Susan Block, Ph.D. Biography

Part philosopher, half sex image, part humorist, and part-time horny housewife, Dr. Susan Block is a world-renowned sex educator, as properly because the host of HBO's "Radio Sex Tv," a finest-promoting writer, award-successful essayist, filmmaker, radio and cable Tv host, syndicated columnist, creator of the perfect-promoting "Dr. Susan Block Video Encyclopedia of Sex & Fetishes," author of "The 10 Commandments of Pleasure" (St. Martin's Press), proprietress of Dr. Suzy's Speakeasy, director of the Speakeasy Gallery (the only everlasting erotic artwork assortment in Southern California) and the Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts & Sciences. She additionally operates an award-successful 2,000-web page webpage (drsusanblock.com, plus an Internet radio/Tv station at radiosuzy1.com), and she is a devoted sex therapist in non-public apply.

Dr. Block's educational background has been both rigorous and various. In high school, she was editor-in-chief of the varsity newspaper, president of the Philadelphia Model United Nations, star of the highschool play, captain of the Debating Team, winner of several American history awards, together with the DAR, a member of the National Honor Society, and won admission to all of the Ivy League colleges, choosing to enter Yale University.

In the summer season of her junior yr, she traveled through Israel, studying historical and modern Middle Eastern tradition and Kabbalah, and working on a kibbutz outdoors Jerusalem. Little did she know that her studies in world history and comparative religion would supply a background for her eventual profession as a intercourse educator. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale with Distinction in Theater Studies, where she was privileged to work with Robert Brustein, Meryl Streep, the late nice Honey Cones, Nikos Psacharapolous and members of the Firesign Theater, amongst others. At the age of 20, she traveled by way of India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, finding out Yoga, Kama Sutra, Tantra and different points of Asian culture. She spent the summer of her junior year at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, learning poetry with Alan Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso at the Jack Keroac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Tibetan-type Tantric Sex with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

After graduating from Yale in 1977, she labored as a "City Mime" for the new Haven City Council, taught "troubled" teens to specific themselves by means of theater, studied with R.G. Davis and different members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and toured with New England Commedia, performing commedia d'elle arte-type adaptations of Tartuffe performs. She additionally practiced Zen Buddhism and Kundalini Yoga.

In 1980, she moved to California, and continued her research at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and More University, traveled via Europe performing commedia and finding out historical past, theater, artwork and philosophy at numerous institutes, including the University of Padova and the Sorbonne, and obtained her doctorate in Philosophy from Pacific Western University in 1991. During this time, she worked as a freelance writer, penning features for such publications as the brand new Haven Advocate, Connecticut Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, the Bay Guardian, the Berkeley Monthly, the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Magazine.

Her first e book, Advertising for Love (Morrow: 1984) turned the definitive guide on private advertisements, and her second e book, Being a Woman (Random House: 1988) which she wrote with psychologist Dr. Toni Grant, grew to become a best-seller. She also published a number of quick tales, together with three in Pleasures, Erotic Interludes, and Erotic Escapades, edited by psychologist Dr. Lonnie Barbach.

During this time, she additionally learn her poetry in many venues all through California, and organized a number of LA city-large poetry occasions with legendary poet/performance artist Bob Flannigan and widespread LA poet Wanda Coleman, among others. She additionally climbed to the highest of the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge with the legendary Suicide Club of San Francisco. Around this time (the mid-80s), she also started her non-public therapy observe, during which she counseled particular person men and women, in addition to couples and teams in matters of love, work and sexuality, according to her philosophy of "ethical hedonism."

She additionally bought into radio. After launching her first radio present on KIEV, sponsored by the LA Weekly, she met her Prince, Maximillian R. Lobkowicz, offered him an ad for her radio present, and fell in love. There was just one hitch: He was married to someone else. They became friends and collaborators, producing a series of legendary Radio Salons and audio tapes, including Dr. Susan Block's Bedtime Stories for Adults Only, that dramatized the erotic feelings they dared not specific in actual life. She also wrote an advice column for his journal, the Brentwood Bla Bla. As well as, Block and Lobkowicz organized LA's first fashionable Art Salons, featuring nice local artists, poets, chefs and designers. Later (in 1991), they made Desert Susan, a series of audiotapes for the troops of Desert Storm.

In 1991, when Lobkowicz separated from his then-wife, he and Block embarked upon their Great Love Affair in earnest. They married in '92 in Philly, under the aegis of Rabbi Gerald Wolpe and Rabbi Ivan Caine, both of whom had had a profound affect upon Block's youth. Lobkowicz started producing Block's weekly call-in radio program, now called "The Dr. Susan Block Show" on KFOX, encouraging her to specific the extra sensuous sides of her own persona. Having all the time been discouraged from overtly expressing her sexuality by previous lovers, Block's persona quickly blossomed into the unflinchingly erotic, witty and clever "Mistress of the Airwaves" that she is right this moment. Lobkowicz additionally began filming his spouse as she hosted her radio present in the KFOX studios. Thus started the cinematic course of that led to The Dr. Susan Block Show on tv in addition to Radio Sex Tv with Dr. Susan Block on HBO.

Seven years later, Dr. Susan Block has become an internationally renowned sex educator and filmmaker, an award-successful philosopher (winner of the bronze award in the good American Think-Off nationwide philosophy debate and declared one of 4 of "America's Greatest Thinkers" of 1998), and an HBO star with #1-rated specials (Radio Sex Tv) and recurring segments on Real Sex. Collaborating along with her publisher-husband, she has expanded her literary work with their very own publication, Dr. Susan Block's Journal, which seems occasionally in print and each day on their web site at drsusanblock.com. She also writes a month-to-month column on sex and politics that is syndicated in other magazines. Her book, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure (St. Martin's Press: 1996), was excerpted in Cosmopolitan, American Woman and the British Sun, has been critically acclaimed (amazon.com offers it the maximum 5 star ranking), and is now being published in nations throughout Europe, the UK, Asia and South America. She is currently writing a brand new e-book on her philosophy of ethical hedonism.

Block and Lobkowicz continue to make breakthrough television with the weekly Dr. Susan Block Show on cable Tv and the Internet, boasting an enormous cult following. Dr. Block draws upon her own wealthy educational background to current totally different sexual subjects from historic, psychological, anthropological, biological, sociological, mystical, theatrical and literary points of view. She attracts upon her experience and coaching in both Western and Eastern cultures. She helps callers and company with their questions, issues, fantasies and fetishes. She teaches each women and men to have greater orgasms and better relationships. She also evaluations numerous current events, movies, performs and books pertaining to sexuality, and talks with celebrities and others in her well-known "broadcast bed" filled with pillows, vibrators, whips, dildos, vulva puppets and other erotic props. She broadcasts the show dwell each Saturday evening on her webpage at radiosuzy1.com (with over 80,000 listeners per thirty days). At any time, visitors also can view and/or hear dozens of archived episodes of The Dr. Susan Block Show on the location.

Tom Quinn of Entertainment Today calls the program "a frank, humorous, thoughtful, sensual romp through all the pieces you ever wanted to find out about sex and have been delighted that anyone lastly requested." "Brilliant, sexy, mental," writes Art Kunkin of the LA Free Press. "Susan is so rattling intelligent it nearly scares me," exclaims sex pioneer Betty Dodson. "Dr. Suzy has an ever-growing cult following under her garter belt," says Dale Brasel in Detour. "Why? Unlike Dr. Ruth, you'll be able to really believe she's had-and is still having-intercourse. Good sex." "Dr. Susan Block is a modern-day Cleopatra," writes Richard Rappaport in Soma. "The response to her present has been, well, orgasmic."

Her two half-hour specials on HBO, Radio Sex Tv and Radio Sex Tv-2: Off the Dial, both scored the highest Nielsen scores for the day in all of pay cable Tv, each reaching about 2.5 million households on their debut nights, with a mixed viewership of over 20 million people. Cara Jepsen's review within the Illinois Entertainer sums up the followers' perception of Radio Sex Tv on HBO: "Dr. Suzy gives sex and relationship recommendation that's friendly and direct moderately than condescendingcombining her open Annie Sprinkle-like sexuality and penchant for lingerie and intercourse toyswith the no-nonsense chutzpah of Dr. RuthDefinitely professional-female without being anti-male." "Radio Sex Tv positive beats a night of The Tonight Show!" says Denis D. O'Leary within the Weekly Alibi. Dr. Block also appears usually (and at all times to high scores) on HBO's Real Sex, her subsequent segment scheduled for November, 2000 on Real Sex 27. She can also be a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Her video collection, Dr. Susan Block's Encyclopedia of Sex & Fetishes, has gained important praise and worldwide consideration. Ellen Thompson of AVN calls her "the '90s Masters and JohnsonDr. Suzy presents simple, inventive and informative methods to help us all get alongDealing with quite a lot of erotic topics, Block's simple-going, playful demeanor places all at ease." The subjects of the videos vary from fundamental approach (Foreplay) to client interest (Vibrators & Other Lovers), from fetish (Spanking For Adults Only) to social commentary (The brand new Horny Housewife) and political satire (Kenneth W. Starr: A Pornographer for Our Times, really useful by Troy Patterson in Entertainment Weekly, and known as "one in all the good social satires of our time," by David Hirst of The Australian, in addition to an "amusing exposé of the poisonous undercurrent of repression, prurience and hypocrisy in America's political and psychosexual crisis" by Joe Conason of the NY Observer). Richard Pacheco of Spectator calls the collection a "work of genius I've become a fan," and Sharon Peters writes in Libido: "Boldly originalDr. Susan Block doesn't simply push the envelope, she is the envelope!"

Not that Dr. Block is at all times praised. Oh, no. National radio and tv speak present host Dr. Laura Schlessinger called her a "pseudo-skilled porn queen." She has been pejoratively known as "Queen Dildo" by Greg Gaslin in New Times and snidely considered to be "Little Bo Peep on depart from a French bordello" by Matt LaBash in the conservative Weekly Standard.

She has had her troubles not only with the press, however with the police. On January 31, 1998, in the course of an episode of The Dr. Susan Block Show in which Dr. Block and the Blockettes offered a Ken Starr lookalike with the 1998 "Pornographer of the Year" award, abruptly, with out warning, Dr. Block's home/studio (the Villa Piacere or "Pleasure House") was invaded by about 20 armed members of the LAPD. Neither Block nor Lobkowicz nor anyone else was ever charged with anything. The truth is, they had been breaking no laws. So why did the LAPD conduct the invasion? We'll never know. Perhaps because they assumed that anybody having as a lot fun as everybody seems to have on The Dr. Susan Block Show should be doing something illegal. Or perhaps that was the one way that certain police officers thought they could get into the present. Many cops are big fans. Dr. Block's studios and galleries have been again invaded frivolously and and not using a warrant by LAPD on February 26, 2000 (For data on the current raid, see our LAPD web page).

Despite the heat (and, to some extent, due to it), Dr. Block continues broadcasting, spreading her message of moral hedonism and helping callers and company to deal with their sex lives, as well as venturing out to provide the occasional lecture or seminar, addressing such groups because the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), Mensa, The Lifestyles Conventions and lots of colleges and universities, including her alma mater Yale. She can be interviewed with some frequency as a celeb skilled on human sexuality on quite a few local, national and worldwide Tv, radio (commonly on KCRW's award-winning "Which Way LA?") and Internet shows, documentary films, and in magazines (repeatedly in Cosmopolitan and Men's Health) and newspapers. And she does occasional efficiency artwork pieces, together with Sex Acts with Heilman-C which played to overflow crowds of greater than 3000 on the Jack Tilton Gallery in Soho, New York, and her acclaimed Old-Time Gospel-Style Sexual Revival at the Lifestyles Convention and Erotic Art of the Apocalypse Opening.

She maintains an award-successful Internet website (drsusanblock.com), which is in the highest 1% of all web sites in the world. Besides Dr. Susan Block's Journal (which The Women's Guide to Sex on the web calls "a veritable who's-who and what's-what of 'ethical hedonism'" stemming from "the beauty and brains of Dr. Susan Block') and live and archived broadcasts of her reveals (radiosuzy1.com), the site features over a thousand pages of intercourse educational materials, interviews, pictures, writings on intercourse, love, artwork, journey, philosophy, politics, poetry, erotic artwork (eroticsgallery.com), private ads, electronic ebook shop (blockbooks.com), grownup toy catalog, behind-the-scenes photographs from her HBO shows, book, film, membership, restaurant and lodge critiques, Dr. Block's Erotic Theater of the Mind (the place viewers can watch her movies) and a wealth of knowledge on the peaceful sex practices of bonobo chimpanzees (blockbonobofoundation.org).

An energetic long-time advocate of these extraordinarily endangered Congolese apes, Dr. Block uses the extremely sexual, remarkably non-violent and non-male-dominant bonobo "way of life" as a prototype for her philosophy of "peace by means of pleasure." Many of her shows, books, movies and columns embody theories and knowledge on bonobos, and her website on the creatures she calls "the horniest apes on earth" at blockbonobofoundation.org has been acclaimed all through the Internet.

Despite the calls for of her energetic media-oriented profession, Block maintains her private therapy practice which includes shoppers from all components of the globe. About 10 different therapists, experts or prodigies in numerous areas, additionally work with purchasers beneath her course within the therapy wing of the Dr. Susan Block Institute. The Institute makes a speciality of treating victims of religious sexual abuse, political indoctrination and mass media distortion. Dr. Block can also be a lecturer with the Human Sexuality Department at University of Southern California (USC), and a guide to the Los Angeles Public Defender's office on capital intercourse crime cases.

Recently, Block and Lobkowicz and the multi-cultural, multi-racial employees of the Institute moved from the Villa Piacere in the Hollywood Hills into the 8000 sq.-foot second floor of a phenomenal previous brick constructing in downtown LA that used to be a real speak-simple in the 1920s. Having typically referred to her show as "Dr. Suzy's Speakeasy," Block and Lobkowicz felt this was the proper urban middle for their erotic instructional dream. Part of the Institute is dedicated to non-public therapy, one other part to dam Studios that broadcasts the present, and one other space to BlockFilms which produces the movies. The latest part of the Institute is the Speakeasy Gallery, LA's solely everlasting assortment of erotic artwork. The Speakeasy Gallery options erotic art in all media, together with painting, sculpture, collage, nonetheless photography and video, created by local and internationally distinguished artists. Block also exhibits a few of her own works, together with her video-photo "Happy Snaps," sensual-satirical "Panties-in-a-Bottle," and her impeachment erotica piece "Hungry Republicans." The Gallery's first present, "Art of The brand new Morality for the subsequent Millennium: Ethical Hedonism," will probably be featured on HBO. The show "Foot Fetish Art" was accompanied by several formal and informal Foot Pleasure Salons which have been sensuous extravaganzas. The present exhibit is "Erotic Art of the Apocalypse." Opening night time, Dr. Block carry out one in all her renowned, rousing "Old-Time Sexual Revivals." The Speakeasy Gallery's next exhibit, "Sexual Evolution," will increase funds to assist save the bonobos.

Dr. Susan Block may be reached at 213.749.1330.

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