Buried Alive – Information for Podcast Guests

Episode Guide & Season Themes

Welcome. If you’ve landed here, it likely means you’re someone who’s done your own inner excavation, and who understands the transformational power of kink, power exchange, or somatic healing. I’m Rachel Tonner, host of Buried Alive, and I’d be honored to explore a conversation with you.

Buried Alive is a podcast and blog that uncovers the intimate ties between BDSM, healing, and self-discovery. We explore how kink, power exchange, and nontraditional relationships can be transformative—breaking through shame, stigma, and expectation. With expert interviews and raw personal stories, we navigate the depths of pleasure, pain, and growth, exploring how sometimes, the filthiest paths lead to the purest freedom.

The podcast and blog audience is people with mid to advanced levels of interest and/or experience in BDSM, Professionals interested in or practicing kink-positive work.

This podcast isn’t about shock value or sensationalism. It’s about intimacy, integrity, and the courageous ways we transmute pain into power.

Below you’ll find the planned episode themes across six seasons — each one an invitation to speak from your lived experience, professional insights, or both.

Season 1 – Conversations with Therapists

Exploring the fertile overlap of clinical work and kink.

This season centers conversations with therapists, coaches, and mental health professionals who understand the healing potential of kink and BDSM.

  1. Personal Growth Through Power Exchange and Lessons from a Therapist and Pro Domme

  2. The Drama Triangle and Power Play: Are We Healing or Repeating Patterns?

  3. Enneagram and Kink: Obliteration, Objectification, and the Sexual Instinct

  4. Rewiring Shame and Trauma: How Kink Can Challenge Deep-Seated Beliefs

  5. Exploring Body-Based Healing Through BDSM and Sensual Work

Season 2 – Consensual Taboo

Desire, fear, and the edge between the two.

This season focuses on high-risk or socially stigmatized fantasies — age play, CNC, taboo roleplay — and how these can be approached with care and intention.

  1. Roleplay and Rewriting Trauma: Is Taboo Play Healing or Re-Traumatizing?

  2. Lolita's Revenge: Using Age Play and Regression as Healing

  3. What Makes Something ‘Too Much’? Navigating Your Own Taboo Limits

  4. Rough Sex, CNC, and the Thrill of the ‘Dangerous’

  5. Breath, Blood, and the Appeal of Flirting with Death

Season 3 – Power Exchange and Shadow Work

Looking at the parts of us that want, need, and dominate — and making peace with them.

We’ll talk about ego, archetypes, inner work, and how power exchange can surface the deeper truths we live by.

  1. Shadow Work in the Dungeon and Integrating the Darkest Parts of Ourselves

  2. The Submissive’s Journey: How Giving Up Control Can Lead to Personal Growth

  3. The Ego and the Whip: Why Dominance Requires Self-Work

  4. The Beauty and Challenges of a Full-Time D/s Relationship

  5. Healing After a Toxic Power Exchange Relationship

Season 4 – Masochism and Sadism

Unpacking the emotional intelligence of hurt and healing.

This is for those who engage with pain on purpose — physically, emotionally, and erotically.

  1. Pain as Pleasure: Why We Crave the Sting

  2. Sadism as Care and How Hurting Can Be Healing For Both

  3. Beyond the Dungeon: How Masochism and Sadism Shape Everyday Life

  4. Does Hurting Someone Mean You’re Bad? The Psychology of Ethical Sadism

  5. More Than Just Pain: The Emotional Landscape of Sadomasochism

Season 5 – Dehumanization

Losing the self, and sometimes finding something sacred in what’s left.

This season explores objectification, slavery dynamics, ego death, and the eroticism of being used.

  1. The Erotic Power of Being Used and Objectification as a Fetish

  2. Losing Myself: When Kink Becomes a Path to Ego Death

  3. The Slave’s Identity: Who Are You When You Own Nothing?

  4. Silent, Still, and Owned: The Mental Space of an Object

  5. Part-Time Slavery and the Art of Duality

Season 6 – Switches and Swaps

Fluidity as a form of power and transformation.

These episodes are for the switchy souls — people who’ve played both roles, or who refuse to be pinned down.

  1. Why Some People Love Both Dominance and Submission

  2. How Your Role Can Change Over Time in Kink

  3. What We Learn by Walking in the Other’s Shoes

  4. Psychological Challenges in Switching and How to Overcome

  5. The Psychological Benefits of Playing Both Sides

*Please note*
I may publish the episodes “out of order,” as finding the right guest for each topic is more important to me than sticking to the plan.

Thinking of joining me as a guest?

You don’t need to be “an expert” in the traditional sense. I talk to therapists, yes — but also submissives, dominants, switches, masochists, and kink community members who are willing to share their stories with vulnerability and depth. If you have lived experience or professional insight into these themes and feel called to share… I’d love to talk.

🔸 Episodes can be anonymous or not. Real names, Fetlife profile names are fine, or an alias.

🔸 Podcast can promote 1-2 items you're interested in sharing, such as your website. However, please keep promotion to a bare minimum during the episode.

🔸 Transcripts may be used to create other material such as blogs, but you will not be direct quoted unless approved.

🔸 Episodes can be audio-only or video-audio. Video may be used for promotion, with your consent.

🔸 Podcast episodes are recorded via Riverside.

🔸 A audio or video consent form is required before recording.

Reach out to me via the contact form below. Let’s make something honest, healing, and a little bit filthy — together.

With love and curiosity,
Rachel

Contact me about being on the podcast