the kind of evolutionary origins of sex, for obvious reasons, propagation of species,

but why parent bonding, why love, why do we need all this extra stuff? Why not just swap your genes?

Helen and others argued that we started to see social monogamy in our species history around 4 to 4.4 million years ago.

What's interesting about that is only about 3% of mammals engaged in social monogamy, about 15% of primates. But what's important there is biologists and anthropologists, when we talk about monogamy, we don't do it in the sense that we often hear in the colloquial use of monogamy. We actually talk about two different levers of monogamy. When you look at the satisfaction rates of people in monogamous relationships and negotiated consensual non-monogamy relationships, they're the same. There's really no differences. And I think that that's so important because it blows up sort of two arguments about, if you have a moral argument about monogamous relationships, that there's so much better than any other structure, well, it turns out that satisfaction rates are the same. But the other argument that we'll sometimes see is sometimes folks who are non-monogamous will take a view that, well, monogamy is this shackle that it's imposed by society, and you just have to get rid of it, and then we can just have free love, and we'll be more happy. Well, actually, you're not any more happy. So the satisfaction rates are the same. Is there any data showing that sex is perceived to be more pleasurable if it's also involved in intimacy? Besides the random one-night stand and everybody has a good time, but you know, you don't do that every all the time or else it wouldn't be a one-night stand. But in general, it's more pleasurable if you're intimate with somebody. I love the U.S.

We do have data on this.

And...

Hey, everybody.

It's Michael Shermer.

It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show.

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All right.

My guest today is Dr. Justin Garcia.

He's an evolutionary biologist and sex researcher.

His research program focuses on the evolutionary and biocultural foundations of romantic and sexual relationships across the life course.

He has served as the executive director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University since 2019 and as the scientific advisor to Match.com since 2010.

He's the author of Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior from Harvard University Press,

an editor of Evolution's Empress, Darwinian Perspectives on the Nature of Women.

His new book, Here it is, The Intimate Animal, the Science of Sex,

Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love. I just finished reading it this morning,

...