LOS ANGELES -- Richard wonders if his girlfriend's breast milk is an aphrodisiac. John is attracted to his father's sexy new wife. Roxy is pregnant by ''the man of my dreams" -- her second cousin.

And so it goes on MTV's Loveline, the television version of the popular syndicated radio show where Drew Pinsky, a practicing physician and addiction specialist, and comedian Adam Carolla field calls from twentysomethings anxious about affairs of the heart ... and regions below.

Add to the equation trendy celebrity guests such as Tori Amos, David Arquette and bands like Jamiroquai on a show taped in a studio set of plush couches and you have Sex Ed that's hip, very hip.

Each night, Pinsky and Carolla impart love-life and sex advice to telephone callers, people in the studio audience and partyers at bars and other remote locations.

The calls, many of which predictably focus on breast and penis size, can be explicit and have earned the show a TV-14 rating.

Pinsky, known as Dr. Drew, fields them with a strong-jaw seriousness, and serves as the straight man to Carolla, the wisecracking, acerbic Neanderthal who favors bizarre analogies and mixed metaphors.

Carolla says, for instance, their advice must be palatable to teen-agers, just as a dog's medicine pill must be wrapped in hamburger. "I'm the burger," says Carolla.

Although sometimes callers are reduced to giggles by their questions, the vast majority seem sincere, and many even come across distraught and frightened.

Tatiana, a 19-year-old from Los Angeles, calls to ask how to tell her current boyfriend that she's pregnant from her previous boyfriend.

"You have to tell him," Pinsky says. "You're as sick as your secrets, the saying goes, and you're only as healthy as you can be honest. And if you're not honest in your relationship, you're not in a relationship."

Such straightforward advice, combined with Pinsky's gentle demeanor, have made the doctor something of an accidental heartthrob and women's advocate.

The bespectacled and slightly graying doctor conceived the show 14 years ago as a med student as a way to help teen-agers and young adults deal with the vagaries of their burgeoning sexuality.

Pinsky says the purpose of the show is not to appeal to prurient interests but to raise issues that are "germane to the human experience."

"We don't go and talk about transvestites so we can go, 'Oh transvestites!' We go there so you can talk about what's underneath that and the trauma and the tragedy that lie underneath these things," Pinsky says.

"It's not being dealt with real-ly," says the 38-year-old doctor, "because the reality is the human experience and the suffering underneath this is profound."

"But, that being said, you got to sneak in a laugh or two," adds Carolla, 33.

Chip Rowe, the Playboy Advisor whose column could be considered a printed equivalent to Loveline, agrees that sex education must be delivered with a healthy dose of humor.

"I think that's completely and totally the way that sex should be approached and discussed in America," says Rowe. "Especially where we're all so Puritanical and schizophrenic about sex."