Why Are We Having Less Sex? A Pornographer Thinks She Knows Why

The entire text available for this piece amounts to one sentence: Erika Lust wants to excite you. It is the opening line of a New York Times opinion item, published on October 30, 2026, under the headline "Why Are We Having Less Sex? A Pornographer Thinks She Knows Why." Beyond that line, the source gives no body text to draw on.

What can be said with confidence comes from the headline, the URL, and the editorial summary. The item is tied to the Interesting Times podcast in the Times opinion section, and the web address also carries the name Julia Yost alongside Lust's. The source does not say what role Yost plays, and it does not say whether she is a host, an interviewer, or a writer. That detail is not established here.

Erika Lust is described as a feminist pornographer, and she is the featured guest. The episode is framed around a cultural question: why are people having less sex, and can erotic content do anything about it? The headline signals that Lust has an answer of her own, and that her answer comes from inside the industry she works in.

This is a conversation, not a piece of reported news. It sits in the opinion section, so its claims are perspective rather than findings. The source supplies no statistics on how much sexual activity has declined, no survey, no study, and no named researcher. The premise of a decline is carried by the headline's framing rather than by any evidence the source presents.

The source also does not record what Lust actually said. Her explanation for the decline, her view of what erotic media might do to reignite interest, and any specific projects or examples she cited are all absent. Any account of her argument would have to be invented, so none is offered here.

What the reader is left with is a premise and a promise: a conversation that pairs a social question with an unusual expert. Whether it delivers evidence or stays a personal view from the industry is the thing to watch for in the full episode. The place to find out is the podcast itself, where Lust's own words will show how far her case goes beyond the opening line.