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- [00:00]
Dax Shepard
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I am Dan Sheppard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
- [00:06]
Justin Garcia
Hi.
- [00:06]
Dax Shepard
Today we have Justin Garcia on, who is a sex researcher, an evolutionary biologist, a scientific advisor to Match.com and executive director of the Kinsey Institute. The famous Kinsey Institute. This was so fun because he knows all the data.
- [00:23]
Monica Padman
He really does. Sex, sex and pair bonds, relationships. He knows everything.
- [00:30]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [00:30]
Dax Shepard
This was endlessly fascinating.
- [00:33]
Monica Padman
Yes.
- [00:33]
Dax Shepard
I had a bazillion questions. The more we talked about, the more curious I got.
- [00:37]
Monica Padman
Yeah, it's really good.
- [00:38]
Dax Shepard
He's epic. And he has a book out now called the Intimate Animal, the Science of Sex, Fidelity and why We Live and Die for Love, which is a phenomenal read and very eye opening. Please enjoy. Justin Garcia. We are supported by Quince.
- [00:56]
Monica Padman
I love Quince.
- [00:57]
Dax Shepard
Who did we just run into that said they were buying Quince because of our show? It was on the red carpet, wasn't it?
- [01:02]
Monica Padman
It was o.
- [01:03]
Dax Shepard
We were getting interviewed.
- [01:04]
Monica Padman
Yes, yes.
- [01:05]
Dax Shepard
And I said, well, you're welcome. I don't feel the least bit bad driving anyone to Quint because the quality is outstanding.
- [01:12]
Monica Padman
It really is. Their clothes are great and also their homegoods are great.
- [01:16]
Dax Shepard
They're solid. That's the thing with Quint. They figured out how to deliver premium quality without the luxury markup. We're talking Mongolian cashmere sweaters, Italian leather outerwear, wool coats that are built to last multiple seasons. They cut out the middlemen and work directly with trusted factories that have real standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. So you're getting the same quality you'd expect from high end brands, just at prices that actually make sense. These aren't trendy pieces that fall apart after one season. They're classic styles you'll reach for year after year. Refresh your winter wardrobe with quint. Go to quint.comdax for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.comdax for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comdax this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. When we were building the Armchair Expert website, Rob actually used Squarespace to get it up and running, which was a smart choice because they've got everything you need in one place to create something that actually looks professional. What really stands out is their blueprint AI feature. It's like having a design assistant that helps you build a site that doesn't look like every other cookie cutter template out there. Answer a few questions about what you're trying to do and it creates something, something that actually fits your vision. If you're someone who offers services, whether that's coaching, consulting, creative work, whatever, Squarespace handles all the business stuff, too. Payment processing, scheduling, client management. No more juggling five different platforms just to get paid for what you do. The whole thing is designed so you can focus on your actual work instead of wrestling with website tech, which, let's be honest, most of us would rather avoid. So head to squarespace.comdax for a free trial, and when you're ready to Launch, use code DAX to save 10% off first purchase of a website or domain. Justin, where are you in from?
- [03:32]
Justin Garcia
Indiana.
- [03:33]
Dax Shepard
It's in Indiana.
- [03:34]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [03:34]
Dax Shepard
Counterintuitive.
- [03:35]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [03:36]
Wina
Yeah.
- [03:36]
Justin Garcia
The Kinsey Institute's on the Bloomington campus, about an hour south of Indianapolis. But it's a funny place for this hotbed of sex research in southern Indiana. It really is. You wouldn't expect it, but in some ways, that's the story of studying sex for 80 years at the Kinsey Institute was because we were in southern Indiana in a pretty conservative state. It's the Bible Belt. Indiana's in the middle of a read similar to what happened in California, but trying to have gerrymandering. Gerrymandering.
- [04:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [04:02]
Justin Garcia
So to have all Republican seats. So you think, how do we end up there? But it's what defines the institute.
- [04:08]
Dax Shepard
Well, that was my very first question for you. I think the history of the Kinsey Institute would be really fascinating for all of us to hear because I think we have vague awareness of it. But first and foremost, you're a New.
- [04:18]
Justin Garcia
Yorker, I'm a New Yorker.
- [04:19]
Dax Shepard
What did your parents do?
- [04:21]
Justin Garcia
When I was young, I was raised by a single mom and we're still very close. Talk every day. Actually, my parents semi retired in Bloomington, so they're closer to me and my wife Michelle now. And we have an infant, so they're helping with that, which is, oh, what a blessing.
- [04:32]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah. We raised two kids with no family around. Well, my sister, but no grandparents.
- [04:36]
Justin Garcia
It's really tough in some ways. What's been interesting for me is, so we had the baby after I finished the book. And you have these moments that you'll think, well, this is why Mother Nature made these pair bonds so intense. Like, how on earth do you get through this unless you deeply love the person? You're doing that.
- [04:49]
Dax Shepard
Absolutely.
- [04:50]
Justin Garcia
When I was a tween, my stepfather entered the picture did you get a good one? The door of my stepdad.
- [04:54]
Dax Shepard
They're pretty rare.
- [04:55]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky. And my best friend growing up hated his stepdad. What's interesting, and I think now when I look at my work and understand the evolution of family relationships and how families connect or as anthropologists will sometimes talk. It takes a couple to raise kids, it takes a family to raise a couple, it takes a village to raise a family. That we're nested in these social layers, that part of that is these degrees of relatedness and a step parent, when they enter the picture, there's this warming up period. You inherently have a genetic relationship to some people where an aunts or uncles or genetic parents that you kind of expect that, that feedback, that saying, oh, you shouldn't feed them, that you should raise them. This when someone else enters, you have to really build that trust and connection before you start to tolerate. Then that changes. That's what's so remarkable about humans. It's not like you're suddenly changing your DNA, but they become an in group member, they become a part of a family.
- [05:46]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [05:46]
Justin Garcia
And that's what's so interesting about our social lives is that we respond to environment, we respond to context, we respond to who's there and when and why and how. And we're an adaptive critter.
- [05:59]
Dax Shepard
We are. We'll get into it as we get into the weeds. How we're living currently versus how we lived 300,000 years ago. As hunting and gathering societies, they almost bear no resemblance to one another. And so we get to watch our evolution butt up against our new culture, which is not without its casualties.
- [06:16]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [06:16]
Dax Shepard
As you got into the evolutionary biology track, where would you rank your interests in human evolution?
- [06:22]
Justin Garcia
So I went to school at Binghamton University in New York, part of the SUNY system. We had this evolutionary Studies Institute. So it was intended from the start to be thinking about evolution in all sorts of different disciplines. It was housed in biology, but including psychologists, anthropologists, people in English and literature and history. So I was really fortunate. I had this institute that I trained in that we were thinking about evolution broadly. I started my graduate studies with a pretty narrow focus. I was interested in the brain. I was interested in the dopamine system and risk taking and then the genetics of it and then the evolutionary genetics of it and these different patterns. Some risk takers, some people who are neophobic. I was interested in DRD2 and DRD4. There were these dopamine receptor genes for our ancestors. They evolved. The thought is they evolved for risk taking. So that there were some individuals in a population who would go see what was on the other side of that mountain. So you had some folks that really migrated and they had to have a propensity for risk, but they might die sometimes. So that's the other side of risk. You could find mates and resources and new lands, but you could die.
- [07:24]
Dax Shepard
So you're into this dopamine reward whole network and risk taking. And then where do we go from there?
- [07:30]
Justin Garcia
For me, these are big stories about social behavior, the evolution of sociality, the fact that we are a social species. Not all species are. Not only are we social, we're preferentially social. So you like one individual more than another? We have friends, we have people that we rank. It's not just that we walk outside and we say hi to everyone, we groom everyone. We have preferential sociality. And then our romantic and sexual relationships fall within that. It's a type of social behavior, but it's a highly specialized one.
- [07:58]
Dax Shepard
So now I would love for you to tell us a little bit about the history of the Kinsey Institute that you are currently the executive director of. And you're bringing back an old theme, which is Kinsey himself was also. He was an evolutionary biologist.
- [08:14]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [08:14]
Dax Shepard
There are only two, right. How many directors have there been? Five or six?
- [08:17]
Justin Garcia
There's. I think I'm six. So Kinsey was a zoologist. He was a Harvard trained zoologist. He studied gall wasps. He also studied insects. And he was renowned for that. He was renowned as this zoologist. He also interestingly used evolutionary theory in his work. So he wrote an introductory biology textbook. And at the time, it was one of the first in the 1930s that used evolution as an overarching framework for the whole book. Where before that it was a chapter, it was a section. And today we take that for granted. Every intro biology textbook book uses evolution as a sort of meta theory, we call it, as guiding principles. And he was just this interesting guy. He hybridized over 200 species of iris. He collected thousands and thousands of specimens of gall wasps. Most of them are in the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
- [09:00]
Dax Shepard
Now, can I ask, what kind of personality type was he?
- [09:02]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, I love that you asked this. Every so often we'll do an event, like we have an award in his name and we'll do events and people are always like, do you have any pictures of him smiling? Then we have a handful that we'll use, but there's not that many of them. He was very serious. He was a serious Academic. And I think because he understood the weight of the research he did when he transitioned to studying sexuality. But when you talk to people who were interviewed by Kinsey. So the initial Kinsey reports that emerged, and I'll get back to the whole story, but when the Kinsey reports emerged, there were 18,000 interviews in total. About 8,000 of them he did himself. Wow, that's an enormous amount of labor. And the interviews lasted between three and 18 hours. Some of them were several days long.
- [09:41]
Monica Padman
Oh, my God.
- [09:42]
Dax Shepard
I thought we were, like, impressive for doing a thousand episodes. Hear this.
- [09:49]
Justin Garcia
You're doing great. But Dr. G, no kids. He would do these interviews. And when we look at reports from people who were interviewed, you hear that he was charming, that he was thoughtful, that he really focused on the person in front of him. And for some people, they said, I shared things with him that I didn't share with anyone else, that I didn't feel safe to share with anyone else. And what a remarkable legacy that people their whole lives couldn't talk about who they were or what they wanted till they were in a laboratory with this renowned scientist and this notion that it was secure and safe. So there was that part of him, and then there was this serious scientist part of him. So he first came to Indiana University in 1920 and was teaching biology. And the story of Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute today, what was then called the Institute for Sex research, was in 1938. He was asked to team teach a course on kind of a sexual hygiene, a marriage course. And a couple of universities around the country were starting to pop up these marriage courses in the late 1930s.
- [10:42]
Dax Shepard
And you point out in the book, like, a lot of people were married in college back then.
- [10:45]
Monica Padman
Right.
- [10:45]
Justin Garcia
So different from today. I could lecture 500 students and no one's married.
- [10:49]
Monica Padman
What's a marriage course mean? Like, how to.
- [10:52]
Justin Garcia
Yes. It was part, like, sexual hygiene, preventing venereal diseases, part what to do when you want to have kids. So it was a little bit reproduction, a little bit sexual health.
- [11:02]
Dax Shepard
Like vocational training. Yeah, for marriage.
- [11:04]
Monica Padman
Because they'll tell you, like, there's no book on this or there's no course on how to be married. Turns out there is.
- [11:09]
Dax Shepard
There was.
- [11:10]
Monica Padman
There used to be.
- [11:10]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And what was interesting was, so you had to be like a married student. You had to be a certain age to be in these, because you had to be an upperclassman to be in these courses. And people were signing up and the thought at the time was, well, have that guy in biology, have Kinsey who's studying gall wasps and knows a little bit about sexual reproduction. Because he's an evolutionist and it's your bread and butter. Have him do a section of the course. That'll be safe. And I think this represents the very best of what a university should be, Even to today what a university, a research university should be. Students had so many questions that they brought to the faculty that they couldn't answer. They couldn't find the answers in the library or the other books. Cause there wasn't a book or in the academic literature. So what Dr. Kinsey said is we have to go out and find answers. That's our obligation as academics. Students have questions, let's go do research and answer them. From that curiosity from students and from the faculty, they started doing interviews in town, in Bloomington. And now we're outside Indianapolis. And we have so much shame around sex that we don't talk about perverse.
- [12:08]
Monica Padman
Yeah, well, even sexual hygiene, that's shameful.
- [12:11]
Justin Garcia
Shameful. The framing is disease. Preventing the disease. Earlier in my career, I used to write about hookup culture and casual sex. And I was interested in how people were negotiating. Young people were negotiating casual sex with desires for relationships and commitment. And we found 51% of college age men and women, no gender difference, had a casual sex hookup because they wanted to initiate a romantic relationship with the person. And they didn't necessarily know the scripts for dating. Or they were trying a different avenue to get there. I remember giving lectures at the time and so many students. This idea was like, well, it's a sexual revolution. You know, young people are hooking up now. This is maybe 10 years ago. And I thought, like, do you know what your parents did when they were in college? Do you know what your grandparents did in the 60s? And there's this idea of like, no. That every generation has a moment that they imagine that they are sexually immoral. The firms, yeah. And that no one before them was. But we have a long history and a deep evolutionary history. Sex was a part of our lives and people knew about it and they talked about it. They had rituals about it. They sing for it, they dance for it, they celebrate it because it was a part of reproduction. In some societies, it's tied more or less to really celebrating reproduction and family formation. And in others, what's so unique about humans is that we can celebrate it for pleasure. And not all species can do that. Even the fact that we can have sex any time of the year, that women can have sex across the menstrual cycle. A lot of Species. Females can't engage in sexual activity and reproductive behaviors around their ovulation cycle. There's a species where the vaginal opening closes. Or take rats in a laboratory. The females engage in lordosis. They arch their back. It's only during certain parts of the cycle that they can arch their back enough that a male could mate them. So there's all these physiological constraints on mating. Humans are adaptively released from that because sex is so tied to our social behavior, to our relationships.
- [13:58]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. So as Professor Kinsey started attempting to answer these questions, what were some of the things that immediately he wanted to answer?
- [14:06]
Justin Garcia
Students were coming with questions. Some were about things that just no one was talking about, like pain with sexual activity. Some were talking about behaviors. And he wasn't really interested in identity, the way that we think about it today. But what he was interested in is that people's behaviors and fantasies didn't align. So over the 80 years since, we've got different methods where we think about that and we unpack that a little bit differently. So today, sex researchers talk about sexual behaviors, sexual preferences, and your sexual identities. And sometimes they could be different. So let's say you're heterosexual male who's in prison for 20 years. We know that many have a boyfriend or a partner, and there's all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it's loneliness, sometimes it's safety. So does that fundamentally change your orientation? And it's a behavior, but is it your preferred behavior if you weren't in that particular context? Now, that's a case of prison. We see things in military. We see things in populations where there's a sex ratio.
- [15:00]
Dax Shepard
Greek soldiers. Yeah.
- [15:01]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. There's all sorts of different examples.
- [15:03]
Dax Shepard
If you're not going to see a female from for four years, you gotta.
- [15:05]
Justin Garcia
Start considering other humans are creative. What's interesting about that is it doesn't necessarily mean your identity's changing or what you think of as your orientation. It also doesn't mean that your preferences aren't necessarily changing. So how we look at behaviors. And in fact, when we look at big data in the United States, if you look at how many men and women had a sexual event in the last year, and did they have heterosexual events? Same sex events. There's way more men that have had a sexual event with another man last year than who identify as gay and bisexual.
- [15:34]
Monica Padman
Consensual, I assume.
- [15:35]
Justin Garcia
Okay. There were a study years ago by a colleague of mine, and the paper that they wrote was called Straight Girls Kissing. And the idea was that two college women in a bar who kiss. And early on people were saying, well, they're doing that for the boys because the boys want this attention. All these young men, they're buying them drinks, they get the drinks and that's why they kiss in the bar.
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Monica Padman
It's hot.
- [15:53]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, right. This idea that's kind of sexy, is it turning them on? But what these two sociologists argued was what everyone is forgetting about, that is maybe the women just wanted to kiss each other. And by doing it publicly in a bar as a show, you in some ways remove some of the stigma. This public display of it allows people to experiment with their sexualities in a way that it feels safer because it doesn't challenge this idea of who you are, what you really want. So today, researchers and the public are really interested in questions of identity, of sexual identity, of how do you identify? Even if you do a survey today, you would often be asked, what's your identity? That's a different question from your behavior. And that has all sorts of implications because people assume certain things about your behavior, that if you're gay or lesbian, you're engaging in certain types of behavior. But we know that people are flexible. So in fact, if you talk to gay and lesbian people, most have had an opposite gender experience at some point in their life. Often when they're younger, but sometimes even later in life. You'll talk to lesbians who will say, we wanted to have kids and we wanted to do it this particular way. And it doesn't necessarily challenge your identity. Now, there's plenty of other ways you can reproduce too, if you have the resources. A lot of what we think about when we talk about sex and family and reproduction, a lot of it is resource bound. So we can talk about in here, in LA or in New York, if you're a lesbian and you want to have kids, you can do ivf. Well, there's a whole lot of people around the world who don't have the resources for that and they find other ways. And sometimes that's just behavior. Yeah, there's these realities of how flexible our sexual lives can look. What's interesting, when we think about the other apes, so we're all a little bit different in our sexual behaviors. And when we kind of look just to humans and understand our diversity, I think part of what we can do is also look to the other apes and understand that diversity and say, ah, there's a lot going on in how we respond to environments. So gorillas have a harem mating system. Chimpanzees are multi male, multi female. What we call promiscuous mating. Some people don't like that term.
- [17:45]
Dax Shepard
I love it.
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Justin Garcia
Yeah.
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Dax Shepard
Promiscuous sounds fun.
- [17:47]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Well it was a technical term in the literature and now it's loaded with. And bonobos have a similar multi male, multi female. But then gibbon, what are called the lesser ape. Most distantly related of the apes. They engage in social monogamy, they engage in long term bonds. Orangutans have a different system.
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Dax Shepard
Well, there's the most fascinating because the females get raped and somehow biologically, I don't know that we know. We didn't know in 2000 when I graduated.
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Justin Garcia
Yeah.
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Dax Shepard
They somehow select for who gets them pregnant, which is fascinating.
- [18:14]
Justin Garcia
There's still a lot of debates. There are researchers who study orangutans. They're just really difficult to study. They are like deep in the forest of Borneo, way up high. So it is, it's coercive mating. It's rape behavior, what we would call in humans. And there's a little bit of evidence that they do have preferential partners sometimes. So that females might even kind of stick around certain males where they are what part of the trees. And the males are heavier. So the females try to escape by going higher up in the trees or further out in the branches. It's too far for the males to get to.
- [18:42]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Once they're full adult males, they're just sitting on the ground. They're too big to get up there.
- [18:46]
Justin Garcia
They're too big cheeks.
- [18:47]
Dax Shepard
I think they have the highest sexual dimorphism maybe besides gorillas. Yeah. They're like two and a half times the size of the female.
- [18:54]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And the sexual dimorphisms, they depend on certain traits. So what's interesting, one of the ones that researchers have studied, for instance, are genitals. So gorillas have actually really small testes for body mass because they don't have a lot of sperm competition.
- [19:06]
Monica Padman
Interesting.
- [19:07]
Dax Shepard
Have you ever seen the balls on a chimp?
- [19:09]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, exactly.
- [19:11]
Dax Shepard
They're enormous.
- [19:12]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
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Dax Shepard
Enormously humongous.
- [19:14]
Justin Garcia
Because there's a lot of mating. And the sperm of one male is competing with the sperm of another male inside the reproductive tract of a female.
- [19:20]
Monica Padman
Interesting.
- [19:20]
Justin Garcia
So they're producing.
- [19:21]
Dax Shepard
You better really hose it.
- [19:24]
Monica Padman
Those poor female chimps.
- [19:26]
Justin Garcia
And it turns out when we look around the animal kingdom, there's all sorts of adaptations of ways that organisms are responding to this sort of mating.
- [19:33]
Dax Shepard
Hyenas. Fascinatingly. Right. A matriarchy with a clitoris that looks like a penis.
- [19:37]
Justin Garcia
And they burst through the clitoris.
- [19:38]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [19:38]
Monica Padman
Oh my.
- [19:39]
Justin Garcia
If you See wolves, or if you have a large dog, you'll sometimes know they mate, and the penis continues to swell in mating and the males can get stuck, and that prevents another male from mating in a short period. So sometimes we see things that look so wild and there's actually this evolutionary adaptive story.
- [19:53]
Dax Shepard
I think that's what drew me. When I try to get deeper and deeper and deeper, what draws me to it. It's that there is reason to all this. Nothing is accidental.
- [20:02]
Justin Garcia
I remember being a first year graduate student, and so I did my master's in anthropology, then my PhD in evolutionary biology. And one of the cultural anthropologists, I asked a question about evolution and behavior, and one of the cultural anthropologists looked at me and said, do you think we're just like magpies and attracted to shiny things? And I thought, yes, I do. Because we do have these evolutionary tendencies of liking shiny things. In fact, when we look at cultures around the world, why do we have so much shiny art and jewelry and decorate ourselves with shiny things? There's patterns to our behavior that are rooted in a legacy. Yeah, undeniable. And this legacy of social behavior, but also trying to signal certain types of information. And I think what's interesting for me is that. But when we understand that, we can also try to biohack parts of it. We can try and improve our relationships if we understand where some of those tensions and touch points are, but also the things that we're really craving that we might sometimes forget. Mm.
- [20:58]
Dax Shepard
So just to speed through Kinsey, I think the part that was really breakthrough, or at least my limited understanding of it, is women, prior to his work weren't even a part of the equation. They were not sexual creatures. They really had no sexual desires. They were mothers. He challenged kind of all of that. Is that accurate?
- [21:18]
Justin Garcia
So Kinsey was teaching team teaching this course in 1938. Two years in the university president said, you can either do this massive study or go back to teaching, but you can't do both because you're interviewing everyone in town about their sex life. And so he decided to go do this study. And then in 1947, the Kinsey Institute was formed. It was then called the Institute for Sex Research, and it was formed to protect the data. Kinsey was very much aware that there were actors, including government actors, who might want to know who were in these studies. And it was a time you could be put in a mental institution for being gay.
- [21:47]
Dax Shepard
Wow. We had sodomy laws on the books.
- [21:50]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Homosexuality was still in the DSM as a mental illness. It's 1940s and he was aware of that. So he felt that we had to protect. He had to protect the participants. I say we because it's still so fundamental to what we do as researchers of protecting the people who share a piece of their life with us in a study.
- [22:06]
Dax Shepard
They're putting so much trust in deep.
- [22:08]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And we have to honor that at all costs. And we try in all sorts of different ways. Some are legal, some are how we code data. So actually they had a coding system that if you walked in today, you couldn't decipher this coding system, which is a great reminder of the obligation of a researcher. So 47. They form the institute of Sex Research is a Separate non for profit 501c3 on the IU campus. 1948. The first book comes out, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male. Huge bestseller. Kinsey's lecturing all over the world. I have a picture outside my office of him lecturing at UC Berkeley and the men's gymnasium. And it's packed. And at the time, the joke was Kinsey filled the Berkeley gym more than any sporting event ever did. People were craving this information. And then to your point, five years later, Sexual Behavior of the Human Female came out. Actually, a much more theoretical book was interesting because they had to change how they were measuring sexual outlet in the male volume. They associated climax with a sexual event, which we wouldn't do today either. There are things that change in 80 years from research. As it should. It's iterative. We get better. But they knew instantly they couldn't do that with females because orgasm rates were so variable. So they had to change how they were laying out all the data in the book. Did you engage in sexual behavior but then did you also have this climax as separate.
- [23:17]
Monica Padman
Interesting.
- [23:18]
Justin Garcia
The female book was also a bestseller. But what was interesting is there were book burnings all over the country. But you had to buy it to burn it. So it was bestseller. So this idea that he could talk about men's sexuality and society was okay with it. That most of society, there were still a lot of people who are not okay with asking anything and still are not okay with asking anything about sex and relationships and gender and reproduction. But the second volume, when he started showing data about people's wives and mothers and sisters and daughters. This idea that women had sexual lives, that they wanted sex, that they craved pleasure, but only a quarter were regularly.
- [23:52]
Dax Shepard
And it was not a symptom of hysteria.
- [23:54]
Justin Garcia
Yes, exactly. And it wasn't this sort of the Freudian illness that then People had a very different reaction. He lost funding. He lost funding from the Rockefeller foundation at the time.
- [24:03]
Dax Shepard
Really.
- [24:03]
Justin Garcia
And then there was a big court case that they had tried to ship 31 photographs in the mail. It still is used today as an example of academic freedom laws and censorship laws. It was a very influential case. It was called us versus 31 photographs. Because when the government. But in particular, when something is seized by customs, the item is named. In the court case. It was like US versus Candle.
- [24:23]
Dax Shepard
US versus oh, wow.
- [24:24]
Justin Garcia
So these funny cases.
- [24:26]
Dax Shepard
Sounds so stupid.
- [24:27]
Monica Padman
I know, right?
- [24:28]
Justin Garcia
They were nude photos, and the government seized them because they said this violated obscenity laws. And the case, ultimately, over seven years, determined that researchers had the right to have materials that some people might find objectionable for the sake of research. And it was settled in 1957. It was still really important for all sorts of researchers of all stripes. Kinsey did so much for us to be able to ask questions about our sex life. Even the fact that we could sit here and talk openly about love and sex, that we had to have people before us. We had to fight for that, Start that ball rolling. Yeah.
- [24:59]
Monica Padman
For the book burnings. Do you know, was it equally shunned by men and women, or was it mainly like, men don't want to hear about women do you know, thinking of.
- [25:10]
Justin Garcia
Pictures that I've seen, I don't know any numbers on it. And it was a mix. There were a lot of men. I'm almost thinking of, like, today's abortion debates. Right. Where we see all these men, and maybe that's where you're going.
- [25:18]
Monica Padman
Yeah. Just imagine, like, who's. I assume it's both.
- [25:21]
Justin Garcia
It was both.
- [25:22]
Dax Shepard
I was just gonna say. It's always counterintuitive, though, how many women particip in things that might not benefit them, but they're benefiting from the larger structure of the patriarchy or the van.
- [25:34]
Monica Padman
Yeah, we're all in a patriarchy. So there's trickle downs.
- [25:37]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. For some people, this idea that if you talk about your sex life, some don't want to talk about it for religious reasons, but then they maybe have to confront something. One of the things that came up, my colleague Judith Allen is a historian who studied Dr. Kinsey's work, but was a leading authority on the history of sexology as a field. And she argued one of the things that happened in the books was that when Kinsey would talk to couples and the researchers would talk to couples, and he brought in other researchers, he realized he was a biologist, he brought in anthropologists. And sociologists. And they had to have this team he assembled. And it was hours and hours of training because you had to be able to ask questions and not make someone feel judged. He wouldn't say, when was your last affair? He would say, how old were you the first time you had sex outside your marriage?
- [26:18]
Monica Padman
Oh, wow.
- [26:18]
Justin Garcia
And it was really this focus of not invoking that shame, these behaviors happening all over the world. And so for some folks, there were sort of religious views or particular cultural views that shaped and shaded how they thought about their sexualities. And then for others, it was because, you know, I have pain with sex. I don't know who to go to for a resource or I just don't want to talk about it.
- [26:40]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [26:41]
Justin Garcia
But what Judith Allen found in her historical work was that when he talked to couples, and it's been turned into comedy bits since then, you would talk to a couple, and women would say, oh, my gosh, my husband wants to have sex all the time. It's like, all the time he's scratching at the door, he wants to have sex. It's three times a week. And then you talk to the husband and say, well, my wife doesn't want to ever have sex. She's not interested. We barely have sex. We only have sex three times a week.
- [27:00]
Monica Padman
Right.
- [27:00]
Justin Garcia
So sometimes the same activity. The interpretation of it could be different. I think what's challenging is we often don't have the tools or the comfort to talk about that. So we see these people showing up in the therapist chair, which is great. You're getting help, you're getting resources. You have a guide to talk through those. But they're not necessarily having conversations with their partners about, is our sex life working for you? Is it working for me? We did a study at the start of COVID on people's romantic and sexual lives, and most of it was good news, actually. We did several studies at the Kinsey Institute. We did one that showed that close to 85% of married people, their marriage got better during the pandemic.
- [27:35]
Dax Shepard
Right. Cause we only heard about the uptick.
- [27:37]
Justin Garcia
In divorce rate that was early on. And then it actually didn't increase all that much. But most marriages did better. There were some that really struggled. Or if you were in a relationship characterized by violence, for instance, you were really in trouble because you couldn't get out that easily. Worse than typical.
- [27:51]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, you're trapped.
- [27:52]
Justin Garcia
But most marriages, because you looked at your partner and you thought, this is the whole reason we did this, to weather uncertainty, to respond to storms, and you have this moment that you could look at each other. Oh, my gosh.
- [28:01]
Dax Shepard
We might die, but we're.
- [28:03]
Justin Garcia
We're gonna die together.
- [28:04]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have this fear of death kind of looming.
- [28:07]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And so most marriages did well, but sexual frequencies decreased. We also found in another study. So also the frequency of masturbation decreased, which suggested that the desire had decreased. It wasn't just you were afraid of getting Covid from kissing your partner. And the one other piece I want to add on this is. So the frequency decreased, but what we found was an increase in new behaviors. So when we looked, the variety was increasing. So about one in five people. It was the first time it took being locked up in the pandemic. It was the first time they ever turned to their partner and said, is there anything we've never tried? Do you have any fantasies we've not talked about? Is it sexting? Is it a new behavior? I remember interviewing one couple, and the woman said, my husband and I started having shower sex during the pandemic, and it was fun. And then as we were talking, she said, well, we really did it because it was the only place we got away from the kids for five minutes.
- [28:52]
Monica Padman
Oh, yeah. Out of necessity.
- [28:54]
Justin Garcia
Out of necessity. This idea that the pandemic was this horrible time for the whole world. But relationships, our romantic lives were this place that we were weathering that storm. And for most people, their relationships. Even though if you were just bean counting and saying, how much sex did you have in the last six months as the world was on fire, you would say, oh, maybe couples don't look so good, but actually they were doing well. They were responding in all sorts of other ways. The relationship was doing well.
- [29:23]
Monica Padman
Do you think part of that could almost be comparison? Like. Like, people in relationships had the wherewithal to know. Like, I guess I'm glad I'm in a relationship. If I were alone, I'd be literally all alone in my house or apartment right now. Like, maybe there was some level of gratitude, of understanding. Like, oh, I have people, and that's good.
- [29:41]
Justin Garcia
I think it was gratitude.
- [29:42]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And also this tension which your book confronts primarily is like, this tension between your sexual desires versus your intimacy desires. So when you're out in the real world, you're a observing your single buddy who just had a wild night, and he's telling you about it. All these things that get pulled off of the table, I think helps you focus on why you give up all that stuff. Yeah, it's not even in your face as much.
- [30:09]
Justin Garcia
Speaking of being in your face. On the pandemic piece, we do a big study called Singles in America with match every year. And what we found in that is a survey of 5,000 singles. One in four who had non romantic roommates started a sexual relationship with them during the pandemic.
- [30:23]
Monica Padman
Wow, one in four.
- [30:24]
Justin Garcia
There's a pretty high number, right? A quarter of people were. And it's boredom, it's safety, companionship, Companionship. You're out of options. At least you're in your little pod. But it also was a moment that I think for a lot of people, we were looking around and seeing things we didn't see before. And it could be that you're trapped in the house and you have this roommate and say, I really enjoy living with you. There's all these things I like about you. I've never thought of you as a romantic or a sexual partner. But now that we're trapped here.
- [30:50]
Monica Padman
Yeah, it's kind of the answer to, you know, we used to debate about this. If you're on an island.
- [30:55]
Dax Shepard
I was thinking the exact same thing.
- [30:57]
Monica Padman
If you're on an island and there's one other person there, Dax is always saying, you will fall in love with them. It doesn't matter who they are. I'm like, no, I don't think necessarily.
- [31:05]
Justin Garcia
But maybe we could turn to some of the work on arranged marriage. I think that kind of gives us some insights on that, that there has been some work that couples in arranged marriage long term can have just as high relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction, even if you're kind of the only two on the island or the only two that your families decide you can marry. Now, the big myth about arranged marriage in the anthropological literature is most people can reject it. So there is this sort of sense that, I mean, I think that's why some of the reality shows of arranged marriages, the challenge is in the real world, people could say, hey, mom and dad, I'm not marrying that guy. Typically, families want to do what's best for you. And there's some flexibility there.
- [31:45]
Monica Padman
Yeah, my parents have a half arranged marriage in that same way, where it was two family members saying, hey, I have this brother. Oh, I have this daughter. Let's get them together.
- [31:56]
Justin Garcia
We'd like to see this happen, but.
- [31:58]
Monica Padman
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We'd love to see it happen, but I think it's more that than what people think.
- [32:02]
Justin Garcia
Exactly.
- [32:05]
Dax Shepard
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's Smart. Not checking your phone's battery before heading out. That'll get you every time. Of course, your phone dies on the way to meet someone, leaving you wandering around quietly panicking about being in the wrong spot. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check all state first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate North America Insurance Co and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We are supported by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses, Monica, only use 20% of their data?
- [32:49]
Monica Padman
That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out.
- [32:51]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, or paying for a coffee that's 1/5 full.
- [32:54]
Monica Padman
Yuck.
- [32:55]
Dax Shepard
Point is, you miss a lot unless you use HubSpot. Their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs and transcripts, all that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more. And when you get a full cup of coffee, you can do more, too. But I digress. Visit HubSpot.com today. 300,000 years ago, there was 100 other people to choose from. And now we have decision fatigue and anxiety, and there's too many options. And then you add the Internet into that. Now I can see every girl from every town at all times. How do I know it's the best?
- [33:40]
Justin Garcia
There's been a lot of studies trying to understand how people are making sense of all this data in our dating lives. So more people meet on dating apps and websites than through any other venue. So if we ask Americans, we've asked them for the last 15 years in an annual survey, where did you meet your most recent first date? And the Internet naps is the most common way, more than church and school and family and friends and a bar. Last time I looked, it was 4 or 6% met in a bar. Whereas, you know, over 30% are meeting from apps and websites. You go on, and there's so many options. And what happens is the human brain, our mating mechanisms, didn't evolve in that context to have that much data. And it's different kinds of data. So our ancestors, not only would they have a smaller pool to choose from, you knew family networks, you had reputational, the true social network, the ancestral social network. And you had all this other information. So we're dealing with different information in today's environment. And one of the challenges we know is sometimes some psychologists call it cognitive overload, some call it paradox of choice. There's different ways that researchers have talked about. But the challenge is you go on the app and you start swiping and looking for partners. And there's so many. And what happens is, even if you start a chat with someone, you're kind of quick to move on to the next one. Cause you say, well, I didn't like. I used two exclamation points. Who does that?
- [34:53]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, it wasn't perfect right out of the gates.
- [34:55]
Justin Garcia
So we're discounting perfectly reasonable partners because we have a sense of an unlimited resource. And then we're playing these sort of psychological games of saying, like, oh, he has a picture of the puppy. I'll like him. It's caretaking. We found in one of our studies that people are looking at tears as a way to assess your health and well being because they're kind of picking little things from photos. Shine and hair.
- [35:14]
Monica Padman
Skin, I'm sure. Yeah.
- [35:16]
Justin Garcia
So we're trying to pick information, but when we think we have so many options, and particularly it's this idea when we think it's unlimited, the brain just can't turn the lever to say, we have to start making some decisions. And we know this from studies on foraging, how animals look for food in a food patch. If they have a sense that the patch is ending, that they could see the end of the bush of where there's fruit, then they might early on just look for the best thing. But then they start making some decisions, they realize it's running out. When you have a real sense of an unlimited resource, when the brain can't say we're running out, you never switch to this making decision mode.
- [35:50]
Monica Padman
This is Leonardo DiCaprio.
- [35:52]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. He's got unlimited resources.
- [35:54]
Monica Padman
Literally unlimited resources.
- [35:55]
Dax Shepard
It's not his fault.
- [35:56]
Justin Garcia
I mean, he has resources himself, but unlimited options.
- [35:59]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, Virtually every option.
- [36:01]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [36:02]
Dax Shepard
Three and a half billion.
- [36:04]
Justin Garcia
So we struggle, struggle. So the challenge for so many of us is we have to grab the brain and just say, okay, I'm gonna make a choice. So we have to do things. If we wanna have more fun and more satisfaction with how we use these apps, I think we really have to do things and say, I'm gonna start a conversation today. I'm gonna swipe X number of people.
- [36:21]
Dax Shepard
You need a game plan. If you think it's just gonna present itself to you, it's not.
- [36:24]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, because the apps are really introducing sites. They're not necessarily gonna say, here's your person who you're gonna have a wonderful relationship with. There's too much dynamic that happens in the real world. And there's timeliness. It could introduce you to someone and say, well, you're great, but you're about to move to Paris for three years. I don't know if this is gonna work. That's the real world for people. There's all these timeliness factors. There's geography, there's family, there's careers. So all of that stuff happens that the apps can't pick up, but they can connect with people that you maybe can have a relationship with. But then you have to kind of make this decision. One of my favorite studies in experimental design, looking at app dating, online dating, and they gave people profiles and the one group saw a smaller number than the other. I think the larger group saw 24 profiles and then the other group I think saw 6. And when they followed up with the participants in this experimental study, the people who saw fewer profiles were happier. Those that had more were in this was the grass greener on the other side idea? This idea that, well, there was someone else I thought was attractive and maybe I should have talked to some of those others. That's just in an experimental design where you have, all things considered, a relatively small number of more options. But we get stuck in this idea that maybe there's someone else out there that I should have interacted and we forget the golden rule of relationship science. The grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. And that's the rule for relationships.
- [37:47]
Dax Shepard
What a beautiful sentence.
- [37:48]
Justin Garcia
And for a date, invest in that date. If you go on a date with someone, don't think about the hundred other options you have on your app. Get to know the person, have a conversation, ask about their childhood, about their lives, about their experiences. Invest in human connection. That's why one of the things we've been looking at in some of our studies are second dates and how important they are. I'm a huge advocate of second. Everyone's nervous on a first date date. Go on a second date, you know, unless your gut really says really try to invest. Water the grass.
- [38:14]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I was just going to say, I think of the knee jerk reaction to that scenario is that it's like there's some greed driving it. But I would imagine there's just as much of this loss bias we have. I deserve this great thing. It's like, what if I picked something that was less? It's this weird loss bias.
- [38:33]
Justin Garcia
We're just starting to collect some new data that's not in the book on this idea of self actualization. And one of the things I think we're seeing is tied to this. More and more people are saying, I need to be perfect to enter a relationship. I need to bring this perfect self to the relationship. And you have to be perfect in the relationship. I'm gonna be perfect. You're gonna be perfect. The relationship's gonna be perfect. So we focus so much on working on ourselves. And as a biologist now all the therapists out there are gonna say, yes, that's important. Not all of them, but. But I actually think we're working too much on ourselves. We're focusing so much on this idea. Now. Sometimes there's real issues. Sometimes people are dealing with depression, addictions, exhaustion.
- [39:11]
Dax Shepard
They should clean those up.
- [39:12]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. But this idea that we need to work through all of our traumas or our wants and our needs before we engage in relationships.
- [39:19]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. We gotta come in perfect.
- [39:20]
Justin Garcia
The relationship should be the vessel with which we make mistakes, which we explore the world. We try new things with someone else with the safety and comfort and partnership of another person. This idea that you have to enter your relationship and say, I know fully who I am. I want you to know fully who you are. How boring.
- [39:36]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I was just gonna say how boring. And where are you guys going together? Nowhere. There's nothing to be improved upon. I can't learn anything from you because I'm perfect and you're perfect. You're not gonna learn anything from me.
- [39:45]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And the more we wait. So more and more people are waiting and waiting and waiting. So we're delaying relationships. We have over 100 million singles in the United States today. So we've got over a third of the adult population. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Some people are very happy.
- [39:58]
Dax Shepard
40% in the book. You.
- [39:59]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. So we have a lot of people who are happy, single and enjoying singlehood. But so many that we study and hear from are struggling with sort of moving in and out of relationships. Well, if you're waiting for everything to be perfect, that's a losing game.
- [40:12]
Dax Shepard
It's not gonna happen.
- [40:13]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [40:14]
Wina
Oh.
- [40:14]
Dax Shepard
The last thing I wanna talk about in the Kinsey is the Kinsey scale. That's the other thing I think people address because I think prior to this work, we thought there were three brackets, basically.
- [40:23]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. So one of the great interventions from Dr. Kinsey in the first book was the Kinsey Scale. And that was thinking about sexual orientation on a continuum. I think he thought about it that way because he was a biologist. Because in the natural world, everything's on a continuum. There's always variation it's the ingredient that an evolutionist needs to do their work, that there's variation of trait and it selects then on that variation. So this idea that sexual orientation was a continuum at the time they argued 0 to 6, exclusively heterosexual, predominantly heterosexual, incidentally heterosexual.
- [40:54]
Dax Shepard
Ooh, what's incidentally mean?
- [40:56]
Justin Garcia
That would be every now and now young people today would say like heteroflexible. Right. This idea that. That you primarily heterosexual or the reverse, primarily homosexual. But then you have moments of maybe fantasy or a behavior or maybe it's kissing in a bar.
- [41:09]
Monica Padman
Like bisexual sort of.
- [41:12]
Justin Garcia
Bisexual is an interesting concept and term. Sometimes people think bisexual people have to equally be attracted to men and women. That's not true. In fact, studies show that very few people are equally attracted to both men and women. And whether we use bisexual or some folks prefer other terms, there's so much new terminology on how we think about our sexual orient orientations. Some people use pansexual. They all have somewhat different definitions. So bisexual is this idea that you're attracted to men and women both. Yeah. Pansexual is you're attracted to people not with regard to a particular gender or sex. So it's sort of like bisexuality.
- [41:44]
Monica Padman
Sound very similar, but that's an easy.
- [41:46]
Dax Shepard
Distinction for me to make. It's like I'm attracted to guys in this way and I'm attracted to women in this way versus the male. Female thing isn't even a part of the attraction.
- [41:58]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. It's more like compassionate people.
- [42:00]
Monica Padman
Personality.
- [42:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah. Like.
- [42:01]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Funny people. Smile.
- [42:02]
Dax Shepard
It's not like I'm in the mood for this or that.
- [42:04]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Although if it's really smart people, then we say you're a sapiosexual. Right. So there's all sorts of people.
- [42:10]
Dax Shepard
Is that what you are, Monica? Sapiosexual.
- [42:12]
Monica Padman
I love smart people.
- [42:13]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [42:13]
Dax Shepard
All right, we got it.
- [42:14]
Justin Garcia
This is an issue. So Kinsey started this idea that we could think about sexual orientation. And again, he wasn't thinking about identity. In the initial studies, they were looking at behavior. So that continuum was based on how many male partners you had, how many females, partnership, how many male fantasies, female fantasies. And the researchers assigned people 0 through 6. Today we would do a study, we might use the 0 to 6 scale and you pick what you are. But at the time it was a taxonomy.
- [42:38]
Dax Shepard
And can I dare ask, what did that average out to?
- [42:42]
Justin Garcia
And when you look at the distributions, a majority would fall in the exclusively heterosexual. What we saw then and what we see even more now is some great work from Rich Savin Williams at Cornell University was looking at the mostly heterosexuals. And we're seeing more and more people who are falling in that category. And it's why you'll see reports for young people like, today's youth is queerer than ever. And what we're seeing is young people are, more and more of them are identifying as bisexual, pansexual, queer, LGBTQ in this broad sense. Part of that is this flexibility piece. They might primarily be heterosexual in their behavior and in the aspects of their identity, but we're seeing more flexibility, more openness to testing the, the boundaries of who they are and what they want.
- [43:23]
Monica Padman
Yeah, like maybe even they haven't engaged in any behavior that's heterosexual, but they're just like. But I don't want to say I'm exclusively this, because I don't know.
- [43:32]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And in fact, when you look at the data, a vast majority who identify as queer haven't engaged in any same sex behavior.
- [43:39]
Monica Padman
Right. It's interesting.
- [43:40]
Dax Shepard
I feel compelled to repeat my favorite joke I've heard recently on the show. English teacher, our lead identifies as gay. He goes to meet his female friend's new fiance and he immediately is like, this guy is. She's about to marry a gay guy and it's driving him nuts. And they're at a party and finally he confronts the guy and the guy goes, no, no, I am 80% gay and 20% bi. And he goes, so you're 10% straight?
- [44:04]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, yeah, but there's 10%. Well, that was like the interview Barry Diller did not long ago. Right. And they said he's attracted to his wife, but if it weren't for her, that he's attracted to men. Right. But there was something about his attraction to his wife. It was targeted to a particular person.
- [44:19]
Monica Padman
Yeah, that's interesting.
- [44:20]
Justin Garcia
That happened. That's the beauty and I think the messiness of our romantic and sexual lives. As soon as there's a particular person at a time and a place, there's.
- [44:29]
Dax Shepard
An incredible comedian named Rob McElhenny and his mother ended up marrying another woman. He was talking to his mom about it and she said about her partner, oh, she's gay as hell, but I'm not. She's gay.
- [44:40]
Justin Garcia
I'm not.
- [44:41]
Dax Shepard
She's the only one. I like her, but that's the only one I've ever liked. But she's gay as hell.
- [44:45]
Monica Padman
Yeah, I'm not a lesbian. I'm just in love with.
- [44:47]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:49]
Monica Padman
She's so interesting.
- [44:51]
Justin Garcia
I have a colleague not at the institute who is trans. And what's interesting is she's been with her spouse since before the transition. So initially she was a man married to a woman. She transitioned, now she's a woman. And we often talk about the experience of trans people and how their relationships change and their sexualities often as a part of that change. We don't often talk about their partners if they're in long term relationships. So her partner, is she a lesbian now or.
- [45:16]
Wina
Exactly.
- [45:17]
Monica Padman
These are the questions.
- [45:19]
Justin Garcia
And in that case, there's all sorts of arguments about sexual orientation is actually a little bit less stable than gender identities. There is some flexibility and it could be targeted to that person. You might say, well, I'm not attracted to women, but I'm attracted to you and I love you. And I think for me, that's a story of how pair bonds of love, relationships can have this incredible power of dictating our sexual life.
- [45:40]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I hate to say I'm curious about this, but I am, I am curious how more frequently a trans woman's partner is fine with that transition versus a trans man's partner.
- [45:53]
Justin Garcia
Interesting. I don't know.
- [45:55]
Dax Shepard
I think the social pressure and homophobia towards men is stronger. So I just wonder if that would be. I'm just curious.
- [46:02]
Justin Garcia
And that's couched in a lot of different things, particularly in our society. It's the history of HIV and aids. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that goes into that cultural pressure. Yes, but it is there. That's true for lesbian women too. But there have been quite a few studies from folks who study gender and sexuality that look at that, that look that there's some unique stigma that gay men face and in their relationships and then how those relationships are supposed to look. This pressure of like, are there supposed to be roles? That's different. And sometimes in heterosexual couples, we fall into gender roles. Now they change in all sorts of ways. As many of us know in our home lives, the gender roles are not often what you necessarily think they should be. In all sorts of ways.
- [46:38]
Dax Shepard
Right. Okay, let's get into. I mean, we haven't even gotten. I had some pre questions before we.
- [46:46]
Justin Garcia
I'm having too much fun.
- [46:47]
Dax Shepard
We got to the intimate animal. But I do want to address one thing, and I'm going to speed through too, and you really have to only answer the last, which is, I imagine that this field in general probably struggled to be taken seriously. And I wonder how hard it was to attract great researchers because it seemed like a perverted pursuit. Did we lose A bunch. But mostly I want to go into why we're so uncomfortable. I mean, there's religion, of course. Do you have any other theory on why this topic, it's like tied with money is something that is like so impossible for everyone to talk about. I have my armchair theories, but I'm curious if you know, data wise, why this is the impossible topic for people.
- [47:24]
Justin Garcia
And I'm curious what your theories are, because I think they're as good as all of them.
- [47:27]
Dax Shepard
I think our deepest insecurity is sex that we will not be enough for our partner who we love, and that we'll be incomplete in that way. And I guess because again, we don't know how good everyone. I can watch someone play basketball and I can rank myself. If I see my wife's ex boyfriend and I look at him, I have no way to understand his competency is stuck. Still a guess of mine. So it's like a. We don't know where. And we're social creatures who are obsessed with status and hierarchy. So where am I in this group? It's impossible for me to know. I'm scared, I'm terrible, and I just don't even want to fucking talk about it. That's one of my theories.
- [48:02]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And we put this pressure of an outcome on our sexual activity. So you engage in sex with your spouse and you're saying, well, did I have pleasure? Did you have pleasure? Was this reproductive sex? Was it conceptive sex? Did we make a baby this time? How was the pleasure? Did you get the kind of pleasure you wanted? Was there or any pain? And was that what you wanted? And maybe you want all of it? And was that what you wanted yesterday? Is it what you want today? So we put all this pressure on ourselves in terms of are we having the kind of sex that we want to be having? Esther Perel, she's been talking recently. It's these reductions in sexual frequencies. You know, maybe part of the issue is, are Americans in particular having the sex that they want to be having right now? And that happens all the time. That's not necessarily a new problem, but it does mean that there's a lot of problems. Pressure in terms of how we think about our sex. That pressure is a little bit different in a hookup or a casual sex encounter or sex with a sex worker, because there's something else going on. We did a study on hookups and your expected outcomes. And we found that women in particular had very low expectations of orgasm and pleasure and uncommitted sex because they don't necessarily have the ingredients that we know are associated with communication. Communication. Often there's a lot of alcohol and drugs and casual sex, particularly for young people on college campus, don't necessarily know the person that well. There's not a lot of communication. There's often not a lot of foreplay. But it was the experience. So it wasn't that they didn't want the sex. It's just that their expected outcome from it wasn't necessarily what we think. Now, in a relationship, you look at your partner and you go, is that what you want? Is that what I want? Is that what we want? Where are we going with this? Is this about building our relationship? Is this just about having fun? Because it's a rainy Sunday? Is it? Cause we're trying to reproduce? So there's a lot of pressure that goes into it. And some of that pressure comes from. From sometimes religious sources or cultural sources. Because in the back of our mind, we're thinking about, okay, let's say you do want to start a family. You're thinking, okay, sex is for reproduction. I have this biblical thing I'm supposed to be able to do. What if we can't do it? What if it doesn't work the first time, the first month, the first six months. Well, welcome to many people today who are trying to conceive this weight that sits on our sexual lives. And then this other question of is it better than a former partner? Is it better than what you watched on your TV binge. There's a lot of expectations that we have about our intimate lives. Now. I think that's true both for the sex part and for the love part. So we have a lot of expectations about what is an argument supposed to look like, what is saying I love you supposed to look like? What is a kiss supposed to look like? What is cuddling supposed to look like? Some of it is from movies, pornography, or. I just looked at some data yesterday that looking at the behaviors, for instance, in typical pornography that you see high rates of women experiencing pleasure. But from behaviors that we know, actually very few women associate with pleasure. Then you go and try it in your real life, and you go, oh, that didn't work. You didn't like that. But I just watched a hundred clips that people really liked it.
- [50:49]
Dax Shepard
This woman could not stop orgasming with the same. You're broken.
- [50:53]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And we forget that part of sex for most people in our lives is it can be passionate, it could be fun, it could be funny, it could be silly, it could be smelly, it could be Noisy. It could hurt your back, it could hurt your hips. You know, you pull your hair out. There's all sorts of fumbling that happens in our sexual lives that we don't talk about that.
- [51:10]
Wina
Right.
- [51:11]
Justin Garcia
We talk about all this stuff. We talk about orgasm rates, and we talk about all. All these particular positions. And we can go on social media and find hundreds of things. And some of it is advice. But so little of that advice gets into the real nitty gritty. When we study people's intimate lives, what's the real nitty gritty of? The kids are sleeping and, you know, you've got the half hour and you can't make too much noise or you want to have sex with your partner, but the apartment is just so hot, and you got to kind of let it cool down.
- [51:34]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. If you already have a hard time reaching orgasm, add footsteps in your household to the mix and the vague threat that someone's coming through the door or even if you've locked it. Why is the door locked?
- [51:46]
Justin Garcia
I love that. Because a little bit of stress, a little bit of risk, it can.
- [51:50]
Monica Padman
People like exciting people.
- [51:51]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [51:51]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. That's why. I remember the first time I taught a sexuality course. A student in my class said, professor, why is sex in a car feel so much better? And I thought, like. I was like, well, that's a loaded question. And I also thought, like, I'm over 6 foot tall. Don't speak for yourself. This idea that a little bit of risk or being caught can be exciting, but too much risk, too much stress, you actually get a different reaction. The nervous system responds differently. One of the things I've said, and I mention it in the book and other places, is when we look at the natural world, we don't see two gazelle mating in front of a lion. And when our stress response is so ramped up, but you're in a burning building, you're probably going to not stop and make out with your partner. But a little bit of stress, someone could walk in, the elevator, door could open, a parky could find you in your car. That can be arousing, but too much. The nervous system then goes into a different response. You sort of go into the flight response.
- [52:41]
Dax Shepard
Now you're in the amygdala.
- [52:43]
Justin Garcia
This isn't a.
- [52:43]
Dax Shepard
You can't do it from there.
- [52:44]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. It's also not conducive to social behavior. So we were talking earlier about how mating and love and sex are a part of sociality. You're also not stopping to have a conversation in front of a Lion or in front of a burning building. So part of what Steve Porges, my colleague at the Kinsey Institute, calls neuroception, for the brain to be able to engage in social activity, you need some degree of safety. And that's true for love and sex too. So part of all this messiness of sexual experience, the sounds and the smells and the feelings, is do you feel safe with the person you're having it with? To explore all that together, to laugh through that together, to cry through that together?
- [53:23]
Monica Padman
That's why it's so intimate, because it is messy.
- [53:26]
Dax Shepard
Okay, so we start your book finally. Ding, ding, ding. The Intimate the Science of Sex, Fidelity and why We Live and Die for Love. You start by going with some colleagues to Pahrump, Nevada, to visit some brothels. And I think you're probably intending to study one thing and then the menu of options gets your attention.
- [53:45]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, I was in Las Vegas because we were collecting hormone samples in a legal sex club in Vegas, as one does when you're scientist on the road.
- [53:51]
Dax Shepard
I mean, hormone samples is quite.
- [53:55]
Justin Garcia
Well because there had been studies on the hormonal responses to sexual activity, but you get these laboratories. We were in a non laboratory setting.
- [54:03]
Monica Padman
And you just draw blood after.
- [54:04]
Justin Garcia
We did saliva, we did salivary testosterone and estradiol. Estrogen. And that's what first brought us to Vegas. Then we decided to take the trip, an hour out to Pahrump in the middle of the desert. And there's quite literally a menu. A woman who is giving us a tour takes us through. And I was so drawn to the last item, which was the most expensive item. They called it the white whale.
- [54:22]
Dax Shepard
$20,000.
- [54:23]
Justin Garcia
And you instantly think, well, what is that? What does it involve?
- [54:26]
Dax Shepard
I'm thinking of murder.
- [54:27]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, what kind of like, oh, are the handcuffs made of silver?
- [54:32]
Monica Padman
Do you get to take that to go? The handcuffs?
- [54:35]
Justin Garcia
Is it longer? Like multiple people? And it turned out that the most expensive thing that people could purchase at a legal brothel was intimacy.
- [54:45]
Dax Shepard
The girlfriend.
- [54:45]
Justin Garcia
The girlfriend experience.
- [54:47]
Monica Padman
Oh, my God.
- [54:48]
Justin Garcia
The most money you could spend was couching your sexual event in terms of. Of pretend intimacy. So you would sit down, you'd get dinner, there was champagne, you had a table. You would be at the cabana on the other side of the pool. You would go in on a date and typically sex would also be involved, but you were couching all of it in terms of this relationship.
- [55:07]
Monica Padman
Oh, my God.
- [55:08]
Justin Garcia
And it was this idea that if you hit it big, then Vegas, you go out here, not just for an hour of something wild. Now that was on the menu, too. People were doing that. But the most expensive thing, the thing that was really disappointing, was couching that sex in this sort of relationship activity.
- [55:22]
Monica Padman
Oh, my gosh. And are you pretending like you already know each other, or is it, like, first date, like, they're getting to. I don't understand. You know what I mean?
- [55:29]
Dax Shepard
You're gonna have to pony up the 20k and find out. That should have been your Christmas present.
- [55:34]
Monica Padman
First dates are bad enough of having to pay $20,000.
- [55:40]
Dax Shepard
Wow. Yeah. And you say. I mean, if we could just define quickly. So now what we're talking about, the intimacy, is in a nutshell, the experience of closeness of feeling and being seen, hear, heard and known. Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to read, that I wrote down is we might not even recognize the need for intimacy as a biological drive, perhaps because it lives in the shadow of our other primal urge, our sex drive. So these are like distinct compartments of us, both essential and evolutionary. And so through this, you introduce this term intimacy crisis, that we're in an intimacy crisis. So how do we come to that conclusion? Other than the $20,000 price tag, which is a pretty good clue.
- [56:22]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [56:22]
Monica Padman
And in places like, I think Japan maybe, or some places you just, like, go and you pay to cuddle.
- [56:28]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [56:28]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [56:29]
Dax Shepard
What's that like?
- [56:30]
Monica Padman
I don't know. It's like. Makes me so sad.
- [56:32]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [56:32]
Monica Padman
But I also get it.
- [56:34]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. I almost did a study a few years ago at cuddle parties, and I was also going to collect hormone samples.
- [56:38]
Dax Shepard
You fucking weirdo. You're a hormone kid. Everywhere you go, I shine.
- [56:43]
Justin Garcia
Whenever here's something funny, like, can I get a cheek swab or some saliva? Now my friends have to tell me, like, leave your kit in the trunk at the next cocktail party. There's these different things popping up all over the world. There's cuddle parties. There's surrogates. I mean, there's sex surrogacy, which are often trained professionals, often work with people with disabilities on sexual activity. But then there's also these kind of cuddle surrogates where people are just cuddling. When we start to look around, there's all these little pieces of evidence that I think are telling us. So we talk a lot about this lonely epidemic and a lot of studies showing psychological loneliness in studies. And one researcher suggests that psychological loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. There's that. But for me, that wasn't enough because I thought, well, how is it that we're Talking about the psychological loneliness. But so many people. We have a lot of connections. We have a lot of people around. How can you be lonely in a crowd? The answer for me was about. It was the type of relationships we had. So the depth of the connections we had. And that's where intimacy comes in. That people weren't feeling heard and seen and loved.
- [57:46]
Dax Shepard
Known to me is the most operative word.
- [57:48]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [57:49]
Dax Shepard
Like God, do we want to be known?
- [57:50]
Justin Garcia
Sometimes psychiatrists talk about being witnessed and it's this idea that. Right. Like, we want someone to know so.
- [57:55]
Dax Shepard
We know we exist. That's the kind of evidence that we existed.
- [57:58]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And vice versa. We want to know someone. I think one of the things in relationships is we want someone to know us and we want to know them.
- [58:06]
Dax Shepard
One of the deepest prides you can have, or at least, least speaking for myself, is to even know someone better than they know themselves sometimes is a very rewarding feeling. And I think a lot of partners know each other better than they know themselves.
- [58:20]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Before I was traveling, I put out my wife's vitamins and I texted her this morning, I said, don't forget to take your vitamins. And she started laughing. I saw them. Thank you. And you know, I just know she'll forget, which is okay. And I do things that she feels in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [58:32]
Dax Shepard
It's co piloting, man.
- [58:34]
Monica Padman
But do we feel like that can happen in not sexual or romantic relationships?
- [58:40]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And I think that's where things get complicated and where we struggle to sort of make sense of these relationships. That we can have close parents and children or best friends or siblings. We can have really close relationships with people we trust. And trust is a sort of a key component. It's a key component of romantic relationships, too. That we often don't talk enough about how important trust is. So we know we can have trust in relationships and that we crave that trust and that connection. Those are in our social. Maybe what we'll call friendships. Right. These sort of social friend relationships, attachment bonding types of relationships. And then we can have these sexual relationships where we're attracted to someone and the sort of lust systems are going on. And then we have these attraction, passionate love systems. And it's really both. So if you talk to people who are passionately in love, yes, they have this sexual desire for their partner, but they also have a deep friendship with their partner.
- [59:29]
Dax Shepard
Right.
- [59:29]
Justin Garcia
They can exist in isolation. But the special sauce that I think so many people are looking for that they desire in their relationship is that combination. Can I Have someone that I'm both attracted to and feel this sense of lust and someone I feel I can really trust. Sometimes those two systems are in conflict with each other.
- [59:49]
Dax Shepard
Right. As you say, we are socially monogamous creatures kind of in general, and we are not necessarily sexually monogamous. So there's quite a bit of tension there. So, yeah, break down the difference between those two.
- [60:02]
Justin Garcia
So when we compare ourselves to the other primates we were talking about or other organisms, only about 3% of mammals engage in this so called social monogamy form intense pair bonds. If we're talking about mammals in general, we would use expressions like mutual territory defense, mutual nest building, dual parental care. So we engage in Those behaviors about 15% of primates in humans we would call that romantic love, this bonded relationship. Now often we talk about monogamy, people just talk about monogamy. But for biologists, there's two different mechanisms when we talk about monogamy. Monogamy. There's social monogamy, which is the relationship structure, that territory defense, nest building, caretaking support of each other, kind of.
- [60:43]
Dax Shepard
Oh, that. A shared identity. There's something about that shared identity.
- [60:46]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. There's one psychological study called the Inclusion of the other and self. And you can actually take these two circles and you can ask couples, as they get closer together, where they start to overlap more. And often in long term loving relationships, you have a shared sense of self. You have the. I also think it's why it's so important when we think about relationships, when we think about the science of relationships and also just functionally how we have healthy and satisfying relationships. One of the things that's really helpful for me is to recognize there's three entities in every relationship. There's me, there's you, there's us. And sometimes they all have different things. Sometimes the us needs something that I don't really want right now. Maybe you don't even really want right now. But for our relationship, our love life to be what we want, we're thinking about that. And there's always, at any given time, there's you, there's me, there's us in our relationship.
- [61:33]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, for me it's like crazy pronounced in a very rare way, which is I am me, I'm an actor, I go do things. I might be in commercials by myself. And then my wife is that thing. And then there's the us in a commercial, which is a very specific thing. And it's not either of us independently. But I think rarely does someone experience like something so dramatic and Obviously a shared identity which is like there's this other category, if you called to hire us, it's like, what do you want? Do you want Kristen? Do you want tax or do you want them?
- [62:01]
Justin Garcia
I don't know.
- [62:02]
Dax Shepard
It's unique.
- [62:03]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [62:06]
Dax Shepard
Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.
- [62:18]
Justin Garcia
For biologists, when we talk about monogamy, we talk about social monogamy of the pair bond and then sexual monogamy, which is physical fidelity. And few species that engage in social monogamy are always sexually monogamous because there is often an evolutionary advantage to having some diversity among your offspring. But if you're socially monogamous, attaining that diversity often comes at the cost of damaging your relationship in your paramount. There's this tension between a desire for sexual novelty and sexual variation and excitement and at the same time the safety and comfort of the long term relationship bond. So I think that when we think of everything from being single and first dating and starting a relationship, maintaining a relationship, finding love again, if you fall out of a relationship, that the tension between those two forces, that desire for a long term bond and that desire for novelty, that explains a lot of the ups and downs of our relationships, a lot of the challenges. And it's rooted in something fundamental for biologists who study social behavior and mating. It's that when we talk about these issues of monogamy, there's two different things.
- [63:26]
Dax Shepard
What are we talking about?
- [63:27]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, Are you talking about sexual fidelity or are you talking about a relationship structure?
- [63:31]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [63:31]
Justin Garcia
Now the relationship, one tries to impose the other, which is interesting. If you're in sexual relationship with someone. We see this in the friends with benefit studies that often people want it to turn into a long term relationship. You're in a relationship with someone you often accept, expect there to be. Not always. We've done studies on consensual non monogamy.
- [63:46]
Dax Shepard
And I'd argue it's gotten only blurrier over the last 70 years where marriages were primarily a social structure to create children and support a woman. And the man worked and all these dynamics. Whereas now you are more and more two independent people choosing to be together that don't need one another. I just feel like that complicates it even further.
- [64:12]
Justin Garcia
There's kind of two things that are going on that are wild. On the one hand, we don't need resources from partners in the same way. So not as many women are marrying because they need male breadwinner providers, which.
- [64:24]
Dax Shepard
Again, this is brand new for humans.
- [64:26]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [64:26]
Dax Shepard
And we went from, we needed a whole extended family to not die, to, oh, we could get this done with five people. To. Now you can get it done individually. It's all so radically different from how we were designed.
- [64:37]
Justin Garcia
So our system has been pair bonding for over 4 million. And now suddenly this idea that how this looks is so different, that on the one hand we're saying, okay, you might be forming these pair bonds, but what you want to get out, what you need to get out of them is different. On the other hand, we also see what Eli Finkel calls the all or nothing marriage or the suffocation model of marriage. It's the academic term. It's that you can turn to your partner and you say, I want everything in this one person.
- [65:01]
Dax Shepard
Esther talks about this a lot.
- [65:02]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Take care of me when I'm sick and then want to have sex with me the next morning and then make me laugh and make me intellectually stimulated. And I'm doing this trian on my lap because I'm thinking about the Maslow's hierarchy. Right. And you want your partner to fill up that whole pyramid. And that's not realistic because you just set yourself up for constant disappointment as opposed to having the village, opposed to having friends and family and the community. We have expectations of partners that are often unrealistic today. But that includes in these domains of. When we think about this tension between social and sexual monogamy, that tension looks a little bit different in the modern world where we're still saying, okay, I want to have this person, I want to have this intense love bond with this person, and I don't want to share it with anyone else. You're saying about your partner, but then your partner is saying, I want to have everything. I want to have this intense love bond with you too, but I want to also go experience the world.
- [65:51]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. So I will never be able to ask someone that would better be able to answer this question. But I'm so curious. And we got to, of course, define better. I know this is a very tricky word, but I'm always so curious what is, is better for long term outcome, for it to be in private and secret, or to try to attempt to have some arrangement like this thing exists, we know statistically, many, many people are not faithful, I guess, or whatever term you want to use. And I just wonder which one's supposed to work better. When I see people attempt the latter, which is like, we're going to open it up. I mean, I definitely see some pretty predictable outcomes of that. And then you go like, I wonder if it's better In France, you know, or it's just like, it's a secret and it's this. Do we know which approach is better?
- [66:40]
Monica Padman
Also clear, people find out and they get divorced.
- [66:43]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, well, no, like, was it Mitterrand's mistress came to the funeral? Like, there's these famous cases in France where it's like, the mistress is at the funeral, no one gives a shit. And it's like, oh, well, that's culturally different.
- [66:53]
Justin Garcia
When we look at those cases, they don't necessarily represent most of a population. So sometimes we're looking at cases of people with a lot of resources or celebrity status or who kind of occupy a different role in the sort of social scene that things are tolerated differently. So often I'll have historians say to me, well, you know, you talk about the biology of love, but in the Middle Ages, people got married for land, except peasants. Peasants always married for love because their families didn't have land to swap. So you're talking about a certain sect.
- [67:23]
Dax Shepard
Of society and trying to blanket statement the entire group. But let's see the goal.
- [67:27]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Wants an answer. He's like, give me.
- [67:29]
Dax Shepard
Well, let's say the goal was to stay in the pair bond, bonding for life, and then, you know, there's going to be infidelity. What approach yields a better result?
- [67:39]
Justin Garcia
One, this question of life. Should your relationship be for life? One of the things I'm curious about is a lot of people set that as their metric for success. I remember I ended a relationship with someone years ago, and I said, it was a great run. He looked at me like, what? What kind of. I was like, yeah. I was like, no, I mean, it was a great run.
- [67:55]
Dax Shepard
I'm not pie gow poker. What do you mean, you're on a good run?
- [67:57]
Justin Garcia
We were both crying, but it was like, you know, it's a good run.
- [67:59]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Yeah.
- [68:00]
Justin Garcia
Okay. So, yeah, let's unpack this. So there's a question of better. I. I don't think infidelity is inevitable for all couples. I think there's some couples that experience it, struggle with it. And there's two ways we can think of sexual encounters outside of a relationship. I paused on saying sexual encounters because sometimes it's emotional, sometimes there's other kinds of infidelity. So one is this case of infidelity, when that's where it's not allowed. We have an expectation in our relationship or our marriage that it's us, that we're socially and sexually monogamous. Someone steps outside that, that's a transgression. It's a violation of the relationship. Relationship. And there's all sorts of stuff that ends up happening. Right. There's shame. Family gets involved. Sometimes lawyers get involved. Because what's happened is there's been betrayal for the contract that you had. I don't mean a legal marriage. In some cases, yes. It's really about. That's not what we were doing. That's not what we agreed to. Yeah, yeah. And that can be really hard to overcome in a relationship because it's viewed as how many rules do we have for our relationship? And if this is one of the few. And you've probably. So the issue with infidelity is really about trust.
- [69:01]
Monica Padman
Often, yes.
- [69:01]
Justin Garcia
And some couples will work through to try and get over that and work through it. And that could be a challenge. I remember talking to one couple who he had cheated on his wife 20 years ago. They were dating at the time. They were in college at the time, actually, when they got in a really bad argument, she would still say, you're a cheater. And he said it was 20 years. So I want to get back to Monica's point, but also text what you said. You encapsulated an enormous amount of literature on infidelity and everything you just explained, that's that there are dozens of studies that look at sex differences in responses to infidelity. Infidelity. And we know that, on average, men are more upset by sexual infidelity. They're more concerned with this idea that in heterosexual cases, men are upset that their female partners are having sex with other people. The evolutionary argument is, what if they have a kid that's not theirs, that's genetically not theirs, that. That infidelity results in siring offspring. Women, on average, are more upset by their husbands having sex with other women. And this idea that the husbands will end the relationship, remember in a context like we were saying earlier, in a historical context where women were more dependent on resources. So we used to say that men were upset by sexual infidelity, women more upset by emotional infidelity, and in fact, they were more concerned with those suites of issues. But then there were a series of studies that started to question those findings. And they said, well, what about if we gave people a third option in all these studies and said, I'm equally upset by both. And what you find is that underneath that. Underneath that. That men are asking questions about sex, women are asking questions about emotional connection, that they were actually upset about the same thing. And that's that each assumed when women were saying, well, I'm concerned About this emotional infatuation, infidelity and the connection. But then came, because you're having all this sex with this person you're connected to. And when men said, I'm concerned about this sex and how good were they? How big were they? Because you're in love with that guy that you're having sex with because he's delivering all these things, I guess it's.
- [70:46]
Dax Shepard
Like they both have fear of being left. And then what mechanism are they focusing on that will drive them?
- [70:53]
Justin Garcia
Well, the rationale for it. So we know that infidelity can be really devastating for couples, and some get over it. Many do. We did a study on motivations for infidelity, though, and I think this was really helpful for us to better understand what was going on. And there's what's called the deficit model of infidelity, and that's that people think that you engage in infidelity because your relationship. There's a deficit. It's not enough. We did a new study fairly recently. We found eight different reasons, and almost none of them had to do with deficit issues. A lot of it was situational. And so I often think about how people will sometimes say, well, how do I prevent infidelity in my relationship? What do I do to protect my relationship? I travel a lot for work. You guys travel a lot for work. And I think if you know that you don't want to engage in infidelity, don't put yourself in situations that are challenging to yourself.
- [71:37]
Dax Shepard
If you're trying to stay off crack, don't swing by a crack house.
- [71:40]
Justin Garcia
Exactly. You want to think, we have the capacity with these big prefrontal cortexes to think about our relationships and think about how do we protect them, how do we save? Control, safeguards. Perfect way to say it. And that could be, you know, don't go out dancing to three in the morning. You want to try to preserve your marriage, doesn't mean you can't. I'm sure people are going to say, oh, I'm entitled to go out with my friends. You are. You know, everyone's entitled to do whatever you want. But when we think about what are maybe the unexpected challenges to our relationships, we know that a lot of infidelity is situational and unexpected. One study of men who committed infidelity, more than half of them said, I wasn't this kind of guy. I think it was two thirds said, if you had asked me a year ago, I would say, I'd never commit infidelity. I'm not that kind of guy. Well, what happened? And it's often not the relationship. More often than not. In our studies, it was something about situations. People were putting themselves in context.
- [72:28]
Dax Shepard
Again, we have this illusion of being an immovable self that doesn't change. We are who we are everywhere we're at. And we know for certain we're completely different people everywhere we're at. So it's like, yeah, the person that made that declaration sitting in that environment was truthful.
- [72:43]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [72:44]
Dax Shepard
And then the other person was in this situation. All of a sudden we've got a little different shape of that self.
- [72:50]
Justin Garcia
Exactly. And I still haven't answered your question. I'm sorry. I'm gonna get there. So that's the part of infidelity. Then. The other part of this story is what we would call consensual non monogamy or open relationships. And I use the term cautiously. I'm Picturing my friend Dr. Wednesday Martin saying right now don't use consensual non monogamy because she'll argue who's consenting to it. Really. But the term CNM is sort of the contemporary term for open relationship. An umbrella for everything from swinging to an open marriage. Consensual non monogamy is a term in the academic literature. A lot some people will use negotiated non monogamy bunch that we could use. But I think it's a good point that Wednesday brings up of Are both partners really consenting to this? And it makes an assumption about open marriages.
- [73:27]
Monica Padman
And is the third person consenting?
- [73:29]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And sometimes they don't even know. We found in one of our studies in a national sample and we replicated it was about 20% of Americans have at some point had an open relationship of no kidding.
- [73:39]
Dax Shepard
That much. Because I've been very public about having been in an open relationship for nine years. And I think I'm the only person I've ever heard say that out loud. And that's insane. I would have guessed I was one of 300.
- [73:53]
Justin Garcia
A lot experience it very short term. And often when they're young.
- [73:56]
Dax Shepard
Doesn't bode well for how well they work.
- [73:59]
Justin Garcia
Well. That's the other part of it. So we know that about a quarter. You nailed it. Right. We know that about 21% of them being exact. And our studies found that they have tried this. But how many are actively in it? And that number is less than 5%. Which suggests. Yeah, suggests for most people it doesn't work. I'd love to hear how you frame it too. It takes a different kind of work.
- [74:18]
Dax Shepard
It does. And I think the structures so incredibly important with how successful it'll be. Ours was very successful. I mean, nine years we lived together, we slept in the same bed every night together. We had a wonderful life together. And I don't think that was necessarily the big reason we broke up. But what I can admit to immediately is for me, the sexual relationship and a long term relationship is so challenging and requires so much vulnerability and so much communication that if you can be satiated in the much easier way, it's going to be hard to not pursue that and lacks on the servicing of your primary relationship. If I had to say, the biggest downside of it all was we probably did not work on our own sexual relationship the way we would have had.
- [75:06]
Justin Garcia
We been monogamous because there were these other outlets.
- [75:08]
Dax Shepard
It's easier. I don't have to be vulnerable. I don't have to say this doesn't work for me. I don't have to worry about hurting your feelings. Those are all hard things. And if I have an easier option, I'm a lazy human, I'm going to do that.
- [75:19]
Justin Garcia
I would actually argue that it's work. I think that there's a lot that goes into trying to do that in a society that that's not the typical way we structure our relationships. There's a lot of emotional mental work and we can look at different pieces of folks who have open relationships, but also cultures where people have multiple marriages and multiple spouses. It takes a lot of negotiation. And even in those cases, when we look at societies now, there's certain, like religious groups that have polygamous marriage. But when you look at societies where, let's say men can have multiple wives, or the few that women can have multiple husbands, there's often a lot of rules about how you think about, okay, I got a gift for this spouse, I have to get a gift for that spouse. I had sex with this one, I have to have sex with that one. When we look at open relationships, there's something called compersion that can happen is that you have new partners that enter the picture and you focus so much on that one and sometimes you can forget about cultivating the relationship. But for me, what's so insightful about when we look at open relationships, for me it reconfirms this argument about social and sexual monogamy because at its core, core, what we see more often than not, not for everyone, but more often than not, is trying to negotiate around a primary relationship. Now, some people, like people who are polyamorous, would argue that they have multiple love bonds. What I see in practice when we look at the data, is that people are often negotiating around primary relationships. And I think that those people that are really able to do it differently, I'm convinced that their brains work a little bit differently, not broken.
- [76:41]
Monica Padman
Just so you're saying. You think in poly relationships, for the most part, even though it's stated these are all equal relationships, mostly they're not.
- [76:53]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. So I think when people talk about poly in the broad sense now, when you actually go to a poly community, they'll often say, no, that's not really how it works. But when we talk about it broadly, there's this sense that it's equal love for everyone. In some ways, that's hard for the human brain. So when psychologists define romantic love, they use express, like, obsessive thought, intrusive thinking, focused attention. It's pretty darn hard to have that for multiple people.
- [77:15]
Monica Padman
Right.
- [77:16]
Justin Garcia
Just going from, like, day to day to have it, but just to try to carry that at any time. So what we really see when we kind of look under the hood a little bit in these relationships is there's often a primary, or you'll see people will say, Well, I have three spouses, or I have three relationships, but it's Veronica, who I'm with for 20 years. She's the one I really go to.
- [77:34]
Monica Padman
When I'm in trouble.
- [77:35]
Justin Garcia
Or it's Bill who he really understands. If I'm sad, it's only Bill that can kind of get. There's something unique about a pair bond. And I think in cases of polyamory, and less so in sexually open relationships where it's just you're having other sex partners. But in poly, it's not that there's not pair bonding. It's that there's a series of pair bonds.
- [77:53]
Monica Padman
Right.
- [77:54]
Justin Garcia
But there's often one. I would argue there's a hierarchy. There are some people who disagree with me, but that's what we're seeing in a lot of our research.
- [78:00]
Monica Padman
I think that's like a question. They ask it on the bachelor all the time. Can you be in love with two people at once? A lot of people have different answers on that, but I kind of think maybe research suggests no, there are people who can.
- [78:15]
Justin Garcia
I think for the vast majority of people, it's pretty darn hard to be romantically in love with more than one person at a time.
- [78:21]
Dax Shepard
Again, it's all about context.
- [78:23]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [78:23]
Dax Shepard
Are all three of you living together? Yeah, that would be very expressed in my opinion.
- [78:28]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [78:28]
Dax Shepard
That hierarchy. Are you In China half the year and in Russia half the year. And you have a partner in China and you have a partner in Russia. I do think, think that might be equal. It's like you're kind of in two different monogamous relationships.
- [78:42]
Justin Garcia
I mean, functionally, it's interesting you said this sort of don't ask, don't tell. Some of that we see are when couples are physically separated. Also if you're on the road a lot for work, because part of what we also know is that our mammalian ancestry desires is physical touch and connection. So when you can't get that from your primary partner, you might say, well, you're the one I go to with all my secrets. You're the one who I have this deep bond with. You're the one who I. I love. But I also have this other stuff that I need.
- [79:08]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I want to eat at Houston's, but if there's not one in the town I'm in, I'll go to the next best steakhouse, you know.
- [79:13]
Monica Padman
But again, next best. I think that's sort of the whole point is like, that's next best. And then, you know, it's like push comes to shove, your jobs in China and Russia, they all go away. You have to pick a place. You're going to pick that primary relationship.
- [79:28]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Where are you going to eat? Where you're going to put your head down at night.
- [79:30]
Monica Padman
Yeah, exactly.
- [79:31]
Justin Garcia
People are trying to navigate this now. When you're in certain cultural systems that permit it, that's different. But what's interesting is even in cultures where people can have multiple spouses, a vast majority, some of the anthropological evidence suggests about 85% of people still partner off socially monogamously.
- [79:47]
Dax Shepard
Wow.
- [79:48]
Justin Garcia
So even if it's permissible, it's not something that's done by everyone.
- [79:51]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. If you look at hunting and gathering societies, you are generally probably pair bonded with someone of the same status. And then you might have had multiple wives that were lower status. There would be a social status hierarchy among the wives, which is fascinating.
- [80:06]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Interesting you bring up this point of status because we also know that that goes a lot into both trying to choosing partners and trying to maintain partnerships. And does your status change over time? There was a study out of the University of Michigan that when people are on dating platforms that they often look for a partner that's 25% higher in mate value. Researchers assign mate value too. So we kind of punch above our weight, as it were.
- [80:28]
Dax Shepard
Sure. Why not shoot for the star?
- [80:30]
Justin Garcia
Exactly. This is a context we all should be aspirational. Yeah, but there comes a point when you want to say, okay, you've been aspirational. You know, you also have to get realistic about mating is a market. You bring a bunch of different things to the table. And it could be your physical traits, your intellectual traits. It could be financial resources. I think that's fine. I've often had people ask me, well, how do I know that they love me and it's not my money? Or, what if it's just the sex?
- [80:53]
Dax Shepard
Or if they're a fan of the show.
- [80:54]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, exactly. And they watch it all the time.
- [80:59]
Dax Shepard
So you've wandered into it argument. So she has a rule. She would never date a fan rule.
- [81:03]
Monica Padman
It's just. I'm just not attracted to that.
- [81:05]
Dax Shepard
My two points are like a. You're not a character on a TV show. They're actually seeing you. Which is already like, I can see where you're the lead of a karate film and someone falls in love and.
- [81:15]
Justin Garcia
You'Re like, yeah, you're not that.
- [81:16]
Dax Shepard
There's some fraudulence feeling. But in this case, it's you. And then my other point is like. And maybe they come for that, but you can't stay for that. What do you think about that?
- [81:26]
Justin Garcia
Well, I think there's two elements. Is it like a fan who tracks you down and says, I've watched every episode.
- [81:32]
Dax Shepard
It's not a nut. It's like a normal person who likes this show and is attracted to Monica.
- [81:38]
Monica Padman
It's not a hard line. He made it a hard. He's. No. If they lead with I'm such a fan, that is a harder thing for me to overcome. But it doesn't mean it can't happen. It's just like, okay. Because it really is like, yes, you know me. You don't. You think you do. You know a lot about me. You know a lot of things about me. But as we talked about earlier, knowing someone really, really know is not.
- [82:05]
Dax Shepard
Is that maybe part of the trigger is they come in with the familiarity that they know you, but you're like, I haven't allowed you to know me.
- [82:11]
Monica Padman
Not to mention, I don't know you. So immediately it's like there's a weird imbalance. Imbalance. And, yeah, there's an over familiarity that comes from them.
- [82:22]
Justin Garcia
You feel vulnerable. They know all these things that you don't.
- [82:26]
Monica Padman
They're talking to me like, we've been on 84 dates. And like, I don't. I don't know anything about you.
- [82:31]
Dax Shepard
Are you a murderer?
- [82:32]
Monica Padman
I'm not ready to talk to you about. I don't know.
- [82:35]
Justin Garcia
It's complicated. I have a thought exercise. So what if not, I'm a fan of the show, but what if you know, that episode three weeks ago, I heard what you said and it was really thoughtful. And I thought you brought up some points that I had never heard anyone else bring up.
- [82:48]
Monica Padman
That's much better.
- [82:49]
Dax Shepard
Tip to listeners.
- [82:50]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. Part one of the things we're gonna send. Monica's information is available. So this idea that one of the things we know, we tend to be attracted to people that we think are attracted to us. So it's actually one of the strongest.
- [83:02]
Monica Padman
Things that is not how I am.
- [83:04]
Justin Garcia
Well, but in long term relationships, it's why it's really important to let your partner know. Sometimes we can get in a routine and we just say, like, of course I'm attracted. Do I live with you? Duh. But to really wake up and say, you know, you're whatever that attraction is, if it's physical, you look beautiful. You look handsome. You're so smart. Affirmations. But in dating. Yeah. Those affirmations in early dating can be important. Of letting someone know what. Why you like them.
- [83:24]
Monica Padman
Yes.
- [83:24]
Justin Garcia
And I think that there's a difference. Right. Of this. Like, I followed you, I'm a fan. And I don't know that we want fans in our relationship.
- [83:31]
Monica Padman
Exactly.
- [83:31]
Dax Shepard
Well, we don't.
- [83:32]
Justin Garcia
Did they hear you back to what you said earlier? Did they witness what you were saying?
- [83:36]
Dax Shepard
I agree with you. You shouldn't be a fan of your partner. I get asked this all the time in interviews. Like, you must be so blown away. And I'm like, no, I don't look at my wife like you do. And I don't think that would be healthy. But I admire and her, respect her. Okay. I generally do a much better job at servicing people's book. And your book is Phenomen. But I think the easiest way for me to lay this out is I think the way you design the chapters says a lot because it goes in progression in my estimation of a relationship.
- [84:09]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [84:10]
Dax Shepard
So it's need, which we talked a lot about. We've talked a lot about evolution and biology. Crave, search, date, mate, nest, straw, break, care and love. Again, this is like the full gamut of what we could expect when exploring intimacy. And so I guess is there of any of those topics, one that we haven't hit that you would hope that people would know is in there?
- [84:38]
Justin Garcia
I think for me, the reason I was so excited to write this book was when we look at all this literature, all this evidence that we have in my lab at the Kinsey Institute in the field of sex research and relationship science, and how does it all come together? And using this evolutionary lens, how does it all come together to understand that we are this intimate animal, that our romantic lives. Some of the most consequential decisions we make in our life as the partners we're with and how long we stay with them, the things we do with them, the experiences we have with them, that there's a science behind it. And if we know that science, we can enjoy it a little bit more. It could be more satisfying. We also know what to look out for, and we also know. So the breakup chapter. For me, understanding this idea, the pain that comes with. From romantic dissolution and rejection. To understand there's a science behind it.
- [85:23]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Tell us what that science is.
- [85:25]
Wina
Yeah.
- [85:25]
Justin Garcia
We'll have to end on a happier note, but I think this is an important part.
- [85:28]
Dax Shepard
Well, you're dispelling these stereotypes right out of the gates, which is like, women mourn longer, and they take it harder, and they mourn longer.
- [85:35]
Justin Garcia
Men are much more likely to commit suicide after a breakup than women, and.
- [85:38]
Dax Shepard
Women are more likely to end the relationship than men.
- [85:41]
Justin Garcia
So there are predictable patterns that we see in the academic literature, and there's evidence that. That we see. But breakups are so intense. And actually, colleagues of mine put people who had just gone through a romantic dissolution into an FMRI brain scanner.
- [85:53]
Dax Shepard
Oh, yeah.
- [85:53]
Justin Garcia
And when they look at the brain first, they see pain. When people tell you that they're experiencing heartache and they feel pain, they have physical pain. It's in the nervous system. It's in the brain. But it also looks like someone. When you show them pictures of their beloved, it looks remarkably like someone going through cocaine withdrawal.
- [86:08]
Dax Shepard
Wow.
- [86:09]
Justin Garcia
So this idea that when you take away a partner, even if they're the one who did the breaking up, this idea that when you separate a parapon. Mother Mother Nature helped us evolve. Right. These intense parapons. And they're so intense that when you try to break them, she takes her pound of flesh. It hurts. That is a testament to what people go through when they go through breakups. And so often we'll say, oh, just get back on that horse, or stop talking about him or her or them. That's not necessarily good advice. And one of the things I write about in the book is I wish that we gave ourselves more grace to mourn the end of a relationship. We do. If someone dies. Right. It seems to Be culturally acceptable. Someone dies, you can mourn them, you can have their picture up for a couple years. But if you just go through a hard breakup, this idea that you're not supposed to talk about them as if you didn't have this love relationship that influenced so many things in your life.
- [86:57]
Dax Shepard
Do you think some of this is driven by the timetable we feel like we're on? I'm in so much pain this relationship ended, but also I'm 29 and I got to meet the next person within the next year so that I know I'm with them so I can start having kids. Do you think there's this pressure that makes that seem like a pragmatic and smart decision to just keep it moving?
- [87:16]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. So we do know that there are patterns depending on age. So when you're in your reproductive year, sometimes researchers will say there's more pressure to sort of move on. On average, there's more pressure to move on kind of quicker.
- [87:26]
Dax Shepard
My biggest panic at the end of that nine year relationship is we were going to start having kids when she hit 30 and I was 31. And that was the plan for nine years. And we broke up virtually right then. And I went, oh my God. My whole plan for having children, which I know I want more than anything, it just went away. Oh, no.
- [87:41]
Justin Garcia
I love that you bring this up because I think the mistake is that that is is a pressure that women alone have. And we know that's not true. Women have different pressures. There's realities of biological clocks now with technology. There's different ways to work around that if you have the resources again to work around them. But we know that men have it too. I'm really interested in this idea. I remember a bunch of my guy friends all around the same time all had this sort of like baby fever in our kind of mid-30s. And everyone's like, I want kids. Like, I haven't heard about this, I haven't watched this movie. Yeah, but there was this desire to kind of find the right relationship. And men saying to each other like, well, I don't want to be too old at graduation. I want to still be able to run around a park now. We had a long Runway. In some ways it brings some benefits, often of wisdom, sometimes financial resources. And you have the maturity, the patience. And we're seeing more and more of that pushing back reproduction. So when we think about the consequences of these relationships, of the different points in our life. So sometimes we're reproductive years, we might try to move replacement really quickly, but we're seeing more and more evidence of people who are dating and having sex late in life after 55 and 60. There was one study of retirement community of, like, men in a retirement community, and it was like one guy for every, like, four women.
- [88:49]
Dax Shepard
The Village.
- [88:50]
Justin Garcia
Yeah. And then you see high rates of sexual activity, high rates of sexually transmitted.
- [88:53]
Dax Shepard
In Raja that plays the Village in Okeechobee, Florida, or whatever had the highest rate of std.
- [88:58]
Justin Garcia
These are myths people are fumbling through just like teenagers. Right? Fumbling. Which I think in some ways there's something.
- [89:04]
Dax Shepard
Oh, it's adorable.
- [89:05]
Justin Garcia
Something adorable. It's adorable how at every part of our life, the pull of love and sex, the pull of intimacy, really, and whether there's more or less sex involved. But the pull of this connection, of this intimate connection with another person is with us all through these different stages, through the pain of breaking up, through the excitement of first love late in life, where we're sometimes doing it again. Doing it again comes with different challenges. Often, by definition of doing it again, we tend to be older, so we're often looking at people who are sometimes in 30, but often we're looking at 50, 60, 70, 80. Different challenges in relationships and how the body ages, including sex is different and what happens after menopause. A lot of attention to that now. And same for men with erectile functions as we get older. So all sorts of stuff going on on that front. My colleagues, the late anthropologist Helen Fisher and Amanda Gesselman at the Kinsey Institute, we had been looking at different age patterns both for dating and sexual activity. And what we. As people got older, they were least likely to settle. They were a bit more sure of what they wanted and needed in their relationship partners if they were dating again. But also what we found is when we looked at orgasm actually and sexual activity, that although sexual activity decreased as we aged, for women in particular, for both men and women, if you control for sexual dysfunctions and medication, use medications that often have sexual side effects, you don't get this precipitous decline and sexual satisfaction. Satisfaction and women in particular, when they hit menopause, there was actually a slight uptick in orgasm. So that's paradoxical, maybe, if you're thinking that's not what we think about what happens to the body. But what was also happening was people were changing their behaviors. They were engaging in more foreplay, they were maybe using lubricants, maybe using hormonal replacement therapy. So on average, they were doing things that, had they done 40 years ago, more foreplay probably would have had higher orgasm. But now they kind of had to because the bodies were changing. So it's a mixture of experience and how our bodies change. And I think later life, love and sex has a lot to teach us. When I used to teach in the fall semester, I would tell my students, when you go home for Thanksgiving, ask your grandparents about their advice on love and sex. And they'd be like, are you crazy?
- [91:07]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [91:07]
Justin Garcia
I used to say, the dean was a friend of mine. I said, one day, I know I'm gonna get called in your office for this.
- [91:11]
Monica Padman
Yeah, exactly.
- [91:13]
Dax Shepard
Some alumni, big donor. You wanna explain to me why my grandkid just came home from your university that I'm funding and asked my love life with their grandma.
- [91:22]
Justin Garcia
Now as a director, I'm not in the classroom anymore. You can do whatever you want.
- [91:26]
Dax Shepard
Now I get well, Justin. My gosh. This was like wind in the sails. This was such a fun episode. It makes me want to keep doing this job till I'm dead. The book is the Intimate the Science of Sex, Fidelity and why We Live and Die for Love. And I hope everyone reads it. It's beautiful. You're wonderful. What a delight to be.
- [91:45]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [91:45]
Monica Padman
Thanks for coming.
- [91:46]
Justin Garcia
Thanks so much for having me. It's great.
- [91:48]
Dax Shepard
All right, be well. Stay tuned for the fact check.
- [91:53]
Wina
It's where the party's at.
- [91:59]
Monica Padman
Happy anniversary.
- [92:00]
Dax Shepard
Oh, it's the anniversary. This is too much stuff is happening today.
- [92:04]
Monica Padman
No, it's for our anniversary.
- [92:05]
Dax Shepard
Oh, this is for our anniversary.
- [92:07]
Monica Padman
Well, I. You know, it's like one of those.
- [92:09]
Dax Shepard
You make it work, Happy crossover.
- [92:11]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [92:12]
Dax Shepard
Happy accident. But we are going to be joined live. I feel like we're doing a telecast. Like we're going to talk to someone on a mountain reporting on a snowstorm. Wina Lou is gonna be joining us.
- [92:23]
Monica Padman
The creator of Connections, our favorite game.
- [92:26]
Dax Shepard
She's a cross puzzler. She does it all.
- [92:28]
Monica Padman
She does it all.
- [92:29]
Dax Shepard
And we're gonna find out. As you guys know, we have a theory that perhaps she winked at us.
- [92:34]
Monica Padman
You have a theory?
- [92:35]
Dax Shepard
I have a theory. I'll stand by it. And then I will. You. I will not share the glory if I'm right. Because you'll have been on the other side of the fence.
- [92:42]
Justin Garcia
Okay.
- [92:43]
Dax Shepard
Okay. I was excited to share the glory.
- [92:45]
Monica Padman
Oh, no, I can't. No, we're on opposite sides of the. Of the spectrum here. We're gonna find out.
- [92:50]
Dax Shepard
Okay, great.
- [92:50]
Monica Padman
But also just so excited to talk to her.
- [92:53]
Dax Shepard
How does she do this? Happy anniversary. Let's talk to Wina.
- [92:56]
Wina
Okay, here comes Wina.
- [92:58]
Monica Padman
I'M nervous.
- [92:59]
Dax Shepard
Me too.
- [93:02]
Wina
Hello?
- [93:03]
Dax Shepard
Oh, can you hear us?
- [93:05]
Justin Garcia
Hi.
- [93:06]
Wina
Yeah. Yeah.
- [93:06]
Justin Garcia
Can you hear me?
- [93:07]
Dax Shepard
Yes.
- [93:08]
Justin Garcia
Oh, my God.
- [93:08]
Dax Shepard
And it's Wina, right? Not w. We messed that up.
- [93:10]
Wina
It's Wina.
- [93:11]
Monica Padman
We mess that up a lot. I'm so sorry.
- [93:14]
Wina
No, not at all. You want to see?
- [93:15]
Monica Padman
Oh, there's a puppy.
- [93:17]
Dax Shepard
Is.
- [93:17]
Wina
This is Polo.
- [93:19]
Justin Garcia
Polo.
- [93:20]
Monica Padman
Does Polo help you write your puzzles?
- [93:24]
Wina
Polo's my muse. Yeah, for sure.
- [93:27]
Monica Padman
Oh, my God. I'm starstruck.
- [93:29]
Dax Shepard
I am too. I am too. I feel like we've crossed. Like we've. We've entered a different dimension. Like when it exists in another dimension. Where the New York Times exists. Yes, but now we're here in the same dimension.
- [93:43]
Monica Padman
Ish. It's our eight year anniversary, so we're really happy to have you.
- [93:47]
Wina
And it's also your. Your thousandth. You just had your thousandth episode. Right. Congratulations.
- [93:52]
Dax Shepard
We're bordering on too self congratulatory because we had a thousand and now we have eight. So we're gonna. We'll just let everyone know. We're gonna cap it at celebrating after today.
- [94:00]
Monica Padman
Well, it's not our fault. There's just so many good things happening, so many milestones.
- [94:05]
Dax Shepard
So, winnow, would I be right to assume you're living in New York?
- [94:08]
Wina
Yeah. Yes, that's right.
- [94:09]
Dax Shepard
And how long have you lived there?
- [94:10]
Wina
I was. Actually grew up here.
- [94:12]
Dax Shepard
Really? What part of town?
- [94:13]
Wina
Always on the east side of Manhattan, so I grew up on like 23rd and 2nd and just kind of moved around.
- [94:19]
Dax Shepard
And what did mom and dad do?
- [94:20]
Wina
My parents are in the radio business. They're in. They're in. Yeah. Mostly Chinese radio.
- [94:27]
Dax Shepard
Chinese radio.
- [94:28]
Monica Padman
That's cool. The original podcast.
- [94:30]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Can they get us big in China? I feel like that would really move the needle.
- [94:34]
Monica Padman
It would.
- [94:35]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [94:37]
Wina
I think that the. The stations are here, so. No.
- [94:41]
Monica Padman
Okay, well, can you get us big in New York? Cause that would also be good.
- [94:46]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Well, I think she's trying. I think she's trying. Okay, now, of course, let's. I want to find out how you've come to be a puzzle creator.
- [94:55]
Monica Padman
Yes.
- [94:55]
Dax Shepard
And then of course, we have a billion dollar question at the end, but. Yeah. What is the route one takes to where you're at? And also explain all your duties as a. Of part puzzler.
- [95:06]
Wina
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, it's a. It's sort of a niche job being a puzzle editor, and I think I came into it through crosswords, so I joined the Times in 2020 as a crossword editor, which is something that I still do. And so all of the puzzle editors at the Times, in addition to like managing their own games and projects, also we all work on editing the big crossword together.
- [95:30]
Dax Shepard
Yes.
- [95:30]
Wina
And so that it's a very small sort of sweet community of just puzzle enthusiasts, of crossword enthusiasts. And so everyone kind of knows everyone and everyone kind of a fan of everyone's work. And so I think that when you start submitting your puzzles to different venues, then you get a sense of the puzzles that people make and the clues they write and things like that. And so I feel like that played a big part of it because being a puzzle editor, a lot of it is clues. And so, yeah, I feel like the puzzles you make are like your resume. So I feel like that really helped.
- [96:08]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. And do you think that are you like a sommelier where you can look at a crossword puzzle in any random newspaper in America and have a pretty good sense of who wrote it? Like, can you identify the authors through their different patterns?
- [96:20]
Wina
I would say that there's definitely some styles. Yeah. I don't know if I would be like, exceptionally good at it, but I bet that there are people who would. And they're definitely like constructors with, like, their own flair. And I feel like they're workings.
- [96:31]
Monica Padman
I feel like you have a real fingerprint, because I was doing, I think maybe minis. You sometimes do minis, right?
- [96:39]
Wina
Occasionally, yeah.
- [96:40]
Monica Padman
Yeah, I think I was doing a mini and I was like, I'm. I wonder. Did this. And then I went and you had what?
- [96:49]
Wina
Wow.
- [96:50]
Dax Shepard
Can you remember the giveaway?
- [96:51]
Wina
The same wavelength?
- [96:52]
Monica Padman
Yeah, I. But I think you, you're like. It's like fun. It's cheeky.
- [96:57]
Dax Shepard
Okay. Cheeky. Enchanted.
- [97:01]
Monica Padman
Enchanted, yeah. Enchanted's the word.
- [97:04]
Wina
But I did nicest things anyone's ever said to me.
- [97:06]
Justin Garcia
Thank you.
- [97:08]
Dax Shepard
But winnow, what'd you major in?
- [97:09]
Wina
Art.
- [97:10]
Dax Shepard
You majored in art?
- [97:11]
Wina
Yeah, yeah.
- [97:12]
Dax Shepard
From where?
- [97:13]
Wina
From Oberlin College.
- [97:14]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [97:15]
Wina
So it was, you know, my mom was always like. My mom, who I'm very close with and who's an amazing, lovely person, was always just like, you're not going to be an artist, let's get real. And so I feel like it was, you know, and she was, she was right. But I think, I feel like the art thing, the art thing was always. Yeah, it's. It's always been like a. An interest of mine.
- [97:36]
Dax Shepard
How did you start making your own cross. I assume you started making your own crossword puzzles for your own amusement, and then what, do you submit them to? The New York Times? Like how does one gain employment in this field?
- [97:46]
Wina
Yeah, no, that's exactly it. You just kind of realize. So for me, I started going to crossword tournaments and that's where you meet like other crossword freaks and it's just really fun. And what becomes kind of intimidating, it's like even the idea of going to a crossword tournament, it's like, oh, I'm not, not that good a solver. You know, I'm not smart enough, I'm not fast enough, whatever. And it's like, do you think it's fun to sit in a room for two days solving puzzles? If you do, then you belong. Like this is, you know, then you're like, no one actually cares how like good you are at solving puzzles. And so it's just a lot of like minded people who love puzzles getting together. And that's where you kind of meet, you know, the sort of like luminaries in the field. And you're like, oh my God, I love their work. I love their work. And then you realize just because everyone's like so sweet that it's like, oh, it's just normal people that make these puzzles. And like, I am normal per. You know, it's like you're like, maybe it occurs to you that maybe it could be you, right?
- [98:39]
Dax Shepard
And you've already said a couple adjectives, but if you had to say there was some through line of the puzzlers. Do you, do you think there is a personality type?
- [98:46]
Wina
It's interesting because it's not like a full time thing. I feel like it's cool that people come from all sorts of different backgrounds, but there is like, there are like a lot of like computer sc. There are a lot of musicians and I feel like there is a certain like, maybe brain that like also overlaps like puzzle, word play, things like that. Maybe something computational as well.
- [99:10]
Monica Padman
It is your full time job though, right?
- [99:12]
Wina
Yes.
- [99:13]
Monica Padman
Oh yeah.
- [99:14]
Dax Shepard
How are you calibrating? As people may or may not know, but the New York Times crossword puzzle gets increasingly hard throughout the week. And I'm wondering how you know, what level Thursday is versus like it's sitting down to do Tuesday versus Saturday. What. What's the criteria that makes, makes it harder?
- [99:31]
Wina
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think that Monday through Thursday and also Sunday are the themed puzzles. And so the nature of the theme will actually tell you a lot about the day of the week that it'll be the most appropriate for. So like Thursday is the day that's like the most known for like tricks. So if you have like a rebus, right, which is when like, you know more than one letter is in that box, or when you have like something funny like the words are turning directions or going backwards or flipping or something like weird is happening, then that's gon like almost always run on a Thursday. And if it's like a more, sorry, go ahead.
- [100:07]
Monica Padman
No, it's just.
- [100:07]
Dax Shepard
Oh, she was just oohing and awing.
- [100:09]
Monica Padman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm amazed.
- [100:12]
Wina
But like, there, there are other themes that are like a little bit more straightforward and those might be good for an early week. And also there's stuff about the grid. This is a little like interrupting. This is like too weedsy or whatever.
- [100:24]
Dax Shepard
Get esoteric.
- [100:25]
Wina
There's like on an early week puzzle, you actually, they're actually really hard to make because you have to make the grid super clean. Which means when you're const the grid, you know, you might want to like include all these like fun entries. But then you might get like these weird little like four letter words that no one knows that are kind of obscure and like, those don't really fly on like a Monday or Tuesday. You really want that vocabulary to be super familiar and not sort of like crossword insidery.
- [100:52]
Dax Shepard
And when you're in your like creative mode where you're coming up with, are you prone to think of like a great clue for a great word? You're eating breakfast and do you have like a notes section in your phone where you're going to like, oh, this is a word I want to use, use. Or do you more visualize the full grid and how it's going to work together?
- [101:08]
Wina
Ideally, it sort of changed for me and I think that you're identifying a really smart, like what a really smart person would do, which is like. Yeah, sometimes you, if you think of like a really amazing like clue answer combo, you write it down. Then you can build your puzzle around it. Yeah, I think that for a long time when I, when I started making puzzles especially, I would kind of just make a grid with the most fun words that I could and then I.
- [101:32]
Dax Shepard
Would clue it, reverse engineer it.
- [101:35]
Monica Padman
Right.
- [101:36]
Wina
And then sometimes you kind of, you don't actually want to do that because sometimes you can't write quite the clue that you thought you could like. It might be a fun answer, but like, it's really the clue answer combo that makes it a good puzzle. So I think that you're thinking about it in a more kind of holistic way, which I believe is kind of the ideal way.
- [101:53]
Monica Padman
How are you handling your new fame, like, also because people have a lot of ire towards you because. Because they can't, you know, if. If the puzzle's too hard or you do the one with the pictures and then people are mad and then they're sending you bad vibes. I admit I once sent a few bad vibes that are bad.
- [102:16]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, you. We were on a Connections chain and sometimes, yeah, she would be like that winner.
- [102:23]
Monica Padman
I know, but I didn't mean it for real, but I was mad.
- [102:26]
Dax Shepard
If she couldn't solve it, it was your fault, not hers.
- [102:29]
Monica Padman
That's right.
- [102:31]
Wina
I. I take responsibility and I. Bad vibes. I think, yeah, I think that's fair. I think it's great. I think it's really fun. Even when people are mad, it's like, I love being mad at stuff, so I get it. I think it's very. I'm in, like, a very lucky position where the thing that, like, making games is something that, like, we love doing. It's like, it's so fun to do and people love solving them, but it's super low stakes. There's like zero stakes, but high passion, so it, like, doesn't really matter. As opposed to, like, other jobs, like, you know, like the journalists or whatever, like news. It's like extremely high stakes and extremely high passion, you know?
- [103:10]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. When you screw up, there's lawsuits. I doubt you've ever been sued over the crossword puzzle yet. Okay, now let's. Let's move to Connections. How did you think of that concept? Who thought of the concept?
- [103:23]
Wina
I did not think of Connections. Connections was pitched internally by some of my amazing colleagues. Basically what happened was, like, in 2021, the Times acquired Wordle. And then there was like this pivot towards new games, and so they brought on this amazing new games team, and then they created these sort of pipelines for pitching and developing new games and like a greenlight process and all that. And so Connections was pitched and developed internally. And then when it got to the stage where they wanted to release a 60 day public beta trial, they needed an editor to WR those 60 boards. And so at the time, I was the only editor that, like, didn't have a game. And they were like, winna, do you want to try writing this game? And I was like, yeah, that sounds amazing. So I was assigned Connections after it had already been, like, developed and stuff. So I got. I got really, really lucky.
- [104:14]
Dax Shepard
Okay. I think of sometimes the. How daunting your job is. I compare it to back when I was in this sketch comedy Theater. And we had a new show every single Sunday and there had to be 25 sketches in it. And just like the never ended and you kind of run out of inspiration. And anyone that was around me in that period, I would be at lunch and someone would put, you know, a napkin down weird. On the table as a waiter, and I'd be like, oh, there's a sketch. What if the person always puts things down? So are you, like, are you kind of crazy? Are you, like, to be around you? Are you, like, looking around you constantly trying to feed that inferno of like. Yeah, like, what's your process for it?
- [104:54]
Wina
Extremely relatable. We said about the napkin. I'm taking notes now. It's like, napkin funny.
- [104:59]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [105:00]
Wina
So look out for that. No, I feel like. Yeah, it's in the beginning. I feel like people are like, oh, is it kind of like ideas kind of come to you? And maybe in the beginning a little bit, but not for a while. I feel like after, you know, it's been like a couple years and I.
- [105:14]
Justin Garcia
Feel like you couldn't rely on.
- [105:15]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. To be inspired from the cloud.
- [105:17]
Wina
Inspired. Exactly.
- [105:20]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [105:20]
Wina
I wish. Yeah. So it is a little bit more of a grind. So it's like you sit down, you go, I'm going to just look at some words, you know, I'm going to look at Google, a list of flowers or like a list of parts of a ship or like, I don't know, how about some fish or whatever, you know, and then you, like, look at words or sometimes, you know, you have a seed of an idea. There's like, like, you know, I was thinking about the other day. It was like, there's a lot of free associated things. So it was. I was thinking of like, computer stuff and there was like, you know, storage drives. So there's like thumb, thumb drive, a zip drive, a flash drive. I was like, oh, like, those words, like, are like, kind of interesting. Thumb, zip, flash. And so I kind of like, I work in a spreadsheet, so like, as like a digital sketch pad, so I can kind of click and drag words around. And so I was like, trying to make a category of that, but then I was like, oh, you know, like, thumb drive and zip and like, flash drive are sort of the same thing. So maybe it's better as like a fake category and you kind of click them around and you try to see if there are other.
- [106:15]
Monica Padman
The fake categories really piss me off.
- [106:18]
Dax Shepard
Well, that's the fun of the game.
- [106:20]
Monica Padman
You get me sometimes. You really get me.
- [106:23]
Dax Shepard
Congrats. The thing. The times I've been mad at you, to be honest, have been solely when we got obsessed with solving the, the, the, the.
- [106:33]
Wina
The purple colors.
- [106:35]
Dax Shepard
Yes. We had to go purple, blue, green, yellow. That was like. That's how you get an A on it in our thread.
- [106:41]
Wina
Yeah.
- [106:41]
Dax Shepard
And so, so often I'd be like, well, definitely. That's the hardest. Yeah. And I would do it and it would be green. I'm like, when it. No way. This, this purple is way easier than this green. Those are the times I've been upset. How are you delineating what's harder in your mind? I guess it's just your arbitrarily.
- [106:59]
Monica Padman
It's whatever you guess. Something I want to get.
- [107:01]
Wina
Yes, please.
- [107:02]
Monica Padman
I feel like the purple is almost always a word play.
- [107:06]
Wina
That's exactly what I would say. Okay, that's exactly right.
- [107:10]
Dax Shepard
It is. It's. There's always like, there's. They're joined by a word that we're missing or the.
- [107:15]
Monica Padman
Or a letter is missing off of a word or something. It's always wordplay. I'm. Purple's my favorite.
- [107:21]
Dax Shepard
Purple is. But then sometimes purple isn't always that though. Right? Purple's not always wordplay.
- [107:27]
Wina
There's not always a wordplay category in the board. And sometimes if there's like a. So I. Do you want to hear my like, very loose, very loose rubric for like assigning colors? Okay.
- [107:37]
Dax Shepard
Yes.
- [107:38]
Wina
So Monica, you're exactly right. With the purple, like, there's like wordplay, which I guess I'm defining. Defining as like the group of four words. The category is not based on the meaning of those four words. So maybe those are all words that like, you know, go with another word. So like the fill in the blank categories. Right. Like blank tape. Right. All the words that go with tape. Those words don't have anything to do with each other, but that's wordplay. Or like. Yeah. The change a letter, the homophones or you know, things like that. So that'll like basically always be purple. Blue is for if there's like trivia. So if it's like kind of more like know it or you don't. If it's a reference to like movies, you'll do like a movie.
- [108:16]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Actor has been in all four of these movies.
- [108:18]
Wina
Exactly. That'll like be blue and then red and green is a little bit more, you know, maybe a little bit more ambiguous.
- [108:27]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [108:27]
Wina
A little bit more of a toss up.
- [108:29]
Dax Shepard
More subjective. Yeah.
- [108:30]
Wina
Like, it's extremely subjective. And I feel like the way I Do it is if I see a word that like is pretty unambiguous in terms of its part of speech or like it like kind of squares. Like it can't. It like identifies the category if it's like ambiguously like a definition of something and it can't really mean other stuff, whatever that category is might be yellow and the green one might be like a group of synonyms or something that's a little harder to see. Maybe their part of speech is more ambiguous. There's like the words have multiple meanings, stuff like that.
- [109:03]
Dax Shepard
Yes, yes.
- [109:05]
Wina
But it's, it's a very vibes based. So I. It's understandably kind of. I think it's. It's subjective. Yeah.
- [109:12]
Dax Shepard
And what is harder for you to create connections or the, the crosswords? Like, are you wearing golden handcuffs with this? You gotta sign this. It's like it's a hit. You, you've cracked it. You're known for it. And you're like, wait, though I'd rather be doing crossword.
- [109:28]
Wina
No, I actually connections has like this kind of like free association, like, like structural, like freedom. Like you can kind of take liberties with like via like thinking it's like fun to think about all the different things a category could be. So there's a flexibility in it that I think is like really lovely. Whereas like creating crosswords are in some ways like at least grid making. It's quite formal. Like it's like hard to like make a good grade and to like not have too many crappy words and things like that. So I kind of appreciate the looseness of connections.
- [109:58]
Dax Shepard
Do you get a bang out of thinking of like how many people play the game?
- [110:01]
Wina
I would, I think, yeah. It's really, I mean, I think it's very cool. I'm very, I feel very fortunate that like something I really love doing is something that, that people like playing now.
- [110:13]
Dax Shepard
Given the pace of how it comes out. Do you. How can you take a vacation? How are you getting time off? Can you do multiple in a day and build a little war chest as.
- [110:23]
Wina
We do right now? Yeah, yeah. There were like about like four weeks ahead. So the boards that like I'll write this week will run in about like in about a month. So there's a little bit of a buffer. But you know, I think I. It's hard to get like if I'm going to be gone for a week, it's hard to get like, you know, a week ahead. So it's just, I don't, I don't mind kind of working When I'm, you.
- [110:48]
Monica Padman
Know, I have an idea. I have an idea for a purple based on napkin.
- [110:53]
Dax Shepard
Okay, great. You got a pitch is what you got. Yeah.
- [110:56]
Monica Padman
Because you said napkin earlier.
- [110:57]
Dax Shepard
Yes.
- [110:57]
Monica Padman
And I've been thinking that a good purple would be like napkin, napkin. And then some like fair child, something. Son, like the last. The end of the word is family, kin, child, son, probably not daughter. That seems hard. But you need a fourth if that shows up.
- [111:20]
Dax Shepard
Oh, you'll spray. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna get to my million dollar question. And I guess first I would ask, have you listened to Armchair Expert?
- [111:32]
Wina
Yes.
- [111:33]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [111:34]
Monica Padman
Wow, that's.
- [111:34]
Dax Shepard
That's a great start. That's a great start. Okay, now, I, I'm sure it got to you, but I was very suspicious, as were the armchairies, that you were winking to us.
- [111:42]
Monica Padman
I want you to be honest, though. I really want you to be honest.
- [111:45]
Dax Shepard
Yes. With armchair and expert being in the same thing the day after the Golden Globes. And we're. I'm, I'm, I'm wondering if it was a wink or not.
- [111:53]
Wina
I can confirm that this was definitely intentional.
- [111:57]
Justin Garcia
It was a wink.
- [112:02]
Monica Padman
That is so.
- [112:03]
Wina
Wow.
- [112:05]
Dax Shepard
I know. That's better than a Golden Globe. I'd rather have that than us having won the Golden Globe, which we had.
- [112:10]
Monica Padman
Lost the day before. So it was a really big moment, but I was too. I couldn't, I couldn't receive it.
- [112:16]
Justin Garcia
You were.
- [112:16]
Dax Shepard
Your self esteem was too low to even consider that.
- [112:20]
Monica Padman
Look, it's also a phrase that doesn't mean us.
- [112:23]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, next.
- [112:25]
Wina
Next time. Next time I'll put Dax and Monica. So, you know, it'll be like Star Trek characters in like Santa Blank or something.
- [112:33]
Dax Shepard
Or you could be using Axe from Dax and I don't know.
- [112:37]
Monica Padman
We're doing Monica's Tricky.
- [112:38]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, it's gonna be rough.
- [112:39]
Monica Padman
There you go.
- [112:40]
Wina
Friends, characters.
- [112:43]
Justin Garcia
Oh, my God.
- [112:45]
Monica Padman
Oh, this really made my whole year.
- [112:49]
Dax Shepard
I'm so grateful because if you had said no, then, then that would have immediately confirmed I was a narcissistic megalomaniac, which is why. And now I'm just observant. That was like the stakes were very high for your answer for me.
- [113:05]
Monica Padman
Oh, that's so kind.
- [113:07]
Dax Shepard
So I guess my curiosity is a. You're still doing a ton of art, right? You're still a very active artist. And so what is. Are you at the pinnacle of puzzling? I'd imagine it would be New York Times. So, like, are you at the place you set out to be? And then what is. What do you desire? Hire Next.
- [113:24]
Wina
I feel really happy about. Yeah. The sort of being able to, like, make this game and be able to, like, work with these people and to be able to work at the times and stuff. Yeah, it's really amazing. And in terms of like, I just like, want to keep making stuff I've always just loved. You know, kind of just like taking classes or, you know, just tinkering with different, like, tools and different mediums and.
- [113:48]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [113:49]
Wina
So I.
- [113:50]
Dax Shepard
You're such a cat. Whoever's caught you is so lucky. You're such a fun cat.
- [113:55]
Monica Padman
I know how fun. Also, you're, like, doing games in bed. Oh, the dream.
- [114:01]
Justin Garcia
I like that.
- [114:02]
Dax Shepard
It's like, it's a mix of approval and disgust. And you're like, you're like, also annoyed that she's so productive.
- [114:07]
Monica Padman
I know.
- [114:08]
Dax Shepard
Impressed and annoyed.
- [114:10]
Monica Padman
I'm embarrassed for myself. Wow, this is so fun. I love this.
- [114:15]
Dax Shepard
Me too. Me too.
- [114:17]
Monica Padman
Really happy you chatted with us.
- [114:19]
Wina
Thank you so much.
- [114:20]
Dax Shepard
Are you ever thinking of new games? Do you think of, like, full new concepts? Do you think of.
- [114:28]
Wina
I. That is, not really. I don't have a lot of experience doing that. Maybe like some little puzzles here and there, but. But no, I mean, do you have new games you want to talk about?
- [114:37]
Dax Shepard
New games? I'm a person who thinks of a lot of things none of them would really.
- [114:42]
Monica Padman
Yeah, you don't really want to hear about practice.
- [114:44]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. My riddles that Monica hates, but I stand by. They're very good riddles.
- [114:49]
Monica Padman
Oh, they're.
- [114:50]
Dax Shepard
Well, one of them is.
- [114:51]
Justin Garcia
Is.
- [114:52]
Monica Padman
Oh, boy.
- [114:52]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. You are in a 8 by 8 by 8 foot cage and there is an adult male lion asleep in the corner. And he's going to be asleep for 30 seconds. What do you do? And this is what Monica hates is. I have decided what the perfect thing to do is. And so if you don't answer that.
- [115:15]
Monica Padman
It'S not a riddle. It's just like, oh, what would you do in this scenario? And it has to be what Dax.
- [115:21]
Dax Shepard
Thinks you should do, which is the correct thing. So I guess my question is, when? What would you do with that? 30 seconds.
- [115:27]
Monica Padman
Ooh, yeah, I'm sorry.
- [115:34]
Dax Shepard
I would. And you only have your body. You only have your body. Right. You don't have any tools or anything. In fact, you're nude. But don't worry, no one's looking. No one's looking.
- [115:43]
Monica Padman
You're wearing shoes.
- [115:44]
Dax Shepard
No. You're nude. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because if you were wearing shoes, you could make a lace noose and strangle it somehow. But no, you're naked.
- [115:50]
Justin Garcia
It's.
- [115:51]
Dax Shepard
It's beast on beast.
- [115:52]
Wina
I feel like the chances of me going against a lion would go extremely poorly for me. I don't think that I would have a chance. So, like maybe trying to be friends with the lion would be like a better, a better attack to maybe go up to the lion and just be like extremely non threatening, which I don't think I need that much help. And maybe I'd be like, this would be a waste of time for the lion in the lion's mind to go after me.
- [116:20]
Dax Shepard
You're introducing a new concept I hadn't considered, which is like, maybe you could do reverse psychology, which is like put yourself in its mouth and then it wakes up and it's like, what's in my mouth? I didn't pick this.
- [116:29]
Monica Padman
Oh, right.
- [116:30]
Dax Shepard
That's kind of interesting. That's kind of what you're suggesting.
- [116:34]
Wina
What were your answers?
- [116:37]
Dax Shepard
Well, here's the answer. The correct answer is you pluck its eyeballs out. Immediately pop them out. Okay. And. And then you're not going to like this part. You do have to put your fingers in your butt and you have to rub it on his nose. So he wakes up and now he's so disoriented. Cause his eyes are looking down at the ground. And his smell, his sense of smell, which is very keen, is all fucked up. Cause you've put your butt on it. And then you climb up on the cage as high as you can. So as he's walking around, he can't find you. But he's not gonna be leaping at you because he can't see and he can't smell. So that is the correct answer to how to survive the 8x8x8.
- [117:15]
Monica Padman
Isn't that a great riddle? Isn't that like the best riddle you've ever heard?
- [117:21]
Wina
What do you think?
- [117:22]
Dax Shepard
Think of that game plan.
- [117:25]
Wina
It sounds hard to execute.
- [117:27]
Monica Padman
It does.
- [117:28]
Dax Shepard
What part? The popping the eyes out.
- [117:30]
Wina
Yeah, I think that. Yeah, starting with that is like.
- [117:32]
Dax Shepard
That's a. I think you'd be surprised at what you'd be capable of doing if you knew you were about to get eaten in 30 seconds. I think you get your thumbs in there and pop them right out. Pop, pop, pop.
- [117:40]
Monica Padman
I just. He's already so close and like, I don't know, he's.
- [117:44]
Dax Shepard
What if it turns out it's really hard just to get their eyelids open? You like, oh God, I got to get this eyelid so huge.
- [117:49]
Monica Padman
Yeah. You haven't even done research.
- [117:50]
Dax Shepard
What if I like David Blaine because I got so hellbent on this was the right an. That I set up this performative stunt to test whether this was the right answer. Forget the Humane Society would be all over me for doing this. But I don't know. I think. I think that's the best solution we have.
- [118:05]
Monica Padman
Okay.
- [118:05]
Dax Shepard
Or make friends.
- [118:06]
Wina
Monica, what was your. Did you have a. Did you have a thought?
- [118:08]
Monica Padman
Well, no, I thought it was a riddle, so I thought there was, like, you know, a tricky answer or like.
- [118:14]
Justin Garcia
Like lions don't sleep.
- [118:16]
Dax Shepard
Right.
- [118:17]
Monica Padman
That's what a riddle is that. And then it was that. So hated that. Hated that.
- [118:25]
Dax Shepard
Oh, well, Winna, this was a blast. We're so delighted that we got to talk to you on our anniversary. Thank you so much.
- [118:31]
Wina
Thank you so much. Thank you.
- [118:33]
Dax Shepard
I sure love you in New York. And we can eat Emily Burger.
- [118:37]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [118:38]
Dax Shepard
Oh, that would be.
- [118:39]
Wina
I'd love that.
- [118:39]
Dax Shepard
Okay, wonderful.
- [118:41]
Monica Padman
Have a great rest of your day. Nice chat.
- [118:43]
Wina
You too. Yeah, thanks so much. It was great.
- [118:46]
Dax Shepard
Take care.
- [118:46]
Wina
See you later. Stay tuned for more armchair adventures.
- [118:51]
Dax Shepard
Expert if you dare.
- [119:01]
Monica Padman
That was just a dream come true.
- [119:04]
Dax Shepard
Better than I thought. And I thought it was going to be great.
- [119:06]
Monica Padman
All right, well, I have to give it up. I have to give it up to you, Dax Shepard.
- [119:11]
Dax Shepard
Big wink from Winna. A Winna wink.
- [119:13]
Monica Padman
I can't believe she winked it.
- [119:15]
Dax Shepard
Wink for the win. Doesn't work.
- [119:17]
Monica Padman
We'll get there. That is so flattering. I can't even handle it.
- [119:22]
Dax Shepard
Knew it. The armchairies knew it. Let's be honest. They knew it before I knew it.
- [119:27]
Monica Padman
They're allowed to know it. But, like, I also maintain that I'm glad that I didn't assume it.
- [119:35]
Dax Shepard
Uhhuh.
- [119:37]
Monica Padman
I, like, I. I want to be a person that doesn't assume. Yeah, compliments.
- [119:44]
Dax Shepard
I don't know if that's something you.
- [119:46]
Monica Padman
Should be through line of my life.
- [119:47]
Dax Shepard
I was just going to say, like, it perfectly mirrors us as daters. I'm like, yeah. I don't know. That girl might say no. Well, big deal. I'll go ask.
- [119:56]
Monica Padman
Yeah. And I'm like, well, they hate me, right? They obviously hate me.
- [120:00]
Dax Shepard
And I'm like, I don't know. There's not a ton of better options here.
- [120:04]
Monica Padman
Oh, God.
- [120:04]
Dax Shepard
Even if I'm not, like, the dream option, I'm. I think I'm better than this D turkey I've been talking to next to me.
- [120:10]
Monica Padman
Yeah, I can't do that. I can't do that. Well, that was just so fun. What an anniversary surprise blessing.
- [120:16]
Dax Shepard
That was.
- [120:16]
Monica Padman
It was a blessing. It was a. It was not a curse. And it was.
- [120:21]
Dax Shepard
And she didn't pass the riddle, which is a little bit of a shocker because she is so intelligent. So intelligent. Although she did lead me to maybe another great. I do like the putting yourself in its mouth.
- [120:35]
Monica Padman
That's more of a. No, none of it's a riddle.
- [120:39]
Dax Shepard
Well, here's the thing. I think if I'm you guys, and I have given up, like, you can't do anything, then at that point, I want to get eaten as fast as possible. I. I don't want to delay this, you know, agony. So at that point, I would just get in its mouth, get it over with. But I put my neck. It would wake up with my neck between its jaws if I thought I had no chance. But there is something interesting about him going, like, what the. Like, no one want. Even if you like, your favorite thing is. Let's say it's Domino's pizza, but you're dead asleep and you wake up and there's a mouthful of Domino's pizza, you like, what the. Why is there pizza in my mouth you immediately hate?
- [121:15]
Monica Padman
I know, but then where do you go? You're still in there. You're still in the cage.
- [121:20]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, but then he's like, get away from me. And then you just go sit for.
- [121:25]
Monica Padman
Like, a minute, and then it's like, oh, actually, it's. Oh, my God, it's Domino.
- [121:28]
Dax Shepard
Now that I'm awake. That tasted pretty good. Now that I'm licking my child.
- [121:31]
Wina
That's good. I.
- [121:34]
Monica Padman
A real answer to the riddle is like, well, it's actually an imposter possibility to out outwit lions. So the answer is to die. Like, that's more of a riddle where. Where, like, you're thinking and you're thinking, and actually there's no answer.
- [121:53]
Dax Shepard
There's a fame. And I've said this before when we've had this debate, but there is a famous story of a. A very old man. I want to say he was in his 70s in Africa. He was a farmer, and he got attacked by a leopard. And he survived by putting his hand in its mouth and pulling its tongue.
- [122:13]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [122:13]
Dax Shepard
And then it bled and choked to death. Because their tongues have those needles on them that go backwards so that they can lick the skin off things. They have, like, needly tongues. Ew. So you could get the ultimate grip of your life on its tongue. And I guess if you put your feet on its shoulder, maybe you could rip the lion's tongue out. That might be a better solution.
- [122:31]
Monica Padman
But if it had has needly tongues then aren't your hands just.
- [122:35]
Dax Shepard
They're going to be when you're done, but you'll be alive. You'll heal from cut hands. You won't heal from a neck bite. From a lion.
- [122:43]
Monica Padman
Watch me. I liked Wina's idea. Like befriended. And then it's like you're in a storybook and it's like, this lion is my friend and he eats people, but not me because I'm his buddy. Yeah, I think I'll pitch that. I'll say hey, hey, hey. How about we try?
- [122:59]
Dax Shepard
Let's call a truce, a story. Sit here and hurt each other.
- [123:03]
Monica Padman
Yeah, we could.
- [123:04]
Dax Shepard
Or we could be friends.
- [123:05]
Monica Padman
We could go against our nature and become friends. Beautiful story.
- [123:09]
Dax Shepard
And then you hop on its back and it trots around the cage.
- [123:13]
Monica Padman
I would like that.
- [123:14]
Dax Shepard
It's gonna get hungry though.
- [123:15]
Monica Padman
We could just die together and not eat each other. That's a. That's the nice ending.
- [123:20]
Dax Shepard
That's the Romeo and Juliet.
- [123:21]
Monica Padman
It is.
- [123:22]
Dax Shepard
You would pick Romeo and Juliet.
- [123:23]
Monica Padman
I would.
- [123:24]
Dax Shepard
And I'd go gladiator.
- [123:25]
Monica Padman
Yeah. Well, that's the difference between male of me. Speaking of there, I saw an article that there's only like 5,600 tigers left or maybe a specific type of tiger. And they're in India. They're all in India.
- [123:40]
Dax Shepard
Do you not remember when we were in India, I looked up the list of all the known tigers in the world and yeah, India has like 80% of them. There's tigers in Russia. There's tigers in lots of parts of Asia, but they're mostly hanging. Hanging in India.
- [123:58]
Monica Padman
There are estimated 5,500 to 5,600 tigers left in the wild with numbers slowly. Oh, increasing in some areas like India, Nepal and Russia due to conservation efforts, but declining in parts of Southeast Asia. That's not a lot.
- [124:13]
Dax Shepard
No, it's not. But I don't know that they were ever hugely populous. I don't know what their original. Okay, let's numbers or their height. I don't want to include saber toothpaste tigers or anything. Let's see what it says.
- [124:25]
Monica Padman
Based on historical estimates, the highest number of tigers that existed at one time was approximately 100,000 wild tigers. That was in 1900, it's peak.
- [124:36]
Dax Shepard
What did it say? 100.
- [124:38]
Monica Padman
100,000.
- [124:39]
Dax Shepard
So yeah, that's a terrible decline. That's a 94% drop. Yeah, 5, 95%. But also there weren't a million of them.
- [124:48]
Monica Padman
Right?
- [124:48]
Justin Garcia
That's true.
- [124:48]
Monica Padman
But still 5,000 left.
- [124:51]
Dax Shepard
Not a lot. Then you get really get into a genetic diversity issue.
- [124:55]
Monica Padman
Yeah, I did start.
- [124:56]
Dax Shepard
Well, they brought the buffalo back. I think the buffalo is down to thousands and now there's millions of buffalo.
- [125:02]
Monica Padman
Well, yeah, it says the low point was 2010. Record low of 3200.
- [125:07]
Dax Shepard
There we go. So they've doubled that.
- [125:09]
Monica Padman
Yeah, they're getting.
- [125:10]
Dax Shepard
The problem with tigers and having a ton of population is they're solitary and they have a territory. So lions are a pride. There's 15 of them in one group and they have a territory. So it's like these solitary animals take. They need so much space that you're never going to have tens of millions of them.
- [125:28]
Monica Padman
Yeah. There is a small part of me that understands like wanting one of these baby tigers as my pet.
- [125:35]
Dax Shepard
Oh sure, they're gorgeous.
- [125:37]
Monica Padman
Look how cute that is.
- [125:39]
Dax Shepard
Oh yeah, they're beautiful.
- [125:40]
Monica Padman
I don't agree with it, but I, I like kind of viscerally understand the desire, the desire to.
- [125:48]
Dax Shepard
Would you rather have a tiger, baby tiger or baby panda? Oh, can I have a. I love baby pandas.
- [125:54]
Monica Padman
Oh my God, they're so rolly.
- [125:56]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I gotta. Now I tell this a lot whenever we talk about tigers, but I'll always think of it when I think of tigers. Is Mike Tyson on Howard Stern saying, howard, I was so crazy back then. I had these two tigers and I slept in bed with them and sometimes, Howard, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, they were fighting each other.
- [126:15]
Monica Padman
I know.
- [126:16]
Dax Shepard
Talk about waking up with a piece of pizza in your mouth. Waking up and you're in bed with 900 pounds of tiger fighting each other. I mean that is, that is the apex of madness.
- [126:27]
Monica Padman
It, it is, it's madness and it's sad. Of course, it's really sad. It's like you want companionship so bad and you want, like you want to feel loved by something dangerous.
- [126:42]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, I think it's the la. I, I'm lean more towards the latter and oh, baby panda. Oh, there Mike with his, one of his tigers. Look how cute he's in cute little white shorts.
- [126:55]
Monica Padman
I feel that's upsetting.
- [126:57]
Dax Shepard
You're upset by this photo. We're looking at a photo of Mike Tyson in a tiny pair of white swim trunks and he's got a white tiger on a leash.
- [127:05]
Monica Padman
I don't, I feel bad.
- [127:07]
Dax Shepard
The tiger's on, he's wrestling it and see, I think it's more personally that Mike was severely bullied as a kid and he got beat up non stop in his rough neighborhood and I think he had to push through the fear of people picking on him. And this thing represents the scariest thing on earth. And if he cannot be afraid of that, he'll not be afraid.
- [127:33]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [127:33]
Dax Shepard
And he finds himself in bed with two fighting tigers because of that damage. Yeah. Oh, Howard.
- [127:41]
Justin Garcia
Oh, my God.
- [127:42]
Monica Padman
That's so crazy.
- [127:44]
Dax Shepard
Facties.
- [127:45]
Monica Padman
Yeah, Well, I.
- [127:46]
Justin Garcia
No.
- [127:46]
Monica Padman
One more thing for our anniversary.
- [127:48]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [127:49]
Monica Padman
We have a special treat. We're not going to eat it on air, cuz. Misophonia.
- [127:53]
Justin Garcia
Uhhuh.
- [127:53]
Monica Padman
But we have a special treat in the garage. We have.
- [127:56]
Dax Shepard
Oh, it's already here.
- [127:57]
Monica Padman
Yeah, that's right. They're right there.
- [127:59]
Dax Shepard
Well, no, let's definitely take a bite in public.
- [128:01]
Monica Padman
You want to take a bite in public?
- [128:02]
Dax Shepard
Yes. Yes.
- [128:03]
Monica Padman
Okay. We're going to take a bite in public. We have a special lunch.
- [128:07]
Dax Shepard
Oh.
- [128:08]
Monica Padman
Philly cheesesteaks. Thank you. Wagyu.
- [128:13]
Dax Shepard
Philly cheesesteaks from.
- [128:16]
Monica Padman
It's from a place called Mattu.
- [128:19]
Dax Shepard
Mattu.
- [128:20]
Monica Padman
It's in Beverly Hills and it's amazing. And they only serve them, like, at certain times. It's a whole thing at the bar. At the bar. And they just opened one up in Pasadena.
- [128:31]
Dax Shepard
No, it's incredible. I've had this one time in my life and it was just. And I'm gonna eat. Eat bread right now.
- [128:37]
Monica Padman
You are?
- [128:38]
Dax Shepard
I am. I am.
- [128:39]
Monica Padman
Oh, my God.
- [128:41]
Dax Shepard
Oh, baby. Oh, baby.
- [128:43]
Monica Padman
Guys, get yourself a Philly cheesesteak tonight.
- [128:47]
Justin Garcia
Oh, my.
- [128:47]
Dax Shepard
Cheers. Cheers.
- [128:50]
Wina
Oh.
- [128:51]
Monica Padman
Happy anniversary.
- [128:52]
Dax Shepard
All right, Love you. Let's do some facts.
- [128:55]
Monica Padman
Okay. Just a few facts for Mr. Garcia.
- [128:59]
Dax Shepard
Yeah. Had you looked up any of his facts, it would have brought you to the Kinsey Institute.
- [129:04]
Monica Padman
I know. That's. That's why. And like, full studies. They did. I can't do a study that fast.
- [129:12]
Dax Shepard
You're not well funded enough.
- [129:13]
Monica Padman
I'm not.
- [129:15]
Dax Shepard
You don't have access to college students.
- [129:17]
Monica Padman
Well, you gotta have it. I do. Because. Go dogs. You know, like, I think I.
- [129:22]
Dax Shepard
Are you interfacing a lot?
- [129:23]
Monica Padman
I think I can put out the.
- [129:25]
Dax Shepard
Gang over at uga.
- [129:27]
Monica Padman
I have some peeps over there still.
- [129:29]
Dax Shepard
That's how that. That's how temperamental social sciences are. Like, if you study the kids at uga.
- [129:37]
Monica Padman
Oh, yeah.
- [129:38]
Dax Shepard
You're gonna get a specific outcome.
- [129:39]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [129:40]
Dax Shepard
You study the kids at Michigan State versus U of M versus Stanford. I mean, who are we kidding? I know all these studies are really based on, like, these very unique populations of who goes to what college.
- [129:49]
Wina
Yeah.
- [129:50]
Monica Padman
Even the fact that it's even college kids is bad.
- [129:53]
Dax Shepard
Yes.
- [129:53]
Monica Padman
And then within that.
- [129:55]
Dax Shepard
But I do trust this one more. More than Most.
- [129:57]
Justin Garcia
Because it's.
- [129:58]
Dax Shepard
It's in Indiana.
- [129:58]
Monica Padman
Yeah. And these aren't called. He. They went around town.
- [130:01]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the initial work of McKinsey.
- [130:04]
Justin Garcia
Yeah, sure.
- [130:05]
Monica Padman
Speaking of. Ding, ding, ding. Go Dogs. Georgia football. Super Bowls coming up. Rams lost. First fact. Bible Belt. What constitutes. What is the Bible Belt specifically?
- [130:21]
Dax Shepard
Does it list the states?
- [130:22]
Justin Garcia
Yes, that's what I wanted to know.
- [130:24]
Monica Padman
Sure. You can try Arkansas. No, hold on, let me. Okay, this is AI Maybe I should look at. Let me look at Wikipedia. The way this chart is doing it is by proportion of evangelical Protestants per state in the American South.
- [130:40]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [130:41]
Monica Padman
Yes. Arkansas is on here.
- [130:43]
Dax Shepard
Arkansas. Oklahoma.
- [130:45]
Monica Padman
Oklahoma's on here.
- [130:47]
Dax Shepard
Missouri.
- [130:47]
Justin Garcia
Yep.
- [130:48]
Dax Shepard
Kentucky.
- [130:48]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [130:49]
Monica Padman
But this. Okay, this chart just has all the states. States in the south. And then it has percentages.
- [130:55]
Dax Shepard
Although. Is Texas in that?
- [130:56]
Monica Padman
Yeah, it is. Why don't you try to do the top 10?
- [131:00]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [131:01]
Monica Padman
Okay. Arkansas is one.
- [131:02]
Dax Shepard
Arkansas. Oklahoma.
- [131:04]
Monica Padman
No.
- [131:04]
Dax Shepard
Oh, wow. Missouri is 10. Kentucky.
- [131:09]
Monica Padman
Yes.
- [131:11]
Dax Shepard
Tennessee.
- [131:11]
Monica Padman
No.
- [131:12]
Dax Shepard
Really? Mississippi?
- [131:14]
Monica Padman
Yes.
- [131:15]
Dax Shepard
South Carolina.
- [131:16]
Monica Padman
No, but close. But no.
- [131:19]
Dax Shepard
All right, hit me with the rest.
- [131:20]
Monica Padman
Okay. I'll start from the top. Alabama.
- [131:23]
Dax Shepard
God, I forget.
- [131:23]
Monica Padman
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware.
- [131:26]
Dax Shepard
H. I reject that one. Continue.
- [131:28]
Monica Padman
This is P. This is science. Although it is weird. It. It.
- [131:33]
Dax Shepard
Ohio.
- [131:34]
Monica Padman
No.
- [131:34]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [131:35]
Monica Padman
Nope. This is not right, Bunk. This is not right. I don't like this at all. I'm going to go back to AI The Bible Belt is a region in the. The southeastern and south central United States characterized by a high concentration of evangelical Protestant churchgoers and socially conservative political views. Coined by journalist H.L. manin in 1925, the term generally covers states like Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and parts of Texas.
- [132:09]
Dax Shepard
I should have included Georgia.
- [132:11]
Monica Padman
Yeah, it's in there.
- [132:12]
Dax Shepard
But there's. I. I associate Georgia with black folks so much because of Atlanta.
- [132:16]
Monica Padman
I know it's.
- [132:17]
Dax Shepard
And they're very Baptist.
- [132:18]
Monica Padman
Even though I'm from the suburbs of Atlanta, I don't think of. I. I do not think of Georgia as Atlanta. As Atlanta at all.
- [132:27]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [132:28]
Monica Padman
And it's not what I was. I never went to Atlanta.
- [132:32]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I only went to Atlanta when.
- [132:34]
Monica Padman
I went to Georgia on the drive. Like from Cali's house to my house.
- [132:41]
Justin Garcia
Uhhuh.
- [132:42]
Dax Shepard
Which is how many miles?
- [132:43]
Monica Padman
Oh, great. Cue.
- [132:46]
Wina
Oh.
- [132:46]
Dax Shepard
Not your strong.
- [132:48]
Monica Padman
Not my strength.
- [132:49]
Dax Shepard
How long does it take you to drive there?
- [132:50]
Monica Padman
10 minutes.
- [132:51]
Justin Garcia
Okay.
- [132:51]
Dax Shepard
And you're probably averaging 35 miles an hour.
- [132:53]
Monica Padman
Exactly.
- [132:53]
Dax Shepard
So let's say it's three miles.
- [132:54]
Monica Padman
Okay. I would Maybe even less.
- [132:57]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [132:58]
Monica Padman
You pass 26 churches.
- [133:01]
Dax Shepard
It does boggle the mind when you're in the South. I see this in Tennessee where, where we're at, which is like, how many people are in these churches? 5, 6. Like it doesn't seem like the population could support this many churches. And it does make me think many of them. Them are empty, but they're probably not full.
- [133:17]
Monica Padman
And there'd be days like when my friends would invite me and I would go. Cuz like, e, you got to go.
- [133:24]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [133:24]
Monica Padman
And like, you know, so I'm at my friend's church, which is like the Methodist church, but then like across the street is the Presbyterian church. And like we see our friends there too. Like they're just all. There's a Catholic church, Santa Monica. Shout out, Shout out to. That's where Cali.
- [133:44]
Dax Shepard
The ocs, the original Christians.
- [133:46]
Monica Padman
Yeah. I had friends. It was weird because it was like, I'm the only one not at any of these.
- [133:56]
Dax Shepard
Huh.
- [133:57]
Monica Padman
Because even like Callie and Christina, they weren't like churchy, but they went to Santa Monica's or St. Monica's Detroit was.
- [134:07]
Dax Shepard
Not like that, to be honest. Like, I would go to my grandparents and we drove a while to go to the Baptist church because they were Southern Baptist.
- [134:13]
Monica Padman
Yeah, yeah, A lot of.
- [134:14]
Dax Shepard
But in my. In Highland, you know, there was a Catholic church by my neighborhood and then there was maybe one or two others and certainly there was zero pressure to be at church. No one, no kids in school were ever like, why don't you go to church?
- [134:28]
Monica Padman
Oh, really now?
- [134:29]
Dax Shepard
I had friends whose parents were quite religious. Yeah, those were the ones I felt judged by. That we were living in sin in this broken marriage home. And those kids weren't allowed to sleep at sleepovers at my house.
- [134:42]
Wina
Yeah.
- [134:42]
Dax Shepard
So they were there. But I don't. It wasn't the cultural norm. Yeah, it was more secular for sure.
- [134:48]
Monica Padman
No, it's that it was that it was like, what church do you go to?
- [134:52]
Dax Shepard
Right. Because you go.
- [134:53]
Monica Padman
You obvi. You definitely are going. Which one do you go to? Okay. Do chimps decide what sperm they're picking?
- [135:02]
Dax Shepard
Not chimps, orangutans.
- [135:04]
Monica Padman
Okay, well, I typed in chimney chimps.
- [135:06]
Dax Shepard
Oh, okay. The claim in the episode though, what has been theorized is that these females.
- [135:11]
Monica Padman
I thought he said chimps, but maybe not.
- [135:13]
Justin Garcia
Okay.
- [135:13]
Monica Padman
It does say chimpanzee females do not directly choose individuals sperm, but they influence fertilization outcomes by preferring mates with different genetic backgrounds to avoid inbreeding. That just means regular mate selection. Okay, so I'm gonna do orangutans because.
- [135:30]
Dax Shepard
They have a lot of non consent sensual sex.
- [135:33]
Monica Padman
Okay.
- [135:33]
Dax Shepard
This says they gave it a scientific name, but it's. Right.
- [135:36]
Monica Padman
Yeah, exactly. Female orangutans do not. Is it rape if it's like if.
- [135:42]
Dax Shepard
The male grabs and forces the female to stay still while it.
- [135:45]
Monica Padman
Now. Yeah. In humans.
- [135:48]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [135:49]
Monica Padman
It is rape.
- [135:50]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, yeah.
- [135:51]
Monica Padman
In a species where that is how procreation happens. Is it?
- [135:59]
Dax Shepard
I just think the minimal definition of rape would be that the female's trying to get away from the male and doesn't want to have sex with the male. And the male forces her to have sex.
- [136:07]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [136:08]
Dax Shepard
We must agree upon that definition.
- [136:09]
Monica Padman
Well, I. Yeah, yeah.
- [136:11]
Dax Shepard
And so by that, you don't see that really in chimps much. You see it in orangutans, and they have the unique ability they can class because their. Their feet clasp. Class. They can class every part of the female. Right. They can get their feet around its ankles. So that can't run like a male. You know, a human could still run or whatever. You understand? It's like they're uniquely.
- [136:38]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [136:39]
Dax Shepard
Set up.
- [136:40]
Monica Padman
The women. The female don't want to.
- [136:43]
Dax Shepard
No, yeah.
- [136:45]
Monica Padman
Do they want to? With some.
- [136:47]
Dax Shepard
Yeah, they have consensual.
- [136:48]
Monica Padman
Oh, they do, yeah.
- [136:50]
Dax Shepard
And then they have. Then they try to not have sex, and then the male has sex with them anyways.
- [136:54]
Wina
And.
- [136:54]
Dax Shepard
And yet what the primatologists have observed is that their offspring is more often than not from the chosen mate. Yeah. Not the one that raped them. So how are they doing that?
- [137:08]
Monica Padman
Right. Okay, so this AI want to be.
- [137:12]
Dax Shepard
With a grain of AI.
- [137:13]
Monica Padman
Yes. Female orangutans do not consciously choose specific sperm cells, but they exert significant control over paternity by selecting mates based on ovulatory timing and reducing the risk of infanticide. Near ovul. Near ovulation, females prefer mating with dominant flanged males while engaging in more forced or unflanged matings during less fertile periods. Interesting.
- [137:43]
Justin Garcia
Okay.
- [137:46]
Dax Shepard
You got to have those flanges.
- [137:49]
Monica Padman
Oh, it's called flangent flanges. I said flanged.
- [137:53]
Dax Shepard
All of the orangutan stuff. And as you know, I say orangutans, all of it was done by Germans. So all these words.
- [137:59]
Monica Padman
Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Flanges, which are distinct facial features.
- [138:06]
Dax Shepard
They're the big plates that come off the sides of the big males.
- [138:10]
Monica Padman
Yeah, yeah.
- [138:12]
Dax Shepard
They're crazy looking. Do you ever see that doc, where Julia Roberts did on orangutans and one of the males grabbed her.
- [138:20]
Monica Padman
Yeah.
- [138:21]
Dax Shepard
Freaked out.
- [138:21]
Monica Padman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [138:22]
Justin Garcia
It was very scary.
- [138:24]
Dax Shepard
Very scary because they're like £350 and they can like reach up and pull themselves. I mean they're so strong. It's crazy. He looks grumpy, doesn't he?
- [138:34]
Monica Padman
Yeah, no. What's this part?
- [138:36]
Dax Shepard
I was just gonna say what's with the guy? I can't remember the name of the gobbler. They have a big old lower flange too. It's a big pancake.
- [138:44]
Justin Garcia
Do they all.
- [138:44]
Monica Padman
Can you look up another one Rob and see if they all do or if that was just, you know, this.
- [138:48]
Dax Shepard
Guy, he's really well flanged. They grow as they get older.
- [138:53]
Monica Padman
Are they hair? Is that part have hair on it?
- [138:55]
Dax Shepard
You know I do wonder because you know, silverbacks, the males don't all develop a silverback. They only develop the silverback if they have taken control of the troop. And once they are the alpha male then the silverback got comes and each troop only has. Oh, this guy's got a 50 gallon trash can hanging off his bottom. Oh well, he looks more fun. He's confused.
- [139:24]
Justin Garcia
I think the bigger the flange the.
- [139:26]
Dax Shepard
More they have that dominant they are.
- [139:29]
Monica Padman
Yeah, it looks like a huge tongue coming out of their neck.
- [139:32]
Dax Shepard
Or just like a. If a human lived to be 900, what their neck would look like. I don't want that. That gobbler.
- [139:40]
Monica Padman
I know.
- [139:41]
Dax Shepard
I just keep working out my neck and trapezius. Hopefully I'll just keep making my neck wider. Hopefully it'll upset that.
- [139:49]
Monica Padman
Okay, I don't.
- [139:51]
Dax Shepard
Oh my God. We go back to that one. Did you see this one, Monica?
- [139:54]
Monica Padman
Holy, that guy looks sw.
- [139:56]
Dax Shepard
He's, he's like drowning in his flanges.
- [139:59]
Monica Padman
Oh God.
- [140:00]
Dax Shepard
It looks like a big testicle sack is what it looks like.
- [140:02]
Monica Padman
I don't like the way that looks. I. Yeah, one of the questions here is how big is an orangutan pee pee? Okay, okay. Relatively small, around 3.3 inches long it says. And has a visible glans.
- [140:19]
Dax Shepard
Well, glans is the head of a penis.
- [140:20]
Monica Padman
Unlike the longer taper glans list penis of chimpanzees with size varying between primate species and often linked to mating competition dynamics with orangutans generally having smaller penises and chimps but larger ones than gorillas. So how big are gorilla peas? I'm going to look at.
- [140:38]
Dax Shepard
Well, gorillas have tiny pee pees and more importantly tiny testicles. Cuz they're not competing with other males. Whereas chimps are competing with a ton of other males. So they have humongous testicles. Hey, look at this little guy. He's got a little tiny dinger look how tiny his balls are too.
- [140:53]
Monica Padman
This is 3cm.
- [140:55]
Dax Shepard
You zoomed in on his big barrel belly. Yeah. Look at that.
- [140:59]
Monica Padman
E. I don't.
- [140:59]
Dax Shepard
But you can see the glands or the metas is also the name of that. The head. Ew.
- [141:05]
Monica Padman
What the is that? I don't. I don't like that. You think that's all. What you said that like all like it's cute me.
- [141:14]
Dax Shepard
That was a cute little penis.
- [141:16]
Monica Padman
No, I hate it.
- [141:17]
Dax Shepard
It looked like a mushroom.
- [141:18]
Justin Garcia
I know.
- [141:20]
Wina
Ew.
- [141:20]
Monica Padman
I did.
- [141:21]
Dax Shepard
That was on a gibbon though. Oh, I think. What does it say? What's that animal?
- [141:26]
Monica Padman
It doesn't. I did not like that.
- [141:28]
Dax Shepard
They. They are monogamous.
- [141:30]
Monica Padman
Oh, so they're. They don't.
- [141:32]
Dax Shepard
They can have those goofy looking penises and there's no competition.
- [141:35]
Monica Padman
Okay. Now another fact I did look up was how big are the chimp testicles? They often weigh 150 to 170 grams, but you know, I'm not good at that.
- [141:49]
Dax Shepard
What's a human's weigh?
- [141:51]
Monica Padman
It says three times larger than human testicles.
- [141:53]
Justin Garcia
Yeah.
- [141:53]
Dax Shepard
I'm so envious of their testicles.
- [141:55]
Monica Padman
Really?
- [141:56]
Dax Shepard
Absolutely. It looks great. I'd love to have a 300 gram set of testers.
- [142:01]
Justin Garcia
Why?
- [142:01]
Dax Shepard
I don't know why. I just would. Rob, would you like that?
- [142:04]
Wina
I don't think so.
- [142:05]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [142:06]
Monica Padman
Yeah, that sounds.
- [142:07]
Dax Shepard
It would make by my bicycling hobby a little more challenging, I guess.
- [142:11]
Monica Padman
Yeah. All right.
- [142:15]
Dax Shepard
Okay.
- [142:16]
Monica Padman
Well, that's it.
- [142:17]
Dax Shepard
Oh, wonderful. I think a lot of primatologists are yelling at their radios right now, but I. We got some of it right.
- [142:24]
Monica Padman
Feel free to write in this is what the Internet's saying.
- [142:28]
Dax Shepard
Yeah.
- [142:29]
Monica Padman
So. And as I said, I didn't do any studies, so like I. I don't. This is all I got the world in front of me. Fingertips. Okie do.
- [142:41]
Dax Shepard
All right. Love. That.