Podcast Summary: Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Episode: "Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love"

Date: February 13, 2026

Overview

In this Valentine’s Day special, Tim Harford explores the long-standing quest to apply science and technology to the mysteries of love and matchmaking. Tracing a line from early 20th-century pseudo-scientific “compatibility” tests to mid-century computer dating and the data-driven algorithms of modern online dating apps, Harford unpacks why our faith in technological solutions for romance might be misplaced. Through entertaining cautionary stories, including the saga of a math PhD who hacked OkCupid, he questions whether love is really a numbers game or remains, stubbornly, an unpredictable art.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Long History of “Scientific” Matchmaking

[03:34–07:29]

• 1924’s Science & Invention Magazine featured a cover depicting a couple hooked up to bizarre contraptions—wristbands, electrodes, hoses—measuring their physiological responses to one another as a way of determining compatibility.
• Hugo Gernsback, the publisher, outlined four “scientific” compatibility tests:
  • Physical attraction via pulse and breathing measurements.
  • Sympathy test: Monitoring reactions as the partner undergoes distress.
  • Body odour test: Measuring the physiological impact of a partner’s scent.
  • Startle response test: Firing a gun and observing who stays calm.
• Harford comments that while these methods seem absurd to us, the motivation underlying them—reducing the uncertainty of finding a compatible mate—remains with us today.

Memorable Quote:
"It's like a seismograph for the earthquake that is love. Because surely there can be no better evidence of physical attraction than the quickening of the pulse and the heaving of a bosom."
— Tim Harford [05:45]

2. The Early Computer Dating Era

[17:34–22:52]

• 1960s: Compatibility Research Inc. (Harvard students) pioneered computer-assisted matchmaking using punch-card questionnaires. For a $3 fee, hopefuls filled detailed forms that a massive IBM mainframe would “match.”
  • The reality: Most of the matching just paired people by basic attributes—location, religion, age, height—and everything else was window-dressing to make the process feel scientific.
• Harford connects this origin story to modern services and notes the enduring “sense of scientific legitimacy” the computer brings to the matching process.

Memorable Quote:
"The computer just gave the whole exercise a sense of scientific legitimacy."
— Jeff Tarr, co-founder of Compatibility Inc. (quoted by Harford) [19:55]

• In practice, the system “worked” in the trivial sense of introducing people (the host points out: Dan Slater, whose parents met via one such system, was born; but they were divorced by his third birthday).

3. Modern Online Dating and the OkCupid Hack

[07:30–30:07]

• Chris McKinley’s Search for Love
  • 2012: McKinley, a UCLA math PhD, frustrated by lack of promising matches on OkCupid, decides to reverse-engineer the site’s algorithm.
  • He deploys bots and machine learning: Harvests 6 million answers from 20,000 women on OkCupid using simulated user profiles, then applies “K-modes” clustering to categorize potential matches into seven types.
  • He crafts multiple “ideal” profiles, each targeted to a desirable cluster, and uses an additional bot to systematically view the profiles of possible matches (knowing users get notified when someone views them). Soon, he’s overwhelmed with messages from women fitting his preferred categories.

Notable moment:
Chris describes the emotional cycle:
"There's these mini emotional cycles of, like, you know, hope and disappointment, like thinking, 'oh, wow, this person seems really cool,' and then, of course, you know, you write them and they don't write you back."
— Chris McKinley [09:33]

• The Outcome: After all this algorithmic optimization, he experiences “87 first dates, three second dates, and one third date,” mostly with women who were—on paper—ideal matches, but for whom there was no spark.

4. The Psychology of Choice and the Paradox of Plenty

[33:10–40:35]

• The “Sex Recession”:
  • Despite dating apps granting access to “infinite” potential partners, Americans are having less sex, with young people having fewer partners than previous generations.
  • Dan Gilbert and Jane Ebert’s Harvard photo experiment: Having many options and the ability to switch produces less satisfaction with one’s choice. Applied to dating, infinite swipes foster endless dissatisfaction.
• Critical perspective on dating app business models:
  • The “product” is not finding love but maintaining the endless search.
    "People don't pay to find the love of their life. They pay to keep looking."
    — Tim Harford [35:55]

5. Algorithmic Matching: Promise vs. Reality

[40:36–46:45]

• McKinley’s “success”:
  • Despite all his math, his future fiancée Christine was not among his top 10,000 algorithmic matches. She found him by searching for specific physical attributes he hadn’t gamed—height, eye color, UCLA proximity.
  • The science didn’t bring them together; happenstance (and a bit of direct initiative) did.

Key Exchange:
“You didn’t find me,” she says. “I found you.” The artist, not the maths genius, made the match be damned. Maybe romance will always be an art, not a science.”
— Tim Harford [47:04]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 05:45 | "It's like a seismograph for the earthquake that is love..." | Tim Harford | | 09:33 | "There's these mini emotional cycles of, like, you know, hope and disappointment, like thinking, 'oh, wow, this person seems really cool,' and then, of course, you know, you write them and they don't write you back." | Chris McKinley (paraphrased by Tim Harford) | | 19:55 | "The computer just gave the whole exercise a sense of scientific legitimacy." | Jeff Tarr (quoted by Tim Harford) | | 35:55 | "People don't pay to find the love of their life. They pay to keep looking." | Tim Harford | | 47:04 | "You didn’t find me... I found you. The artist, not the maths genius, made the match be damned. Maybe romance will always be an art, not a science." | Christine & Tim Harford |

Key Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------|-------| | 03:34–07:29 | Science & Invention Magazine’s “scientific” love tests | | 07:30–14:31 | Chris McKinley’s OkCupid disappointment and decision to hack | | 17:34–22:52 | Computer dating in the 1960s and its "scientific" veneer | | 22:53–30:07 | Details of McKinley's large-scale OkCupid hack and its outcome | | 33:10–40:35 | The paradox of choice, Dan Gilbert photo experiment, and dating app dissatisfaction | | 40:36–46:45 | Why algorithms actually don’t solve love; the real story of Chris and Christine | | 47:04 | Final reflection: Art vs. Science in love |

Conclusion

Tim Harford’s “Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love” is a witty, cautionary meditation on our urge to use the latest tools—whether sphygmographs, punch cards, or machine learning algorithms—to solve the inscrutable problem of human romance. Through cautionary tales stretching across a century, Harford demonstrates that while technology changes, the fundamental unpredictability—and art—of finding love does not.

Further Listening/Reading

• For more on amorous mishaps, Tim Harford recommends his Patreon bonus episode (teaser at [48:10]).
• Sources for episode stories and research are listed at the end of the main episode.