a new normal that emphasizes communication and seeks to remove the shame behind consuming porn. 

Adolescent Content: Walk me through the process of creating an episode, from coming up with the ideas to uploading it online.

J: Our initial season was very focused on two characters that mirrored ourselves slightly. But then, we realized we really liked the character development—their backgrounds and explorations of themselves. We tried to create a Cum With Us universe where you had more characters who were relatable to people, which porn often isn’t. You can follow their journey, but even if you don’t, you can still enjoy a single episode. The ideas for the stories come from past experiences of ours, people we talk to, and our community members. We’re trying to make everything relatable.

K: In terms of the technical side, J and I have specific roles we play in the creation. We brainstorm our stories together, sharing ideas, fantasies, and things we’ve seen floating around the sex-positive community. After we do that, we both write half of the story. I edit the stories; I’m better with words, and J is much better with technical stuff. We’ll batch-record a bunch over a few days, and then J will do the audio editing. I write the episode summary and create Instagram posts to promote them, and J uploads the audio to our platform. 

Adolescent: Was there something specific in the porn community that you were hoping to offer to listeners that might not be available anyplace else?

K: Ethical porn for women was a gap that needed to be filled and, personally, that gap affected me searching out stuff, and my friends had talked about it, too. There are some sites and apps out there, but they’re behind paywalls, and we wanted to make something more accessible but still high-quality. We have a Patreon that people can donate to if they want, but it’s nothing that they have to shell out every month for.

There are some other audio porn podcasts, but they feel a lot more based around men. That’s not to say men don’t listen to ours; we have quite a high male listenership, but we wanted it to be more focused on men and women being equal. 

Adolescent: I know you emphasize enthusiastic consent and open communication between characters in your stories. That isn’t super common in mainstream porn; could you speak to the importance of it in erotic content?

J: I think consent is non-negotiable, at least it should be. If we’re going to be really honest, those things need to be more prevalent. We always think back to when we first learned about sex education—in school, I remember them giving us condoms to put on bananas, but there was no discussion of consent or pleasure. We wanted to create something where if someone picked this up, maybe someone a bit younger and formative, they’d see that this is what real, consenting adults are like.

K: Mainstream porn is very fake; likely everyone is consenting behind the scenes and protection is being used, but that’s not shown. We want to showcase what should be the model and open that conversation around consent and pleasure, but also make it sound sexy. We put it in the story so it seems very normal and doesn’t take away from that sexual passion in the moment. If someone listens to this and has only seen certain types of porn before, maybe this will open up their mind.

Adolescent: You use a lot of characters with an array of sexualities, preferences, and pleasures. What’s your take on representation in porn and what it means to listeners?

K: I think everyone wants to see or hear themselves genuinely depicted and represented in content. That being said, J and I are both straight and cisgender, but we know people who aren’t and we do try to educate ourselves about the struggles and pleasures that come with other sexual or gender identities. But, we can only speak to as much as we know. Eventually, we would love to have more people writing characters they can speak to, whether it’s someone who isn’t straight or cis, or someone who is disabled, etc. We feel like sometimes, these aren’t our stories to tell, so we do tread a bit lightly, but we try to incorporate as much representation as we can with our backgrounds.

Adolescent: Tell me about your lockdown season of the podcast. What was the motivation behind creating erotic content based around a time a lot of people are having trouble navigating?
J: We came out of lockdown in London a bit earlier than other places, and we’d heard some great stories that would fit into our podcast. At that time, there was a massive uptick in people wanting to explore a sexually liberated lifestyle or try something new. I guess we wanted to try to represent that a little bit while also being sensitive to the fact that it was a terrible thing happening.

K: We tried to keep the episodes very ethical. It wasn’t like people were breaking the COVID-19 rules all the time in those episodes—they were being respectful of them. It was a really hard time for most people, but there were some good times for a lot of people, too. 

Adolescent: Do either of you have a favorite episode you’ve made?

J: Mine changes as we go along. I really enjoyed putting together our ski and winter season recently, maybe just because I enjoyed writing about the mountains. The ski instructor episode was a good one that I really enjoyed. 

K: I still think the cove foursome is my favorite. It’s based on a trip J and I went on to Sardinia and it didn’t happen, but we did go to this cove and it was something I was fantasizing about, then I was able to bring it to life. It’s actually one of the most-listened-to episodes. Plus, it was just a fun one to write.

Adolescent: Obviously, erotic content of any kind is often still stigmatized. How would you push back against assumptions that consuming pornography has to be taboo, secretive, or shameful?

K: We’re trying to give people the ethical option. There’s some statistic that basically shows most kids have already seen porn by the age of 11, and I can imagine it’s not the best kind of porn. We want to get more people using these alternatives like the one we’re providing, so that early on, people can see that there are ethical and positive ways to view porn. I think the destigmatization of shame around porn is huge. People should only feel bad about porn when that porn is hurting other people. Most porn is only really benefitting people sexually, so there doesn’t need to be that shame attached to it. I think the more positive and ethical porn that’s out there, the less shame people will have around it and the more women will feel empowered by it.

Adolescent: What does the future of Cum With Us look like to you?

K: We want to get more people represented in our stories, but getting that representation without it being colonized by us is key. We eventually would love to make this our full-time job by expanding our characters and our range of stories—so working with more sponsors to help propel us forward creatively is how I envision the future. Basically, catering to as many people as we ethically can.

J: Representation and relatability for as many people as possible is really our key thing.