Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Chris McKinlay is a good-looking, smart student at UCLA, but he can't seem to get a girlfriend. He's a computing expert, so why not use his technology prowess to supercharge his search for a soulmate? He starts building an army of bots and unleashes them into the world of online dating. Chris' search for love leads him to some unexpected places, and it might be teaching us all the wrong lessons about love.  See the show notes at timharford.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives fear off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The other side of change pairs singular real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something that we're not something

to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be. I'm thrilled to share that booklist gave the Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, it's impossible not to be moved. The other side of change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books. Pushkin. Chris McKinley popped open a second window on his desktop computer and checked for messages from OKCupid. Oh dear, oh dear. Yet again, his favourite online dating website was offering tumbleweed.

That didn't seem right. Chris was a catch. He was smart. A degree in Chinese, a master's in mathematics, and he was nearly through a PhD in data science, which was why he was sitting in front of a computer screen in a cramped cubicle and a doctor.

deserted open plan office at UCLA's Mathematics Sciences building at 3 o'clock in the morning. He was handsome, blue eyes, six feet tall, slim, rugged good looks, and tousled hair. He was interesting. He liked art, loved music, had even spent a few years making a living as a professional blackjack player. But now, June 2012, he was interested. his early 30s, about to complete a highly marketable PhD, and Chris was ready to settle down and commit to a serious relationship. He was lovable, he knew computers, so why couldn't the computer find him love? With a sigh, Chris shut the OK-Cupid window and switched off the computer. Then he switched off the desk lamp too, letting darkness or...

wash over the fifth floor of the UCLA building. Just as he did every night, he rolled out his foam sleeping mat under his desk, stretched himself out, and waited for sleep to come. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. The cover of Science and Invention Magazine, 1924, shows what is at first glance, nothing more than a cliched clinch between a loving couple. He, tall, muscular, clean cut with a striped tie, blue waistcoat and crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled above the elbow. She, rosy cheeks, dark hair in a flapper cut, red jacket and fashionable red cap, wrapped in his strong arms

and gazing helplessly up at his chiseled features. And then you notice the equipment. A wristband, arm band, vacuum pumps and hoses, spool after spool of ticker tape, glass tubes, little brass engines, the works, all somehow attached to our dashing hero, presumably to see what exactly her adoring gaze and soft embrace is doing to his vital signs. Goodness me, the promise that the latest technology will find you love, is not a new one. Perhaps that's no surprise. Looking for love can be frightening, disheartening, even torturous. So of course there's no shortage of people

promising that they can make the course of true love run smooth. But can they? Let's find out what else Science and Invention Magazine 1924 has to offer us. The magazine's publisher, Hugo Guernsback, has written a feature article arguing that it's vital to put science to work, helping improve the quality of marital matches. He describes four tests of compatibility.

The first one uses the equipment depicted on the cover. Gernsback describes his and hers electrodes to allow an electrical schvigmograph to record their pulses. A chest-mounted chain measures breathing, Gernsback explains. Around the chest of each is a chain which is secured to a piece of spring covered by a rubber hose. One end of the tube thus formed is sealed. The other connects to a manometer and also to a tambour equipped with a stylus. The stylus leaves a record on a moving paper tape showing the rate of respiration.

It's like a seismograph for the earthquake that is love. Because surely there can be no better evidence of physical attraction and the quickening of a pulse and the heaving of a bosom. And, Goern's back contends, the single most important element for a successful marriage is physical attraction. Okay, what else? There's the sympathy test. This uses the same equipment as the physical attraction test,

but instead of canoodling with her bow, the lady watches him go through an unpleasant experience, such as having blood draw. Again, if she becomes excited, short of breath, tense muscles, then she's sympathetic to him. And this is a sign of a good match. The positions should then be reversed, of course, to check that when she is in discomfort, he is sufficiently sympathetic too. It gets better.

Let's talk about the body odour test. One of the prospective couple is placed into an enormous. glass capsule with a hose emerging from it. The other person, still attached to the electrical schvigmograph and the other paraphernalia to monitor their physical response, takes the attachment at the end of the hose, places it over their nose, and takes a big sniff. Maybe they catch a whiff of armpit or bad breath. More likely, there's nothing to smell but damp rubber hose.

No matter. If the aroma doesn't provoke an adverse physical reaction, that is supposed to be a good sign. Gernsback opines that in all probability, more marriages are destroyed by body odours than any other reason. And who can prove him wrong? The last scientific test is simplicity itself. While a couple's vital signs are being recorded,

one of the experimental team walks into the room and fires a gun into the air. If only one of the couple shows physiological symptoms of being startled or upset, that's fine. But if both of them panic, that's a bad result. Someone has to keep cool in a stressful situation, Gernsback explains. So far, so ridiculous.

But Gernsback's explanation for all this nonsense seems strikingly contemporary. How much would the average man or woman give to know beforehand if his or her prospective married life is to be success or failure? asks Gernsback, who was, at the time, three years into his second of three marriages. At present, marriage is a lottery. It seems impossible to predict beforehand how your prospective mate will turn out in the future. These days we might speak of relationships rather than marriages, but the promise is familiar.

Through the miracle of the latest technology, the labyrinth of love can be easily navigated. And there's a clue in the way he phrases the matter. How much would the average man or woman give to know? Or to put it another way, how much could we charge to tell them? Goernsback adds Through certain fundamentals which can easily be ascertained one can be reasonably certain

as to one's choice. There are certain basic tests which can be made today and which will give one a reasonable assurance of married happiness. You won't find many takers today for watching your partner having blood taken

or putting them in a capsule to harvest their body odour or for checking their reaction to having a gun go off without warning. These century-old tests seem ridiculous. But will future generations look back at today's multi-billion dollar business of online dating and conclude that the joke is on us?

There are two million women in Los Angeles. And most of them didn't know that Chris McKinley relied on the UCLA gym for its shower facilities and slept in a cubicle. So why couldn't he get a girlfriend? McKinley found that OKCupid was only suggesting a match once every few days, and that just wasn't a deep enough pool of people to have much success.

He'd look at the new matches profile and think, maybe not for me. Or sometimes a girl would come along and he'd think, she's perfect. But then, Chris explained, there's these many kind of emotional cycles of like, you know, hope and disappointment. Like thinking, oh wow, this person seems really cool. And then, of course, you know, you write them, and they don't write you back.

We do know, Chris. We do know. But Chris was a computer guy. And as a man who once made money counting cards at the blackjack tables of Vegas, he was perfectly comfortable with looking for a little edge. And so, he decided to hack OKCupid. Step 1. Figure out why the site wasn't delivering many matches. That meant he'd have to reverse engineer the algorithm,

figure out what variables it was using to make its recommendations. This wasn't easy. OKCupid made its matching recommendations on the basis of how people had answered various questions about themselves and their preferences. But there were hundreds of questions, maybe thousands of questions. Anything from, do you like the taste of beer, to how important is religion or God in your life? As well as an answer, people would also record what answers they'd find acceptable from a mate,

and how important the question was on a one to five scale. Most people only answered a few of these questions, but Chris wanted to master OKCupid, so he had to figure out which were the most important questions and which were the most popular answers. And OKCupid wasn't saying. Except there was a little quirk on the site. If your questions and your answers were a perfect match for someone,

you'd be shown their profile when you logged in. So all Chris had to do was create thousands and thousands of different profiles, each with different answers, each revealing a different woman's profile. Then look at each of them and try to figure out what sort of women seem to answer what sort of questions. Put like that, it sounds impossible, unless you're relaxed about bending the rules and are in the final months of a PhD in computer science. Chris created an army of box, programmed them to simulate the clicking and typing behavior of humans that wouldn't get banned, and sent them into battle.

Cautionary tales will be back after the break. Women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers,

all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the, the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting

can help your business. Think Iheart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives fear off course, feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The other side of change pairs singular real-life stories with scientific insights to help

us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be. I'm thrilled to share that book list gave the other side of change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, it's impossible not to be moved. The other side of change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books. Nearly half a century after the event, Dan Slater received a package from his father. It contained a stack of old letters and postcards from 1966. written by his mother at Mount Holyoke College to his father at Harvard University.

Dan had never asked his parents how they'd met. The letters revealed the secret. In one note, his mother wrote, Thank you, you old, mathematically minded, can't mind your own business, mass production, postcard instigating work of art in stainless steel computer. Thank you. Who writes a thank-you note to a computer? Then sends it to her boyfriend.

Further down the pile was a questionnaire. Contact, personality preference inventory. Dan called his father to ask what on earth he was looking at. His father was slightly puzzled. Your mother and I met through a computer dating service. These days they're all over the internet. They certainly are. But such dating services are older than you might think.

Mr. and Mrs. Slater were indeed introduced in 1966 by an IBM supercomputer on the basis of their answers to questionnaires. And something must have gone well because otherwise Dan Slater wouldn't exist. In the mid-1960s, some young Harvard students found themselves, drinking and keeping each other company on a Saturday night, having failed to persuade any women to spend the evening with them. The dating scene was tough, they agreed. There were two ways to meet girls, blind dates or parties. But blind dates were a lottery, and parties were awkward.

The friends agreed there had to be a better way to get a date, and so they set up an impressive sounding organisation. Compatibility Research, Inc. How much, Hugo Gernsback had asked back in 1924, would people give to know whether they were compatible? Compatibility Research Inc. charged $3. About $30 in today's terms. Hopeful singles would then fill out a questionnaire.

There were simple numerical questions. age, height, grade point average, this was Harvard after all, there were less quantifiable queries. Do you believe in a God who answers prayer? Is extensive sexual activity in preparation for marriage part of growing up? There were even little scenarios with multiple choice responses. If you were set up with a blind date for a dance, but the person was, quote, embarrassingly unattractive,

would you, one, suggest a movie instead, two, move in on your roommate's date, three, go through with a date, but make excuses and leave early, or four, be very friendly at the risk of being backed into a second date. What exactly the computer was supposed to make of all this is unclear, But the founders of Compatibility Research, Inc., were clearly having fun. The answers would be converted into a punch card, and the all-knowing computer,

an IBM mainframe the size of a bus, would do the rest. If you think that all sounds a bit like OKCupid, you might be right. OKCupid, which was founded in 2004, also by Harvard students, also promised to use questionnaires to find the perfectly compatible couple. You can see why people found this plausible. One of Compatibility Inc's founders later recalled that the computer just gave the whole exercise a sense of scientific legitimacy. But the truth was much simpler.

Jeff Tar, one of the founders, admitted much later, The first thing we did was to make sure they were in the same area. Mostly girls wanted to go out with boys who were the same age or older, their height or taller, the same religion. So after we had these cuts, then we just kind of randomly matched them. That's it. So much for compatibility research. The IBM computer did what computers do very easily,

found a match for zip code, religion, age and height. Further sorting was usually unnecessary, and the implication of Jeff Tar's account is that most of the questions were there purely for effect. According to Dan Slater's book, Love in the Time of Algorithms, the founders of compatibility research were planning to take first pick of the ladies who signed up. OKCupid had many more customers and many more questions to work with, than compatibility research, but it's not clear that their matching algorithm

really worked any better. In the summer of 2014, OKCupid published the results of a few experiments that had been running on the site's users. One of these experiments deployed a kind of placebo-matching algorithm. Users were told that they were 90% compatible, whatever that means. Even though the computer estimated they were barely compatible,

at all. Others were told the same story about their high level of compatibility, except that the computer actually believed it. The result of the experiment? What the computer actually thought didn't matter much. What mattered was that users were told they were a good match. That assurance was perfectly effective at promoting an extended online chat. Compatibility was a placebo. believing that you were compatible was extremely helpful. Actual compatibility, according to the algorithm, didn't add much extra. Did computer dating via punch cards work? Sure, up to a point, Dan Slater exists.

After all, a computer dating service succeeded in introducing his parents to each other in the 1960s, and they succeeded in getting married and producing Dan. Then again, Dan's parents divorced when he was three years old. So if you're going to give the old mathematically-minded, can't-mind-your-own-business, mass-production, postcard, instigating work of art in stainless steel computer, a grade, it's hard to go much higher than a B-minus. Back in the 21st century,

computer whiz and former card counter, Chris McKinley, had many more potential dates, a much more powerful algorithm to work with and an army of dating bots on his side. Surely he couldn't fail. McKinley's bots harvested data on 6 million answers from 20,000 women. Then he deployed a machine learning algorithm

called K-modes, designed to group data into clusters. Kevin Poulson, who wrote about McKinley, for Wired Magazine, described the algorithm as clumping data like the coloured wax in a lava lamp. With fine-tuning, he could adjust the viscosity of the results, thinning it into a slick or coagulating it into a single glob. Soon enough, McKinley had identified some potential globs. There were seven distinct types of women who the computer reckoned had some potential for matching with him. Sifting through each cluster of women, McKinley disagreed.

One group of women were highly religious, not a good match. Another group was full of women who were new to online dating and looking for a fling. Uh-uh. McKinley wanted a soulmate. These women over here were too old. Those women over there were too young. But there were two globs full of women with appealing qualities. One group were professional creatives in their 30s.

They were designers and editors. The other were a little more punk and a little younger, tattooed, musicians, free-spirited. He thought it'd take a chance on both. But Chris had barely begun to solve his problem, because now he had to design the perfect profile, or actually two different perfect profiles, one for each cluster. His dream was that when one of those women logged on, no matter what exactly she searched for,

or how exactly she answered the questions, the computer would have a single top recommendation. Have you considered a date with Chris McKinley? Of course, Chris had exactly the data he needed to construct his Adonis profile, and he gave himself a little extra help. OKCupid members get a notification when someone views their profile page. So Chris simply programmed another bot to patiently visit every woman who matched.

On Monday, the bot would swing past 1,041-year-olds. On Tuesday, it would visit 1,040-year-olds. Two weeks later, it would get to the 27-year-olds, and then it would begin the cycle again. But would all this really work? His PhD had taken a back seat while he deployed all his computational chops to the problem of getting a girlfriend.

Was he just fooling himself? Feeling slightly silly, Chris loaded up his superhero profiles, let his bot off the leash, unrolled his sleeping mat, and went to sleep. And he woke up, he recalls. That's the point at which events started to take their own course.

And I think I stopped really being in control of this. Chris found himself drowning in flirtatious messages. I haven't until now come across anyone with such winning numbers, writes one woman. Also, something about a rugged man who's really good, With numbers, I thought I'd say hi. All of these messages came from exactly the kind of woman Chris had already decided he was keen to meet. His hero profiles were a 99% match with dozens and dozens of local women

and 90% compatible with more than 10,000 of his fellow Los Angelinos. Every few minutes a new message came in. I wasn't really prepared to sort through all the kind of human consequences, he recalled. And again, carpe diem, man. Cautionary tales will return after a break. Median women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large. is the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship,

the loss of a job. As our lives fear off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The other side of change pairs singular real-life stories

with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be. I'm thrilled to share that book list gave the Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews saying, It's impossible not to be moved. The other side of change is out now.

Get your copy today wherever you like to buy books. Here is a puzzle. Sex between consenting adults has never been less taboo, and yet somehow people are having less than less. less sex. Americans are having their first sexual experiences later than they used to. Millennials born in the 1990s were much less likely to have had any sexual partners between their 18th birthday and their early 20s than were Gen Xers born in the 1960s. And American adults in general were having sex nine fewer times per year in the early 2010s than the late

1990s, partly for the very obvious reason that people had become less likely to have a long-term sexual partner. Let's allow that to sink in for a moment. We're in a sex recession, partly because people are just less likely to have a spouse or a steady girlfriend or boyfriend. And yet, the most powerful dating technologies ever designed are sitting in our pockets. What is going on? No doubt there are many factors that help to explain the sex recession. But let's focus on one. Maybe these dating apps just aren't very good?

Tinder has been losing users, but as Valentine's Day 2026 approaches, it's still much the most popular dating app. And maybe Tinder in 2026 feels, a bit like Chris McKinley after hacking OKCupid in 2012. There's just no end to the number of possible matches, which should help, right? Maybe not.

About 25 years ago, the psychologist Daniel Gilbert and Jane Ebert conducted an experiment that seems to be about photography, but actually points at a deep contradiction between what lovelorn singles want and what online dating companies give them. Gilbert and Ebert recruited Harvard students for a photography course, pretending to be conducting a study of teaching methods.

The students were given hours of training and an analogue camera and told to make a dozen photographs that meaningfully captured their time at Harvard. Then they spent supervised time in the dark room making a contact sheet and were asked to evaluate each photograph. How much do they like each composition on a scale of one to nine? They made beautiful eight-by-10-inch glossy prints of two of the negatives. Then came the experiment. All the students were told that the teaching project, which had sponsored all this training,

needed to keep one of the prints on file for their records back at headquarters in England. The student could keep the other print as a memento. So which one would they like to keep and which would be shipped to the archive in England? An agonising choice, two handmade prints, labours of love, originally designed to be meaningful, which one would go and which would stay.

Half of the students, chosen at random, were told that the prints they relinquished were going to be mailed out to England that afternoon. The other half were told that the prince wouldn't be sent off for a few days and the experiment who would call them beforehand to double check they didn't want to change their mind. Instinctively, they'd think it would be nice to have the option to switch, or at the very least that it would do no harm. Wrong.

It's much better to have a now or never choice and try to make the best of it. Dan Gilbert summarised the findings this way. People who are stuck with that picture, who have no choice, who can never change their mind, like it a lot. And people who are deliberating. Should I return it? Have I gotten the right one? Maybe this isn't the good one? Maybe I left the good one. Well, says Gilbert. Those people have destroyed their joy by pondering their choices over and over again.

They don't like their picture. The implications of this study for online dating are devastating. Dating apps seem to offer infinite romantic riches, endless scrolling, endless swipes, endless choice, endless opportunities to ghost somebody and dive back into the dating pool. But if Gilbert and Ebert are right, there is no better way to ensure that you're unsatisfied with the romantic prospect in front of you

than to know that another date is only a click away. And one more thing. Hugo Gernsbach rhetorically asked, how much would people give to know that they were compatible? He had it backwards. This is a monthly subscription we're talking about. People don't pay to find the love of their life. They pay to keep looking.

If they succeed, that's when the subscription revenues drive. up. Thankfully for the dating companies, success doesn't seem to be all that likely. Chris McKinley took a shower in the UCLA gym and drove across town for date number one. Lunch with Sheila. He was scared. Lunch went nowhere. Neither he nor Sheila were feeling it. His second date was a walk with a blog editor. She was feeling love. She was feeling love. And by the end of the walk, so was Chris. Date three was Alison. She was cool. They met in a bar in Korea town.

He drank too much Korean beer and woke up in his cubicle with a terrible hangover. He messaged her. She didn't write back. Chris didn't not have a good time. He got invited to some crazy parties. He had romantic walks along the canals of the Venice District. But as the dates piled up, Chris started to seek out shortcuts.

No elaborate plans. No concerts or movies. No drinking. Grab lunch or coffee, focus on her and get to know her a bit. Cut it off fast when it's not working. No driving across town. Keep it local. He was exhausted.

And he was also. struggling to keep track. All these girls had been picked by the algorithm from the same cluster. He might meet three or four on a single weekend. Sometimes he'd take two different women to the same place on the same day. It was hard to keep them distinct in his mind. They were all similar, at least superficially. And if all you're doing is getting coffee, then you're never going to get past those surface impressions.

30 first dates passed, 50 first dates, 75. I'm not sure how many of us have managed 75 first dates in our entire lives, I know I haven't, but Chris's cleverness with OKCupid had produced only three second dates, and just one third date. Chris had optimized the heck out of online dating and then out of dating in real life. He'd had quite a ride. But one thing he didn't have was a girlfriend.

The late Daniel Carneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and author of Thinking Fast and Slow, offered many pearls of wisdom in his life. But one that's particularly stuck with me is this. When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution. That may be the reason that algorithmic matching appealed to Chris and appeals to many other people. The question Chris was facing was,

could I be happy with this woman for years? Maybe for the rest of my life? and could she be happy with me? That's a hard question. And it's not a question a computer armed with some questionnaire results could reasonably help with. But here's an easier question.

Do we say we like the same bands and the same books and have similar attitudes to religion and to sex and to beer? A computer can help you with that for sure. And perhaps you won't notice the substitution. Chris was just about ready to shut down the bots and cancel his account.

And then he received a message from Christine Tian Wang. She was an artist and an activist, ambitious, confident, direct. Like him, she was a grad student at UCLA. They met at the campus sculpture garden, then went for sushi. There was a spark right from the start. Chris confessed to his love. hacking. Dark and cynical, thought Christine, I like it. Two weeks later, they both closed their OKCupid accounts. When Wired magazine reported on the story, a year after that first date,

they were able to share the happy news that Chris had proposed and Christine had said yes. A decade after that, the BBC returned to the story. Chris and Christine were still together, still blissfully happy. Love really is a numbers game, quipped the BBC host Hannah Fry. While Wyatt's headline was, How a Math Genius hacked OKCupid to find true love. It seems that we can't quite shake off the idea. that science and technology are going to solve romance for us.

But I'm not sure that's the lesson I draw from this cautionary tale. Before meeting Christine, Chris's brilliant hack had delivered 87 first dates, none of which went anywhere significant, and most of which went nowhere at all. That's an astonishingly low hit rate. If he'd had 87 dates with 87 people randomly chosen from the Los Angeles telephone directory, I'm not sure he could really have done any worse. Ah, but you might say, the 88th date proved that his system worked in the end.

Not at all. According to the algorithm, Christine wasn't in his top 10,000 matches. They only matched because she searched on pretty much the only information he hadn't tweaked. 180 centimetres tall, blue eyes near UCLA. You didn't find me, she says. I found you. The artist, not the maths genius, made the match. Svigmograph be damned.

Maybe romance will always be an art, not a science. If you haven't had enough of amorous accidents to really get you in the Valentine's spirit, there is a whole additional episode over on the Patreon feed for members of our cautionary club, where I tell a collection of the shorter stories I found over the years. Here's a quick clip, and if you want to hear the rest,

just head over to patreon.com slash cautionary club. Enjoy. Nigel Blundell's book, The World's Greatest Mistakes, describes another case from the late 1970s. An airline pilot had a wife in one city and a girlfriend in another.

The girlfriend was ensconced in his flat in London as it happens. We try not to be too judgmental here on cautionary tales, but I am sorry to report that I hold this gentleman in low regard, since after a few months he decided that his mistress was surplus to requirements and he evicted her

giving her a couple of days to move out while he departed on a series of long-distance flights when the CAD returned he found that his girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, was gone and the apartment was spotless there was just one thing out of place the telephone receiver. When he picked it up and placed it to his ear,

he heard only the sound of an American voice endlessly announcing the time. She had dialed the speaking clock in Washington, D.C., before she made her exit. Fifty years ago, transatlantic telephone calls weren't cheap. The phone bill was, in today's turn, about $10,000. For a full list of sources, see timharford.com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben Adaf Haferi edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Melanie Guthridge, Genevieve Gaunt, Stella Harford, Masea Munro,

Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really does make a difference. to us. And if you want to hear it, add-free and receive a bonus, audio episode, video episode, and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. That's Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash cautionary club. There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job.

As our lives fear off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, who we become when life makes other plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The other side of change pairs singular real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumble. of change? What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be? I'm thrilled to share that book list gave the other side of change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, it's impossible not to be moved. The other side of change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books.

This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human.