Reviews & Interviews
Capt’n Max: An Extraordinary Life
It is with deep love, sadness, reverence – and a dash of irreverence – that we announce the passing of Pr. Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka Captain Max, aka Mickey, aka David Rossi, aka Vivienne Hammer, aka Xam Paris, aka Max. Max was a truly great man, though never one to be impressed with greatness – his own or anyone else’s. So, irreverence is as vital as reverence for memorializing Capt’n Max.
On Monday 6/9/2025, Max will be cremated, as was his wish, by Pierce Brothers Mortuary, starting with a private visitation at the Westwood Village Cemetery at 8 AM, followed by a procession around the grounds and cremation at Valhalla Crematorium. Many Hollywood stars are entombed on these grounds, and Max was a star of Underground Hollywood. One of Max’s favorites has a crypt there: Marilyn Monroe. For Max, Marilyn was the personification of fun, as well as the epitome of tragedy. Max also loved “The Dark Marilyn” and “Queen of Pin-Up” Bettie Page, who is buried there. In 1996, Max and his wife, Dr. Susan Marilyn Block, interviewed Bettie Page on their radio show.
It hurts so deeply to say farewell to Capt’n Max, but it helps to know he’s in good company.
The Goal is the Journey
Max’s motto – drawn from Gurdjieff, Confucius and the vivid landscapes of his own extraordinary travels – was “the goal is the journey.”
And what a journey it has been! Max led a remarkable life – over 81 years of romance, revolution, art, theater, publishing, radio, TV and internet broadcasting, erotica, pro-bonobo activism, international intrigue, fearless freedom-fighting, loads of fun and endless love. Max had many names and wore many hats – all with panache and a quirky originality that defied expectation.
As a producer, Max created thousands of fantastic, iconoclastic shows, salons, “speakeasies” and other events. As a publisher, Max pioneered the concept and practice of “reader-written magazines” long before social media existed. This was no easy task and led to many legal battles. But Max was a freedom fighter, as proud of his free speech arrests and prosecutions – most of which he won in court – as he was of his more conventional honors.
Max was married to Susan Marilyn Block, Ph.D. – also known as Dr. Suzy – for over 33 years. Their partnership spanned more than four decades as friends, lovers and creative collaborators, as well as husband and wife. Together, they produced legendary shows, best-selling books, bacchanalian gatherings, antiwar activism, sex-education and peace initiatives rooted in their Bonobo Way philosophy. Their art galleries, bonobo conservation, sex therapy system and endless love affair spearheaded the pro-bonobo movement of peace through pleasure, mutual respect, enthusiastic consent, alternative lifestyles, communal ecstasy, equality, compassion and free expression, helping to shape Underground Hollywood, the Underground Los Angeles Art Scene and the international conversation about peace and sexuality from the early 1990s through the 2020s..
Born in the “Pope’s Hospital”
Max was born on November 8, 1943 in Rome at Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù, aka ‘Child Jesus Pediatric Hospital,’ aka “The Vatican Hospital” or “The Pope’s Hospital,” right next to the Vatican and under the jurisdiction of the Holy See, during World War II as Allied bombs were dropping, even hitting the Vatican itself (despite its neutral status). Fortunately, the infant Maximillian, aka Massimiliano, nicknamed Massimo, emerged safely and was soon whisked out of the war zone to Brescia in the Italian Alpine countryside, with his mother, Princess Giovanella Filangieri. When he was two, a Franciscan nun captured his angelic features in an oil painting. After the War, he and Giovanella moved to Naples where they lived with his Grandmother Pia Rossi Filangieri and other relatives who doted on little Massimo, pinched his cherubic cheeks and encouraged his artistic and equestrian talents.
Max never knew his biological father, though he seems to have been a German officer. As a boy, he was inspired by his Great Uncle Rodolpho, a Polish Jewish painter who had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, married to his grandmother’s sister (their father was Carlo Rossi Filangieri), his Great Aunt Anna Filangieri who was a ceramicist in a beach house filled with art. Many Filangieris were involved in the arts, including putting on plays and other events at the Filangieri castle in Naples.
At about age six, little Massimo’s life changed dramatically when his mother took him to a Neopolitan cafe to meet his stepfather, Prince Peter Francis Lobkowicz of Prague, Czechoslovakia. According to his recollection, this first meeting of father and son was punctuated with a hail of gunfire.
Max’s ancestors on both his stepfather’s and mother’s sides of the family can be traced to the Middle Ages, both with aristocratic traditions. The House of Lobkowicz is a Bohemian noble family that dates back to the 14th century, including the titles Prince of Prague, Duke of Melnick. Sponsors of great art, architecture and music, Lobkowicz nobility built several tremendous palaces that were confiscated by the Nazis and then the U.S.S.R., forcing them into exile. Nowadays you can visit Lobkowicz Palace, the only privately owned building in the Prague Castle Complex, and immerse yourself in Bohemian history while sipping a Lobkowicz Beer, produced by Pivovary Lobkowicz brewery, dating back to 1466.
On his mother’s Filangieri side, Max’s Italo-Norman noble ancestors date back to the Crusades, held many high military posts and built several fairytale-like castles and palaces. Max was most proud of being directly descended from the great progressive philosopher Gaetano Filangieri (22 August 1753 – 21 July 1788), 5th Prince of Satriano, whose works influenced the American Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and who counted among his admirers the American statesmen, Benjamin Franklin.
Coming to America
At the age of seven, Max, his mother, stepfather and his six-month-old infant brother, Charles Leblovic Lobkowicz, aka Charlie, set sail for America – in part to escape the gunfire, in part to continue the American/Filangieri connection – on The Italia. Crouched under its gigantic hull, sprayed by the briny sea, young Maximillian fantasized about being the captain of a big ship like the one holding his family and other deposed royal “refugees,” leaving the Old World for the New. He never got that job (or even tried), but he did get the hat.
“Capt’n Max” was never an official “captain” in the military (he’d been vehemently antiwar since throwing down his own rifle during bootcamp when he realized he “could kill somebody”), and he wasn’t even licensed to steer a canoe. He did like the captain’s hat (with “scrambled eggs” on the brim), as well as the big ships, bikinis and the endless ocean. Beyond all that, Max simply exuded the air of an authentic, strong but compassionate Man in Charge, a true Captain, so people called him that. He may not have piloted yachts, but he was the Captain of the Good Ship Bonoboville, aka the Ship of Fools for Love, and it’s inscribed inside his wife’s wedding ring, “Captain of My Heart.”
But it all started on October 4, 1951, when the Italia set sail from Naples, Italy to the Statue of Liberty, when Max discovered his love for the sea. Upon arrival, Massimo became Mickey, moving deep into the suburbs of Montclair, New Jersey, where his noble parents soon hired a housekeeper and butler to care for their two sons so they could go out almost every night.
One day, when Mickey was a young teen looking at pin-ups of Marilyn Monroe or Bettie Page, just beginning to explore his sexuality – amid the typical 1950’s lack of sex education – the housekeeper confronted him with a bunch of sticky, crumpled up papers she’d found in the bushes under his window. Mortified, he braced for a lecture. But instead, she just smiled and said, “Next time, use tissues – and throw them in the trash.”
As befitting a young Prince, Mickey was a great equestrian, winning several prizes. Tragically, a girlfriend of his was killed when she fell off her horse, and he never felt quite the same about horseback-riding again.
On June 10, 1955, 11-year-old Mickey had a mystical experience that would ripple through the rest of his life. As he sat under a large pine tree, toying with a pinecone, he found himself wondering who the love of his life might be, and he felt he received a “sign” in the pines: The name of his future Great Love would be hidden within his own. Later, when he connected with Dr. Susan Block (born June 10, 1955), they both realized that the letters of her name, “Block,” appeared within his own, “Lobkowicz.” Thus, the Pine Tree Prophecy had been fulfilled.
Peyton Place, New Jersey
The Lobkowicz family of four all became naturalized American citizens in 1956, when Mickey was 12. Adjusting to American culture wasn’t easy, especially with limited English skills, but that wasn’t Mickey’s only problem. His deposed Czech Prince stepdad engaged in arms deals – sometimes supplying both sides of a conflict, and inevitably trouble followed. One day, when Prince Peter was out of town, a gang of gunmen came looking for him, then stormed the house, holding the butler, housekeeper, Mickey and baby Charlie at gunpoint until wily Mickey could get a message to his school friends who rushed to the rescue, surrounding the house and pelting the intruders with rocks until they fled… at least, according to the tale that Mickey – then Max – liked to tell it.
Fascinated by the secret lives of spouse-swapping Montclair adults – it all felt like something out of “Peyton Place” (the #1 bestseller at the time) – young Mickey found inspiration for his first publishing venture. He snuck into the Montclair Junior High School office after hours to mimeograph copies of his friend Bonnie Kelner’s localized “Peyton Place” parody, “Montclair Place,” which turned into the talk of the school – and got Mickey suspended. At least, he wasn’t deported. More importantly, it was then that he realized that publishing was his calling.
He also realized he liked Jewish girls, and he eventually married three (Dr. Susan Block was his third wife). He converted to Judaism – guided by renowned “Renaissance Rabbi” (to Elizabeth Taylor and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others) Bill Kramer – before marrying wife #1, Susan Spilka, whom he met in 1963 on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, and with whom he had three children (Michael in 1968, Daniele in 1972 and Keri in 1982) before they divorced.
Speaking of divorce, Mickey learned that from his own parents whose divorce upended his own young life. At the age of 15, he moved with his mother to Genoa, Italy, where he worked as an actor in the State Theater Eleonora Duce of Italy and Teatro Arlecchino of Genoa. He also road-managed English rock star Colin Hicks and performed Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley tributes while in Europe.
At 17 or so, he moved in with his father, along with his new wife Bibi, a Brigitte Bardot lookalike with whom he engaged in pillow fights, in New York. Sometime earlier (it’s not clear when), Papa Peter sent him to a prostitute to lose his virginity. Poor over-excited Mickey climaxed before he even climbed the stairs to her apartment door, and she was so kind and understanding, he became a lifelong, unashamed advocate for sex workers.
In the early 1960s, Mickey joined the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, but quit in bootcamp when he realized this new job involved killing people. He was put in a mental ward (or so he told the tale) and managed to avoid a dishonorable discharge by threatening to blow the whistle on the Peyton Place-like, spouse-swapping society of his fellow patients and their doctors.
L.A. Star Publisher
After leaving the military, Mickey hitchhiked through the U.S.A. – waiting tables, digging ditches and taking other odd jobs along the way – until he eventually settled in Los Angeles. There he found work as a bill collector, the most thankless job in the world, but Mickey was good at it, good enough to start a family with his first wife. During this time, he also pursued his education at UCLA and Santa Monica City College and became increasingly active in politics. One pivotal moment was attending a rally at the Ambassador Hotel for Robert Kennedy, Jr. – a night marked by shock and horror, as RFK was assassinated there, a tragedy that Mickey never forgot.
Then the old publishing bug bit him again. He met LA Star Publisher and Editor Paul Eberle and together they wrote the popular book, “Playing to Win: How to Deal with Bill Collectors.” Then in 1973, Max quit bill-collecting and started publishing The LA Star.
One of Mickey’s first acts as publisher was to put a black and white photo of a topless woman on the cover of The LA Star. The model was a member of the Elysium nudist community in Topanga Canyon, written up in the paper’s lead article, an interview with Elysium founder and director Ed Lange. Nevertheless, this was unprecedented, and copies of The LA Star – which also featured the early works of Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski and many esteemed writers – flew off the racks, easily beating the competition (mainly The LA Free Press). A series of arrests and lawsuits ensued, and Mickey, Paul and his wife and partner Shirley Eberle, won or settled all of them, usually represented by famed Free Speech attorney Stanley Fleischmann and eventually his office colleague, Barry Fisher. They changed the “rack laws,” paving the way for cable TV. Among their other legal wins was the landmark “Angie Dickenson Case” that overturned American Criminal Libel statutes in favor of Freedom of Speech. So, you might still be sued for putting Angie’s face on a naked body, as Mickey did on The LA Star, but you can’t go to jail for it.
“Reader-Written” Media Pioneer
During this time, Mickey entered into a lifelong friendship and artistic collaboration with Dutch multi-media artist Willem de Ridder, chairman of the FLUXUS art movement in Northern Europe and founder/publisher of SUCK, the first European erotic magazine, featuring luminaries such as Germaine Greer, baring all in sex-positive prose and very explicit pictures. Together, Mickey and Willem published some of the most innovative sex magazines and journals ever seen before – or since – including Love, Hate, Finger, God (called “G” on the cover because the religious printer refused to print it as “GOD”), Annie Sprinkle’s Hot Shit, The Sprinkle Report, Charles Gatewood’s “Forbidden Photographs,” The Ladies Room, the LA Star, and Sound Finger (the first talking magazine), featuring the works of Marco Vassi, Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, Alien creator Dan O’Bannon and many more, representing the most extensive documentation of human sexuality and erotic art during the 1970s. Certain issues cannot legally be possessed in the United States, and many are now sold as collector’s items for thousands of dollars each.
Mickey and Willem also “plundered” the European airwaves, producing “pirate” radio shows in San Felice, Italy, early audio experiments whose echoes can be still be heard in contemporary productions, including Max and Dr. Suzy’s own FDR radio shows. Together, accompanied by their families, lovers, hippie *groupies* and Mickey’s big black poodle Robear, they trailblazed free speech as they traveled through Europe and America, making art, getting busted and publishing “reader-written” magazines that changed the world.
Yes, changed the world. Now, with social media, 90% of what most of us read is “reader-written,” but back in the Swinging ‘70s, it was unusual (if not blasphemous) to publish the prose, photos and art of readers – not professionals – with virtually no editing or censorship. This was a significant, if unheralded accomplishment for Mickey, Willem, Paul, Shirle, Susan, Annie, the Star Family and surrounding hippie groupies, as they were hounded from all sides – from Manson Family death threats (immortalized in the hit movie “Beverly Hills Cop”) to a string of LAPD busts and an Elmira, N.Y. home invasion.
Mickey’s work also delved into some of the most mysterious yet widespread subjects in human sexuality behavior and fantasy. For this, he was prosecuted 23 times, possibly making him the most prosecuted publisher in U.S. history. He usually won, but he served 18 months in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institute where he ran for attorney general, and where his second daughter, Kari, was born while her mother, Mickey’s first wife Susan Leblovic, was shackled to her prison hospital bed. In 1982, so that Susan could be released to care for Kari and their other children, Mickey made a “deal” to plead guilty for the first time.
After being paroled in 1984, Mickey returned to LA and soon began publishing again. He also started calling himself “Michael.” His new publishing ventures were much tamer, but also ground-breaking as “reader-written” media. Along with Ellen Dreksler (his second wife, with whom he had his fourth child, Jonathan Dreksler in 1989), Brad Bucklin, Rudy Marinacci, Robert “The Bear” Wachtel, Kelly Bushinski and others, Mickey published “Meetings with Remarkable People” in 1986, “Beverly Hills the Magazine” and, most famously, “The Brentwood Bla Bla” in 1987. In 1989, Mickey sold both magazines to Eli Broad of Kaufman and Broad, and then in 1990 to Robert Page of the Chicago Sun-Times who spoiled the “reader-written media” concept (after which, Max quit), and soon completely destroyed both entire magazines, by inviting advertisers to write the articles.
Captain of Her Heart
In late 1984, “Michael” (formerly Mickey, soon to become Max), was working as a dating service consultant, when he met Susan Marilyn Block – soon to be Dr. Suzy. She came to his office to close a sale for a commercial spot on the weekly “Susan Block Show” on KIEV and later KFOX radio. He advised the dating service to buy the commercial, and they began corresponding. She also started calling him “Max” – when she found out his real first name was “Maximillian,” and the name stuck. After all, it was his original princely name.
Thus, Pr. Max’s and Dr. Suzy’s great 40-year friendship and creative collaboration began with their “Soap Salons” on her radio shows and her columns in his magazines. In 1990, Max’s second marriage ended, and he began living in The Brentwood Bla Bla’s executive suite on the 11th floor of the Brentwood Plaza. At this point, Max and Susan, now “Dr. Susan Block” (having obtained her first Ph.D. in philosophy with a major in psychology), began to see each other romantically.
The duo also collaborated on more audio artworks. In late 1990, they produced “Desert Susan,” crystalizing their mutual opposition to war in general and “Gulf War I” in particular, which was very popular at the time. A lyrical, hypnotic program featuring soulful music, antiwar poetry, “ethical hedonism” and excerpts from Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” cassettes of “Desert Susan” were sent free in 1990-1991 to thousands of troops and officers in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Over the years, Max and Dr. Suzy heard back from many troops who had received these cassettes, turning them from war to peace. They also created the best-selling audio series, “Bedtime Stories for Adults,” including “The Great Erotic Train Ride,” “Office Fantasies” and “Passions of the Plaza,” reflecting their own rising passions for each other. In 1991, Max moved out of The Brentwood Bla Bla executive apartment and into Dr. Suzy’s West Hollywood condominium.
In 1992, Max started producing The Dr. Susan Block Show. He also served as campaign manager for Dr. Suzy’s antiwar, pro-free speech U.S. Presidential run. She didn’t win, but she did marry her Prince (Max) that same year.
On April 12, 1992, Max and Susan were married at Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Gerald Wolpe and Rabbi Ivan Caine. Guests flew in from around the world, including Mickey’s brother Charlie and Charlie’s daughter Giovanella from Milan, to witness the friendship that blossomed into passionate love and was now a lifelong commitment. Inside his wedding ring was inscribed “Master of My Soul,” and inside hers, “Captain of My Heart.”
MaxCam on DrSuzy.Tv and HBO
Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy’s long-term love affair sparked a theatrical media partnership that produced the legendary Dr. Susan Block Show, Dr. Susan Block’s Journal (both in print and online), The Dr. Susan Block Video Encyclopedia of Sex & Fetishes, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, The Bonobo Way, Bonoboville, Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy, four “Real Sex” segments and “Radio Sex TV with Dr. Susan Block” on HBO. Their HBO shows were directed by Emmy-award-winner Shari Cookson and executive-produced by acclaimed Emmy and Oscar winner Sheila Nevins.
Max is the creator of the unique, critically acclaimed style of filming The Dr. Susan Block Show known as “MaxCam,” also featured on HBO’s “Radio Sex TV.” Sheila Nevins was so enamored with it, she ordered HBO’s camera quality to be “degraded” to look as close to MaxCam as possible when shooting “Radio Sex TV.”
Max also assumed the position of “Max the Butler” to Dr. Suzy’s “Mistress of the Airwaves,” a beloved character that is well-remembered by fans of The Dr. Susan Block Show, in its early days on live radio and public access TV, for his distinctive garb of Captain’s hat, dress shirt and ultra-short shorts, plus his deeply soothing yet intense baritone radio voice that announced the show and delivered his liberating and provocative commentary. Both Max and Dr. Suzy used their Commedia dell’Arte experience to create memorable characters based on their real personalities, but theatricalized. They called their performance style “Commedia Erotica.”
After KFOX radio switched formats, Dr. Suzy and Max the Butler expanded The Dr. Susan Block Show to over 150 stations nationwide through the Independent Broadcasters Network – while also airing a video version of the show on several public access TV stations in California and New York – broadcasting live from Dr. Suzy’s West Hollywood condo. From there, they moved into a penthouse in Westwood overlooking Holmby Hills where they first interviewed Nina Hartley, Lasse Braun and Willem de Ridder, and filmed HBO’s “Real Sex 11.”
Then they expanded into several suites at the old Century Wilshire Hotel, right down the street from Westwood Village Cemetery, where they visited Marilyn Monroe’s crypt for inspiration, as they continued to broadcast live on IBN nationwide and KMAX radio in LA. They also filmed two iconic, half-hour, #1 Nielsen-rated “Radio Sex TV” specials on HBO, “Radio Sex TV with Dr. Susan Block” and “Radio Sex TV 2: Off the Dial,” both featuring the inimitable MaxCam style.
A Police Raid, a Stabbing, Dozens of Great Shows and the Bonobo Way
During and after these ground-breaking shows, Max and Dr. Suzy experienced many wild adventures, almost all of which were peaceful. However, one night in 1994 at the Century Wilshire Hotel, while bravely defending his wife against an intruder armed with a military-knife, Max was stabbed. The intruder was a jealous “cuckold” whose “hot wife” (with his expressed consent) had danced with renowned director Lasse Braun on the show. He had broken into their bedroom and tied up Dr. Suzy, when Max walked in. Then he lunged at Max as Dr. Suzy yelled, “He’s got a knife!” Before the blade could cut deep, and only using his bare hands, Max subdued the attacker and threw him against the wall – later joking that he was aiming for the window but missed. The assailant fled and was eventually apprehended by police. Though Max’s stab wound was superficial, the incision that the UCLA ER surgeon made to inspect the wound through his groin led to a hiatal hernia that bothered him the rest of his life.
Max and Dr. Suzy’s philosophy of love, peace and community is inspired by the bonobos, the “Make Love Not War” chimpanzees who are humanity’s closest genetic cousins and have never been seen killing each other in the wild or captivity. They first saw these amazing Great Apes in the last episode of the “Nature of Sex” series on PBS, and it soon became clear to them that bonobos practice the kind of sex-positivity, “peace through pleasure,” female empowerment, male nurturance, sharing, caring and ecosexuality that they believed essential to keeping their own love alive – and even a key to world peace. “The Bonobo Way” became the foundation of their love and work together for the rest of Max’s life. “Bonobo Liberation Therapy” was also integrated into Dr. Suzy’s sex therapy system, in private practice at The Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences since 1991.
In 1995, Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy posted their first internet website on AOL, and it was promptly censored for the use of clinical words and showing a photo of “copulating bonobos.” So, they started their own sites, DrSusanBlock.com and BlockBonoboFoundation.org.
In 1996, Max produced Dr. Suzy’s live in-depth radio and public access TV interview with Harvard Anthropologist Dr. Richard Wrangham about bonobo culture, the first in a series of interviews with over a dozen bonobo ape experts that continued over the following three decades.
That same year, Max produced, filmed and participated in Dr. Suzy’s interview with Pin-Up Queen Bettie Page, “the dark Marilyn,” one of Max’s youthful crushes. It was the first live interview with the legendary Bettie Page and the longest, also featuring a beautiful Bettie Page lookalike, an 18-year-old protégé of Max’s friend Mistress Antoinette, named Dita Von Teese. Dita would make several more appearances on the show and soon became an international fetish and burlesque sensation.
Also in 1996, St. Martin’s Press published the first edition of “The 10 Commandments of Pleasure: Erotic Keys to a Healthy Sexual Life,” Dr. Suzy’s third book, based on the philosophy of love, pleasure and the Bonobo Way she was developing with Max. Published in over seven languages in more than a dozen countries, the book was a springboard to more Travels with Max, including their first trip to the San Diego Zoo to see the real bonobos, through the East and West Coasts of the U.S., and though England, France, Italy, Germany and Holland. While in Amsterdam, they met with Max’s old partner Willem de Ridder, artist Cora Emmons, “The Happy Hooker” author Xaviera Hollander and many other members of the European erotic arts and sex-therapeutic wellness communities.
The Villa, Yale, a Real Speakeasy and another Police Raid
In 1997, Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy moved into a big house in the Hollywood Hills. They called it the Villa Piacere or just the Villa. Continuing to film HBO specials and other sex educational documentaries, as well as broadcast their live weekly call-in shows, their work grew in artistry, popularity and therapeutic value. Max mentored emerging filmmakers in his distinctive MaxCam style while cultivating a vibrant space for his wife and the artists around them to thrive. Together, the crafted “Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy” – a singular blend of talk show, revival, history lesson, fetish forum, bacchanal and bar – where guests could “speak easy,” exploring topics that mainstream shows dared not broach. The vibe was almost always peaceful – except for the one night when the LAPD raided the place. Ironically, it was during a big show featuring the artist Frank Moore, Heilman-C, KLOS personality Frank Naste, Free Speech Coalition lawyer Jeffrey Douglas, and even a UPN-TV news crew – very excited to be covering a police raid when they had come to film a talk show. Nothing illegal was happening and no neighbors complained, so no charges were filed.
In 1999, Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy transported their merry band into a real Speakeasy; at least it was a speakeasy in the 1920s and still had the original bar. The high ceilings were perfect to showcase their growing collection of great artworks by Doug Johns, Karin Swildens, Dennis Dutzi, Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Yossi Vardan, John Evans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Scott Siedman, Jirayr H. Zorthian and many more. They opened Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy Gallery of Erotic Art, enthusiastically reviewed by Stephen Lemons in LA New Times and filmed for “Real Sex 25” on HBO.
On January 22, 2000, they launched Eros Day – a holiday idea introduced to them by award-winning filmmaker Lasse Braun – to honor the Greek god of love, sex and life itself, coinciding with the planetoid Eros’ closest approach to Earth. It all came together with divine erotic artistry – featuring Murrill Maglio as Eros and his wife Teri Weigel as Venus – the two of them making love on the artist Mario Saucedo’s giant wooden bondage cross in this great historic Speakeasy across from the Morrison Hotel, as Dr. Suzy and Capt’n Max conducted the first of about a dozen classical and astronomical Eros Day celebrations, covered by many media outlets and personalities, including rocket scientist Stan Kent, the LA Weekly and Citizen LA.
Attending “Stage Blue,” a Yale Dramat event, in 1999, Max and Dr. Suzy (Yale Class of 1977) met iconic Altadena artist Colonel Jirayr H. Zorthian (Yale Class of 1936) and his wife Dabney Zorthian, and a great collaborative four-way friendship in which Max and Dr. Suzy produced several exhibitions of Jirayr’s masterpiece erotic artworks, with Dabney’s help, and made a film about him, “Zorthian: Art & Times,” which they premiered at their Zorthian art memorial in 2005.
In 2000, the LAPD raided The Dr. Susan Block Show for a second time (when actress Ginger Lynn was the main guest) and again, no charges were filed. This time, Max and Dr. Suzy sued the LAPD and eventually won a large settlement (the amount of which cannot be legally disclosed) on appeal that allowed them to rebuild Bonoboville and “Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy in the Soul of Downtown LA.”
That same year, they moved to Flower Street near the new Staples Center where they continued to broadcast live on the Internet and public access TV. During the Democratic Convention, they mounted a popular erotic art show called “Democratic Sex,” surreptitiously attended by many convention delegates.
David Rossi & Xam Paris
Max and Dr. Suzy’s life was quirky but in many ways ideal, though as Max often said, “The ideal is the enemy of the real.” In early 2001, the morning after an exuberant Eros Day, Max was arrested by the LAPD based on false charges, taken to Twin Towers jail and held there for two months before Dr. Suzy could gather bail for his release. After several court appearances, Max disappeared, and then appeared in August, 2001, making the first of a series of calls to his befuddled prosecutor from various locations in France.
In October, 2001, Dr. Suzy reunited with Max – now going by the name “David Rossi” – as she ran from a taxi straight into his arms on a street corner in Nice, France. From there, the two headed to Cannes where they showed their film, “Weimar Love” at MipCom 2001. Eerily prescient, their film forecast a “Reichstag-like incident” triggering a crackdown on civil liberties – echoing the aftermath of 9/11. This was the first of several trips Dr. Suzy took to France to see “David,” combining their work (including her Max-inspired new Counterpunch columns), with great pleasure, deepening love and a dash of danger, as always, but now with a French accent, celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary on April 12, 2002 in Paris.
In March 2003, in response to George W. Bush’s bombing of Baghdad, “David” and Dr. Suzy produced “Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace” at Il Teatro Restaurant, an art exhibit of photographs, paintings, drawings and digital artworks by American artists that counteracted and commented on “Smart Bombs” and the eroticization of explosive, massively endowed, corporate-sponsored violence. They also founded the Cannes Press Club hosting a series of press gatherings and a screening party of journalists and friends for the 2002 premiere of Tom Wontner’s “My Yacht,” an independent film made at Cannes 2001, parasailed, swam on nude beaches and sailed around Cannes harbor on the Adria sailing ship.
While Dr. Suzy was in LA, David continued to perform as “Max the Butler” on her weekly shows, handling his announcer duties remotely from France, sometimes with new friends he made there, such as Imanne Sterning with whom he broadcast shows on NSEO radio in Paris, and who helped promote “The 10 Commandments of Pleasure” French edition, “Les Dix Commandements du Plaisir” (Presse Grancher).
In 2004, David returned to LA. Off the LAPD radar, he lived, loved and worked happily for several years under the names David Rossi and Xam Paris, producing bigger and more bacchanalian shows and events with Dr. Suzy in their biggest Speakeasy ever, a sprawling, 17,000 square foot universe of art and exploration on Pico near the DTLA Fashion District. He also helped Dr. Suzy to conduct seminars at Sex Week at Yale (her alma mater) in 2004 and 2006. At Sex Week at Yale 2006, David spoke to a packed auditorium at the Yale Law School on the importance of Free Speech.
In 2005, award-winning filmmaker Canaan Brumley started making a film called “Speakeasy,” featuring David, Dr. Suzy and all the wild and colorful characters in attendance as well as fictional characters played by actors Wallace Stevens and Sara Sioux Robertson. Many have hope that one day, “Speakeasy: The Movie” will be released. In the meantime, “the goal is the journey,” and the journey of making “Speakeasy” was and is always extraordinary.
During this time, David and Dr. Suzy expanded their celebrations of conventional holidays in their own way – with a little parody, history, spectacle, sensuality, art, music and a lot of fun – reenacting the story of Lupercalia, the original Valentine’s Day, putting on erotic Purimshpiels, Hot-Wax Hanukkah, Saturnalian Xmas, Dionysian Sprng, Kinky Krampus, Easter Resurrections of Persephone, Masked Balls for Halloween, turning Labor Day into Labia Day and great birthdays and wedding anniversaries that celebrated married romantic love and longevity with communal ecstasy.
Also, in 2005, David executive-produced “Dr. Suzy’s Squirt Salon: The Art & Science of Female Ejaculation” which held its world premiere at the Cinekink Film Festival, went viral and won several awards. In 2006, their erotic antiwar music video “Blonde Island” held its world premiere at the Barcelona film festival, and its American premiere at Cinekink, which David and Dr. Suzy attended in New York on their way to New Haven for another Sex Week at Yale.
In Sickness & In Health… & Back in the Tank
In May, 2006, the night after a major Speakeasy show featuring Yale’s Whim ‘n’ Rhythm, Dr. Suzy collapsed from septic shock. Her organs failed, she was in a coma for almost two weeks, and she came perilously close to death. David – Max – Mickey was by her side in USC hospital every day. As she woke up, there he was in his khaki vest and straw fedora, helping the nurses and doctors to help her come back to life. Two months later, when he took her home in a wheelchair, he was her primary caregiver all day and night, every day and night.
As Dr. Suzy recovered, the duo retuned to hosting shows – bigger and more bacchanalian than ever before. Canaan continue filming “Speakeasy” through Dr. Suzy’s recovery and far beyond. Director Scott Webb also produced a series of Dr. Susan Block Shows, and many documentaries were made. Around this time, Dr. Suzy expanded her telephone sex therapy practice to include therapists all over the world with different areas of expertise, all under David’s management.
Calls for therapy, counseling, information and guidance rang in from near and far. Occasionally, there would also be unwanted calls and scams, and for those, David would often assume the identity of “Vivienne Hammer,” answering the phone in his usual deep baritone voice with “This is Vivienne Hammer, how may I help you?” confounding whatever scammer or bill collector was on the other end of the line.
Then one day in May, 2008, David answered the door, and a gang of police piled on top of him and took him back to Twin Towers, this time with no bail. Though the original accusations had long ago been debunked and thrown out, now Max was on the hook for “failure to appear.” At least, he was back to being “Max” again, his original name.
From May, 2008 through February, 2009, Dr. Suzy spoke with Max every day by phone and visited him twice a week in Twin Towers, sometimes accompanied by Sara Sioux. During that time, he continued to “produce” Dr. Suzy’s shows by phone and through long visits, such as when he reviewed Dr. Suzy and Sara’s promotional banners for her Eros Day X Orgy for Obama in January 2009 through the Twin Towers visitor glass, sparking lively conversations among the guards and other prisoners, many of whom protected Max because they were his fans.
Capt’n Max Back at the Helm
In late February, 2009, Dr. Suzy, Canaan and Sara Sioux picked up Max in an emotional reunion at Delaney Prison and took him back to the Speakeasy. With Capt’n Max back in Dr. Suzy’s arms and at the helm of the Good Ship Bonoboville once again, The Dr. Susan Block Show took off – with great guests like Dave Bautista, Too $hort, Striperella artist Anthony Winn, Expedition Wild’s Casey Anderson, bestselling author Robert Greene, artist Soma Snakeoil, NoFX lead singer Fat Mike, actor John Barrymore, musician Elvis Schoenberg, comedian Chris Gore and so many more – plus more Eros Days, wedding anniversaries, bondage balls, musical concerts, stripper pole performances, erotic art exhibits, holiday bacchanals and the filming of Canaan’s “Speakeasy” movie took off again like a rocket, solidifying the position of Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy as the most exciting and yet down-to-earth “power couple” in the Downtown LA erotic art scene.
One inadvertent silver lining of Max’s incarceration was that, after smoking cigarettes since age 15, he quit cold-turkey and never resumed the habit. Nevertheless, he encountered health setbacks, but nothing Capt’n Max couldn’t overcome – for a while – with Dr. Suzy by his side. He was the Captain, she was the Admiral, and their ship was sailing along. In 2009, Max underwent a quadruple bypass (that turned into a triple bypass when one vein didn’t take), and in 2012, upon learning he had bladder cancer, he underwent chemotherapy and neo-bladder surgery, and though the results weren’t perfect, he was cancer-free the rest of his life.
In June, 2012, Max attended Dr. Suzy’s 35th Yale University Reunion (Class of 1977), proud to exchange his captain’s hat for a “Yale Husband” cap, at least for the weekend, and continued to participate in her 2017 and 2022 Yale reunions, as well as other Yale events. Between reunions, several Yale college students spent their summers working as interns on The Dr. Susan Block Show. What a unique education they received!
In August, 2012, Max produced “Big Win in Vegas,” a film centered around an RV trip to see Dr. Suzy being awarded her second Ph.D., an honorary Doctorate of the Arts in Sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHA) in a ceremony at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, officiated by Dr. Ted McIlvenna and attended by friends and fans of Max and Dr. Suzy from around the world, followed by a party in the motorhome. Max was also the driver of that motorhome – their Bonoboville-On-Wheels.
They broadcast live on location from many other places, such as Hollywood’s Zephyr Theater and several years at Mistress’s Cyan’s DomCon LA where they developed an enthusiastic following for their talks on Bonobo BDSM and Female Empowerment. But their incomparable, sensational and yet intimate, meaningful, inspirational shows at Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy in the Soul of Downtown LA, all set in breathtaking bohemian environments designed by Max as Xam Paris, were the glittering jewels in their crowns as King and Queen of the DTLA Underground Erotic Art and Theater scene for over a decade.
From DTLA to Inglewood
Nothing lasts forever, certainly not glittering crowns. In 2013, as DTLA prices soared, and the quality of life for artists declined – causing many of their friends and allies to disperse from the Downtown area – Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy relocated Bonoboville to vibrant Inglewood, California. There, they flourished for five years of fantastic shows, seminars, bacchanals, media and love – plus only one visit from the Inglewood police that resulted in giving the officer-in-charge (who confided that he and his wife were interested in swinging) an autographed copy of “The 10 Commandments of Pleasure.”
In 2014, Max published “The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure” by Dr. Susan Block. Auspiciously, the publication date was November 8, 2014, Max’s birthday, and a great book launch birthday was held with fire jugglers, dancers, Bonobo Way book-spankings, readings and other festivities. Max and Dr. Suzy’s Bonobo Way book tour took them through UC Berkeley, UC Puerto Rico, UCLA, USC, Cal Tech, Yale University, DomCon LA, AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) and more.
In 2015, Max “discovered” powerful progressive newscaster/activist Abby Martin, and invited her to visit Bonoboville as the only guest on a special edition of The Dr. Susan Block Show, and thus began a great friendship and media collaboration between Max, Dr. Suzy, Abby and her husband Mike Prysner, as well as Abby’s brother Robbie Martin, that among other things, encouraged Max and Dr. Suzy to open up and speak more freely about their support for Palestine.
They continued to mix the discussion of politics, sex and culture with performance in their Inglewood shows, featuring hundreds of artists, therapists, professors and porn stars, including award-winning actor Luzer Twersky, Dominatrix and 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidate Tara Indiana, bestselling author Dr. Christopher Ryan, Ecosexuality author Dr. Serena Anderlini, actress Daniele Watts and gourmet vegan Chef Belive, rapper Ikkor the Wolf, Taboo actress Kay Parker, author Moushumi Ghose, comedienne Sally Mullins, artist Jeffrey Vallance and many more. The sex made the politics more fun, and the politics made the sex more meaningful. Altogether, it made life feel good.
In 2018, when their Inglewood building’s new owner doubled the rent, Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy moved Bonoboville to Arcadia, California in 2019. They set up their studios in a great building that had been a Home for the Deaf, and their love and work flourished once again. However, from the beginning, they were harassed by inspectors and other officials with the City of Arcadia, despite their landlady’s continual support. This harassment seemed to coincide with more censorship, including the deactivation of Dr. Suzy’s Meta accounts, and less free speech in general, as the 20-teens turned to the 2020s, with various types of repression coming down the proverbial pike from both the Right and the Left.
During the 2020 Covid pandemic, Dr. Suzy and Max held a series of “Bedside Chats,” inspired by FDR’s “Fireside Chats” – except in bed, with guests on Zoom like Hypatia Lee, Goddess Phoenix, author David Steinberg and fellow Counterpunch writer JoAnn Wypijewski.
Towards the end of 2020, Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy started co-hosting FDR Radio, broadcasting live on several internet platforms, talking about sex, politics and culture, with the theme of a train traveling through time into the great unknown, picking up guests and callers along the way. Max loved trains almost as much as ships. They also continued to give interviews to many other media outlets.
In July, 2021, Bonoboville was raided by the Arcadia Police, just as Max, Dr. Suzy and the crew were preparing for a podcast interview with Counterpunch founder and American Babylon host Ken Silverstein about Free Speech and the City of Arcadia’s unconstitutional harassment. The police forced everyone out of the building, frisked them and made them wait as they searched Bonoboville and found many interesting things, but nothing illegal. During this time, Max – who explained to the police that he had a neo-bladder he could not always control – was not allowed to go to the restroom.
Their warrant was based on false information, and no charges were filed, but the City’s harassment escalated. Max spoke out strongly against their personal harassment and the fascism in general that was creeping into American politics and everyday life on The Dr. Susan Block Show and in an interview he and Dr. Suzy did with The LA Daily News. Meanwhile, the FDR radio shows continued.
In 2022, Vice TV produced a special in-person revival of The Dr. Susan Block Show and “day in the life” of Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy. One of the funniest, most authentic moments ends the piece, with Max in front of the Bonoboville washing machine explaining how just before the show, we always wash the dildos, and then he showed each soapy rubber schlong to the camera with great glee, as if to say, “Relax, we’re just having fun.”
That April, Dr. Suzy and Capt’n Max celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, and that June, they moderated a “Peace, Love and Bonobos” roundtable discussion at their Yale reunion. In 2023 and early 2024, they continued to broadcast live on FDR (almost) every Saturday night, celebrating Max’s 80th birthday (which included his son Jonathan) and their 32nd wedding anniversary… though the great Capt’n Max was in a wheelchair, had various debilitating health ailments, and a hint of wistful nostalgia was already in the air.
A Life-Shattering Stroke
On the morning of May 19, 2024, shortly after broadcasting his last live FDR show, Max suffered a major ischemic stroke. With Dr. Suzy by his side, he was rushed to USC Hospital, intubated and put on life support. The prognosis was dire, especially when doctors couldn’t remove a blood clot in his brain. But Max fought for his life, and within about a week, he was cautiously taken off the respirator. Still, the stroke had rendered him almost immobile, virtually paralyzing the entire right side of his body, and splintering his mind. He couldn’t lift his head, eat or drink and had to be fed through a tube, first in his nose, then a G-tube and eventually a GJ-tube in his stomach.
Most frustrating, the stroke left Max afflicted with aphasia, so that most of his words came out garbled or just plain wrong. This would be devastating for anyone but was especially painful for a publisher and eloquent radio host like Max, so strong, right-handed, with such a powerful, creative mind – now broken like a jigsaw puzzle spilled all over a wet floor.
It was heart-wrenching to see Max wrestle with simple words that used to flow so easily from his silver tongue. Though sometimes the struggle exploded in a symphony of laughter, and every so often, he blurted out pithy phrases like “spoken word” poetry or delivered carefully pronounced but utterly scrambled instructions with the gravity of a Mafia don. Dr. Suzy called it “Maxolalia” in the spirit of “Glossolalia,” speaking in tongues. Once, in a rush of babble, Max suddenly and very clearly declared, “We Are An Art.” Other Maxolalia: “I feel my brain,” “It’s not ending” and “We’re in the skin.”
One late September night in 2024, when he was rushed by ambulance from the nursing home to the ER just ahead of Dr. Suzy, he grinned through his oxygen tubes as he saw her come running in and exclaimed, “My Girl is here!” His favorite words were “Okay,” “No!” and “Smile,” and his more frequent question was “Why?” But most of his speech was incomprehensible, even with speech therapy.
A language Max and Dr. Suzy still understood – maybe better than ever – was the language of love. Pleasure was the most effective painkiller – and the oxytocin of love seemed to work better than the Oxycontin of drugs – at least for Max’s final spin around the sun. Though not a medical doctor, Dr. Suzy was Max’s primary caregiver, every day and into the night, helping Max navigate life on the edge of death at three different hospitals, four rehabs, over 10 ambulances and a nursing home in the course of just under a year.
For Max, this last year of life was marked by profound agony, but also moments of ecstasy. A long-time advocate for pleasure as a vital part of physical and mental well-being, he worked with Dr. Suzy to integrate pleasure therapy into his pain management. She massaged and stretched him while he gently touched her hair as if it had magical powers. He shared many moments of pleasure, joy, laughter and wonder with other friends, family, Bonoboville crew and Chico the Bonoboville dog who braved the hurdles of hospital or nursing facility visitations or just connected for a video call, as well as the dozens of doctors, nurses and therapists who monitored his care as best they could, limited as they always were by insurance constraints.
Music had always brought Max great joy throughout his life, but in his final months, it was a lifesaver. He especially loved singing his own little tunes. With aphasia, Max found singing could communicate more effectively than speaking sometimes. It also made him feel good. He sang to communicate, entertain, to ease his own pain and to give himself courage. He even sang sometimes during some of his most agonizingly painful procedures like “wound care.”
“No other patients ever sang during wound care besides Max,” confirmed Max’s nurses when Dr. Suzy inquired. For that alone, Max will never be forgotten in these halls of great sickness and healing.
Over this “year of living precariously,” Max’s health went up and down, and each time it went down, it dropped a little lower. After the stroke, he never really got “better.” Sometimes, he’d rally – such as Barry Fisher’s “Bella Ciao” accordion concert that got the nurses and other patients dancing around Max’s bed, or for special physicians that really went the extra mile for him like Kaiser’s Armen Aghabegian, and for his 33rd wedding anniversary with Dr. Suzy on April 12, 2025. Some couples ride to their anniversary celebration in a limo; Capt’n Max and Dr. Suzy took an ambulance, laughing, singing and loving all the way to Max’s room at the South Pasadena Care Center, where they were soon surrounded by balloons and flowers.
Max loved flowers, especially roses – right up until the end. Their fragrance seemed to revive him, if only for a moment of what seemed – from the look in his big hazel eyes – like the purest pleasure in the world.
Farewell Capt’n Max
Max was an astoundingly strong, vibrant, creative, passionate, Zorba-like character, the most loving and romantic husband and a very peaceful bonobo sapien, but also a force of nature, always creating, publishing, producing, performing, pioneering and steering the ship, supporting and mentoring others, making you think or laugh or maybe making you mad – a larger-than-life lover of life.
But no matter how lively you are, a major ischemic stroke takes you – body, shattered brain and soul – to as deathly a place as you can go in life – short of death itself. In Max’s case, death came for him in May of 2025, just before the first anniversary of his stroke. He was rushed from South Pasadena Care Center to the ER and then ICU of Huntington Hospital (the Pasadena branch of Cedars Sinai) with extremely low blood pressure, kidney failure and low oxygenation. He rallied in the ICU, with Dr. Suzy by his side, but then his heart failed. In the last moments of his life, just before noon on May 13, 2025, Max squeezed Dr. Suzy’s hand hard several times – perhaps communicating his “good-bye” – and then he was gone. The whole ICU crew came in to try to revive him, but he would not return. Capt’n Max had set sail.
Max is survived by his wife of 33 years, Susan Marilyn Block; his brother Charles Lobkowicz; son Michael Leblovic; daughter Daniele Macdonald; daughter Kari Schiaman; son Jonathan Dreksler; grandchildren Anna Baer, Talia Amato, Paige Belmont, Madix Leblovic, Jacob Schiaman, Juliet Schiaman; great grandchildren Taylor Amato, Levon Baer; cousins Giovanni Rossi Filangieri and Anna Aliena Ciriello; and many beloved friends.
Prince Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic di Lobkowicz di Filangieri, aka Mickey, aka David Rossi, aka Vivienne Hammer, aka Xam Paris, aka Capt’n Max…you will be missed forevermore, but we wish you smooth sailing along your merry magical way and hope we meet again someday.
The Goal is the Journey, and the Journey continues…
L’CHAIM: Two JEWS with OPPOSING VIEWS
May 2, 2025, LOS ANGELES — American sexologist Dr. Susan Block appeared on L’Chaim Jewish Radio on WCAP-AM 980 and gave the following report:
“L’Chaim” is the Hebrew toast “To Life!” It’s also the name of a radio show. After all, “L’Chaim” is more than an invitation to share a schnapps, but perhaps a whole life (see Fiddler on the Roof), or at least a friendly conversation about serious things.
And a friendly conversation about serious things is what we had on “L’Chaim Jewish Radio” live on the WCAP 980 AM airwaves. Or you could call it a passionate but diplomatic debate, since the host, longtime New England Jewish community activist Jim Shainker, and I, are in diametric disagreement on almost everything regarding Israel and Palestine, Hamas and Likud, war and peace, and the “Zionist Colonial Project.”
Lazy lefty that I am, I prefer preaching to the choir, and I’d much rather make love not war. But occasionally I enjoy sparring with the opposition, especially over a drink. In this case, it being 7am (PST), the drink was freshly brewed coffee, heavily spiked with coconut milk.
I felt like I was entering enemy territory through my cousin Jimmy’s living room. Jim and I bonded over our Jewish roots, notably our mutual admiration for my old rabbi, the late great Gerald Wolpe, the Zero Mostel of Philadelphia’s Har Zion Temple, who presided over my entire Judaic youth as well as my wedding to Max 33 years ago. Max also loved Rabbi Wolpe mainly because, upon hearing that Max (a Jewish convert) was uncircumcised, he shrugged his big heimish shoulders as if to say, “Don’t worry, I won’t cut you,” causing Max to exhale with great relief. I also just found out that the rabbi was the primary caregiver for his beloved aphasia-stricken wife; I was so touched to learn this, since Max just had a stroke, and also has aphasia. These days, I can almost hear Rabbi Wolpe’s resonant baritone guiding us through the darkness of these times.
Back to L’Chaim, where I mentioned that I gave a talk on the Biblical heroine, Queen Esther during the now-legendary Sex Week at Yale (ah memories) at a Jewish social club near Yale’s campus called Shabtai. Back then, Shabtai felt like a lively, open-minded salon fostering a free-ranging exchange of ideas over latkes and slivovitz—L’Chaim! Twenty years later, I realized that Shabtai had taken a hard turn to the right when I found in my inbox an invitation to a Shabtai “lunch” with none other than Israel’s infamous Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Yes, that Ben Gvir (and no, I didn’t go)—Netanyahu’s right-hand hardliner, a man whose hands are dripping with so much blood, Lady Macbeth herself would tell him to take a shower and a long, hard look in the mirror. Most tragically, a great deal of that blood belongs to innocent Palestinians, slaughtered by Israeli bombs and starvation.
“It’s a Shonda!” I cried, using the Hebrew word for “shame” to describe the Netanyahu regime and all of Israel’s monstrous assault on the Palestinian people.“No, it’s not a Shonda!” Jim retorted, trying to defend Israel with all the heart and heimishness he could muster, though I could sense some wobble in his position. At least, he professed to dislike Netanyahu, and he joined me in condemning the Zionist thugs who harassed and assaulted lone pro-Palestine protestors and passers-by on the streets of Brooklyn after Ben Gvir’s inflaming appearance.
Still, how could he defend what I called the Zionist Colonialist Project – punishing the Palestinians for the sins of the Nazis, serving as a military outpost for America (another colonialist project), confiscating native lands and building an apartheid society – even with so-called liberals running the government? In addition to being horrified as a human, I felt embarrassed as a Jew, stung by this sense of collective mortification for the sins of my murderous Zionist brethren.
“And no, I’m not a self-hating Jew,” I assured Jim. “In fact, I’m very self-loving, and tis the Season of Self-Love! Happy M Month (I didn’t say “Masturbation Month” – as I didn’t want to be censored over sex on a show about Israel’s war crimes)! Give yourself a hand. And stop stealing land.”
“They’re not stealing land!” Jim protested.
I honestly wish Jim was right about that, but there are numerous documentaries about Zionist settlers’ land theft, violence, arson and further misbehavior, including our friend, the amazing Abby Martin’s pioneering Gaza Fights for Freedom and many more since then. Israeli settlers help themselves to Palestinian land, homes, farms and olive groves like they’re on a government-subsidized, army-defended shopping spree – and they are! What they can’t steal, they blow up… with US-taxpayer-financed explosives. Jim wasn’t buying what I was saying, but he did let me say it on his program. Seems we also have a common interest in Free Speech.
Which brings me to where Jim found me: on another WCAP show, Active Radio hosted by the delightful Hartley Pleshaw, where I delivered my 5th annual State of the Sexual Union address and spoke about the bonobos who show us the way to peace through pleasure, as opposed to war for profit or, in the case of Zionist Israel vs. Palestine, genocide for profit. In between talking with Hartley about caretaking Max and taking Zuck the Cuck to court, I expressed my rising support for a Free Palestine and loathing for Bibi and Don the Con’s Trumpocalyptic plans for a Gaza Trump Plaza on the coming Gaza Riviera.
At this point, Jim texted in to *correct* me, saying “Israel is at war with Hamas, not the Palestinian people.”
Oh, please.
With a heavy heart (I was there to talk about making love, not war… sort of), I replied that over 100,000 dead and wounded Palestinians would beg to disagree with Jim, pretty much dismissing his critique as “the standard Zionist hasbara” (propaganda) and doubling down on my disgust with Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in their homes, schools and hospitals, and social media’s censorship of pro-Palestine views. I also unsubtly mentioned my Judaic credentials (I’m a Jewish Bloc/k for Palestine, baby!), and Jim invited me onto his show. He is, after all, a nice Jewish liberal. Yes, liberals may have paved the way for our current authoritarian nightmare, but where there is liberalism, there is hope – and usually, a fairly well-stocked bar – L’Chaim!
So… I went on Jim’s show and had the conversation my Zionist friends and relatives will never have with me – or at least, the beginning of such a conversation. I listened and tried to understand Jim when he spoke, and he listened to me. At least, he seemed to be listening, and not just wondering if his Zionist sponsors or in-laws were listening. We didn’t interrupt each other very often – especially for two Jews with such opposing views.
I imagine it will disappoint most people I know for opposing reasons. My Zionist family members and old friends now living in Israel will be mortified that I openly expressed such pro-Palestine views at all, let alone on a Jewish show (if they read my articles and listened to my own shows, they’d be more mortified). On the other side, my pro-Palestine friends will feel I wasn’t hard enough on Jim for supporting blood-drenched Israel’s “right to exist” or “the Israeli people” who elected Netanyahu whose definition of that “right” includes perpetrating a genocide. Or maybe they feel I shouldn’t even go on an Israel-supportive show like L’Chaim. While I respect that opinion, I don’t share it. Jim isn’t a war criminal, and I’m not a firebrand; I’m a sex therapist with pro-bonobo tendencies and an ardent desire to get the “free Palestine” message heard.
And Jim did let me have the last word. After dispelling another stubbornly lingering bit of Zionist hasbara that Hamas had burned Israeli babies in ovens on October 7, 2023 (it never happened!), I made sure to tell the L’Chaim Jewish Radio audience that, just in case they haven’t seen the numerous horrific photos and videos:
“Babies are being burned in Gaza [by Israel].”
And then, our time was up. “Wonderful to talk to you,” boomed congenial Jim before inviting me back for a future round. It’s not like holding peace talks in Qatar, but “L’Chaim” made me feel that dialogues can develop, and that someday (hopefully before it’s too late), the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure can prevail over perma-war for profit, and that Palestine will be free. And maybe so will “wandering Jews” like me… and Jim.
It’s a drop in the bloody bucket of hasbara, but perhaps speaking directly to American Jewish communities like those served by L’Chaim Jewish Radio could help shift public opinion toward a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, a rejection of Zionist apartheid and a more evolved and dare-I-say *respected* Jewish people around the world.
To life! To friendly conversations on serious topics and a Free FREE Palestine.
Listen to L’Chaim: 2 Jews with Opposing Views above or on Bonoboville YouTube.
For more information or to arrange an interview, email BlockMediaDesk@gmail.com or call 626-461-5950 and ask for Christina.
© May 7, 2025 Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sexologist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For information, call 626-461-5950. Email her at drsusanblock@gmail.com and you will get a reply
Dr. Susan Block delivers “State of the Sexual Union” 2025 on WCAP AM-980
April 16, 2025, LOS ANGELES — American sexologist Dr. Susan Block delivered her fifth annual 2025 State of the Sexual Union address – a sex-positive, greed-negative, pro-bonobo “rebuttal” to U.S. President Donald Trump’s pseudo-strongman State of the Union 2025 and his pro-wrestling circus-style lurch toward authoritarian repression and recession – broadcast live 4.5.25 on Active Radio with gracious host Hartley Pleshaw on WCAP-AM 980 and now available on most platforms.
Listen to Dr. Susan Block’s full 2025 State of the Sexual Union address
“Where the State of the Sexual Union (SOTSU) is concerned, no one is better qualified to deliver it than America’s leading sexologist, America’s #1 sex therapist and sexpert, Dr. Susan Block,” Hartley asserted. And yes, she delivered.
So, in a word… What IS the State of the Sexual Union in 2025?
“Precarious” pronounced Dr. Susan Block, aka Dr. Suzy, veteran sex educator, sex therapy pioneer, award-winning cultural commentator, host of HBO’s Radio Sex TV and best-selling author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. Having found the word, she went on to address the rather perilous, unstable state of our sexual union in the public sphere, as well as the precarity of her own personal love life.
Then Dr. Suzy’s SOTSU 2025 address metamorphosed into “Meet the Press,” with Hartley asking her questions on various topics, from sharing, erotic caretaking, sensual healing and The Bonobo Way to censorship, Zionism, the Billionaire Mind Virus, the Marquis de Sade, Zuck the Cuck and Musk the Boar, within the “meeting ground of sex, politics and culture which,” he opined, “I believe Dr. Suzy covers and handles better than anyone in the present contemporary scene.”
SOTSU 2025 Topics:
- State of Disunion: Even as *We the People* continue to move towards sexual union, opening up to a veritable rainbow of consenting-adult erotic expressions, Dr. Suzy observed, our leaders (many of whom are billionaires) – in politics, religion, corporations and in media, including social media – tell a different story, driving us toward a state of sexual disunion, dividing us to conquer us, through rising authoritarian repression, blatant hypocrisy and a neo-Puritanical, fascistic, misogynistic, ecocidal emphasis on sex as procreation, not recreation. Though these same leaders tend to indulge in (semi-secret) recreational sex for themselves, they aggressively repress it in others, censoring sex education and the erotic voices of The People, policing us in social media and in our everyday lives with increasingly draconian and autocratic measures.
- Max’s Stroke: Revealing the precarious “state” of her personal “sexual union,” Dr. Suzy shared the melancholy news with her WCAP audience that her beloved sexual partner, husband for over 33 years and friend for 40, as well as publisher, DrSuzy-Tv producer, FDR co-host, her “witness” and constant collaborator, Capt’n Max, aka Prince Maximillian Rudolph Leblovic Lobkowicz di Filangieri, suffered a major ischemic stroke on May 19, shortly after SOTSU 2024. Surfing the waves of emotion, she addressed the intensely personal – yet sadly universal – challenges that she and Max face due to his sudden and devastating physical and verbal incapacitation. Though Dr. Suzy’s no Luigi Mangione – nor Florence Nightengale – her crash course in caretaking Max post-stroke, under constant threat of being triaged into a living death by the American Medical Insurance Megamachine, has given her a deeper understanding of just how it both saves and destroys lives.
- Bonobo Caregiving: Hartley opened the next segment with Marvin Gaye’s iconic “Sexual Healing,” moving Dr. Suzy to open up about what she’s learned *hands-on* regarding the importance of erotic touch to Max’s healing and to healing the world. It’s “Caregiving the Bonobo Way,” harnessing the life-giving power of Eros, Greek god of sex, love and the breath of life, and in a way, the opposite of death (Thanatos). Practicing this kind of erotic touch in hospitals and nursing homes where it may be abused is a “touchy” subject. Nevertheless, her experience with Max is teaching her that consenting-adult sensual touch “provides more healing than oxycontin.”
- Suzy vs. Meta: “Why is Zuck the Cuck after you?” Hartley asked Dr. Suzy. “That’s what I’d like to ask him,” she replied, “or at least his representatives – in court.” She is suing Meta for wrongful business practices based on “censorship by bot,” erroneous, anti-sex algorithms abruptly deactivating her 15-year-old Facebook and IG profiles. “This is a fight for Users Rights,” explained Dr. Suzy. “And real Free Speech for all – including sex workers, activists and Palestine-supporters, not just Zuck the Cuck and whoever he’s trying to suck up to.” Save the Date: June 20, 2025 for the Dr. Suzy vs. Zuck the Cuck Showdown in the San Mateo Courthouse. Now Mark Zuckerberg is buying his way into the UFC – like Elon Musk bought into the White House. Will Zuck buy the judge? He probably already has…
- The Billionaire Mind Virus: Dr. Suzy’s article “Fighting the Billionaire Mind Virus: In the Ring with Zuck the Snake & On the Range with Musk the Boring Boer-Loving Wild Boar,” also on Counterpunch has struck a chord, as it addresses the influence of Zuck, Musk and other tech billionaires – as well as pseudo billionaires like Trump – on free speech and on freedom in general. “The Woke Mind Virus is just Elon Musk’s paranoid fetish, but the Billionaire Mind Virus is real,” said Dr. Suzy, “and it’s killing us.”
- Trump Speech Isn’t Free: “I brought back Free Speech in America,” declared the POTUS to kick off his SOTU. “It’s back.” To that, Dr. Suzy rebutted, “Trump Free Speech is about as free as a seat next to him at Mar A Lago Sunday brunch. And slap a tariff on that.”
- State of Palestine: Suzy blasted “Donand Bibi’s gaudy graven image of a Gaza Riviera – now offering hot deals on beachfront property (with offshore gas shares) – or some monstrous variation on Manifest Destiny, MAGA-style,” criticizing Trump’s Zionist alliances as disingenuous, profit-driven, cruel and bloody. Like censored sex educators, voices advocating for peace—especially Jewish voices speaking out for Palestine—are increasingly silenced by social media moguls in bed with political powerbrokers.
- Jews with Opposing Views: Mid-broadcast, another WCAP host, Jim Schanker, *texted in* to Active Radio to criticize Dr. Suzy’s remarks on Palestine, asserting that “Israel is at war with Hamas” rather than Palestine. Dr. Suzy, describing herself as a “Jew for Palestine,” peace and justice, clarified her support for Palestinian civilians while also recognizing the pain of all victims. “I am very much against all killing,” she noted, “whether it’s of hostages or people that are being bombed… and a lot more Palestinians are being bombed,” while pointing out that such pro-peace stances are increasingly censored on social media and college campuses. Before her SOTSU ended, Jim had invited Dr. Suzy on his show, L’Chaim (“To Life”). Tune in on May 2, 2025 for what’s sure to be an exciting dialogue between Jews with opposing views on Israel and Palestine, and probably a few other things.
- Liu, Hedges, De Sade: In the final segment, Hartley played a provocative clip featuring culture critic (and fellow Yalie) Catherine Liu, describing the Marquis de Sade as a philosophical forefather of sexual liberation, with podcast host Chris Hedges’ apparent support. Dr. Suzy firmly rejected this framing, stating, “To represent sexual freedom as the Marquis de Sade is disgusting… he was not a kink-aware practitioner of BDSM; his activities were mostly non-consensual. The “Make Love Not War” movement pioneered consent’s importance to kink, female empowerment and peace through authentic pleasure, not aristocratic “sadism” masquerading as freedom. Perhaps this is what happens when anti-sex “feminists” get paid by Rightwing thinktanks to cleverly critique the sex-positive Left.
- A Bonoboësque Vision for a Make-Love-Not-War Future: Having long exemplified “greed is good,” Zuck the Meta Cuck is now pushing “aggression is good” in the ring, in the public square, everywhere. Dr. Suzy contrasted Zuck the Cuck’s worshipful elevation of violent aggression – buttressed by Meta’s twisted, algorithmic, dehumanizing control of the People’s Voices – with the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure, female empowerment, male nurturance, sharing and, not just caring, but caregiving, embracing lust over greed, like the bonobos do, and acknowledging that eros is not just for procreation, but also recreation, good relations and relationships, as part of a broader vision for a more sex-positive, greed-negative, antiwar, ecologically sustainable future.
Listen to Dr. Susan Block’s 2025 State of the Sexual Union address on WCAP
Listen to SOTSU 2025 on YouTube
Listen on DrSusanBlock.com. Listen on FDR Radio. Listen on YouTube. Listen on X/Twitter. Listen on Facebook. Listen on Podbean. Listen on Soundcloud. Listen on Pandora. Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on Instagram. Listen on IHeartRadio. Listen on Academia. Listen on Amazon. Listen on Spotify. Listen on Rumble. Listen on Substack.
Read Dr. Suzy’s SOTSU 2025 account on COUNTERPUNCH
Check out Dr. Suzy’s 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 “State of the Sexual Union” (SOTSU) addresses.
For more information or to arrange an interview, email BlockMediaDesk@gmail.com or call 626-461-5950 and ask for Christina.
Read Dr. Suzy’s SOTSU 2025 Recap on COUNTERPUNCH
Dr. Suzy vs. META: Round II
Los Angeles, CA. – November 3, 2024 – Dr. Susan Block, aka “Dr. Suzy,” award-winning sex therapist, best-selling author, HBO personality and bonobo conservationist, is stepping up her legal fight with META, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
To recap: Block contends that when META’s AI “content moderation” bots censored and deactivated her Facebook profile and IG account – unfairly, arbitrarily and without warning – META breached its own contracts.
META contends that Block is nothing but a wanton wh0re unworthy of any protection from harm or even being treated like a human being.
Read “Free Speech Woman vs. Zuck the Cuck” on Counterpunch
Section 230: The Internet’s Iron Dome
Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg, the Billionaire Boy in the Bubble, is shielded from his own massively destructive mistakes and power-drunk misdeeds by a protective “bubble” – a virtual Iron Dome – enabled by an algorithmic army of bots and fortified by highly paid attorneys, complicit arbitrators and an obscure portion of the Communications Decency Act, 47 USC 230, known simply and ominously as “Section 230.”
In the legal world, Silicon Valley-friendly interpretations of Section 230 have given social media moguls like Zuckerberg that Iron Dome-like protection, letting them groom and doom, exploit, censor, ban and deny many users their right to free speech, access to the “digital town square,” even their right to communicate with loved ones in times of need.
Block’s own Facebook profile was deactivated shortly before her beloved husband of 32 years, Maximillian R. Lobkowicz di Filangieri, had a major ischemic stroke. Meta may not have caused the stroke, but it certainly didn’t help that besides deactivating Blocks Facebook profile and IG account, it also removed her Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, making it all the more difficult for her to get in touch with loved ones in this cataclysmic crisis.
“That’s Zuckerberg Family Values for you,” remarks Block. “Since 2008, Meta had groomed me and my relatives to communicate via Facebook, then doomed me to deactivation and the rest of us to zero communication.”
When Block asked META to restore her wrongfully deactivated accounts, she was greeted with stony silence, followed by a barrage of defamatory lies. On the advice of counsel, Block took META to arbitration. However, thanks to Section 230’s protective bubble around Boy-Lord Zuckerberg, buoyed by a paid-by-META arbitrator’s unsubtle coaching of META’s Mayer Brown lawyers, Block’s case was unceremoniously and erroneously awarded to META without allowing her – the plaintiff – to utter a word.
Algorithmic Ignorance & Sexual Services
In attempting to defend their indefensible actions and to keep Block’s mouth gagged shut with fabricated scandal, META falsely accused Block of being a sex worker (i.e., prostitute) providing “sexual services” via META sites. Just to set the record straight: Block is not now, nor has she ever been a sex worker, nor did she ever provide “sexual services” through META sites or anywhere else. She is a therapist providing sex therapy, as she was prepared to prove if she had been permitted to present her case. Though she has expressed her political views that consenting adult sex work should be decriminalized, and sex workers have been guests on her show, she herself is not one. Nevertheless, META’s lawyers and the paid-by-META arbitrator colluded to defame Block with the Scarlet Letter of “sex work” – on top of depriving her of her rights – to punish her for blowing the whistle on META’s fraudulent “contracts of adhesion” and its destructive, AI (Artificial Ignorance)-based censorship.
“Like so many other innocent Meta users posting about sex, politics, health and other debatable topics, I am the victim of an algorithm that identified buzz words on my profiles and incorrectly labeled me as being in violation of platform policies,” asserts Block. “Rather than bothering to even try to be fair, Facebook and Instagram just adopted the algorithm’s conclusion as gospel. No human beings even looked at my profiles until I requested arbitration, and then it was the lawyers for META, who simply sought to ratify the algorithm to avoid a cascade of claims against the two platforms for relying solely on these faulty algorithms to police content from people’s profiles. Because the fact of the matter is, as many studies have shown, these powerful algorithms are notoriously faulty.”
Next Legal Move – Motion to Vacate
Bullied but not beaten, Block is now taking META’s “bull” by the horns, filing a Motion to Vacate their deeply flawed Arbitration Award, in pro per.
Block’s motion maintains that not only was the Arbitrator biased, prejudicially squeamish about basic sex education, ignorant of algorithmic error rates and disingenuous about Facebook’s vast and unique social media power, he was also “without legal authority” to rule on Block’s case based on Facebook’s and Instagram’s contracts.
Therefore, Block asserts, “the Arbitration Award must be vacated.”
Free Speech Woman vs. Zuck the META Cuck
“One of our most valuable rights as Americans is Freedom of Speech,” Block proclaims as “Free Speech Woman” (her Halloween 2024 costume). “Most nations don’t grant Free Speech to their citizens, but we Americans (supposedly) do. It’s as close as our secular government gets to sacred. In 1789, We the American People received the Bill of Rights’10 Amendments, rather like Moses receiving the 10 Commandments. Our First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech has been revered by the world, but it has long been under attack from both the Right and the so-called Left – now on a Meta-scale.
“Whether you’re talking about sex, politics, equality, health or Palestine, power-drunk social media moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk pervert the very phrase ‘free speech,’ twisting it into its Orwellian opposite, literally getting away with digital murder every day.”
Groom & Doom
“But enough is enough,” Block continues. “This past Halloween, I summoned the spirit of “Free Speech Woman” within me to hold – or at least try to hold – Mark ‘Zuck the Jiu-Jitsu Cuck’ Zuckerberg down on the Mat of Truth, holding him accountable for censoring our speech, exploiting our desires, stoking our divisions, flattening our relationships and banning us from our own communities and the Internet’s public square.”
Mark the META-Megalopolist knows this better than anyone, referring to his Facebook “fiefdom” (so-called by others) as “the digital equivalent of the town square,” and boasting meta-magnanimously that “our platforms are for everyone.”
“Really – ‘for everyone’?” wonders Block. “More for every paying advertiser and useful government power broker. But what about Meta users? What about ‘We the People’ who make Meta great? What about me? What right does Mark Zuckerberg have to ban me from the ‘digital equivalent of the town square’ – to banish me from my own communities, even my own family during a time of need – just because his faulty algorithms ascertain that my politics, religion or sex-positive values might offend a Meta advertiser or the head of the House Commerce Committee?”
While Block venerates the creators of the Bill of Rights – including Max’s 18th century Italian ancestor, Gaetano Filangieri – who was freedom-loving pen pals with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (though Filangieri didn’t own slaves) – Zuckerberg exalts a different kind of role model (who owned lots of slaves): the first emperor of the Roman Empire, Augustus Caesar, aka Gaius Octavius, “known for making the world safe for ruthless dictators,” Block points out. “Now Mark ‘Silicon Caesar’ Zuckerberg has more unchecked power over our everyday lives than any single human on earth.”
The Greek prefix “META” means “beyond,” and Zuck the Cuck’s META has gone beyond the pale, metamorphosing into a Meta-menace to democracy.
The Pro-Bonobo Way
“Zuck the Cuck needs to be clocked!” declares Block, brandishing her cherry red boxing gloves as Free Speech Woman, fighting to win her Motion to Vacate the Award with a knock-out punch, taking down Zuck-the-Cuck (actually, just a blow-up doll effigy appropriately attired in a snappy “Meta Über Alles” white T) to the Mat of Truth.
“Tell the truth,” commands Block. “You’re a censor.”
Then, like a true bonobo matriarch, she spanks his sorry rubber butt with The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and the Motion to Vacate, gently but firmly holding him responsible as she holds him down on the Mat of Truth between the Bill of Rights and her pointy-toed, high-heeled, cowgirl boot, as a couple of bonobo apes make peace through pleasure nearby.
“Like the bonobos, I’m a lover not a fighter, and I prefer negotiation,” says Block, “but Meta refuses to negotiate. So, Free Speech Woman to the rescue! Cage match!
Zuck the Cuck vs. Elon the Chicken
Elon the Chicken won’t fight Zuck the Cuck, but Block will.
Musk talks big, thanks to his own almost limitless Free Speech, but Block is willing to fight for love.
Zuck may be a more experienced fighter than Block, with his own personal team of high-priced Jiu-Jitsu trainers and Mayer-Brown lawyers. But Block has fighter role models too, like Muhammad Ali (whom she met at a 1996 wrap party after one of my HBO specials); the ‘People’s Champ’ could ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’ and had the courage not to fight in the Vietnam War.
Block also picked up some fancy fight moves from actor Dave Bautista, when he was a guest on her show in his WWE Champ “Batista” days, demonstrating the ”Batista Bomb.”
“Drop Batista Bombs – not real bombs! Let’s make peace like bonobos (not baboons),” says Block, “and put the brakes on this runaway train of corporate censorship running roughshod over Free Speech.”
Ironically and most unfortunately, Block is getting some real-life wrestling training by taking care of her beloved husband Max (whose stroke occurred in the middle of the “META Arbitration That Wasn’t”), involves practicing the “Caretaking Jiu Jitsu” martial art of gently but firmly wrestling Max’s one good, remarkably strong, sometimes rambunctious left hand away from yanking out his life-saving – but oh-so-yankable – G-Tube.
Even if META/Zuck wins this round (justice is not always blind), Free Speech Woman will not give up the fight, and Block will continue to press her case, mounting a new lawsuit against META in pro per, chasing Zuck the Über Cuck, like the cartoon villain he is, through the Halls of Justice.
A Trial of Human Being vs. Machine
“It’s a long shot, but putting my case in front of a jury of human beings could have long-reaching effects on how humans and our increasingly powerful machines interact. One day those machines may well have the equivalent of human emotions and judgment. But today they do not, and we cannot (or at least should not) permit them, at this time, to rule over our constitutional rights – no matter how many Zuckerbucks AI saves Meta stockholders.
“Sure, Meta has the legal right to control content on its platforms, but that control must not be left exclusively to error-riddled AI. There must be checks and balances. My day in court is just such a check and offers a reasonable and absolutely necessary balance between human being and machine on this sensitive issue of censorship. If we do not strike that balance now, the thought of what future publications might be censored, or not censored, is chilling.”
This is not Block’s first round in the Free Speech Ring, nor her first “pro-bonobo” lawsuit in pro per, punching up (never down) against an overly powerful authority stomping on her First Amendment Rights. Block successfully sued the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) back in 2002 when they unjustly raided her studio, for which she won a large enough settlement from the City of Los Angeles for her to create Bonoboville in real life and on the web.
Zuck’s a different kind of fight, of course, but, in a way, he’s already crying uncle…
True Confession: Zucky Feels Guilty
Some will call it a pure coincidence, but shortly after Block’s case against META was being tossed out of the Kangaroo Court of Arbitration, META CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a letter to the U.S. Congressional Judiciary Committee on the subject of META’s overly zealous, government-coerced censorship, aka “content moderation on online platforms.”
“Senior officials from the… White House repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor [content]… I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it…”
“Sounds like Zuck the Cuck feels guilty for censoring us,” observes Block the Therapist. “As well he should! But don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing bad about cuckolding, as long as it’s between consenting adults, and Zuck’s cuck guilt (if he has any) is a private matter between him, Priscilla, their bull and their therapist. But Zuck the Cuck doesn’t feel guilty for cuckolding. He feels guilty for censoring us! And considering Meta’s beyond-the-pale power, poor little Billionaire Bubble Boy Zuck’s problems wind up hurting us all.”
“Meta is censoring us per Mark Zuckerberg’s obeisance to certain government officials, advertisers and the power of his own Meta-Bot AI Army,” Block continues. “These bots are so powerful, they even subjugate Zuck himself – rather like Victor Frankenstein conquered by his own Monster – as they stealthily and relentlessly obliterate all of our rights to speaking freely.”
Markie Z’s Meta-Megalopoly
“We’re about promoting speech and helping people to connect in a safe and secure way,” Zuck prattles on in his usual robot-programmed-to-sound-human style.
“But what about promoting my speech?” asks Block. “What about helping me to connect in a safe and secure way? I was not safe or secure when Mark Zuckerberg groomed me for over 15 years of participation, and then doomed me in a nano-second to deactivation – all duly exploited by Markie Z’s Meta-megalopoly.”
Block is fighting in the Meta Ring for her rights as well as the rights of all users on Meta and “beyond.”
“Sure, I’m slugging it out in the Meta Ring in hopes of having my accounts restored, though this isn’t just about my rights, but the rights of all Meta users and ‘beyond’,” Block explains. “It’s also about honoring my beloved Max’s pre-stroke wish that no single corporation, person or amateur Jiu-Jitsu-fighting Augustus-Caesar-wannabe have the unchecked power to banish us – with zero accountability – from the ‘digital town square’… and beyond.”
For media inquiries or interview requests, please contact:
Christina
626.461.5950
BlockMediaDesk@Gmail.com
About Dr. Susan Block
Dr. Susan Block is a renowned sex therapist, award-winning cultural commentator, bonobo conservationist, best-selling author of several books, including The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, and the host of The Dr. Susan Block Show, a pioneering talk show exploring sexuality, psychology, politics, art and society. Block has been married for over 32 years to publisher Maximillian R. Lobkowicz. She is a Philly native, Yale graduate, star of HBO specials, originator of “phone sex therapy,” and the founder/director of the Dr. Susan Block Institute (since 1991). She has been interviewed by many talk show hosts around the world. But she’ll never quit her “day job” as a therapist in private practice, helping people all over the globe to better handle and enjoy their personal lives.
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The Mirror interviews Dr. Susan Block about Stormy spanking Trump
May 9, 2024 – International sexologist and spanking expert Dr. Susan Block gives an “exclusive” interview to The MIRROR’s Yelena Mandenberg on “the spank heard round the world” – Stormy Daniels spanking Donald Trump with a rolled-up Forbes featuring his picture on the cover – just as the world’s most politically influential porn star wraps up her “bombshell testimony” at Trump’s hush money trial.
Here are a few of Dr. Block’s observations about Stormy, Trump, spanking, kink, fetishes and humiliation quoted in The Mirror story:
- “When somebody spanks somebody else, they’re turning the tables. [Stormy Daniels] is a younger person, she’s smaller in height, less powerful in status, so she’s turning the tables on Trump… and it’s very satisfying for us as an audience, and for him, it might be a turn-on because he’s so used to people kissing his a– and now here’s someone spanking his a–.”
- Block referred to the incident as a ‘sex game’ – one that they’re continuing to play. “They’re still playing this sex game. They’re just playing it in court and the realm of public opinion. He wanted to keep it private, but he didn’t succeed in that. The game is right in front of us, and it’s very titillating.”
- “Humans are always titillated by hearing about sex stories from the powerful, from Clinton to Gary Hart, whether we find it appalling or [feel] ‘go for it.’ Usually it’s been consensual, though not always, but, usually, it is something we can laugh about without guilt and enjoy ourselves.”
- “Because it seems he was a little tyrant since he was a kid – his mother was ill and his father was gone – so my guess is he wasn’t spanked or even punished very much so there might be a part of him that liked it, that found it exciting that the tables are turned.”
- “She spanked the obnoxiousness out of him for at least 10 minutes, then she went to the bathroom, and he went right back to his old way; that’s probably when the spell was broken.”
- “A lot of times people in positions of power do get turned on by having the tables turned sexually, want to keep it private… Often we get excited and, even if we don’t like it, or feel it’s bad, or humiliating, we may be turned on by it. Because [this incident] was private, he wouldn’t feel humiliated [in a hotel bedroom], but in the courtroom, I’m sure he did feel humiliated to hear all of this.”
- “For him, it was foreplay. For her, it was a joke.”
- “I’m kinda impressed by the idea that this person from the sexuality field, the ‘porn star,’ can bring down the past president,”
To read or listen to the entire Mirror article, go to https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-stormy-daniels-kinky-476856
Partial interview in The Irish Star
For media inquiries or interview requests, please contact Christina or Max.
Phone: 626.461.5950 I Email: BlockMediaDesk@Gmail.com
Dr. Susan Block featured in Hustler Magazine’s “Building a Better Orgasm” by Marcy Diamond
Hustler Magazine interviewed Dr. Susan Block, aka Dr. Suzy, for its article on “Building a Better Orgasm” by Marcy Diamond.
“Practice may not make ‘perfect,’ but it does intensify your orgasms!” Dr. Block says in the Hustler article. “Practice on your own or with a partner. Get to know your erogenous zones and how to manipulate them externally and internally for the optimal climax.”
The article goes on to quote Dr. Block, “America’s leading sexologist” and one of the world’s foremost experts in orgasmic pleasure, on how men, women and couples can “build a better orgasm” for themselves and their partners.
Dr. Block gives tips on “edging” – delaying or controlling ejaculation – for men, how to find and effectively stimulate the G-spot for women, as well as better communication and Tantric sex techniques for couples.
“Male, female, trans or nonbinary, if you want to give the best orgasms, ask your partner what they like and listen carefully to what they say and/or watch what they do!” Hustler quotes Dr. Block. “Pay attention to the details of their desire, and you’ll be a master orgasm-giver!”
For more, click https://hustlermagazine.com/articles/building-a-better-orgasm/?PUB2222
Note: Marcy Diamond was a special guest on DrSuzy.Tv’s Orgasmic Halloween 2015 Kink Month Climax in BooNoBooVille +Dr. Susan Block and her husband Max were guests of the late great Larry Flynt.
Dr. Susan Block Gives “State of the Sexual Union” Address 2024 on WCAP
Two days after U.S. President Joe Biden went to Congress to deliver the 2024 State of the Union address, Dr. Susan Block went on “Active Radio” with Hartley Pleshaw on WCAP-AM 980 to deliver the 2024 State of the SEXUAL Union.
“Where the State of the Sexual Union (SOTSU) is concerned, no one is better qualified than America’s leading sexologist, Dr. Susan Block,” Hartley proclaims.
Whether you loved, hated or slept through the President’s State of the Union, don’t miss Dr. Suzy’s State of the SEXUAL union address 2024.
Best-selling author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, longtime broadcaster and cultural commentator, as well as an award-winning sexologist and sex therapist, Dr. Susan Block, aka Dr. Suzy, launches her 2024 SOTSU “Sermon on the Mound” – usually inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech reimagined as “I Have a Fantasy” – with a Biden-ish spin, mirroring his SOTU 2024’s series of “I See a Future” visions for her own bonoboësque vision of a more equal, more free, make-love-not-war tomorrow.
I see a future where good clean consensual sex is not considered dirty.
I see a future where peace through pleasure is honored over war for profit.
I see a future where sex education and science are valued over ignorance, superstition and violent religious fundamentalism.
I see a future where ecosexuality is more popular than ammosexuality and war porn.
I see a future where women’s rights are respected more than faith-based forced breeding.
I see a future where we have a Ceasefire Now and Permanently in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine, Russia, Africa, America and around the world, where Jews and Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and everyone else will be free and will “study war no more.”
I see a future where we practice the Bonobo Way of female empowerment, male well-being, sharing resources and peace through pleasure… and stop acting like baboons!
“I’m ready to vote for you for President now, Dr. Suzy,” Hartley exclaims at the climax of her vision for the future. “You have by far the best platform of any of the candidates this year, which isn’t saying much, but you really knocked it out of the park!”
Then the SOTSU turns into a sort of Meet the Press where Hartley asks Dr. Suzy questions on a variety of topics within the “meeting ground of sex, politics and culture which,” he opines, “I believe Dr. Suzy covers and handles better than anyone in the present contemporary scene.”
Subjects include:
- Anti-Abortion Crusaders who fetishize the fetus and eroticize the embryo, but once you’re born, you’re over the hill to them – and how now that they killed Roe vs. Wade, they’re going after contraception and whatever power over our sex lives they can grab.
- The Christofascist Supremes – Since Federalist Society powerbroker-to-the-Supremes Leonard Leo owns a mansion in the WCAP broadcast range, Dr. Suzy addresses him personally: We see you, Leonard Leo, trying to take America back to a time like The Handmaid’s Tale, stripping sex of recreation for the sake of procreation – forced breeding – so that the poor can bear cannon fodder for the military and cogs in the wheels of capitalism – and the rich can have grandchildren to inherit their billions. For that perk and others, those billionaires get to bribe the reactionary Supremes that you choose – Brett “Beer Pong” Kavanaugh, Amy Coney “Handmaid” Barrett and Neil “Handman to the Billionaires” Gorsuch – ganging up with Sam “Leaky” Alito, Clarence “Uncle” Thomas and John “Citizens United” Roberts to overturn Roe V Wade, restrict our sexuality, free big business from any restrictions whatsoever, and throw the American people under the bus.
- Anti-Sex “Feminists” – Dr. Suzy and Hartley talk about the erotophobia (fear of healthy sex) on the Right and Left, from the #MeToo activists who have done great things, but could learn something from the female-empowered bonobos – that female empowerment is intrinsically connected to nurturing male well-being – to the anti-sex “feminists” paid by Rightwing thinktanks to make convoluted arguments to keep most women (excepting them, of course) knocked up and broke.
- Ammosexual War Porn – From American War Profiteers to the NRA to the young troops of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), modern death-dealers are using “Sex As a Weapon,” tapping into our frustrated, denigrated sex drives like never before, using sex to sell and promote phallic missiles, climactic explosions, mass murder and apartheid, even genocide. Warmongers have tried to “sex up” fighting and weaponry since the beginning of war but, but the IDF’s dark, depraved, dystopian, wildly ammosexual and sadistic war porn is off the charts, far more demented than George W. Bush’s P.O.W. Porn at Abu Ghraib – and that’s just what the Israelis themselves show openly on their own channels. Plus, why are so many incels – spawned by the denigration of lust and elevation of greed – so ammosexual? War porn harms (and often kills) its victims, as well as its perpetrators, and also traumatizes those of us who watch – by choice or by chance – transforming the populace into War Porn Voyeurs.
- The Burning Soldier – Can self-immolation illuminate dehumanization? Can suicide help to stop a genocide? Dr. Suzy contrasts S. Airman Aaron Bushnell tragic but sane sacrifice to “Free Palestine” from ammosexual war crimes and domestic mass murders committed by PTSD-wracked veterans of America’s many wars.
- Censorship by Bot: Dr. Suzy is taking META to arbitration for their wrongful deactivation and algorithmic, anti-sex, dictatorial, technocratic dehumanization. Save the Date: June 26, 2024 for the Suzy vs. Zuck the Cuck Showdown.
#GoBonobos for a Sex-Positive, Antiwar, Free Speech, Pro-Bonobo Future!
Click the pic above to listen to Dr. Suzy’s 2023 State of the Sexual Union address and “Meet the Press”-style interview with Hartley Pleshaw on Active Radio WCAP 980-AM or listen on one of your favorite platforms.
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Coralyn Jewel interviews Dr. Susan Block on “Embrace”
Sex-positive alternative relationships expert Coralyn Jewel interviewed renowned sexologist Dr. Susan Block, aka “Dr. Suzy,” on her award-nominated podcast “Embrace” about human sexuality, censorship and the state of the world. The interview kicks off Season 4 of Embrace, “Open Up,” and is now available for your listening and viewing pleasure and knowledge on multiple platforms.
Subjects of discussion include:
- Dr. Suzy’s Philadelphia upbringing, family, Yale University education and other early influences on her life, loves and work as a sexologist and sex therapist in private practice.
- Phone Sex Therapy and video therapy with the Dr. Susan Block Institute (where Coralyn is a therapist).
- Bonobo apes, Dr. Suzy’s book and her philosophy of the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure (bonobos don’t kill each other!), female empowerment, male well-being, sharing, caring and lots of great sex!
- Dr. Suzy’s relationship with Pr. Maximillian R. Lobkowicz, aka “Capt’n Max,” her husband of 31 years, executive producer of The Dr. Susan Block Show, publisher of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, Dr. Block’s Speakeasy Journal and many other publications, and co-host with Dr. Suzy of F.D.R. radio.
- Dr. Suzy’s definitions of “Sexual Fetishes,” “Phone Sex,” “Striptease,” “Spanking” and “Cuckolding” published in the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality.
- Censorship in America, YouTube’s termination and META’s deactivation of Dr. Suzy’s various accounts and channels, and how she is taking META to arbitration—and YouTube will be next!
- Vice TV’s new documentary on Dr. Suzy and Bonoboville (including an appearance from Coralyn at the Bonoboville Reunion) which is “salacious, suspicious and rather sanctimonious,” inciting anti-sex comments, especially compared to the shameless sex-positivity of the #1 Nielsen-rated documentaries Dr. Suzy did with HBO.
- How to balance your personal sexual needs with respect for the so-called *morals* of your more prudish family—especially if you live with them!
- Dr. Suzy‘s world-famous bacchanalian orgy shows.
- How to prevent our erotic humanity from being destroyed by the billionaires and their bots.
- Other topics include the power of kink, masturbation, sexual fantasies, cuckolding, relationship counseling, religion, fantasy roleplay, virginity, erotophobia, taboo thoughts, mother issues, Yale thongs, Bedtime Stories for Adults, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure, embracing your sexuality and more!
Watch it on YouTube
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Screenshots from “Embrace”
+Photos from the Day in Bonoboville
New Vice TV Documentary, “Phone Sex Therapy” featuring Dr. Susan Block generates Great Love & Virulent Hate
Dr. Susan Marilyn Block, a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy”—her remarkable life, pro-bonobo world and “controversial” sex therapy system, clients and techniques—is the subject of the new Vice TV documentary, “Dr. Suzy’s Controversial Phone Sex Therapy.” The piece premiered in August, 2023, shot past 100,000 views within its first week and is edging towards 200,000.
“The practice of sex therapy is changing,” says Dr. Susan Block about her groundbreaking approach. “30 years ago, when I was just starting to conduct therapy sessions over the phone, no one else was doing it, and some of my colleagues were appalled. Gradually, they realized it’s safer, more convenient, intimate, private, better for the environment and available to anyone with a phone worldwide, and started doing it themselves. Nowadays, tele-therapy or phone therapy and phone sex therapy are as common as in-person sessions. However, my unique brand of therapy allows clients to talk about ANYTHING. We are not the ‘thought police,’ and we believe in the value of talking about what’s on your mind with someone who can help you handle it. Most find this unconventional approach liberating and effective, but some—like Vice—see it as ‘controversial’.”
With unfettered access, Vice TV ventured deep inside the Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences and Dr. Suzy’s Speakeasy in Bonoboville. Filmmakers documented two days in the life of Dr. Suzy, her husband Max and their merry band of bonoboësque collaborators and volunteers. Vice even takes viewers into the lives and homes of real phone sex therapy clients of the Institute who discuss how phone sex therapy has helped them.
Dr. Suzy’s playful, mindful techniques come to life in the invisible, intimate and often very healing realms of the telephone, as well as in the extended “capitalist socialist” community she calls “Bonoboville,” which exists in virtual reality as well as regular reality.
Part of the “Vice Guide to Sex” series, the episode climaxes with a bacchanalian “Bonoboville Reunion” of artists, kinksters, actors, comedians, political activists, friends and lovers in the “Womb Room” sanctuary of the “Irreverend” Dr. Susan Block’s very special “Church” of the Bonobo Way in the “Eco Village” of Bonoboville centered around her philosophy of peace through pleasure, female empowerment, male well-being, ecosexuality, friendliness, inclusivity and sharing resources.
Though the Vice piece touches upon Block’s philosophy, it focuses on the “controversies” as well as the erotic action, packing into the 17-and-a-half-minute piece much nude cavorting, while just managing to stay within YouTube’s vague but unforgiving “community guidelines.”
Taboo body parts are revealed but concealed by a whitish film. “If you squint, it looks like the editors must have ejaculated all over everyone’s nipples and genitals, and some butt crack, depending on the angle,” quips Block. “It’s funny because the Vice cameramen really focused on the nudity in Bonoboville, almost like they were trying to shoot porn, only to hand the footage over to editors who then censored it in this eerie, dehumanizing but still provocative way. It’s digital ejaculation censorship. They do seem to love that white stuff. It’s all over a painting of Marilyn Monroe, her breasts and even her face.”
Was it worth it?
“It’s a great honor and privilege to be the focus of a Vice TV documentary, reaching their huge viewership of millions,” says Block. “Their spin, however, is pretty salacious, suspicious and a little sanctimonious. After all, they call themselves ‘Vice,” and present my work as a kind of ‘vice.’ They’re more sex-positive than most major media, but with a dash of disapproval. And it’s not just the sex. Much of our art is censored, as is our politics. They also keep changing the title, making it sleazier with each alteration. I’ve complained to the producer, but he says there’s nothing I can do, as all the Vice marketing team is looking for are ‘views’… and not getting sued.”
Besides garnering over 180,000 views, the new Vice documentary has inspired hundreds of passionate comments, ranging from great praise, support, tributes and testimonials to thundering rage, outrage, disgust, condemnation, denigration, slut-shaming, elder abuse, misogyny, thought-policing, prayer-reciting and even violent threats.
The ongoing, name-calling debate between lovers and haters of Dr. Suzy’s “controversial” phone sex therapy, kink-positive Bonoboville community and Bonobo Way philosophy is a sign of the times, elucidating a views-driven cultural divide in America and around the world that questions the very nature of sexual health and mental well-being.
Bonoboville Reunion guests include Daniele Watts (aka DaLove), Chef Belive, Amor Hilton, Sally Mullins, Man-Pet, Shannon Coronado, Mistress Mina Nietsche de Sade, Nova, Kacy T-Girl, Onyx Muse, Rhiannon Aarons, Coralyn Jewel, Erikka Rijks, Ikkor the Wolf, Luzer Twersky, Abby Martin, Mike Prysner, Stan Kent, Cyn Yen, and John Barrymore.
Other segments show flashbacks of Dr. Suzy’s shows with Too $hort, Dr. Christopher Ryan, Nancy Friday and Dave Bautista.
Susan M Block, Ph.D., aka “Dr. Suzy,” is an internationally renowned sexologist best-known for her groundbreaking HBO specials. She has hosted The Dr. Susan Block Show for almost 35 years, and is the best-selling author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. A magna cum laude Yale graduate, Counterpunch columnist, DomCon and AASECT lecturer, and champion of sex education, bonobo conservation and freedom of speech, recently featured in Vice TV’s Sex Before the Internet, interviewed on Abby Martin’s Dosed and nominated for the “Most Popular Sex Educator” Urban X Award, Dr. Block hosts F.D.R. Radio every Saturday night with her husband of 31 years, publisher and producer Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri. She’s also been featured on NPR, Oprah, Health, The Doctors, and many others. But she’ll never quit her “day job” as director and chief therapist with the Dr. Susan Block Institute, helping couples, singles and groups to explore, enjoy, take responsibility for and live their best sexual lives.
“I just hope that, despite—or because of—its flaws, this Vice piece inspires some viewers to check out our own shows and books and join us in Bonoboville, as well as encouraging people who need help to call the Institute for private therapy whenever they need to talk.”
For information or to arrange an interview with Dr. Susan Block, email drsusanblock@gmail.com or call (626) 461-5950.
Dr. Suzy’s Vice TV Documentary
PHOTO GALLERY
Urban X Awards nominates Dr. Susan Block for “Most Popular Sex Educator” 2023
The Urban X Awards has nominated renowned sexologist Dr. Susan Block, a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” for its “Most Popular Sex Educator” award. Originally called the Urban Spice Awards, established in 2008, the Urban X Awards recognize achievements by performers and others in adult media, with a focus on Black, Latin and Asian achievers. The winners are voted for by fans. Besides Dr. Susan Block, other nominees for the “Sex Educator” 2023 award include Tyomi Morgan, ACS, Jetsetting Jasmine, Sinnamon Love, Pegstress (Peggin tha Stallion), Madame Carmen, Jessica Drake and Ericka Hart.
“Education is power, and sex education is sexual power,” says Dr. Suzy. “So I’m thrilled to be among such illustrious fellow sex educator nominees. In this erotophobic era of sex education suppression, banning books, anti-sex social media censorship, repression of sexual expression, defunding the Kinsey Institute, firing sex educators and rendering The Handmaid’s Tale all too real, it’s great to be honored for our work… and play. Thank you, Urban X Awards, for your courage and great taste.”
Susan M Block, Ph.D., aka “Dr. Suzy,” is an internationally acclaimed sexologist best-known for her groundbreaking HBO specials. She is currently featured in the new Vice TV documentary, “Dr. Suzy’s Controversial Phone Sex Therapy.” She has hosted The Dr. Susan Block Show for almost 35 years, and is the best-selling author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. A magna cum laude Yale graduate, Counterpunch columnist, DomCon and AASECT lecturer, and champion of sex education, bonobo conservation and freedom of speech, recently featured in Vice TV’s Sex Before the Internet and Abby Martin’s Dosed. Dr. Block hosts F.D.R. Radio every Saturday night with her husband of 31 years, publisher and producer Maximillian Lobkowicz di Filangieri. She’s also been featured on NPR, Oprah, Health, The Doctors, and many other media outlets. But she’ll never quit her “day job” as director and chief therapist with the Dr. Susan Block Institute, helping couples, singles and groups to explore, enjoy, take responsibility for and live their best sexual lives.
The Urban X Awards will be held on Sunday, August 20, 2023 at the Globe Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. Red carpet will be at 6 – 7:30 PM and the Awards Show will be from 8:00 – 11:00 PM.
For information or to arrange an interview with Dr. Susan Block, email drsusanblock@gmail.com or call (626) 461-5950.
VICE TV’S Sex Before the Internet features DR. SUSAN BLOCK in “SEX on TV” (ep. 5) about HBO’s REAL SEX
World renowned sexologist, best-selling author of The Bonobo Way, and host of the Dr. Susan Block Show, Dr. Susan Block, a.k.a. Dr. Suzy, recently appeared on episode 5 of VICE TV’s Sex Before the Internet series, produced by former ABC News President James Goldstone. In the episode titled “Sex on TV,” which first aired on Feb. 7, 2023, Dr. Suzy discusses both her experiences and the impact of HBO’s groundbreaking cult favorite reality show, Real Sex.
“HBO was the place to go for adult entertainment that was as smart as it was sexy in those spicy, sex-exploratory years surrounding the turn of the 21st century,” explains Dr. Suzy. “In many ways, HBO’s Real Sex was unprecedented in television history and unsurpassed ever since. It also happened to be open-minded, informative, educational, empathetic, relatively nonjudgmental, funny and a lot of fun.”
The feeling was mutual. HBO called Dr. Suzy “radio’s sexiest, funniest, most outrageous sex therapist… if conversation is a sex act, then this Yale graduate has a very talented tongue.”
Vice’s “Sex on TV” opens with footage of Dr. Suzy’s signature “Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners…” which leads into her monologue on ethical hedonism that also kicks off Real Sex 25. The moment is followed by a present-day interview with Dr. Suzy, where she states that Real Sex was “a sexual revolution—for television.”
After making cameo appearances on a few of the very first Real Sex shows, Dr. Suzy was first featured on Real Sex 11 in 1995, then again on Real Sex 25 in 1999. In between her Real Sex segments, HBO launched two half-hour spin-offs hosted by Dr. Suzy, Radio Sex TV (1997) and Radio Sex TV 2: Off the Dial (1998), all about “Sex. Fun. Wisdom.” Both were #1-rated Nielsen specials.
“Sex on TV” also shows a Real Sex 11 clip of Dr. Suzy broadcasting her live syndicated radio show from bed 28 years ago, juxtaposed with her present-day studio as she broadcasts alongside her husband of over 30 years (also appearing in Radio Sex TV and her Real Sex segments), Max Lobkowicz, on F.D.R. Radio, where she still helps callers with their love lives, still educating, exploring and sharing “sex… fun… wisdom.”
The episode also includes interviews with former head of HBO Documentary Films and Real Sex executive producer Sheila Nevins, former HBO President Michael Fuchs, Real Sex lead producer Patti Kaplan, producer/director Deb Wasser, and other members of the female-led Real Sex production team, along with appearances by sex educator Tristan Taormino (another Real Sex featured guest), as well as comedians Nikki Glaser, Lunell, Joanna Briley, Zach Noe Towers, and adult performer Silvia Saige, all of whom say they *grew up on* Real Sex when it aired on HBO, and a few of whom would love to *bring it back* in some form.
In her Vice interview, Dr. Suzy talks about how Real Sex greatly expanded her audience, enabling her to reach people all over the world, as it helped so many others to share their sexual experience, insight and joy via this unique and remarkable TV show.
- For Dr. Suzy’s appearance on Sex Before the Internet, click the arrow above, and for more info, visit com/hbo#Vice.
- To watch Dr. Suzy on Real Sex, as well as her Real Sex spinoff specials, Radio Sex TV and Radio Sex TV: Off the Dial, on HBO, visit com/hbo.
- To see the full episode of Sex Before the Internet episode 5, “Sex on TV,” click here.
“Sex on the Internet” Aquitania Films Shoot Photo Gallery
PHOTOS: HARRY SAPIEN, UNSCENE ABE, SUSAN BLOCK
Bonoboville Photos: Harry Sapien & Susan Block. Frames from Vice TV’s “Sex on the Internet”: Aquitania Films
Dr. Susan Block Gives “State of the Sexual Union” Address 2023 on WCAP-AM 980
Back by popular demand after her 2021 and 2022 “State of the Sexual Union” (SOTSU) addresses, world-renowned sexologist Dr. Susan Block, aka Dr. Suzy, returned to Active Radio with host Hartley Pleshaw on WCAP-AM 980 in the Massachusetts Valley on 2/25/23 to deliver a new SOTSU address for 2023.
“We had Joe Biden’s State of the Union last week. We had Vladimir Putin’s address. Well, those were just amateurs,” opined Hartley Pleshaw by way of introduction. “Today you’re going to get what we consider to be the most important state of the union – State of the Sexual Union, I should say – address of 2023, the one and only Dr. Susan Block… sexologist supreme.”
The two then discussed a variety of topics within the “meeting ground of sex, politics and culture which” Hartley says, “I believe [Dr. Susan Block] covers and handles better than anyone in the present contemporary scene.”
Just before the end, at the climax of the show, Dr. Suzy delivered the heart of her 2023 SOTSU address, her passionate “I Have a Fantasy” speech, inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King’s iconic 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, updated for 2023.
Some of the subjects discussed include:
- War: Right after Dr. Suzy’s 2022 SOTSU address, Russia bombed Ukraine, and now America and most of Europe are at war with Russia, putting much of the world on a warpath which is the opposite of the Bonobo Way, the path of peace through pleasure. This warpath, mapped out for us by the war profiteers within the Miltary-Industrial Complex, dominates our budget, our hearts and minds and some of our bodies. During this year of war, Dr. Suzy responded with “Make Kink Not War” at her Yale Reunion, DomCon and on FDR, one of her key “fantasies” being to replace the Capitalocene, which values war for profit, with the Bonobocene, valuing female empowerment, male well-being, sharing resources, good sex and peace through pleasure. That’s one reason the theme of Dr. Suzy’s annual presentation at DomCon 2022 was Make Kink Not War: Be Bonobo.
- Censorship by Bot: The “Artificial Intelligence” (AI)—or as Dr. Suzy calls it, “Artificial Ignorance”—that terminated The Dr. Susan Block Show channel (and many other great shows and channels) on YouTube, and her remarkably effective “Block Curse” on YouTube CEO and Censor-in-Chief Susan Wojcicki who subsequently resigned. Nevertheless, despite the power of “Block Magic,” she says that Free Speech—in terms of noncorporate sex education and political expression—is still being unfairly censored in our more and more corporate, and less and less human (let alone humane) social media.
- Real Sex: Hartley dubs Dr. Suzy the “Official Sexologist of Active Radio” and commends her recent appearance in Vice TV’s Sex before the Internet episode 5, explores how HBO’s Real Sex revolutionized the portrayal of sex on television.
- DeSantis: Prompted by Hartley’s questions about the book-burning Florida Governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” programs, coupled with his 2024 U.S. Presidential ambitions, Dr. Suzy delves into the fascism-lite “phony cafone” populism and sadistic personality traits of her fellow Yale grad (Class of 2001, also a member in the infamous Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, like G.W. Bush), Ron DeSantis and his personal record of torture and deception when he was a CIA lawyer stationed at Guantanamo prison as described in an interview conducted by Mike Prysner (the marvelous Abby Martin’s awesome husband) with one of his former prisoners.
- Trump: Hartley asks Dr. Suzy to address sexual conservatives’ support for Trump, a sexual libertine, to which she replies, “In a word, it’s hypocrisy,” then talks about how a libertine created a S. Supreme Court of the Religious Right to rule a citizenry that’s less religious than ever.
- Drag: When Hartley asks Dr. Suzy her views on the “Republican jihad about drag queens,” she discusses the history of ”drag” from prehistoric times to Shakespeare to now, and how closeted crossdressing, bisexual desires, erotophobia and shame mix with Rightwing politicians’ cynical and divisive approach to this “culture wedge” issue, creating a ridiculous yet very dangerous anti-Drag Queen/anti-trans crusade that has triggered mass shootings and other violence.
- “I Have a Fantasy”: Dr. Suzy delivers her latest rendition of “I Have a Fantasy,” inspired by MLK’s “I Have a Dream.”
Click here for a list of her 2023 fantasies as reprised on FDR.
Click the pic above to listen to Dr. Suzy’s 2023 State of the Sexual Union address and chat with Hartley Pleshaw on Active Radio WCAP 980-AM or listen on one of your favorite platforms.
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Abby Martin & Mike Prysner Interview Dr. Susan Block on “DOSED”
Esteemed and intrepid investigative journalist (Breaking the Set, The Empire Files, Media Roots), artist, activist and commentator, Abby Martin, along with her partner, political activist Mike Prysner, interviewed Dr. Susan Block on episode #22 of their live Callin show, “DOSED With Abby Martin.” For each episode, Martin invites different public figures and freethinkers to offer their insights on what’s happening in the world today.
On this broadcast, Martin and Prysner ask Block for her unique sexological perspective of current events, especially violence, war and politics—which is tied to Martin’s opening question, “Would you say that America has a healthy relationship to sex and our bodies?”
Martin begins with a riveting reading from Block’s acclaimed 2001 essay, “Sex Not Bombs” in which she compares the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers to a “castration” of America’s great phallic towers of power. Then Martin and Prysner ask Block for her views on sexuality and violence in America, and the discussion delves into the relatively liberated Native American tribes vs. the strict, punishing Puritans who invaded this land and the Neo-Puritans on the Supreme Court now controlling it. As Block sees it, the American denigration of natural diverse sexuality—sex for recreation, not just procreation—has played a significant part in our high levels of violence, misogyny, mass murder, ammosexual incels on the march, perma wars, “forced breeding” and “forced feeding,” along with the increasing mechanization, militarization and polarization that is engineering the economic and ecological collapse of America and perhaps human civilization. A bleak horizon, but Block sees a glimmer of hope in our kissing cousins, the “Make Love Not War” bonobos, and believes that following a “Bonobo Way” of peace through pleasure, female empowerment, male well-being and sharing resources, could go a long way toward solving some of these problems.
The discussion, which includes calls from the audience, runs over two hours. This marks the first time that Martin has interviewed Block, though Block interviewed Martin on “The Dr. Susan Block Show” in 2015, and Martin’s brother (who makes a quick appearance on this show) Robbie Martin interviewed Block on Media Roots about two years ago. Abby and Mike both make a brief appearance on Block’s Bonoboville Reunion show released in the Spring of 2022.
Episode #22 of “Dosed” is now available on all major streaming platforms.
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For all other listening platforms, visit linktr.ee/dosedshow.
Dr. Susan Block Gives “State of the Sexual Union” Address on WCAP-AM 98
Following a rousing reception to her 2021 “State of the Sexual Union” address, world-renowned sex therapist and “Sexologist of the Year” Dr. Susan Block, aka Dr. Suzy, returned to Active Radio with host Hartley Pleshaw on WCAP-AM 980 in the Massachusetts Valley to deliver a new State of the Sexual Union address for 2022.
Broadcast live 2/12/22, this special Valentine’s Day weekend address and interview focused on some of the major themes and events of the past year, including
- The ongoing Coronapocalypse, and how singles and couples are navigating the difficulties and opportunities of pandemic sex
- 2022 improvement: We don’t have a grifting, sociopathic narcissist in the White House, but we do have a geriatric neoliberal corporate military industrial complex cheerleader, which is only marginally better
- The 1/6/21 Insurrection and its noxious aftermath
- The Afghan war and the monstrous American Miitary-Industrial Complex
- The Massage Parlor Massacre and the general rise in misogynistic ammosexual violence and discourse
- Andrew Cuomo, #MeToo and the backlash
- Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and the masculinist incel movement
- Distinguished leftist journalist Chris Hedges “plague of pornography” campaign is dangerously misguided
- Neopuritanism rising on the Right and the Left
- Toxic masculinity and toxic femininity
- The American Conservative and the misogynistic Sexual Counterrevolution
- The atrocity of Julian Assange still being imprisoned
- Small win for sex this year: Onlyfans flipped
- Stormy Daniels won her suit against Avenatti
- The ominous anti-sex, anti-Free Speech “EARN IT” act is worse than the proven-to-be-bad SESTA/FOSTA acts
- Lupercalia, the original pagan Valentine’s Day
- Happy World Bonobo Day! Help save humanity’s closest great ape cousins, the bonobo chimpanzees, from extinction – and release your inner bonobo for better sex and a better life
- The Bonobo Way of ecosexuality, female empowerment and male well-being, sharing, caring and peace through pleasure.
Click here to listen to Dr. Suzy’s 2021 State of Sexual Union address.
Listen to Dr. Suzy’s 2022 version of her “I Have a Fantasy” speech on FDR Radio’s Valentine Fantasies & Neopuritanical Nightmares.
Click the pic above to listen to Dr. Suzy’s 2022 State of the Sexual Union address and chat with Hartley Pleshaw.
Dr. Susan Block wins “Sexologist of the Year” (2021) for her third Glenny Award
The Glenny Awards have announced that Dr. Susan Block is the winner of the “Sexologist of the Year” award 2021. Announced at the cusp of 2022, the Glennys are produced by Sex in the Pews and Glenn Klein Online host Glenn Klein.
Dr. Susan Block, a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” has been a sexologist and sex therapist in private practice for 30 years. Perhaps best-known for her HBO specials, she hosts The Dr. Susan Block Show and co-hosts F.D.R. (F*ck Da Rich), along with her husband and collaborator, Pr. Maximillian R. Lobkowicz. She is also a bestselling author of several books, including her latest, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, and an advocate for the highly endangered “Make Love Not War” bonobo apes. A longtime journalist and commentator, her columns on sexuality, politics, art and culture appear in Counterpunch and other publications, including her own Speakeasy Journal.
This is Dr. Suzy’s third “Sexologist of the Year” Glenny award in a row! She won her first in 2019 for her premier “Sex in the Pews” interview (episode #58) based upon her bonoboësque philosophy of “Ethical Hedonism.” The interview went “viral,” according to Coach Glenn, scoring the most hits that year. In episode 270 of Sex in the Pews, “Sex is the Essence of Life,” her illuminating answer to the question, “What happens when life gets in the way of sex?” garnered her second Glenny award.
Now three’s the charm. “The great Greek philosopher Pythagoras considered ‘three’ to be the perfect number of harmony, wisdom and understanding,” says Dr. Suzy. “Plus it’s a hat trick, an honor and a pleasure. The Glennys are better and sexier than the Grammys or the Emmys, and not just because the Grammys and the Emmys don’t give “Sexologist of the Year” awards, but because with Neo-Puritan fervor rising on the Right and the Left, it’s important to acknowledge good sex. So, I will continue to use my platform as ‘Sexologist of the Year’ to speak out for love not war, freedom of speech, sexological research and sexual healing, as well as advocating for our highly endangered bonobo great ape cousins who show us the way to consensual sex-positivity, female empowerment, male well-being, sharing, caring, ecosexuality and peace through pleasure. There are so much to do this year, but I’ll never quit my day job helping people privately with that most sensitive of subjects, human sexuality.”
Find out more about Dr. Suzy’s other “Sexologist of the Year” Glenny awards here and here.
To arrange an interview, call 213-291-9497 or email DrSusanBlock@gmail.com. For private telephone sex therapy sessions with Dr. Susan Block or one of her Therapists Without Borders, call 213-291-9497.
TikTok SPLOSH with Dr. Susan Block on Screen Shot Media
Sploshing is the latest TikTok food trend with thousands of sexy chefs and gourmets preparing sensuous “food hacks,” spilling cream or suggestively eating sausages. Splosh isn’t a new concept though; it’s been around for ages. Just ask Dr. Suzy! Journalist Malavika Pradeep did just that for “Inside the wet and messy world of sploshing, the latest food festish on TikTok” (10/16/21) on UK-based Screen Shot Media, conducting an in-depth interview with internationally renowned sexologist and sploshologist, Dr. Susan Block, about the deliciously messy ins and outs of erotic food play. In the article, Dr. Block gives an extensive overview of splosh, why it’s so appealing, how to enjoy splosh properly, and the roots of this fun and messy fetish in human history. Quoted along with several TikTokers and splosh enthusiasts, Dr. Block is the main authoritative source for the piece. The article also includes many delicious excerpts and photos from Dr. Block’s Splosh ‘n’ Art Speakeasy Journal, featuring Daniele Watts, Rawkstar Chef BeLive, Gypsy Bonobo and Jiin Christou.
Articles by Dr. Susan Block
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About Dr. Susan Block
Susan M. Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” world-renowned sexologist and leading champion of sex education, erotic freedom and the highly endangered bonobo apes, is perhaps best-known for her groundbreaking specials on HBO. Host of the famous—and slightly infamous—Dr. Susan Block Show, broadcasting on radio, cable TV and the Internet for over 30 years, Dr. Block is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University with a Ph.D. in sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, and a co-founder of Sex Week at Yale, inspiring similar college-student-based sex education conferences around the world. A best-selling, award-winning author, Dr. Block’s latest book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure, has been acclaimed for its paradigm-shifting vision, humor and sound advice by journalists, sexperts, statesmen, primatologists and porn stars.
Director of the Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences, she is a top contributor to the Wiley-Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, authoring “extended explorations” on “Sexual Fetishes,” “Phone Sex” and “Striptease,” as well as definitive articles on “Spanking” and “Cuckolding.” Recently, she wrote the foreword to the award-winning Ecosexuality collection, and her writings on sex, politics and culture have been published in a variety of publications from Counterpunch to Cosmo to her own Journal. But she’ll never quit her “day job” as a therapist in private practice, helping thousands of individuals, couples and groups, from California to Saudi Arabia, to explore, understand, discipline, enhance, share and enjoy their sexuality.
Married for over 23 years to Pr. Maximillian R. Lobkowicz, pioneering publisher of the first “reader-written” media such as the LA Star, Love, Hate, Finger, The Brentwood Bla Bla and Beverly Hills, the Magazine, the two founded and direct Bonoboville, both a new social-media and a real “socialist/capitalist,” pro-sex community in Los Angeles, known for producing the first reality-based sexuality programs, convivial “Speakeasies,” bonoboësque gatherings, erotic art exhibitions, bacchanalian soirées, life-changing lectures, sex-educational seminars, and priceless moments of communal ecstasy, with a portion of all proceeds going to help save the highly endangered real bonobos in the wild.