The Evolution of Love and Sex with Dan Savage

Dim the lights and get comfy when Neil Tyson chats with sex columnist Dan Savage about modern love. Chuck Nice and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher look at sex scientifically, and Bill Nye rants about… what else?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I was feeling that one. I love it. I see you feeling it. Man, turning myself on. I don't know. That's just, sometimes you feel the universe flowing through you. Right on. You know, that's when you're a Jedi, that happens.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, welcome back. It's always good to be here. Yeah, yeah. So tonight, we're gonna be talking about sex. Okay. And relationships. Okay. And, and dating. I like the first part of that. The other two I can do without, but the first part is awesome. I know you, you know, you're a man. I know you, you, you have some expertise, but it's not the kind of expertise I'm looking for in this. Okay. So we gotta bring some extra, extra armament in on this conversation. Professor Helen Fisher, welcome to StarTalk. Thank you. It's delighted to be here. Yes.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you are a specialist at, what is the academic specialty that describes you? Well, I'm a biological anthropologist. Well, that's, that's 10 syllables. Yeah. Biological anthropology. Exactly. Evolution, evolution of love. Yeah, so we're featuring today my interview with Dan Savage, who is like the online expert on love. Yeah. And relationships. Yeah. And everything that go with it. And, you know, of course, we have a changing face of relationships today. Right. Because it used to be, uh, I was thinking it used to be a hangout at a bar, but people still do that. Right. But the, the internet has changed all of this and Tinder. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Actually, these are very old. In fact, we're moving forward to the kinds of relationships we had a million years ago. Really? Yeah. We're actually shedding about 10,000.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, I just mentioned Tinder, which operates on a smartphone, and your next line is, "We've had this since cavemen." Yeah. Well, what do you do on Tinder? You swipe, uh, cave walls back in the day. First, they would draw it and then they would swipe it. No, no, no, what they do, they swipe the actual person.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you, so it's old, it's just a new method, you're saying? Yes, absolutely. Well, that's good to know. And what we found, and you've been at this for 30 years? Yeah, a little more. A little more than 30? Job or sex? Both. All right.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Dan Savage, I, I, you know, this, this resume is great because he puts his last name in all the names of stuff. Right. So, so he's got a column called Savage Love. Okay. Yeah, you know, how could you not read that, right? And what's, and he's got the, the host of the Savage Love Cast. Yes. You know, you gotta say that. The Savage. Love Cast. Wait, can I, go, go as deep as you can. Love Cast. Love Cast. So, Dan is, he's like the go-to man for people who having troubles in their relationships. Right. Wants some advice in modern times. So, let, let's look at my interview with Dan Savage and we'll just find out how do you become an expert sex columnist? Let's check it out.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  It was an accident. It's the kind of job you really can't run out looking for. You, you can't go to any university and get a degree in advice columning. I met somebody who was starting a newspaper and I said, "Oh, you should have an advice column because everybody reads them. You see that Q and A format, you have to read it."

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, who was that person?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Tim Keck, who was the...

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why do I even know that name?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  He was the founder of The Onion.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  And so, at first, it was just a joke. I was gonna, uh, because I was a gay guy and I was gonna write this advice column about straight sex for straight people. And the joke was, I was gonna treat straight people and straight sex with the same contempt and revulsion that straight advice columnists like Ann Landers had always treated gay people and gay sex with.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be hilarious.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  It was hilarious and straight people loved it.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Because it was a new experience for them to be treated that way. And I just started getting tons...

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As the weird one.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  As the weird ones. And I started getting tons of letters with real questions in them and my fake joke, gonna do this for six months or a year, advice column turned into, "I've been doing it for 24 years", real advice column.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you feel qualified, um, this question's not about whether you're academically qualified, but just whether you're culturally qualified, to advise on any combination of these gender permutations, as we would say in mathematics?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Well, the only qualification you need to give your advice is some idiot was fool enough to ask you for it.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dan Savage. Wow. Yeah. That's very cool. Did you catch the fact that I was not in shirt and tie in that interview? I was going to say that I really, really liked the relaxed meal in that. I stripped down to my T-shirt on that one. Yeah? So I can hang with the man. Okay, right on.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  You're cool.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was very gay of you, Neil. (laughing) Thank you.

• 4:51Chuck Nice?

  By the way, let me just-

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah. Let me go on record and say that that is my fantasy of my gay boyfriend.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 4:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, if I had a gay boyfriend, that would be like, you know what I mean? He's like, good-looking and smart and, you know what I mean? And he's funny and, you know, like, that would be the guy.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep talking, here, yeah.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  True confessions, you heard it here. So, of course, relationships and advice columns is all... Somewhere, you part the curtains, there's typically the search for love-

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -in there. So, you're an academic, have you been able to define love?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you have!

• 5:26Speaker 03

  I think we've evolved three distinctly different brain systems for mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive, second one is feelings of intense romantic love, and the third is feelings of deep attachment. And I think all different forms of love are, you know, all kinds of different permutations, you like that word, combinations of, uh, of these three basic brain systems, operating in all kinds of ways to-

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that allows you to explain a lot of behavior that people exhibit when they're falling in and out of love.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  But what I study is, I, I really study romantic love, the, the second of those three things. And there's a very, uh, specific things that happen. The first thing that happens when you fall madly in love is a person takes on what I call "special meaning," and then you focus on them. You can list what you don't like about them, but you just sweep that aside and then focus on what you do.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so do you, now, I, I, my records show here that you, you're like a, a, an advisor for Match.com, is that right?

• 6:15Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm chief scientific advisor to Match, yeah.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chief scientific advisor! Whoa!

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Yo, that's hot. That's hot.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chief scientific advisor.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, right now I just got a little more attracted to you.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  And that works for me!

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, get a room, you know?

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a room. So, so what's going on in the mind- -of a one-night stand?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Of a one-night stand?

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are, are they equally as from-

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  The problem with that is, is not going on in the mind.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the problem.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  First of all, it's, um, well, you can, um, all kinds of people, over one-third of Americans have had a one-night, actually almost 60% have had a one-night stand. But what's interesting about one-night stands, over 30% turned into a long-term partnership.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's exactly how-

• 7:05Speaker 03

  And there's, there's brain circuitry for why. So basically casual sex is not casual unless you're so drunk you don't remember it. It's not casual. Things happen in the brain.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I had to ask Dan that, because people are asking him this all the time. And he, he's in a long-term marriage-

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -that began as a one-night stand.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  A lot of people have. I mean, as I say, over 30% of people have had a one-night stand turn into a long-term relationship.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what he's, he's gonna tell us about one-night stands.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  I think that happens a lot more often than we know. Because people who meet-

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the one-night stand has such a stigma.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Right. People who have sleazy meetings, they don't tell their kids about it. If your parents met in rehab, if your parents met in a sex club or a dungeon somewhere, uh, they're not gonna-

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or in the backseat of a 57 Chevy.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  They're not gonna tell you. Um, I actually wrote a series of columns, this is how long I've been doing my advice column, uh, while Ann Landers was writing hers, she wrote a column, a bunch of columns where she invited her readers to share their how they met stories. And they were all these meet cute stories, I danced with this boy at a USO, danced during the war, and then we wrote letters to each other all through the war, then we met.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a generation who are now full up with those.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they were all like so innocent, all of her stories. And I was just thinking about the people I knew who were in successful, loving, long-term relationships, many of which had really not innocent starts, who met, who had one-night stands like Terry and I did, who met in rehab, who, you know, had a drunken three-way, and then fell in love with the, actually the guest at the three-way, the, the, the, the third, the spare.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spares.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  And those aren't the stories you're gonna tell your grandparents or your kids.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that never gets out.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So we have this distorted view of how a decent, loving relationship must start. And then people do this thing.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, wait, I have to interrupt. You, you made such an important point there. Because if we give the view of love and romance that we want to be true, and that's what percolates- Then we establish culture and social mores based on that. So that if anyone is different from it, you get ostracized.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Or...

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's tragic.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It is tragic, but it's actually not, I think, the most damaging aspect of this sort of cultural belief that no decent relationship can have a sleazy start. Because people will discount people as potential partners that they had a sleazy meeting with. They will say, "I, you know, I might date this person. This might have been someone I would date, but look at what they did. Like, I couldn't date this person. We had a one-night stand." And no decent relationship can grow from a one-night stand. So I can't date this person. And no, decent relationships grow all the time from one-night stands.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely, they do. For good biological reasons, too.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  I mean, any stimulation of the genitals drives up the dopamine system and can, you can fall, uh, push you over the threshold into falling in love. And then with orgasm, there's a real flood of oxytocin, giving you feelings of deep attachment. So...

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sex is a drug.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  Is what you just said.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Say that again.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sex is a drug, is what you just said.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Sex is a drug, definitely a huge drug. What people... But it's, even, an even bigger drug is romantic love. People don't, you know, you ask somebody to casually go to bed with you and they say, "No, thank you." You don't kill yourself. You know, around the world...

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Speak for yourself.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Most crimes of passions aren't over that. I'm sorry for you.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but what about, okay, you, okay, you, you said something very important. That this is a natural biochemical phenomenon going on within us all.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is biology.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then why does the one-night stand carry a stigma?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  That's a really good question.

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  I'll tell you mine.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Because part of it is what he said, which was, "It doesn't make for a great story later on when you're with that person. That's why, even if you did meet and when I stand, you will change the story. You will not say to your children, 'You know, when I met your mother, that ball gag looked so great in her mouth. And the way she used that riding crop was amazing. And on top of that, she gave me a discount.'" Like, that's not gonna happen.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  I can't imagine that's gonna be the start of a good relationship, to be perfectly honest with you.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, for thousands of years, marriage was the beginning of a relationship. Now it's the finale. We are really doing what I call fast sex and slow love.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So love, we speak of it as being something that you, you're implying, all these urges imply that you know much more about the person than some people would claim, who would assert that they were in love, for example, on first sight.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's very easy to explain love at first sight, actually.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, so you can explain everything.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Well, not everything, but I can do that one.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when we come back, let's find out more about love at first sight on StarTalk.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. Chuck Nice.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Hey, hey.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck in the house.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  In the house.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we've got Helen Fisher, an expert on sex, because tonight we're talking about sex.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  And love.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And love, and relationships. And we're featuring my interview with Dan Savage, and he's an author of Savage Love, the advice column. Only the best column.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, so, you know, I'm curious about something. Some of the most famous love stories would include, I don't know, Cleopatra, and, and, and there's beauty that might attract if it's female beauty, heterosexual female beauty, we think of the beauty of Helen of Troy.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and she lost a thousand ships.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  You know, looks do count. I mean, there's, there's breaking points all through a relationship. And the very first thing you do is you look at them. This is why Tinder is popular.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why Tinder is popular.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love at first sight.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it love at first sight, or is it lust at first sight?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  It depends, you know.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it doesn't. It's lust at first sight.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  It is lust. It's both. I mean, it's very often both. I mean, you can trigger the brain circuitry for romantic love, and then everything about a person is sexy, from that moment on. And then you can, you can go to bed with somebody and trigger the brain circuitry for romantic love. So they can be very well connected.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's got the wire and going, going.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Unless you're so drunk you can't remember it, of course, you know. You know, sex does mean something.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked Dan Savage, is love at first sight really possible? Because he's got data from people trying to ask him about it. Let's check it out.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Love at first sight is one of those phenomena that is, some people believe it's true because...

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because it would happen to them.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  It jives at their personal experience.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  But it's a logical fallacy because you may have had the exact same initial feelings about somebody else and it didn't work out. And so you don't say "love at first sight isn't true" because when I felt love at first sight feelings for this person and it didn't work out, it disproved the theory. But I felt it for this person and it worked out, so it proves the theory.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they remember the hits and not the misses, is what it is.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Right. And you could be with somebody where you had this like love at first sight feeling, be with them all your life, and you can say, "Oh, love at first sight is a true thing and it actually happens." But somebody else may have had the exact same feelings for another person who turned out to be a jerk and it didn't work out. You may have had the exact same feelings for somebody before you had your love at first sight experience.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love at first sight, hate at second sight.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Love at first sight, hate in divorce court 15 years later.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so he's looking at all the data.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Not all of the data.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, but if you had love at first sight and you ended up divorced, then it's not really, it's the true love that people look for from fairy tales.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Ah, true love, that's a different issue.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  But the bottom line is, it's very easy to explain love at first sight. The brain circuitry for romantic love is like the fear system. You can be scared instantly and you can fall in love instantly. And we really want to get to know somebody before we ever tie the knot. And so first things, we get right in bed with them. You learn a lot between the sheets about somebody. And then you move into the friends with benefits.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or on the pool table, yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  I imagine that would work. So basically, you know, you get them into bed right off the bat and/or on the pool table, whatever, and then you, then you get, you know, the friends with benefits and then you live together. And even with the marriage, one-third of Americans want to have some sort of prenup agreement. So, you know, but because we are marrying so much later and really knowing the person before we do marry them, I think, I'm very optimistic about the future that more and more relationships will retain, will remain.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the secret to a successful relationship, is what you're suggesting?

• 15:38Speaker 03

  I don't want to advise people to do it on a pool table in order to have a 50-year marriage.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He meant the part about getting to know each other. Yeah, well, let's find out with Dan Savage, what his recipe might be for a successful relationship. Check it out.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  I think being good to each other, taking care of each other and not taking each other for granted. And to try to keep things in perspective. You know, as a relationship advisor, what I'm constantly noticing is people who are obsessed with the things in their relationships that annoy them. And they can be very articulate and long-winded about their partner's faults, or the things that they're dissatisfied with in the relationship. And nowhere near as long-winded or articulate about their partner's strengths, or what's good about the relationship. I call it paying the price of admission in a long-term relationship. There are things about your partner, there are edges you're gonna wanna stand off. There are things that, as you come together, you're gonna carve a groove in each other so you fit. There's no "the one."

• 16:37Speaker 01

  There's no perfect person for you. There's maybe a .64 and you round that guy up to one, or that woman up to one, or that some other point along the gender spectrum up to one. You make them the one. That's an act of will that you did for them, and they're doing the same for you. To make that happen...

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an under-recognized need in a relationship. Because people are saying, "I want the person who I will then never have to change."

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Perfect marriage.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And in practice, no.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  That doesn't...

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If such a person exists, you're not finding them, because there's 7 billion people in them.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  That person doesn't exist.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even inside of 7 billion?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Even in 7 billion, that person, even if we get to 7 trillion, that person does not exist.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  People grind against each other, people annoy each other.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the inter-- in math, we might call that the intersection function. That function will, in any healthy relationship, need to be continually adjusted and modified.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Right. But my point is, with the price of admission, is you sand off the edges you can sand off so you fit together more comfortably. But then you have to identify those things that, no matter how much you bitch and complain about them, will never change. And you have to ask yourself, is this person worth paying the price of admission to put up with that? And not put up with it and complain about it and guilt them about it all the time, put up with it and shut up about it.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to weigh the rest of the relationship and say that it's worth it.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  That is a really interesting thing that you said and he said. Because we, there's all kinds of psychological things about making a happy relationship. But we look in the brain at happy relationships and try to see which parts of the brain become active in a really good relationship. And the main part is a brain region which linked with what we call positive illusions. The simple ability to overlook what you don't like about a human being and focus on what you do. And actually, that's what he was saying.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because what I wonder is if, even if you engage that,

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there is the question of whether someone else attracts your attention down the line.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Well.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because this brings up the question of monogamy. And in fact, you know, Dan Savage coined a term? Monogamish.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not laughing at that, America.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Monogamist, or you monogamish. More on Dan Savage's definition of monogamish when StarTalk continues.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Chuck Nice.

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. Helen Fisher. We brought you in as a sex expert because we're featuring my interview with Dan Savage. Author of Savage Love. We left off before the break, wondering about monogamy.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Helen, you, you describe the, the state of deep love where you ignore the things you might not like, embrace all that you do and that, but how long can you sustain that? How long does it take before someone else comes up and say, hey, I don't have to brush aside as many things?

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and this, this tests one's monogamy. And I ask this because when you comb the animal kingdom.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Monogamy is not as common as we would wish it were. And if that's the case, what is the requirement that we expected of ourselves?

• 19:53Speaker 03

  We've evolved what I call a dual human reproductive strategy, a tremendous drive to fall in love, pair up, rear our children as a team, and also a tendency to be adulterous. And you find it in every single culture.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what Dan Savage says about this word. Monogamish. Check it out.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  What we know about primates and mammals, we are not a naturally monogamous species. We are a pair bonding species. But there's social monogamy, which is the pair bond, and there's sexual monogamy, which is never touching anybody ever again with your genitals. And we are not sexually monogamous.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've never split that before.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  No, we need to split it. All of these birds we used to look to and think, "Why can't we be monogamous like birds?"

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the eagles and the...

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, certain geese and little birds that would mate. And they would mate for life. And we would measure our failure as humans to live up to the standards set by these damn birds. Well, along comes genetic testing, and we find out that these birds are screwing around on each other constantly. That they are socially monogamous, pair bonded, but they're not sexually monogamous. No primates with testicles our size are monogamous, sexually monogamous. Women, hidden menses. I'm not saying all this to say that people shouldn't go for monogamy if monogamy is something that they want. I'm not saying this to argue that people who made a monogamous commitment have license to violate that monogamous commitment.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, that's what headlines would do when they hear a phrase that comes out of your mouth.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And they do that. What I'm saying is, we are not naturally monogamous. It is a difficult struggle for us. Chris Ryan, a sex writer, in his book Sex at Dawn...

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's great, you just know all these sex writers.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Well, I do, I read them all. He points out that, you know, all these cultures, you know, the sky religions, death penalty for adultery. While at the same time, we run around arguing that monogamy comes naturally to us as a species. Well, no other species has to be threatened with death to do that, which comes naturally to it. We don't point guns at dolphins and say, "Swim." Right? But we point guns at each other and say, "Don't cheat." Because monogamy comes naturally to us? And so, my argument then isn't, "You shouldn't have it, you shouldn't do it." My argument is, we should be a little compassionate and understanding about the fact that monogamy is a struggle. That a monogamous... We said, we believe, what we're told as children, is one day you will grow up and fall in love with someone, and you will make a monogamous commitment to them, and that means you're in love with them. And when you're in love, you won't want to have sex with other people. And the truth is,

• 22:10Speaker 01

  if you make a monogamous commitment to someone you love, you will still want to have sex with other people. You will refrain from it. It will be difficult. And so, perhaps we need to look at people who've been in 50-year marriages and only cheated on each other once or twice, and say, "They were good at monogamy." Not bad at it, good at it. And give them some credit for having done this thing that was difficult and unnatural as a token of their love and affection and commitment. Almost completely successfully. It's like somebody standing on one foot for 50 years. That's kind of amazing. If they touched the ground two or three times to get their balance, we wouldn't go, "They sucked at standing on their foot for 50 years on one foot."

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what should happen going forward?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Uh, monogamish relationships.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ish, monogamish.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  It's hard to do, though.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's talking about splitting your love from your genitals. Is that?

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that sounds painful.

• 23:09Chuck Nice?

  That just sounds painful, I'm sorry.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  I hear you.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, there's one exercise in the effort to split one's love from their genitals. Uh, genitals. Genitals. Isn't there a, um, I forgot what they call it. In some marriage contracts, there's like a, there's a an exclusionary clause

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in case the one love of their life, usually a movie star or someone, happens to walk in and say

• 23:33Speaker 03

  A hall pass.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A hall pass. You got a hall pass. If the love of your life just walks in the door and says, "Let's do it."

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, isn't that a manifestation of this? We've gotta be honest with ourselves.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  All kinds of people, you know, the whole thing now is polyamory. The people will form a pair bond and, you know, have a marriage and, and agree to have lovers on the side or agree to have sex on the side. But it regularly doesn't work. We're a jealous animal.

• 23:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  We do not share. In fact, uh, I was once, um, I was traveling in New Guinea in the Highlands and I met a man who had three wives. And I asked him how many wives he'd like to have. And I thought he was gonna say, was he gonna say five? Was he gonna say 10? He was gonna say 25? He said none.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  I know, since I got one.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's hard to share, you know, and, uh, we're not really built for that. So we are built for both, though.

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is even if people put a hall pass clause in their marriage contract,

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they don't really mean it with each other?

• 24:26Speaker 03

  I think they mean it. They mean it cognitively, but emotionally, it's very difficult to do.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what Dan Savage says about hall passes.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I think that's a good thing. For two reasons. A.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the partners who agree to it, they're pretty sure it'll never happen. That's why they agree.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  That's one of the reasons I think it might be good for people who want to be monogamous. But they're also acknowledging and having that conversation that it's okay for each other to find others attractive. People waste...

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting point. It's an explicit...

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Acknowledgement of that you desire others.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not gonna lie to yourself.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Right. And people in relationships will waste a lot of time and energy policing each other for evidence of what they already know to be true. Of course, your husband wants to sleep with other people. Of course, your wife is attracted to her Pilates instructor. You know. And you should be okay with that. But you hear all the time, "You looked at that woman, you must want to have sex with her." Or, "You looked at that guy, uh." It's like, yeah, of course. That means I'm not... I get this letter all the time. "It made me feel like I'm not enough for him." And I write these people back and I say, "You're not."

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, now, here's an interesting point. Lately, recent decades perhaps, we've been a little more candid with ourselves about where you are on this sexual spectrum. How does that play out in the discussions of love?

• 25:40Speaker 03

  Exactly the same. In the Singles in America studies, the gays and lesbians were exactly like the streets. They fell in love the same amount of times. They were equally eager to remarry the person that they're married to now. They have the same number of home-cooked meals. They're very similar. And when you look in the brain, it's exactly the same brain system. You know, homosexuality is who you are in love with. But I study how you feel when you're in love. And it's exactly the same in the gay and straight world.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how you feel when you're in love, there's no...

• 26:08Speaker 03

  There seems to be no difference in the brain, no difference in behavior.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more on this gender identity and how it manifests within the brain on StarTalk.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tonight, we're talking about sex, gender, relationships, love, all of the above. And Helen, you wrote a book, The First Sex.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're trying to identify the fundamental differences between men and women.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biological, neurological differences, I guess. And what have you found?

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, men and women...

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are men, genetic men and genetic women.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not people who want to express themselves as one or the other.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Well, we're all, you know, wide variations of both sexes, but we do have...

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In terms of expression?

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, in terms of expression and in terms of the brain, the brain physiology, etc. I think men and women are like two feet. They need each other to get ahead. But for millions of years, they did different jobs, and that built, really, some differences in the male and the female brain. And, um...

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how do you know, how do you know what's going on in the brain?

• 27:10Speaker 03

  We put people in brain scanners and, uh... Oh, there you go.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  That's romantic.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  And a lot of other people do, too. As a matter of fact...

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're telling me you put electrodes on someone's, somebody's head, on two people's heads, and say, "Tell each other that you love one another." How does, do you really solicit this in the laboratory?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Well, we put people in a brain scanner. You can only get one person in a brain scanner. It's a tiny little hole.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Um, and, uh... So like MRI? It's an MRI.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Yes, and we show them a photograph of their sweetheart, and we, I get them to think about love, not sex. And we study the brain circuitry of romantic love and feelings of attachment, and even the sex drive will come up, too. And you got men to agree to do this? Yes, well, one guy wanted to look at Angelina Jolie, so that wasn't too hard. And in fact, Angelina Jolie made less activity in his brain than looking at his own wife. Because with Angelina Jolie, all you have is a fantasy. With your wife, you've got the smells, the tastes, the good sense of, the jokes, etc. And so, much, so much more. But I thought it was rather courageous.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  He had no problem getting laid after that one.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  No, we did him a service, yeah.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I chatted with Dan Savage about just men versus women, you know, this thing, and we'll get his take on this. Check it out.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  One of the things I think makes a difference between male and female is testosterone. And there's been some really

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, the hormonal

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, really interesting stuff written by people who were born into, you know, coercively assigned female at birth, people who were born into women's bodies who are men, who then transitioned to male and took testosterone. And they have written about how their sexual thoughts, fantasies, everything radically changed after testosterone.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A colleague of mine just transitioned male to female. And we already know how to communicate with one another because we're colleagues. We're scientists, we contemplate the universe daily. So it's interesting to already know how to communicate with him becoming a her. And then have her now tell me changes within her. And she was saying she had completely different ensembles of thoughts in response to things that she knew intellectually she would have responded to differently as a man. To the point where she said, this is a phrase I'll never forget. She began to question free will.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was, this was, oh, I was like, wow. The things guys do in society, where most of the criminals are guys, right? And so why isn't that equal? And he's telling me there are things he wanted to do, but had no urge to do it.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Sex is 500 million years old, we are 200,000 years old. Sex built us. We inherited it. One of the lies we tell kids is you're gonna grow up one day and have sex. No, no, you're gonna grow up one day and sex is gonna have you.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so what, you do transgender studies within your brain?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Yes, just like you with your friend. There's all these wonderful stories about how when people transition from one sex to the next. When a woman goes into being a man, she becomes more visual, she has a harder time. He finds, now has a harder time finding the right word. There really are, these hormones are really evolved millions of years ago to get us operated in a certain way so that we can survive. And there's no question about it. If you inject some of them, you're gonna change, you're gonna change your behavior.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, tell me about romance, because there's a, there's this stereotype that, you know, women Want the flowers, or whatever is that stereotype?

• 30:48Chuck Nice?

  Are women more romantic?

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who's more romantic?

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Men are more romantic. There's a great deal of studies of this, and we have in my Singles in America studies with Match.com, we've proven it. They fall in love faster because they're so visual. They fall in love more regularly. They want more public displays of affection. I think it's called mate guarding in science.

• 31:09Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense, yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  And men are more interested in fetishes than women.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We will get back to that after this break on StarTalk.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is back. We're talking about dating, relationships. Got my interview with Dan Savage in San Francisco. Helen Fisher, expert on this sort of thing. Chuck is an expert too, but there's no degrees to demonstrate that fact. That hasn't stopped him from weighing in on everything you've said.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can love be swapped with a fantasy? And no love can equal that, and so you lead a depressed life for having never equaled these desires?

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  I would imagine so. I don't know. I've never studied it, but...

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are romantic comedies these unreachable ways that women want men to behave?

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you should put women in an MRI while they're watching when Harry met Sally.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  I would, the whole thing would light up.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta ask, you said before the break that men are more romantic than women. It seems then to me that men would be flocking to romantic comedies. And they don't. Men would be flocking to romance novels, and they don't.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  No, they don't. But romance novels are about romantic love. They're not about sex. Fifty Shades of Grey is about sex, and women are flocking to that. And men aren't flocking to them. They're flocking to more visual porn, because men are more visual than women. For millions of years, men had to hit that buffalo in the head with a rock. And the bottom line is you've got to have very good visual skills. And men are going much more for visual pornography than women do.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's how you account for that. That's how you would account for it. So what about fetishes? I think the data show that men...

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Are much more, yeah.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fetish prone.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think the bottom line is women are the custodian of the egg. And so as men who, in every society, you know, they do much more of the, um...

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exploratory sex.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, if a man can get a sexual opportunity and pass his DNA on to tomorrow, he will win. And so men will remember those little moments in which he won, and it'll turn into a fetish.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what Dan Savage has to say about it.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Humans are infinitely perverse, and the way our imaginations can snap onto anything, and nobody quite understands why. There are some theories that it has to do, the same capacity of our complicated, crazy brains that allows for abstract thought and human speech also has wired into it this, like, snatching stuff randomly out of your life and out of experience and eroticizing it. The people who are aroused by swim caps and pies and balloons, right? Like, where did that come from? Well, it's some sort of abstract reach around erotically.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You make an important point that I want to emphasize, that we have certain talents and profiles that are distinctly human, but that, that is not just the one expression of that talent.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a portfolio of forces that come together for that, and how else do those the elements of that portfolio manifest?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And if perversion, or what's been labeled perversion, is linked to those qualities and those things, maybe we should celebrate it instead of stigmatizing it. If it comes bundled together, abstract thought, the capacity for speech, with this propensity towards eroticizing things that don't seem erotic to other people, we should celebrate those diverse sexual interests rather than stigmatize them.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Helen, what, what do you, what does your study say about perversion?

• 34:38Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I, um, I don't actually study perversions. I study normal people who are madly in love or feeling deeply attached.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So perverse people are not normal? No, no, I ask that quite seriously.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  I mean, I would imagine that as long as you keep your mouth shut and don't go, you know, seeing it in the streets and keep it in the bedroom, I can't imagine that it would be perverse.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it true?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  As long as everybody is eager to play.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But isn't it true that psychology dictionaries?

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Used to have a whole portfolio of human states of mind and condition that were considered abnormal?

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Even homosexuality was considered abnormal until recently.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is an evolving definition.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Right. You know, we are a sex-negative society. We have long equated sex with sin. All of Asia...

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We in the West?

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, in the West. I mean, in Asia, they don't link sex with God. You know, sex is part of the normal flow of life.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  Biology.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Yes, biology. Well, it's a lot of things, but certainly biology. But, um, yeah, I think all of these things are going to, just like he's moving the discussion forward, and I think as we shed 10,000 years of our agrarian tradition, where you had to marry the right girl from the right background, the right kin connection, hopefully from a bigger farm next door, we're now turning inwards to find somebody who we want, and we're beginning to...

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than who your parents want, yes, yes.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we're beginning to build the kind of relationships that we have, as long as we keep it in our own home, I think that a lot of these stigmas will disappear.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I want to talk about more? I want to talk more about Tinder.

• 36:06Chuck Nice?

  Tinder?

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know what else? I want to find out what Bill Nye, the science guy, has to say about all this sex stuff.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Bill Nye's on Tinder?

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I say that? Chuck, just because the two parts of a sentence doesn't mean one is the other. We're gonna find out all about that when StarTalk continues.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dating, Sex, and Relationships: The Science of... Don't you want to know what Bill Nye, the science guy, thinks of sex? Oh, I do.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  So do I.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what my good friend Bill Nye has to say about sex.

• 36:52Bill Nye?

  When it comes to sex, we're all animals. Sex is how you pass your genes into the future. It's evolution's way of providing innovation, new traits, new colors, new shapes. For most animals, they have sex during a single season, a single time of year. It's just something you gotta get done if you're a living thing on Earth. It's business. But when it comes to humans, we want to have sex all the time. Procreation, schmo creation. Apparently, the same evolutionary processes that gave us this big brain allowed us to predict the future and see what a burdensome situation sex can put you in.

• 37:31Bill Nye?

  So along with that, evolutionary processes created this super hard drive to have sex. Anytime, anywhere. Actually, there's a great deal of evidence now that all kinds of different animals get pleasure from having sex. Now, why would that be? Well, evolution is what determines our size and shape, how tall we are, our hair color, and so on. Well, apparently, it also determines what we feel, our emotions. So by getting pleasure out of sex, we are driven to have sex and pass our genes on. I mean, check this guy out. There's something going on in this boy panda's mind.

• 38:12Bill Nye?

  When he looks at the girl panda, he's thinking, "Vive la difference," or "Long live the difference." In fact, that's the essence of this. Without sex, your genes wouldn't live long at all. You know, all this talk about sex is making me hungry. Wait, is that what I meant? All this talk about sex is making me horny.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it up for Bill.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me about sex drive.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  About the sex drive?

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because that's not love drive, that's sex drive.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Well, it's primitive, it's ancient, it's primordial, and we all carry it around in our heads and do it regularly. But I do think that animals actually love as well as, you know, no animal copulate with anybody. Too old, too young, too scruffy, too scrubbed, wrong color, wrong shape, wrong size, they won't do it.

• 39:06Chuck Nice?

  No, no, Helen, let's be honest here. No female will do. You know that's the truth. In the animal kingdom, the male will do anybody.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think he's right.

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  The female is the one who makes the decision.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A male dog humps a tree stump. So clearly, it does not matter to the dog.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  When a female in heat is not pretty, is not too picky either, you know? I mean, big time.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I have yet to meet one of those.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So sex is online now. I guess that was inevitable. And... Tinder. What's that about?

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, it actually works. Tinder actually works pretty well because the first thing you have to do anyway is look at a person and they'll say a lot about a person when you take a look at them.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  And then you gotta go meet them. The bottom line is, these are not dating sites. They're introducing sites. And when you get into the bar or into the coffee house or whatever and you sit down, the ancient human brain works the way it always has and you court the way you did a million years ago.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I've been married 28 years, which means I have no idea how these dating sites work. I have no idea what Tinder is, how it works, what it is. So I got Dan Savage to explain it to me. Check it out. So you submit a photo, as I understand it, and you say what you're looking for, age range and this sort of thing. And then there's a photo of that person and you either say yes or no.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Swipe left or swipe right?

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. And if you're left-right dyslexic, that could be a problem.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And if you swipe them in the right direction and they swipe you in the right direction, the app hooks you up. The app introduces you.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm betting that the create, the inventors of the global positioning satellite.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Never anticipated this.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never anticipated that there would be an app that localizes you on the surface of the earth to find someone else you're gonna have sex with in a few hours. This is an extraordinary application.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  But that's what humans always do.

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An extraordinary application of tax money.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  That's what humans always do with new technologies.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GPS is a military project by the Air Force.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  We always do that with new technologies. The first use, the first adaptation of a new technology will be to the service of our sex lives and our romantic lives. And whatever it is, like the phone was considered this socially destabilizing, revolutionary, subversive creep thing because a young man could call your daughter in your house. And the car, people freaked out about the car because a young couple could go be alone.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  That was a big thing, the car. It was bigger than even contraceptive pills. In 1940s, the car, it was a mobile bedroom.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back when cars were large enough to be a mobile bedroom. Now, it's like, you know, it's unfortunate.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that I would know.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Not doing that in a smart car.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The no-sex car is what that is. So, do you embrace the role of technology now in the role of dating?

• 42:01Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, we've got this long...

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says the woman who is the advisor to Match.com.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  No, you know, we no longer have parents who can fix us up. By middle age, you know, you've gone through people who your girlfriends could introduce you to. You've met everybody you might have wanted to meet at work. And it's cheap, it's easy, and it's safe. So, why wouldn't we want to do it all through our lives?

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a little weird to see somebody swiping their thumb on the Tinder screen.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  But you know...

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm told there's a condition called Tinder thumb.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have Tinderitis.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought that was from doing something else.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  But you know what? Romantic love is like a sleeping cat. It can be awakened at any moment. And that person who's just out for sex on Tinder or wherever, and I don't think they're all out for just sex, they meet the person that triggers the brain circuitry for romantic love, and they're off to the races on something even more powerful than sex.

• 42:55Chuck Nice?

  That's a very interesting point. So, are you saying that there is very little academics when it comes to love? In other words, love makes you stupid?

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Love does make you stupid.

• 43:04Chuck Nice?

  Love makes you stupid, okay.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  As a matter of fact, whole brain regions begin to shut down.

• 43:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shut down. It makes you stupid. That's what it is.

• 43:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no place else we can take this conversation but from there. Chuck Nice, thanks for being on StarTalk, as always. And Helen Fisher, if sex comes up again, we're gonna find you.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  I'm not hard to find.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna put you right back in this seat.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, everyone, you've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.