For Immediate Release:
Contact: Max Lobkowicz. Phone: 213.291.9497. Email: DrSusanBlock@gmail.com
“Survival of the Friendliest”
Is Your Dog Smarter Than You?
Can Bonobos Show You How to Share Your Love?
A Remarkable Interview with Dr. Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods on
The Dr. Susan Block Show
What did Charles Darwin really mean by “Survival of the Fittest”? That only the strong survive in a ruthless race to the top? Or does “fittest” actually mean friendliest… and, in a way, sexiest? If so, what does that say about the history and precarious future of humanity? And what do dogs and bonobos have to do with it?
Is your dog smarter than you? Could bonobos teach you how to share your love?
These questions kick off internationally renowned sexologist Dr. Susan Block’s fascinating, penetrating interview with Duke University Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Dr. Brian Hare, and award-winning science journalist, Vanessa Woods, about their book, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity.
Hare and Woods are married co-authors of the runaway New York Times best-seller, The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think. Woods is also the author of Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo.
This interview is the 25th installment of The Dr. Susan Block Show‘s Bedside Chats in the Coronapocalypse series and peace-through-pleasure studies program. A longtime broadcaster, best-known for her HBO specials, director of the Dr. Susan Block Institute and contributor to many publications, from The Wiley-Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality to Counterpunch, Block is the best-selling author of several books, including The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure. She and her husband and collaborator of over 30 years, Maximillian R. Lobkowicz, run Bonoboville, a community of artists, technologists and therapists inspired by the real bonobos and The Bonobo Way. Block has interviewed a variety of primatologists, anthropologists and peace activists about bonobos since her 1996 interview with Harvard Anthropology Professor Richard Wrangham who has mentored and collaborated with Hare and Woods.
Why do most of the “fittest” life forms appear to be the friendliest? Dogs and bonobos are very different mammals, but both, like humans, have survived and thrived through friendliness. Our four-footed best friends for thousands of years, dogs excel at being friendly with people. Meanwhile, humanity’s closest genetic cousins, the Make-Love-Not-War bonobos, excel at friendliness with each other. Bonobos are very friendly, even with strangers; they share resources, empower the females, nurture the babies, engage in frequent consensual sex—more “outercourse” than intercourse in a Bonobo Sutra of positions—and most remarkably, bonobos are the only Great Apes that never kill each other.
How do they do that, and can we do it too? What can we learn from bonobos and dogs about the power of friendliness? What’s sex got to do with it? Will human friendliness help us through the anthropogenic crises that confront us now? Or will its deadly “flip side” (dehumanization of our fellow humans) destroy us all?
Besides Hare, Woods and Block, the interview features Chico, Bonoboville’s adorable Pomeranian-in-Residence, and Congo, a golden lab mix service dog from Canine Companions for Independence enjoying his retirement with Hare and Woods, directors of the Duke Dognition Center.
The interview also includes riveting film footage of bonobos in the wild, at the San Diego Zoo and at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary outside Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), under the direction of Claudine André. Hare and Woods are on the Friends of Bonobos Board of Directors, supporting Lola ya Bonobo (Bonobo Paradise) and bonobo conservation for these highly endangered, precious creatures.
Watch the interview and read more about it: https://drsusanblock.com/survival-of-the-friendliest.
See it on YouTube:
Read it on Counterpunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/20/survival-of-the-friendliest/
For information or to arrange an interview, email drsusanblock@gmail.com or call 213-291-9497.