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Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg, "Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
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- [00:04]
Alicia M. Walker
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com Limu Gamu and.
- [00:32]
Ariel Kuperberg
Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save.
- [00:35]
Alicia M. Walker
Hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [00:36]
Ariel Kuperberg
But now we want you to feel it.
- [00:38]
Alicia M. Walker
Cue the emu music.
- [00:39]
Ariel Kuperberg
Limu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We save. That may have been too much feeling.
- [00:51]
Michael Johnston
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty, Liberty.
- [00:56]
Alicia M. Walker
Liberty Savings.
- [00:57]
Michael Johnston
Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [00:59]
Ariel Kuperberg
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [01:00]
Alicia M. Walker
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- [01:31]
Michael Johnston
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome. My name is Michael Johnston, and this is another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. Today we'll be discussing Bound by Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life, published by Bloomsbury Press earlier this year, 2025. The authors who I have on the show today are Alicia M. Walker, associate professor of sociology at Missouri State University, Ariel Kuperberg, associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Welcome to the show and thank you for joining me today.
- [02:08]
Ariel Kuperberg
Thanks for having us.
- [02:09]
Alicia M. Walker
Yeah, thank you.
- [02:11]
Michael Johnston
So the first question that I want to ask is, how did the two of you come together and decide to write this book?
- [02:19]
Ariel Kuperberg
You want to take that?
- [02:21]
Alicia M. Walker
Yeah. So Ariel and I have been working together for a while, and we've been friends for a while, and I love working with her. So anytime I come up with a study idea that I think I could maybe talk her into, I'm always bugging her, being like, hey, do this with me. So I had, like, six different students who didn't know each other approach me after class and say, hey, have you ever thought about studying bdsm? And the first three, I was like, no, I haven't. But by the fourth one, I was like, maybe I should be doing this. And so I reached out to Arielle, and thankfully, she was interested. She wanted to do the project. And so we wrote a survey together and wrote our interview questions and. And launched, which was amazing. And we got a massive response. It's the largest study on BDSM to date, so that was super exciting.
- [03:18]
Michael Johnston
And then are also things you wanted to add to.
- [03:21]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah, no, I mean, we've been working together for, I think, over a decade at this point. We first met in a random Facebook group, and it turned out we had a lot of overlapping research interests. So our first paper was on college students who call themselves heterosexual that have same sex hookups. And, yeah, when Alicia approached me with this idea, I was intrigued. I think most of my. I've done a lot of sexuality research, but most of it has been what I would think of as, like, more mainstream sexuality. So, like, college hookups, college dating. So I was interested in learning more about this topic, which, like, I like learning new things and new projects, so.
- [04:06]
Michael Johnston
Excellent. Yeah. But, you know, your book highlights the two of your book. The two of you have this book that highlights the importance of explicit communication and negotiation boundaries that are associated with BDSM relationships. But, you know, I think that this BDSM book maybe talks to a more wider audience than maybe even our audience can even imagine, because I think that it translates into broader conversations about intimacy, consent, and emotional health and even non BDSM relationships like the ones that you were talking about before. Ariel, do you agree? And if so, how does it translate?
- [04:42]
Ariel Kuperberg
I think our intent was to speak to a wider audience. We wanted to find out, like, what. Well, what our book ended up being about is we found our BDSM practitioners were very, very happy, and we were like, what is it about BDSM that makes them so happy? And can those be lessons that apply to everyone, whether you're into BDSM or not? So, yeah, we did write it intending it to be for a bigger audience than. I hope BDSM practitioners like it too. But we think that they. We found kind of, like, universal lessons about what makes people happy. So one of them was communication, as you talked about, and being vulnerable to people. It also provides things like community and an ability to be creative, an ability to break some of the social norms about things like gender and sexuality, definitely. So it kind of has this, like, package deal where it gives you all these other things that, like, make all humans happy. And so our book ended up being about, like, what are. What are lessons we could learn about how to be happy that you could take away even if you're not into BDSM and don't ever want to be.
- [05:58]
Michael Johnston
But also by exploring the BDSM community, I think that it might unsettle. It might suggest lessons that might unsettle conventional assumptions about sex, love, and happiness. So I think that it might reduce maybe even some of the stigma or the taboo that is associated with BDSM and other kink communities. So I wonder, what do you see as being the most pressing cultural myths about relationship. Relationships that BDSM practices directly challenge? Yeah, Alicia, do you want to take that one?
- [06:30]
Alicia M. Walker
That's a good question. Say the last bit again.
- [06:36]
Michael Johnston
So what are some of the cultural myths about relationships that BDSM practices directly challenge? Is there anything in this BDSM community that you found challenging norms that are associated with the. You know, with. With relation with relationships in general or cultural myths that are had about bdsm, but in the practice, it's. It's directly in. In opposition to what those cultural myths are. Are.
- [07:04]
Alicia M. Walker
So I think the cultural myths about BDSM are that the people that do it are, like, super weird. And, you know, you could, like, identify them walking down the street or something. And we very much found they're your neighbors, they're your friends or your coworkers, they're your family members. And the people I interviewed very much wanted to be sure that I knew that and understood that and that it's not abuse, it's consensual activities. As far as the myths that BDSM busts about relationships, I don't know if it's a myth per se, but I think it really lays bare the importance of speaking up, asking for what you want, being clear with yourself and your partner. This is what I want. Can you give this to me? Can you not give this to me? And I think that is something that they're really doing, right, that the rest of us should take notice of, because they're having these conversations where they're explicitly saying, like, hey, I want to have this happen. I want you to do this and this and this and this. And the other person is like, okay, yes, I can do that. No, I cannot do that. It's like, we have this. So this is definitely a myth. We have this myth in relationships that, oh, we're in love. And so the sex is going to work itself out, right? The sex is going to be amazing because we're so in love with each other. Um, and it just doesn't always work that way. You know, sometimes what I want, what I need is not in line with what the Person I love, wants, needs, or is willing to do so. I think that's a big thing that it addresses and. And really illuminates.
- [08:42]
Michael Johnston
There's no expectation of the other person being a mind reader, but instead explicit communication between both parties. And that was one of the things that I picked up on most in your book, and that is the explicit communication that is taking place and the consent that is given at all layers. And consent is something that can also be taken away at any given point in the. During sex or in the relationship between the two.
- [09:10]
Alicia M. Walker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Sorry, Arielle, go ahead.
- [09:13]
Ariel Kuperberg
Oh, yeah, no, I was just going to say that I think there are a lot of negative stereotypes about BDSM practitioners. That they were, like, all abused as a child or something, or they're, like, traumatized or have mental illness. And looking more. I mean, both our research and other people's research has found, like, they're not more mentally ill than the typical person. They don't all have childhood trauma. We found most people found out about BDSM not because they were reliving some trauma or something. That wasn't a story that came out at all. It was more about, like, oh, I had a previous partner who introduced me to it, or a lot of people found out about it through the media, and then they were attracted to it. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of negative stereotypes about BDSM practitioners, which they then have to navigate in their real life when they're trying to figure out, like, who can I tell about this? Can I tell people? And, like, kind of disclosing their BDSM identities to others becomes a whole kind of management thing they have to deal with. Yeah.
- [10:23]
Michael Johnston
So you talk about the survey that you had conducted for this. For the research for this book, and about how it turned out to be one of the largest response rates of any BDSM surveys. Could you talk about any of the methodological hurdles around privacy, stigma, and access that resulted from conducting such research? And in terms of methods of building trust with participants, what are some of the choices that you made that helped shape the insight for this book?
- [10:55]
Ariel Kuperberg
You want me to take that? So I think one thing we did. Yeah, one thing we did is we had an anonymous survey where we didn't collect any identifying information, except we had a thing at the end, like, if you want to be in our raffle, like, put your email into this separate website. But allowing, I think with sexuality research, especially online data collection, generally has a lower response rate than sending people to, like, knock on your door. But I think with sexuality research, it is, you're going to get much more accurate answers and much more like, level of comfortability to take an anonymous survey where, you know, it's not, like, connected to your name in any way versus having to actually talk to a person. And then for Alicia's interviews, she gave people the option of either doing a phone interview or an email interview, which also allowed people to be completely anonymous. All we would have is an email. And you can make up an email anywhere. And she emailed the questions back. I mean, Alicia could talk more about this, but she emailed the questions back and forth, kind of like one at a time. So it allowed her to have a more dynamic interviewing than just like, you know, sending a bunch of lists of questions, but also allowed people to feel like they were, you know, when you're typing into a computer screen, you're going to be much more honest than when you're talking to someone face to face and looking them in the eyes while you're talking about something that is highly stigmatized in society. So, yeah, I think in, in sexuality research generally, the more anonymous people could be, the better. You have to balance between, like, anonymity and response rates. And I think in sexuality research also has this issue of, like, where are you getting your respondents from? We can't take like a nationally representative survey of BDSM practitioners, because how do you get that? Like, how. Where does that come from? I mean, maybe I could. So maybe BDSM practitioners are like, what, like, 1% of the population or something? So I can, you know, survey thousands of people and have like a screener question. But so there's like, trade offs you have to take. And I think sexuality research is one of these areas where you end up having to make a lot of methodological trade offs of saying like, like, we went through Reddit, we, we tried to recruit from everywhere, basically. Like, we sent. Alicia, sent research assistants to like, sex toy shops. We put ads on, like, every social media thing we could find. We went to like, Reddit, our BDSM and R Sex and fetlife, which is kind of like Facebook for people into BDSM and other kinks. But that's not like, again, it's not nationally representative. Right? So it's, I don't want to say, like, you know, exactly. 25% of BDSM practitioners have engaged in this practice nationally or something. Like, that's not the kind of data you could conclude, but you could be like, okay, doing this thing. It looks like, you know, when we ask people to self rate their light before and after bdsm. If you did this type of thing, your self rating went up a lot more. So I think it's better at answering those kind of questions.
- [14:15]
Michael Johnston
I think one of the things that was for a person to be eligible, if I remember correctly, was that a person had to be practicing. You didn't want somebody who was coming in after making a past life or something they no longer engage in. Which also says something about BDSM and how it is something that it can be a temporal status. It's not necessarily something that is permanent, but something that one does and one engages in, meaning that there might be an exit and entry into the practice of that behavior. Just as there might be a rite of passage or ritual of passage, just like in marriage and. Or divorce. Right. As another thing. So it's something that people actively participate in. And, and I guess that also suggests something about what information you're wanting to get from them. You're not necessarily interested in, well, how many people participate in it. What's that? Total population, national, international, global, whatever it might be. But instead, what are the experiences? Which says something about the research method that both you and Alicia use in both survey and then an interview. Because interview isn't just raw, raw numbers. It's, it's, it's rich thick. Yeah. Thinking of like Herbert Ganz and stuff. Right? Like, so rich thick description.
- [15:39]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And talking about Exeters, we talked to. We were on a different podcast that was run by a BDSM like dominatrix, and she also talked, was talking about how some people, like, at some point go through a phase they call purging, where they like, get rid of all their BDSM stuff and they're like, I'm not doing this anymore.
- [16:01]
Alicia M. Walker
Anymore.
- [16:01]
Ariel Kuperberg
And in her experience, they tend to come back to it later on. But it is kind of this temporary state that people sometimes become a BDSM practitioner for a while, and then that relationship with that person ends, or they get into a different relationship with someone who's gone into that type of thing, and then they may no longer be a BDSM practitioner.
- [16:21]
Michael Johnston
So the subtitle of your book is the Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life. What are some of the surprising lessons that you found that could extend well beyond even sexuality, you know, perhaps into the realm of like, work and family or self identity in terms of the experiences that these PDSM participants had in your research?
- [16:47]
Alicia M. Walker
When we're trying to figure out what this book was about, we kind of struggled. We kind of struggled. We couldn't really figure out. And I kept saying to Arielle, I don't know what the story is. I have no idea what the story is. The only thing these people have in common is that everybody is wildly happy. Like, that's the big undergirden, undergirding, you know, thing that I'm, that I'm hearing. And Ariel said, well, maybe that's, you know, what the story is. Which is kind of why it's like unexpected, because who would think that you go to study BDSM to find out about being happy, right? But we, we decided to dig in and find out, like, why were all these people so happy? Because it can't just be, oh, they're sexually fulfilled. Because I interview sexually fulfilled people all the time and I've never had another sample where every single person I talked to was just wildly happy. And so we found these things that combined together we think, you know, is what is making folks so happy. Which, yes, sex is definitely a part of it. Sexual creativity, sexual fulfillment, but also like, authenticity, like being able to really fully be yourself, be vulnerable, be clear with yourself and other people about who you are and what it, it is that you want. And having rich and open, clear communication with other people and high levels of trust and freeing yourself from expectations that society puts on you, especially around gender, you know, men are not supposed to show their feelings. Right. Things like that. And then having this sense of community, these folks had really well developed networks of social support. I mean, I was honestly very jealous. As somebody who's moved around a lot, I was like, I don't have anything like that. I don't have, I don't have 30 friends in the same city, you know, and they're having holidays and game nights and weekends and somebody to pick you up from the airport and help you move and things like that. And in a world where we're all feeling increasingly disconnected and isolated from each other and loneliness is an epidemic, the sheer amount of community that these folks have created for themselves is really, really impressive. I don't know if you want to add something.
- [19:04]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah, I think you've covered pretty much all of it. I think it also gives people a very clear sense of identity, which I think also helps with their happiness. For me, what was interesting was going through all the other communities. We asked an open ended survey question on, like, what other groups are you a part of that, like, meets up regularly in person and going through that I thought was very interesting. Like, it was like, what do humans do for fun? Like, what do we enjoy doing? So a lot of them were around creative expression. There was stuff around exercise, around, like, exercise, creative expression. There was like, intellectual interests and like, learning about stuff. There was, like, wearing costumes was common and like, role playing, playing games. And BDSM incorporates like, a lot of those different things so you could be creative. There are, like, game playing, there's costumes involved. Right. But I think it was interesting to think about, like, what is it that, like, what fulfills human beings? Like, what are we doing in our free time? And how could we try to code it and code it into different categories and stuff. So BDSM provides a lot of those things, but there's a ton of other communities that just BDSM practitioners are a part of, but that anyone could be a part of that provides a lot of community as well. I think BDSM does a particularly good job of packaging together.
- [20:42]
Michael Johnston
A lot of.
- [20:42]
Ariel Kuperberg
Different things that make people happy.
- [20:45]
Michael Johnston
Well, that question even alone humanizes the BDSM practitioner as being more than just a BDSM practitioner or some sex toy object, but instead actually being a person, being a human being who has interests that span well beyond sexual intercourse or any other sex related or sex adjacent experience that might come with bdsm, like role play or. Or cosplay and so on and so forth. And the reason that I bring that up is because it's because the happiness that is created from that. Even though I think that there might be less of an orgasm gap between two parties who participate in BDSM just by the general amount of conversation that must take place between two parties, just as they find out that the orgasm gap reduces among two people who are married as compared to two people who are just hooking up. And women most often being the ones who are least likely to have an orgasm outside of a marital relationship or outside of this bdsm. I think that the happiness is well beyond just having an orgasm. I think that it is having a genuinely good time with one another and being able to express oneself without judgment.
- [22:00]
Alicia M. Walker
Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. I think that's a huge piece of it. Having these connections where you can fully be the person that you are. And you can be even. Even getting to a place where you can be honest with yourself. A lot of the interviews talked about that. That finding BDSM was. Was sort of like the final moment on this journey of figuring out, like, who am I really? What is it that I actually want? And, you know, sometimes it's hard for us to be honest about what we want. If society has said that what we want is not normal or good or.
- [22:35]
Michael Johnston
Okay or even if what we don't want is abnormal. Like, yeah, well, I don't want that. Well, everybody else wants it. Why don't you want it? Well, absolutely.
- [22:44]
Alicia M. Walker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [22:46]
Ariel Kuperberg
I think you see that in the growingly visible asexual community too, of people saying, like, I don't want to have sex. That's also okay. It's not a disorder. Right.
- [22:56]
Michael Johnston
Well, and fulfillment that comes in ways other than, like, sex. Like, that's just one aspect. And one of the things that I talk about in all of my sociology classes is the stuff we're studying isn't that complicated. Just willing to move beyond one's own personal Eurocentric or whatever viewpoint and taking on a different perspective. It is complex and it is going to require you to think in a different way that you're used to and make you feel a bit uncomfortable. But if you're willing to open up your mind and take risks, then you can learn from this sociological lens that we'll be using in all of the classes I teach.
- [23:31]
Alicia M. Walker
Yeah, absolutely. And there were people in our participant pool who were very clear that BDSM actually wasn't even about sex. For them, it was for the majority, but not, not for all.
- [23:43]
Michael Johnston
So this, this topic, first off, was one that you must have, well, at least. At least approached it with some sense of caution because of the taboo and the stigma that is often associated with the. With the population that is being studied, and to approach it with caution, not only for your own personal reasons and to protect yourself and your families, but also to protect the participants who are coming into this study and making themselves vulnerable. Also, books about BDSM can attract both curiosity and controversy. So how have you experienced audiences outside of academia responding so far? And what are some of the misunderstandings about your work or about BDSM that you hope to correct through this book? So I guess to start off with is how have people responded so far?
- [24:37]
Ariel Kuperberg
I've had a lot of people tell me they're into bdsm, like, way more than you would think. So, like, when you talk about non academic audiences, especially, like, that's the number one reaction I've gotten is people coming up to me to be like, I heard you wrote a book about bdsn. Did you know? Like, actually just this past weekend, two of my friends came up to me at a, like, I went to a music show, and two people who I like sort of know but were not super close came up to me to be like, Oh, I heard you just published this book about BDSM. Like, me and my late husband were in a 247 BDSM relationship, and, like, I was like, cool. So, yeah, I think it's. It's the fun part of a sex researcher is you hear all the secrets. The sex secret. Sometimes I'm like, I don't want to hear that from my colleagues or whatever at work, but from all my regular friends. I think it's also. It's still taboo. Like, my parents were like, we're not telling our friends if we wrote this book. Like, literally. They said, yeah, but I think we've gotten a pretty positive response.
- [25:43]
Alicia M. Walker
I would say I've gotten a marriage proposal, which I turned down. And I got an offer to fly to Scotland to dom someone, which I also turned down, though I would like to go to Scotland. So, yeah, maybe I should think about that one a little more. No one has come forward to say, like, hey, I do bdsm. But that's probably because I think everyone I know who does it had already told me, like, years ago that they do. Like, as soon as people found out, like, oh, you're gonna study sexual topics, people just kind of came out of the woodwork with, like, oh, by the way, here's this, like, huge secret about me, which, you know, whatever. I do think a big. A big stigma around doing sexuality research is people make a lot of assumptions about you. People assume that you're, you know, swinging from the chandeliers. And. And I always say, you know, if I studied crime, would you think that I was cutting people up in my garage on the weekends? So, like, why do you make this, like, assumption? Because I'm studying sex. I don't really, like, understand it. And people often just don't take your work very seriously. I've had people laugh at what I'm doing or just say, like, well, you know, this is not real work because your work is fun. And that's really frustrating because the work we do is really important. Sexual health is health. It's part of wellness. It's an important part of the human experience. And so the work that we do really does matter. It is important. So that's frustrating. I think that's the most frustrating thing for me is just having people not take what we do seriously. And I think that it is serious, and I definitely approach it in a very serious way. And this particular population was concerned. I wasn't sure if people would talk to us because we're not part of the community. So that was a little Concern for me, it was fine, though. People were fine talking to us. So that was good. And I was a little worried. I was a little worried about the controversy. You know, I have had a previous experience where I. I studied something that I naively did not think was going to be very controversial. And it. It created a lot of problems for me, so I was a little anxious. But it's. It's so far been fine.
- [28:15]
Ariel Kuperberg
It's.
- [28:15]
Alicia M. Walker
It's been positive. I think Ariel's taking the brunt of it with everybody coming to share their B stories with her. But, you know, hey, I spent all those time listening to people's BG stories in the interview, so, you know, it's only fair.
- [28:32]
Ariel Kuperberg
I was just gonna say I moved last year, so a lot of my friends are kind of new, and most of them didn't even know I studied sex or didn't know what I did for a living. So I think they found out I studied sex through publishing this book. So that's probably why I'm getting so many people coming out to me. But I've also. I had my. When I finished my dissertation defense, my dissertation chair sat me down, like, literally in the same room and was like, okay, what are you doing next? Like, what are your next projects? And I was like, I think I'm going to work on this college hookup project, which ended up. I've published probably, like, seven articles on college hookups at this point. And he was like, don't study that. He's like, people aren't going to take you seriously. The data set isn't nationally representative. You should study more serious topics. And I think within academia, that is an attitude that you're going to encounter. When I first started studying sexuality, there were barely any sociologists studying sexuality at the time. There was, like, some older Foucault kind of stuff, like, you know, the history of sexuality from the 70s and a lot of stuff on sexual orientation, but on actual sex. When I was first starting out, I feel like it was more the realm of psychologists or, like, public health people. And one thing that's been nice in, like, the past 20 years of my career is seeing, like, sexuality has become of really important. ASA just launched a sexuality journal, which is really cool. So I think sociologists are, like, moving into that realm a lot more.
- [30:08]
Michael Johnston
Well, and I think of it as, like, you know, to some degree, dark tourism. It could be considered dark tourism or something like that, where it's in the hidden realms and it's in the crooks and crevices of Society, you know, in between the. In between the cushion seats, like things you have to dig for, like coins and things like that. But. And I think we are in the United States, at least very, very vanilla when it comes to sex. I've watched Latin television from the United States because you can do that now. And some of the sexual behavior that takes place on there is much more open and accessible than what we see on US Television. So I think if we can open up those conversations. And I almost thought of, like, Ariel, when you were talking about all these people coming open to you and telling you about their experiences, almost as if it was like Gunny sacking, as if they're suppressing all of this behavior, and all of a sudden they saw permission to come. Come clean to you and to come out to you.
- [31:11]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah, yeah. And I think there's, like. I think something we kind of wrote about in the book is there's this, like, catharsis and like. Like, part of happiness is also being able to tell people about, like, the things that make you happy. Right. And if you're. The things that make you happy are so taboo, that's like another layer of secrecy, which I think makes it, like, even more relieving to be able to tell other people about that. Finding people who are, like, not going to judge you.
- [31:41]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. So maybe this is a good transition to BDSM more broadly. Hoping to correct some of the misunderstandings by making it more open and accessible to tell people about bdsm, maybe through a safe space like the book that people are reading, instead of directly coming from the raw data, from the actual people having to sit around and talk about experiences and making themselves vulnerable to victimization. A safe read of others. Be exploring and understanding BDSM not for the sake of bdsm, but for how the opportunity that it provides to people to build a happier lifestyle and see them as more than just BDSM participants. But, you know, as. As I say in sociology, learning how to appreciate what they do, not becoming a participant, but at least taking in the consideration and an appreciation for what others might do, that even if you don't find it as being something that oneself wants to participate in.
- [32:45]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah. And I think when studying a highly stigmatized community, it's part of our responsibility to make sure we don't reproduce the stigma in our own research too, and make sure we treat our interviews and survey respondents with respect. And. Yeah, I think we did a pretty okay job.
- [33:03]
Michael Johnston
Well, I like the accessibility of this book. One of the things that. That stands out about it is just that it's easy to read, and it's going to be something that I think a general audience will be able to read, take it in, and not have to be an expert in sociology or the social sciences to be able to understand what is being said. So I appreciate that. Thank you.
- [33:26]
Ariel Kuperberg
Yeah, thanks. I think that was our intent, but we still have some sociology hidden in there. Like, you might learn about hegemonic masculinity or something, but explain for a general audience.
- [33:39]
Michael Johnston
So while I'm out of questions for you today, there is another question that pertains to this, but maybe not, I guess, and that is, what are you working on these days, Ariel? What have you been working on?
- [33:56]
Ariel Kuperberg
I think so. I've been working on a few things, some with Alicia. We're working on a sexualities textbook. We're also starting up a project on polyamory relationships. And apart from that, I'm writing a couple of books on student loans, which is my completely other area of research. Although a lot of people made jokes about torture or something like what connects BDSM and student loans. But, yeah, my other major line of research is looking at student loans and the impact on young adults. And I'm also part of a team collecting, I mentioned earlier, a hookup data set. So I'm part of a team of a few different researchers collecting a big data set. We're up to over 13,000 college students at, I believe, 45 different colleges. And we have a few projects like, I'm working right now on a couple of projects related to things like how abortion laws did not actually affect behavior. I thought it was going to be about how abortion laws affected behavior, but it turns out to be they did not really affect behavior, sexual behavior and male victims of sexual assault. So that's all the different things I have going on. I know Alicia is working on some other stuff, too.
- [35:19]
Alicia M. Walker
I'm writing the first of what I think will be two books, books on highly sexual women, which is something I've been gathering data on for a really long time and just finished gathering a little more data this past summer. Excuse me. So I'm working on that right now. And I think Ariel just said we're writing a sociology of sexuality textbook. So that's taken up a lot of my time. And yeah, we just. I collected a bunch of data on open relationships and people in polyamory. So that'll probably be our next book together. And I feel like there's more. Oh, well, we're. We're working on some. Some BDSM articles because that data set is so large. There's something else, but, gosh, I'm drawing a blank. That's enough, Shirley. Right.
- [36:11]
Michael Johnston
There's only so many hours in a day and so many days in a year. So as. As another scholar once said, if you write about an hour a day and, you know, within a year, you'll have a book. Wr. So. Yes, but. Excellent. Well, these are. Well, you've got me busy for a couple of years then, with all of the books that you're writing and projects that you have on. So please let me know once you've gone to press and once you have a release date out for those books, and I'll definitely be sure to have you on the show.
- [36:45]
Alicia M. Walker
Absolutely.
- [36:47]
Michael Johnston
Well, thank you again for listening to new books on Sociology Channel on the New Books Network. And thank you, Alicia and Ariel, for coming to talk about Bound by bdsm, Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life.
- [37:04]
Alicia M. Walker
Thanks for having us.
- [37:05]
Michael Johnston
All right, have a great day, everyone.