For more than two decades, Dan Savage has doled out honest, provocative and informative sex advice — with a heavy dose with humour — in his internationally syndicated advice column Savage Love.

For his latest initiative, Savage has taken to a new medium — television — to deliver his trademark no-holds barred sex advice.

Savage U, which premiered on MTV this month, sees the columnist and It Gets Better campaign co-creator answer anonymously submitted questions about sex in front of auditoriums packed with college students.

Touring to schools isn't something new for Savage, but creating something akin to a televised version of his advice column made sense, he said.

"When you see sex portrayed on television, what you often see are people taking large risks, being impulsive in kind of a thoughtless or consequence-free parallel universe," Savage told Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC's Q cultural affairs show.

"But when people give sex advice, the advice is always 'If there’s any risk at all, if there's any danger, you shouldn't do this...' That's in conflict with how sex is portrayed [on TV]."

Savage U is an attempt to bridge those divergent messages for young people, he said.

"You can go for it, you can be impulsive, you can have fun. You can have casual sex. But, you have to do with thought given to the negative outcomes, the consequences, the risks, and mitigate those risks thoughtfully and with some intentionality."

Savage talked to Q about his reputation as the "voice of reason" for sex advice for young adults, advising his own son on sexual matters and why he chooses to weigh in on political debates.