Stuff You Should Know - Would A Love Drug Be Ethical?

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

What if science could create a drug that made you connect with people more deeply, let your emotions flow more openly, and sparked love and attachment in you for other people? Would you take it? Better hurry and decide because they might be on their way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table For Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guests you could possibly ask for. People like David Duchovny, Jeff Goldblum, and Kristen Wiig. We're doing all the dessert. We're doing all the dessert. We'll just skip right to it. Our second season is airing right now so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Guess what, Will? What's up, Mango?

I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murders or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries, like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money. And then of course, can you game a dog show? So what you're saying is everyone should be

listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. I got no little mini joke for this. Great. Let's dive into love drugs. Oh, okay. Well, Chuck, would you overtake a love drug if they were available?

Uh, no, but based on the couple of people that we're sort of highlighting on who've been researching this kind of thing, it's definitely something I think has more merit than when you just think about quote quote-unquote,

love drug. Yeah, I saw, I think it was a new scientist even, some very legitimate science magazine source was saying like, these things are going to be around in 10 years. So there's a group of philosophers, especially an ethicist named Julian Savilescu from, oh, I think he's from Oxford. And then another guy named Brian Earp, who I also believe is from Oxford. They have kind of been hitting this hard

and actually came out with a book called Love Drugs, colon. Colon. The Chemical Future of Relationships. I think in Europe it's called Love is the Drug, which a Roxy music reference if I'm not mistaken and they're at the center of this whole talk But one of the cool things about when a philosopher puts a book out There's other philosophers that critique it and you have interesting like alternative Thoughts and explanations and stuff like that and this is there's this is no different from anything else

but what Savalaski and Earp are basically saying is, these things are coming, and here's how they could work, and here's what to look out for and how they can help. And that's essentially the basis of this episode. Yeah, for sure. This comes with some caveats at the beginning, chiefly because they use the word love drug, and that's a term that means a lot of things

to everybody that you might ask. Across different cultures, even within the same culture situationally, love can mean something different to anybody. So the first thing to kind of know is that there's not anyone out there saying like, hey, love is just a phenomenon that's because of the chemicals in your brain. Like, I think even the most hard-hearted philosopher will say, or chemists will say like, yeah, there are chemicals

that work in the brain that, you know, release all kinds of hormones and things that make us feel certain ways and it factors in. But like there's also this indefinable thing that we'll never be able to like understand and control through a medication. Yeah, I think what they're getting at then from that point on, they're saying yes, we agree love is not just biochemical, but there are a lot of biochemicals involved in the feeling of love and whatever love is, it's associated with these chemicals. So if we can manipulate these chemicals, perhaps we can jack the feelings of love up or create love or strengthen love.

That's kind of like the position they're coming from. And so from that point on, just accepting that love has some sort of biochemical basis to it, or signature to it, they then moved on to the work of an anthropologist named Helen Fisher, who had dedicated essentially her career to love, basically. And she divided love into essentially three parts. And this sounds really familiar to me. There's no way we haven't talked about this before, have we? Did it seem familiar to you? Hmm.

Just feeling that way about you and Jerry and my wife and my daughter all the time. OK, well, let's get to it. Lust? Oh, well, never mind. Apparently you felt about me and Jerry. Romantic attraction? Sometimes.

And then attachment, I think, is the one you're talking about me and Jerry. Romantic attraction. Sometimes. And then attachment, I think is the one you're talking about. For sure. Those are the three stages. A lot of people will say that those occur in that order. Fisher is like, no, it can occur in really any order and then fall back out of order and back into order, which I kind of agree with that notion. But she does say that, you know, these are the things

that package together as what we would look around the world at and agree on as romantic love, like a long-term love relationship. Yeah, and when you look around the world, it's expressed in different ways, sometimes very privately, sometimes there's PDA, like it's just different culturally, but if you strip all that stuff away, you're going to find those three stages, essentially, or those three parts of that package. Not everybody agrees with that. A psychologist named Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah, which by the way, if you're ever bored and you want to learn about epigenetics, go to the University of Utah site. by the way, if you're ever bored and you wanna learn about epigenetics,

go to the University of Utah site. I think I mentioned this before. They have a world-class, user-friendly epigenetics website. It's amazing. But anyway, Lisa Diamond believes in more of a split attraction model. And she says, sex and romantic attraction, they are independent.

Biologically, they, they are independent. Biologically, they're functionally independent. They don't depend on one another, and therefore, Helen Fisher's wrong about this whole thing being a single package. Yeah, and she's got some points, and she can point to some studies that seem to back this up,

one of which that she cites on the reg is that 61% of women and 35% of men have reported that they've experienced infatuation without a need for sex. So that certainly makes sense. But if you look at sex and romance and love in the way that the culture of a lot of the world looks at it at least. That three-part chemical formula from Fisher carries a lot of common sense weight, I think. And we're going to look at some of these chemicals now, including at first testosterone and estrogen, of course, which drive the libido. That's sort of the first bucket.

Yeah, that's the last part, right? Right. The next one, Chuck, would be the attraction part or the romantic attraction. And that's associated with a bunch of different ones. Dopamine, norepinephrine, which increases arousal and attention. Cortisol, which is interesting,

but it totally makes sense when you think about it. Cortisol stress symptoms include things like racing heart and sweaty palms. Another one is serotonin. Serotonin regulates mood and keeps out intrusive thoughts. So when there's a dysregulation of serotonin, those things can kind of creep in and you can feel intense, intense feelings and think about nothing else but the person you're romantically attracted to. And you put all those things together and you've got the chemistry, the brain chemistry

essentially of romantic attraction, the thing that's beyond just lust, the thing that you want to be with that person. Yeah, for sure. And when you have that initial attraction and then it settles in to just sort of normal relationship status, I guess that puppy love sort of wears off. Those are chemical reactions as well. That cortisol that shot up and the lack of serotonin,

those kind of level off. And that's why you level off. It's very sad, but it happens. So what about attachment? Attachment is oxytocin. That is one that we've talked about a lot on the show. Also one that's very closely related, vasopressin, which is the one that males, and male mammals at least, is most important for bonding.

And this is, you know, when you have sexual intercourse or maybe some other kind of intimate contact. Hugs even. A good hug can release some oxytocin. So other things that you can do like hugging and kissing other people. And that's when your empathy and your trust and your feelings of safety are really going to ramp up. And that's a big deal.

That's how you become attached. Right. and that's a big deal. That's how you become attached. Right, and so evolutionarily speaking, caring for offspring is facilitated by oxytocin in a lot of ways. There's a tremendous amount. Remember, oxytocin is in part responsible for breast milk production. There's a huge increase of it during labor and delivery.

It's a big deal, but it also has to do with pair bonding with mates, the people who come together and reproduce to create that offspring, to put it really biologically. So there's a question, it's not just granted science that humans are pair bondingbonding mammals, like say, Prairie Vols, which we'll talk about in a minute. But, insofar as we are,

the oxytocin has a lot to do with that, I think is what I'm trying to say. So much so that people call that the love drug. Yeah, for sure. Like if you Google love drug, you'll probably run across that pretty quickly. That or ecstasy? Yeah, which we'll also get to.

So one of the other big caveats, and I imagine like every lecture that Sablevsky and Earp probably give, start off with them saying, by the way, when we're talking about a love drug or a love potion, we're not talking about what you've seen in movies and stories and fairy tales when like some losers attracted to like the hottest person in their class and so they spiked their drink and all of a sudden that person thinks they're gorgeous and that you have a winning personality. They're like, we're not talking about that at all. There's not a way to do that.

And even if there was, that's ethically not, it's dangerous to even talk about something like that. But what we're talking about is people that are in relationships, who are in long-term partnerships or marriages, to use, potentially use these drugs to give them some boosts when they need it, to increase those feelings, not necessarily take them back to like the puppy love stage, but not not do that. Right. I say we take a break and we'll come back and talk a little more about that. How about that? Yes, it's great. We'll be right back.

In a galaxy far, far away. No, babe, that's taken. We're in our own world, remember? Right. In our own world. We're two space cadets. And totally normal humans. Sure, totally normal humans. Embark on a journey across the stars,

discovering the wonders of the universe, one episode at a time. We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and why you should never argue with your co-pilot. Especially when she's always right. Right. And if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury retrograde. Or Emily's questionable space-piloting skills. Hey! Join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs, and super corny

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Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in the prints. A lion.

An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so where we left off, we were basically saying that Savalaski and Earp and

all of them are like, we're not, you can't create love out of nothing at all, as Air Supply would have put it, for these love drugs, again, generally hypothetical, theoretical love drugs, but you could use them to help people who want to stay together, but for one reason or another, have lost the attachment that they once had. That could help people a lot, and that's kind of what they're pointing to,

is like the main use of something like a love drug, if we ever come up with one. Yeah, and they'll also say things like, hey, if you think we sound like human monsters for trying to sort of regulate or increase these good time feelings by the use of drugs, like what do you think happens when a married couple that's been married for 25 years and are a little sick of each other,

they go on a sweet, awesome vacation, or go out and have a couple of drinks together and a nice dinner. It's basically the same thing that we're talking about. It's like those are things that people are accepting as a way to do that in your marriage. And we're just talking about doing it in a way that's just a little more dialed in and scientific. Exactly. You can take a love drug more dialed in and scientific. Exactly. You can take a love drug or you can go to P.F. Chang's. Your choice.

But the result's going to be the same. You're going to fall right back in love, right? Yeah, sure. So yeah, that is a question though. It's kind of like, okay, well, wait a minute. If we're not, if humans aren't actually pair bonded, if we're not evolutionarily meant to be monogamous, then it does kind of seem to be at least counter evolutionary to take a drug, to stay together. I mean, what if that's like, you know, that's a, that's a signal, that boredom is a signal that you need to find a different relationship or move on from the other one. I mean, that might

be true in some cases, but there's also plenty of cases too where people are not functionally able to be attached as they want to be to their mates in a relationship. Say people with autism, people with ADHD, they might want to be in that relationship but they're not bringing it like they need to. That's a good example of how of supporting a monogamous relationship, essentially, rather than just forcing somebody to stay in by drugging them. Yeah, for sure. And also, like, even though this might fly in the face of evolution, because I think they even say that, you know, it seems like evolutionarily we're supposed to get together,

have a kid, and stick around together for about four years to get that kid going in life. And then that's it, evolutionarily speaking. But they're quick to point out, like there are a lot of benefits to long-term coupling, you know, it's good for your mental health, or, you know, studies have shown that it can be good for your mental health and or you know, studies have shown that it can be good for your mental health and physical health,

and overall well-being, so, and people are doing it anyway. You know, they're not like trying to rewrite this. People are staying married anyway, so they're saying, why don't we give people better tools in a clinical setting as like part of couples therapy, so they can connect on a level that they haven't in a while. Yeah, you can make a case like evolutionarily speaking, we should be beating up people

who have different hair color than us, but we don't do that because we've agreed as modern society that's not, that's in the past evolutionarily speaking, you can make the same thing for monogamous relationships, even if we didn't evolve to socially speaking, we've decided as humans, we're kind of into that kind of thing. So why not use a drug to support that when needed? That's what they're saying. That's what they're saying.

And also, they're pointing out things. These guys make a lot of good points, I have to say. And also, so does Livia, by the way, who helped us out with this one. Yeah. Livia weighed in on some stuff, and I thought it was all like super valid and smart. But they also point out things like, hey, you know, we're on a bunch of anti-love drugs. Like a lot of these SSRIs that people are taking are lowering their sex drive, maybe dampening their feelings and sort of dulling their feelings, which is going to affect their partner.

And the medical community is like prescribing this stuff to individuals when people aren't just individuals. They're in partnerships and marriages where the whole family needs to be considered with stuff like this. And the medical community doesn't look at it that way, and they should. Yeah, and they're using the opportunity in discussing love drugs to point out that we should be doing this with other drugs

that are already in wide use, like you said, SSRIs. Drugs that impact the way that you interact with other people for good or ill, this has to be considered, and it should be considered as part of the love drug too, right? I think that's essentially what they're saying Yeah, yeah as well as like hey You don't just have to use these drugs to treat a disease like why not use these drugs?

For people that don't have any disease to actually enhance their life and their romantic life that's a huge one too because what they're essentially saying, I watched a couple of lectures by Brian Earp and he kind of really hit on this in one of them. He was he was basically saying like, we have this society, at least American society, we have this really weird like dichotomous view of

drugs, right? Drugs that are made by pharmaceutical companies that are prescribed by doctors, A-OK, but we only use those to treat maladies. When you start to use those same drugs that are pharmaceuticals and prescribed to improve something that we've already agreed is a good enough baseline, now you're entering into the realm of recreational drugs and we, we as a society are basically like, we're not cool with recreational drugs. And that's what Seville Eskew and Earp, one of the other points they're taking

the opportunity to point out is like, that doesn't make any sense morally, ethically. Why would you not use something that can improve something that to make you happier, to make you feel closer to your mate, even if you're already doing good enough? And I think that's a really good point too. But the other part of that point is there's a concern that we would, if we start creating love drugs, then as a society, we would expect pharmaceutical companies to come up with some malady that

these need to treat or else they're not going to go anywhere. So we need to come up with something like hypo-lovia or something like that where we're just not that good at loving, so we need these pills. And now all of a sudden we have labels like you're not very good at loving. There's a new label for somebody just because we can't be like, this is in and of itself is a good thing. We don't have to medicalize it. Yeah.

Don't take love a self if you have a bad reaction to love a self. That's a little inside joke for our live show fans, right? Yeah, for sure. Which we'll be releasing that not too far from now, I would guess. Right? Yeah. Probably end of the year ish. Fall, late fall? Let's say late fall. All right so you know what kind of drugs are we talking about you know who knows

what's coming down the line if we're looking at what's in front of us right now we can talk about a few things. We've already talked about booze. Alcohol is a drug, and alcohol is a drug that is already used for this. They use this, Savalescu and Earp, use this as an example of the potential, like hey, it's fine if someone goes out and has a couple of drinks on a first date to sort of relax them and make them

a little more socially, maybe less awkward if that's how they might feel. And again, they're saying like, this is what we're talking about. We're already doing it with booze. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a great smart thing to point out because it's like, oh, okay, well you just disarmed me Savalaski,

that's a point to you. They also point out that we have sex drugs in rock and roll, like Viagra is a sex drug, taking testosterone, low T. Ask Frank, what's his name? He'll tell you the ladies are going to like it too. These are libido boosting chemicals or erection producing chemicals. And the point of them is to have more or better sex, right? And so Savalaski and Earp and their ilk aren't saying like, that's a love drug. producing chemicals, and the point of them is to have more or better sex, right? And so, Savalaski and Earp and their ilk aren't saying like, that's a love drug.

They're saying these drugs can help facilitate the things that produce feelings of love, say like the release of oxytocin that comes from sex. So indirectly, those are already love drugs that are on the market. Wait, who's Frank's so-and-so? are already love drugs that are on the market. Wait, who's Frank so-and-so? Frank, he's a hall of fame MLB slugger from the 90s, maybe early 2000s. Oh, oh, Frank Thomas. Yes. He does those ads with Doug Flutie.

Yeah. I've seen those. I forgot about those. And he does that creepy, like she's going to love it too. Yeah. It's a little creepy, but also like, well, they got paid's gonna love it too. Yeah, it's a little creepy. But also like, well, they got paid for those. Never mind. Yeah.

I was gonna say good for them for like, you know, for taking the mantle of men with low T, but... So good for them. Sure. So, you mentioned Prairie Vols earlier. Prairie Vols are great little rascals. They're good comps for human behaviors when it comes to mating and bonding and stuff like that. They bond in ways that are kind of like us in our marriages. So, they bond initially to, because of sex, because that oxytocin is released, kind of like we

do. When they're bonded, they like to spend time with one another. They nest and make homes together. They care for their offspring together. They work together. They go to the farmer's market together. Yeah, they go to the farmer's market. They buy those light up roses at traffic stops.

People buy those? Sure. I thought it was just some sort of ploy for something else. Like there's, you know, a kilo of cocaine in the bottom of that bucket. Right, or they want you to like come meet their friend, the leader. Right, exactly.

Well, maybe it is, I've never bought them. But they've done lab experiments where they have administered oxytocin to females and then the vasopressin for the males. And it caused them to bond just like they would if they had mated without mating. And if they block those chemicals, they don't form the bonds. So it's kind of, you know, it's not direct proof, but it's kind of like sitting right there saying, hello, this works. Yeah, and I mean, again, prairie rolls are definitely pair bonded species and humans aren't necessarily,

but the fact that all of those brain chemicals do the same things to them that they appear to do to us, that's pretty, it is a useful model for sure. And oxytocin, again, we're gonna keep hitting that because there's a good reason why people call it the love drug and there's already available on the market, uh, intranasally taken, like one of those nasal sprays that you squeeze. It's oxytocin. It's available in that form and, uh, it shouldn't cross the blood brain

barrier, but it does something. It actually does have an effect. Studies have shown like this actually has an oxytocin like effect on the people who use it. They think maybe if it doesn't actually cross the blood brain barrier, it just raises the general level of the oxytocin in your system, who knows?

But from that, people have proposed uses of this stuff that's already on the market in ways that are not quite love, but more kind of tap into the idea that you can build trust with somebody through oxytocin, and that if you dose them with that, they will have to trust you. And here's the other thing about oxytocin

is there have been a lot of studies on this stuff, kind of like the early 2000s is when all this got heavily researched, you know, or at least the beginning of it. And a lot of those results were, you know, pretty astounding, but a lot of those studies also can't be replicated now. So, you know, experts are now saying like, hey, all those early studies about oxytocin, we really need to kind of pump our brakes a little bit. Not saying completely discount it, but like let's just do more research. Yeah.

And like some of those uses that were proposed that go beyond love, there was an Air Force major named David Duthoff, who in 2007 wrote a master's thesis on using oxytocin spray for things like hostage negotiation and riot control to establish immediate trust with the police or the military or whatever. And of course all of this is theoretical, but that's exactly what Savalaski and Earp and the people that are with them are trying to do. They're saying like this stuff could be coming and we need to talk about how it's fraught and how it could be useful.

And that's a good example of how it's fraught. You don't want people controlling you or making you trust them, even though you probably shouldn't, just because they've dosed you with oxytocin if that ever really becomes possible. Yeah, and you know, Earp and Savalasco will also say like,

you know, it seems to help out in some positive ways but also some negative ways. And experts will chime in and say, well, yeah, but in a very limited way, like introducing this, you know, in a, not a fake way, but I guess what would it be called, exogenous way to your body, just go out and take a hike and do some exercising or give someone a hug and that's about the same effect that you're going to be getting by introducing it, you know, exogenously. Yeah.

Exogenously? No, I like that. I like that the first time. I kind of do too, actually. But the great thing about an intranasal oxytocin spray is you don't have to give somebody a hug. Right, exactly. And then also MDMA, we said, is something that comes up a lot when you search love drug.

And for good reason too. I mean, it does some wacky stuff to your brain chemistry, including massive releases of oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrine, cortisol, serotonin, all the stuff that Helen Fisher was hammering create lust, romantic love, attachment, all that stuff gets released to varying degrees. When you take MDMA, it also makes you grind your teeth like crazy, and so people have said, okay, this could conceivably be used

therapeutically in some form. And especially before it was outlawed in 1985, people were already studying it like that. They were using it in therapeutic settings like couples therapy. Yeah, for sure. And then when studies come out to say, you know, when you take MDNA, you're more connected, you're more loving to people, there's a greater bond when it comes to even like casual conversations. It seems like everything seems more meaningful. Someone might also say, yeah, but the same thing happens when you take methamphetamine.

It's just impacting, instead of oxytocin, it's impacting dopamine and norepinephrine. And like you said, since 85 MDMA has been banned for study in therapeutics, but it is still used in different countries, a lot of times with people who have PTSD diagnoses and in couples therapy to pretty great effect. Yeah, I was reading there's some couples therapists, kind of rogue couples therapists who are like, I can't tell you to go buy MDMA and I certainly can't tell you where to go buy it. But I can tell you that if you have it on you and you show up to this particular place, we're going to be having a retreat where you and your wife would be able to take this

in a therapeutic setting. So people are still trying it. And anecdotally, they report, especially compared to methamphetamine, that there's a lasting effect of like the attachment that can be produced by MDMA that lasts beyond, you know, the experience of being on MDMA. So it could conceivably be used as such,

but I think if there's, you know, if we can isolate oxytocin and you can use that, I would guess we were probably gonna go more in that direction than MDMA. And if you have cash, you might see my office manager in the parking lot. Oh yeah. I don't know anything about it.

Right. Sharkey. Is that the office manager? Yeah. With loads of MDMA. Uh, let's take our second break and we'll come back and talk about the opposite of this. How about that?

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starting at 10.30 p.m. Eastern, 7.30 Pacific. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, Lucha Libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha Libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre.

And I'm your host Santos Escobar, the emperor of lucha libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads.

We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's

running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, so back to Sablescu and Earp. It's fun to sing together, isn't it?

What kind of singing do are they? Oh, let's see. I think one of them plays the organ and the other one plays the saxophone. Really low-key mellow stuff. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Okay. All right, so another thing that they propose,

like you mentioned before the break, is the opposite of that. Maybe some drugs that help you get away from the feeling of love. Let's say you're in a relationship that is toxic or complicated or even abusive. And you have a hard time leaving because you have this attachment that you just can't let go of to your abuser or to your toxic friend or loved one. And maybe if you are stuck in that loop, we can design drugs to give you the courage to get out of that.

Yeah, I also saw in one of those lectures that Earp gave some other examples of how this could be useful, anti-love drug essentially. If you're a pedophile seeking help or treatment, it could be useful for that. If you are involved in an incestuous relationship, you don't want to be, it could be helpful for that.

If you're committing adultery and you love the person, but you really love your spouse even more, it could be useful for that. And then lastly, if you are selling those electric roses on the side of the road, it can help you stop loving your cult leader as well. So there's a lot of other uses for it too that you just wouldn't think of, but when you do think of it, you're like, actually, it would be great to have a drug for those people that need that kind of help. And one of the other great things about this is that there's no real downside to that. Like there's a lot of objections, as we'll see,

to the idea of creating love, but how can you object to breaking harmful love? There's really no problem with that. That's kind of like, that's probably the best or least objectionable use of a drug that has to do with an effect on love, you know? Yeah, for sure. It's probably no surprise that there's been a lot of criticism about all of this stuff.

There was a German ethicist named Sven Nielm in 2014 that got wind of what Savalaski and Earp were doing and they said, you know what? I don't even know if this counts if it's essentially synthetic. Like, it's not real, it's not these innate characteristics that people develop in a natural organic way. It's a chemically mediated sort of thing that you're designing. Yeah, and you could see him being like, okay, that's a pretty obvious objection, but he laid it out pretty well and essentially said, like, what this focuses on is, you know,

all of the things that a loving attachment can produce, like health and lower depression and, you know, a stable environment for the kids. Like, those are the goods that you guys are focusing on. What if we stop looking at love like that and look at it as love is intrinsically good in and of itself, it doesn't matter what other great effects it has.

Love itself is good enough. Then if you're producing that chemically, even though you're creating all of these great side effects like stability in the house or just good times, it's still, it's not love. You can't say that it's love. That's ultimately what his objection is. Yeah. There's another guy from Cal State, a guy named Jacob Blair, another philosopher, who

talk about, you know, he just imagines two people in a relationship and he's saying, well, here's the thing though, is one's love for the other doesn't depend on the actual true characteristics of that person and like who they really are. And like I hear what you're saying Earp and Savalisco about like, yeah, but you know, romantic dinners, it's the same thing and alcohol is the same thing. But he argues back that like, yeah, but you can't go to romantic dinners every night and just have three or four drinks every night to keep that, you know, quote unquote genuine love going. It's not like a good comp.

Who can afford to go to P.F. Chang's every single night? Not me, man. Nobody, not even the owner P.F. Chang himself couldn't afford that. So there's another objection to what Jacob Blair and Sven Nyholm were saying in defense of Savalaski and Earp by a Montreal ethicist named Haicham Nar.

Haicham Nar argues that even if you're just producing something that's not actual love, those side effects that are good could be enough to keep you around so that you are still experiencing all the stuff that that love produces. And so if it's not actual love, you could still conceivably appreciate the other person's characteristics that make you love them. And so the whole thing kind of becomes hurly burly at that point.

And really what's the problem? Are you guys just being philosophers being philosophers, I think is what NAR was saying. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that for everybody who is a philosopher, you know. That's just the nature of the beast. It really is. They love to argue and put up weird situations to prove their point. Yeah, I mean, that's just the deal. There's a bioethicist named Peter Harrison Kelly who went about it and arguing it in a little bit different way, which is the notion of something like oxytocin being a love drug.

You know, it all depends on this notion that attachment is a feeling, like it's a drive that you have. And he said, I don't think it's that, that's the case actually. It's not like you don't have this drive to constantly feel this way toward a person. Like you have these hormones that may encourage that, but you already have to have that attachment in place

to begin with. But I mean, it seems like that's kind of what Earp and Sablescu are saying though, right? Yeah, I didn't 100% understand what the issue that Harrison Kelly was raising was that Earp and Sablescu didn't agree with, like you were saying. They're saying like, yeah, you can't create this

out of the blue, but you can support it. I guess what he was saying is more, he disagrees with Helen Fisher's idea. Like you were saying that it's a drive, like you can't compare attachment to hunger. Like attachment is its own thing. It's separate from all of that. So you're not boosting attachment. You're boosting the trappings of attachment. The feelings that you get from attachment are being boosted, but don't make any

mistake that you're actually boosting attachment itself, I think is what he's saying, that it's more than just some sort of biochemical drive. So yeah, in a way he's certainly arguing and at the same time supporting their point, I think. Yeah, I think I agree. That's exactly what he's saying. And then, of course, we have to talk finally about the fact that, you know, these kind of things in the wrong hands, you know, hey, let's just go put two people in a room

together of, you know, put a man and a woman there together and give them this drug and see if that cures them, that kind of thing. Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of ways that it can be misused. And I think Earp and Savalosky were criticized as basically saying like, no, you just make sure that you regulate them and make sure that they're prescribed correctly. And they were definitely called out as naive for suggesting that that's the only way that they would be used.

So yeah, that is definitely something that makes it fraught for sure. I agree. Frought. You got anything else about love drugs coming soon? No, it seems like it's coming soon in some way or another. Yep, for sure. And if you want to know more about love drugs, just wait, I guess, and see what happens and see if you can get your doctor to prescribe them. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, I'm going to call this, I'm glad I got this email because

I've been getting this wrong all these years with this song title. Okay. Or I guess the singer. Hey guys, listen to the episode on Cher. One of you mentioned, it was me, Chuck, working at retail at Christmas, it was at the Gap, and repeatedly hearing the song Santa's Got a Brand New Bag by James Taylor, which you know you corrected me in the moment. Obviously it's James Brown. But he said James Brown is also incorrect. The

song is clearly an homage to James Brown. It is actually by a bunch of white kids from Detroit called Bob Seeger and the Last Heard. Oh wow. Yes, that Bob Seeger, he says. The title is Sock It To Me Santa and it was released in 1966 on the Cameo Parkway Records label. Probably my favorite Christmas song. In 2018, an anthology of last heard singles from 66 to 67 was released. I believe the first time they've been compiled in one place. This is also an unrelated R&B funk song.

Oh, there is also an unrelated R&B funk song called Socket to Em Santa by Joe Chenal, Circus 68, that's worth a listen. And of course, James Brown does have a Christmas album with some pretty great tunes. And he died on Christmas Day. I didn't know that. 2006. Damn. Yeah. Wow, that was some deep cuts.

Who was that? I didn't even bother looking at any of this stuff up, so I hope Kevin Schneider is right. He certainly comes across as confident, so I believed every word. Yep. Same here, Kevin. Thank you for mesmerizing us with your musical knowledge. And if you want to be like Kevin and mesmerize us, take your best shot.

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