by Dr. Susan Block. The past is quite imperfect, and the future looks like an über-scary clown, but Bonoboville lights up the crossroads with an off-the-charts fantastic, orgiastic and very Happy New Year’s Eve. It’s a night of communal ecstasy, collective joy, bonoboësque spirit, rainbow-ësque diversity, resistance to oppression from all directions and pure pleasure… with a little bit of pain. Featuring a galaxy of porn stars, pundits, singers, swingers and LA’s most preeminent pro-Dommes, we spank out the old annus (and anus) and flog in a very Happy Nude Rear, as we ride the magical orgasmical Sybian into a deliriously climactic 2017.

It’s Sex at Dawn co-author Dr. Christopher Ryan’s fourth sapiosexually stimulating guest appearance on The Dr. Susan Block Show in exactly five years. Since our first August, 2010 phoner (which he called, in his book’s inscription, “the best interview of all time”) and his first in-studio visit later that year and appearance #3, Sex at Dawn has become not *just* a New York Times best-seller translated into 20 different languages, but a beloved, oft-quoted Bible for a new generation of sex revolutionaries, and we’re proud to have been one of the very first to acknowledge Sex at Dawn’s genius back in the summer of 2010. Flash forward five years later, and here we are celebrating the book’s success with a Womb Room packed with fans and bonoboesque feelings. It’s actually a full “Sex at Dawn Day” for me, commencing with a little marital sex at dawn—the Capt’n and I getting hot just anticipating another sexy night in Bonoboville—and it just gets hotter from there. In fact, by the time Chris gets here to interview me about The Bonobo Way for his podcast “Tangentially Speaking,” it’s sweltering in the shade. Then we have to turn off the noisy air-conditioning to do the interview.

by Dr. Susan Block Freedom is the greatest aphrodisiac, but restraint is a close second. It’s one of the many ironies of sex that some of the freest people get off on giving up their freedom—consensually, of course. They may be turned on by being “forced” to experience things that they really want but don’t feel free to receive unless they’re restrained. They may be aroused by struggling against the restraints or surrendering as they enter “sub space.” This is one of the bedrock principles of BDSM. Another principle is theater. BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sado-Masochism) is dramatic, and I don’t mean Fifty Shades of Holy Crap drama; I mean the living theater of intimate power exchange, the potent poetry of mixing pleasure with pain as you play—with an audience. This show’s guests of honor are masters of BDSM play. So it’s natural that they’re now creating “plays,” i.e., theatrical entertainments spotlighting the drama of BDSM, engaging in themes of passion (the latin passio means “to suffer”), intimacy, discovery, healing, consensuality and control.