We know, you use your phones everywhere. At work. When you’re with your kids. Underneath the table. In the bathroom (admit it – and special thanks to listener Andrew Conkling for the warning on that one). 

GraceAnn Bennett, the advertising executive turned tech entrepreneur behind a new app called PlsPlsMe, wants to give you an excuse to whip it out in the last sacred frontier: Bed. Well, sort of. 

As a 20-something virgin Mormon newlywed, Bennett expected her new husband to just get it. 

“I thought he was supposed to figure it out. Figure out sex… figure out how to unlock me in some kind of way without me giving any instructions. Because instructions, to me, were a turn off. I thought, ‘OK, well, if I tell him then it kind of kills it.’ Just like someone telling you, ‘Buy me this!’ and then wrapping it up for Christmas. Right? It’s like, OK, this is not, this isn’t sexy, this isn’t fun. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.”

Nineteen years of marriage later, those primal instincts still hadn’t kicked in. The couple ultimately got divorced – and, unable to shake the feeling that this just wasn’t how sex was supposed to work, Bennett quit her job in advertising to focus on fixing sex lives. She asked the Kinsey Institute to help her answer the question: Is anyone out there really having good sex? If so, what does it take?

The results weren’t really that surprising: One out of three respondents in the 2,000 person sample said they wished it was easier for them to talk with partners about their sexual desires.

For the past few months, the Note to Self team has been collaborating with Kaitlin Prest, host of The Heart – an audio art project and podcast about intimacy and humanity. Prest got two couples to test the app and the premise: can technology disrupt your sex life? In a good way?

Listen above for some taboo, sometimes scary, and absolutely intimate stuff.

In this episode:

• Kaitlin Prest, host of The Heart (with cameos from producer Mitra Kaboli)
• GraceAnn Bennett, founder of PlsPlsMe
• Katherine Frank, cultural anthropologist and sex researcher

PlsPlsMe is available as of this week on iTunes. An Android version should be available later this year. If you try it – or something like it – let us know?

Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.