(In a delightful twist, my new segment got stitched together with a rebroadcast of an older episode featuring the incomparable @elijfinkel.bsky.social, one of my grad school professors, whose work on marriage is captivating. I couldn’t ask for a better Hidden Brain buddy!)

The Center employs scientific evidence to help people, organizations, and societies leverage the power of disagreement for good.

To learn more about the Center, see this Northwestern Magazine cover story.

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magazine.northwestern.edu/features/cen...

Welcome, Eric -- thanks for subscribing to the show!

And good question. I'd love to listen to such a podcast, too. To my knowledge, no such show exists, but I've tagged @pauleastwick.bsky.social in case he might have any leads.

If you'd like to read the chapter -- or even if you'd just like to see more of the quotes I use to illustrate the principles of relationship science -- you can read it here:

openpublishing.princeton.edu/read/romantic-

Time won’t fly
it’s like I’m paralyzed by it
I’d like to be my old self again
But I’m still trying to find it

— Taylor Swift (2012), All Too Well

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain.

— bell hooks (2000), All About Love

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

— Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history.

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

The chapter quotes liberally from major thinkers and pop-culture icons alike -- from Leo Tolstoy to Ursula Le Guin to bell hooks to Taylor Swift. Here are some examples:

Finally, the chapter considers three major challenges confronting relationship science: (1) biased research samples, (2) the chasmic divide separating the field from evolutionary-psych perspectives on relationships, and (3) measurement challenges that hamper our theory-testing.

Next, the chapter considers three emerging topics in relationship science: (1) consensual nonmonogamy, (2) relationships-as-microcultures, and (3) singlehood.

The chapter then considers the dissolution of romantic relationships, including a discussion of whether a relationship that breaks up is necessarily a failure.

The second batch encompasses 12 interpersonal tendencies that we can cultivate to strengthen our relationships, including constructive patterns of thought and behavior.

Then the chapter gets into the field's major ideas and findings, discussing them in two batches. The first batch encompasses seven exogenous constraints that impinge upon our relationships, including the nature of human psychology, human sociality, and time itself.

The chapter then considers the methods of relationship science -- how researchers design studies and use empirical evidence to test falsifiable hypotheses about the nature of romantic relationships.