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Guest host Geena Davis helps us explore how the love we feel —for our partners, friends, family, even our four legged companions—shapes our brains, bodies, and lives.
Summary: On this episode of The Science of Love with Geena Davis, we delve into the many forms of love, and experts share research on how small daily actions, physical touch, and emotional attentiveness strengthen relationships, while evolutionary and neuroscience studies reveal why these bonds matter. We also explore practical strategies for cultivating deeper connections and understanding the biological and psychological roots of love.
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
The Science of Love Series: https://bit.ly/TheScienceofLove
The Science of Love, with Geena Davis (Episode 1): https://tinyurl.com/bfave5wd
How 7 Days Can Transform Your Relationship: https://tinyurl.com/bdh2ezhr
Related Happiness Breaks:
Visualizing Your Best Self in Relationships: https://tinyurl.com/4797z2vf
A Guided Meditation on Embodied Love: https://tinyurl.com/3dmpfam6
A Meditation on Love and Interconnectedness: https://tinyurl.com/ye6baxv3
Today’s Guests:
DANIEL LEVITIN is a neuroscientist, musician, and bestselling author of the books, Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power and I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music As Medicine. Follow Daniel Levitin on IG: https://www.instagram.com/daniellevitinofficial
JOHN GOTTMAN is a psychologist and the co-founder of The Gottman Institute.
JULIE GOTTMAN is a clinical psychologist and co-founder of The Gottman Institute and President of The Gottman Institute and co-founder of Affective Software, Inc. Learn more about John and Julie Gottman here: https://www.gottman.com/
JUSTIN GARCIA is an evolutionary biologist and international authority on the science of sex and relationships. Learn more about Justin Garcia here: https://tinyurl.com/2c39cs6r
ANNA MACHIN is a British evolutionary anthropologist at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, England and author of the book Why We Love: The Definitive Guide to Our Most Fundamental Need. Learn more about Anna Machin here: https://annamachin.com/
MARISA G. FRANCO is a psychologist and professor at The University of Maryland and author of the book “Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make – and Keep – Friends.”Learn more about Marisa G. Franco here: https://drmarisagfranco.com/
Message us or leave a comment on Instagram @scienceofhappinesspod. E-mail us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Funding for this special was provided by the John Templeton Foundation, as part of the Greater Good Science Center's Spreading Love Through the Media initiative.
Transcription:
DACHER KELTNER: This is the Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Welcome to Episode Two of our Science of Love series. Today, Geena Davis returns as our host, taking us deeper into the science of why we love and the many ways love shows up in our lives. Tomorrow, we explore how love and grief are intertwined, our deep bond with the natural world, and the ways love connects us to our communities and the world around us.
[“I wanna Be Loved by You” plays]
GEENA DAVIS: What is love?
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 1: Love is this neurobiological state of being.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 2: To me, love is somebody caring enough to find out and remember all of the niche, sort of little, details about you.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 3: Loving someone or something is finding them so excellent and desirable that you want to make them part of who you are.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 4: When you're describing the way love is, you're not gonna come up with an Aristotelian definition, like you would for a triangle.
GEENA DAVIS: I'm Geena Davis. Welcome to The Science of Love, a special by the Science of Happiness Podcast. In our last episode, we began exploring the science of love, how it evolved, and how it shapes our closest bonds. We heard about love between parents and children, romantic partners, and even the ways love affects our microbiome.
Today, we continue that journey, exploring how to keep romance alive, what sex has to do with it, and also the love we feel for our friends, our families, and our four-legged companions. The Science of Love after this break.
[Ad plays]
GEENA DAVIS: Welcome back to The Science of Love, a special by the Science of Happiness podcast. Falling in love can feel easy, but staying in love — that takes ongoing effort. Fortunately, there's a science to it. After 50 years of studying, tens of thousands of couples researchers, Julie and John Gottman have identified ways to help romance last. One of them is a simple daily check-in. Take 10 minutes to really connect.
JULIE GOTTMAN: A check-in means just asking your partner, “How was your day? How are you doing?”
GEENA DAVIS: That's Julie.
JULIE GOTTMAN: You really want to see what were the highs, what were the lows. And if there's stress involved, help that partner be less alone with whatever is stressing them.
GEENA DAVIS: Also, keep an eye out for those subtle bids for connection. A quick glance, a smile, a sigh, or the way they call your name from another room.
JULIE GOTTMAN: We brought couples into the lab for 24 hours, and what we saw is that in the little moments when one partner made a bid for connection, as simple as saying, “Wow, look out the window, there's a beautiful bird!” and your partner responds to you by looking out there and saying, “Oh, yeah,” — that's all it takes! That's all it takes to make relationships more successful.
GEENA DAVIS: You can also try asking some open-ended questions, ones that invite them to share more.
JULIE GOTTMAN: My favorite question is do you have a dream about doing something, having a bucket list, or experiencing something that I don't know about? 'Cause I wanna hear it.
GEENA DAVIS: Play detective by looking out for all the good things your partner does during the day, and then letting them know you see it.
JOHN GOTTMAN: Changing a habit of mind changes you so that you notice all the good things that are happening in your life.
GEENA DAVIS: That's John.
JOHN GOTTMAN: ‘Cause now you can express gratitude for what is happening. So that good stuff happens more often.
GEENA DAVIS: The Gottmans’ research shows that couples who show gratitude by giving real compliments fare better. And if you're stuck finding one…
JULIE GOTTMAN: Look beyond.
[JOHN LAUGHS.]
JULIE GOTTMAN: Look beyond. Don't just look at the day-to-day. This is where that positive habit of mind comes in.
GEENA DAVIS: Remember to cuddle, hold hands, or give each other hugs. Lab studies show that when couples touch affectionately, it not only strengthens their bond, it also synchronizes activity in the regions of the brain tied to social connection and emotion.
Last but not least, go on a date. That could mean a night out dancing, or alone time on the porch after the kids fall asleep.
JOHN GOTTMAN: The largest study that's ever been done on what makes for great sex and romance and passion, was 70,000 people in 24 countries, found that people who say they have a great sex life really do have a date night. Where they're not talking about their long to-do list, but they're really connecting with each other and keeping romance alive.
GEENA DAVIS: But what does a great sex life look like, and what's love got to do with it?
JUSTIN GARCIA: Sometimes the tensions between love and sex explains some of the greatest challenges in our relationships.
GEENA DAVIS: Justin Garcia is an evolutionary biologist, anthropologist, and one of the world's top sex researchers.
JUSTIN GARCIA: We know that love and sex are important in people's lives. We know that it's part of a deep evolutionary story of what it means to be human. But we also know that there's a lot of variation in what makes love and sex work for people. I think sometimes folks might think, “Oh, I should be having a certain amount of sexual activity in my romantic life, or it's not fulfilling.”
GEENA DAVIS: But that's not actually what the data says.
JUSTIN GARCIA: What the research shows is that the right amount of sex for your relationship is how much feels good to you, how much feels right. One of my pet peeves is when I hear groups or someone say, “Oh, you should be having sex ‘X’ amount of times.” And in fact, I'm convinced that for some couples that would totally ruin their relationship, that more is not always better.
GEENA DAVIS: Garcia says that to understand the real cause of those tensions between love and sex, we have to zoom out.
JUSTIN GARCIA: The bigger picture for me is how do we navigate our love, our romantic desires, our desires for connection, our desires for safety, psychological safety, with also the desires for the excitement and the novelty that comes with sexual activity? And that's a challenge for a lot of people.
GEENA DAVIS: He says the first step is to understand the evolutionary roots of monogamy.
JUSTIN GARCIA: In evolutionary biology, there's two different aspects. There's sexual monogamy, or fidelity, and this question of “How many sexual partners do you have?”
GEENA DAVIS: Then there's social monogamy.
JUSTIN GARCIA: Species that form intense social bonds, romantic bonds, what we would maybe call romantic love in humans, but they still have sex with their neighbors. And, so, that tension we see all over the animal kingdom. And in fact, it's very much part of the human story. So we know, for instance, folks that engage in polyamory, it's really important to promote trust among all the partners. If you spend too much time with one, then the other can get jealous. All of that we can understand by understanding the push and pull of social and sexual monogamy.
GEENA DAVIS: Regardless of how many partners you have, if you're wanting to have good sex, maybe even great sex, research shows that having a caring and enthusiastic partner — someone you feel emotionally connected to — is key.
JUSTIN GARCIA: When they're aligned, when what we want on both the love and the sex front, when we have both of it, it is so intoxicating. Our relationships feel so rich and fulfilling, like a fuel that could carry us to the moon and back.
GEENA DAVIS: When we think about love, romance often comes to mind first, but is it the most important?
ANNA MACHIN: There are many forms of love, and there isn't a hierarchy. Romantic love doesn't sit at the top. I'm afraid that's a multi-billion dollar love industry that's told you it does.
GEENA DAVIS: That's anthropologist Anna Machin.
ANNA MACHIN: They're all equally beneficial. So, do you have love with your friends? Do you have love with your community? Do you have love with your dog or your God or your children or your sister or brother or anyone? Look for that love.
Because we now know that the relationships you build, the love that you have in your life, whatever form of love it might be, is the biggest factor in your mental and physical health, your longevity and your wellbeing. There is an enormous body of evidence behind that now.
GEENA DAVIS: Up next, we hear what science is uncovering about the many other important relationships in our lives, like our friendships, our families, and the love we feel for our furry companions. I'm Geena Davis. Stay with us for more Science of Love.
[AD PLAYS]
GEENA DAVIS: I am Geena Davis. Welcome back to The Science of Love, a special by the Science of Happiness Podcast. One of the most important kinds of relationships is friendship. The people in your life who are your ride or. The Thelma to your Louise. Shuka Kalantai reports from Berkeley, California, how some researchers are looking to a surprising source to learn more about the neuroscience of platonic love.
SHUKA KALANTARI: It's Sunday morning, and Annaliese Beery is kneeling over some bushes in her backyard, holding a metal bin filled with Cheerios, a hay-like filling, and two small animals huddled in a corner.
ANNALIESE BEERY: So, I'm just gonna pick up this little girl and show you what a vole looks like.
SHUKA KALANTARI: A California prairie vole.
ANNALIESE BEERY: Voles are small, brown. They're a little larger than most tiny mice. They have short tails and their ears tend to lie flat against their head. So if it looks like a little brown, nondescript rodent, there's a chance it’s a vole.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Beery runs the Beery lab at UC Berkeley, where she studies voles.
ANNALIESE BEERY: So voles are very unusual because they form selective social bonds with one another, And prairie voles do this in all sorts of contexts. They form these friendship-like relationships, and then they also form a bond with a romantic partner regardless of what's happening with a few extra flings on the side.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Decades of research have turned prairie voles into a one of a kind model for exploring the social brain.
[3 KNOCKING SOUNDS]
ANNALIESE BEERY: Come on in! Hello!
SHUKA KALANTARI: Inside Beery’s lab, there's a definite vibe. A T-shirt is pinned to a wall with a cartoon of three voles hugging. One is drinking a beer. There are vole paintings and stuffies, and a drawing of a vole with bubble letters saying, “Where's the apple sauce?”
ANNALIESE BEERY: They love applesauce. We use applesauce as a reward for them sometimes.
SHUKA KALANTARI: But what makes the lab unique isn't the quirky decor — it's that unlike most labs focused on vole romance, Beery’s focuses on the neurobiology of friendship.
ANNALIESE BEERY: In our lab, we do a lot to say, “How are romantic or mate-related bonds different from peer or friendship-related bonds?” And that's a question we're really interested in.
SHUKA KALANTARI: And what does vole friendship look like?
ANNALIESE BEERY: It looks like any snuggling. We call it huddling instead of cuddling, but it's really the same. It's being side-by-side. Sometimes one is snuggled up on top of the other one. Usually, they're resting next to each other. Sometimes one is grooming the other one.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Beery’s lab recently took a closer look at oxytocin in the brain. You know, what people call the “love hormone”?
ANNALIESE BEERY: Oxytocin does get called the “love hormone” and the “cuddle hormone” a lot in the news, and I think where we go a little bit astray is that no neurochemical, really, has a single function. And oxytocin’s no different that regard.
SHUKA KALANTARI: Oxytocin can spike during things like sex, kissing, childbirth, and during less-cuddly times as a response to stress. Lab studies show voles can bond romantically without it, but it takes longer.
Beery wanted to see if the same goes for friendships. She worked with genetically modified prairie voles that lacked a key oxytocin receptor, so their bodies couldn't produce the hormone. Then, they put those voles in little rooms together.
ANNALIESE BEERY: Prairie voles were very slow to form new relationships. They took much longer than it normally takes, and then those relationships were more fragile.
SHUKA KALANTARI: In another experiment, her team put the oxytocin-free voles in a sort of maze with multiple rooms that were all connected by tubes.
ANNALIESE BEERY: I think of this as the party format study, where if you go to a party with a friend, and you're bonded to that friend, and you're a little socially nervous, you might stick to that friend for a while before you start to branch out.
SHUKA KALANTARI: That's normally the case with voles — and humans!
ANNALIESE BEERY: But the voles that were missing their oxytocin receptors, you couldn't even tell that they had come with a partner. They immediately mixed. So oxytocin really seems to be important for that new phase of a relationship and forming a relationship.
I always tend to come at things from a wonder of science, basic science angle. But all of this research has a really big potential applicability to understanding humans.
SHUKA KALANTARI: And human conditions like autism and schizophrenia, which can make it harder for people to connect.
ANNALIESE BEERY: Nearly every different social disorder or diagnosis that has a social component impacts these peer relationships. Many people have said we have an isolation epidemic — so, understanding not only what neurochemicals, but what sorts of environmental circumstances, play a role — we can learn things that are really directly applicable to humans.
SHUKA KALANTARI: She thinks friendships are especially important to study because they're the core of our relationships.
ANNALIESE BEERY: Maybe peer relationships are more common than monogamy, and provide a foundation from which monogamy has repeatedly evolved. And wouldn't it be interesting to find out that many more species show these sort of peer relationships, these friendship-like relationships?
SHUKA KALANTARI: I’m Shuka Kalantari, reporting from UC Berkeley.
GEENA DAVIS: Back in the human world of shifting emotions, heartbreaks and connections, friendships can be even more complex and sometimes unattended to.
MARISA G. FRANCO: So, in my young twenties, I was not focused on friendship — I was focused on romantic love, and it was not going well!
GEENA DAVIS: That's Marisa G. Franco, a psychologist and expert on the science of friendship.
MARISA G. FRANCO: I remember going through a breakup, and I felt so bad, so I asked my friend, Heather, “Heather, how about we create this wellness group? We will meditate, cook, do yoga.” And it was really to heal from that romantic breakup. Heather said yes, and me and a group of friends would meet every week to practice wellness.
And I looked around and I asked myself, like, why doesn't this form of love matter to me? Why I've been so focused on romantic love, feeling like I have no love in my life unless it's romantic. Like I'm not worthy unless I have a romantic partner? Like, why doesn't this love count?
We just treat friendship as something that we take for granted. Something that's nice to have, but not necessary. Something that we don't have to put effort into. Something that, you know, people are less likely to work through conflict with friends than romantic partners. And we have this all wrong!
GEENA DAVIS: Research shows that when we don't have friends, or when the friendships we do have are unhealthy, we're twice as likely to die prematurely. A risk even greater than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
MARISA G. FRANCO: Even when we have a romantic partner we really love, likely, a lot of us still struggle with feelings of loneliness because our fundamental human needs are not met through one person.
GEENA DAVIS: Friendships can not only make us less depressed, but they spill over and contribute to our spouses feeling less depressed, too.
MARISA G. FRANCO: Our romantic relationships thrive the most when we consider our romantic partners our friends. It's friendship that is at the center of the success of romantic partnerships.
GEENA DAVIS: We need friendships to thrive, but how do we make friends? What does the research say?
MARISA G. FRANCO: There was a study where people were told that they would go into a group and be liked based off of personality questionnaires they filled out. This was a lie, the researchers were using deception. But when they thought they would be liked, they suddenly became friendlier and warmer and more open. And it became a self-fulfilling prophecy where people that assume they're liked get liked, because assuming you’re like triggers these friendly behaviors.
GEENA DAVIS: And friendships don't always just happen. You need to make an effort.
MARISA G. FRANCO: One study that tracked people's beliefs about connection and their loneliness over time found that when people thought friendship was something that happened without effort, they were lonelier five years later; whereas the people that thought friendship takes effort were less lonely five years later. Because they made that effort!
GEENA DAVIS: Which leads to Franco's next bit of advice, try to reconnect with people.
MARISA G. FRANCO: Are there people in your life that you've fallen out of touch with that you already know, you kind of get along with?
GEENA DAVIS: Also, do the things that you love in community.
MARISA G. FRANCO: So, go to a dance class, go to a language class. And the reason that I say a class, right, rather than like a single event, is because of something called the mere exposure effect, which is this finding that the more that we are exposed to something, the more that we like it. And this applies to people, and so, can you join something that's repeated over time, so you give mere exposure effects a chance to set in!
GEENA DAVIS: Another relationship where we often have to put in effort is with our families, and those dynamics can be tricky.
BELINDA CAMPOS: Everybody values family. There's no doubt about it, that's a human thing. But we have different ideas about how to show our value for family.
GEENA DAVIS: Belinda Campos is a psychologist at UC Irvine, where she studies the effects of familism, or familial love. It's a cultural value that emphasizes warm, close, supportive family relationships and prioritizes interdependence over independence.
BELINDA CAMPOS: Those of us who report greater endorsement of this more interdependent way of being actually report favorable responses in terms of their bodily response, their stress hormone response.
GEENA DAVIS: She says Western cultures often see familism as something that holds us back.
BELINDA CAMPOS: Familism really started as being seen as something that was a deficit, something that had to be changed in order to do well in the United States.
GEENA DAVIS: But Campos’s studies have shown the opposite. That familial love is not a deficit, but an advantage.
BELINDA CAMPOS: When you grow up around these ideals about family and closeness, those ideas translate into socialization practices. How we learn to share, how we learn to put others before the self, how we learn to manage our relationships — that ends up being really good for our relationships. Not just in our families, but outside, to our romantic partners, to our friends, and other kinds of relationships.
GEENA DAVIS: We've been talking about love as something expansive, woven into our relationships with partners, friends, family, and our physiology. But love doesn't stop with other people. For many of us, it extends into the rest of the animal kingdom. After all, a lot of us don't just have pets. We consider them family.
[DOG BARKS]
GEENA DAVIS: An estimated 60 million households in the US include a dog.
ANNA MACHIN: The relationships we have with our pets, particularly dogs, it is an attachment relationship. It is a loving relationship that goes both ways, and it is underpinned by the same set of hormones as human to human love is.
GEENA DAVIS: That's evolutionary anthropologist, Anna Machin again.
ANNA MACHIN: There's been some brilliant studies done both looking at brain activations in humans, and brain activations in dogs actually, when they're interacting with their human. And you do see the fingerprints of love, and you see the activations associated with attachment, so it would appear that that is what we would define as a loving relationship.
GEENA DAVIS: Research shows, just petting a dog can lower cortisol, the stress hormone, and spending time with them can make us more cooperative, friendly, active, and more attentive to the people around us.
TRUC NGUYEN: I love my dog, Frankie, and I feel like he loves me too.
GEENA DAVIS: That’s reporter Truc Nguyen.
TRUC NGUYEN: Frankie definitely feels like he's a part of my family.
[DOG WHINING]
TRUC NGUYEN: Are you so happy to see that? He loses his mind when he sees my friends. [LAUGHS AND CHATTER] He’s climbing out and over to here.
GEENA DAVIS: Most studies on loving dogs have focused on how we feel about them, how they help us. But what about how they feel? Do they pick up on our social cues, like who we trust, who we like, and use that information to make their own decisions? To find out, we put Frankie and Nguyen on their first airplane ride together to do an experiment at a canine laboratory, and learn about how our dogs understand the world through us.
[AIRPLANE DEPARTURE MESSAGE]
ZACH SILVER: Just turn left here. We're gonna head right down the stairs. This way, Frankie!
TRUC NGUYEN: That's Zach Silver. He founded the Canine Intelligence Lab here at Occidental College. Frankie and I are here to take part in what his team calls an “affiliation study.”
ZACH SILVER: We're curious if Frankie is, sort of, seeing the world through your eyes here.
TRUC NGUYEN: They wanna know, will Frankie pick up on my social preferences? And will he use that information to make decisions?
ZACH SILVER: Like, “Well, my primary point of contact in the world, this person I spend the most time with, seems to be friends with one person. Should I be friends with that person too?”
UNKNOWN LAB ASSISTANT: Hello.
TRUC NGUYEN: Hi!
ZACH SILVER: Gonna step on into this room right here. Okay. Come on in.
TRUC NGUYEN: Frankie waits outside the room as I head into the lab with Silver and his two student researchers, Eliza and Fiona.
ZACH SILVER: So Fiona will turn towards you and offer to give a hug.
FIONA: So, I'll initiate by turning towards you, like this.
TRUC NGUYEN: But instead of opening my arms to hug her, I hold them straight up in the air.
ZACH SILVER: Then Eliza's gonna turn towards you, ask for a hug, and you are going to give Eliza a hug. And the idea here is, we're communicating to Frankie that there is an affiliation between you and Eliza. So, we're basically trying to convince Frankie that this is your friend.
TRUC NGUYEN: After a few practice rounds, we're ready for Frankie.
ZACH SILVER: Alright, Frankie. Alright!
TRUC NGUYEN: I wait for Fiona's cue, and put my arms up in the air. When Eliza turns towards me, we hug. We do this choreography three times while Silver holds onto Frankie. Then I turn towards the wall.
[UNZIPPING SOUND]
TRUC NGUYEN: Fiona and Eliza sit on the ground, open their pouches, and hold out dog treats in their hands. Frankie is released. First, he runs up to me, but I have to ignore him, so he pauses at my ankles.
When Frankie realizes I'm not going to turn towards him, he walks over to Eliza, who I just hugged three times. He takes a treat from her hand, but ignores Fiona. Each time, Frankie leaves the room and comes back in.
ZACH SILVER: Frankie's doing a great job so far. Come on Frankie!
TRUC NGUYEN: After rejecting, giving hugs, and eating treats, the experiment is done.
ZACH SILVER: Alright, good job, Frankie!
TRUC NGUYEN: Silver gives us the results. What you saw today, what does it tell you about my relationship with Frankie?
ZACH SILVER: Well, it certainly suggests that there's a strong relationship here — that Frankie is using his perception of your other relationships to decide how he wants to form those new ones. So, if Frankie didn't care at all about you, he wouldn't care about who you like and don't like either.
Even after being released and being able to make choices, Frankie came to you first all four times, only then detoured off to one of the other two people.
TRUC NGUYEN: Like dogs, we also take cues from people we care about to make decisions, and choose who's in and who's out.
ZACH SILVER: We take shortcuts, and one shortcut that we take is that we use people that we already know and already have a strong opinion of to help us make those future decisions.
TRUC NGUYEN: Whether we're talking about people or dogs, the more we try to understand the beings we love, the better.
ZACH SILVER: I've always loved dogs on a personal level. Now, being able to do work that helps me understand them better in hopes that we can then give them the best possible lives, feels really important to me. Not just because I love dogs, but also that I want dogs to have a great life, and to have the best possible relationship they can have with their people.
TRUC NGUYEN: The kind of symbiotic relationship that says, “It's not that I need you. It's more like, I want you, and I want to share my life with you.”
ZACH SILVER: We could survive without dogs, and dogs could survive without us, but together, we're able to accomplish much more. That's what feels like love to me.
TRUC NGUYEN: I'm Truc Nguyen, reporting from Los Angeles.
We could survive without dogs, and dogs could survive without us, but together, we're able to accomplish much more, and that's what feels like love to me.
I'm Tru Quinn reporting from Los Angeles.
ZACH SILVER: All right. Who's counting us down? You are.
LAB ASSISTANT: You are.
[COLLECTIVELY]: 1, 2, 3. Frankie!
ZACH SILVER: Thanks so much for coming. Frankie, it was so nice to meet you. Hope you enjoyed the science.
GEENA DAVIS: Tomorrow, we're releasing our third and final episode of The Science of Love. We'll be exploring the science behind our love of stuff.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 5: When customers love a brand, they are willing to go out of their way to find it. They're willing to pay more for it. If there's a problem, they're willing to forgive the brand.
GEENA DAVIS: Our love of the natural world.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 6: caring for the Earth is caring for ourselves.
GEENA DAVIS: Grief.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 7: You can't really talk about grief without talking about love.
GEENA DAVIS: And the love we feel for our wider communities.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER 8: It's that connection and that feeling and that love of humanity, generally, which leads us to wanna help people who are different from us.
GEENA DAVIS: Join me, Geena Davis, tomorrow on The Science of Happiness.
GEENA DAVIS: Thank you for exploring these many forms of love with us. This special is dedicated to the loving memory of radio producer Ben Manila. The Science of Love is a production of The Science of Happiness Podcast at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. Our executive producer and editor, Shuka Kalantari. Our senior producer and co-editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan. Sound Design and Production by Jenny Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our reporter is Truc Nguyen. Associate Producers are Emily Brower and Tarini Kakkar. Fact-checked by Dr. Eli Susman. Funding for this special was provided by the John Templeton Foundation, as part of the Greater Good Science Center's Spreading Love Through the Media initiative.
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