Sex: An Unnatural History - Love

If you know anything about biology, you know that sex has existed for a long time. It's the vehicle through which organisms reproduce; we wouldn't be here without it. Somewhere along the line, however, and quite recently in fact, a new phenomenon seems to have evolved: love. And that's thrown a wrench into what previously used to be a pretty straightforward instinct.

The relationship between love and sex is complicated. You'd have to be blind not to see the differences, subtlety and complexity behind the relationship between these two instincts. Yes, often love and sex go together like peas in a pod, but there are times when you can have one without the other, times when you can use one to get the other, and times when you can use one to destroy the other. It's a mess.

Continuing her exploration of Sex: An Unnatural History, Julia Zemiro explores in today's episode the reasons we fall in love, what maintains it, why this emotion confounds even the greatest of minds, whether human are wired for monogamy, and whether there is a new horizon opening up for us or whether we are trapped in the struggle between these two all-pervasive biological tidal forces.

Oh yeah, happy Valentine's Day...