Bonded by Evolution

How Love Really Works

Hidden Brain, 2 November 2026. The author is the guest. The book comes up at 41 min 31 sec in.

Host Shankar Vedantam interviews Paul Eastwick, psychologist at UC Davis, who discusses his book Bonded by Evolution. Eastwick argues that compatibility is not a property found in a partner in advance but is built through shared history, rituals, and patterns that develop over time. He draws on speed dating research showing that exactly 0% of what makes two people compatible can be predicted from self-reported information alone.

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