欧普拉是美国的脱口秀主持人。从采访记者到政客等诸多人士无不在争相效仿她的风格，但却没人能够企及她的声望与收入。她所主持的《欧普拉。温弗瑞脱口秀》及其专题节目《Oprah Winfrey Prime Time》在全世界132个国家播出。才华与商业头脑兼备使他她很快成为美国第一位黑人亿万富翁。她的节目曾获得过30多项艾美奖，以及无数的其它成就奖项。她还是一位出色的演员和制片人，她是美国最有影响力的人物之一。

欧普拉。温弗瑞于1954年1月29日出生在美国最贫穷的地区之一----密西西比州的科西阿斯科。她的父母是一对未婚青少年，她小时候生活在外婆家的农场里，少年时曾经不幸受到一些亲戚邻居的性虐待。贫穷和不幸遭遇并没有消灭她对知识的渴望和对生活的信心。后来她利用参加选美赢来的奖金进入大学学习，并且凭借自己的天赋和不懈努力进入了广播媒体领域。1986年，她创办了《欧普拉。温弗瑞脱口秀》节目，很快受到观众的欢迎，成为美国脱口秀的领军节目。她的节目内容主要关注个人问题，寻找办法激励，帮助人们拯救自我,她的目标是让电视改变人们的生活，给每一个人，每一个家庭带去快乐和成就感。

Even in a culture in which sex toys are a booming business and Oprah Winfrey discusses living your best life in the bedroom, a coed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm hovers at the extremes.

The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, sees herself as leading "the slow-sex movement," one that places a near-exclusive emphasis on women's pleasure — in which love, romance and even flirtation are not required.

"In our culture, admitting our bodies matter is almost an admission of failure," said Daedone, 41, who can quote the poet Mary Oliver and speak wryly on the intricacies of women's anatomy with equal aplomb. "I don't think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality."

A core of 38 men and women — their average age the late 20s — live full time in the retreat center, a shabby-chic loft building in the South of Market district. They prepare meals together, practice yoga and mindfulness meditation and lead workshops in communication for outside groups as large as 60.

But the heart of the group's activity, listed cryptically on its Web site's calendar as "morning practice," is closed to all but the residents.

At 7 a.m. each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation — "OMing," for short. The couples, who may or may not be romantically involved, call one another "research partners."

A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating "the orgasm that exists between them," in the words of one resident, may sound like the ultimate California satire. But the Bay Area has a lively and venerable history of seekers constructing lives around sexual adventure.

San Francisco is proud of its libertine heritage, as Sean Penn recently demonstrated in "Milk." The search for personal transformation, including through sex, led to the oceanside hot tubs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, cradle of the human potential movement, and in the 1960s, communes flourished in the city, many espousing free love.

One Taste is but the latest stop on this sexual underground, weaving together strands of radical individual freedom, Eastern spirituality and feminism.

"The notion of a San Francisco sex commune focused on female orgasm is part of a long and rich history of women being public and empowered about their sexuality," said Elizabeth Armstrong, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, who has studied San Francisco's sexual subcultures.