Love-ly: Exploring Modern Relationships

This week, Mehak sits down with Gracie Canaan—comedian, writer, actress, and OnlyFans creator—to go inside the world of digital intimacy from both sides of the screen. We love to judge the women who sell intimacy online, but who's really creating the demand? As one half of the six-part investigative podcast OnlyFantasy (made with journalist Leon Neyfakh), Gracie has spent a lot of time thinking about the harder questions this platform raises.

Gracie explains how she branded herself the "professional girlfriend," and why she now chooses late-night OnlyFans conversations over Hinge dates. She sets the record straight on the roughly 90% of OF subscribers who are married, her half-joking mission to "save men," and why the real ick isn't being on the platform — it's being cheap on it.

Plus, Mehak and Gracie disagree on whether OnlyFans counts as cheating, and the bigger lesson underneath it all: that inconvenience is the price of community, and rebuilding it starts with strengthening the social muscles we let atrophy.

You can find Gracie @savegraciecanaan on Instagram, and catch her live shows and tour dates at graciecanaan.com/subscribe

Listen to OnlyFantasy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, or Amazon Music.

Hosted by: Mehak @whathemehak on TikTok | @whathemehak_ on IG
Credits: Producer: Shei Yu | Content Writer: Mehak | Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Love-ly Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Josephine Chai | Executive Producer: Saadia Khan
Subscribe & Listen to Love-ly on Apple Podcasts — $3.99/month or $34.99/year for ad-free episodes and more. Leave a Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify — it helps more people find us.
🔗 Subscribe to Hyphenly, our new newsletter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes. 💌 Share your thoughts: info@immigrantlypod.com
Follow Us: 📸 @lovelythepod on IG | @immigrantly on TikTok
Love-ly is an Immigrantly Media Production. For advertising inquiries, email info@immigrantlypod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're bringing back a previous conversation where Mehak sits down with sex educator and pleasure expert Danielle Bezalel—host of Sex Ed with DB.

Together, they unpack the motifs that shape our earliest understandings of intimacy: immigrant households where sex was whispered, cultures that mistake silence for safety, and school systems that replace curiosity with misinformation.

From Danielle’s Afghan Jewish upbringing to Mehak’s own cultural reflections, this episode explores how identity, religion, shame, and generational expectations influence the way we date, desire, and perceive ourselves. Danielle also shares the turning point that led her into public health and sex education, the emotional stakes of bad sex ed in the U.S., and why pleasure still feels like a radical act—especially for women of color.

We end with a Love-ly signature: a modern dating detour into why everything—including romance—feels so aesthetic now, and what it would mean to return to our bodies instead of performing our lives for the camera.

This is an episode about unlearning, reclaiming, and finally giving ourselves permission to want what we truly desire.

Check out Sex Ed With DB @sexedwithdbpodcasts on IG and on the website, www.sexedwithdb.com

Hosted by: Mehak ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@whathemehak⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on TikTok and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@whathemehak_⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on IG

Credits: Producer: Shei Yu | Content Writer: Mehak | Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Love-ly Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Josephine Chai | Executive Producer: Saadia Khan

Subscribe & Listen to Love-ly on Apple Podcasts — $3.99/month or $34.99/year for ad-free episodes and more. Leave a Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify — it helps more people find us.

🔗 Subscribe to Hyphenly, our new newsletter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes. 💌 Share your thoughts: info@immigrantlypod.com

Follow Us: 📸 @lovelythepod on IG | @immigrantly on TikTok

Love-ly is an Immigrantly Media Production. For advertising inquiries, email info@immigrantlypod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Mehak sits down with her close friend Yana — Ukrainian artist and former midnight ballerina— to unpack the two and a half years she spent working at one of downtown Toronto's most iconic strip clubs, and everything that chapter taught her about men, money, and herself.

Yana sets the record straight on the women behind the stage, recounts the one boundary that was violated once and never again, and explains how she could be the "bitchiest bitch" to men at the club—because why wouldn't she be?? She opens up about how former partners reacted to her past — and why she now treats it as a privilege not everyone earns the right to know.

Plus, how she’s dating now, celibacy as discipline, de-centering men, and the lesson she's still learning: you'll always get more love from within than from seeking it in someone else.

You can find Yana @yanamyart on Instagram

Hosted by: Mehak @whathemehak on TikTok | @whathemehak_ on IG

Credits: Producer: Shei Yu | Content Writer: Mehak | Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Love-ly Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Josephine Chai | Executive Producer: Saadia Khan

Subscribe & Listen to Love-ly on Apple Podcasts — $3.99/month or $34.99/year for ad-free episodes and more. Leave a Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify — it helps more people find us.

🔗 Subscribe to Hyphenly, our new newsletter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes. 💌 Share your thoughts: info@immigrantlypod.com

Follow Us: 📸 @lovelythepod on IG | @immigrantly on TikTok

Love-ly is an Immigrantly Media Production. For advertising inquiries, email info@immigrantlypod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jessica Lanyadoo was getting dressed for a solstice party when her spirit guides told her: don't wear pants, wear a skirt. That night she met the man she's now been with for 14 and a half years.

In this episode, Mehak sits down with Jessica Lanyadoo, humanistic astrologer, psychic medium, animal communicator, and host of Ghost of a Podcast, to talk about what astrology can (and can't) tell us about love.

Jessica explains why she never checks the birth chart of a crush, why sun-sign compatibility is a fancy way of blocking intimacy, and what a full chart actually reveals — from your sleeping patterns to how you fight. She shares the stories she'll never forget: a message from a client's late mother that saved a man's life, and a street dog who begged her to translate for his human. Then Mehak gets a live mini-reading of her own — Saturn square sun, old dating patterns, and the verdict on her new situationship: either he's your husband, or he's your lesson.

Follow Jessica @jessicalanyadoo on Instagram, listen to Ghost of a Podcast, and visit lovelanyadoo.com for weekly horoscopes, classes, and her book Astrology for Real Relationships.

Hosted by: Mehak @whathemehak on TikTok | @whathemehak_ on IG

Credits: Producer: Shei Yu | Content Writer: Mehak | Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Love-ly Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Josephine Chai | Executive Producer: Saadia Khan

Subscribe & Listen to Love-ly on Apple Podcasts — $3.99/month or $34.99/year for ad-free episodes and more. Leave a Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify — it helps more people find us.

🔗 Subscribe to Hyphenly, our new newsletter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes. 💌 Share your thoughts: info@immigrantlypod.com

Follow Us: 📸 @lovelythepod on IG | @immigrantly on TikTok

Love-ly is an Immigrantly Media Production. For advertising inquiries, email info@immigrantlypod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Gold and Tim Utting's love story began at a Halloween party in 1987: hours of conversation, one missed meeting, and a note that said: you have one more chance. He called. The rest is 39 years of history.

In this episode, Mehak sits down with Anna and Tim, IMAGO practitioners and co-founders of Replenish Relationships, to talk about what it really takes to communicate across differences. They break down the Turtle and the Hailstorm dynamic, why opposites attract but struggle to stick, and why the messy, uncomfortable, "ugly" stages of a relationship might actually be where the growth happens. Mehak gets personal about her own situationship, and Anna and Tim offer the reminder we all probably need: you don't have to have it figured out. You just have to stay curious.

Follow Anna and Tim @replenishrelationships on Instagram and visit replenishrelationships.com to learn more about their workshops and retreats.

Hosted by: Mehak @whathemehak on TikTok | @whathemehak_ on IG

Credits: Producer: Shei Yu | Content Writer: Mehak | Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin | Love-ly Theme Music: Lou Raskin | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art: Josephine Chai | Executive Producer: Saadia Khan

Subscribe & Listen to Love-ly on Apple Podcasts — $3.99/month or $34.99/year for ad-free episodes and more. Leave a Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify - it helps more people find us.

🔗 Subscribe to Hyphenly, our new newsletter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes.
💌 Share your thoughts: info@immigrantlypod.com

Follow Us: 📸 @lovelythepod on IG | @immigrantly on TikTok

Love-ly is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, email info@immigrantlypod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices