What a break from sex can teach you

Summary

Life Kit: What a Break from Sex Can Teach You
Hosted by NPR’s Marielle Segarra | Released June 30, 2025

---

In the June 30, 2025 episode of NPR's Life Kit, host Marielle Segarra delves into the nuanced topic of taking a break from sex, exploring how celibacy can lead to profound personal growth and healthier relationships. Drawing from the experiences of author Melissa Febos, artist Trevor Hines, and insights from sex therapist Angel Suarez, the episode offers a comprehensive look at the benefits and challenges of intentionally stepping away from sexual and romantic engagements.

Understanding the Craving for Sex

Marielle Segarra opens the discussion by acknowledging the powerful allure of sex and its surrounding dynamics, such as courtship and seduction. She highlights how these interactions flood our brains with "delicious chemicals," creating a compelling urge to pursue sexual connections.

Melissa Febos, author of The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex, shares her personal journey:

"Like once those little chemicals get released, suddenly I'm making different choices because I want to feel more of that. I want to keep the party going inside of me." (00:57)

Febos explains that her relentless pursuit of romance and sex led to destructive patterns in her 30s. After a devastating breakup that left her health and friendships in shambles, she recognized the need to pull back and reassess her relationship with sex and intimacy.

The Power of Celibacy

Segarra introduces celibacy not as a religious obligation but as a deliberate choice to understand oneself better and break unhealthy patterns.

Febos recounts how her friends suggested taking a break:

"I could never have foreseen how profound that change would be. I could never have foreseen how it would literally change the entire course of my life." (03:14)

This period, which she initially labeled a "dry season," turned out to be transformative. Febos discovered that her sensuality extended beyond sexual activity, enriching other areas of her life.

Defining Your Celibate Journey

The episode outlines five key takeaways for anyone considering a period of celibacy:

1. Consider Your Intentions
   Reflect on why you want to take a break from sex. Are you looking to break certain patterns or reconnect with a partner? Febos emphasizes the importance of introspection:

   "Everything else became so much more sensual. It was like my sensual and erotic capacity became expressed in so many other places." (02:37)

2. Define What Celibacy Means to You
   Establish clear rules about what constitutes sex for you. This includes decisions about kissing, romantic touch, and masturbation. For instance, Trevor Hines decided to abstain from sex, romance, and masturbation to redirect his focus inward:

   "I wanted my focus to completely go somewhere else and not go to sex at all." (10:59)

3. Expect Discomfort and Potential Slip-Ups
   Recognize that the initial phase may be challenging, and you might break your own rules. Instead of viewing these setbacks negatively, see them as opportunities to learn:

   "Any goal you set, you're going to stumble and fall. And I think it's just important to identify, like, how did you sway? And that will teach you more about yourself." (15:43)

4. Appreciate the Gifts of Celibacy
   Celibacy can enhance your ability to appreciate non-sexual pleasures and deepen your relationships with others. Febos shares how she reconnected with friends and discovered joy in solitary activities:

   "I actually liked to be alone a lot. I had no idea how much alone time I needed to be happy." (09:27)

5. End Your Celibacy Thoughtfully
   When you decide to re-enter the realm of sexual relationships, do so with intention and awareness. Both Febos and Hines highlight the importance of mutual respect and genuine connection in ending celibacy:

   "They respect it. And then also just highly respecting this person for who they are in their mind made it a lot easier to take that step when, like, we did go there." (20:44)

Insights from Experts

Angel Suarez, a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in sex therapy, offers additional guidance:

"If you know you're ready, that's when you're making the healthiest choice for yourself." (21:57)

Suarez advises that setting time limits on celibacy can provide structure but cautions against adding unnecessary pressure, which might hinder genuine personal growth.

Transformative Outcomes

Febos narrates how her celibate period led to significant lifestyle changes, such as altering her fashion choices to reflect her authentic self rather than societal expectations:

"I started wearing sneakers every day. I stopped wearing makeup. That doesn't mean I never wear those things now, but I feel more aware of my choices and what I actually like and want." (17:30)

She also shares a pivotal moment where she confidently declined unwanted sexual advances, underscoring the strength and self-awareness gained through celibacy:

"The moment when I do something different feels, in a way, like a moment of grace, like something becomes possible that was not possible." (19:10)

Concluding Thoughts

The episode concludes with a recap of the five takeaways, reinforcing the transformative potential of celibacy when approached thoughtfully and intentionally. Segarra encourages listeners to explore further episodes on related topics, such as codependent relationships and conversations around consent, available at npr.org/LifeKit.

Melissa Febos and Trevor Hines both illustrate that celibacy, far from being a barren period, can be a fertile time for personal development, deeper connections, and a more profound appreciation of life's myriad pleasures beyond the sexual realm.

---

Produced by Margaret Serino, with contributions from Beck Harlan, Malika Garib, Megan Keane, Beth Donovan, Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Sylvie Douglas, and engineering support from Simon Laszlo Jansen.

Transcript

[Sponsor Announcement]

Support comes from our 2025 lead sponsor of Life Kit, Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Marielle Segarra]

You're listening to Life Kit from npr. Hey, it's Marielle. Today on the show, we are talking about sex. It's a part of and this is Life Kit, after all. Now, sex can be amazing. Obviously, it can also be intoxicating. Not just the act itself, but the pursuit of it and everything that comes before it. The courtship part, the seduction part, the feeling that's generated in you knowing that you're desired. All sorts of delicious chemicals flood our brains throughout this process.

[Melissa Febos]

Like once those little chemicals get released, suddenly I'm making different choices because I want to feel more of that. I want to keep the party going inside of me.

[Marielle Segarra]

This is Melissa Febos, author of the Dry Season, A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. So this craving for sex and seduction, it can sometimes lead us to a reckoning point, a point when what makes the most sense is to pull back. For Melissa, that moment came in her 30s. She'd been in back to back relationships for most of her adult life.

[Melissa Febos]

Basically, When I was 15, I started being preoccupied by romance and love and sex and those pursuits and how they made me feel about myself. And that was a huge preoccupation of mine for the next 20 years.

[Marielle Segarra]

And then she went through a devastating breakup, which was really a devastating relationship.

[Melissa Febos]

Where I had become so abject and obsessive and really kind of ruined my life. I had lost friends and crashed my car and my health had suffered and I had really just sort of gone completely off the rails. And I thought, what is going on? How did I get here and why am I stuck in this pattern and how do I change?

[Marielle Segarra]

Some friends had suggested she take a break from dating and sex, and she says eventually she was in enough pain to try it. She started with three months, but then went a year without having sex. And the gifts that emerged from this time were bountiful. A dry season it was not.

[Melissa Febos]

Everything else became so much more sensual. It was like my sensual and erotic capacity became expressed in so many other places.

[Marielle Segarra]

On this episode of Life Kit, I talked to Melissa and others about the practice of celibacy, specifically taking a likely temporary break from sex. This episode isn't intended for people who are celibate for religious reasons only. Although if that's you, you might find some wisdom here Anyway, Melissa says celibacy can help you understand yourself better, develop new patterns of behavior, and also reconnect with a partner.

[Melissa Febos]

I could never have foreseen how profound that change would be. I could never have foreseen how it would literally change the entire course of my life.

[Marielle Segarra]

That's after the break.

[Sponsor Announcement]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

This message comes from Discover. Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the last 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. This message comes from Amica Insurance. As Amica says, empathy is our best policy. Whether you're seeking auto, home or life coverage, they'll work with you to choose the policy that best serves you and your family. Discover how Amica can help protect what matters most to you today. Go to ameca.com and get a quote today. This message comes from Meta AI. Meta AI is the personal AI to help you with whatever you need. Not only is Meta AI now an app, but it's also on the apps you already Love Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Plus the Ray Ban Meta glasses. It's easy to access wherever you are throughout the day. Experience Meta's newest AI that's tailored to you by downloading the Meta AI app. Try the Meta AI app today on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A Century of Impact, A Future of opportunity. [e-mail].

[Marielle Segarra]

When Melissa Febos was in her 30s, she went to something called a cuddle party where people get together and plan to engage in some sort of non sexual physical affection like hugging or lying next to each other. There was a workshop on consent at the beginning and they said don't cuddle with anyone you don't want to. And yet she cuddled with people she.

[Melissa Febos]

Didn'T want To I thought, what the heck happened here? Like, I'm a queer woman, I'm a feminist, I know all about consent. What? Why was I saying yes to spooning with strangers that I don't want to? And I sort of followed that question all the way back to my early, like, social education in sex, where I got all of this explicit and implicit messaging that it was just bad to disappoint people when they wanted something physically from you. And like, I've had a lot of sex over the course of my life that I didn't really want to have because I felt like I should. And taking a break from sex is a great way to sort of look at that and try to stop doing it.

[Marielle Segarra]

So one reason you might consider a celibate period is if you have patterns or behaviors that you're trying to change. Takeaway 1 Consider your intentions. Why do you think a period of celibacy might be in order if you're hoping to interrupt certain patterns or behaviors? What are they? And what role do you play in these dynamics? Journaling or making an inventory could help you figure that out. During Melissa's celibacy, she made a list of everyone she'd ever been with sexually or romantically, and she asked herself some.

[Melissa Febos]

Hard questions like, where was I dishonest? How was I self centered? Like, what happened here? You know, I had a story about who I was in my past relationships, and it was much more heroic than what I saw when I did the inventory. Doing the inventory really showed me what I had to be accountable for and how I'd been complicit in every sort of romantic disaster of my life.

[Marielle Segarra]

For a lot of us, our patterns involve some form of self betrayal. Doing things you don't want to do or that don't align with your values, or having intimate relationships where you're not getting your needs met. One version of this is the person who wants to find a serious committed partnership but keeps having sex with people who don't want that. If that's you and casual sex doesn't feel good to you, Trevor Hines says a period of celibacy could help.

[Trevor Hines]

I think at the end of the day, it's going to give you the tools to value yourself, love yourself, and look past that initial lust and surface level connections and go for the depth. And it also really repels everybody who's not interested in you for you. The ones who are for you, you'll be able to identify.

[Marielle Segarra]

Trevor is an artist in Canada, and he uses celibacy as a tool in his life. He once went celibate for three years. He says celibacy can also help you figure out all the things you love about yourself outside of your sex appeal.

[Trevor Hines]

I think when I was younger, like in my early 20s, I kind of like led with a little bit more ego and talent. But when I was celibate, it allowed me to identify with other qualities of myself, like being kind or compassion or my creativity.

[Marielle Segarra]

Another reason you might consider celibacy. It gives you the time to explore other interests and and platonic relationships. There's a quote in Melissa's book where she says time had always felt in short supply and it began to appear that it simply been splurging it on romance. During celibacy, she started spending more time with her friends and family. Her other relationships flourished.

[Melissa Febos]

I was going out dancing. I went out dancing more often that year than any other year of my life. And I was also having these long, rambling phone conversations with my friends, kind of like when I was a teenager.

[Marielle Segarra]

She also got to know herself better, what she likes, what she doesn't.

[Melissa Febos]

That I actually sometimes like to eat dinner at 11pm and have a plate of like pickles and cheese and dried fruit, like some ancient Greek person or something. And that I actually liked to be alone a lot. I had no idea how much alone time I needed to be happy. And I think I had needed it for years that I'd actually been starved for it.

[Marielle Segarra]

So far we've been talking about celibacy for folks who are single. But if you're in a romantic relationship, you can take periods of celibacy too. Melissa says those can offer a chance to reset.

[Melissa Febos]

Even if you think about, like, if you're having technical problems in your computer, restarting it is the solution to most things, right? And that's been true in life, and it's true for a lot of people in life.

[Marielle Segarra]

Melissa is married now, and she and her wife have done this when she felt her thinking about sex was getting narrow or she was having a lot of shoulds pop up in her mind around the topic. They'd take sex or certain parts of it off the table and focus on other kinds of physical intimacy. So these are some of the many reasons why you might consider celibacy. But yeah, let's say you're curious. You want to try it out. Takeaway two is to define what celibacy means to you. The first question to ask yourself here is what are the rules? Right? What do you consider sex? Are you going to participate in any kind of romantic touch? Is Kissing off the table, masturbation. Trevor decided, no sex, no romance, no masturbation.

[Trevor Hines]

I wanted my focus to completely go somewhere else and not go to sex at all. So anything that really came under the umbrella of sex, I got rid of it. And even, like, romance, really, for me, it was about focus. I wanted my focus to go inward instead of outward to woman. So for me, like, those were my rules.

[Marielle Segarra]

Your rules might be different. During her one year celibacy, Melissa quit sex and romance, but not masturbation. She asked herself early on, is masturbation part of the problem for me? And the answer was no. The behaviors she wanted to change were ones that she exhibited with other people.

[Melissa Febos]

My sexual relationship to myself was totally cool. I had no problem with it. It felt very healthy to me. So I do think that, you know, sex is one of those areas where people have to define abstinence for themselves. They have to really get honest about where the issue is and where it isn't.

[Marielle Segarra]

Another question to ask yourself is, do you want to set a time limit? Trevor chose to be celibate for a year. At the outset, I think a year.

[Trevor Hines]

Is just like a cycle. And I felt like, when I mentioned it to, like, my friends, for some reason they thought like, a year was crazy. So I felt like, okay, a year is good. A year seems like a good challenge.

[Marielle Segarra]

Melissa, on the other hand, chose three months. At the start, that was as long.

[Melissa Febos]

As I could imagine not having sex. And I was trying to work with myself. You know, I knew if I picked longer than that, I probably wouldn't stick to it.

[Marielle Segarra]

Then at the three month mark, she extended her celibacy for another three months, and then another three months. And then at nine months, she stopped setting deadlines.

[Melissa Febos]

At that point, I was really comfortable, really happy with where I was. And I honestly had begun questioning if I would ever want to be in a relationship or have sex again. And then, you know, things got interesting.

[Marielle Segarra]

Then she met her future wife, but we'll get back to that. Her advice for you, give yourself some sort of structure to start with, but also start modestly. Angel Suarez is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a sex therapist in New York. They have some thoughts on this, too. One is that time limits might make you feel safer, but they also might stress you out.

[Angel Suarez]

So I think based on the personality type, if you know that you need an end date or a deadline for yourself to feel more in control of what's happening with you, then I think that would work. But if you actually want to just be celibate, because you're feeling like, I want a more connection with an individual, and that's when I'll know if I may engage in sex again. Then I think having a time structure will actually put more pressure into finding someone.

[Marielle Segarra]

Ok, you figured out your celibacy rules and you're ready to get started. Takeaway 3. Expect some discomfort at the beginning of your celibate period. Understand that you might break your own rules. That doesn't mean you should stop early in your celibacy. You might be tempted to go back to the same patterns you're trying to break. This can be a really powerful urge, especially if you don't know what to do when it happens. For instance, if you've decided not to have sex or to masturbate, what do you do if you get turned on? Trevor was reading a lot of spiritual texts during his celibacy, and one idea he came across that really resonated with him is that sexual energy and creative energy can be the same. So what he did and what he suggests you do is, is expect that your body might feel cravings, but you.

[Trevor Hines]

Can identify that just as like, energy. And now you can ask yourself, well, where do you want to place this? It doesn't have to go to the sneaky link, or it doesn't have to go to a website because most likely there's studies you'd like to focus on or a creative project you'd like to do or a business you want to build or whatever it may be. Maybe it's your body you want to take a boxing lesson. Like all that energy can truly just be transferred into another activity.

[Marielle Segarra]

Here's the other thing to you might break your own rules. Trevor did in the first 45 days of his celibacy. He was out partying and saw someone he knew.

[Trevor Hines]

And then we ended up having sex. And I woke up and I remember I just felt so upset with myself that I broke this, like, vow to myself and I was like, well, why did I break this vow? I was like, well, I was under.

[Marielle Segarra]

The influence of alcohol, which brought him to a realization. A lot of the time he felt like he needed a drink to have sex.

[Trevor Hines]

And I was like, well, that means you're not even really comfortable. You're not even really comfortable that you need liquor, confidence to even go there with this person. So which means you're not comfortable with this experience at all. But for some reason you feel like you have to. And I didn't realize that until I was celibate.

[Marielle Segarra]

He decided to quit drinking too. Trevor says, there's nothing wrong with failing at your celibacy and feeling regret because those broken promises to ourselves give us information.

[Trevor Hines]

Any goal you set, you're going to stumble and fall. And I think it's just important to identify, like, how did you sway? And that will teach you more about yourself.

[Marielle Segarra]

Angel Suarez asks that if you do fall short of your celibacy goals, you show yourself some grace.

[Angel Suarez]

Really, you know, everyone else in this world sometimes is very critical of ourselves. We're growing, and so how do we react with love for ourselves when we make mistakes or we go against our value of what we're trying to work for in celibacy?

[Marielle Segarra]

All right, time for takeaway. 4. Appreciate the gifts that celibacy brings. One reason I think that people enjoy sex is that it can be, at its best, a moment to slow down and appreciate the sublime, to touch another person's body. Really look at it. The beauty mark they have that looks like a thousand stars exploding across their back, or the scar they have that tells you some stories about their life or the way their eyes sparkle. It's like they become a work of art, and you become a work of art and you get a chance to play and appreciate each other. It's easy to forget that there are other pathways to those sensations. When you take sex out of the picture, at least momentarily, you realize, you know, I could get really into this raspberry that I'm eating right now.

[Melissa Febos]

That ability to slow down and marvel at things and. And cultivate curiosity for them and appreciate the intricate design of a raspberry or a hydrangea or my own hands, you know, or my pet. We all have the capability to sort of slow down. It is maybe the most beautiful application of our self consciousness that we can appreciate other things.

[Marielle Segarra]

In her book, Melissa says, I had been thinking of this time as a dry season, but it had been the most fertile of my life since childhood. Another gift that celibacy offers is it can allow you to detach yourself from what other people think about your appearance. Melissa says she'd been wearing heels since she was a teenager because she's short and she thought they made pants look better on her.

[Melissa Febos]

And by better, what I meant is they made my body look more like I had learned would attract other people, slash men, even though I wasn't even trying to attract men. That was still buried in there. And buried in, buried beneath it was this belief, like, if I can't appear attractive or lovable or sexually viable to strangers, then that's a bad day without that Pressure.

[Marielle Segarra]

She started wearing sneakers every day. She stopped wearing makeup. That doesn't mean she never wears those things now. But she feels more aware of her choices and what she actually likes and wants. Yet another gift of celibacy. And is that over time, Melissa learned that she could do something that once seemed impossible. Saying a firm no, a warning. Here we're about to talk about an instance of someone pressuring another person to have sex. Melissa was at a conference with a fellow writer who wanted to have sex with her. The writer was drunk and didn't want to take no for an answer. What Melissa might have done in the past would have been to cave and give the writer what she wanted to avoid embarrassing her. But she says in the book, I knew that the alternative was also a kind of mortification, a submission to something that would hurt me.

[Melissa Febos]

Right up until the moment I did something different in my mind, I was like, oh, no, oh no, oh no. Like, I'm definitely gonna do what I've done every other time. But there was this little scrap of gumption that was like, no, we don't want to. And then the moment when I do something different feels, in a way, like a moment of grace, like something becomes possible that was not possible.

[Marielle Segarra]

After a while, Melissa felt that she might be celibate forever.

[Melissa Febos]

I really felt so fulfilled, and I thought, if being with other people is risking what I have found in my celibacy, I'm not willing to give it up. So I just sort of, like, stepped into the future as a celibate person.

[Marielle Segarra]

Then she met her now wife, a poet who she started a correspondence with after loving her latest book. Their connection wasn't romantic at first, but it turned out to be takeaway.

[Melissa Febos]

5.

[Marielle Segarra]

If you want to end your celibacy, do it thoughtfully. Trevor had a similar experience in that he didn't step out of celibacy until he met someone he was really interested in.

[Trevor Hines]

It really just kind of happened naturally. Like, I just met somebody, and it was through conversation. I was just like, I want to explore this person. And I was really interested by their mind. They're a very beautiful person, but, like, I was just really interested in this person.

[Marielle Segarra]

The way I'm talking about all this might make it sound easy, seamless, like a fairy tale ending. It was hard. They were both afraid of what ending celibacy would mean. Trevor was afraid to have sex.

[Trevor Hines]

Am I even gonna be able to have sex? Am I even gonna be good at it? Like, there's so much fear around it, but, like, being with someone that one Who I told them, like, my journey and everything, and they respected it. And then also just highly respecting this person for who they are in their mind made it a lot easier to take that step when, like, we did go there.

[Marielle Segarra]

And Melissa, she didn't want to lose the beautiful life she'd built or all the gifts that came with celibacy. In the book, she talks about the first time she and the poet had lunch. She was acutely aware of her attraction to the poet as they walked to a cafe. So she turned her attention to her surroundings. The trees, the people, the smell of french fries wafting through the air. I was here in my body in the city of Washington, D.C. walking down the sidewalk beside a tall stranger, she says. Choices all the way. Holding onto herself within this committed relationship has required some work. She's had to find aloneness even in the company of a loving partner and to protect the space she built for herself without pushing her wife away. Now, no one can tell you when the right time is for you to end your celibacy, but angel gives this rule of thumb.

[Angel Suarez]

I definitely think that when people know they're ready is when they're making the healthiest choice for themselves.

[Marielle Segarra]

They say if you have a lot of doubts coming up, that could be a sign that you're not ready, that you have more internal work to do. One thing, Trevor cautions, is that we shouldn't stay in celibacy out of fear.

[Trevor Hines]

Because you can sit in fear, and then the journey's gonna be doing the opposite from transformation. Now you're going to be like, you've created your own prison in your own cage. And I think most people will know when they've hit that point, because at the end of the day, like, I think most people step into celibacy to, like, strengthen the connection with themselves. And naturally, you're going to want to share that love that you have for yourself with somebody else.

[Marielle Segarra]

Okay, time for a recap. Takeaway one, consider your intentions. Why do you think a period of celibacy might be in order? Are there patterns you're trying to break? Are you hoping to reconnect with a partner? Journaling or making an inventory could help you figure out what you're trying to change. Takeaway two is to define what celibacy means to you. What do you consider sex? Does kissing count? What about masturbation? And do you want to set a time limit? Takeaway 3, Expect some discomfort at the beginning of your celibate period. Expect that you might break your own rules. That doesn't mean you should stop. Takeaway 4. Appreciate the many gifts that celibacy brings and takeaway 5. End your celibacy thoughtfully. And when you're ready for more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on how to know if you're in a codependent relationship and another on how to have conversations around consent. You can find [e-mail] LifeKit and if you love Life Kit and want even more, subscribe to our [e-mail] LifeKitnewsletter Also, we love hearing from you, so if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email [e-mail] this episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Keane is our senior Supervising Editor and Beth Donovan is our Executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

[Melissa Febos]

Foreign.

[Sponsor Announcement]

This message comes from Meta AI the new Meta AI app is built to get to know you, basing its responses on your preferences and interests. Get help anytime with Meta AI, your personal AI. Download the Meta AI app today, now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

This message comes from Thrive Market. The food industry is a multi billion dollar industry, but not everything on the shelf is made with your health in mind. At Thrive Market, they go beyond the standards, curating the highest quality products for you and your family while focusing on organic first and restricting more than 1000 harmful ingredients all shipped at your door. Shop at a grocery store that actually cares for your [e-mail] podcast for 30% off your first order plus a $60 free gift. This message comes from NPR sponsor Viori featuring the performance jogger. Visit viori.com NPR for 20% off your first purchase on any U.S. orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.