Why do briefly glimpsed people appear to be more attractive?

Why did portrait photographers used to put Vaseline on their lenses?

And what does that have to do with Instagram filters?

Why are thirsty people more likely to perceive something as transparent?

And what does any of this have to do with mating or optimal decision making or puberty or

frogs or instincts or movie stars?

Welcome to another episode of Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman.

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford.

And in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand the relationship between our brains and our lives.

Throughout this podcast, we're going to try to gain a better understanding of ourselves by practicing the technique of viewing the familiar as strange.

We'll look at instincts, things that we do naturally, so naturally that we never

even think to question them. But digging in on these things is how we come to develop a deeper

understanding of ourselves. And today's episode is about the absolutely fascinating topic about how our brains determine for us what we find beautiful.

So beauty is found all around us in nature and an art and in music.

And a good life is full of beautiful moments like a sunset or a compliment or a child's smile. But our interest

today is in people and specifically on the notion of attraction. So the notion of the movie star

whose next movie you just can't wait to see, mostly because you find that person just so

magnetically good looking, or the workmate

or the neighbor, or the person you knew from your childhood, who's just so amazingly attractive.

So what is going on in the brain here? What are the signals that tell you that person is attractive?

And what does all that have to do with the

propagation of the species so let's get started there are hundreds of ways that a person

...