June 25, 2025 • 31 mins
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Not according to science! Jorge takes on a beauty of a topic.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
More Him, and today we're diving into the science of beauty.
What makes someone beautiful, what's going on in our brains
when we see a beautiful thing? And is it possible
to be addicted to beauty? We're going to talk to
a couple of beauty experts, including an evolutionary biologist who
(00:22):
has a brand new theory about what beauty is. So
get ready with me as we explore what makes something beautiful?
I promise the answers our real beauty. Enjoy. Hey everyone, Okay,
here are some interesting facts about beauty. Babies as young
(00:45):
as two months old can tell the difference between someone
who's supposed to be attractive and someone who's not. In
a famous nineteen eighty seven study, scientists showed a bunch
of babies photos of women that were rated by adults
to be attractive or not, and then they measured which
photos to babies would stare at more. They found that
(01:07):
babies would look at the faces of women who were
rated to be attractive more than the faces of women
rated to be less attractive. Other studies and beauty have
found that people who are considered beautiful are also more
likely to be thought of as being smarter, more trustworthy,
and confident. They get hired more for jobs, and they
(01:28):
are more likely to get paid more and get more promotions.
Studies have even found that being beautiful or attractive will
make you less likely to be found guilty if you're
ever accused of a crime. Clearly it helps to be beautiful.
So the first thing I did was try to see
how I could be more beautiful, and to do that,
(01:50):
I reached out to a plastic surgeon. Well, thank you,
doctor Sadegi for talking with us.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, thank you very much for inviting me to your studio.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I called up doctor Piem Sadegi. Doctor Sadeghi was a
plastic surgeon in his home country of Iran and did
his medical fellowship in plastic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic
in Ohio. Currently, he's the resident in pathology at Eastern
Carolina University. I wanted to ask doctor Sadeghi what he
would do to make me more beautiful, but apparently that's
(02:26):
not how it works.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
A doctor's job and responsibility is first to listen to
the patient to know what exactly the definition of beauty
of that patient is and what it means to them.
So that's very important to first understand the beauty standards.
A doctor should spend a great time dealing with the
(02:51):
patient to be able to understand those standards.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, According to doctor Sadegi, a plastic surgeon's job is
to quote promote a patient beauty standards unquote, which means
it all depends on what the patient considers to be beautiful.
But that's kind of the question I wanted to know now.
The reason I reached out to doctor Sadeghi in particular
is that he's written several academic papers on plastic surgery procedures,
(03:20):
and specifically, he and his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic
published the paper titled what is Beauty? So I asked
him to tell us, how do you define beauty?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's a great question and a simple question, but a
very sophisticated answer. I want to answer your question with this.
Beauty is a multi dimensional concept that has intrigued philosophers, artists, scientists,
and surgeons for centuries. Cannot be fully defined, as Plato
(03:55):
suggests it, Beauty is not just what appears pleasing. It
often harbors a deeper meaning or essence, inviting us to
contemplate beyond the surface. From both philosophical and neurobiological perspectives,
beauty engages not only our senses, but also our emotions
(04:18):
and memory, evoking a powerful, often mysterious response. So good
luck with that. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
We're trying. Yeah, thanks a lot, doctor said, Diggy. It's
a tricky concept, so I asked him if he could
be more specific. For example, what makes a human phase
or body appear more beautiful?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So promasurgical and scientific perspective, Symmetry, proportion, and harmony are
key elements of facial and bodily beauty. For the phase,
features such as balance, third and fifth symmetry, and the
proportions like the golden ratio play important roles. Similarly, for
(05:04):
the body, of characteristics like waste to heat ratios in
women or muscle or symmetry in men are often perceived
as attractive.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
You mentioned proportions. Can you explain what that means?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So the proportions of the elements in the face are
like different in different people and in different cultures.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Meaning some people might have larger eyes.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Correct, like the distances between the eyes the nose. The
nose with the lips, the length of their lips, the
proportion of the upper lip to the lower lip.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, here's our first clue about what makes something beautiful,
and this is the idea that it's related to ratios
or proportions, for example, the ratio between the waist and
the hip in women, or the shoulders and the waist
in men, or for faces, how symmetric you're is, or
what the relative distances are between your eyes and nose
(06:05):
and ears and mouth and cheeks are. But searching the
scientific literature on this, it's hard to find a study
that conclusively proves there's a perfect face or an ideal
set of ratios that people find beautiful. Some studies find
that symmetry is important, some don't. Scientists have tried to
(06:25):
look for common features and the proportions of faces that
are ranked by test subjects to be beautiful, and it
seems there are none. It's like, we can all tell
if a face looks beautiful to us, but trying to
say why that face is beautiful is hard. In one
two thousand and eight study, researchers at Google and tele
(06:46):
Abeef University had to use ninety eight variables about the
face to get a computer program to predict how human
judges would rate faces to be beautiful. In other words,
when we're looking at a face and judging whether we
find it handsome, pretty or not, we might be juggling
as many as ninety eight variables in our heads. And
(07:09):
there are several ideas that make this even more complicated.
So there is sort of like a general idealized face
and body for men and women. But I imagine that
it can vary depending on the person and the culture.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Right correct. For example, in Asia, the curvedness in the
forehead and also the ratio of forehead between like the
hairline and the eyebrows is different.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Oh, how is it different? So in Asia prefer.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
What not to be like totally flat, let's say, And
that is more correlated in Asian cultures, So we need
to also consider that. For example, if you want to
practice in Asian countries, you might get more requests from
the patient who want to do these types of procedures
(08:02):
rather than the others.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yes, as you can imagine, beauty standards vary with culture.
What's considered beautiful in one culture might be different to
what's considered beautiful in another culture. Beauty standards can also
change over time within a culture.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
These standards of beauty have evolved dramatically across time and cultures.
In ancient Greece, proportion and mathematical harmony were central. During
the Renaissance, fuller figures were admired as symbols of fertility
and wealth. Today, especially in Western media, beauty often favors thinness, youth,
(08:45):
and flawlessness, though this is now being increasingly challenged by
more inclusive ideals that celebrate diverse body types, ages, and
skin conditions. Importantly, each culture defines beauty in its own way.
This emphasizes that beauty is not only in the eye
(09:08):
of the beholder, but also shaped by the society and
time in which we leave.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Okay, how do we make sense of all of this?
It seems that beauty is definitely a thing. Babies can
recognize it, which means there's something inherent in our DNA
about it, and there's also something universal about beauty. No
matter what culture you're in, people talk about beauty, and
everyone in the world has opinions about whether something or
(09:36):
someone is beautiful or not. At the same time, it's
hard to describe exactly what it is that makes us think,
ah that's beautiful and what's considered beautiful can be different
depending on the person, their culture, and it can change
over time. So to date, there hasn't really been a
(09:57):
strong scientific theory about what beauty is until now. On
our next segment, we'll talk to an evolutionary biologist who
thinks she has a theory of beauty that covers all
of these aspects of beauty and how it has played
a role in our evolution. But first, I was curious
(10:18):
about something doctor Siedeggi brought up. You mentioned that the
goal is to promote the patient's quality of life. What
does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Right? So, when you think of the beauty concept and
when you have a beautiful image of yourself in your subconsciousness,
you think in a positive way. When you think that
you are the most beautiful person, not comparing to anyone,
but just you are beautiful, this is a positive statement
(10:49):
of your mind and this positivity, this mindset, positivity is
very important in your daily job, in your daily activity
because it gives a positive energy to your mind, so
then you can better perform in your daily basics.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I say, feeling beautiful is part of how we feel
better about ourselves in general.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
That's right. And also it can affect the others. It
can be transmitted to coworkers, to friends, to anyone because
it's a positive energy, and that's why I believe it
can promote the quality of life.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
All Right, we'll dig into the biology of beauty and
how it's affected evolution after the break and stay with us.
We'll be right back. Welcome back. All right. We talked
about how beauty is hard to define and how there
(11:51):
doesn't seem to be a standard for what beauty is.
It can vary from person to person and from culture
to culture. But does that mean that it's impossible to
study scientifically? Not necessarily. There's a growing group of scientists
who think they figured out the right way to define
beauty and they think it works for humans and possibly
(12:13):
other animals. To fill us and I talked to one
of those scientists, doctor Tamra Mendelssohn.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
My name is Tamra Mendelssohn, and I am a professor
of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
I study evolutionary biology and specifically animal behavior.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So to start us off, how do scientists define beauty?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
You know, it's hard to pin down, so you might
get a different definition from every scientist you ask.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I guess that's kind of the beauty of it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Sure, I would say only relatively recently have a critical
mass of scientists really started to address the question. Philosophers
have been asking for centuries, and scientists surely ask here
and there. But I think recently, with the development of
technology in artificial intelligence and in neuroscience, I think we're
(13:06):
better able to ask this question from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
What do you mean advances in AI and neuroscience, what
has been happening there?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, we can use neural networks to visualize activity in
the brain and figure out where in the brain information
is processed, how it's processed.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And so way to have those scientists been finding in
terms of beauty.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Well, maybe it makes sense to start with our definition
of beauty and then I can talk about how the
technology relates to and enforces that definition. We just wrote
a paper that just came out in Biological Reviews. This
is with my colleagues Julian Renew from the CNRS in France,
Dave Schukar from the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland,
(13:53):
and Gil Rosenthal from the University of Padava in Italy.
And we are all evolutionary biologists who still the animal communication,
and we define it beauty then as the pleasure or
hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent of the function
or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
That's a bit of a mouthful the area, right. Okay.
What doctor Mendelssohn is doing here is trying to come
up with a definition of beauty that holds up and
that is useful to scientists. If a definition is vague
or can't be tested, then you can't really do science
with it. Say one more time, what's the definition of beauty.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
The pleasure or hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent
of the function or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Okay, so I guess we'll start with the first part.
It's a feeling. Beauty is a feeling.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yes, beauty is a feeling. Absolutely, it's the pleasure or
what psychologists or neuroscientists called hedonic impact.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
It feels good. So every animal has some kind of
a reward system. Vertebrates especially like us and other primates
and fish, which is what I study, all have What's
called a mesolympic reward system that generates positive feelings. It
seems clear from early studies of beauty and philosophy to
(15:23):
now empirically, it's been shown that beauty is pleasure and
that at least all vertebrates, if not all animals, should
have the capacity to experience that.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
To experience pleasure, or to experience the sense of beauty.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Good question. So let's start with pleasure. You have to
have that. If other animals are going to experience beauty,
they must also be able to experience pleasure. That's like
the first piece.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So it seems like you're saying that beauty is an
experience felt by the person looking at something that's quote
beautiful unquote, meaning that it's not an inherent property of something.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Very much so, yes, it's an interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's the reaction that person or animal has looking at
this other organism.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes, exactly, or listening to a beautiful piece of music
for example.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Oh right, right, all right. The first part of doctor
Mendelssohn's definition of beauty is that it's a feeling felt
by the person looking at or listening to something. It's
not inherent in the thing being observed. In other words,
Beauty really is in the eye or ear of the beholder,
(16:32):
and it's not just any feeling. It's a feeling of pleasure. Now,
she mentioned the reward system, and that is the circuit
in your brain that gets turned on when you feel good.
If you've heard of dopamine, dopamine is the brain chemical
that gets released that makes this circuit work. It's also
the circuit that gets hijacked when you become addicted. We'll
(16:55):
get to that later, but for now, just remember that
beauty is a feeling. Okay, So it's a feeling and
you said it's a feeling that's related to information processing.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yes, great, So that's like the next piece, right, and
it's specifically. The word we use in our definition is
fluent information processing. I think most people can wrap their
minds around the concept of fluency, Like when you're fluent
in a language, it's easy, right, you don't even have
to think about it. It's easy to speak that language
you're fluent. So psychologists use fluency as the basis of beauty.
(17:30):
So beauty is something that is easy, easy to process.
So in neuroesthetics they model beauty as efficient information processing.
It's when something is processed at low cost.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Oh, I guess this is bringing to mind the phrase
that someone is easy on the eyes? Is that sort
of what this relates to?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Absolutely, one hundred percent, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yes, meaning if I look at something and somehow my
brain doesn't have to think much about it, somehow that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yes, that is the core piece of beauty. And so
we're arguing that not necessarily all efficiently or fluently processed
information is beautiful, but that all beautiful stimuli have this
in common of being efficiently or fluently processed.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, this gets a little bit technical, but the main
point is that, according to doctor Mendelssohn, a key part
of something being beautiful is that it gives us information,
and that it gives us that information in a way
that's easy for our brain to process. For example, you
might apply that to a face. If face has balanced proportions,
(18:40):
maybe that's easier for our brain to process that it's
a face, and because it's easy, our brain goes, ooh,
that was easy, and it gives us a little pang
of pleasure. And that experience of pleasure, doctor Mendelssohn and
her colleagues argue is what beauty is it makes me
(19:00):
notice that you're using the word efficiency, meaning that it's
not how much information is being given to my brain,
it's how easily my brain can process it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's right. Efficiently processed information isn't necessarily simple. It can
be complex. But if that complex information is processed efficiently
at low cost, then that is pleasurable.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Well, I guess what would be the opposite of that?
Does that mean that's something that's not beautiful or ugly?
Would you say something that's not beautiful? Would you use
the word ugly?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I think that possibly this concept of ugly might have
more cognitive connotations, so it may remind us of something gross.
So ugly isn't necessarily just inefficiently processed information. Inefficiently processed
information is uncomfortable, for sure, that's been shown. But whether
it's ugly, I think, is another question.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's true some people find ugly things beautiful. Okay, we
talked about how beauty is a feeling and how it's
about information being efficient. Now let's talk about what's in
that information. And do you apply this definition of beauty
that we have so far to just other organisms or
does it apply to all things?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
All things?
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So then what sort of information am I getting when
I look at a beautiful face?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Well, you're getting a lot of information right at all levels.
But if we were to judge whether a particular face
is beautiful or not, then by our definition, we would
be asking if that face is more efficiently processed than
other faces. So there are some really basic ways that
information can be efficiently processed, Like symmetry is efficiently processed,
(20:42):
because that's basically you're getting two for one, right, So
that's cheap. Prototypicality when a stimulus is like the best
representative of a category that is efficiently processed.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
All right, This is kind of interesting. What doctor Mendelsson
means here when she talks about prototypicality is basically the
average face in a group of people. And this is
something that was found in some of the studies I
mentioned earlier. If you take a bunch of photos of
people's faces and you add all those faces together to
get kind of the average face of that group, test
subjects will generally think that face is more beautiful than
(21:18):
any one of the other faces in the group, especially
for women's faces. In other words, part of having a
beautiful face is having features that don't stand out very much.
And doctor Mendelssohn argues that face is beautiful because it's
easy for our brains to process since the average is
kind of what our brains are expecting. So you're saying
(21:42):
that our brains are sort of tuned to recognize some
certain things or like certain things, and so when something
satisfies that tuning in a really easy and efficient way,
then we think, oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yes, I mean, arguably there's potentially more to it than that,
but that's necessary but potentially insufficient component of beauty.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I see you said that there was another component, which
was its independent what it's independent of.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It's independent according to the definition of the function or
consummatory reward provided by the stimulus. So this goes back
to Kant and his idea of disinterestedness, that beauty. Beauty
is a self sufficient source of pleasure that we don't
necessarily want to own it. That beauty then is liking
without wanting, and the only wanting maybe you feel towards
(22:32):
something that's beautiful is you just want to keep processing it.
You want to keep listening, or you want to keep looking,
but you don't want to have it. You don't want
to eat it, you don't want to mate with it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Okay. The last part of this definition of beauty is
that we should like beauty for beauty's sake. In other words,
part of the definition of beauty is that it's addictive.
We want it just for the pleasure of experiencing it. Okay.
When we come back, we're going to talk about how
beauty could have affected our evolution and whether it's possible
(23:05):
for an animal like a dog or cat or fish
to experience beauty. Stay with us. You're listening to science
stuff and we're back, all right. Cool. So we have
a definition of beauty, and then how does that apply
(23:27):
to evolution and our biology and why we are all here? Great?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I love that question. So the way we came at this,
my colleagues and I, is because we study animal behavior
and we're interested in how animals choose their mates. I
study fish that are stunningly beautiful? Are they beautiful to
other fish? Are our peacock's beautiful to pea hens? What
is the experience that those animals have? What are they feeling?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Meaning? Is it a coincidence that we find a peacock
still beautiful and that it's also something phans find attractive.
Is there a connection there that's kind of what you're asking.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah, and then key, if animals experience it as beautiful,
how does that affect their decision to choose or not
choose that other individual that has this ornament as a mate?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Meaning is a peacock's tail beautiful to a phn correct? Okay,
The last question we're asking here today is what is
the role of beauty in nature? If animals and our
ancestors could experience beauty, how did it shape evolution? And
here doctor Mendelson doesn't have a lot of answers. Like
I mentioned, this theory is still pretty new, which is exciting.
(24:41):
If you've never talked to a scientist while they're still
formulating their hypothesis, it's interesting to hear how they think.
You know, it seems like we as humans use beauty
as a factor in our choice of who we want
to mate with. Is that the same for animals as well?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Here's an analogy. You would need to buy a new car,
so you go to the car sales place, or you
want a candy bar. You have a hankering for something sweet,
and you go to the grocery store and you look
at all these candy bars. Which candy bar? To what
extent does the wrapper influence your decision? You already want
the candy bar, you already want to mate. What role
(25:23):
does the beauty play.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
In that process? Yes, do we know? No?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
I don't think we do.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Okay, what are some of your hypotheses?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
So we argue that this beauty, this experience of beauty,
encourages proximity. So the idea is that an animal already
wants to mate, say it's breeding season, they're already looking
for a mate. Then they see something beautiful that makes
them feel good and they're attracted to it for that reason,
so they want to keep processing it. So it just
(25:51):
encourages proximity, and then once they're physically proximate to that individual,
then they may So it's just kind of like it's
a marketplace, and you know, there's a lot to choose from.
You just don't know which one. And there's something that
really catches your eye or catches your ear and makes
you feel good, so that's the one you.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Go to, all right. Doctor Mendelssoh's hypothesis is that beauty
evolved as a kind of hack to give animals an
edge during mate selection. Being beautiful or having features that
turn on our potential mate's information processing reward system has
nothing to do with survival, but it does help you
(26:29):
get attention. So I feel like maybe you're saying that
beauty is something that has come up even though it's
not useful for survival, Like, maybe it's just useful for
choosing a mate.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah. For sure, our brains tuning to our environment and
wanting to process information efficiently. So then what's happening is
that mutations arise that exploit this bias and that make
themselves attractive because they're efficiently processed.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Hmmm.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
It has nothing to do with whether they are more
fit if you will, or have you know, quote unquote
better genes.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Meaning a peacock's tail obviously has nothing to do with
how it might get food in the wild. But because
it pickles the peahan's soft spot for information processing, that's
why peacocks over time evolved these huge, colorful tales.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yes, and in fact, arguably this is it's not good
for them to have these big tails, right, It does
actually affect their ability to find food in a bad way.
I saw this great video of a tiger just totally
nailing a male peacock who is displaying because they're just
so obvious. Right, tigers can just the right. So and
(27:47):
Darwin famously said that a peacock's tail, when I look
at it, it makes me sick, because he had developed
his whole theory of natural selection and then he looks
at this tail and he's like, that's ridiculous. That does
nothing for its survival. So then he publishes his book
on sexual selection to explain that maybe sometimes traits can
(28:07):
help you with reproduction, even at a cost to survival.
And that's where beauty might come in.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I see, sometimes beauty might be a burden on your survival. Yes,
but because we have a beauty response, it's there because
it gives you an advantage in mating. And you're saying,
we have this beauty response because our brains like information
that's easy to process.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Got it, that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, Apparently Darwin was not a fan of peacocks. Okay.
The last part of our conversation I want to play
for you was when we talked about whether we can
change what we find beautiful if beauty is what our
brains find easy to process, and if we find easier
to process things that match what we expect. Does that
(28:53):
mean changing beauty standards? It's just about changing expectations.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And then throw another puzzling piece on top of the
mere exposure effect. So familiarity can make something more beautiful.
When you have been exposed to something, it becomes more
beautiful to a certain extent.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
But the more we were exposed to something, the more
we grow to appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, the more we like it.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And these are mostly in psychology studies where they flash
things for people and then they ask them what they like,
and they've shown that the things that have been flashed,
that they've been exposed to more are more likely.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Oh, so we can influence what we find beautiful. I
just had some interesting thoughts because you know, I also
produce a television show, and so there's always questions about
representation and what we portray in the media. And then
you're seeing that a lot in advertisements today, different body types,
different skin tones. People are trying to change the standards
(29:51):
of beauty.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
A lot of beauty is genetic or something that you
can't really change. But I think a lot of beauty
is what you can change, right, because it's just all
about efficiency and our brains are being tuned all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
We're receptive to having standards of beauty change.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I think so just by mere exposure, you can start
to influence people's standards of beauty.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
All right, I think that answers our question what makes
something beautiful? It's not skin deep. It's all in the
brain of the beholder. To close us off, I'm going
to let that Razidegi have the last word.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
The majority of the anatomy of human beings is pretty
much similar. We are all the same. We all have
the major organs, we all have the liver, we all
have the lungs. I believe that every person is beautiful.
We just need to explore it and discover it. And
that is the beauty of the beauty concept.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Thanks for joining us. See you next time you've been
listening to Science Stuff production I heard Ready Bring the
produced by me or Hm, credited by Rose Seguda, executive
producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram
And you can follow me on social media. Just search
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(31:14):
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Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
More Him, and today we're diving into the science of beauty.
What makes someone beautiful, what's going on in our brains
when we see a beautiful thing? And is it possible
to be addicted to beauty? We're going to talk to
a couple of beauty experts, including an evolutionary biologist who
(00:22):
has a brand new theory about what beauty is. So
get ready with me as we explore what makes something beautiful?
I promise the answers our real beauty. Enjoy. Hey everyone, Okay,
here are some interesting facts about beauty. Babies as young
(00:45):
as two months old can tell the difference between someone
who's supposed to be attractive and someone who's not. In
a famous nineteen eighty seven study, scientists showed a bunch
of babies photos of women that were rated by adults
to be attractive or not, and then they measured which
photos to babies would stare at more. They found that
(01:07):
babies would look at the faces of women who were
rated to be attractive more than the faces of women
rated to be less attractive. Other studies and beauty have
found that people who are considered beautiful are also more
likely to be thought of as being smarter, more trustworthy,
and confident. They get hired more for jobs, and they
(01:28):
are more likely to get paid more and get more promotions.
Studies have even found that being beautiful or attractive will
make you less likely to be found guilty if you're
ever accused of a crime. Clearly it helps to be beautiful.
So the first thing I did was try to see
how I could be more beautiful, and to do that,
(01:50):
I reached out to a plastic surgeon. Well, thank you,
doctor Sadegi for talking with us.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, thank you very much for inviting me to your studio.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I called up doctor Piem Sadegi. Doctor Sadeghi was a
plastic surgeon in his home country of Iran and did
his medical fellowship in plastic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic
in Ohio. Currently, he's the resident in pathology at Eastern
Carolina University. I wanted to ask doctor Sadeghi what he
would do to make me more beautiful, but apparently that's
(02:26):
not how it works.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
A doctor's job and responsibility is first to listen to
the patient to know what exactly the definition of beauty
of that patient is and what it means to them.
So that's very important to first understand the beauty standards.
A doctor should spend a great time dealing with the
(02:51):
patient to be able to understand those standards.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Okay, According to doctor Sadegi, a plastic surgeon's job is
to quote promote a patient beauty standards unquote, which means
it all depends on what the patient considers to be beautiful.
But that's kind of the question I wanted to know now.
The reason I reached out to doctor Sadeghi in particular
is that he's written several academic papers on plastic surgery procedures,
(03:20):
and specifically, he and his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic
published the paper titled what is Beauty? So I asked
him to tell us, how do you define beauty?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's a great question and a simple question, but a
very sophisticated answer. I want to answer your question with this.
Beauty is a multi dimensional concept that has intrigued philosophers, artists, scientists,
and surgeons for centuries. Cannot be fully defined, as Plato
(03:55):
suggests it, Beauty is not just what appears pleasing. It
often harbors a deeper meaning or essence, inviting us to
contemplate beyond the surface. From both philosophical and neurobiological perspectives,
beauty engages not only our senses, but also our emotions
(04:18):
and memory, evoking a powerful, often mysterious response. So good
luck with that. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
We're trying. Yeah, thanks a lot, doctor said, Diggy. It's
a tricky concept, so I asked him if he could
be more specific. For example, what makes a human phase
or body appear more beautiful?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So promasurgical and scientific perspective, Symmetry, proportion, and harmony are
key elements of facial and bodily beauty. For the phase,
features such as balance, third and fifth symmetry, and the
proportions like the golden ratio play important roles. Similarly, for
(05:04):
the body, of characteristics like waste to heat ratios in
women or muscle or symmetry in men are often perceived
as attractive.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
You mentioned proportions. Can you explain what that means?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So the proportions of the elements in the face are
like different in different people and in different cultures.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Meaning some people might have larger eyes.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Correct, like the distances between the eyes the nose. The
nose with the lips, the length of their lips, the
proportion of the upper lip to the lower lip.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, here's our first clue about what makes something beautiful,
and this is the idea that it's related to ratios
or proportions, for example, the ratio between the waist and
the hip in women, or the shoulders and the waist
in men, or for faces, how symmetric you're is, or
what the relative distances are between your eyes and nose
(06:05):
and ears and mouth and cheeks are. But searching the
scientific literature on this, it's hard to find a study
that conclusively proves there's a perfect face or an ideal
set of ratios that people find beautiful. Some studies find
that symmetry is important, some don't. Scientists have tried to
(06:25):
look for common features and the proportions of faces that
are ranked by test subjects to be beautiful, and it
seems there are none. It's like, we can all tell
if a face looks beautiful to us, but trying to
say why that face is beautiful is hard. In one
two thousand and eight study, researchers at Google and tele
(06:46):
Abeef University had to use ninety eight variables about the
face to get a computer program to predict how human
judges would rate faces to be beautiful. In other words,
when we're looking at a face and judging whether we
find it handsome, pretty or not, we might be juggling
as many as ninety eight variables in our heads. And
(07:09):
there are several ideas that make this even more complicated.
So there is sort of like a general idealized face
and body for men and women. But I imagine that
it can vary depending on the person and the culture.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Right correct. For example, in Asia, the curvedness in the
forehead and also the ratio of forehead between like the
hairline and the eyebrows is different.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Oh, how is it different? So in Asia prefer.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
What not to be like totally flat, let's say, And
that is more correlated in Asian cultures, So we need
to also consider that. For example, if you want to
practice in Asian countries, you might get more requests from
the patient who want to do these types of procedures
(08:02):
rather than the others.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yes, as you can imagine, beauty standards vary with culture.
What's considered beautiful in one culture might be different to
what's considered beautiful in another culture. Beauty standards can also
change over time within a culture.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
These standards of beauty have evolved dramatically across time and cultures.
In ancient Greece, proportion and mathematical harmony were central. During
the Renaissance, fuller figures were admired as symbols of fertility
and wealth. Today, especially in Western media, beauty often favors thinness, youth,
(08:45):
and flawlessness, though this is now being increasingly challenged by
more inclusive ideals that celebrate diverse body types, ages, and
skin conditions. Importantly, each culture defines beauty in its own way.
This emphasizes that beauty is not only in the eye
(09:08):
of the beholder, but also shaped by the society and
time in which we leave.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Okay, how do we make sense of all of this?
It seems that beauty is definitely a thing. Babies can
recognize it, which means there's something inherent in our DNA
about it, and there's also something universal about beauty. No
matter what culture you're in, people talk about beauty, and
everyone in the world has opinions about whether something or
(09:36):
someone is beautiful or not. At the same time, it's
hard to describe exactly what it is that makes us think,
ah that's beautiful and what's considered beautiful can be different
depending on the person, their culture, and it can change
over time. So to date, there hasn't really been a
(09:57):
strong scientific theory about what beauty is until now. On
our next segment, we'll talk to an evolutionary biologist who
thinks she has a theory of beauty that covers all
of these aspects of beauty and how it has played
a role in our evolution. But first, I was curious
(10:18):
about something doctor Siedeggi brought up. You mentioned that the
goal is to promote the patient's quality of life. What
does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Right? So, when you think of the beauty concept and
when you have a beautiful image of yourself in your subconsciousness,
you think in a positive way. When you think that
you are the most beautiful person, not comparing to anyone,
but just you are beautiful, this is a positive statement
(10:49):
of your mind and this positivity, this mindset, positivity is
very important in your daily job, in your daily activity
because it gives a positive energy to your mind, so
then you can better perform in your daily basics.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I say, feeling beautiful is part of how we feel
better about ourselves in general.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
That's right. And also it can affect the others. It
can be transmitted to coworkers, to friends, to anyone because
it's a positive energy, and that's why I believe it
can promote the quality of life.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
All Right, we'll dig into the biology of beauty and
how it's affected evolution after the break and stay with us.
We'll be right back. Welcome back. All right. We talked
about how beauty is hard to define and how there
(11:51):
doesn't seem to be a standard for what beauty is.
It can vary from person to person and from culture
to culture. But does that mean that it's impossible to
study scientifically? Not necessarily. There's a growing group of scientists
who think they figured out the right way to define
beauty and they think it works for humans and possibly
(12:13):
other animals. To fill us and I talked to one
of those scientists, doctor Tamra Mendelssohn.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
My name is Tamra Mendelssohn, and I am a professor
of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
I study evolutionary biology and specifically animal behavior.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So to start us off, how do scientists define beauty?
Speaker 3 (12:35):
You know, it's hard to pin down, so you might
get a different definition from every scientist you ask.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I guess that's kind of the beauty of it.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Sure, I would say only relatively recently have a critical
mass of scientists really started to address the question. Philosophers
have been asking for centuries, and scientists surely ask here
and there. But I think recently, with the development of
technology in artificial intelligence and in neuroscience, I think we're
(13:06):
better able to ask this question from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
What do you mean advances in AI and neuroscience, what
has been happening there?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, we can use neural networks to visualize activity in
the brain and figure out where in the brain information
is processed, how it's processed.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And so way to have those scientists been finding in
terms of beauty.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Well, maybe it makes sense to start with our definition
of beauty and then I can talk about how the
technology relates to and enforces that definition. We just wrote
a paper that just came out in Biological Reviews. This
is with my colleagues Julian Renew from the CNRS in France,
Dave Schukar from the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland,
(13:53):
and Gil Rosenthal from the University of Padava in Italy.
And we are all evolutionary biologists who still the animal communication,
and we define it beauty then as the pleasure or
hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent of the function
or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
That's a bit of a mouthful the area, right. Okay.
What doctor Mendelssohn is doing here is trying to come
up with a definition of beauty that holds up and
that is useful to scientists. If a definition is vague
or can't be tested, then you can't really do science
with it. Say one more time, what's the definition of beauty.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
The pleasure or hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent
of the function or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Okay, so I guess we'll start with the first part.
It's a feeling. Beauty is a feeling.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yes, beauty is a feeling. Absolutely, it's the pleasure or
what psychologists or neuroscientists called hedonic impact.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
It feels good. So every animal has some kind of
a reward system. Vertebrates especially like us and other primates
and fish, which is what I study, all have What's
called a mesolympic reward system that generates positive feelings. It
seems clear from early studies of beauty and philosophy to
(15:23):
now empirically, it's been shown that beauty is pleasure and
that at least all vertebrates, if not all animals, should
have the capacity to experience that.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
To experience pleasure, or to experience the sense of beauty.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Good question. So let's start with pleasure. You have to
have that. If other animals are going to experience beauty,
they must also be able to experience pleasure. That's like
the first piece.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So it seems like you're saying that beauty is an
experience felt by the person looking at something that's quote
beautiful unquote, meaning that it's not an inherent property of something.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Very much so, yes, it's an interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's the reaction that person or animal has looking at
this other organism.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes, exactly, or listening to a beautiful piece of music
for example.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Oh right, right, all right. The first part of doctor
Mendelssohn's definition of beauty is that it's a feeling felt
by the person looking at or listening to something. It's
not inherent in the thing being observed. In other words,
Beauty really is in the eye or ear of the beholder,
(16:32):
and it's not just any feeling. It's a feeling of pleasure. Now,
she mentioned the reward system, and that is the circuit
in your brain that gets turned on when you feel good.
If you've heard of dopamine, dopamine is the brain chemical
that gets released that makes this circuit work. It's also
the circuit that gets hijacked when you become addicted. We'll
(16:55):
get to that later, but for now, just remember that
beauty is a feeling. Okay, So it's a feeling and
you said it's a feeling that's related to information processing.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yes, great, So that's like the next piece, right, and
it's specifically. The word we use in our definition is
fluent information processing. I think most people can wrap their
minds around the concept of fluency, Like when you're fluent
in a language, it's easy, right, you don't even have
to think about it. It's easy to speak that language
you're fluent. So psychologists use fluency as the basis of beauty.
(17:30):
So beauty is something that is easy, easy to process.
So in neuroesthetics they model beauty as efficient information processing.
It's when something is processed at low cost.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Oh, I guess this is bringing to mind the phrase
that someone is easy on the eyes? Is that sort
of what this relates to?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Absolutely, one hundred percent, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yes, meaning if I look at something and somehow my
brain doesn't have to think much about it, somehow that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yes, that is the core piece of beauty. And so
we're arguing that not necessarily all efficiently or fluently processed
information is beautiful, but that all beautiful stimuli have this
in common of being efficiently or fluently processed.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, this gets a little bit technical, but the main
point is that, according to doctor Mendelssohn, a key part
of something being beautiful is that it gives us information,
and that it gives us that information in a way
that's easy for our brain to process. For example, you
might apply that to a face. If face has balanced proportions,
(18:40):
maybe that's easier for our brain to process that it's
a face, and because it's easy, our brain goes, ooh,
that was easy, and it gives us a little pang
of pleasure. And that experience of pleasure, doctor Mendelssohn and
her colleagues argue is what beauty is it makes me
(19:00):
notice that you're using the word efficiency, meaning that it's
not how much information is being given to my brain,
it's how easily my brain can process it.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's right. Efficiently processed information isn't necessarily simple. It can
be complex. But if that complex information is processed efficiently
at low cost, then that is pleasurable.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Well, I guess what would be the opposite of that?
Does that mean that's something that's not beautiful or ugly?
Would you say something that's not beautiful? Would you use
the word ugly?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I think that possibly this concept of ugly might have
more cognitive connotations, so it may remind us of something gross.
So ugly isn't necessarily just inefficiently processed information. Inefficiently processed
information is uncomfortable, for sure, that's been shown. But whether
it's ugly, I think, is another question.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It's true some people find ugly things beautiful. Okay, we
talked about how beauty is a feeling and how it's
about information being efficient. Now let's talk about what's in
that information. And do you apply this definition of beauty
that we have so far to just other organisms or
does it apply to all things?
Speaker 3 (20:14):
All things?
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So then what sort of information am I getting when
I look at a beautiful face?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Well, you're getting a lot of information right at all levels.
But if we were to judge whether a particular face
is beautiful or not, then by our definition, we would
be asking if that face is more efficiently processed than
other faces. So there are some really basic ways that
information can be efficiently processed, Like symmetry is efficiently processed,
(20:42):
because that's basically you're getting two for one, right, So
that's cheap. Prototypicality when a stimulus is like the best
representative of a category that is efficiently processed.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
All right, This is kind of interesting. What doctor Mendelsson
means here when she talks about prototypicality is basically the
average face in a group of people. And this is
something that was found in some of the studies I
mentioned earlier. If you take a bunch of photos of
people's faces and you add all those faces together to
get kind of the average face of that group, test
subjects will generally think that face is more beautiful than
(21:18):
any one of the other faces in the group, especially
for women's faces. In other words, part of having a
beautiful face is having features that don't stand out very much.
And doctor Mendelssohn argues that face is beautiful because it's
easy for our brains to process since the average is
kind of what our brains are expecting. So you're saying
(21:42):
that our brains are sort of tuned to recognize some
certain things or like certain things, and so when something
satisfies that tuning in a really easy and efficient way,
then we think, oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yes, I mean, arguably there's potentially more to it than that,
but that's necessary but potentially insufficient component of beauty.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I see you said that there was another component, which
was its independent what it's independent of.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It's independent according to the definition of the function or
consummatory reward provided by the stimulus. So this goes back
to Kant and his idea of disinterestedness, that beauty. Beauty
is a self sufficient source of pleasure that we don't
necessarily want to own it. That beauty then is liking
without wanting, and the only wanting maybe you feel towards
(22:32):
something that's beautiful is you just want to keep processing it.
You want to keep listening, or you want to keep looking,
but you don't want to have it. You don't want
to eat it, you don't want to mate with it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Okay. The last part of this definition of beauty is
that we should like beauty for beauty's sake. In other words,
part of the definition of beauty is that it's addictive.
We want it just for the pleasure of experiencing it. Okay.
When we come back, we're going to talk about how
beauty could have affected our evolution and whether it's possible
(23:05):
for an animal like a dog or cat or fish
to experience beauty. Stay with us. You're listening to science
stuff and we're back, all right. Cool. So we have
a definition of beauty, and then how does that apply
(23:27):
to evolution and our biology and why we are all here? Great?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I love that question. So the way we came at this,
my colleagues and I, is because we study animal behavior
and we're interested in how animals choose their mates. I
study fish that are stunningly beautiful? Are they beautiful to
other fish? Are our peacock's beautiful to pea hens? What
is the experience that those animals have? What are they feeling?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Meaning? Is it a coincidence that we find a peacock
still beautiful and that it's also something phans find attractive.
Is there a connection there that's kind of what you're asking.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah, and then key, if animals experience it as beautiful,
how does that affect their decision to choose or not
choose that other individual that has this ornament as a mate?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Meaning is a peacock's tail beautiful to a phn correct? Okay,
The last question we're asking here today is what is
the role of beauty in nature? If animals and our
ancestors could experience beauty, how did it shape evolution? And
here doctor Mendelson doesn't have a lot of answers. Like
I mentioned, this theory is still pretty new, which is exciting.
(24:41):
If you've never talked to a scientist while they're still
formulating their hypothesis, it's interesting to hear how they think.
You know, it seems like we as humans use beauty
as a factor in our choice of who we want
to mate with. Is that the same for animals as well?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Here's an analogy. You would need to buy a new car,
so you go to the car sales place, or you
want a candy bar. You have a hankering for something sweet,
and you go to the grocery store and you look
at all these candy bars. Which candy bar? To what
extent does the wrapper influence your decision? You already want
the candy bar, you already want to mate. What role
(25:23):
does the beauty play.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
In that process? Yes, do we know? No?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
I don't think we do.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Okay, what are some of your hypotheses?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
So we argue that this beauty, this experience of beauty,
encourages proximity. So the idea is that an animal already
wants to mate, say it's breeding season, they're already looking
for a mate. Then they see something beautiful that makes
them feel good and they're attracted to it for that reason,
so they want to keep processing it. So it just
(25:51):
encourages proximity, and then once they're physically proximate to that individual,
then they may So it's just kind of like it's
a marketplace, and you know, there's a lot to choose from.
You just don't know which one. And there's something that
really catches your eye or catches your ear and makes
you feel good, so that's the one you.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Go to, all right. Doctor Mendelssoh's hypothesis is that beauty
evolved as a kind of hack to give animals an
edge during mate selection. Being beautiful or having features that
turn on our potential mate's information processing reward system has
nothing to do with survival, but it does help you
(26:29):
get attention. So I feel like maybe you're saying that
beauty is something that has come up even though it's
not useful for survival, Like, maybe it's just useful for
choosing a mate.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah. For sure, our brains tuning to our environment and
wanting to process information efficiently. So then what's happening is
that mutations arise that exploit this bias and that make
themselves attractive because they're efficiently processed.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Hmmm.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
It has nothing to do with whether they are more
fit if you will, or have you know, quote unquote
better genes.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Meaning a peacock's tail obviously has nothing to do with
how it might get food in the wild. But because
it pickles the peahan's soft spot for information processing, that's
why peacocks over time evolved these huge, colorful tales.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yes, and in fact, arguably this is it's not good
for them to have these big tails, right, It does
actually affect their ability to find food in a bad way.
I saw this great video of a tiger just totally
nailing a male peacock who is displaying because they're just
so obvious. Right, tigers can just the right. So and
(27:47):
Darwin famously said that a peacock's tail, when I look
at it, it makes me sick, because he had developed
his whole theory of natural selection and then he looks
at this tail and he's like, that's ridiculous. That does
nothing for its survival. So then he publishes his book
on sexual selection to explain that maybe sometimes traits can
(28:07):
help you with reproduction, even at a cost to survival.
And that's where beauty might come in.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
I see, sometimes beauty might be a burden on your survival. Yes,
but because we have a beauty response, it's there because
it gives you an advantage in mating. And you're saying,
we have this beauty response because our brains like information
that's easy to process.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Got it, that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, Apparently Darwin was not a fan of peacocks. Okay.
The last part of our conversation I want to play
for you was when we talked about whether we can
change what we find beautiful if beauty is what our
brains find easy to process, and if we find easier
to process things that match what we expect. Does that
(28:53):
mean changing beauty standards? It's just about changing expectations.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And then throw another puzzling piece on top of the
mere exposure effect. So familiarity can make something more beautiful.
When you have been exposed to something, it becomes more
beautiful to a certain extent.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
But the more we were exposed to something, the more
we grow to appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, the more we like it.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And these are mostly in psychology studies where they flash
things for people and then they ask them what they like,
and they've shown that the things that have been flashed,
that they've been exposed to more are more likely.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Oh, so we can influence what we find beautiful. I
just had some interesting thoughts because you know, I also
produce a television show, and so there's always questions about
representation and what we portray in the media. And then
you're seeing that a lot in advertisements today, different body types,
different skin tones. People are trying to change the standards
(29:51):
of beauty.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
A lot of beauty is genetic or something that you
can't really change. But I think a lot of beauty
is what you can change, right, because it's just all
about efficiency and our brains are being tuned all the time.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
We're receptive to having standards of beauty change.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I think so just by mere exposure, you can start
to influence people's standards of beauty.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
All right, I think that answers our question what makes
something beautiful? It's not skin deep. It's all in the
brain of the beholder. To close us off, I'm going
to let that Razidegi have the last word.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
The majority of the anatomy of human beings is pretty
much similar. We are all the same. We all have
the major organs, we all have the liver, we all
have the lungs. I believe that every person is beautiful.
We just need to explore it and discover it. And
that is the beauty of the beauty concept.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Thanks for joining us. See you next time you've been
listening to Science Stuff production I heard Ready Bring the
produced by me or Hm, credited by Rose Seguda, executive
producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram
And you can follow me on social media. Just search
for PhD Comics and the name of your favorite platform.
(31:14):
Be sure to subscribe to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.