True Love

What is love? With half of first time American marriages ending in divorce by the 20th anniversary, and infidelity bein

What is love? With half of first time American marriages ending in divorce by the 20th anniversary, and infidelity being widespread, Science Vs asks: have we been lied to by our love songs?
On today’s episode we explore: What happens to the brain when we fall in love? Is the compulsion to stay together biological? And, is monogamy really unnatural? We talk to Dr. Helen Fisher, Professor Larry Young, and Dr. Dieter Lukas about their labors of love.

Our Sponsors:

• Everyday Bravery - Listen to Everyday Bravery, a podcast from Prudential, by going to everydaybravery.com
• Virgin Atlantic - Listen to their podcast, The Venture, wherever you get your podcasts
• Ziprecruiter - try Ziprecruiter for free by going to ziprecruiter.com/sciencevs

Credits:

This episode has been produced by Wendy Zukerman, Heather Rogers, Ben Kuebrich, Shruti Ravindran and Rose Reid. Kaitlyn Sawrey is our senior producer. We’re edited by Annie Rose Strasser. Extra editorial help from Alex Blumberg. Production assistance from Stevie Lane. Fact checking by Ben Kuebrich. Music production and original music written by Bobby Lord. Special thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson, Austin Mitchell and to Professor Karen L Kramer, Professor Garth Fletcher, Dr. Alexander G. Ophir, Professor David Barash, Richard Bethleham .

Check out Gail and Rose Reid's podcast Details Please. 

Selected References:

• CDC - Data on First Marriages in the United States
• Helen Fisher fMRI Paper on Early-Stage Love
• Larry Young Review Paper on the Neurobiology of Pair Bonding
• Dieter Lukas’s Paper on the Evolution of Monogamy in Mammals
• The monogamy camp - review paper arguing “we evolved to be monogamous”

There are a lot of fads, blogs and strong opinions, but then there’s SCIENCE. Science Vs is the show from Gimlet Media that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. We do the hard work of sifting through all the science so you don't have to. This season we tackle alcohol, fasting diets, DNA tests, race and the fertility cliff.