Podbit · Modern Wisdom
Women experience the ick far more than men because the asymmetric reproductive risk makes discernment evolutionarily essential. New research frames the ick through the behavioural immune system and evolved disgust reactions. For men, missing a mating opportunity is the bigger risk; for women, it's mating with the wrong person.
In David Puts' study, male formidability — rated by other men — predicted how many sexual partners a man had over the next 18 months. Women's attractiveness ratings of those same men had zero predictive power. Looksmaxers may have accidentally optimised for the right variable.
When women are placed in conditions of economic scarcity or inequality, they upregulate preferences for resourceful partners — not because of evolved psychology alone, but as a strategic response to incentives. When they're rich, that preference softens. Beauty preferences didn't move at all.
Women's sexual desire drops roughly by half within the first year of a relationship and keeps declining, while men's stays flat. One provocative hypothesis: early high desire is a mate-retention strategy, then desire shifts to a bargaining tool once commitment is secured.
When men are hungry, economically poor, or in famine conditions, they shift toward preferring heavier women. Fat is a caloric bank account — in scarcity, a heavier woman signals fertility reliability and resource access. In abundance, thinness signals youth and nulliparity instead.
A 2026 Kinsey Institute study of 10,000+ US adults found the average person falls passionately in love 2.05 times. Only 42% have experienced passionate love once or never. This suggests humans are natural serial monogamists — not strict lifelong pair-bonders.
Paul Eastwick's research argues that when you measure actual romantic evaluations in speed dating, the standard sex differences in mate preferences disappear — women care more about looks than they say, men more about resources. Steve Stewart-Williams pushes back: survivor bias in couple data, non-representative samples, and abundant real-world data point the other way.
Rory Sutherland's EV showing 16% battery sent him into a panic — even though that was 58 miles of range. His wife's Mini at 56% with the same physical range felt completely fine. Range anxiety lives in the mind, and billions are being wasted fighting the wrong enemy.
Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean is the most remote spot on Earth — farther from land than anywhere else on the planet. If you're standing at Point Nemo, the closest human beings to you are astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It's also used as a spacecraft cemetery, where defunct satellites and space stations are deliberately crashed into the ocean.
The redhead gene evolved in northern latitudes like Scotland to remove skin pigment and maximize vitamin D production from weak sunlight. But transplant that gene to Texas, and the lack of melanin becomes a liability in high-UV environments.
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