Study: Sending emojis is linked to scoring more dates, sex

Emojis might contain more emotional information than meets the eye.

  • A new study shows that people who frequently used emojis in text messages with potential dates engaged in more sexual activity and had more contact with those dates.
  • However, the study only shows an association; it didn't establish causality.
  • The authors suggest that emojis might help to convey nuanced emotional information that's lacking in strictly text-based messaging.
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The lies we tell on dating apps to find love

It turns out these little white lies serve a purpose.

Nearly one-fourth of young adults are looking for love through dating websites or apps.

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When will we begin to take child sex trafficking more seriously?

Regan Williams, co-founder of Seen and Heard, wants adults to listen to children.

  • Regan Williams, CEO of Seen and Heard, is on a mission to help foster youth develop necessary social and career skills through the performing arts.
  • Williams says 300,000 American children are commercially trafficked every year.
  • Children in our society are ignored except when they're famous or sexualized, which is part of the reason sexual abuse is not covered.
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Polyamory offers a unique opportunity to enjoy prolonged passion and closeness in romantic relationships

Researchers recruited more than 1000 polyamorous participants.

Sex & Relationships

As everyone knows, the nature of romantic relationships usually changes over time. An early period of intense attraction tends to develop into a less fiery, deeper attachment bond.

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Porn arouses women and men in same neuronal way, review finds

The results contradict the popular assumption that men react far more strongly to pornography.

Pixabay
Sex & Relationships
  • The review examined the results of 61 brain-scanning studies that involved 1,850 people.
  • The results of the review found no significant differences in how male and female brains respond to viewing visual erotic stimuli.
  • Still, one of the researchers noted that there are sex-specific differences in sexual behavior.
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Elif Shafak - the story no one hears

"We live in an age in which there is too much excessive information, less knowledge, and very, very little wisdom." Elif Shafak has faced trial and investigation in her native Turkey for giving voice to the voiceless in her novels. We talk about her book THREE DAUGHTERS OF EVE and the fight for nuance in a world of binaries.

Think Again Podcasts
  • "To say that there are two stories to the same issue…doesn't mean [they] have the same power. Sometimes one of those stories will be the story that no one hears….that is suppressed and erased and forgotten and pushed to the margins."
  • "I think faith is way too important to leave it to the religious. Just like politics is way too important to leave it to career politicians. And I've started to believe that technology is way too important to leave it to tech companies and monopolies."

After four years and just over 200 conversations for this podcast, I'm feeling the need for a new kind of politics. One that would champion uncertainty, fragility, emotional vulnerability against the tyranny of opinions that push us one way or another. I used to think that art was sufficient for this purpose. After all, it was books like J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey or Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, bands like the Smiths and the Velvet Underground that gave a much younger me courage to embrace ambiguity as a great teacher.

Art's an open door, but you have to walk through it. And it's the politics and culture around you that shape your ability to do so. We're hurting and hungry for connection. Sick of misunderstanding and violence. I think this is true all over the world. I think it runs so deep it's like an underground river, one whose presence we can only guess at from the contours of the surface earth.

I'm very happy to be talking today with Turkish-born global citizen, novelist and activist Elif Shafak. She's the author of HONOR, THE FLEA PALACE, and THREE DAUGHTERS OF EVE, among many other books. In her writing and public speaking, she's one of the most eloquent voices I know of this new politics that doesn't fit easily on any flag.

Surprise conversation starters in this episode:

Pete Holmes on #metoo and binary thinking