4.2 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
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A survey that started as a student project at Stanford University has become a popular dating and relationship tool on campuses across the country. Its goal is to delve deeper than the superficial information found on a typical dating-app profile, connecting people based on deeply held values rather than looks or sports teams. Most apps, says Liam MacGregor, who created the Marriage Pact with a fellow-student, “were designed to solve really specific problems … if you want a short-term relationship. But because they’re the only tools out there, people have tried to use them to solve these other problems.” The Marriage Pact “set out to solve this very specific problem at the beginning: If you need a backup plan for a 50-year-long relationship, who’s right for that?” Would you put an elderly relative in a nursing home? Do you keep people as friends because they might be useful to you later? Would you keep a gun in the house? More than 250,000 students across more than 75 campuses have taken the survey. The Radio Hour’s producer KalaLea talked to students at Princeton University, where the survey was being conducted, to find out what it was all about.
Plus, perched high above the ice at Madison Square Garden, the organist Ray Castoldi has conducted the soundtrack of Rangers games and more for thirty years.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and the New Yorker. |
| 0:12.2 | This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnik. |
| 0:15.2 | Each June, and that means that a lot of us are attending some weddings, maybe even having |
| 0:19.8 | a wedding. |
| 0:20.8 | Still, the rate of marriage remains at historic lows, and the median age for marrying continues |
| 0:26.4 | to rise. |
| 0:27.4 | That can cause some real anxiety both for sociologists and for single people who might |
| 0:32.7 | like to settle down. |
| 0:34.4 | The Radio Hour's Cala Lia has been looking at a project to alleviate some of that anxiety. |
| 0:39.0 | It came out of an economics class in Stanford University, and it's called the Marriage |
| 0:44.4 | Packed. |
| 0:45.4 | Hi, I'm Katie. |
| 0:47.3 | And I'm a girl. |
| 0:49.2 | Katie and Miguel are the same age, 23. |
| 0:52.5 | And I am just under a month older. |
| 0:55.2 | Yeah, I'm also 23. |
| 0:56.4 | And we're the same star sign, if that makes a difference. |
| 0:59.6 | I see. |
| 1:00.6 | Yeah, we're both feces. |
| 1:02.2 | Katie and Miguel met while in college around Valentine's Day, just about a year and a half |
| 1:07.5 | ago. |
| 1:08.5 | But they've done a whole lot together in a short amount of time. |
... |
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