S22E12: The Science of Intimacy, Sex, and Love w/ Dr. Justin Garcia

Dateable: Your insider's look into modern dating and relationships

Yue Xu and Julie Krafchick

Society & Culture, Sexuality, Science, Social Sciences, Relationships, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 910 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At our core, we’re not just wired for sex—we’re wired for deep connection with another human being. In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Justin Garcia, leading sex researcher, evolutionary biologist, and Executive Director of the Kinsey Institute, who shares the science behind why humans are driven to bond, love, and seek intimacy. We explore how modern dating both supports and disrupts our natural instinct to pair bond, what choices like staying single or exploring nontraditional relationships mean in that context, and why even when connection feels hard to find it’s still fundamentally what we’re built for. To learn more about Dr. Justin Garcia follow him @drjustingarcia and go to https://kinseyinstitute.org/. Get his new book 'The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live & Die For Love' wherever books are sold. ---- Take our Dating Archetypes quiz: https://howtobedateable.com/ Read our book: How To Be Dateable: The Essential Guide To Finding Your Person and Falling in Love: https://howtobedateable.com/ Try the Dateable AI Dating Coach: Get personalized advice trained on our years of podcast episodes, courses and frameworks: https://studio.com/dateable Follow us @dateablepodcast, @juliekrafchick and @nonplatonic. Check out our website for more content. Also listen to our other podcasts The Psychology of Relationships and Exit Interview available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. WE WROTE A BOOK! HOW TO BE DATEABLE (Simon & Schuster) is available now: https://howtobedateable.com/ Want to remove distractions from your dates? Download Brick and get 10% off at https://www.getbrick.app/DATEABLE Our Sponsors: * Avocado Green Mattress: Check out their mattress and furniture sale: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/DATEABLE * Get Rain of Shadows and Endings wherever books are sold or at Kensington Publishing https://www.kensingtonbooks.com * Quince: Get free shipping and 365 day returns at https://quince.com/dateable * Ruggable: Get 10% off your first order, sitewide, with promo code DATEABLE at https://ruggable.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm U.E. Xu.
0:01.7	And I'm Julie Craftchick.
0:03.3	We're active daters turned dating insiders.
0:05.8	Here to dive into everything, modern dating and relationships.
0:09.5	Welcome to Datable.
0:14.6	Hello, friends.
0:18.7	Welcome back to another episode of Datable.
0:24.6	Let's get intimate and sexy today.
0:27.2	Was that a sexy? That felt really sexy.
0:30.0	It's my deep sexual intimacy voice.
0:35.5	But now I'm going to turn it up a notch because we're talking about the science
0:39.5	behind intimacy and sex. That's very sexy. Oh, okay, I was trying to be less sexy.
0:46.8	You got me at science. Okay, now you know. Now you all know how our views about science are.
0:52.9	I'm like, I'm trying to be less sexy. And Julie's like,
0:55.5	I have more turned on. We are so lucky to be joined, though, by Dr. Justin Garcia, who is a lead
1:02.8	sex researcher, evolutionary biologist, scientific advisor for the match group. He does the
1:09.1	Singles in America Studies that many of you tend to see,
1:12.9	and the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, the world's foremost research center on
1:18.6	sexuality and relationships. And he is the author of the timely and fascinating new book,
1:25.4	The Intimate Animal, The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why
1:29.5	We Live and Die for Love. And like you, A said, we talk about why we're wired for intimacy,
1:36.2	not just sex, and what intimacy really means, what it means to feel that, like, known and
	...

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