Dear Sugars

Mar 28 2025 387 ep. 36 mins 9.7k

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Radically empathic advice. Produced by WBUR.

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Redux: Trust Your Body

Mar 28 2025 41 mins

This episode was originally released on June 11, 2018. Her doctor categorized her as overweight when she was 5 years old. Her grandmother always introduced her as the “chubby one.” As an adult, she vacillates between moderation and binge-eating, restricting food some weeks, and gorging on cake and ice cream during others. “It’s only when my pants are nearly impossible to b

Redux: Sex & Aging

Mar 15 2025 36 mins

This episode was originally released on May 25th, 2018. When two women in their sixties start losing interest in sex, their sex-starved partners become increasingly frustrated. Both women blame old age for their waning libidos. But is their diminished sex drive because of age or something else? The erotic lives of senior citizens are typically made invisible by our culture, which

Episodes We Love: Rapid Fire — Love & Money

Mar 01 2025 44 mins

This episode was originally released on July 21st, 2018. When it comes to love, money is supposed to be no object. But there’s no disentangling love from anything in our lives, and income is no exception. So how do you assess the role money should play in a relationship, and what happens when your desires and means change over time? In this episode, five letter writers want to

Episodes We Love: Do I Follow My Head Or My Heart?

Feb 15 2025 25 mins

Cheryl and Steve are no longer dishing out new advice, but we're listening back to episodes we love every week. This episode was originally released November 6, 2015. ____ The Sugars get a letter from a young woman who has fallen head over heels in love. She and her boyfriend only met a month ago, but they are already in deep. Everything seems perfect, and yet the letter writer c

Redux: Rapid Fire Letters

Feb 01 2025 32 mins

This episode was originally released July 29th, 2017. ____ In a heated moment, a mother reveals a dark chapter from her childhood to her daughter, then immediately regrets it. What now? In this week’s episode, the Sugars tackle this and several other questions, including how to handle a brother-in-law who treats your vacation as his own free childcare; what to do when your best

Rewind Rapid Fire: Love In Doubt

Jan 18 2025 44 mins

This episode was originally released on January 5, 2017. How many times have you heard this: "I love him, we're great together, but..."? There's always room for doubt, even in the happiest of relationships. So in this episode, the Sugars take on some of those doubts in rapid-fire fashion.

Rewind: How Do I Find The Courage To Be My Own Guide?

Jan 04 2025 26 mins

This episode was originally released September 23rd, 2016. The Sugars often discuss letters dealing with very specific problems or struggles. In this encore episode, they take on a broader, more existential question: how to follow your heart. The Sugars discuss with the GRAMMY-winning singer/songwriter India Arie, who shares how she learned to be her own guide.

From the archives: The Great Reckoning

Oct 26 2024 51 mins

This episode was originally published on July 28th, 2018. Special guests Mitchell S. Jackson and Rebecca Skloot share the stage with the Sugars to tell stories of personal reckoning and answer letters from the audience. To some extent, every letter the Sugars receive is a kind of reckoning, as it’s often the letter writer’s first attempt at taking account of their mistakes and

Redux: Dark Fantasies, Part 2

Sep 28 2024 29 mins

This episode was originally released on January 20, 2018. “I’m a 24-year-old woman who is completely and embarrassingly aroused by people who are confined to wheelchairs,” writes a woman who calls herself “Wishing to be Seen.” In her pained letter, she explains the possible origins of her isolating fetish and asks the Sugars for a way out: “I just want to have an orga

Redux: Dark Fantasies, Part 1

Aug 31 2024 32 mins

This episode was originally released on January 13, 2018. Orgies. Sex in public. Incest. These are the things that some of us think about in the dark. Taboo fantasies can be exciting, but they can also be the source of our deepest shame. In this two-part series on sexual fantasies, the Sugars read letters from people who want to turn off the thoughts that turn them on. Dr. Ian K