The Science of Dating: Stories about sex and romance

This week, we're presenting two stories about the science behind dating, ranging from a neuroscientist's attempts to use brain scans and personality tests to determine her compatibility with a rapper to a comedian's mishaps with a "penis-numbing spray"!

Part 1: Comedian Josh Gondelman is threatened with a lawsuit after he reviews a new sexual enhancement product.

Part 2: Seemingly incompatible, neuroscientist Heather Berlin and rapper Baba Brinkman try to use science to figure out if they belong together anyway.

Josh Gondelman is a writer and comedian who incubated in Boston before moving to New York City, where he currently lives and works as a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In 2016, he made his late night standup debut on Conan (TBS), and he recently made his network tv debut on Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC). Josh’s newest comedy album Physical Whisper debuted in March of 2016 at #1 on the iTunes comedy charts (as well as #4 on the Billboard comedy chart)  and stayed there for…well…longer than he expected, honestly. Offstage, Josh has earned a Peabody Award, two Emmy awards, and two WGA Awards for his work on Last Week Tonight. He is also the co-author (along with Joe Berkowitz) of the book You Blew It, published October 2015 by Plume. His follow-up, Nice Try, is set to come out Fall 2019 through Harper Perennial. His writing has also appeared in prestigious publications such as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker.

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She practices clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Department of Neurological Surgery, and is a Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Passionate about science communication and promoting women in STEM, she is a founding committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, host of Startalk All-Stars with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and has hosted series on PBS and the Discovery Channel.

Baba Brinkman is a New York-based rap artist and playwright, best know for his “Rap Guide” series of hip-hop theatre shows and albums that communicate challenging scientific fields to the general public. Baba has produced Rap Guides to Medicine, Religion, Evolution, Climate Change, Consciousness, and Wilderness, among other topics. He has performed on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, shared stages with Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, and toured worldwide including runs at the Sydney Opera House, the Edinburgh Fringe, and off-Broadway in New York, and has been nominated for and won multiple theatre awards.

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