and could also inadvertently damage the home to the traditions of courtship. dr helen fisher biological anthropologist human behavior researcher and author of why we love the nature and chemistry of romantic love welcome to the show it's really great to have you with us now on the way of sexual harassment allegations to start with the once an affair has perhaps changed a way with think about male female interaction in general so is romantic courtship going to change irrevocably from now on will we be constantly asking permission to touch someone's hand or kissed him. i think in some ways it's going to be exactly the same and in some ways it's going to be very different i think strangely powerful men are going to think twice about using their power to get a woman to do something i think the days of the casting couch where women have to give out sex in order to get a good job are probably over those are the people at the top but there's an awful lot of the rest of us who. just go out on dates and don't want to ask permission

the brain is not well built for this give and take of do you can you kiss me can you touch my breast can you give me a hug you know courtship was supposed to be a much more natural process and i do think that it's going to be very difficult to change that i don't think that this constant consent is going to end up working what we've really got to do is train women to say no to because so that they never get into this situation where they've got to give this constant give and take so then probably you have to agree with the french actress catherine deneuve among others because she voiced opposition at the way of harassment accusation saying rape is a crime but insistent or clumsy if learning is not a crime nor is gallantry just aggression do you think there's a point here. i do think she has a point one of the problems is you know i'm an anthropologist and i study love men are not as good your regular man on the street is not as good at picking up all of

the little messages that women send they will miss renie what women are sending and they tend to over evaluate a woman signal so they will think that there is some sort of come on that a woman is giving when in fact she is not giving it and this comes from millions of years of men needing to see it was not adaptive for a man to miss an honest sexual cue so men will over interpret over really great men and women's cues because for millions of years those that didn't didn't have the partnerships didn't send their d.n.a. into tomorrow so men can be. very clumsy about it and men have to learn to read women's cues better but women have to learn to send very clear cues so that men know what they're doing so what's the distinction between sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior can we count on a cultural difference i mean should we approach russia with an american standard for instance yeah this is a problem and we've got all kinds of international standards even within america

even within the same social said i mean some men don't know now when i walk towards the door with an open the door for me and be sort of a traditional gentleman or whether they let me open the door because they don't want to offend me as a feminist so it's a time of tremendous transition not only between cultures but within cultures even in the same city even people of the same age group so as we redefine what is appropriate and what isn't appropriate and what is sexual harassment i think we're going to create a new group of taboos and rules and we're in the middle of that transition now some people have compared me to with a witch hunt do you feel it might be getting out of hand i mean actually preventing relationships from forming are man just going to be so scared. to do anything at all. well there certainly are people who do feel that it is

a witch hunt i mean as apologist i just look at these things and study them but some people are beginning to see all men as predators and all women as victims and it's a real shame because not all men are predators by any stretch of the imagination and certainly women are not victims all the time you know it's interesting one person wrote well priests and women are going to be the chaperone again we're going backwards if we want to be constantly protected by others so i do think that this is dramatically changing what we call harassment. you're going to not know whether this boy is a receiver which is this guy is just really in the mix signal or a bad signal or something so each one of us is going to make clear what we need. so that our partners understand so we hear a lot of heartbreaking stories about sexual assault or harassment towards women but the fact is that in

a lot of places in the world women like the way things are i mean they like being pursued conquered their knowledge doesn't always mean you know and so on i mean i can tell you for myself i don't usually just say yes but i expect the guy to perceive i mean there is a question of the joke that i heard that i thought was genius when a general says a yes that means yes when general says no it means no when he says maybe he's not a general and then when a diplomat says a yes they mean yes and one of diplomat says maybe they don't know and if a diplomat says no that he's not a diplomat but when a young lady says maybe she means yes and when she says no it means maybe and if she says yes she's not a you really. how does that make it into the idea of changing our behavior when it comes to romance you can tell man to stop harassment but how do you know the woman to stop enjoying it. right well you know women expect men to make the first move

you know i do a national study in america i've got data on thirty five thousand single americans from every walk of life every age group every background etc and we ask men it's called singles in america and i do it with the dating site match dot com and we ask men you know would you like women to make the first move would you like women to be the first to kiss would you like to have women be the first to. invite you into the bedroom and ninety one percent of men say yes they would love to have women take over some of this role but women don't do it. everywhere in the world my guess is that probably just about everywhere women expect men to make that first move and here we are in an age where men are scared to make the first move don't know how to make the first move don't know what's right to make the first move and women are really sitting around waiting for them to make the first move so in this time of tremendous transition. men are going to have to sort of dope it out and women are

going to have to be clear or women are going to get it going to make the first. one percent and man want it because they're afraid it can be seen as harassment who is going to do that first move. i think we're going to go back to having men make the first move and i think you know women are beginning to invite men out they'll invite them out in the group they'll say well i've got one extra theater ticket come along with me that are the beginning to figure out ways to to make the first move to make some indication that they are interested you know pick up runs on messages they have to be returned a man may make the first move but the women will put herself in a position to say in a restaurant or. in a party a woman will go and stand near a bed and she'll ask questions to casually tap him on the shoulder still smiling at him but there's something called initiative transfer and it's some point. she's made yourself clear she's made herself available but he has to make the first move

to put his arm around her cancer etc these are very primitive courtship rituals i don't think they're going to change it's just that women have to be a little bit clearer about what they want and what they don't want is they could wake or woman stronger men dynamic something that's just in us biologically and we can't fight it i don't think that women are weak or women are very clever you know a lot of them and they're really. i mean well they're physically but you know women are very clever at flirting women read posture gesture and tone of voice better than men do they are more complex tools holistic long term thinkers than men are they tend to be nurturing and emotionally expressive so you know you can see a man who's it might be bigger but these days we're not you know size is not what's the issue it's a play of power play of of who is interested and who's not interested and that's

psychological that's that's that's been textual and women are very good at reading context very good at reading tone of voice posture just your facial expressions and they can run circles around a man just by being charming but you know digging in here by suggesting that cetera . and i think they will continue to do it women are extremely powerful we just don't advertise. so canadian clinical psychologist john peterson claims that women really prefer a strong partner over a weak one and when they end up with a soft man they end up dominating and being miserable is dominating in a relationship is not a female thing generally speaking i mean probably are exceptions i don't like somebody who aren't. i don't know really what you mean by dominating i mean. you can dominate by i mean much more money but you know you can be the president of the bank but you can come home and be dominated by the wife in the living room. you

know you will die you think you are you can and usually once you're at how you are the one who's in charge taking all the decisions and making all this is just for the two of you. well the data really show that the finest relationships are where there's a real balance in the relationship is soon as it begins to get skewed you begin to have real problems i mean the woman might dominate in many ways and so the man is going to object to that and go elsewhere men might dominate in the women is going to object or. go elsewhere so the finest relationships are in which there's a balance of power and each person respects the other when i asked singles what they're looking for in a partner the number one thing and i ask it year after year in this massive study is respect and when you really respect somebody when you feel you can confide in them when they make you laugh when you find them physically attractive and when they make enough time for you you're going to have a good relationship is

a matter of fact you know i studied the brain i put people in brain scanners and studied the brain circuitry of romantic love and attachment and i did one study of long married people and these are the three brain regions that are linked with long term happiness psychologists will say all kinds of things about what makes you happy but this is what the brain says these are the three brain regions that become active in a long term marriage happy marriage brain region link with empathy a brain region lead with controlling your own stress and your own emotions and a brain region linked with what i call positive illusions the ability to overlook what you don't like about somebody and focus on what you do we found it those three brain regions just as active in men as in. women if you can express them but they control yourself and all of which you don't like you're likely to have a happy partnership for both men and women who are going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking about the evolution

of human relationships with helen fisher as apologists and human behavior researchers say. it's. possible to. look a state it's a city it. must. lose it. could feel it's doing a little cool wall. doesn't even

really destroy. all four school it's only about the looking out into the pit. full to one of the ninety one columns on the wall she will not want the. boy. cut. you'll both. you know world of big partisan movies a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bats and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now

for watching closely watching the hawks. what politicians do something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to be rich. that's a going to be for us this is like the full story in the morning can't be good but i'm interested always in the waters in the house. where sidney.

and we're back with dr helen fisher anthropologist and human behavior researcher discussing gender roles and the changes romantic relations have shown during today's world no helen what is it what it's like when your partner is a country's leader what other day in a mix of such a relationship i mean do you just naturally have to submit more out of the way. it's going to depend on the relationship i mean somebody like macross hunt in france gets a great deal of guidance from his wife you know she's really schooled him on how to give a speech they have all kinds of conversations about what the right thing to do is under certain circumstances she's very much of a partner in his political world and his political life and his style of leadership so actually i think that mccrone and his wife. the future and i think that somebody

like trump and melania his wife is the past. plays almost no rule in any of his decisions. doesn't appear as if she makes any kind of public appearances that she doesn't need to it doesn't seem as if she is in any way playing any leadership role. as a spouse so i think there's all kinds of different forms of leadership i know with a former american president yes i want to and i want to as a life was very useful to him i want to go actually step by step to constructing each one of those relationships that you brought up but we'll start with a bomb a dynamic because there's a lot more of an equal partnership well at least that's how it looked from the outside for instance with trump like you've said well this man power why is your approach to power sharing in the relationship so different. oh very different people you're talking about obama obama well very different. obama's and they. will

trump is a very high testosterone guy is also a very high dose i study the brain circuitry of personality and we've evolved for very broad styles of thinking and behaving like with the dopamine serotonin to run an estrogen system and trump is why i'm and i'm not as a psychoanalyst but the bottom line is it's pretty clear that he's very high testosterone and very high dove i mean very impulsive men apparently quite narcissistic and not interested in sharing power he didn't pick a woman who appeared to be interested in his powers i don't know whether she was interested in his money probably quite charming in bed who choose to know but they are not a leadership couple the way say obama is obama is a much more high estrogen man he's a very verbal e skilled good very good people skills he was always interested in the little guy who would go you know kitchen to kitchen talking to people in the suburbs and and

the hinterlands trying to figure out what they needed he's a touchy feely guy who has tremendous compassion for. a whole lot of people and he married a woman who shares his values and is a very strong woman she is i think more high testosterone than he is he's got a lot of opinions he respects her opinions and they've done it as a team apparently when obama was first approached to become president one of the first things he said i have to ask michelle will it be ok with michelle is she going to be interested in doing this with me i don't expect that trump ever. well i'm sure if your partner in this. latest scandal is going trump's presidency firing fieri claims malani am broke down in tears when her husband's victory was announced apparently not of joy or anything i mean being the first lady the president's wife really that bad. well i think that the. going to depend on who you are and what you want i mean if you want to play

a big role in world politics you're interested in changing the world. doing a great deal for humanity you would probably see it as an enormous opportunity and i my guess is that michelle obama saw it exactly that way whereas malani in a probably wants a relatively comfortable life in which she can raise up her son and have some peace and quiet and she's not going to get that this way when he became president apparently when he learned that he was president the first thing he did it is go in and talk to her about it to burst into tears so i don't know whether she did or didn't didn't but she's not taking a huge active role the way other president's wife has which is a good indication that this is a power trip that he's enjoying is enjoying it by himself he did not choose a woman who wants to participate in this part of his life and perhaps they're both comfortable with her staying out of the picture and him jumping in so every single relationship is going to be different they're going to see power differently they're going to say their roles in the marriage differently and their roles in

society different so i think it is a very important time in human evolution where both men and women can choose to expand their roles in all kinds of ways and we're seeing a quite a right of different sorts of partnerships including obama and trump well and then there are man who are husbands and leaders like angela merkel or margaret thatcher what do you think is their role in all of that i mean can you really be a macho alpha male when your wife pretty much runs half of the free world. it's entirely possible that they didn't want to show male. i believe that. i mean both of these women are very high testosterone women there are matter of fact they're let's get it done is entirely possible when they fell in love they fell in love with somebody who didn't just wanted to be a supportive partner or wouldn't have worked out. you know when i study personality people are very high testosterone tend to choose people who are high estrogen who

want to be supportive who want to be nurturing who want to think long term and who want to be a helpmate so it's my guess that two very high testosterone people are not likely to make a very strong marriage and are not likely to go into politics together so i'm not surprised that. her and angela merkel of i mean angela merkel i think she's a physics or chemical i don't know she got a ph d. in a in a very mathematically based science and she's chosen a husband who was i think also a physicist. and so they probably see a great deal in each other's intellectual concerns and he. appears to be happy that she is. doing what she's doing for the world and trying to be supportive of or while she's doing it it wouldn't have been a stable marriage and they probably would have broken up of. merkel has been

margaret thatcher's husband didn't want to play the supportive role they would have left there is sort of these days it may be hard to leave because you know yes. i want to tell you once you are cast in the role it doesn't look too good for the further has been who left you yeah. yeah you know oh dear and you know your i'm going to go somewhere else i want to do physics and you want to run the world forget it no they both picked men who wanted to be supportive of them and indeed were because both women have been very effective. there's something else i want to talk to you about there's a survey by german saucy ologist which says that there is a direct connection between politicians good looks and the votes they get so are we with the wording the same way with swiped and or. and why isn't george clooney president then. we're going to have more than good looks and good looks always are useful when i put people into

a brain scanner we know the little factory that lights up when you look at a good looking face it's a it's a factory that put pumps out and dopamine and gives you a sense of pleasure so even if you're walking down the street and you see somebody who's very good looking you don't necessarily want to talk to him you want to get on your way but you notice that and you sort of enjoy a looking at them so we enjoy looking at a good looking face and it will probably help you anywhere but you need more than a good looking face to run the world and you need a smart idea is you need to be a good speaker you need to dress appropriately you need to know yourself probably because we've got some now the don't but never mind. you know to be an effective leader you need a lot more than just good looks so loving someone or being attracted to someone is a really they claim sure of the deal is it can you love someone till death do you part or can you love someone literally to death killings were jealous when crimes

of passion they're among the most common so how do you how do you go how how do we go so fast from loving and caring to hating and detesting the very same person why is the line between the two so the same it's actually extremely easy when you study the brain the brain circuitry for intense for manic love are actually extremely well connected to. brain circuits to generate feelings of hate the opposite of love is not hate the opposite of love is indifference that's that's the real difference when you when you don't care anymore that's the opposite of love and hate and you you know when you think about it love and hate have a lot in common they both are high energy there's a lot of focus there's a lot of motivation there's a lot of craving to to to when somebody you are to. hurt somebody and some of the big. motivations are the same for both love and hate so they're well connected in

the brain. and it's very easy to slip from love to hate and back to love again as a matter of fact you can do both at the same time you really hate somebody for what they're doing to you and still be passionately in love with you in love with them at the same time so they can actually even go together so how do you stop love becoming such a dangers obsession i mean isn't weiner smack your husband's had with a frying pan for cheating and the infamous words of president trump about grabbing women really the same side of the coin i mean isn't all about session and domination is love really about that i don't think love is about that at all i think we've all three distinctly different brain systems for mating the reproduction one is this extra but it's feelings of intense romantic love and the third is feelings of deep attachment sex drive gets your answer looking for a whole range of partners you can have sex with somebody you're not in love with we're manic love enables you to focus your mate in the g. and just want to time and the third brain system of attachment enables you to stick with this person at least long enough to raise

a single child through infancy together so they're different brain systems and the basic traits of romantic love have nothing to do with power we seem to be so fixated on power these days but when you fall in love with somebody the first thing that happens is that they take on special meaning everything about them becomes special the car they drive is different from every other car in the parking lot the street they live on the music that they like then you feel when things are going well a mood swings into horrible despair when things are going poorly all kinds of bodily reactions butterflies in the stomach and dry mouth when you talk to them real possessiveness you want to win them intense craving for them we know the brain circuitry high in motivation to win this person. and power is really not basic to the feelings of and. romantic love holds host a constellation of other traits and. wow i could just talk to you for days and days

but i have to say thank you for there's a wonderful conversation on this now thanks so much alan it was really interesting we're talking to dr helen fisher biological anthropologist and human behavior researcher about how the way of sexual harassment stories are actually going to change romantic relations well that's it for this edition of sophie and co i will see you next time. it's a very rough roads around you so it's rough climates and you have to fight to be able to live in the flat. it was gunshots on top of them and so many friends

say what happened in the morning and i've been even up i will don't think anything will back up for me you know i don't want to see a better body in this world when these are the two punches but in the good. old to me a good mood and. you don't think about these movies so good on you because three it's like and you know another patient. is democratic socialism the future of the democratic party the future of america is moving to the left a winning strategy to take on donald trump's vision of conservative populism one thing is undeniable mainstream politics in both parties for under pressure to evolve and become more accountable.

we are going through a dramatic economic and social cultural transformation that women want to participate gay and lesbian people want immigrants want rights in many cities are saying that's my way but there are more traditional parts of the society that are saying no i don't want that i live in a more of a rural community i believe we should have one national because i believe in a country that's divided as much as any in the world we actually have to localise our government.

you know you. two palestinian protesters are killed on the gaza border as clashes also robbery tween israeli soldiers and muslim worshipers on the temple mount in jerusalem. the firm behind the dettori a strong russia just here is something to court in the us after a lawsuit is brought by a russian entrepreneur. and i quote or says wiki leaks founder julian assange may soon have to leave their embassy in london where he's been for the past six years. the latest on these stories head to r.t. dot com in the meantime stay with us for the big picture.