Experience speaks: Mom talks sex in video podcast  

WAUKESHA, Wis. — Nikol Hasler doesn't recommend the "pull and pray" method of birth control. She says you should not have sex on nature trails because of bugs and Sasquatch. And if you hate your body as a teen, just wait.

The 28-year-old mother of three speaks from experience, and her video podcast, the "Midwest Teen Sex Show," is attracting thousands of viewers.

The product of a teen pregnancy, Hasler spent years in foster care and went to five high schools before graduating. She got pregnant just before her freshman year in college and dropped out after one semester. She was living in a homeless shelter when she gave birth to her first child.

Now Hasler uses her experiences to talk to teens about such topics as "The First Time," "The Older Boyfriend" and "Female Masturbation" on the online video series that started this summer.

"It's cathartic for me. It's a way for me to finally turn what was once something very negative about my life into something very positive," she said.

With co-creator and director Guy Clark, Hasler and actress Britney Barber use humorous skits (such as teens applying for a fornication license) to get their message across. Much of the advice comes from the no-nonsense Hasler talking directly to the camera.

There have been a dozen episodes so far, each about three to five minutes long. The topics vary.

On the first time: "Don't expect too much the first time. That's what the second time is for. Practice makes perfect and you're going to need a lot of practice."

On birth control: "Personally, I think any girl over the age of 8 should be on the pill. If you're old enough to bleed, you're old enough to be a statistic. It may have side effects, but so does pregnancy."

Hasler said she exaggerates about 95 percent of the time. (For the record, if she had an 8-year-old daughter, she would not place her on birth control.) She wants to make people think.

"When hearing a joke that makes you squirm ... that causes you to examine that part of the joke in yourself and brings it forward and makes you think about it even more," she said.

The show's target audience—teens, young adults and their parents—is responding. The show has 65,000 subscribers through iTunes and other podcast subscription services, Clark said. It's regularly ranked in iTunes' top 10 health podcasts, and its Web site averages 4,000 unique hits a day.

Hasler's biography on the Web site labels her a "former expert practitioner of teen promiscuity." She does reveal in an episode about birth control that two of her three children weren't planned.

The show's Web site stresses that "all advice given is simply opinion and should not be taken as fact." The intent is to provide a forum for the discussion of teen sexuality, its creators say.

"Part of what's translated into this show is my own desire to kind of shake kids and say, "If somebody had come around and said, 'Come on, these ideas are completely wrong,' then I would have been listening more," she said.