Finding Your Match: The Science of Love and Attraction

Major funding for The Pulse is provided by a leadership gift from the Sutherland family. The Sutherland support WHYY and its commitment to the production of programs that improve our quality of life. This is The Pulse, stories about the people and places at the heart of health and science. I'm Mike and Scott. Anna. She's all Paul Eastwick can think about during the fall semester of 1999. He is a very studious and slightly awkward psychology major at Cornell University. And she? She is gorgeous. She has all of this social confidence. She's fluent in Russian, loves classic films, and writes poetry. She's so impressive. And yet she wants to hang out with me over winter break. They know each other because they are from the same town. They'll both be heading home for the holidays, and Anna is insisting they should spend time together. And at first I find this a little bewildering, and then I start to think, whoa, wait a minute, is she into me? It doesn't make sense to Paul. Anna is totally out of his league. They hang out a lot over the break, and they have a great time, but nothing romantic happens. Once they're back at school, Anna invites Paul over to watch a movie, a very long movie. Paul is excited at first, but when he arrives, Anna sits far away from him. Her phone is ringing and she's actually taking the calls. Suddenly, it becomes crystal clear to Paul. Anna thinks of him as a friend, no attraction on her end. And it was tough. I felt the self-esteem hit. I felt what a lot of people feel when they feel like they've flown too close to the sun. But dejected as he was, Paul stayed friends with her. And what ended up happening was she kind of brought me along into her social universe. I mean, if anything, I actually had a better time at college now that I was just hanging out with her as a friend than, you know, when I was struggling to try to get her to like me. And soon his romantic feelings for Anna faded. And the fascinating thing is that in the end, we really were friends, and I wasn't so smitten with her come a year later. Paul is now a leading researcher on attraction, romance, and couples, and he says there is an important lesson in this whole Anna saga. Relationships can change in a wide variety of ways if we're willing to give them the space to evolve. Attraction can morph into friendship and friendship can morph into romantic attraction but in the world of dating apps endless options, red flags and snap judgments we rarely give love a chance to grow On this episode, what we're learning about dating mating and finding a real match Let's stick with Paul Eastrick. He's the principal investigator for the Attraction and Relationships Research Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. His new book is Bonded by Evolution, the New Science of Love and Connection. When Paul was a teenager, he had a tough time dating. So his friend gave him a few pointers, tips to help turn his luck around. He thought, well, if you could just maybe work out a little bit and the clothes need some work. His friend kept going. Be more confident. Relax. Don't try so hard. Your sense of humor, that could use a little effort, too. But we'll get there by, you know, boosting your attributes. It seemed like something straight out of a romantic comedy, the kind where the underdog character suddenly becomes more attractive after a total makeover. And all of this sounded reasonable to Paul when he was a young adult. And then when he started to study attraction, he recognized this approach. What his friend was trying to help him improve, evolutionary psychologists call this mate value. And, you know, it refers to the traits that you bring to the mating market. Could be things like attractiveness, intelligence, you know, social confidence. But all of these attributes together essentially determine whether you're a very desirable 10, a sort of middling 6, or an undesirable 2. And this is on some level helpful, right? And we also see it, I guess, reflected in couples where we often see people who are similarly attractive or smart or successful. So there is something to it. That's exactly right. There certainly is something to it. As depressing as it might be for many people, the reality is that when people are meeting for the first time, and certainly when they're perusing photographs on a dating app, they are assessing these qualities related to mate value as best they can. And we kind of figure out where we fit in to this hierarchy. And it shapes how willing we are to pursue this person or that person. Are you willing to set your sights high or low? So it certainly matters a lot in first impression contexts. And it also affects things like our self-esteem as well. But Paul argues that mate value is only a small piece of the attraction puzzle. I think what this idea misses is that many times when we look at somebody and we try to figure out, is this person physically attractive or not? I think we underestimate the extent to which people disagree about things like attractiveness. And we see this in a lot of studies. For example, if I were to ask you and a friend to rate some guy about how attractive he is, you'd agree with your friend about 65% of the time if you just met him. That actually leaves a lot of room for idiosyncratic disagreement. It means your friend might want to pursue this guy where, you know, you might not. And what's especially fascinating is that that modest level of agreement, it gets weaker and weaker as people get to know each other. I think sometimes we think dating is all like first impressions, you know, going up to a stranger at a bar, trying to impress them right away. But what that misses is that much of the time we are getting to know people over time often in small groups. And when you do that, agreement about who is desirable and who is not declines to very close to chance levels. You have a thought experiment that you write about in the book where you talk about people who are essentially stranded on an island. They have everything they need, you know, so things are pretty good. But now there is sort of this question of who shall you mate with on this island. So talk a little bit about how that illustrates this idea of attraction and compatibility. Yeah. So I like this thought experiment a lot because I think it comes far closer to the environment in which we evolved than when we think about approaching people at bars, you know, meeting strangers. So if you imagine a small group of people interacting with just each other, but for a long period of time, honestly, like when we were evolving on the Savannah 50,000, 150,000, a million years ago, that's what group living was a lot like. In other words, you didn't get to meet a whole bunch of strangers all that often. You lived in these small groups, but you had the advantage of getting to know people over a long period of time. So if you were on this desert island, my guess is that you would ultimately find potential partners that were intriguing to you and that most people would find something to bond over. Most people would find a partnership that would make them happy. And some of that is due to the fact that when we get to know people in groups, we have a chance to sort of find compatibility, find the people that we uniquely click with. But in today's era where you can kind of bail after an initial date doesn't go all that well, you know, we've kind of lost touch with that older style of meeting and getting to know people. Because I guess a first date could be awful, but then if you tried five more dates, you might have a really good time or you, the reverse could be true that the first date is amazing. And then you go out again and you're like, what on earth was I thinking? That's exactly right. I think we fail to appreciate the extent to which our opinions about somebody can change for good or for ill as we're getting to know them, right? Especially early on. On interaction number 1000 with somebody, the next interaction isn't going to be all that different. But if we're talking about the fourth time, the fifth time you've interacted with somebody, your impression can change a lot. And if we imagine dating as sort of a series of steps where I'm going to be waiting people out, okay, you have to pass a certain threshold for me to even want to see you again, we remove that process of, hey, you know, seeing how impressions change. And I think it makes the whole process feel a lot more demoralizing. Paul Eastwick is the principal investigator for the Attraction and Relationships Research Laboratory at UC Davis. His new book is Bonded by Evolution, The New Science of Love and Connection. We'll hear more from him in a bit. So far, we talked about the mate value, our perceived place in the dating hierarchy, and Paul also discussed the changing nature of our attraction to other people. Like if you give something enough time, things can morph in unexpected ways. Our next story speaks to both of these ideas. Kevin and Danielle have been together for 30 years. They are married. They have three kids. But their origin story as a couple was rocky. Liz Tung has more. For Danielle, the attraction was instant. It hit like a bolt of lightning the first time she saw Kevin in the fall of 1995. He was wearing a turquoise blue long-sleeved shirt and light-colored jeans, and I immediately had a crush on him. Danielle was a sophomore at Boston University, and Kevin was a junior. He was just like Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. And they were both working freshman orientation week helping to park cars. We worked to street corner together. I like to lead with that and let people's minds turn a little bit before I explain it. The two of them immediately hit it off. They spent the whole day just talking and joking around. By the end of their shift, Danielle was smitten. And Kevin? In terms of my first impressions of her, I thought, I mean, there was some attraction there. I thought she was really fun. I just had a great time with her. And it's like, yeah, this is somebody I definitely want to spend more time with. And they did. Danielle was always inviting Kevin over to her apartment to use her washer and dryer or her computer. But Kevin wasn't getting the hint. This is where I have to confess that I'm not great at social cues. It didn't at first it did not occur to me that she might be into me. I just was like, wow, she's friendly and nice. It was obvious he was friend zoning me, you know. And so how how could you tell that he was friend zoning you? I mean, I basically Yeah. I was like, hey, let's date. And he said no She said it to me at a time and I was just in my head I was like I really really value this person in my life If we date and it doesn't work out, then that's over. And I just was kind of afraid to screw that up. And yet, they were kind of already acting like a couple. For one thing, they were spending practically all their time together. Stupid. Stupid. An excessive amount of time, yeah. But the situation was wearing on Danielle. She'd been putting all of her hopes in Kevin, which meant she wasn't dating and he wasn't dating either. So about nine months after they first met, Danielle decided to give Kevin an ultimatum of sorts. And I was like, look, I haven't dated me in a couple of months. Neither have you. Like we hang out all the time. if you don't want to date me, we have to be like less of friends so I can go out and meet other people because I really like you. And Kevin, how did it feel to hear that? Like a wake-up call, like I'm losing this good thing right in front of me because I'm too scared to just jump in. And so began the new romantic phase of their relationship. On one level, the whole story feels very romantic comedy. The guy who takes way too long to realize the girl he treats like his bro is the one he really wants. But Danielle had a nagging feeling that there was something else going on. That maybe Kevin was a bit out of her league. Danielle has described herself as a plus sized girl and average and Kevin as extremely good looking. But Kevin insists he was attracted to her from the start. One, you're way too hard on yourself as you were. There was a sexual attraction there because she just had an energy that I dug. And everyone who knows her gets, understands exactly where I'm coming from. She has an energy that just lights up a room. Despite that, over the years, people have questioned their relationship and why they're together. Take, for example, Danielle's grandmother. She told me I could never have a husband at my weight. She said I'd be always alone unless I lost weight. And then when Kevin and I were dating, she was like, well, he's great. He's too attractive for you. Then a few years into their relationship, Kevin was getting his MBA and Danielle got to meet some of the people in his program. And there were multiple people who came up to me and said that he should leave me for somebody more attractive for his career. Which, you never came out and told me that. It's brutal. It's brutal to hear that. Those people are terrible. I say the closest thing I heard to something like that would have been one of my friends there. And all he said was, I didn't understand what brought you two together at first, but now that I know her, I get it. So I never heard anything like that. Of course, they're not going to say that. I want names, though. I want to know who I need to beat up if I ever see me. Kevin says these comments, paired with his initial reluctance to date, have left their mark on Danielle. She got some baggage from her grandma because it's three kids later and we're now in our late 40s. Yeah, I got. Neither of us are underwear models. I got. Yeah. You know. You were very attractive. You are very attractive. And Danielle, do you think with this baggage that you had from your grandmother and whoever else, did understanding how much Kevin was attracted to you change the way you saw yourself? Honestly, like I was so hard on myself. I was unfair to Kevin. And I had a hard time like accepting his love for me and his attraction to me. And that did affect our relationship. But for a long time, I'm not going to lie, Liz, like it was hard for me when he was like, well, you're so beautiful. You're so great. I'm like, no, like I'm so ugly and I'm so yucky. He's like, but I want to be with you. And it was like hard for me to like accept that at the time. Like I've gotten so much better over the years. But it took a really long time to like get there and like get that confidence. Like I am worthy. Like I am worthy of like this really hot guy right here. As for their initial friendship phase, Danielle now thinks it was actually a good thing. Because we got to know so much about each other by being friends. Like, I'm so, I hate, I don't want to really admit this now. Like, I'm glad he turned me down initially. Write this down. No, no, no. So that we could, like, be more friends first. And then I had the initial attraction. But, like, I'm so thankful there was so much more there. And I think maybe that comes from the friendship part. And maybe I'm glad that we didn't immediately start dating so that we could work on that first. That story was reported by Liz Tong. We're talking about attraction and how that initial feeling evolves into something deeper. Coming up, researcher Paul Eastwick is not big on dating apps. It's a system that caters to the super appealing, right? Whoever's got the highest mate value on paper because you're essentially swiping on strangers. So I'm going to, you know, go based on a photograph and some very easy to assess stats. We'll also discuss what compatibility really means. That's next on The Pulse. I want to be loved by you. What is love? It supports us, challenges us, and connects us. I'm Gina Davis, host of The Science of Love, a new three-episode series produced by the Science of Happiness podcast. We'll look at romantic love, family bonds, friendship, and even the love we feel for the natural world. Join me for The Science of Love. This is The Pulse. I'm Mike and Scott. We're talking about attraction, dating, and how our initial feelings for somebody can change. Attraction researcher Paul Eastwick has a new book. It's called Bonded by Evolution, the New Science of Love and Connection. He says something we often want in a partner is compatibility, but it's tricky. I think compatibility is in some ways the most important concept when it comes to human romantic relationships. And I think we misunderstand it in a few key ways. So I think when we think about compatibility, a lot of people would tell you, of course, compatibility is going to be important. I think, though, that the metaphor that people have for compatibility is one that's akin to puzzle pieces. like I'm shaped like this and I need to find somebody who's shaped in a way that's going to complement my strengths and weaknesses. The funny thing is though, in the science, we have a remarkably difficult time identifying exactly how people should fit together as puzzle pieces using information you would collect about people before they meet in the first place. And so in other words, if I assess like what you want in a partner, for example, you'd think that I could find who's compatible with you by finding the potential partners that have the traits you said you wanted. And then if we go and do that, actually, we kind of perform a chance at introducing you to people that you'd actually like. So it's been this intriguing dilemma. We really know that compatibility is key. Some couples are great together and some couples are terrible together. And yet it's remarkably difficult to predict who the successful and the unsuccessful couples are going to be until people have had a chance to interact, get to know each other and even try things out a little bit. And also, I guess we may not always choose compatibility, right? So we may have a person in our lives who is perfect in terms of everything we've ever wanted, but then we still end up with somebody else. Yeah, I think this can happen quite a bit. Some of this has to do with the fact that, you know, at least today in the contemporary West, we choose partners based on how they make us feel. Now, when we're swiping on apps, there's not much feeling to go on. What you do have is a set of attributes in front of you, and it's pretty easy to compare that to whatever sort of list of must-haves you would have drawn up ahead of time. But the reality is whether somebody matches that list of must-haves may or may not make you feel anything when you meet that person face-to-face. And so that's why often when we're dating, yeah, you might have gone on a few dates with somebody and they meet your whole checklist, but you don't feel what you feel when you're, you know, dating the person who you never would have picked out ahead of time. And you're not even sure you can bring this person home to meet your parents and yet they're exciting or they just make you feel supported and understood in ways you never have before. I think this is one of the grand dilemmas that people face. And my advice is usually don't worry so much about whether they match what you're looking for ahead of time. What really matters is how you feel and also how they make you feel about yourself. That's really important. Given everything you've said so far, it seems like online dating would be a really bad way to find a mate then because it's on some level it's based on attractiveness in air quotes and then this compatibility and all of that seems so fickle. Yeah, right. It's exactly right. So what online dating is going to do, I mean, it's like amazing that online dating has done as well as it has for people, given the way that it's set up. It's really quite something. So if you, you know, it's a system that caters to the super appealing, right? Whoever's got the highest mate value on paper, because you're essentially swiping on strangers. So I'm going to, you know, go based on a photograph and some very easy to assess stats to the extent that I can ascertain compatibility at all from looking at somebody on an app for a few seconds. You know, it's really a dart throw whether that compatibility is actually there. I think what the apps have succeeded at doing is bringing people together, giving them a chance to meet face-to-face. You're meeting maybe many people that you never would have met otherwise with at least the mutual understanding that you're both interested in a relationship in some form in the abstract. So that component is very helpful. But, boy, it sort of sets people up with the wrong either initial tools or initial impressions. It's starting from a place that isn't great. And I think ends up excluding a lot of people because if you don't have the attributes that make you very popular on the apps, you just kind of languish at the bottom for no real reason. Because if you were meeting people face to face through some other means, I can nearly guarantee that you'd hit it off with some folks. Yeah, because you could work your way through the maze, so to speak, get to know people, get to have different opportunities, all of those things. Exactly. I mean, we ran speed dating studies back in the day. And just a simple fact with the studies we ran is that, you know, something like 95% of people had a match at the speed dating event, right? Somebody that they were interested in and who was interested in them I mean I don know find me the app that can boast that that most people are coming with matches I mean, there are a lot of people who really struggle to find connection there. And I would be surprised if it's 95% of users. It's funny, though, because I feel like especially online and in different, like, influencer spheres, all of the emphasis is on the physical attributes and your mate value and you have to look like this and you have to look like that and you have to behave like this and you have to do this that and the other thing right so that can that advice is so loud it's very loud it's extremely loud Um, I think that these folks, they're not wrong. It's just limited. They are limited to a headspace where the way that you get date number two is by sufficiently impressing somebody at, you know, date or moment number one, right? Where it's operating like a funnel. I have to give you a funny opening line to get you to give me the next five minutes, okay? Approaching people at bars, approaching strangers at parties. This is the model that folks have in mind. This is one way to do it. I think it is a very hard way to do it. I think that way is not for everybody. We have forgotten that there are many, many contexts where people get to interact repeatedly. and for lack of a better description, the other people don't get to opt out of interacting with you if you're insufficiently appealing at first. I mean, there's classrooms and workplaces, but it doesn't have to be those contexts. It can be things like, you know, you take a cooking class or an improv class, you join some sort of sports league. These are all contexts where people are going to be interacting repeatedly over time without the opportunity to opt out because somebody doesn't seem initially hot enough. So I just want to remind people that these settings exist and they are a far more democratic, you know, less inequality in those markets compared to the I got to chat up a stranger and I get 30 seconds to make an awesome impression. Because this is not a job interview, you know, as much as we act like it is. Yeah. Okay, so people are having at least reasonable success on the apps. And so what are people tempted to do? I got all these people I got to meet. I can like stack a bunch of 20-minute coffee dates and we can exchange resumes and, you know, figure out if there's a fit there. Like even that is not the way to do it. Like really brief impressions don't actually give you a sense of whether or not you click with somebody. It can, but much of the time you're going to be misled either in the positive or the negative direction. So, I mean, if you got to do the quick date, I know I recommend to people like also make it a point of trying out dates number two and three. I mean, if you are in the habit of bailing after an initial poor impression, you're really not doing yourself any favors. It might feel like you're being efficient with your time. I think you're probably not. You're just kind of, you know, sort of spinning around randomly. Like if you're going to date and you're going to use the apps, give people a little more time, even if the first date is just kind of okay. What have you learned about what makes for successful relationships? What are the elements that keeps people together and bonded? Yeah, I love the term bonding, and I think that's really a perfect description for the way that couples construct their close romantic relationships. When I think about bonding, I often think about support, like the way that couples support one another. You know, when things are bad, who do you feel like you can go to? When things are going well, who's going to be there to celebrate you, right, to bask in the reflected glory of your successes? These are really critical things that romantic partners can offer for each other. And they're really some of the best predictors of whether people are going to be happy and committed to their relationships in the long term. And what do you see in couples where those things look positive? Yeah. So I think what you're often trying to construct is an environment where you feel safe and secure being vulnerable with another person, right? Where you feel like you can tell them when something has gone wrong in your day and when you feel like they're going to listen to you, be able to empathize, and they're going to be able to understand where you're coming from. what's kind of fascinating is that we even see that some of this support it can be evident very early on as relationships are forming in the first place in other words it's a really good sign for potential relationship if you feel like you know i had this bad thing happen today and i know i've just been dating this person for a couple of weeks but i really would like to tell them what went wrong because I'm comfortable being vulnerable with them. And I think they're going to get me. I think they're going to understand why this is hard. That can really take a negative experience and, you know, really turn it around and makes it an opportunity to connect with somebody else. And now as we get going into the future of a relationship, what the most bonded couples are good at doing is building in opportunities in their daily lives to have those sorts of connections, to feel like, hey, I can open up and be vulnerable a little bit, and you're going to understand me and be able to validate where I'm coming from. I think too often we kind of get into our own little routines and we forget to reinforce the moments of connection with our partners, and that can spell trouble because if you don't engage in those moments of support, you kind of lose that bonded feeling with another person, and that can be trouble for a relationship. And a lot of times people start to look for those supports in other people, in a close friend or a colleague or like a work wife or that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I think one of the things about the attachment bonds that we form with our romantic partners is that when those bonds are strong, they provide a protective layer for the relationship that actually keep people from noticing attractive alternative partners. I mean, this is one of the other concepts that I hit as well. This tendency for people to think like, oh, relationships are all about trading up to get the best deal you can possibly get. That's really a terrible metaphor for thinking about how relationships work, in part because the attachment bonds provide these blinders. So you wouldn't even notice if somebody, quote unquote, more appealing was coming on to you, you know, was was coming along and was especially into you because we tend to think that alternative partners are less desirable than they actually are. Now, that's the case in relationships that are going well, where the bond is strong and you feel very connected to your partner. If you lose that connection, then you're exactly right. What happens is the alternatives start to make their appearance at the periphery. And that can be a bad sign, you know, especially for relationships that, you know, are practicing monogamy. And the way you describe this bonding process, it sounds kind of like the exact opposite of what we tend to do when we are dating, where we feel like we're competing. Right. So every time I'm showing up on a date, I'm competing against I don't know how many other people and I have to be so funny and so charming and so unbothered by everything around me, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The competitive instinct is in many ways exactly the wrong approach for starting a relationship. Because if we feel competitive, we feel compelled to make ourselves look better than the competition. You try to seem like you don't need anybody's help. You've got it all under control. Look how competent and funny and amazing I am. In reality, what people often like is a little bit of vulnerability. There's this recent study. I'm not a part of this particular study, but it's totally fascinating. What it shows is that we tend to find people more initially romantically attractive if they express like a need for help. If they're like, hey, I could really use your help with this. This is a topic I really don't understand, but you seem like you kind of get it. Like, can you help me out here? As opposed to somebody who's like, I got this all under control. Like they like that first person more. And that's because people like to feel needed. People like to feel like they're building something meaningful where like, hey, I'm here to help you and you're here to help me. Like we like that feeling of connection around being useful. And I think, boy, when the environment is very competitive and you feel like your job is just like to be number one, it can distract from some of the more effective ways we have of building genuine connection with each other. Paul Eastwick is a professor of psychology and the director of the Attraction and Relationships Research Lab at the University of California, Davis. His new book is called Bonded by Evolution, the New Science of Love and Connection. Coming up, quantum physics may not sound like the most romantic topic, but for one couple, it proved to be the spark that bonded their relationship. What matters is that whatever you do, that you're passionate about it. And that attracts people to each other. That's next on The Pulse. This is The Pulse. I'm Mike and Scott. we're talking about attraction and how it morphs from the initial feeling into something deeper. When it comes to love stories, Celine Bruckert and Frank Verstrater have a pretty amazing one. Well, we met on the bike. They are part of the same road bike club and they were doing a long 150 mile trip on their bicycles. So that gives you, of course, a lot of time, a lot of hours to talk. Celine is a playwright and film producer, and Frank is a professor at the University of Cambridge in quantum physics. And I didn't know Frank that much on that moment, so I thought it was a good opportunity to get to know him a little bit better. So I knew that he was into quantum physics, but I didn't know much more. On the most basic level, quantum physics examines how the universe works at the smallest possible scales, how tiny particles like electrons, photons, quarks and atoms behave. Celine was curious about Frank's research. So I was starting asking him a million questions and he explained me things about bosons and fermions and all these things I never heard about before. On the one hand, I find it really fascinating, but I was also a bit shocked by myself, I have to admit, because he was talking about all these things that he is working on day and night because that's really his passion. It's not only his profession, it's also his passion, Beauval. But I didn't know anything about it. While it's quantum physics, after all, it's about nature. And we make part of this big system called nature. And Frank, if you're at a cocktail party and somebody says to you, so what do you study? And you say oh quantum physics What usually happens Are people just like oh boy I know nothing about this Let me get another drink or Well there two types of people Indeed most people are having exactly have this reaction from, okay, yeah, no, I don't want to do this. This must be a very boring guy. Let me not talk about it. Or there are also many people that are fascinated by quantum physics because it resonates with their more, let's say, esoterical feelings. They think that quantum mechanics is about spiritualism, about energy, about these things. Of course, this has nothing to do with this, but these are the two typical reactions. But it is very interesting to see that once you start talking about it, you start convincing them, no, no, this is interesting, that certainly many, many people are interested, and they start realizing, yes, it's shocking that we live in this world, but basically we have no idea what matter is. For example, we see color because of the way matter interacts with light. And then you start explaining that actually by understanding this, by understanding why color, where is this color coming from, or why is matter hard? If I hug a tree, why I'm not kind of sinking into the tree, that this is all about quantum mechanical principles, then people start to be extremely interested in. So I think it's more of a fact that people are not aware of how rich and how beautiful the world is, that pushes them out. At some point, Frank tried to write a book about quantum physics for a lay audience. He felt that the topic deserved a bigger platform. I did not understand that people would spend so much time reading a book like War and Peace of Tolstoy, which is extremely complicated. You have all these characters you have to follow, you have to write notes to remember who is who. But they would never take the effort of reading something that is even a bigger masterpiece, namely the book of nature. But Frank's book project had failed. He couldn't explain this topic in simple language. And that's why I was so incredibly charmed by Celine that asked the right questions. She was exactly kind of asking the questions that I should have asked, and I didn't. Once they returned from their bike trip, they were smitten with each other. and Frank asked Celine to write a book about quantum physics together. You need lots of patience. And somehow by coming together, by explaining this, we really grew together. And of course, many other things came out of this. It was much more than the book. They were falling in love. Their relationship got really serious. I would have never had the patience of writing a book with a non-scientist if we would not have been in love, effectively. And how long after this bike trip did you get married or what happened next? Nine months later, more or less, I think. Wow. Yes. So the book is actually our child. Yeah, you can consider it our child. Yeah, yeah, no, yes. No, but we just, because we spent so much time together and we were actually really pushing each other, we immediately felt, yes, this is it. Because of course we are not that young anymore. We all had some relationship and we felt, no, this is what we were looking for all our lives. And by doing a project that is this demanding, you cannot hide yourself. You have to be completely frank. You have to be completely open. And that's what we were. Their book is called Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics, the Story of the Science that Shapes Our World. Selene had to understand basic concepts in this field, like wave-particle duality, that these tiny particles can behave like particles and waves at the same time. It was a lot to take in. So the first weeks and months, I was most of all reading and trying to grasp, what am I doing? I was a bit at a certain moment like, am I serious? Am I really doing this? But so fascinating. And Frank never stopped believing in the fact that we could do this together and that we actually had to do this together. Because that's the strength of our collaboration, that I am more the outsider. And I really forced, it was a challenge for me, but it was also a challenge for Frank. Because I forced him to explain all these topics in other words. I'm not one of his colleagues. He had to reinvent himself and try to explain it in a different way, in an accessible way. And for him, all these things are very obvious, but these are not obvious for me. So I was sometimes very, very angry, but maybe that's more, it has more to do with my own character because I really wanted to understand, but I didn't. And then at a certain point he said, but you have to stop trying to understand it. You can impossibly understand this matter. At a certain point, you just have to accept certain principles and go on with it. And that made it a little bit more easy for me. And of course, Celine was angry to me when I didn't explain something well, but she was right. And I didn't have any problem with this. I was also, of course, extremely charmed by the fact that Celine was asking the right questions. This is very rare. It's very rare to come with people or to encounter people that are always asking the right questions. And of course, it might have been that I was not very objective because there were other kind of things in play. I was certainly very much in love with Celine. But nevertheless, I think this was certainly a magical moment for us to have a project to work very hard day and night basically together on this very difficult task. And Frank, did you learn things in the process? I find that sometimes when we have to explain something very deeply and then we have to explain some underlying assumption and then some assumption under that and then maybe something under that, it forces us to really go deep. and sometimes that can be a really helpful process even to clarify something that you felt like you knew. Yes, I found this extremely useful to take a step back from my day-to-day research which is abstract and very far, very remote from the actual world to start thinking in the long term, why is this useful? What happened? What actually did my colleagues do in the last 100 years of quantum mechanics? What did they realize and what were we able to do? And taking this step back, it's amazing how much I learned about the history, but also about the relevance of what is important to discuss a lot with my students, colleagues. It's actually amazing how few people think about these things. Very few people actually think about the relevance of what they do in the long term. They are just busy with their own kind of tiny field. But in the long term, it's beautiful to see how a field like quantum physics has completely changed how everybody builds on top of each other. And at the end, what comes out of it is a new theory on which the whole technology of the current world is based on. There's no transistors, computers, nothing of that would be possible without this very fundamental research. And I found this actually wonderful to really kind of think what is now, what are these most important things that came out of physics. And one of the things that we write, and I'd never really read this in any other popular science book, is about symmetries, for example. So this is something of these most fascinating things that the strongest force in nature is actually something that is called the exclusion principle. That's about symmetries. It's about the fact that, well, it's the opposite of attraction. I push my finger on the table, then what happens is that the electrons of the table don't want to be in the same wave function as the electrons in my finger. And that's why they repel each other extremely hard. Okay, so and that is what makes matter. And trying to explain these principles was extremely interesting for me, also from a scientific point of view. But this is actually, it's nothing more than that. And Celine, now that this project is finished, what's next? You know, this was a big part of your relationship. And now you have to find a new project. The divorce now. No, no. But actually, I just, well, no, it's already in the beginning of last year, I worked on the French translation. And now since a couple of months, I'm working again on a book on quantum physics, but it's for young people, for teenagers. It's really an adventure book explaining the same main topics, but making it ever more accessible. Because we noticed that for the younger audience, it's a step too high. So through this adventure book, we want to reach even a broader audience. And for me, it's very fun to do. But I also realized I could not write this book now without having written the previous one, because you really have to understand in order to being able to play really with it. And so I first did my serious homework and now I can really play. Could you see yourself bringing the same patience if the tables were turned? So if Frank wanted to write a book about what you do and the process of writing, like it's very hard to be that patient, I think. Yes, I could, because we also noticed it's not, we don't, we also have a lot of things in common. Okay, we have a totally different background, but what we share is our creativity. Frank is as creative as I am. You have to be creative in science. Otherwise, you don't ask the right questions. Everybody can reproduce things and can calculate whatever you want. But if you're not creative in your thinking, you will never get to the core. So Frank, he is creative. He is also very artistic. He has a really, a very playful mind. And that makes me, that even if I should have to convince him about what I'm doing, if he would have to write a book on my field, he would give it another turn. He would also have his own funny twists, I'm sure about that. So I would be very, oh, it's actually a good idea. Maybe we should do it. But I think his input would be as valuable as my input was in our book now. Yeah, I would be completely incapable of writing a decent book. That's the problem. As a scientist, we are not trained to write nice sentences. A book is much more than information. So for us, if we want to explain something we want to be as precise as possible such that somebody can actually use it and work further on it but that's not at all the goal of a popular science book so like like Celine said this complementarity is beautiful and it's also amazing how to see how creativity can have very different forms okay so you some people express this in one way but scientists are also equally creative and to basically see that we have the same passion because at the end that's what matters What matters is that whatever you do, that you're passionate about it. And that attracts people to each other. If you see that you have the same passion, you have the same drive, you start something, you want to end it, even if you have no real idea of how long it will take or where it will bring you. But as long as you're passionate about it, you will be able to do something beautiful. And that was the image that we had. That was the drive that we had. We were convinced that just because we were ourselves happy doing this and we learned something and we were able to teach each other and ask the right questions to each other that we felt, okay, if we are happy with this, then something will come out of it that is also a good product. That's Frank Verstrater and Celine Brookhardt. They co-authored Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics, the story of the science that shapes our world. That's our show for this week. The Pulse is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Our health and science reporters are Alan Yu and Liz Tan. Charlie Kyer is our engineer. Our producers are Nicole Curry and Lindsay Lazarski. I'm Mike and Scott. Thank you for listening. I'm falling for you At 9.82 meters per second squared Behavioral Health Reporting on The Pulse is supported by the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, an organization that is committed to thinking, doing, and supporting innovative approaches in integrated health care.