‘The pendulum is swinging back to Puritanism’

After 55 years, the vibrator continues to inspire devotion, as well as a new podcast: ‘It takes on larger-than-life symbolism’

In a Goop-ified world where one can purchase sleek, luxury vibrators for up to three figures, how has one sex toy that’s existed for 55 years garnered such devotion? It’s a question the sex writer Kate Sloan explores in Making Magic, a new podcast about the clunky, white-and-blue, straight-from-a-70s-porn-set Magic Wand Original Massager.

Sloan first became interested in the Magic Wand when she was a 19-year-old spending her gap year writing a sex toy review blog called Girly Juice. Later, while working at a sex store, Sloan noticed how customers would come back to buy the Magic Wand over and over again, eager to replace their old ones with the same model.