Hyperfixed - PRESENTING: Smart Girl, Dumb Questions

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

This week we're sharing a podcast we love, the show Smart Girl Dumb Questions. It's a curiosity party, and you're invited. On Smart Girl Dumb Questions, Nayeema Raza asks simple Qs to big thinkers (like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Diplo, or two 11 year olds), trying to make sense of life.LINKS: Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast feed: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/smart-girl-dumb-questions/id1784967461 Smart Girl Dumb Questions on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi, I'm Alex Goldman, and this is Hyperfixed. And this week we have a very special guest episode from a podcast called Smart Girl Dumb Questions, which is hosted by Naima Raza. And Naima is here with me right now. Hi, Naima. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of Hyperfix. Welcome. My God, I feel like I'm hijacking your feed.

What's going on? I love it, honestly. I love using the opportunity to introduce people to shows that I'm a fan of, and my audience may not have heard of or listen to. So I want to do that right now. I'm curious if you could just describe for our audience what Smart Girl Dumb Questions is about. So Smart Girl Dumb Questions is really a show where I ask the questions I think a lot of us have about topics. And the idea is that the dumbest thing you can be is a know at all. So I came from traditional media.

I was at the New York Times. I used to produce a woman named Keras Swisher for a long time. I used to co-host a show alongside Ben Smith at Semaphore. And I thought there's so many questions that I have that sometimes I wouldn't feel. comfortable to ask out loud. A big example of this would be in the pandemic when I was going to get my vaccine. I actually did pull over to the side of the road and think, MRI sounds a lot like DNA. Well, this affect my ability to have kids. Now, I had produced a New York Times interview with the couple that created the bio-antec vaccine, but I still had that question. I still thought

about it as a woman of childbearing age. And like, I think we have created an ecosystem where it's sometimes hard to ask questions out loud. And so, no, this is not an anti-vax podcast. Don't get excited out there. But it is something where like nothing's off limits. And I want to ask the questions we all have and just be like in a world of hot takes, I think the hottest thing you can be is curious. I love that, first of all, because I am a huge fan of asking incredibly dumb questions, because often they end up giving you incredibly surprising and much more layered answers than you'd expect.

Yeah. And I think people are, like, excited to answer them because, like, I interviewed Jeffrey Hinton, who's the godfather of AI who helped create, like, the, like, kind of understanding of the neural networks won a Nobel Prize for it. And I asked him, how many people who are interviewing you actually understand how AI works? And he was like, not many. And I said, well, how many ask you? And he says in his very English accent, very few, you know.

So it's like, I think it's like that idea that we're all pretending to understand things because we have this thing in our pocket that has all the answers in the world. And so instead of having a fight at a dinner party, we're just like chatting with chat chippy tea and getting our answers. Or now, Claude, because everyone's canceling chat chit-tie-t. But yeah, hope they're not a sponsor. They're not. Don't worry. Whoever you're going to disparage in this intro, I assure you, they're not a sponsor. It's interesting that you say that because I, you know, I was a tech journalist for 12 years and I understand conceptually how AI works, but it's still like is very elusive because it's actually really complex.

So people are like, oh, well, you put it in a computer has all the information in the world and it gives you an answer. It's a lot more complex than that. And like the how is it different from search? Like I really didn't know. And he just very much articulated and explicated to me. And we started off the conversation there. Like, how do your eyes work? How does your brain work?

And we start from there. And then we end on, like, should you have kids in an AI world? So, yes, that's what the thesis is. And I do think you also do a great job of asking those questions. Oh, thank you. So, like, what are some of the questions that you have tackled on your podcast? And what has asking the, quote, unquote, dumb questions illuminated for you? Oh, my gosh.

That there's so much I do not know. That is what it's illuminated for me, and that there are so many people who also don't know them, and I am not alone, am I not knowing? That's what it's done. In terms of questions I asked, I started with a conversation with Mark Cuban about, can billionaires save us? And why can't the U.S. government be more like the NBA? Like, why can't we have more fairness in how the U.S. economic system works, like salary caps and revenue sharing and all kinds of things that are done in the NBA? So that's one route. How AI works was another one. I asked two 11-year-olds what they do all day. And because I don't have kids yet, it was a super illuminating conversation about how

they're on FaceTime with each other without talking. And they told me they feel closer to their friends on FaceTime than real life. That is so nuts. Yeah. And then I asked them why they think that. And this 11-year-old girl, Sophie, now 12, says, well, when you're on FaceTime together, you're doing stuff together. You're playing Roblox together. You're doing homework together. But nowadays, when you're in real life, everyone's just on their phone. Wow. That's so bizarre. And profound. It's true. What an amazing dystopia we've created? Yeah. And like I interviewed these two dwaremen and ask them like kind of what people are like when no one's watching and how can you tell if relationships are going to fail. So just, you know, there are fun conversations with everyone.

I had Neil DeGrasse Tyson on. I asked him, how would we know if we're in a simulation? By the way, he did not rule out that we're in a simulation. Oh, okay. Well, if we get shut off today, it was really nice knowing you. Yes. Yes. Well, he didn't say that we are in a simulation. He just told me how you would test the edges of the universe. Got it. Okay. So what is the episode that you have for us today? This episode is with Dr. Justin Garcia, who's the head of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Studies at University of Indiana. And the big question I had is, are we really not having sex anymore? You know, we hear about the sex session, the end of sex, et cetera. And I was curious to understand what that's like. And also where sex came from. if human anatomy has always been this way.

And yeah, I just wanted to have a sex ed class, you know, at an adult age. I found I don't want to spoil anything on this episode. But I do feel like it's full of things where I was just like, oh, my God. I can't believe that this is not a thing that I thought about because it seemed so obvious. But hearing someone say it out loud, which I think is probably like the thesis of smart girl dumb questions, right? It's like the things that only feel obvious once someone has told them to you. Like, I can maybe scoop one, which is like kissing. Like, the idea that, like, not everyone kisses when having sex or something was interesting to me.

We're like, what animals do. It's just, like, kind of wild. Yeah, that's crazy. At the end of the day, it reminded me that we're all just animals. Yeah. So where can people find you, aside from on every podcast app, of course? On every podcast app, you can find me at Smart Girl Dumb Questions. And you can also find us at Smart Girl Dumb Questions on social media, on Instagram, on TikTok.

where we're very small on YouTube at Smart Girl Dumb Questions. And you can slide into our DMs there. You can also call us at 1-855 My Dumb Q and tell us what you think of the show or leave us questions you think we should ask. Taking a hint from you, Alex, because you're so good at the user-generated questions. Well, thank you so much for sharing an episode with us, Naima. We will include links to your show and your social media in the show notes. And for our audience, please enjoy this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions with Dr. Justin

Garcia. Is falling in love a brain response or a body response? Both, which is why touch can be so electrifying. They put people on an fMRI brain scanner and they were romantically in love. And they found that a part of the brain, the VTA, which is the powerhouse of dopamine, would light up, which would mean the brain was pulling more oxygen-rich blood. And they've done a series of other studies. They put people who had been romantically rejected also in an fMRI brain scanner.

And what happens to their VTA? Their brains look remarkably like someone going through cocaine withdrawal. Smart girl. Dumb questions. Justin, thank you so much for being here. I'm thrilled to be here with you, as always. We were introduced originally by Esther Perel. That's right.

We met in the pandemic in 2020 because I was writing a piece about dating in a pandemic. And then we went for a walk, and I told you I thought dating apps were over. Yeah, I still remember it. And you said they weren't. And I still don't think they are. You don't think they're over? I think people want to be in real life again. I do, but I think so, okay.

So it's a big question, right? We know that people are struggling with the dating apps, and people are struggling with dating. But I think we have to be cautious about where we put that blame. Is it the app and are they dead? And I don't think that's the evidence. So for the last 15 years, we've run our Singles in America study with looking at about 5,000 singles every year. And apps and the Internet are still the most common way singles are meeting other potential partners. And I want to say, as a disclaimer, you are a consultant from Mass.com.

Is this your commercial line or this is your philosophical line or both of the above? No, I think it's, so we've been really fortunate to have a long relationship with Match and they fund the singles in America's study. But we also are quite critical of where are people feeling burnout and dating? Where are their challenges with the apps? I'm not personally vested in a particular product. I'm an evolutionary biologist by training, as you know. And so my questions are, well, what's changed from courtship 4 million years ago or 10,000 years ago

during the agricultural revolution, what has happened to the human animal in our courtship patterns? And does technology help that? Does it make it more complicated? For instance, during the pandemic, when you did your piece, and I still remember what we talked about, it was about first kiss after the pandemic. And we have data on kissing we could talk about later. There's a wild study out of the Sunni, Albany study. That was 50% of people who think they're attracted to someone after a first kiss will be like, nope, wasn't it? They'll know. Yeah, they just know there's this notion of instant chemistry. And what's so interesting about that, I did a study a few years ago with two colleagues at the University of Nevada, and we looked at cross-cultural patterns of kissing. And we take for granted that kissing is part of our courtship routine, that we just do it, that you should kiss someone if you like them.

And it's important, like you said, for 50% of young people, that kiss, that spark is important. But we shouldn't assume that it's the case all over the world. And that's somewhat true of all of our data. We found that around 44% I think was the number of society. engage in romantic or sexual kissing. For a lot of places in the world, the idea that you would say, I like you, so I'm going to spit in your mouth, is obscene to people, and particularly in places that don't have modern oral hygiene.

Okay. So there are countries where people do not kiss. Can you name some of these countries besides Julia Roberts and Pretty Women? Well, even that, I think, is interesting. This idea that kissing also is reserved for certain types of relationship. What we found in the data was that, in some cases, parents will pre-chew food. They pre-masticate food. So kissing can be more symbolic. You kiss maybe a baby on the mouth, or maybe you're passing pre-chew food, or maybe you kiss a religious figure.

So if I'm remembering correctly, we had certain patterns in Oceania and through the Pacific Islands. And in some cases, actually also in parts of Central Africa, I remember one case that two anthropologists wrote that they were doing research and they would kiss each other. It was a married couple. And they wrote in one papers that the people would say, like, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that to your wife? Why would you, why would you spit on it on her? And they were like, no, in America, this is a sign of affection and we care for each other. So this is like very serious thing, like, if I hook up with a guy from the Federated States in Micronesia, he's going to be like, what are you doing? Why are you doing to me in my mouth? Well, it depends on how Western eyes they are and how, and but yes,

very likely in a lot of places. And it's also, we know people have all sorts of rules about kissing. Like, do you kiss on a first date? Do you kiss on a third day? How soon? And what we were interested in is that there are all these scientists who have made these claims about, oh, we're passing hormones from each other. Well, the trick is if you pass hormones, yes, you might have testosterone and estrogens in your saliva. We know that because we can measure it. But just because I dump it in your mouth doesn't mean that your brain is receiving it. And more than likely, it's going into your stomach. And there's no receptors for those hormones there. So this idea that it's really important for the sexual and erotic script, I think, tell. tells us that there's so much variation in the world, that what we take for granted as part of courtship or relationships varies across place and time. Okay, I'm going to say something that I probably shouldn't say on a podcast. The reason I know this is because my first boyfriend, who I did for years and was dating him in college, he had a foot fetish. Then when I was with my second boyfriend, it was like, you know, the second guy I'd like kind of like been with in my life. And I'd be like putting my like foot near his mouth. And the guy's just like, get that.

Like what is he's like pushing? So this is how I know. Yeah. Like how you hook up, date, kiss. Yeah. Early in your cooking up kissing, dating life is not how everyone is going to hook up kiss and date, which is a wild lesson I learned the awkward way. Yeah.

We did some studies on fetishes too. I can't let that go by. So we found, actually, foot fetishes are one of the most common for what it's worth. And there's one argument that it has to do with where sensory information for feet occur in the brain is very close to sensory information for the genitals. We did a study years ago with one of my graduate student that was working with us from Australia at the time, Jaselle Reese. And she was asking people, there's like clinical criteria for a diagnosis of fetishism. But it turns out that a lot of people have this sort of subclinical fetish. there's things that they really like. The challenge is that when you use the word fetish,

most people assume, and technically according to the clinical guidelines, it means you're unable to have arousal in the absence of that object. And that's not what most people have. They say they like it. It's like a cherry on top. Yes. And you brought up a great part. The other piece of that is you have to negotiate it with your partners. So a lot of times people will say, okay, I have a leather fetish, but my partner says, you know, we can't do this in the summer. It's too hot. And so also to ways that they're negotiating these. things. I'm just like mentally picturing the guy in my mind who has a leather fetish and the woman like the wasp who's like, no, no, it is very warm and Martha's winter at this time of year.

We cannot do that, Jimmy. This is seasonal fetishism. What's the wackiest, or you wouldn't say wacky? I wouldn't say it. What is the most esoteric fetish you have observed? Oh, gosh. That's a good question. The term itself is pretty broad, so some folks will consider, And now we're going to get to the weeds. So some researchers debate on what's the big umbrella. How did you take such a sexy question? I know.

I'm sorry. Fetishes and take it to the weeds. You're like, what's the hottest fetish that you know about? I'm like, ah, it's a technical. Because there's some folks that would say, like, you know, if we look at the big umbrella of kink, like, what is BDSM? Is that considered, is it a fetish? Is it a lifestyle? Is it Tuesday?

Is it? Yeah, exactly. It depends on what city you're in. And so there's things like that. But people we see sometimes fetishes are for objects. shoes, leather, latex. Sometimes it's for a particular part of the body, and sometimes it's for something entirely different.

Yeah. It has to do with ice cubes or it has to do with any number of things. Do you have a fetish? Can I ask you that? Sorry, I wasn't expecting that one. I know. So I, how do I answer that? Not according to any clinical guidelines.

Oh, excellent. Thank you for your very boring answer to my very fun question. Okay. I want to take this all. make it a little PG. Yeah. You studied evolutionary and biocultural foundations of romantic and sexual relationships. Did I get that right?

Yeah. Wonderful. Are you like a Darwin of sex? Yeah. Well, that's exactly what we try to do. We use evolutionary theory to understand the human animal and how that relates to all of our romantic and sexual behaviors and experiences and desires. And the Kinsey Institute, where I'm the director and senior scientist, that was founded

by Dr. Kinsey, who was also. a biologist. And in fact, a lot of people know when they think of Kinsey, they think of the Kinsey scale for sexual orientation. Yes. It's like, is everyone a little gay? Yeah. And that concept of sexuality on a continuum, I think, was because Kinsey was a biologist. If you're a biologist, you can't help look around at the natural world and see everything happens on a continuum. There's so much variation in the natural world. And our, I know there's an Instagram feed called openly gay animals, but are animals gay too? Yeah. So it depends on how you define gay, but yes. Short answer is yes. It depends a little bit on how you think of sexual orientation. So when we think

of what does sexual orientation orient is what a paper that my colleague Lisa Diamond wrote many years ago. And one is an identity, right? So is the gay penguin from Central Park, the one that a lot of people knew about, and it got upset when they introduced new penguins and they had a divorce and they repartnered to an opposite sex partner, but a lot of drama in penguin world. And so one is your identity. How do you define yourself? And that's how we often think about sexual orientation in humans. But when we're thinking about preferences and behaviors, that's different. And we certainly see that in the animal kingdom. And sometimes it's very purposefully responding to an ecological situation. So, for instance, some birds, sometimes female birds will partner and sit

on a nest together. So they mate, they quote-unquote heterosexual mate. They hang. Yeah, but then they get back, then they have a female, female bond to sit on a nest together. But they can't make a egg. No, so they'll sexually reproduce with a male and then they kind of partner with a female. They say I figured it out. Yeah, well, that's not a bit, shag. And so we see all sorts of variation in the animal kingdom. And sometimes it's what we will call facultatively responsive. It's adapting to a particular ecology.

And actually the same is true for human relationships. We see all sorts of relationship variation and sexual variation and gender variation. And often that, with that evolutionary lens, we could say it's adaptive to an Like, I'm often so curious about marriage patterns, but marriage is a sort of social, cultural, legal contract that really tries to contain the biology of reproduction and love and family units. When did marriage start? Oh, that's a great question. And it depends on, I mean, a lot of traditional societies have some version of marriage. There's ritual around love.

If we go all the way back and we could talk about the work of our friend Helen Fisher, the biological anthropologist who we sadly lost, great friend of mine and colleague, mentor. Helen argued that about four to four point four million years ago. So for the anthropologist, it's between artapithecus and Lucy, that our ancestors started having these patterns of romantic love, of deep, what we call pair bonds in the sciences, and that those pair bonds helped humans respond to the environment and help them really disperse around the globe. And then, though, about, so the agricultural revolution is anywhere between 10 and 14,000 years ago. A lot of anthropologists would say about 12,000 years ago, we saw another change. And that was with being more sedentary.

So more farming, different sort of subsistence lifestyles, that marriage took on a different role because then you had different resources you were trading. You had land and property. So it changed what was at stake with marriage. So what happened to marriage then? Sometimes I love when folks will talk about romantic love and they'll say, well, it's a Victorian era phenomenon. And I go, no, it's not.

It's millions of years. It's baked into our physiology. Lucy. Yes, yes, exactly. Okay. And then 10,000, 12,000 years ago, when the hunter and gatherers are going out and getting the stuff, like what? Exactly. How did the marriage change? Before that, people partnered for love. And what we saw is that as resources changed and the politics of resources changed, marriage became more arrangements. They became political arrangements. Now, we know, like, Stephanie Kunt's work on marriage. We know, for instance, peasants always married for love because they didn't have resources. Even in any kind of Shakespearean play, often like the most pure love is what you see happening with like the maids in the house. So these sort of financial resources and the challenges they can bring has tinkered with our love lives for a very long time.

So capitalism is the reason we're not getting laid or we're not sleeping with the right person. I mean, the crypto bros were supposed to save everyone, but I don't know. All right, let's take a quick break. If you like this show, please. tell your friends about Smart Girl Dumb Questions. They can find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or you can just share a link with them so they can check it out right now. Also, you and they may really like our TikTok or Instagram at Smart Girl Dumb Questions. We're doing a new street series where we kind of go around New York and Paris and find out the last questions people ask their

phone because they were afraid to ask them out loud. It is super fun and makes curiosity cool and communal again. All right, so that was all the capitalism that is ruining our sex lives and now back to the episode with Justin. Okay, it was always for romantic love. 10 to 12,000 years ago, agricultural revolution happens. People start getting together, you know, not marrying necessarily, but having some kind of ritualistic monogamy, which is required for preserving and appropriating resources and distributing resources. And then when's the next shift?

So I think the one big one was a little over four million years ago, then the agricultural revolution, and then I think the rise of the internet. And I do think, to your point, That's probably where we agree a little bit. I do think the rise of the Internet, it didn't change what's baked into our brains. It didn't change the desire for love, the capacity for love. I mean, we take for granted sometimes that we can even fall in love. Only 3% of mammals form these intense pair bonds.

About 15% of primates. This isn't a universal that all species have the capacity to form these intense bonds. Really? Not everybody has this capacity to fall in love. Not all species. And so the penguin. So about 90% of bird species form pair bonds, but often for a breeding season. Penguins are known often for lifelong pair bonds.

What is interesting and what, yeah, but the challenges that I think could sometimes upset people is the natural world sees pair bonds and humans. It also sees separation and divorce. So sometimes pair bonds dissolve just like us. And sometimes you just say, you know, people will say, I've had enough of this person. Well, animals can do the same to each other, especially. animals that have what's called preferential sociality. And if you've ever been around someone who has a lot

of pets or if you've been to a dog park, they don't act the same towards all other individuals. That's a hallmark of a social animal. We tend to be a little bit more social with our family members. That's part of what a romantic bond is. It's preferential that you treat your romantic partner differently. You feel differently. You want to be around them more.

Yeah, ideally better. But in some cases worse. In some cases worse. Okay, sorry. But I want to let you finish your thought. You were saying that your big sweeping claim was that the third arc of this was the internet and that hasn't changed the following in love, but it's changed some of the, and you didn't finish that thought. Yeah, thank you. You've always been good with getting me back on track. Yeah. So the other with the internet is that I think it changed the capacity for way people can connect.

And I do think the internet and all the apps that have emerged, they have given us an unprecedented and evolutionarily unprecedented opportunity. That opportunity also comes with a lot of challenges. Yeah. And because just like we can pick up our phones and find someone to play pickleball with at 4 o'clock this afternoon, if you're gay or lesbian, you can go on an app and find someone that maybe you don't feel comfortable or safe walking in a certain areas to meet someone.

So the internet did in a short way. It allows, I think the internet allows us to find people. It's an opportunity to connect with people for the things we're looking for. Yeah. Sometimes too much. Too much opportunity. Exactly. You nailed it.

The challenge is that it's so much choice, the human brain is. isn't really able to thoughtfully deal with it. And then our minds start playing all sorts of tricks because we think there's this abundance of resource that one of the challenges is we don't hone in. So when we look at our data about singles today, what we find is it's not that there's an absence of wanting to be in a relationship.

There's an absence of people going on first dates and actually trying to establish relationships. Something about jumping from the app to the real life is where people are, struggling. Though I want to push back a little bit on that because there's also been research that now, I think, it's 30% of men and 40% of women no longer see romantic partnership as critical to a fulfilled life. That's not from your study. That's another study. But have you seen that data as well? So there's been a lot of work on this question of singlehood, on the rise of singlehood.

We know that over a third of the adult population in the United States is single. And that's true of a lot of developed countries. We're seeing more and more people who are single and more people are getting comfortable with that. They're getting comfortable with a single life and maybe they're going on dates but they don't want to go too far. Maybe they're hanging out with their buddies or their girlfriends or their family. And there's a lot of richness to a single life that we're seeing reported more and more. But I think there's a caveat in that data. And my take is that just at the same time that we're seeing people say they're comfortable in their singlehood, they still are interested in these romantic bonds. Even if they're saying I'm kind of fed up with

trying to find one or I'm a little discouraged on trying to find one. It's this thing that the human animal desires, that romantic connection. Even, we could talk about sexual connection. We know from our studies and plenty of other studies, people don't even want just sex. They want sex in the context of a relationship. Yeah, it's better. Both men and women say it's better. Exactly. It's not just that the sex is, but the relationship is better because of the sex, too. I just thought it's a preferential relationship for a reason. It feeds some of the desires of the intimate animal that we are. So you're leveling that there's this cognitive dissonance. People are reporting that because they feel they're faded to that maybe in some way. And the technology is part of why they feel

they're faded to that because I think that one of the, this is my conjecture here, I think that just everything is a dating app now. So the primacy, like if you're talking about preferential relationships, like preferential apps, I'd rather spend time on an app where I could get a job or I could you know, catch up with my friends or like look up the name of my friend's baby who's turning one just I can write the card. And also just like serendipitously on that app have so, oh, wow, that's interesting. I met somebody on Instagram, right? I can know a lot more about them or an app where I'm like spending time commenting or Reddit or wherever it is. Like these have become almost physical places on the internet. And so we, and I think you and I talked about

that when we went on the walk in the park in COVID, where I have this romanticization of IRL. relationships. And then you told me something really interesting there, which was that people think something unexpected or risky is sexier. Like if you are, they did a study where people walked on a shaky bridge, right? Did I remember that correctly? So tell us that study. Yeah, so it's called misattribution of arousal is what psychologists call it. Missatribution of arousal. I love that term. In this study of a heart-tie. I thought I liked having sex with you, but I was really having sex with you and thinking of Brad Pitt. This attribution.

Well, that happens too. That's a whole other. But on the shaky bridge study, people walked across this bridge and either a solid one or a shaky one, at the end of a confederate, someone who worked on the study, would say, here's my number. Let me know if you have any information. And when men walked across the bridge, if it was a shaky bridge, they were more likely to call the woman afterwards to ask her on a date or to sort of try to connect with her. And it was the same woman. It wasn't like a hotter woman on the shaky bridge. It was the same woman.

And because this idea that your heart's pumping and you're a little anxious. because the physiology of falling in love is actually awfully like an anxiety response. So you have sort of a rise in dopaminergic responses. You can have plummets of serotonergic responses. You can have butterflies in your stomach, clammy hands, you're losing your words. In another context, if you were sitting in an exam and you had that, you'd say, holy, yeah, I'm having an anxiety attack. But in the context of a first date, you might say, oh, I really like this person. So the context of our physiological responses,

matter. And part of that, that excitement is a little bit of risk. Now, not too much. You don't want too much. You don't want, most people don't stop to kiss in a burning building, right? But a little bit, a little bit of risk and excitement can help. We are meaning-making animals. And so we apply that romanticism to our preferential relationship. Yeah. And it becomes part of a story. It becomes part of our love stories. And I think one of the challenges that a lot of us have, and something you and I have talked about something I think you're good at is framing the positive aspects of those love stories. And that just because a relationship doesn't last forever doesn't mean it was a failure. I hate that term. I hate when people talk about relationship failures. There are some that are

characterized by abuse and conflict and trauma. That's its own issue. But so many people have relationships that ends and they got failures. They were good for what they were. They were wonderful hot summer romances and they are part of our stories and our experiences. So many of our relationships can be successful, but sometimes they end and we move on to something else. And we can be in a different chapter of our life. And sometimes we want different things. Yeah. And I do definitely think that. I have like very warm feelings about most of the people I've been in relationships with, if not all. I mean, in some way in all of them, right? You had to, because at some point you did. Yeah. And barring that, you know, horrific experience, it just becomes part of who you are.

Like, I think it changes your physiology in some way, falling in love. So I want to talk about that. So because, as you mentioned, Helen Fisher, the late, great Helen Fisher, is your longtime mentor and friend, and I have to say, a sexy woman, I thought. She married late in life, right? She married late in life in her 70s, yeah. So Helen Fisher had done early on, and I think this was the early odds, a kind of study of the brain, right? And what happens to the brain when we fall in love? So that's very different to, like, what you're saying, clammy hands, the, like, shaky, you know, the feeling of getting off that shaky bridge and seeing a, you know, a hot woman that seems hotter when the bridge is shakier. Yeah.

Is falling in love a brain response or a body response? Both, I think both. So insofar as the brain connects is the sort of central command station for our physiology, that it is part of the body, which is why touch can be so electrifying, especially if it's someone that you're interested in or you're attracted to. And what Helen Fisher and colleagues found is they put people on an fMRI brain scanner and they were romantically in love. And they found that a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area, a lot of parts of the brain, but one in particular, the VTA, which is the powerhouse of dopamine, would light up, which would mean the brain was pulling more oxygen-rich blood so it could do its thing. And they've done a series of other series. They put people who had been romantically rejected also in an fMRI brain scanner. Yes, the dumped study.

Yes. And what happens to their VTAs? Their brains look remarkably like someone going through cocaine withdrawal, which also tells us that if you've ever been through a breakup and you are depressed or you feel physical pain, it's not, I mean, it is literally in your head. It's in your brain. Yeah. That those are real bodily reactions we have to relationship laws. And what's the cure for that addiction? Oh, I mean, Mother Nature overdid herself, right? And it's in some ways the one of the things I've argued is that it's the cost of pair bonds to love so intensely and deeply that we have that.

capacity means that when it gets pulled away, it hurts, it stings. And in some ways, in the short term, it was probably an adaptive to keep us in bonds, at least for several years, maybe through rearing of offspring or to deal with major challenges. I've come to believe that pair bonds involved in part to allow us to weather uncertainty. So the story of the anatomically modern human animal is that we have survived so much uncertainty in different environments. And, different diseases and different access to resources and different predators. And I think that we had a teammate and our ancestors had teammates. That's what has allowed us to be this dominant species on the planet for better or worse.

That's what's allowed us to get here. The collaborative aspect of human society. So, sorry, you said something and my mind went to a dumb place that I have to articulate, which is you said anatomically modern human animal. Did humans always have penises and vaginas? I love that you brought this up because it turns out that there's a lot about our genital anatomy that also tells us something about our story of relationships. So the fact that, so we, if you've ever watched a nature show, you'll know that a lot of animals may male behind the female. So, and there's sort of technical terms, dorso ventros.

Sometimes human animals do that too. Sometimes human animals do. It's one of the top three most common sexual positions that people engage in. But the idea that we have sex face-to-face, missionary style, as some people will call it, that that is something else that's part of our evolutionary story as a parabonded animal. Not many animals engage in sex face-to-face. You're incredibly vulnerable. You're facing each other's entire sensory information with the face, so you could see each other, you can hear each other, you could taste each other, you can follow each other's breath. That is part of what makes sex so intimate.

that aligning of sensory experience or synchronization. Now, I'm not trying to say the only way to have sex is missionary and to breathe the same way. That's not at all what I'm saying. But that we have that capacity. That's a special human. Yeah. And that has to do within males that the penis was moved forward of where it is in terms of our anatomy. So evolutionary, like the penis actually moved?

Well, and also we have relatively smaller testes. And the reason we have smaller testes compared to gorillas or chimpanzees. So gorillas have quite small testes, given. their body mass because they have a harem mating system. There's no sperm competition. It's one male for all these females. So he's like having to spread it around all time. Well, there's not, his sperm isn't competing with other sperm in the reproductive track of females. Whereas chimpanzees have multi-male, multi-female. They have large testes for their body mass because a female might mate with several males. So the larger the testes, the more of the sperm. So you can produce more so it can compete.

Got it. Okay. So if you're ever on a farm, you could tell what the monogamous animals are on how big their balls are. And you're like, oh. So should we be, like, judging men by the size of their balls and not by the size of their penises? No, no, but I'm saying, you know how, okay, fine, but you know how they say, like, size matters, doesn't. Yeah.

And there's all sorts of different penis morphology. There's animals that have corkscrew-shaped penises and all over that are all that. Who has a corkscrew-shaped penis? Alpacas. A certain birds. Wait. If I just say animals, can you tell me about their penis? I don't know.

I don't feel I'm on the spot. I don't know. Let's say, okay. So alpacas have. A corkscrew-type penis. And then the females have a corkscrew reproductive tract. What about a bear? Oh, I don't know.

Zia, it got me stumped. What about a giraffe? Just tell me animals you do know, Justin. Which animals? What's interesting is, I don't know, you didn't mention this, but when we think about, like, livestock, because they've been artificially bred, you know, a lot of livestock actually don't mate. I mean, like cattle, because farmers will collect the ejaculate and then artificially inseminate because it's safer, because sometimes the heavy weight of the bull can injure the cow.

These farmers are creeps. Yeah. And speaking, oh, my God, now you're going to be excited on farming. There was a study years ago that orgasm might be associated with. Do you have a farming fetish? Is that the fetish? No, I don't. I'm like a city boy.

I've always wanted a farm, and I never knew I could do all these sexological studies there. Okay. And, oh, we'll talk about China and Tandas in a second. But first, on pigs, there was a study on pigs that if they orgasm, that it's associated with better outcomes on their litter so that they have, like, one more piglet. So there have been some cases now of farm. Farmers, pig farmers who will hop on top of a female and manually stimulate them to orgasm. Oh, my God.

That is so creepy. I'm sorry. No. But in humans, there's still huge debates about the actual purpose of orgasm. Sorry, they're doing that also just to make more pork for humans to eat, probably. Well, yeah, yeah, that's right. That is so weird. I mean, I was not going to date a pig farmer before, but now I'm definitely never dating a thing.

But they know her thinking too about the biology of orgasm. You know, it might be worth a lunch. And so, but we know that the science of orgasm is so complex. Sorry, just booking flights to, you know, Kentucky as we speak. I cannot wait for that podcast. And so, but we know that the science of orgasm, there are these debates about does orgasm have an evolutionary function. And males, the ideas that orgasm is associated with ejaculation, It promotes mating.

But in females, the relationship between orgasm and fertility is – research has had a hard time finding clear evidence that women who orgasm have are more likely to get pregnant or they get pregnant sooner or the pregnancy is more likely to last. There's all sorts of theories. I find that the men who are most likely to make you orgasm are the least likely to want to have children. Oh, interesting. Tell us more. I'm just trying a relationship between. fuck boys. Yeah. So what's interesting, though, is that there's some evidence that partners that

help women orgasm, or if we don't use the word achieve often in the literature, because there's so much variation, but having partners that are, like, more empathetic or funnier, or it seems to be associated with better orgasm outcomes for women in heterosexual context. Oh, yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay, this is, this is all fascinating. It's like, I'm like, on question, too. Yes, pandas. Oh, I'll end on pandas. You want to tell me about panda penises. You're so excited because No, not panda penises, but panda mating. So Michelle and I were in China last year, my wife. And we were visiting family in China, and everyone knew I wanted to see the pandas.

And it turns out that pandas have, the females have a relatively short window for reproduction annually. They're only receptive to mating for about two, three days a year. Exactly. So if the males aren't interested in mating in that particular window, a whole year lapses. And part of the challenge for panda populations is how do we get them to mate? So researchers are – They've got to get the pick farmer out there. Yeah, well, so they've created panda porn.

So there's researchers who have created – There's panda porn. Yes. And their researchers have created videos of pandas mating with the idea that if you show them to the pandas, like right the couple weeks leading up to the female being receptive, reproductively sexually receptive, that maybe they'll know what to do. Because sometimes – Has it worked?

It's mixed evidence. There's a bunch of pandas in like – One of these, like, sperm donor facilities, like, all, like, sitting and, like, watching pandas doing the thing. Yeah, you made it much more sterile sounding, but... Is there just in the wild? And they bring, like, what? They put, like, yes, they put screens up in the, in the particular in, like, the zoo. We just went to a regular, like, sanctuary.

Did you, like, wake, wink, nudge, nudge. A panda show him a little panda porn on your phone? Yeah, I was like, where, where? I want to see. Like, what are you doing? What's the role? And does it, okay, so we don't know yet if the porn makes them want to. There's evidence.

I mean, folks, researchers are working. on this, but it also tells us something about conservation and mating that we're not the only species that is sort of really, every organism we look at has an interesting story about reproduction. So this is also wild. Okay. I just, I need a moment to process, but give my listeners and viewers a moment to process too. Okay, so they see the porn.

The pandas are watching the porn. First of all, like, is the panda porn, but this is, okay, why this is breaking my brain is because, like, male pandas don't just want to have sex all the time. I think one of the things that we're told as a society is like men, this masculine desire to spread seed and to kind of always be on. I feel that is something that affects male-female relationships. You're saying these men, these panda men don't want to fuck all the time. Yeah. And so, wait, are we just wrong when we say men want to fuck all the time?

Yes, we are wrong. And I'm so glad you brought it up because we have these deeply held beliefs about how men and women should. I'm so glad you told me about panda porn so I could bring it up to. Yeah, I think you. You've made connections here. Thank you. Yes. But we have these beliefs about how men and women should experience their sexual lives

or what is it really? What does it mean to be a man in terms of your sexual urges? And so much of it, so much of it is kind of dangerous and troubling bullshit. And right, we have this idea that, okay, this is what all men should. want. And that, now, certain cultures put that on because of their notions of masculinity or femininity. But we know that, for instance, when we ask people, what are the things you most desire in a romantic and sexual partner, yes, people want someone who's attractive. But more than someone that they're physically attracted to, they want someone they can trust, and they want someone

who is humorous, and they want someone who they can confide in. They want someone who's empathetic. So when we look at all these traits that people really want and what really makes a partner are hot. Yes, physical attraction is one small piece of a bigger puzzle of what we're looking for in partners. What turns us on? But then, okay, but fast forward to right now, like, by the way, I think I have all of these qualities in spades that you just said, empathy, humor, what was the other one? Someone you can trust, somebody you can confide in. Yeah. But I do think that we live in a world where men are kind of socialized to want to fuck Instagram models. To want to see a particular kind of body face, et cetera.

And we focus a lot on visual information. So years ago, one of the dating apps took photos down for a 24-hour period. And what they saw is that it ramped up messaging. Which app was that? I think it was OKCupid that did it. If I remember correctly, I don't even know if it was done purposefully.

And it was that photos were down and people started messaging more. And we know there was a study by Elizabeth Bruch at the University of Michigan, a great study, that people, they first connect with folks on an app that are about 25% higher and mate value. Maid value is this assessment of like one to ten, where are you?

Yeah, yeah. We know what that means. Yeah, so we tend to. Yeah, exactly. So we tend to have, we are aspirational. And exactly, if we're on these apps all the time, we have these aspirational bids for our romantic and sexual partners. And we think, you know, I think always that song,

like looking for a guy that was a 6-5 finance, blue eyes. One demographer looked at how many people are there like that in this country. I think there were two. I think there was like a thousand something, but I remember that. And whether it's two or a thousand, when we're talking about over 100 million singles, that's a real unrealistic expectation of that we have for these that you, and also people vary. We know that, you know, men don't always want to have sex. They get tired.

They get ate too much at dinner. They have too much on their mind. They're having stress. They don't feel it this night. But the more they work out, like the more testosterone they have. You know, they should get these pandas to work out, I think, that porn, I mean, I don't know. I don't watch a ton of porn, I have to say. I don't find it that interesting.

Sometimes I watch it because I'm like, what's everyone's up to? I'm kind of curious. A lot of Americans just incidentally watch it. It's not. There's a subset that watch it very routinely, but it's not that meant. When humans watch porn, are they more likely or less likely to have sex? It depends. So there's some studies that people watch porn as a couples, they watch it together.

So it depends on, like, what your purpose is. A lot of people are watching porn. They only watch it for a few minutes because they use it as a masturbation aid. So are you watching it because you're masturbating? Are you watching it because we were with a partner? Are you watching it to get ideas? Yeah, very good. Are you watching it just for entertainment?

Because you think the storylines are funny. I always watch porn for the excellent B-plot, you know. I can't believe that they did that. They ordered pepperoni. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with less on pandas and more on marriage and social expectations. Okay, you're a sex scientist. Is there anything that makes Short King's anatomically better sexual partners

or emotionally better sexual partners because they're working hard for it? Or is they're reaching a certain part of your body? Yeah. So possibly. So we know that the whole notion of a Short King, and often when it's used in sort of popular culture, it's a guy that's maybe shorter than average, but they tend to be fit.

They tend to be highly fit. And one argument is that some people who, if they're below average in height, that maybe they find other ways to compensate because of social expectations. So maybe they work out more, maybe they're more fit. But there's human variation all over the map. In terms of the sort of anatomical nuts and bolts,

as was aware, of sexual activity, we can accommodate a lot of different sizes. The challenge is that it's a fairly consistent bias, though, that we see that in most societies, on average, women tend to be attracted to men that are taller than them. Right. And even as women get taller, their preferences for men just get even taller.

And actually, it's interesting things also in socioeconomics, that we know that women tend to be attracted to men that have some form of resources or wealth. And as they have more, it's that the goalpost moves. Yeah, this hypergamy reality, which I think is part of the reason that we're seeing so much singledom in America. And I think your singles in America study would show that. The average woman has exceeded the average man in terms of education, in some cases, in some city. in terms of average income, et cetera, in some fields, what is the solve for that? Like, if we are an evolutionary species, can we evolve to absorb this radical shift of, you know,

what is it, feminism, social change in our life? Or is the answer to, like, have a bit of a swing back, which seems to be what we're on the trajectory of? Yeah, and there's sort of these movements of this idea of returning to you know, a way that we used to be in terms of our relationships and gender norms. Yeah. And I think we have to be really cautious of that. One is I mentioned Stephanie Kuntz earlier. She all talks about the nostalgia trap.

And we have this- Stephanie Kuhniz is a researcher at the Family Studies Center. Is that what it's called? She's the Council on Contemporary Families. Yeah, counsel on contemporary. And she's a social historian. And she has what she calls the nostalgia trap. And it's this idea that we think it was better.

In my world, when someone talks about courtship when it was better, and I think when do you think it was better? You think it was better when a young man had to go to a young woman's home and get permission from her parents before he could leave the parlor with her when domestic violence was okay and there was no regulation against it, when people weren't able to make free choices, when women had nine pregnancies throughout their life and spent most of their life either lactating or pregnant? Oh, my God. You know, when do we think it was better? When we had more disease, when more people died from maternal... Okay, we get it. Okay, anyway, sorry. Really killing the buzzies podcast. But, yeah, sorry, okay, we'll get back to Animal Sex.

And so I think we have to be cautious about this idea that our romantic and sexual lives at some point were better than they are today. We have more opportunity today in our intimate lives than ever before. So, but one of the things that we're seeing is that this tendency, there are overall sex differences in what men and women want in their romantic and sexual relationships. And that tendency is moving as we move, exactly as you said. So, okay, what's the solution to that? But how do you, yeah, like, is there a direction change? Like, is there a world?

I'm asking, like, we talked about Lucy and hunter-gatherers and 10,000, and then we talked about the internet. Do you fast forward and see a world in which women, like, all of a sudden, short men who earn last? are dating tall women who are, you know, the breadwinners or hunter and gathering in some modern technological society. By the way, when we make the social club, we're going to use, like, Google V-O-2 or V-O-3 and make it all. But, yeah. Yeah. I think that now that we're seeing more popular examples, right?

So there's like some day on Tom Holland or there's – and there's been a lot of examples, celebrities. The more that we see that, the more that we can model those famous cases, the more normalized it becomes. But when it comes to income? So I think that one is still, several years ago I was doing a study and I interviewed a woman who was an executive and asked her about her marriages. We were talking about marriage and her relationships. And she said she really liked this idea because she was breadwinner and her family, by far, a breadwinner. Her hours were demanding. And this idea that having a partner who could be a kind of stay-at-home dad and help.

And she really, this really appealed to her as a concept because she said, well, we're just flipping the gender. script. Yeah. But she couldn't stop cheating on him with men that were in her industry. She couldn't stop. As much as she had this guy at home, she didn't really respect him in that role. Now, I'm not saying that's the way things should be. Or that they're always going to be that way.

Or that they're always going to be. But we are committed more than we like to admit to gender roles. And for her, as much as she valued having the substance. And I think she loved him at home and helped raise her. family and helped her have the career she was having. Now, that happens with men all the time, right? All the time. But what it suggests is that there was still this desire for her to be around sort of high-powered men, that she wasn't really attracted to her husband anymore as this sort of stay-at-home debt. And there's been studies on how couples distribute household chores, which

hint at some similar things going on. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of critics who want to come out, cultural critics who want to come out and say, why should women have to make their guys feel safe in their relationship? Why should, I shouldn't have to tell a partner. Well, certainly the men didn't necessarily do that for women. Well, I think that in some ways they do, more than we like to acknowledge, that in our relationships, part of a long-term relationship is that notion of psychological safety. Yes. And that it is incumbent on all of us to try and cultivate that.

I mean, I think all the time, you and I both travel for work. if you're in a long-term relationship, it can be easy to have an affair. It could be easy to cheat. You have to, I think that if you don't want to cheat, you have to not put yourself in silly situations. When I'm traveling on business, you know, sometimes I'll get food. I don't stay at the bar until it closes, talking to every woman at the bar. You don't put yourself in those compromising situations. Right. Or you come up with rituals like, oh, the nightly phone call in long-distance, which I always hate. I'm such a long-distance, you know. But like, I don't want to check in every night. I don't want the man to feel that he needs to check in with me every day. And you find a balance. But part of that balance for relationships is how do you cultivate psychological safety in it? And I think there's a lot of people, as you just said, who can be really resistant

to this. Like, I'm not a child. I don't want to check in. I'm an independent person. But you want to make your partner feel safe. But I think any time you create one thing that feels like work, it actually, in my mind, increases the prospect that somebody feels constrained. The best way to, I think, create psychological safety is to create some psychological freedom in a relationship. which isn't necessarily like an invitation in polyamory, but it is a sense that like you're here because you want to be here and you could vote with your feet. That makes it feel like a choice and positive, I think.

Yeah, but at the same time while we let partners know that we appreciate them, that we're thinking of them, that you, you know, do you go on a business trip for a week and you barely check in or you're, you know, especially now and a technological lover. You sex them. You send a picture, here's where I am. Look, here's Naima and I recording. Whatever it is, you make them, you pull them in. even through into your life. And that takes, I hate saying that relationships take work.

Because you know, it's an expression I don't like. But it takes effort. And it takes cultivating. It's like having a garden. You can't just throw the seeds out there and expect they're going to do great. You've got to cultivate. You've got to weed. You've got to fertilize.

You've got to water. That's part of what, that's part of the magic. It should be part of the fun of our intimate relationships. Okay. I want to do a very quick lightning round of a bunch of questions. Okay, okay. Okay. So what role does sex?

play and falling in love. And is that different for men and for women? It's bidirectional. When we're in love with people, we want to have sex with them. And if you have sex with someone, it can trigger the physiology of falling in love, particularly the oxytocin systems, the bonding systems, so that sexual activity, particularly if it's good sex, or feels good, it can make us feel more connected to another person. Okay. Is that more true for women than men? Because I think there's something very intimate about having somebody inside of you as a woman. Yeah. Sexologists have argued whether there's sex differences in that. It's unclear. Men value sex with a romantic partner more than people think. And in fact, men at higher rates than women will say that the best sex they've ever had is someone that they love.

And is it better to wait and to have more anticipation and when you have sex? Is there like, you know, one, two, three, eight, 15, 12 dates, what's the right? Yeah. A lot of people have rules about when they have sex. Now, I think rules can be good if it helps you feel kind of. Tom and it helps you feel that you have a game plan. Yeah, but what is this science? But there's really mixed evidence. There are some people that have the kind of sex interview. You have sex with them. You have sex with them.

And then it turns into a relationship. In our studies, about one and three Americans, have at some point had a hookup turn into a romantic relationship. You learn a lot about with someone when you have sex with them. You learn if they're hygienic. You learn if they're funny. You learn if they're empathetic. You learn if they're attentive.

Attentive. You learn if they're ambidextrous. I mean, you learn a lot about them. And so... You learn if they had a... Long career as a pig farmer. Yeah, so you can learn a lot. So for some people, sex early on is really informative.

For other people, they want to wait, we also know that the script of sex has changed. It's what sexologists call the hierarchical reordering of sexual activity. So, for instance, our parents and our grandparents' generation, oral sex was something very intimate. You did that later in a relationship after you were committed. Well, young people today are having oral sex before intercourse with a new partner. Okay. I know why Doggy Style is called Doggy Style. Why is missionary called missionary?

I forget. I remember reading a paper about this. I forget the answer to that. But there is an answer. Someone has written about this, and I can't remember what it is. I shall ask Pope Leo. I'm going to send you a text later tonight and hope that your date doesn't see it and be like, why is someone texting you about missionary. But it's academic.

It's academic. It is academic. Okay. We talked about the Kinsey scale for sexual fluidity. You know, is everyone a little bit gay or is it just Barry Diller? I don't know. I love Barry Diller. Great book.

that he's just written. Like, thousands of years ago or hundreds of years ago, men were having sex with men, right? Women were having sex with women that we think. Like, the times of Alexander the Great, it seemed like men were with men. So we know that, we know that sexuality can occur on a continuum, including, so sex researchers often break up when we ask about sexuality into three pieces, three components. There's your sexual behavior. There's your sexual preference, and there's your sexual identity. So your identity could be gay, straight, buy, fluid.

And then there's your preferences. So you say all things being equal, these are the types of partners I want to have. But for any number of reasons you might not, maybe because of social pressure, maybe because you're in prison and you're only around people of the same gender. Maybe because you're castaway on an island. Who knows? And so you have preferences, and then you have your actual behaviors. And sometimes your behaviors don't sync with your identity. So, for instance, if we, in surveys of people's sexual behavior last year,

there's many more men who have had sex with men in the last year than who identify as gay and bisexual. Interesting. So behaviors don't always align with. Okay. Is there also a Kinsey scale or some kind of spectrum of monogamy? Because I saw that you guys have done a lot of research in polyamory of late. So is everyone a little poly? So in one of our studies about one in five Americans have at some point in their life had what's called a consensually non-monogamous relationship.

Some people say negotiated non-monogamy. It's really about even consensus. Who's consent? So there's a lot of terms. Well, there's a lot of terms, and they all mean something different. So one in five people have done it. Does everyone have an inclination to do it? Or are some people?

Because I feel like I am so monogamous. Like, I could not cheat if I tried. I'm serially monogamous. I'm very monogamous. I even hate that I live in New York City and I date multiple people at the same time. I don't like it. But it's the culture that I'm part of. I don't like to be physical with more than one person at a time.

Yeah. So we know that there are people who would try it, but we also know that a much lower number, about one in five have tried it at some point, a lower number actively in a kind of consensually non-monogamous relationship. So it doesn't work for everyone. There are some people who it does work with. It takes, the evidence would suggest that it takes a lot of discussion and conversation, as any relationships do, but you're just amplifying it because you have two people. You have three people then or four people in a relationship. I think that you nailed it. There are some people for whom this is a desire and it works well. I mean, the biggest sexual fantasy is actually. three-sumns, according to Justin Laymellor's research. So, and even that, I think, is telling about opening up a relationship. But at its core, you still have a pair bond. You have a core relationship and you're allowing someone else in or you're seeing other people. Some people, this is important and they want it. But what the data suggests is for a vast majority of people, this doesn't really

work. So it's not to say that it's good or bad, but the pattern is still, it tends to be forming intense pair bonds. But we know there's variation of that. There's, There's a lot of variation on what people, what works for them and what they want. I'm thinking back to our conversation about hypergamy and also men feeling that they don't want to have sex all the time, but feeling like they should have sex all the time. Women feeling like they need a partner who's a powerful man, more powerful, more better earner, more intelligent, more funny than they are. Yeah. I feel so much of what keeps us trapped in singledom is this expectation. Yeah.

Like our societal expectation. And one of the best movements I've had in my dating life is when I stop thinking about what my partner says about me and when I start thinking about what my experience with my partner feels like and is like and is going to be like through ups and downs. And how do we as like a culture knowing that, that's a very simple thing. I'm saying that and people are like, that's not wise. That's just like basic. It's normal. But really there's a trend toward it.

So how do we pull ourselves out of that? Especially when I think there are people, you know, like I know there are brown men who do not date brown women. There are black men who do not date black women. There's probably the other way around, right? There are people that have such internalized trauma and a desire to prove themselves to society that they're in this very personal, very intimate core part of who they are are like struggling to negotiate that with themselves. Yeah. Yeah, how do we get out of that? Partly what we know is that people have preferences.

but we also have to be cautious about not being prisoners of those preferences. And we are never prisoners of our biology. So part of what the human animal also has the capacity to do is to flex, is to experience things that make us feel uncomfortable, to make our own decisions. We have this huge prefrontal cortex that evolved. We have the capacity for decision-making and agency. And so we have to be really cautious about these ideas.

And that's why you've heard me sometimes I'm really concerned when people say, well, men should have testosterone, and men should do this and women should do that and it's the natural quote unquote natural way. And I was like, whoa, we are not a species that's locked into a natural way of anything, particularly when it comes to love and sex. And so I think we also have to be empowered about what it is that we want and what we don't want. And we should feel empowered that we have that capacity. People have preferences and that's okay as long as they're consensual and they're safe.

But how we can also be cautious about sometimes what we think that one person is going to bring us too much. I know our friend Esther Brough will sometimes say, you know, a healthy relationship is someone whose faults you can live with. And I love that because it's a reminder that sometimes we expect our partners to be everything. We expect them to always be beautiful to us. We expect them to always be smart. We expect them to always be an earner, always be positive. And it's what Eli Finkel wrote his book called the All or Nothing marriage. The academic term is the suffocation model of marriage. And it's a, and, and, and, And it's this idea that we expect a lot from partners.

You want the same person to, you want to wake up and be desired by your partner and desire them. And when you have food poisoning tonight and you hold their hair back and you say, you still want to have sex with me, honey, as they're vomiting over a toilet. Not missionary style. Yeah, these are unrealistic expectations that our lives have these ups and downs. And sometimes it's within a day or within weeks, within months, within years. And that relationships are about, I think, in the best case, about finding. someone to navigate those ups and downs with, not always be on. And I think we've set our

expectations unreasonably high. There's this meme that's been circulating that's like either you're his type or you're wasting your time. Something like that. Is that true? Do we always date our type? No. Sometimes we date people that are outside our box. And sometimes it's a disaster. And sometimes we each experience something new and exciting. So we have to be really cautious about this narrow box that humans have a diverse, romantic and sexual style. So I want to have a whole conversation with you about sex recession because I feel like no one's having sex anymore or maybe everyone's having sex. Are you having sex? Yes, we're in the process of reproducing.

That's great. That's great. That's a very good thing. Okay. Let me ask you one very quick question about it. Are Americans having less sex right now? On average, yes, but it's a pretty complicated answer. So on average, we're seeing a decline in sexual frequency in big data. Researcher has witnessed this in several different data sets that we're seeing declines in sexual frequency. But that doesn't necessarily mean that satisfaction is down, and it depends on in what groups. So sexual frequency is declined and partnered people, but not as steadily in single people. So there's a lot of nuances to that answer. Yeah. And your data showed, or I think was it your data or someone else's data, showed that like millennials and Gen Xers are having sex five times

a month on average versus Gen Zeres and boomers are having less sex three times a month. Yeah. So we know that as we age, we tend to engage in less sexual activity. But part of this so-called sex recession is that young people, it's not even that overall sexual frequencies have decreased a little bit. It's a number of people who are just not having sex has grown. There's more zeros. So there's more virgins out there. Exactly. And they're weighing down the average. And then your research has also shown that like the 40s are the new sexual problem, right? So it's like no more 40-year-old virgin. It's like 40-year-old. In our singles in America study, we're seeing that people in their 40s are feeling a new peak of their sexual lives.

And they're also saying that sexual chemistry is really important to them when they're in dating relationships. So this was a sample of singles. This is for men and women. Yeah, over 90 percent said that sexual chemistry was critical, not just it's something that they would like to have. So we're also, we have new expectations. We're seeing Americans have new expectations for sex in their intimate life. Is sexual chemistry a leading indicator of emotional compatibility? There's some evidence that I'm going to reframe it.

So it's sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction or the terms that researchers, the kind of constructs that researchers use. I'm reframing it because I don't have a good answer to your question. Okay. And so I'll answer a different one. Good dog. And so what we know is that relationship and sexual satisfaction sort of feed on each other. They're sort of bidirectional. And as one goes up, the other goes up.

So it's an exciting two-way street. So can you have a good relationship with someone with whom you have bad sex? Good romantic relationship. it can be quite challenging. Yes, you can have a good relationship with someone that you have a low sexual satisfaction. So it depends on what do we mean by bad sex. But you can definitely have good sex with someone with whom you have a bad relationship. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes even better. Yeah. Well, what's so interesting is that just because someone is a compatible sexual partner doesn't mean that you can have a happy and healthy and satisfying relationship with that person. Yeah. But we do know from our studies, the more happy, healthy relationship you have, the better the sex becomes. Got it. The last question I'm going to ask you.

I ask every guest here. What do you? Someone who knows so much about panda proclivities and pig sex and, you know, corkscrewed penises of artworks. What was the animal? What was the animal? Alpacas. Alpacas. They're so cute. And now we know. What do you not know? What is something that you are dumb about that we could go and find the answer for you? Oh my gosh. There's so much I don't know about. You know, for the longest time, I think I get the Sunday New York Times and we had a change in the delivery person. So now it's double-bagged and it's wonderful. And I really thought, how on earth does this paper get to be every Sunday?

Like, what's the whole process? Where is it printed? Who bags it? How does it get here? How do I get that paper? Like, I know the brilliant journalists who produced it. How does it end up on my doorstep? Well, thank you on behalf of the somewhat brilliant journalist.

That's a great question. Okay. Well, no one gets the paper anymore, Justin. So that's the answer to the question. It's just you. Evolutionary Biology. I'm lagging behind. is going to just take out the paper and everyone involved in the delivery chain.

Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks. All right. If you're like me, you need a moment to decompress from, like, pig farmers and corkscrew penises and all of that jazz. But I totally love Justin Garcia's non-judgmental, curious, open, safe view of sex and all things, relationships.

He has a great book that's about to come out called The Intimate Animal, which you can pre-order now, and I highly recommend it. I've seen the cover. I've seen some proofs. I've read some stuff from it. It's going to be great. And I just want to say I really appreciated his kind of optimism about the world of internet dating, his long view of history.

And above everything, this idea that we need to make our partners feel safe in relationships. I think there is such a temptation in our new independent world to be super cool about these things. Chill. Oh, I don't need anything. But the reality is that we are these needy comfort-seeking animals and security-seeking animals. And I just thought that was a great reminder that I'm definitely going to keep in mind. And I hope you do too. That's it for this week. We'll be back at the end of the month with an all new season of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. And like I said, I want to know what you think. So please drop me an email, Naima Raza 101 at gmail.com or say something in the comments or reviews below. Tell your friends about the show. And thank you for watching or listening. I'll see you soon. This episode was produced by Dana Ballute, Healy Cruz, Noah Friedman and Annalisa Cochran. And our music is done by David Kahn. I'm your host, Nema Raza. Thank you. And thank you to my great team. Bye.

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