Neil deGrasse Tyson: From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide. [applause, laughter] Chuck, I was feeling that one! pop culture collide.

Chuck Nice: I love it. I see you feeling it!

Tyson: I'm turning myself on. [laughter] That's just, sometimes you feel the universe flowing through you.

Nice: Right on. You know, that's, when you're a Jedi, that happens.

[laughter]

Tyson: Shhh. So, Chuck, welcome back.

Nice: It's always good to be here, Neil.

Tyson: Yeah, yeah. So tonight we're gonna be talking about sex.

Nice: Okay.

Tyson: And... [laughs] And relationships.

Nice: Okay.

Tyson: And dating.

Nice: I like the first part of that. [laughter] The other two I could do without. But the first part is awesome.

Tyson: And I know you, you know, you're a man, I know you have some expertise. But it's not the kind of expertise I'm looking for in this.

Nice: Oh, okay.

Tyson: So we got to bring in some extra, extra armament in on this conversation. Professor Helen Fisher, welcome to StarTalk.

Helen Fisher: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.

Tyson: Yes, and... [applause] You are a specialist in, what is the academic specialty that describes you?

Fisher: Well, I'm a biological anthropologist.

Tyson: That's ten syllables.

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: Biological anthropologist.

Fisher: Exactly. Evolution. Evolution of love.

Tyson: Yeah, so, we're featuring today my interview with Dan Savage, who is like the online expert on love and relationships and everything that go with it. And you know, of course, we have a changing face of relationships today.

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: 'Cause it used to be, I was thinking it used to be hanging out a bar, but people still do that.

Nice: Right.

Tyson: So, but the Internet has changed all of this, and Tinder.

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: You know.

Fisher: Yeah. Actually, these are very old. In fact, we're moving forward to the kinds of relationships we had a million years ago.

Nice: Really?

Fisher: Yeah. We're actually shedding about...

Tyson: Wait, wait, wait, I just mentioned Tinder, which operates on a smart phone, and your next line is, we've had this since cavemen.

Fisher: Yeah. Well, what do you do on Tinder? You look...

Nice: They used to swipe cave walls back in the day. [laughter] First they would draw it, and then they would swipe it.

Tyson: No, no. No, what they do, they swipe the actual person. [laughter] But so, it's old, it's just a new method, you're saying.

Fisher: Yes, absolutely.

Tyson: Well, that's good to know. And what we found... and you've been at this for 30 years?

Fisher: Yeah, a little more.

Tyson: A little more than 30 years.

Nice: Your job or sex?

[laughter]

Fisher: Both.

Nice: Alright.

[laughter]

Tyson: So, so, Dan Savage. You know, this résumé's great, 'cause he puts his last name in all the names of stuff.

Nice: Right.

Tyson: So, so he's got a column called Savage Love.

Nice: Okay.

Tyson: Yeah, you know, how could you not read that, right? And he's got the host of the Savage Lovecast.

Nice: Yes.

Tyson: You know, you got to say that. The Savage...

Tyson: Lovecast.

Nice: Lovecast.

[laughter]

Tyson: Wait, go as deep as you can.

[deep voice] NICE: Lovecast.

Tyson: Lovecast. [laughter] So, Dan, he's like the go-to man for people who are having troubles in their relationships.

Nice: Right.

Tyson: Want some advice, in modern times. So, 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.

Dan Savage: It was an accident. It's the kind of job you really can't run out looking for. 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&A format, you have to read it.

Tyson: Who was that?

Savage: Tim Keck. Who was the...

Tyson: Why do I even know that name?

Savage: He was the founder of The Onion.

Tyson: Ohhh. Yeah.

Savage: And so at first, it was just a joke. I was gonna, 'cause I was gay guy, and I was going to 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.

Tyson: That would be hilarious.

Savage: It was hilarious. And straight people loved it, because it was a new experience for them to be treated that way.

Tyson: Uh-huh.

Savage: And I just started getting tons...

Tyson: As the weird one.

Savage: As the weird one.

Savage: 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.

Tyson: Do you feel qualified? 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?

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

Tyson: Dan Savage.

Nice: Wow.

Tyson: Yeah.

Nice: That's very cool.

Tyson: Now, did you catch the fact that I was not in shirt and tie in that interview?

Nice: I was going to say that I really, really liked relaxed Neil in that.

Tyson: I stripped down to my T-shirt on that one. Just so I can hang with the man.

Nice: Okay, right on.

Fisher: You were cool. You were very cool.

Nice: That was very gay of you, Neil.

Tyson: Thank you for that.

Nice: By the way, let me just...

Tyson: Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Nice: No, I was gonna say, yeah. Let me go on record and say that that is my fantasy of my gay boyfriend.

Tyson: Is that right?

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.

Tyson: Keep talking here. Yeah, keep going. [laughter] True confessions, you heard it here. [laughter] So, of course, relationships and advice columns, it's all, somewhere you part the curtains, there's typically the search for love...

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: ... in there.

Tyson: So you're an academic, have you been able to define love?

Fisher: Absolutely.

Tyson: Yes?! You have?

Fisher: 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 these three basic brain systems operating in all kinds of ways to...

Tyson: And that allows you to explain a lot of behavior that people exhibit...

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: ... when falling in and out of love.

Fisher: But what I study is, I really study romantic love. The second of those three things. And there are some very 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.

Tyson: Okay. So do you, now I, my records show here that you, you're like an advisor for Match.com? Is that right?

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

Tyson: Chief science advisor!

Nice: Science advisor!

Tyson: Whoa! NICE: That's hot.

Nice: That's hot.

Tyson: Chief scientific advisor for Match.

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

[laughter]

Fisher: And that works for me.

[laughter]

Tyson: Hey, get a room, you know. No, so... [laughter] Hey, get a room. So, so what's going on in the mind of a one-night stand?

Fisher: Of a one-night stand?

Tyson: Are they equally as...

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

[laughter]

Tyson: That is the problem.

[laughter]

Fisher: First of all it's, well, you can, all kinds of people, over one third of Americans have had a one-night stand. 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.

Tyson: And that's exactly how...

Fisher: And 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.

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

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: That began as a one-night stand.

Fisher: 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.

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

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

Tyson: 'Cause the one-night stand has such a stigma.

Savage: 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.

Tyson: Mm-hmm. Or the back seat of a '57 Chevy.

Savage: Yeah. They're not gonna tell you. I actually wrote a series of columns... this is how long I've been doing my advice column... 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, like I danced with this boy at a USO. Danced during the w*r, and then we wrote letters to each other all through the w*r and then we met.

Tyson: That's the generation who are now full-up adults.

Savage: Yeah. But they were always so innocent. All of her stories. And I was just thinking about the people I knew who are 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 guest at the three-way, the third, the spare.

Tyson: The spare.

Savage: But those aren't the stories you're gonna tell your grandparents or your kids.

Tyson: No, that never gets out.

Savage: No. So we have this distorted view of how a decent, loving relationship must start. And then people do this thing.

Tyson: Oh, wait. I have to interrupt. 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 cultural and social mores based on that. So that if anyone is different from it, you get ostracized. That's tragic, actually.

Savage: 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, 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.

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

Nice: Yeah.

Fisher: I mean, any stimulation of the genitals drives up the dopamine system and you can fall, 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.

Nice: Sex is a drug, is what you just said.

Fisher: Say that again?

Nice: Sex is a drug is what you just said.

Fisher: Sex, well, sex is a drug, definitely a huge drug. What people, but 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 k*ll yourself. You know, around the world...

Nice: Speak for yourself.

[laughter]

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

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

Fisher: Absolutely.

Tyson: It is biology.

Fisher: Yeah.

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

Fisher: That's a really good question.

Nice: I'll tell you why.

Fisher: Okay, good.

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 in a one-night 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.

Tyson: What the?!

Nice: And on top of that, she gave me a discount. Like, that's not gonna happen.

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

[laughter]

Nice: I have to disagree.

Fisher: 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.

Tyson: So, love, we speak of it as being something that 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?

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

Tyson: It's, so you can explain everything!

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

[laughter]

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

[applause]

[applause]

Tyson: We are back. StarTalk. Chuck Nice.

Nice: Hey, hey. Always good to be here.

Tyson: Chuck in the house.

Nice: In the house.

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

Fisher: And love.

Tyson: And love and relationships. And we're featuring my interview with Dan Savage. And he's a, author of Savage Love.

Nice: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: The advice column.

Nice: Only the best kind.

[laughter]

Tyson: You know, so, you know, I'm curious about something. Some of the most famous love stories...

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: Would include, I don't know, Cleopatra and...

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: And there's beauty that might attract a mate, if it's female beauty, heterosexual female beauty. We think of the beauty of Helen of Troy.

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: And she launched a thousand ships.

Fisher: You know, looks do count. I mean, 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.

Tyson: That's why Tinder's popular!

Fisher: Exactly.

Tyson: Love at first sight.

Fisher: Absolutely.

Tyson: Is it love at first sight or is it lust at first sight?

Fisher: It depends, you know.

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

Nice: It is lust.

Fisher: 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.

Nice: That's so true.

Fisher: So they can be very well connected.

Tyson: See she's got the wiring going...

Fisher: Yeah, unless you're so drunk you can't remember it, of course, you know. [laughter] You know, the sex does mean something.

Tyson: I asked Dan Savage, is love at first sight really possible?

'Cause he's got data from people trying to ask him about it. Let's check it out.

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

Tyson: Well, 'cause it would happen to them.

Savage: It jives with their personal experience.

Tyson: Yeah.

Savage: 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, you disproved the theory. But I felt it for this person and it worked out, so it proves the theory.

Tyson: So they remember the hits and not the misses.

Savage: Right. And you can be with somebody where you have 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.

Tyson: Love at first sight, hate at second sight.

Savage: Yeah. Love at first sight; hate in divorce court 15 years later.

Nice: Well, okay.

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

Tyson: All the data.

Fisher: Not all of the data.

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

Fisher: Ah, true love. That's a different issue.

Tyson: Oh! Okay.

Fisher: 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.

Tyson: Or on the pool table. Yeah. [laughter] Did I just say that?

Fisher: I imagine that would work. So basically, you know, you get them into bed right off the bat, 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 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.

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

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

Nice: He missed the part about getting to know each other.

Tyson: Let's find out what Dan Savage, what his recipe might be for a successful relationship. Check it out.

Savage: I think being good to each other, taking care of each other, not taking each other for granted. And to try to put, keep things in perspective. You know, as a relationship adviser, 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 their 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 are gonna want to sand off. There are things that, as you come together, you're gonna carve a groove in each other so that you fit. There's no 'the one.' 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.

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...

Savage: It's a perfect marriage.

Tyson: Right.

Tyson: And in practice, no. If such a person exists, you're not finding them. 'Cause there's seven billion people in the world.

Savage: That person doesn't exist.

Tyson: Even in seven billion?

Savage: Even in seven billion, that person, even if we get to seven trillion, that person does not exist. People, people grind against each other, people annoy each other.

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.

Savage: 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.

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

Savage: Right.

Fisher: 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 the 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.

Tyson: Because what I wonder is, even if you engage that...

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: There is the question of whether someone else attracts your attention down the line. Because this brings up the question of monogamy. And in fact, you know, Dan Savage coined a term... monogamish.

[laughter]

Nice: I'm not laughing at that there.

[laughter]

Tyson: Not entirely monogamous. You're monogamish.

Nice: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: More on Dan Savage's definition of monogamish when StarTalk continues.

[applause]

[applause]

Tyson: StarTalk. We're back. Chuck Nice.

Nice: Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Tyson: Thank you. [laughs] Helen Fisher. We brought you in as a sex expert, 'cause we're featuring my interview with Dan Savage, author of Savage Love. We left off before the break wondering about monogamy. Because, Helen, you described 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 says, hey, I don't have to brush aside as many things. And this tests one's monogamy. Now I ask this because when you comb the animal kingdom...

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: Monogamy is not as common as...

Fisher: No.

Tyson: ... we would wish it were. And if that's the case, what is the requirement that we expected of ourselves?

Fisher: We've evolved what I call a dual human reproductive strategy. A tremendous strive 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, adultery.

Tyson: Let's find out what Dan Savage says about this word, monogamish. Check it out.

Savage: 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-bonding, and there's sexual monogamy, which is never touching anybody ever again with your genitals.

Tyson: And we've never split that before.

Savage: 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?

Tyson: Like the eagles, and the...

Savage: 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 up 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.

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

Savage: Right. And they do that.

Tyson: Right.

Savage: 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.

Tyson: That's great; you just know all these sex writers.

Savage: 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 thr*at with death to do that which comes naturally to it. We don't point g*n at dolphins and say swim. Right? But we point g*n 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 monogamous, what we said, what we believed, what we're told as children, is one day you'll grow up and fall in love with someone and you'll 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 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.

Tyson: So what should happen going forward?

Savage: Monogamish relationships.

Tyson: Ish. Monogamish. [laughter] There it is.

Fisher: It's hard to do, though. You know, people are jealous.

Tyson: Splitting your love from your genitals. Is that, is that...

Nice: Wow, that sounds painful. [laughter] That just sounds painful, I'm sorry.

[laughter]

Fisher: I hear you.

Tyson: There's one exercise in the effort to split one's love from their genenitals, uh, genitals. [laughter] Genitals. Isn't there a, I forgot what they call it. In some marriage contracts there's like a, there's a...

Fisher: Oh, yeah.

Tyson: An exclusionary clause.

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: In case the one love of their life, usually a movie star or someone, happens to walk in...

Fisher: A hall pass. Is it a hall pass? Right.

Tyson: You get a hall pass.

Nice: A hall pass.

Tyson: If the love of your life just walks in the door and says let's do it.

Fisher: Right.

Tyson: And isn't that a manifestation of this... we've got to be honest with ourselves?

Fisher: Well, 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 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.

Nice: Yes.

Fisher: We do not share. In fact, I was once, I was traveling in New Guinea in the highlands. And I had 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?

Nice: None!

Fisher: He said none.

[laughter]

Nice: I know, 'cause I got one.

Fisher: Yeah, it's hard to share. You know, and we're not really built for that.

Tyson: So, but it seems, so what you're saying is even if people put a hall pass clause in their marriage contract...

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: They don't really mean it with each other.

Fisher: I think they mean it, they mean it cognitively. But emotionally, it's very difficult to do.

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

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

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

Savage: 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.

Tyson: Interesting point. It's an explicit...

Savage: Acknowledgement that you desire...

Tyson: You're not gonna lie to yourself.

Savage: 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, ugh. It's like, yeah, of course. That means I'm not a... 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.

Tyson: Well. Now here's an interesting point.

Nice: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: Lately, recent decades, perhaps, we've been a little more candid with ourselves about where you are on the sexual spectrum. How does that play out in the discussions of love, and...

Fisher: Exactly the same. In the Singles in America studies, the gays and lesbians were exactly like the straights. 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. It, you know, h*m* 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 gays, too.

Tyson: And how you feel when you love, there's no, there's no difference.

Fisher: Seems to be no difference in the brain, no difference in behavior.

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

[applause]

[applause]

Tyson: This is StarTalk. Tonight we're talking about sex, gender, relationships, love. All of the above. And, Helen, you wrote a book. The First Sex. We're trying to identify the fundamental differences between men and women. Biological, neurological differences, I guess. And what have you found?

Fisher: Well, I mean, men and women...

Tyson: And these are men, genetic men and genetic women.

Fisher: Right.

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

Fisher: Well, we're all, you know, wide variations of both sexes.

Tyson: In terms of expression.

Fisher: Yeah, in terms of expression, and in terms of the brain. The way brain physiology is, et cetera. 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...

Tyson: And how do you know? How do you know what's going on in the brain?

Fisher: We put people in brain scanners.

Tyson: Oh! There you go.

Nice: That's romantic.

[laughter]

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

Tyson: Are you telling me you put electrodes on somebody's, somebody's head, on two people's head, and say tell each other that you love one another. How does it, do you really solicit this in the laboratory?

Fisher: Absolutely. Well, we put people in a brain scanner. And you can only get one person in a brain scanner, it's a tiny, little hole.

Tyson: Okay.

Nice: So like an MRI?

Fisher: It's an MRI.

Nice: Okay.

Fisher: Yes.

Fisher: And we show them a photograph of their sweetheart. And 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.

Nice: And you got men to agree to do this?

Fisher: Well, one guy wanted to look at Angelina Jolie. So that wasn't too hard. [laughter] 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, et cetera and so, so much more. But I thought it was rather courageous of him.

Nice: He had no problem getting laid after that.

Fisher: No. We did him a service, yeah.

Tyson: So I chatted with Dan Savage about just men versus women, you know, this thing. And let's get his take on this. Check it out.

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

Tyson: The hormonals.

Savage: Yeah.

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

Tyson: A colleague of mine just transitioned.

Savage: Hmm.

Tyson: Male to female.

Savage: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: 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've responded to differently as a man.

Savage: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: To the point where she said... this is a phrase I'll never forget... she began to question free will.

Savage: Oh, my God.

Tyson: This was... [laughter] This was, oh, it 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.

Savage: 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.

Tyson: So...

Nice: Wow.

Tyson: Yeah, so what, you do transgender studies within your brain, your brain scans?

Fisher: 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 women 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 really are, evolved millions of years ago to get us operated in certain ways 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.

Tyson: Well, tell me about romance. Because there's a, there's the stereotype that, you know, women want the flowers, or whatever is that stereotype.

Nice: Are women more romantic?

Fisher: No.

Tyson: Yeah, who's more romantic?

Fisher: 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.

Nice: That makes sense. Yeah.

Fisher: And men are more interested in fetishes than women.

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

[applause]

[applause]

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. [laughter] But that hasn't stopped him from weighing in on everything you've said. [laughter] 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?

Nice: Wow, that's great.

Fisher: I would imagine so. I don't know. I've never studied it.

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

Nice: Yeah, you should put women in an MRI while they're watching When Harry Met Sally.

[laughter]

Fisher: I would, I would, the whole thing would light up.

Tyson: I got to ask. You said before the break that men are more romantic than women.

Tyson: It seems then to me...

Fisher: Yeah.

Tyson: That men would be flocking to romantic comedies.

Fisher: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: And they don't.

Tyson: Men would be flocking to romance novels, and they don't.

Fisher: 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 p*rn. 'Cause men are more visual than women. For millions of years, men had to h*t that buffalo in the head with a rock. And the bottom line is you got to have very good visual skills. And men are going much more for visual p*rn than women do. Women go for romance.

Tyson: That's your account. Alright. So, what about fetishes? I think the data show that men...

Fisher: Are much more, yeah.

Tyson: Fetish prone.

Fisher: Yeah.

Fisher: 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...

Tyson: Exploratory sex.

Fisher: Yeah.

Fisher: 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 will turn into a fetish.

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

Savage: 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 with the same capacity of our complicated, crazy brains that allows for abstract thought in human speech. Also it has wired into it this, like, snatching stuff randomly out of your life and out of experience and eroticizing it. People 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 erotica.

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

Savage: No.

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

Savage: 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. It becomes bundled together. Abstract thought, 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.

Tyson: So, Helen, what does your studies say about perversion?

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

Tyson: So perverse people are not normal.

Fisher: Well, I...

Tyson: I ask that quite seriously. Because what is normal?

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

Tyson: Isn't it true that...

Fisher: As long as everybody is eager to play.

Tyson: But isn't it true that psychology dictionaries used to have a whole portfolio of human states of mind and condition that were considered abnormal?

Fisher: Even h*m* was considered abnormal until recently.

Tyson: So this is an evolving definition?

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

Tyson: We in the West.

Fisher: Yeah, in the West.

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

Tyson: Biology.

Fisher: Yes, biology. Well, it's a lot of things. But certainly biology. But, 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...

Tyson: Rather than who your parents want.

Fisher: 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.

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

Nice: Tinder!

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.

Nice: Bill Nye's on Tinder?

[laughter]

Tyson: Did I, did I say that? [laughter] Chuck, just because they're two parts of a sentence, doesn't mean one is the other.

Nice: So true.

Tyson: We're gonna find out all about that when StarTalk continues.

[applause]

[applause]

Tyson: StarTalk. Dating, sex and relationships, the science of. Don't you want to know what Bill Nye the Science Guy thinks of sex?

Nice: Oh, I do.

[laughter]

Fisher: So do I.

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

Bill 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, single time of year. It's just something you got to 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, shmocreation. 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. 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 when he looks at the girl panda. He's thinking, vive la différence, 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, that's not what I meant. All this talk about sex is making me horny.

[laughter, applause]

Tyson: Give it up for Bill. [applause] So tell me about sex drive.

Fisher: About the sex drive?

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

Fisher: 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 the, you know, no animal will copulate with anybody. Too old, too young, too scruffy, too scrubbed, wrong color, wrong shape, wrong size, they won't do it.

Nice: No, no, Helen, let's be honest here. No female will do it.

[laughter] And you know that's the truth. In the animal kingdom the male will do anybody.

Tyson: I think he's right.

Nice: The female is the one who makes the decision.

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

Fisher: When a female in heat is not pretty, is not too picky, either, you know.

Tyson: Yeah, yeah.

Nice: Yeah, yeah.

Fisher: I mean, big time.

Nice: Yes.

Fisher: So...

Nice: I have yet to mate one of those.

[laughter]

Tyson: So sex is online now. I guess that was inevitable. And Tinder, what's that about?

Fisher: 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 it'll say a lot about a person when you take a look at 'em.

Tyson: Yeah, yeah.

Fisher: And then you got to 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.

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 that sort of thing. And then there's a photo of that person, and you either say yes or no.

Savage: Swipe left or swipe right.

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

Savage: 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.

Tyson: I'm betting that the inventors of the global positioning satellite...

Savage: Never anticipated this.

Tyson: Never anticipated that there would be an app that localizes you on the surface of the Earth to find someone else you can have sex with in a few hours. This is an extraordinary application.

[laughter]

Savage: Well, that's what humans always do.

Tyson: An extraordinary application of tax money.

Savage: That's what humans always do with new technology.

Tyson: GPS is a military project by the Air Force.

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

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

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

Nice: Yeah, exactly.

Tyson: Not that I would know.

Nice: Not doing that, not doing that in a Smart car.

[laughter]

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

Fisher: Absolutely. You know, we've got this...

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

[laughter]

Fisher: 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 want, might've 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 life.

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

Fisher: But, you know...

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

Fisher: Oh, really?

Tyson: Yeah, Tinderitus.

[laughter]

Nice: Oh, I thought that was from doing something else.

[laughter]

Fisher: But you know what? Romantic love is like a sleeping cat. It can be awakened at any moment. And that person is 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...

Tyson: Says the woman.

Fisher: For romantic love. And they're off to the races on something even more powerful than sex.

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?

[laughter]

Fisher: Love does make you stupid.

Nice: Love makes you stupid. Okay.

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

Tyson: Shut down. It makes you stupid. That's what it is. There's no place else we can take this conversation from there. Chuck Nice, thanks for being on StarTalk.

Nice: Always.

Tyson: As always.

Tyson: And Helen Fisher, if sex comes up again, we're gonna find you.

Fisher: Yeah, I'm not hard to find.

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

Fisher: Thank you very much.

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

Nice: That was great.
{"type": "series", "show": "StarTalk", "episode": "01x03 - Dan Savage"}