Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – The Science of Love

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. This is a special edition of StarTalk. It's our Valentine's Day edition. Yeah. Oh, yes. L-U-U-U-U-V. And I know we could probably handle that our own, but we bring in some expertise. Yes. And we're gonna bring in Helen Fisher. Helen Fisher, she's been on StarTalk before and it hit a new book, Anatomy of Love. The Anatomy of Love. And what color is it? It's red. The red cover. Helen Fisher, you're like the world's expert on like love, marriage, relationships. You work for the Kinsey. I'm at the Kinsey Institute. The Kinsey Institute. This is the famous Kinsey. This is the famous Kinsey who really studied love. He did. It was very good way before everybody else did. He did. Excellent. And in this edition, this is. But sex, he actually studied a lot of sex more than he did love. Sex. We really broke into studying love. I mean, people really thought this was part of the supernatural, part of the stars. But what's love got to do with it? People pine for it, liver it, kill for it and die for it. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on earth. Is that love or sex we talking about? It's what you just said everybody. Sex. We agree. We agree that happens for sex. I don't think if you ask somebody to go to bed with you and they say, no thank you, you don't kill yourself. But around the world, people kill. Speak for yourself, Helen. I gotta tell you, people kill. Rejection well. Yeah, nobody takes rejection well. And nobody gets out of love alive. No. We have some scars. As a matter of fact, it's an addiction, a very powerfully wonderful addiction when it's going well and a perfectly horrible addiction when it's going poorly. But anyway, you say, is it a sex or is it love? I've mentioned this to you before. I think we've evolved three distinctly different brain systems for mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive. One is the feelings of intense romantic love. And the third is feelings of deep attachment. And I think people go- Oh, I got one out of three. Not bad, not bad. All right. So for this edition of StarTalk, we're soliciting, we've solicited questions from our fan base through our various media platforms. And they're all about sort of Valentine's Day and love. Yes. And all that goes with it. Yes. But I have one live anecdote just to start off with. So in the medical community, there's a disease of lovemaking, which is collectively called venereal diseases. And that is actually named after Venus. Really? The goddess of love. So the genitive form of Venus is Venera. And in fact, the Russian space missions to Venus were all called Venera. Venera one, Venera two, Venera three. The medical doctors said, oh, here's a disease peculiar to love making and love and beauty and all that go with it. Let's name it after Venus. So they call them venereal diseases. Then we astronomers came along and said, we need a name of some of an alien who might be from Venus. We're not gonna call them venerals now. Word is taken. Exactly. We had to invent a non-legitimate word. And so you're Venetian if you're from Venus, but you're technically, you should be Venera. Venera. Oh, okay. When the venerals come. Say I'm a Venetian. Say you're a Venetian. You're a Venetian, man. Get a little further in the social ladder if you're. Cool thing about that is doctors gave us the term for VD, which actually is the same Valentine's Day as VD as well. Ouch. Why don't you think about it? Ouch. Valentine's Day, venereal disease. Ouch, Chuck. Wait a minute, there's good prices this Valentine's Day. We're all fun. Okay, we're just laying in the blanket. I'm just saying it's never been a good day for me. No, me neither, I'm always working on that day, yeah. So Chuck, you got some questions. None of us have seen them and Helen is here to, I'm just here to direct them to Helen because out of what the hell do I know? Yeah, these are our Cosmic Queries, of course, like you said. Cosmic Queries. Taken from all over the internet. So let's start off with Chris Reed coming to us from Twitter, cdreed is his handle. Evolution is about the natural selection of traits. How has love evolved and what traits were left behind? So that's a really good question. Yeah, that's a really good question. And I wonder if I can add to that. If we think of love as distinctly human, but does this preclude other animals, especially other mammals, from having the same sentiment? And why else would we say, oh, look at the love birds? It would analogize our love to what we know are two birds. So there's three questions really on the table. And let me start with the evolution of it and the brain. You know, I put people in brain scanners and study the brain circuitry of romantic love. That's what scares me about you, but nice. Well, I wouldn't say, you know. Talk about your foreplay. Put your mate in the brain scanner so he really does love you. Go ahead and get in that brain scanner. That's how we starting this off tonight. It's like you get in a brain scanner. That's what we're doing. You know, you can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake. And then when you sit down and eat that cake, you feel that joy. In the same way, I can know everything you can know about love and still make the same mistakes. Just to be clear, to guys, chocolate cake is really just chocolate cake. Yeah. I'm sorry. Maybe to you. But anyway, this is a brain system. It came from other mammals. It came from other birds. All kinds of animals feel attraction to certain creatures and not attraction to others. You know, too old, too young, too feathers out of order. Too anything. Antlers too big, too little, et cetera, et cetera. You don't want it. Oh, God, I know that part. So the bottom line is we did evolve. Get your antlers out of this. I want to see your antlers. Show me your antlers. Anyway, the bottom line is this brain system came out of nature. So long before mankind came down out of the trees, began to stand up on two feet, began to need to form pair bonds to read their young and the brain circuitry for romantic love began to evolve in order to make us focus on one particular individual and start the mating process. But you can see that in other mammals, particularly ones that form pair bonds. You know, you'll see an immediate attraction of one animal for another and, you know, they're going for it. In fact, this is the evolution of love at first sight. Is it attraction or is it just they want to mate? How do you distinguish them? Did you ask them? There's actually academic studies that when a female chimpanzee, for example, is in heat and in estrus, she'll copulate with actually almost all of the males, but there's some she won't copulate with and it's because she doesn't like them. Because he's a real a-hole, that guy. The bottom line is these are different systems and just the sex drive will get you out there looking, but then it's romantic love or attraction in other animals or magnetism, just animal magnetism, that enables you to sift between all these other animals and focus on the one that works for you. It's one thing if they don't sleep with you because they're sleeping with only one other person, but they're sleeping with everybody and not you? That's bad. Yeah, it's all bad. Can't they just find out that the reason, the pandas that they had wherever in San Francisco that they've been trying to mate, that the reason they didn't mate was because the female didn't like the male? There you go. That is a really important point. Because no animal on this planet will copulate with anything that comes along. They all have preferences. And we evolved that system for preferences. And then, of course, when we began to stand up on two legs, females began to have to carry their babies in their arms instead of on their backs, they began to need someone to help them out, at least while they raise the child through infancy. And so this brain circuitry for animal attraction evolved into what we call today romantic love. Is there anything that was left behind, like the questioner asked? Oh, that's a beautiful question. Nobody's ever asked me. Sure, the ability to share. We're not an animal that shares very well. We're a jealous animal. You know, I mean, I was talking last night to some people who are polyamorous. And they really have to work very hard to keep their... Which means several partners? These people actually believe that you can have several partners. Swingers, baby! Swingers are the sex... they're swinging for sex. Polyamorous are... Are relationships? Yes. So they're... Romantic. So they want to keep their deep attachment to one partner and then have a lot of romances on the side. And they say they can overcome this jealousy and the, you know, the self-deception and all, but they can't. They work very hard on it. But the bottom line is no, we're not a good animal. We don't share well. And of course, we're also cheaters, you know? I mean, it's an example. So in the Mormon tradition of multiple wives for the men, then this is, you're saying there might be an evolutionary force that makes that not stable? Because they've been doing it for 100-something years. You know, 86% of world cultures permit a man to have several wives. But actually... I don't know. It can be a toothache. I can tell you that. It can be a real panic. I think I told you last time I knew a man in Highlands of New Guinea who had three wives. And when I asked him how many he wanted, he said, none. Be careful what you wish for. It can be a toothache, yeah. Plus, as I understand it, historically, in particular the Middle East, as I've come to understand it, that was initially put forth as protection for women so that if you actually got romantically involved with a woman, you had to then take care of her. Exactly. So it was a matter of accountability for who you were. It was also ecological reasons. But, you know, most societies permit a man to have several wives. But only about 5 to 10% of men in almost all cultures actually have several wives, because you've got to have a lot of money, a lot of cows, a lot of sheep, a lot of education or something to get two women to share you. So are there any cultures where a woman has multiple husbands? Only very few. Among the very rich of southern Alaska, traditionally, these people lived in these archipelagos and the men went out fishing every... To be the native peoples of Alaska. Native peoples of Alaska, yes. And a woman... Not Sarah Palin. Oh, I have four husbands, you betcha. You betcha. But it's very impractical from a Darwinian perspective, because if a woman is sharing several men, she can't have a baby every nine months. Whereas if a man has several wives, he could have a lot of babies simultaneously. Four babies at one time. Or more. But the problem with polygyny, poly meaning many, gyny meaning women, is that the women fight. Sometimes they try to poison each other's children. Not my problem. Yeah, that's right. Keep it that way. You guys do your thing. Don't come bother me with your petty squabbles. To bond is human. We're a pair-bonding animal. But the world's also an animal that cheats. And we seem to do both. And I think one of the great 21st century issues is, to what degree do we want intimacy with one individual, and what degree do we want autonomy? That great balance between the two is something we all have to wrestle with. And what intrigues me is how we cherry-pick the animal kingdom to use as examples of how we want to behave. So we'll say, oh, an eagle will mate for life. Swans. They'll mate for life. Okay, well, but how about the, what's the one that just has sex as often as it can with as many other... All of them. No, all the rest of them. The rest of them. Oh, the rest of them. Even eagles. Even eagles. Even swans. We have not found a completely... The naked mole rat. The naked mole rat has two subspecies. One of them mates for life. The other is just... Yeah. Same thing with... It's the prairie vole. The prairie vole. Sorry, maybe that's what I meant. Not the naked mole rat. And some of them... And we know the genes of that, the genetics of that. And then you take one of the genes from one of those prairie voles that does mate for life, and put them in a non-pair bonding mouse or something, and it'll start to form a pair bond too. Start to do the nasty... So there is biology to feelings of attachment, yes. Well, they put the attachment gene in the ones that were not always reattached. Yes. But how about the wandering gene? Does that make them wander? We haven't really found a wandering gene. We found genes in which you attach less. There's one gene in which if you have no copies of that gene, you're the most among men, actually. It's a study of men. The least promiscuous. One gene, they're going to be more promiscuous, and two genes, they're going to be the most. Actually not promiscuous, but in unstable relationships that are going to lead to promiscuity. So we're finding something. But you know what? That's your promiscuity coefficient. That should come out in the speed dating rounds, right? But you know what? It's important. Even though we have predispositions, you can say no to them, you know, because, you know... Because we're living in civilization. That's why. That's why. Yeah, you can... You know, people can be... Quit their bad habits. Yeah. And then some of it is called age for men as well. Yeah. It's just... Wait, wait. But just to be clear, just to be clear, they're not habits if we're genetically predisposed. So they can... You can overcome a genetic predisposition because we live in civilization where certain conduct is necessary. Very well said. And then you just get too old. It's amazing how many people don't, though. I mean, I've looked at adultery in 42 societies and you find it even in places where you can get your head chopped off. It's not even adultery. There's murder. There's transgressions of a society. Well, that's... I mean, I think that most of our crimes of passion come because people have been... They've lost a true love. They've lost from a Darwinian perspective. They've lost life's greatest prize, which is a mating partner. Yeah. They need to rethink some things. That's what I'm saying. You got another question. Let's move on. That was fascinating stuff, man. All right, let's get down to, here's one from The Teen Poet. Coming to us from Twitter. That's a Twitter handle. That's a Twitter handle. At the teen poet 322 wants to know, is human love more than chemical reactions, as in Interstellar's unrealistic ending? Well, thanks for the critique inside the question. Just in case people missed that moment in Interstellar where Anne Hathaway's character says, maybe I'm paraphrasing, you know, love is something that transcends even dimensions. Right. Oh, wow. It's love that they're using to communicate with us through basically space and time. Yeah, through the space-time continuum. The space-time continuum. Love is the language that transcends the space-time continuum. So if I can tighten the question, how much of your research tells us that love is just electrochemical in your brain and it's nothing more or less than that? Well, bottom line is everything is electrical and chemical in your brain. I mean, everything, you think of anything, do anything, feel anything, any kind of drive, thirst, hunger, all of them. Chuck, it doesn't permeate the fabric of the space-time continuum. No, it can't. And now my heart is broken. And then we make a whole lot of things out of it. And we make beautiful things. I mean, all of the love poetry from around the world, I mean, our plays, our poems, our novels, our sitcoms, our ballets, our operas, our theater, our myths, our legends, I mean, the world is cluttered. Don't forget porn. That was conspicuously absent on that list. We got it in there, Chuck, thank you. But why isn't that just the spectrum of human emotion, of which love is one? It's actually a drive. So is hate. Hate is as big a drive as love. No question about it. In fact, they're not even the opposite. It's the opposite of love is indifference. That's deep. In fact, you can hate and love somebody at the same time. Oh, now that explains my parents. Absolutely. That way you get the frenemy. The frenemy. I had a wonderful girlfriend who said of her husband, it was a wonderful marriage, but she said, you know what? Sometimes I hate them, but I always love them. And so these are different brain systems and you can flop from one to the other. It's indifference. That's when you've killed the passion. But you know what? It's a drive. This is not even an emotion. It comes emanates from a little factory in the base of the brain that lies right next to the brain regions that orchestrate thirst and hunger. Because this is so essential to survival and it has been for so long. Because if you don't have babies, you don't form a pair bond. You don't pass your DNA on to the... That's the end of your line. So it's just it's basically the second greatest driving force in our being, which the first is gotta eat. You know, eating makes you live another day. You know, having sex will make you live genetically... Make you want to live another day. Right. That's how you really gotta do it. Good for you, by the way. Sex is really good for you if it's with the right person. Freeds it to the choir, baby. Well, I think so it is reducible in a fundamental way to... I came up with three in the list. So there's food, sex and shelter, which are three things that we need for our survival. And so we ought to be pretty energetic in the acquisition of those three. Absolutely. And also, if you don't... I've never seen anybody kill themselves when they couldn't get something to eat. But I've certainly seen people kill themselves when they couldn't get a particular sweetheart. Couldn't get the love. I don't think you go around... Well, you might go around murdering somebody for bread, you know, in the right place when you're starving, but... You kill in the name... You won't kill yourself, you'll kill somebody else. And that's why. Okay. I bet there's... I guess our jails are much more filled with people who have committed a crime of passion. I mean, this is a powerful brain system. What people will do for love is out of this world. And particularly around right now, you know, I am the chief scientific advisor to match.com. And between the day after Christmas and Valentine's Day, the amount of people going on to that site and other sites increases everywhere from 30 to 60%. This is the time. This is the season for love. You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment. Stay tuned part five. Stay tuned for part five. Stay tuned for part five. Stay tuned for part five. Stay tuned for part five. Stay tuned for part five. Welcome back to StarTalk. Here's more of this week's episode. Oh, yeah, and I'm going to say it's because you pleasure yourself publicly on the train. People just can't forgive that, Ben. They can't forgive you for it. Let me broaden the question, Helen, and ask, is there someone for everyone? Sure. If there is, then the person who can't find love is not looking hard enough. They're not looking hard enough. You know, if you go on these dating sites, it does require some work, you know. First of all, he's probably too picky. You know, lower your standards. The guy who's looking for love. Looking for love. When in doubt, lower your standards. Is this advice you're giving us, Helen? I got your book here, The Anatomy of Love. You're telling us. Think of reasons to say yes. You know, there's a huge part of the brain that enables us to overlook the negative and focus on the positive. Do it all the time. When we want to. Yeah, but one of the problems when you're meeting people online is you know so little about them when you start out that you over, you know, you overweight those few things that you know and you break it up before you, the more you get to know somebody, the more you like them. You gotta give people a chance, you know. See, now that is a chemical thing because, and I'm probably gonna get in trouble if I say this. Oh, I'm gonna say it again. We can edit this, Chuck. All right, so here's the truth. I have often sat and said to myself, why after 18 years of marriage. Okay, stop there. Okay, no, no, no. Let me protect Chuck from himself. Oh, I don't even hear it. Back away from the microphone, Chuck. But I've put people in Scanner. It's possible to remain in love long term. I and my colleagues have put 17 people into the Scanner who were married an average of 21 years. So you're behind the game. I'm still in love. No, that's my point. Back away from the mic, Chuck. You're right. I said, okay, but I'm still in love. I mean, however, no, no, listen to me. Don't, you know what, listen, if I were to put it down on paper, I should not be in love. Yeah. I should not be. I should not be. This woman, I love her to death and there's nothing she can do that's wrong. And if I were to actually go and say all the stuff that I probably would be like, no, I don't like that. No, I don't like that. I should have left long ago. So if you deconstruct your relationship, there's nothing there, but in total it's working for you. Oh my God. It's the best thing ever happened to me in my life. So Helen. We evolved to deceive. Chuck, you are lying to yourself. No, you're not. You're overlooking the negative. You are in love with your wife. You are overlooking the negative and there's a huge part of the brain that enables you to do that and bless it. So, but let me come in the back door there. If you do have a list of what you like in someone and then you put it on one of these websites and then you find someone that matches it, the premise is that's your soulmate. But what Chuck is saying is if you laid out the inventory, if you laid out the portfolio, then no. He would have never met her in this way. I would have never met her this way. I bet that there are real, no, you wouldn't have met her. But once you did meet her, there is things about that woman that you really like that ring deep into your love map. Then what of these websites that are matching people up and slicing and dicing them in these very, what is it? Farm... farmers.com. farmers.com. Farmers can mate other farmers, meet and mate with other farmers. It's a whole lifestyle so that you can understand it. But the bottom line is these are not dating services. These are introducing services. The only true algorithm is your own human brain. So the faster you can get out and meet the guy or girl in the bar, on the street, it's just giving you a whole range of people and then you got to do the job. We can give you the people, but you got to do the job. And that's what's really thrilling. But would you agree that if you pre... If you proscribe what you think you're going to be attracted to, that is greatly restricting your options? The problem is... Or it could be at least. At least there's a potential for that, right? It's... Listen, staying at home and looking for somebody under the couch is certainly going to not do much for your options. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, how many people do you meet through your friends? How many do you meet at work? How many people do you meet when you're playing... At the fitness center. And you run through all that. And then how are you going to meet people? No, I think these dating services, introducing services, give you a much broader range than we've ever had in all of our history. I would agree. Wait, even the ones that specify, because there's J-date for Jews, and lately there's like a white people one. White people meet. White people meet. Do they really have a hard time finding... Then they have black people meet, to which I told a friend, how could I ever meet a white girl when black people meet? No, but how craziness is that? But do white people actually have a problem finding other white people in a country that... Apparently, all these white people live in Detroit. Is that what it is? It's like, I don't know where I'm going to find another white person. Every time I look around, I'm here in Detroit and I can't find any white people. I need a web service to help me find one. A web service to help me. But you do meet many more people on these dating sites than we ever did through all of history. Plus, throughout your life, we've got things like Our Time, which is for people over 50. I mean, I can't stand in a bar and have the perfect boy walk by. You're selling yourself short there, Helen. Thank you. Telling you right now. So Chuck, what are the questions you got there? All right, let's get back to this. So we told our boy here to get out. Get the hell off the couch. Get out the house, get out the house, Ben. That's the answer to your question, all right? Wait, wait, just to, I'm sorry, just to round that out, round out that question. Should someone change themselves to be more attractive to other people? Should they go through a makeover? Should they change their hair? Should they, other than the minimum hygiene that we expect in society, should someone do that if they're desperate for love? And then, if they find that person, did that person fall in love with what they created for themselves? We do fall in love with what we created for ourselves, no matter what. Even if somebody fits somewhat within your love map, you overlook what doesn't fit and you focus on what you do. So we're constantly, yeah, that's what it is. We have this, you know, as small children we grow up and we create a list, an unconscious list of what we're looking for in a partner. And then you see the perfect person at the perfect time and they fit pretty much in your love map and you get rid of, excuse me, what you don't like and you just focus on what you do. So that's good. But what was that other question? No, I'm saying that, you know, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Should you change yourself? All right. You know, and on the one hand the answer is no. If you're a man, because don't worry, she's going to do that for you. You do not have to worry. Be yourself, man, because whatever you are and whoever you are, that is not what you are going to be in two years. It's a good project for us girls. We have a lot of work to do. Let me tell you, I have a friend that I saw has been 20 years since we've seen each other. And we got to hang out. I was in Philadelphia and we got to hang out. We haven't seen each other in 20 years. That was your place. That was my hometown. And at the end of the night, he was like, Wow, man, you really have changed. And he really hadn't. He's not married. What did you change? He's just me. What did you change about yourself? Mostly, now that I'm married, I'm gay. That's the most thing. I think you need to change. Listen, if it's not working, you ought to make some changes. But I wouldn't certainly make any changes. First of all, it's very hard to make changes in personality. You can be somebody else, but it's tiring out of character. It's an investment of energy at all times. And as it turns out, by being who you are, you will turn off some people. But when you find the right one, that person is going to really love you. So I wouldn't make huge changes. Sure, you can change your hair and maybe stop swearing or read a little bit more so that you're better educated. You can call them comfort changes. That might make the other person comfortable. Without really totally messing with you. Exactly. Unless there's parts you don't like of you, and you can work on that too. But as you say, she's going to work on you too. Oh, rest assured. Next question. Let us move on. Men do their work too. Women are always scrambling to please. But we don't know that that's what you're doing for us. You just appear that way and we think, hey, wow, I really like that. Not knowing that you spent five hours creating that, which we just said we liked. That was very profound what you just said. Because that is the difference between what makes a woman appreciate you because you noticed what she did, but you just gave the true male perspective, which is we're appreciative of it. We just think like, wow, look at you. This is how you look. We're completely oblivious. Completely oblivious that you actually took effort and time to make yourself look that way. We're just like, wow, okay, that looks good. We're idiots, basically. I don't know, I am from Foreman and I don't think you're idiots. But yeah, I'll keep to my self-deception on that one. Okay, exactly. All right, all right, here we go. This is Ray coming to us from Twitter as well. And Ray has a very simple, succinct question, but I think it's quite in-depth when you look at it. Why does love hurt? Oh, boy. That's all he asked. But I've got to say, that's pretty prolific, what he just said. He just asked. It really does. So we've put a lot of people into a scanner who had just been dumped. And the brain regions that become active when you've been dumped is three brain regions linked with intense craving, a brain region linked with physical pain. Physical pain. Physical pain, a brain region, and actually aspirin helps when you're rejected in love. There's an academic article on that. And also anxiety that goes along with the physical pain. And you're also brain regions linked with trying to figure out what went wrong, the cost, the benefits, what happened here. And I think so the brain is in overdrive. It is in a terrible state. This is why we have all these crimes of passion, you know. And why does it hurt? It hurts because you've lost, once I said, you know, life's greatest prize, a mating partner. You've lost the ability to pass your DNA on to eternity. I think nature overdid it, to be perfectly honest. You really suffer terribly. And there's basically two stages of getting rejected. The first is protest. You just try to win the person back. You'll try to seduce. You'll try to threaten. You'll try to make them jealous and all that. And then you slip into this incredible depression. Unless you get them back. In which case you slip into indifference. Like, why did I ever want you and I keep doing this? You've heard that other people say this. Yes, exactly. Read about it, Chuck. But I think it hurts too much. You think it's a real part of the brain center that is responsible. There's no question about it. Big parts of the brain become incredibly overactive. You know, you can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't stop crying. So it's disruptive to your human physiology. Yes. And to your social relations. So lovesick is an actual sick. It's an actual sick. And you can die from being rejected. Wait, don't tell me you die from a broken heart. You die from heart attacks and strokes. So the stress... Okay, so your heart did break... . was a great deal of anxiety. Stress actually manifests itself physically, and you end up dying of a stroke or a heart attack because of... It drives up the dopamine system in the beginning. That gives you all that energy and focus and motivation and craving. And then after a while, you can't get them, you finally give up and you slip into sort of a profound depression. Okay, as a corollary to this, there are people who are in love with people they've never met. Yes. Isn't that it? So now, are they... They're practicing. They're not the mating partner that they got to know intimately, but nonetheless, that sentiment is still there. It's a crush. It's largely teenagers. But it can be somebody at work you don't ever dare come close to, but you know, you feel all that. It'll go away. They're grown... I agree with the teenager thing, but isn't that more women and when you get older, it's the male stalker of the women? No, men fall in love faster than women do. They fall in love more often than women do. When they meet somebody that they really like, they want to introduce them to friends and family sooner. Men want to move in sooner. Men have more intimate conversations with their wives than women do with their husbands because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends. And men are two and a half times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship is over. So men are the more passionate... Wow! So basically... Just to be clear, I think we're more likely to commit suicide in all categories. Probably, yes. And homicide. It's a more delicate... Men are just completely messed up. I was going to say, it sounds like we're a bunch of love pussies. That's what it comes down to. Oh, my God, I can't live without you. Women are pretty bad, believe me. I've had them on my couch. So, okay, so we've established it's real. It's real. Pain is real. It's not imagined. You can't just say, get over it. It's like breaking your leg and saying, get over it. Exactly. As a matter of fact, a week later, you can't remember any physical pain in your tooth, but a week later, you're still really suffering from a romantic rejection. Wow. So that's baggage, I think. That's evolutionary baggage. Is there any truth to the fact that they say for every year you're together, it takes six months to get over? I don't know the... That's interesting. Yeah, they say so forever. If you're together with somebody... So at some point, it would take longer than your life, your actuarial life expectancy. Exactly. It depends on who you are, what your other alternatives are, how much you invested in it, how well you are. There's gonna be many forces in how you get over it. Whether you bought the couch together because then you'll have to take the chainsaw and cut it in half when you split up. Oh, thank God we didn't buy the dog together. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned. More up next. Welcome back, here's more of StarTalk. Chuck, you've got questions from the internet. Yes, I do. All right, what do you have? So let's jump right back on this. Melissa McCurdy from Facebook says, is the state of being in love considered mental illness or chemical imbalance? In other words, are you crazy to be in love with somebody? I don't think so. I mean, it's that you're gonna do, it's the most important thing we do with our lives, but you are a little crazy. I mean, you can't eat, you can't sleep, you forget your coach, you don't get to work, you forget to feed the cat, you don't call your mother, you're obsessed, it's an obsession. Right, so why doesn't it count as some kind of mental disorder? Because you're not otherwise... It's a natural drive. It's a natural obsession. In fact, I think that all of the chemical addictions hijack this basic brain system that evolved for natural craving. So we're trying to actually say to the medical community that it's a very positive addiction when it's going well and a perfectly horribly negative addiction when it's going poorly, but it is an addiction. The addiction centers become activated. But I don't want to call it a mental illness. Isn't there like an album or a song with that title? Yes, it is. Who is that? Robert Palmer. Robert Palmer. Mine as well, face it, you're addicted to love. He's got the models with the red lips. And I'm like, I see why you're in love. I remember that video. There were already hot chicks behind you. That was an early MTV video. Oh, my gosh. That was like... Our poets have said it for centuries. I mean, the oldest love poetry is over 4,000 years old. And this describing love exactly the way we describe it today. Right. Okay, so even though it disrupts our normal functioning, our responsible functioning as members of society, because of its frequency among we humans, you're not going to say... It's essential purpose. And you're not going to say it's a disorder. We're going to say it's something... it's like today where they have drugs living with this disease. Right. We're just going to live with it. We're going to teach us how to live with our love. That's what you're saying. Well, I would basically say that an awful lot of people would be happy to live with their love. I mean, people are madly in love, think of nothing else. They don't care if they forget to feed the cat. They're just happy. Happy, really. I mean... Cat will care if you forget to feed the cat. You know, what you just did there, you actually described the textbook case scenario for a person addicted to drugs. I don't care about anything. I don't care if I feed the cat. I don't care if you're right. There's a big difference, there's many big differences though. I mean, you know, the right love affair is going to give you tremendous pleasure. It's going to give you optimism. It's going to give you hope. I mean, as you drive that dopamine system up when you're madly in love, you get energy, focus, motivation. You know, when you take drugs, you're not getting necessarily. And by the way, the drugs are going to be gone tomorrow morning when you wake up. You don't party with me tomorrow morning. You mean nine o'clock tonight. Now go ahead. Well, that sounds good. Okay, so that's a fascinating point. There are upside, the upside of this. It's a wonderful addiction. It's a fundamental contribution to society and people's happiness. Okay, all right, we got that. Here we go, let's move on. Move on up. This is Joe Pettengill from Portland, Oregon, coming to us through Facebook once you know this. Biologically, how does the love of a pet differ from the love of a person or love of an object? This means a person's love of a pet, not a pet's love of the person. Right, not a pet's love of a person. But even though that's a very interesting, I'd like to know about that now that you brought it up. Like, you know. Well, I don't know if she studies non-human animals. Oh, that's great. I do, I do, because you have to understand. Scare me every day you keep talking and telling me what you put in your machine. I think that's very cool. I think my dog wants to bang me. But, you know, there's a constellation of traits that are linked with feelings of... You have permission to use that word in that way for me. Oh, thank you. Constellation, yes, good. And among those things are the drive to actually have sex with the person. And you really don't. Most people want to have sex with their dog. So, you have many of the traits linked with romantic love. I mean, the obsession, the focus, the... You think your dog's the best looking dog in the whole universe. It's the only dog that's alive that counts, et cetera, et cetera. So it has some of the characteristics of intense romantic love and feelings of deep attachment, that second brain system. But you don't have any of these sex, sexual things. So, it's the intimacy or physical intimacy that sets that apart. Yes. You can fall in love with your small baby too. And, you know, you can fall in love with all kinds of things, but yes, it's that sexual component that's missing. Fall in love with a toaster. Yeah, yeah. Just don't have sex with... It'll be hot. Right, so I have a question on that animal frontier. Dogs were basically bred for their loyalty to humans among other properties. So, you know, there's an old saying, be the person who your dog thinks you are. Oh, how wonderful. Yeah, because your dog thinks you're the greatest thing ever. You come home, no matter what, no matter the day the dog had, no matter the day that you are the best person there ever was to happen to them. So that might fool you into thinking that this is a relationship, and the person appreciates you for who and what you are. Now, cats, not so much, so do we have data to show that people have stronger relationships with their dogs than they do with their cats? Because the dog is reciprocal in its... Yes, yes. And in fact, you know, they call it chick bait. I mean, a man with a dog walking down the street picks up more girls than if he's walking along with a cat. Must love dogs, the whole movie with that title. Must love dogs. He's basically advertising that he can take care of something. That's a pretty low bar. Take care of a cat. Maybe he's good mating material. That's actually, we've got data on that. He picks up the poop. That's good. But you know, dogs are pair bonding animals naturally. Only 3% of mammals form a pair bond to really young and all the wild wolves, foxes, coyotes, dingoes and you know, and dogs form pair bonds. I thought they travel in packs with one male and one female who are the breeding pair and everybody else is a helper at the nest. Oh, so it's not one male mating multiple females. Like a pride of lion. Exactly. I didn't know that. Okay, good. So this is why we bond so easily with them. As a matter of fact, anthropologists think that it's dogs that picked the bonding with us and followed along with us, you know, and... Because we left food behind. Yeah, yeah, we did that on Cosmos. We did like a whole episode and it's titled And The Wolf Shall Become The Shepherd. Yeah. Well, you know, dogs, I mean... That's Ann Druyan's poetic... She's got... There's a poetry side of her that contributes to the scripting. So that's where that came from. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so that's real. Oh, yeah. It's real. And it probably creates a lot of the oxytocin. You know, the brain system for attachment is the oxytocin system in the brain. I think what people, men and women get out of their relationship with their dog is all the hugging and touching and everything. And all of that drives up the oxytocin system in the brain linked with feelings of attachment. Yes. And it probably is the same in the dog, but it's certainly in that feeling in a human being. So, you know, as you put your arm around somebody, as you hold hands with them, as you hug them, as you learn to sleep in their arms, you're driving up this oxytocin system. And, and it's a feel-good chemical. No question about it. You did. I don't need you. I got my oxytocin pills. I don't need you for nothing. Just don't crush it up and snort it. All right, Chuck, we got five minutes left. We're going into lightning round. Lightning round. So no longer the luxury of long answers. Long answers. We'll try to get through the list because we have, Chuck, you have multiple pages of questions here. I do. I've got quite a few. I'm going to test my bell. Good. There it is. Okay. So you're going to give sound bite answers, pretend you're on the evening news, and you have two minutes to give your entire interview. You ready? Chuck, go. There we go. Jeffrey Clark on Twitter says, what's the science behind attraction? Am I pre-programmed to be attracted to certain traits or is attraction a learned behavior? Love it. Go for it. It's not a learned behavior. I mean, some of it is learned, but chemically we're drawn to certain people rather than others. I've figured out when people say we have chemistry, I understand what that means now. So, that's real. Yes. We're going to be naturally drawn to some people rather than others, basically because of body chemistry. Body chemistry. That's called BO. I think. Let's keep going. Go. This is from Dan Larkins on Facebook. Wants to know this. If evolution favors individuals who seek out the strongest and the best suited mates to pass on their genes, is there a biological advantage to falling in love over choosing the most advantageous partner gene-wise? No insult intended to my beloved. Right, Dan. There you go. Yeah, so that's a pretty clean question. So if you just want to propagate survival, you pick the person and then you do that, what's love got to do with it? Why do we fall in love with a guy who looks like the penguin from Batman and he's not rich and you're a super mob? How does that even happen? That doesn't happen too often. Basically... Thank you for your honesty. I mean, penguins go for penguins, you know. I mean, we tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general level of intelligence, same general level of good looks, same religious and social values. We are drawn to people to some extent like ourselves. But that's environmental, of course. Your religion that you're born into is you're born into it. Yes, exactly. And so, socioeconomics, those are the people you hang out with. But I do think, you know, people who are very novelty seeking and risk taking go for people like themselves. People who are very traditional go for people like themselves. Helen, except some of the greatest stories ever told where people fall in love who were completely not the same anything. From Romeo and Juliet to, to, in, in, in, in. To Hillary and Bill Clinton. I mean, Hillary's high testosterone and Bill is, I think, high estrogen. You know. Well, like, people want to. So, so I can't accept the blanket statement that people tend, I mean, yes, statistically perhaps, but the exceptions to that are so extraordinary. It's going to be a lesson to us all. There's always exceptions. We are an animal that's flexible. No question about it. An environment always plays a role. There we go. All right. That was a good one. Quick. Here we go. This one is for Dr. Tyson from Joy Green on Facebook. Dr. Tyson, my question revolves around the following topic. How can an average everyday citizen get others to fall in love with science? Oh, look at Joy Green. I got to team up with Helen here to find out, can you fall in love with things that are not other members of your species? Can you fall in love with an idea, a principle, a philosophy, a pursuit? People who are serious hobbyists, the only word you can say is that they're in love with their craft. I agree with you. These are basic, all-purpose systems in the brain. So you got your oxy... Well, that's the dopamine system when you fall in love, it's the oxytocin system with feelings of attachment. But sure, these are, you know, the attachment system in the brain. You can be attached to your motorcycle, you can be attached to your girlfriend. But are those same chemicals being excited when you're waxing your motorcycle? Yes, probably, yes. They're all purposeful. Or to lesser extents. Can there be measured releases of these, you know, when you say dopamine, like for instance, you do cocaine, your brain floods with dopamine. Absolutely, it does. Absolutely. And you can fall in love. All right. With cocaine. Last question. I don't love it, just the way it smells. Time for one more question. Here we go. From Dewarmo Dave on Google Plus says, is chastity healthy and what are the effects of chastity? To each his own. To each his own, that's it. That's an awesome cop out answer. I mean, I think you learn a huge amount about somebody when you make love to them. It triggers the brain circuitry for romantic love, it triggers some of the brain circuitry for attachment, and it drives up the testosterone system so that you want more sex with them. But I can tell- We were built to have sex and fall in love. I can tell you this, if you have a gene for chastity, you didn't inherit it. You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And for this StarTalk Live, we're going to explore Transgender Visibility Day. And I've got Natalia Reagan here. Hello, Natalia, she's one of our StarTalk All-Stars. And she's an anthropologist who thought deeply about that. And Chuck. Yeah, hey buddy. How are you? So Transgender Visibility Day. First of all, who declares these days? That's okay. So the transgender community did not have a day celebrating those that had worked so hard in the past to become visible. So in 2009, they created, it's actually Transgender Day of Visibility. And so basically. It's been around for eight years. Yeah. And it's finally, I mean, obviously with the internet, with Twitter and with Facebook and all these things, it's getting more and more steam. I mean, people, we're talking more about these issues. And of course it's more. Getting steam, that's a very dated source of energy. Cool, it's coming back, guys. Coming back. Dated thermonuclear fuel, dated solar power. Okay, so just, we'll be taking inquiries from Facebook live. But if you just set the stage here, there are people above whatever age who were just perplexed by this. Exactly. And people now describing not gender being male or female, but that there's a spectrum. It's non-binary, yeah. So, humans. Genetically, in terms of your sexual preference, in terms of every dimension that's there. And to be clear, gender and sexuality are two totally different things. And gender and sex are two totally different things. Gender is generally, it's a social construct, it's in the brain. Sex is what's going down below the waist, which can vary. There are people that have, intersex individuals that have differences. No longer called hermaphrodites? Yeah, it's now generally intersex. Intersex, okay. But there's also varying versions of what that can be. But as far as transgender individuals, they basically wanted to celebrate people in the past that had fought for visibility. But to be clear, gender, again, in the head, sex below the belt, cisgender, which is what somebody that identifies as their, what's going on in their brain matches what's going down downstairs typically. Like cisgender? Yes, cisgender. Transgender is where that does not fit. So if you're- Doesn't match. Doesn't match. It fits, it just doesn't match. Exactly, well, yeah, and that, again, that's what we're changing our way of looking at it. It's no longer a problem, it's actually being celebrated. You're not a mistake, you know. You are just as good as everybody else. There's also people that identify as non-binary or genderqueer, which are those that don't feel like they fit in a traditional male, female gender. Well, they can be either at a different time according to- So they're fluid, basically. Yeah, exactly. Gender fluid, and that's the thing is gender, people have even identified as certain genders at certain parts of, like different parts of their life. Fluid has an official physics definition. It is a substance that takes the shape of its container. So air is a fluid as is a liquid in that context. So if you're fluid, there's a different container here, I'll fit that. Right, you'll never fit that. Sometimes we're different at different points of our life. That's great. So we got our questions coming in. Yeah, well, questions are already coming in, and I actually left one up because this was the very first question. And before we take any questions, the reason why we do this is so that we can tell you guys that for everything that you want to find StarTalk, there's a place to go called startalkallaccess.com. And that's where we have things that are original content that you can't find anywhere else. We have extended content that we had to cut. And so we put it there in full form. It is all commercial free. And you can also find video of the podcast itself that you normally can only find in audio form. All of that is on startalkallaccess.com. And if you subscribe within this week, we will be revealing for only one day at the end of this weekend, nude pictures of Neil deGrasse Tyson. So please make sure you go, make sure you go and subscribe to startalkallaccess.com. And you will be able to see your nude picture of Neil deGrasse Tyson. At least wait till I get my six pack abs. All right, let's do our first question. And the first question comes from Eric Fiore. And Eric says this, please answer how does gender identity and sexual orientation work in the brain? Why can two siblings have so much in common and one prefers their own sex and the other prefers the opposite? Thanks. That's like the million dollar question. Because there isn't, I think, a clear cut answer at this point. How, you know, some people say that it's a choice and no. We're hearing you live here. So there isn't, I personally do not know the answer to that question because I don't think there is an answer of exactly the mechanism of how one chooses. You're absolutely right. The reason why you don't know the answer to that question is because we haven't found the answer to that question. If we had, even though researchers are looking at whether or not there is a genetic link to your sexuality and your preferences, but... Because even sexuality, to be fair and to be clear, is on a spectrum and people are fluid. People prefer certain things at different times in their life for whatever reason. Doesn't that bring up a morality question? Suppose we learn that there's a part of the brain that generates sexual preference. And there are societal pressures that you should be one way and not another. And then someone says, I can go in and operate and we'll fix that. Well, it's like those camps they used to have to try, or I think they still have them to try to change kids or... Gender reorientation. Exactly, yeah. But yeah, I mean... That's a moral question. And I also think that's... It means society is in denial of who you actually are. And then says, but we can fix that. That's a peculiar world. It is, and I feel like humans are interesting as far as animals, as a species. We are the only animal that really kind of puts this sort of moral layer on top of sex and sexual orientation. You don't see a chimpanzee struggling like, oh god, I don't know, should I ask Steve out? I know I'm a male. But you don't see that same sort of... Dogs don't have that problem either. They hump whatever. They hump anything, a couch, my leg, Jim, Beverly. What else you got? And I apologize for all of that. I'm having trouble. I got one here. Are there instances of brain switching during development later in life? This is Cole Primo from Facebook. Are there instances of brain switching during development later in life? Or is it something you're born with? As far as I, I mean, so one of the things that happened a lot in the past was like, say for instance, if you were dealing with a, if you had a child that was intersex, a lot of times parents would might choose at the time of birth, what sex to, you know, what gender you would assign. Hormonally or surgically? Surgically. Surgically. And sometimes they make mistakes. And so that child is left to grow up in a body that does not match the brain. So the mistake means they left them with plumbing that is different from their brain's expectation of their plumbing should be. So something that they're doing now is waiting. Waiting until the child can choose what feels right. What age is that? Because we saw pictures of someone who was like 11, who was born male, but is expressing female in middle school. Do we know enough about our gender identity by then? I think they can say like the tween ages is when they're really starting to kind of make it tweens. That sort of solid choices. But as far as making sort of a gender reassignment or any sort of surgical, I think they're waiting and not doing it at that age. That's very young. So there's another question, Malcolm Oliver Marfan. Malcolm. Malcolm. Malcolm Marfan. We got from Malcolm. So are the brains of men and women wired differently? And have we found this to be true also for transgender individuals? Because the extent to which we know it's in the brain, maybe we can't figure out where it is or what it's doing, but we can show that it's different. That's a base level of information. So males and females, as far as sex goes, are far more similar than dissimilar. Let's put that out there. We want the same things. Oftentimes we strive for the same things. Except you guys are often left disappointed and we're not. So sorry. There's things that affect our behavior, sometimes like different hormones. And if someone has more estrogen or more testosterone in their body, they're going to behave differently. But I don't think there's been actual studies about the hard wiring of transgender individuals versus those that are not. You studied other primates. So do you see any gender spectrum behavior in other primates? I mean, the bonobo chimps in these folks? See, that's what we talked about a little bit, which is really interesting. Bonobos are funny because they're all about having lots of sex and they're also female dominant. We talked about that. What kind of animal? That's all I'm saying. That's how they diffuse tension. Like say, for instance, there's a piece of fruit on the ground, like if we want to choose who gets that piece of fruit, there would be lovemaking. And then we'd probably forget that there was fruit there to begin with. They are the most genius creatures ever. Let's settle disputes by making, I'll make love for it. Let's love it out. Sword fight. Let's love it out, bitches. Come on, let's do it. But what we should say, one of the things that makes bonobos different from their cousin's chimpanzees, female dominant social group. So the females are in charge, which means, hey, maybe if we let a woman be in charge of the United States. I guarantee you. I don't know. I guarantee you, if the answer to conflict resolution is let's make love, we would give over the power to females, okay? I'm just letting you know. It might be hugs. We got it, you know, and it's gonna be consensual. That's not the right joke. The right joke is if you let a woman be president, she'll be tweeting all day about everything she feels about. Ha ha ha ha! Then I think we have a woman president, guys. Let's go another one. So, Tony Allen, is there a particular age when someone realizes their orientation? Is there an average age where you can then say, pretty much you know where you're coming from and where you're going by that? I think it has a lot to do with just individuals, but I think a lot of people... I mean, my orientation, I'm assuming they mean sexual orientation, not how they feel gender-wise. What turned you on? People talk about it as early as like three, four, five. I have several friends who tell me, I was four years old and I knew for a fact. Four years old? Four years old. And I said to a friend of mine, I said, how did you know you were gay when you were four? And he said, let me ask you this. When you were four, did you like women? And I was like, you know, I absolutely did. I knew then that he was like, it's the exact same thing. You didn't know when you were four. That's because you were too busy loving science, Neil. And this is what's, I'll say this and I'll wrap it up real quick. But when I was eight, I thought I was gay because I actually thought I was attracted to women at one point. I was like, oh my God, that means, I didn't realize that there was a spectrum. You know what I mean? And now that visibility and now that we're seeing that, you know, kids are not- Very courageous people. People coming out and showing that there are alternatives and that this is not a spectrum, then you know it's okay and it's safe. Wherever you are, it's okay. You're fine. If you fall on that spectrum, good for you. We have a Facebook live viewer called Albert Einstein who says, nice shirt, Chuck. That's a little nurse assistant, don't you think, Albert Einstein? We gotta wrap this up. This was quick. This was a quick one, yes. Quick and fast, but Transgender Day of Visibility. That's new to me, even though it's been around eight years. So thank you to LeBrun Coxes and all the activists out there. Follow them on Twitter. Right, right, excellent. Thanks for that suggestion. So Natalia Reagan, thanks for doing this. And Chuck, always good to have you here. We gotta sign out on Facebook Live. They give us like 10 minutes at most for this. And so, yeah, we will find us in the universe. StarTalk signing out.