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How Flirting Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuffworks dot Com. Hi, I'm welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh, I'm Chuck. Yeah. Hey, Chuck, Studio one, Ay,
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Speaker 1: deep within the bowels corporate quarters, That's where we are, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: I have a question for you, shooting. Is that a
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Speaker 1: bottle of Windex in your pants? It is not. It's
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Speaker 1: funny because I can see myself in him. Really, I
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Speaker 1: have no idea where this is going. Actually, I just
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Speaker 1: wanted to demonstrate an example of flirting. That's flirting. It
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Speaker 1: is a really overt, crude, crass, and and probably completely
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Speaker 1: counterproductive form of flirting. But yes, that was flirting. I
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Speaker 1: don't know if that counts. Actually, that was just a
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Speaker 1: come online. I don't know if that counts as flirting.
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Speaker 1: To be honest, Well, I could have just as easily said, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: have you seen the latest issue of National Geographic. Believe
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Speaker 1: it or not, there's a leopard on the cover. That
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Speaker 1: is not flirting at all. I chose to direct a
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Speaker 1: sentence to try to get you into bed, just now, expressly, expressly,
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Speaker 1: actually blushing as a result of flirting. Right, We'll get
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Speaker 1: into that later. And I've got some very startling facts
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Speaker 1: about blushing and other things like that. It's gonna be
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Speaker 1: so we're talking about flirting today, chuck. Um. From what
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Speaker 1: I understand, flirting is technically considered a language, especially by
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Speaker 1: evolutionary psychologists, UM, behavioral psychologists, anthropologists. Basically anybody with an
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Speaker 1: ist end, just especially UM, considers it. It's a type
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Speaker 1: of language. It's body language, but it's language nonetheless, and uh,
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Speaker 1: it's it's been pretty important to our survival as a species. Basically,
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Speaker 1: what flirting is other you know, it's it's me giving
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Speaker 1: you a bad pickup line or rubbing your knee as
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Speaker 1: I am right now, Um, it's it's yeah. Okay, did
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Speaker 1: you think it was Jerry, our producer? No, I thought
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Speaker 1: we had a troll under the table here. That was me?
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Speaker 1: What did you think I felt? Nice? Okay? So, Um,
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Speaker 1: whether it's rubbing your knee or trying to pick you
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Speaker 1: up with with a bad line, Um, basically, what I'm
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Speaker 1: doing is I'm sizing you up and letting you size
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Speaker 1: me up to figure out how well we could reproduce
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Speaker 1: in a sense, and the reason it's so important for
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Speaker 1: you know, the evolution of the human race and actually
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Speaker 1: just about every other animal race out there or species
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Speaker 1: out there is um it. We can figure out whether
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Speaker 1: or not the reproduction a work before actually having sex.
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Speaker 1: So essentially, without flirting, either nothing would happen ever, right,
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Speaker 1: or everything would happen all the time, and there'd be
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Speaker 1: six trillion people on the planet which would wobble sickening,
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Speaker 1: lee under the weight pretty much. Yeah, so we would
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Speaker 1: have died out or there'll just be too many of us.
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Speaker 1: Any other way we'd be screwed. So flirting is a
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Speaker 1: way of kind of leading up to the sex part
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Speaker 1: and keeping us from jumping in bed with every single
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Speaker 1: person to see if it works. Well, thank god for that, agreed. Agreed,
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Speaker 1: flirting is kind of fun, isn't it. It's world class flirt,
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Speaker 1: are you really? Yeah? Sure, you always rein it in
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Speaker 1: when I'm around. Well, you know, you never let that
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Speaker 1: light shine on the josh on the Josh. I like that. Uh,
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Speaker 1: you want to talk a little bit about some of
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Speaker 1: the flirting signs, like some some of the physical kids. Uh,
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Speaker 1: using your name a lot in a conversation, which I
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Speaker 1: didn't realize that that's how I did really. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: it's actually kind of off putting if it's not done
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Speaker 1: very deftly. I can see that. Yeah. Uh, complimenting the
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Speaker 1: the other person, that obvious one asking about interest. Um
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Speaker 1: to ching an arm or knee, that's a big one.
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Speaker 1: That's huge. Someone told me early on a female friend
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Speaker 1: of mine that when a girl's talking to you and
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Speaker 1: she like grabbed your arm or shoulder or something, that
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Speaker 1: is a sign of all signs. Yeah. My my sister
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Speaker 1: when I was younger, told me that if a girl
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Speaker 1: ever looks at you more than once and you're not
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Speaker 1: dressed like a total freak, she's interested, right, Like, if
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Speaker 1: you don't have she's she's open to checking you out. Yeah, uh,
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Speaker 1: and got any We're idiots. Men are idiots, so we
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Speaker 1: we need the females to tell us these things along
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Speaker 1: the way. Otherwise I just think, why does that girl
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Speaker 1: keep touching me on the arm. Well, and we'll get
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Speaker 1: to this again in a second. To um, it's not
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Speaker 1: entirely our fault. Well, we'll talk about protean um proteum behavior,
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Speaker 1: all right, Well, we need to get that quick then,
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Speaker 1: because that's interesting. Um. Another one, though, is leaning in
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Speaker 1: close to someone obviously physical proximity. Uh, and smiling the
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Speaker 1: old classic smile, which which you know can be taken
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Speaker 1: one way or another. Okay, so um, let me talk
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Speaker 1: about that proteum behavior, right. Uh. Basically, what that is
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Speaker 1: is it's a it's a form of flirting that most
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Speaker 1: women do where it's just on the threshold between normal
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Speaker 1: behavior and flirting, right, and it gives a woman plausible
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Speaker 1: deniability in case her her advances are rejected or she
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Speaker 1: doesn't get the response she wants, right, or in case
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Speaker 1: the guy turns out to be a big dope kind
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Speaker 1: of Yeah, but it's it's confused protective thing, um, like
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Speaker 1: to protect themselves. I took it actually like yeah, they're
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Speaker 1: they're protecting themselves, like if they're rejected, right, if the
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Speaker 1: guy doesn't go, hey, put yourself exactly, she can you know,
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Speaker 1: easily rein it back in and you know, but if
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Speaker 1: if you aren't picking up on this quite right, if
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Speaker 1: you're not aware of these protean gestures um, which is
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Speaker 1: actually it's name for um Proteus, the Greek mythological figure
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Speaker 1: who could shape shift very appropriately makes sense. Um, it's
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Speaker 1: very confusing, and I concern myself fairly smooth dude. But
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Speaker 1: I'm confused by this and uh, actually, after I figured
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Speaker 1: out that there is such things protein gestures, it, um,
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Speaker 1: it supported my general theory that women suck. Wow, it
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Speaker 1: was a it was a big eye opening experience. Well,
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Speaker 1: I know, men's flirtations are much more aggressive and over
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Speaker 1: over exactly women do things like flip their hair or
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Speaker 1: it says actually in the article, bat their eyelashes. It
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Speaker 1: seems slightly dated to me, to be honest, but coquettish. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I guess they still do that, though, do they? I
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Speaker 1: haven't seen it in years, so I have no idea
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Speaker 1: to keep an eye out for it. But yeah, men
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Speaker 1: men intense eye contact and aggressive gesturing. They're a little
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Speaker 1: more intense with their flirting. Yes, that is true, not
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Speaker 1: to protein. Now, what's what's interesting about flirting is that
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Speaker 1: it's such an animalistic behavior. Number one. Um, it's it's
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Speaker 1: emotional behavior. It's not rational, right, we don't walk up
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Speaker 1: to one another and say I'd like to have sex
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Speaker 1: with you. Shall we have sex? It's it's all very
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Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very again smooth, uh if done right?
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Speaker 1: If not, it's painfully clumsy either way. It's it's it's
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Speaker 1: driven by desire, which is an emotion. And guess who
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Speaker 1: guess who makes an appearance Our old friend Darwin. No,
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Speaker 1: I mean he's always in the back drop somewhere. No,
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Speaker 1: not cosh Kari, the fight or flight response, the sympathetic
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Speaker 1: nervous system everything. Um. So basically, this very primeval part
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Speaker 1: of the brain takes over when you see a woman
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Speaker 1: or a man that you would like to have sex
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Speaker 1: with the limbic system yes, yes, yeah, which controls the
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Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system. Um. So you see somebody you're turned on,
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Speaker 1: and you you engage in this flirtatious behavior, but you're
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Speaker 1: you're not thinking I'm going to um, you know, puff
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Speaker 1: my chest out, but you do anyway. Or women don't,
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Speaker 1: you know, kind of swivel their hips a little bit
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Speaker 1: to to let the guy see you know that they're
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Speaker 1: they're of a proper race show too from waste a hip. Yeah,
8:02
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Just pretty pretty interesting, isn't it. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It's apparently women will draw attention to their pelvis because
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Speaker 1: it um indicates whether or not they can carry a child.
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Speaker 1: And additionally, UM, men are attracted to women with that
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Speaker 1: ratio the hip to ract hip to waste ratio, the
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Speaker 1: waste must be no more than sixty of the hip circumference. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you want to know what's what's uncanny. What they've done
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Speaker 1: studies on women with those kind of ratios, and they
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Speaker 1: found that the women who fall into that that actually
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Speaker 1: seventy the ones who fall right in the middle are
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Speaker 1: the most fertile. Really. Yeah, so there's actually a basis
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Speaker 1: in it. So when when you see like a curvaceous woman,
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Speaker 1: you're turned on by her, you're basically responding to you know,
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Speaker 1: eons of collective memory of experience of you know, that's
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Speaker 1: on the cellular level. It's an evolution. Baby, it is baby,
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Speaker 1: and it's real straw. You're absolutely right, pretty cool. So
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Speaker 1: we know all this because people actually study it, and
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Speaker 1: there's a guy. All of this studying started, um in
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Speaker 1: the seventies. I think real serious study of flirting started
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Speaker 1: in the seventies. There was a guy and um, as
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Speaker 1: per usual, I'm going to butcher this person's name, Ranius
9:21
Speaker 1: ebel Ibs felt it sounds good to me, thank you,
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Speaker 1: um and Raneus. It was a I don't actually know.
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Speaker 1: I imagine maybe some sort of psychologists as sociologist possibly.
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Speaker 1: He came up with his own little camera that took
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Speaker 1: a picture in a different direction. He was pointing it
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Speaker 1: so he could get candid photos of people. And he
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Speaker 1: trained this uh super cool uh camera on couples around
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Speaker 1: the world who were engaged in in flirting without pointing
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Speaker 1: the camera and then right, okay, so they didn't think
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Speaker 1: they were being photographed, and they were. They weren't paying
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Speaker 1: any attention to him. Um. And he started comparing these
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Speaker 1: photos and he found a pattern. Actually um and women
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Speaker 1: generally tend to extend their necks, which is actually very
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Speaker 1: comparable to um female wolves in the wild that will
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Speaker 1: turn over and submit to men. It's a it's a
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Speaker 1: it's an active submission. UM. Men tend to puff out
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Speaker 1: their chests and all of this together, it's very animalistic
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Speaker 1: and it's stomach in the Actually, if you think about it,
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Speaker 1: sucking in your stomachs and you you want to puff
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Speaker 1: out your chest, do you want your your your your
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Speaker 1: chin to go up and appear broader. One of the
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Speaker 1: things you're showing a woman as a man is that
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Speaker 1: you are well number one, your virile and actually bilateral symmetry,
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Speaker 1: your face being even on both sides is a real
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Speaker 1: sign of developmental health. So good genes right there. That
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Speaker 1: one's very interesting, Yeah, it is. It's it's kind of
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Speaker 1: off putting. A symmetry is a little off putting if
10:55
Speaker 1: you really think about it. Um, And so you've got that,
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Speaker 1: you've got symmetry. UM, so that's actual reproductive health. You have, um,
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Speaker 1: like a prominent jaw that's developed by testosterone, so you
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Speaker 1: have reproductive ability. And then if you're a big guy,
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Speaker 1: wide shoulders, you know, big chest, you can puff out.
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Speaker 1: You're showing that you can actually protect the young that
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Speaker 1: you're about to um create with this this woman you're
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Speaker 1: gonna get it on with, which Yeah, so that was
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Speaker 1: the original study. This guy found that, um, that this
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Speaker 1: is universal, right, and then it started to really kind
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Speaker 1: of take off. And actually most of the actual studies
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Speaker 1: of um flirting and and flirtations behavior have been conducted
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Speaker 1: in like lounges. Like one landmark study was conducted in
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Speaker 1: the in the bar of a Hyatt hotel. And after
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Speaker 1: you know, after studying I don't know, probably for several
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Speaker 1: days not weeks, um, the researchers got so good at
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Speaker 1: it that they could predict just on body language alone,
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Speaker 1: who is going to go upstairs to while Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: they we've got flirting down pat. Unfortunately, you know, most
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Speaker 1: of us don't have flirting down pat like researchers may
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Speaker 1: understand it, but it's still just kind of this vague, um,
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Speaker 1: often uneasy kind of thing. Right, there's no formula, No,
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Speaker 1: there definitely isn't. It would probably be kind of depressing
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Speaker 1: if there was a formula. And obviously there is a
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Speaker 1: universal physical gestures, but apparently we have, um different cultures
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Speaker 1: have layered on their own interpretations of these gestures. Right,
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Speaker 1: that makes sense. Did you read that Germans and Americans
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Speaker 1: famously tend to get their wires crossed when flirting? Really? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: what does that mean? German women find American men too
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Speaker 1: forward when they flirt, and apparently German men, uh just
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Speaker 1: get all sorts of confused when American women are just
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Speaker 1: talking to them, they assume they're they're being flirted with. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I can see that, probably because of the same reason
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Speaker 1: American women are, I think, are a little more forward
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Speaker 1: than German women. Right, So I've got another study if
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Speaker 1: we if we have time. This was not in a bar. Uh,
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Speaker 1: this was a few years ago at Tulane University, and
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Speaker 1: they uh researched a little bit about how flirting affected
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Speaker 1: women in the workplace and their careers. And it was
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Speaker 1: a small sample, only a hundred sixty four women, but
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Speaker 1: fairly valid um of these women said they used various
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Speaker 1: forms of flirting as a tool to get ahead at work.
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Speaker 1: And fort said they have never flirted for such purposes.
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Speaker 1: And the women interested, what do you think, I haven't
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Speaker 1: even told you this. What's what's the call flirting gets
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Speaker 1: you ahead? Or now I would see you? Nope. Really,
13:44
Speaker 1: what they found was that the women who did not
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Speaker 1: flirt earned seventy five two hundred thousand dollars per year,
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Speaker 1: while women who did flirt average fifty thousand and seventy
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Speaker 1: five thousand. And if you did not flirt, you also
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Speaker 1: were promoted three times as many times. And basically they're
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Speaker 1: they're takeaway was that sexuality is a short term power source.
14:05
Speaker 1: It does it kind of cheapen You're cheapen the value
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Speaker 1: of your personality to the That's what I could assume
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Speaker 1: that maybe a man would not take a woman as
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Speaker 1: seriously if he realized that she was flirting to try
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Speaker 1: and get ahead. I know I wouldn't. Yeah, no, that
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Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, it's nice one, Chuck. Thank you, way
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Speaker 1: to pull that one up for the bowels of tulane. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so well that's flirting. Hopefully it helps a little bit
14:28
Speaker 1: here there for all of you awkward, single, gangly young
14:32
Speaker 1: men out there who have trouble getting dates. Just um,
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Speaker 1: make him laugh. Yeah, that's really Ultimately, you know, throw
14:38
Speaker 1: symmetry out the window. If you're not very virile whatever,
14:42
Speaker 1: there's pills out there and in both Chucks. In my opinion,
14:46
Speaker 1: it comes down to if you can make a woman laugh,
14:48
Speaker 1: she'll be yours forever. If you're not funny, then we
14:51
Speaker 1: have no advice for you whatsoever. You better be handsome. Yeah,
14:54
Speaker 1: that's all I gotta say. I guess you know, Chuck,
14:56
Speaker 1: it's probably time for their advice for us, right, which
15:00
Speaker 1: would be listener mail. Okay, Josh, This listener mail isn't
15:06
Speaker 1: so much advice, but it's some fan mail from yeah,
15:12
Speaker 1: from someone named cos uh and I'm gonna butcher this name.
15:15
Speaker 1: K A S. Cause bochtll b A c h t
15:20
Speaker 1: A L from Ashland, Wisconsin. Nice Wisconsin person. Uh, so, Hi,
15:26
Speaker 1: I've been listening to your podcasts and join them greatly.
15:28
Speaker 1: Always a good way to get your thing right on
15:30
Speaker 1: the air, by the way, starting off that way. And
15:32
Speaker 1: this is on the podcast we did on guerrilla gardening,
15:34
Speaker 1: which is when people take over public spaces and plant
15:38
Speaker 1: flowers and things. And at one point in the podcast
15:41
Speaker 1: we talked about how we can't imagine that someone would
15:44
Speaker 1: not want anyone to do this. Yeah, let's play look club. Yeah,
15:49
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to pick someone's brain who's really
15:52
Speaker 1: against this? Yeah. I want to meet the person who
15:54
Speaker 1: sees what's going on and goes home and it's just, yeah,
15:58
Speaker 1: dare they plant those flowers right there? I'm just I'm curious,
16:01
Speaker 1: what's what's happening there? Yeah? And I don't think I
16:03
Speaker 1: could explain it. But I know for a fact I've
16:05
Speaker 1: met people like that before. It's always a little unsettling. Uh.
16:09
Speaker 1: So this person writes in and says, I can think
16:11
Speaker 1: of one possible situation where a perfectly sensible property owner
16:15
Speaker 1: might object to groule of gardening. Uh. In some areas
16:18
Speaker 1: of person can lose some rights pertaining to their own
16:20
Speaker 1: land if someone else can show a pattern of long
16:23
Speaker 1: term benefit from trespassing. So uh, they're thinking of people
16:27
Speaker 1: parking or walking on other folks land for twenty years.
16:30
Speaker 1: Then the owner comes and they're unable to get rid
16:33
Speaker 1: of these people without any legal recourse. So the only
16:36
Speaker 1: way to have to prevent this in some cases is
16:39
Speaker 1: to keep people from establishing that long term usage benefit
16:42
Speaker 1: in the first place, i e. Planning flowers and making it,
16:46
Speaker 1: you know, a more attractive place to hang out. That
16:48
Speaker 1: is an excellent, excellent point. I hadn't thought of. Um,
16:52
Speaker 1: that's squatting essentially, And uh, that's that's a great point.
16:56
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact. For that great point, don't
16:58
Speaker 1: you think God should get a T shirt? Uh? If
17:00
Speaker 1: if we can get costs of T shirt, I think
17:02
Speaker 1: we should. We'll see we can do costs if you
17:04
Speaker 1: want to send us your your address and we will
17:08
Speaker 1: see if we can get a how stuff Works t
17:09
Speaker 1: V T shirt out and shirt size? Yeah, shirt size?
17:12
Speaker 1: Good one't chuck? All right? Cool? Well, thanks for listening.
17:15
Speaker 1: Anybody else who has any comments, any mail, any anything,
17:18
Speaker 1: you want to drop us a line. Send it to
17:20
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more
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