The Intimate Animal, a new book from Kinsey Institute Executive Director Dr. Justin Garcia

The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love

Kinsey Institute

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The Intimate Animal, by Kinsey Institute Executive Director Dr. Justin Garcia

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Credit: Courtesy of Little, Brown Spark

Why do we love who we love? Why do we stay in unfulfilling relationships and stray from rewarding ones? Is it ever a good idea to open a relationship? How has the digital age affected courtship? And why do some longtime couples crash and burn while others stay madly in love? These are just some of the questions Kinsey Institute Executive Director Dr. Justin Garcia explores in his highly anticipated new book, The Intimate Animal.  

Drawing on decades of interdisciplinary research in evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and social science, Dr. Garcia reveals the surprising science behind why we crave connection, why relationships can be so complicated, and how intimacy anchors us in the world. With warmth and clarity, his book explains how humans have evolved to need meaningful relationships, while exploring how modern challenges such as digital dating, shifting social norms, and the loneliness epidemic are impacting our ability to connect today. 

Blending rigorous science with real-world relevance, The Intimate Animal shows us we are not prisoners of our drives for sex or love. And the more we understand about the science behind our choices, the better equipped we are to build healthy and happy relationships.  

Special Preorder Opportunity 

Pre-order a copy of The Intimate Animal by January 26, 2026, to join a special behind-the-scenes conversation with Dr. Garcia answering all YOUR questions about sex and relationships on Thursday, January 29 from 7-8 pm ET. Dr. Garcia will be joined by journalist Nayeema Raza, the creator and host of the podcast Smart Girl Dumb Questions. (A recording will be made available for those unable to attend live.) 

Pre-order your copy 

Register for the bonus event 

About Dr. Justin Garcia

Justin R. Garcia, PhD, is an award-winning evolutionary biologist and recognized international authority on the science of sex and relationships, specializing in modern romance, dating trends, and sexual behavior. He has served as Executive Director of the world-renowned Kinsey Institute at Indiana University since 2019, where he leads pioneering research and global collaborations. He is widely published in academic journals, serves an advisor for industry partners such as Match, and frequently contributes to major news outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

Praise for The Intimate Animal

As technology fundamentally shifts how we experience intimacy, Garcia brings us back to the animal inside to remind us that even when connection, love, and desire feel elusive, it’s exactly what we’re wired for. 

—Esther Perel, psychotherapist, author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and host of Where Should We Begin? 

 

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK! So exciting to see a research-based book that gets to the real fundamentals in understanding what it means to be human. This book is a real page-turner — so rare in non-fiction. 

—Dr. John Gottman, psychologist, co-founder of The Gottman Institute. and author of Fight Right 

 

The Intimate Animal promises to be the best book on modern mating for the next decade. It is scientifically sound, yet conversational in style — highly accessible and informative to everyone. It’s sure to be a smashing success. 

 —Dr. David M. Buss, evolutionary psychologist and author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating 

 

This book is a revelation — honest, nuanced, and deeply compassionate. Garcia cuts through noise and shame to map how we bond, break, and begin again. 

—Lara Love Hardin, founder of True Literary and author of The Many Lives of Mama Love 

 

A brilliant exploration of why we love, connect, and sometimes stray. …Insightful and eye-opening, The Intimate Animal will make you stop, reflect, and say, ‘Oh, that is why I do that.’ A must-read for anyone curious about the deeper forces behind love, sex, and connection. 

—Dr. Emily Morse, founder of Sex with Emily and author of Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ & Own Your Pleasure 

 

Publisher Little, Brown Spark

ISBN-13978-0316594035

FREE ALL LAB ANIMALS

Anxiety is reversed for lab mice rehomed in fields

Cornell University

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ITHACA, N.Y. – In a new study, Cornell University researchers rewilded multiple cohorts of lab mice over two years and found that their fear response in a classic assay used to assess anxiety was reduced and even reversed after living in the field – even after a single week.

The study, published Dec. 15 in Current Biology, echoes research in human psychology that finds that a greater range of experiences increases a sense of agency and reduces anxiety.

“We release the mice into these very large, enclosed fields where they can run around and touch grass and dirt for the first time in their lives,” said senior author Michael Sheehan, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior. “It’s a new approach to understanding more about how experiences shape subsequent responses to the world, and the hope is that what we learn from these mice will have more generalizability to other animals and to ourselves as well.”

The researchers used the most common (and one of the most humane) mazes for studying anxiety – known as the elevated plus maze – to gauge anxiety in the mice. The maze has two arms the mice can explore: One is enclosed by walls, where the mice feel safer, and another is open and elevated like a plank, where the mice feel exposed. In thousands of studies, researchers have measured the amount of time mice spend in each area and have widely documented the development of a fear response to the maze; after initial exposure, mice spend less time in the open, exposed areas.

The Cornell team exposed groups of lab mice to the maze before rewilding half of them. In subsequent trials, those that continued to live in the lab showed the traditional response to the maze: spending less and less time in the “open” arms. But when the rewilded mice were re-exposed to the maze, they behaved differently.

“The rewilded mice show either no fear response or a much, much weaker response,” said Matthew Zipple, first author and a Klarman Fellow.

The team also found that mice exposed to the maze multiple times in the lab – mice that had an established fear response – reversed their anxiety after living in the field.

“We put them in the field for a week, and they returned to their original levels of anxiety behavior,” Zipple said. “Living in this naturalistic environment both blocks the formation of the initial fear response, and it can reset a fear response that’s already been developed in these animals in the lab.”

“We think this change in behavior is about agency, at its core,” Zipple said. “What I mean by agency is the ability of an animal to change its experiences in an environment through its own behavior.”

The rewilded mice can move freely, Zipple continued, can burrow and climb, can find their own food and navigate weather, seasons and each other. In general, they can encounter challenges and overcome those challenges through their own movement, he said, which could give them greater confidence in the maze. The range of experiences also gives the mice a richer context for encountering anything new.

“If you experience lots of different things that happen to you every day, you have a better way to calibrate whether or not something is scary or threatening,” Sheehan said. “But if you’ve only had five experiences, you come across your sixth experience, and it’s quite different from everything you’ve done before, that’s going to invoke anxiety.”

Media note: Pictures can be viewed and downloaded here.

For additional information, read this Cornell Chronicle story. 

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.10.050 

When blue-collar workers lose union protection, they try self-employment

Strategic Management Society

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In U.S. states with anti-union labor environments, workers are up to 53% more likely to start their own businesses—and blue-collar workers are more likely to do it out of necessity.

A study in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal examines how the labor environment in states with “right-to-work” (RTW) laws compared with that in neighboring states with stronger union bargaining power.

“We found that the enactment of stringent anti-union laws reduces employees’ incentives to stay in their workplaces and increases the attractiveness of becoming self-employed,” said study coauthor Namil Kim, from the Graduate School of Information at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.

RTW laws prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions, allowing employees to opt out of joining unions or paying union fees. These laws have historically reduced union membership. They have also diminished the power unions wield to negotiate for better worker wages, benefits, and job security.

The research team compared work environments in Michigan and Indiana, states that have adopted RTW laws, with those of neighboring states—Ohio and Kentucky—that did not. They tracked workers aged 20 to 34 who transitioned to self-employment, defined as dedicating 15 or more hours weekly to a new business. RTW laws were the main independent variable, while control variables included individual demographics, job tenure, occupation, industry and state-level socioeconomic factors.

They discovered that anti-union environments do more than change paychecks and benefits: they also push more people into self-employment. After RTW laws passed, workers in affected states were about 50% more likely to start working for themselves, mainly by opening small, unincorporated businesses, said Dr. Kim.

“This pattern is especially strong for blue-collar and low-wage workers, who often feel they have little choice but to start a business because their regular jobs have become less secure, not because they discovered a promising new opportunity.”

RTW law adoption was associated with a 1.96 percentage point decrease in union membership, a marginal increase in weekly working hours, and no significant change in weekly wages, suggesting that conditions post-RTW got worse.

“For blue-collar and low-wage workers, the weakening of unions tends to mean longer hours, less security, and fewer benefits on the job,” Dr. Kim said.  “Under these conditions, many of them turn to self-employment as a way to protect or replace their income. In our data, these workers are much more likely to start unincorporated, one-person or very small businesses, which fits the pattern of necessity-driven entrepreneurship.”

Twenty-six U.S. states have adopted right-to-work laws. Although some employers might prefer anti-labor, pro-business environments because it allows them to operate with less union influence, the authors warn that their workers may leave these environments to pursue their own businesses, especially if those workers have enjoyed benefits from unions in the past.

“Workers are a firm’s most important long-term resource because their experience, skills and relationships cannot be easily copied by competitors,” said Dr. Kim. “In anti-labor environments should think carefully about how to keep these employees. If they leave to start their own businesses, firms not only lose trained talent but may also face new competitors created by their former staff.”

To read the full context of the study and its methods, access the full paper available in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

About the Strategic Management Society

The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is the leading global member organization fostering and supporting rigorous and practice-engaged strategic management research. SMS enjoys the support of 3,000 members, representing more than 1,100 institutions and companies in more than 70 countries. SMS publishes three leading academic journals in partnership with Wiley: Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Global Strategy Journal. These journals publish top-quality work applicable to researchers and practitioners with complementary access for all SMS Members. The SMS Explorer offers the latest insights and takeaways from the SMS Journals for business practitioners, consultants, and academics.

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Click here to learn more about the programs and opportunities SMS has to offer.

 

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Journal

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

DOI

10.1002/sej.70006 

Article Title

Anti-labor environments and employee entrepreneurship: Evidence from right-to-work laws

Southeast Asia’s greenhouse gas emissions demand urgent regional action

Hiroshima University

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Map highlighting Southeast Asia’s peatlands, which act like giant carbon storage areas but are at risk of deforestation and drainage (Adapted from Masayuki Kondo et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles, September 24, 2025).

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Credit: Adapted from Masayuki Kondo et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles, September 24, 2025

A new regional assessment shows that Southeast Asia is a major net source of greenhouse gases, with land-use change and rising fossil fuel use overwhelming natural carbon sinks, reservoirs that store carbon-containing chemical compounds for a long period. 

A comprehensive assessment of Southeast Asia’s greenhouse gas balance carried out by an international team of researchers led by Hiroshima University, shows that the region is a significant source of climate-warming gases. The leading causes are deforestation, damage to peatland, fires, and a rapid rise in fossil fuel use. The study, published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles on September 24, 2025, highlights how difficult it will be for countries in the region to reach climate neutrality. It stresses the need for countries to work together as soon as possible.  

The team measured all major sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide across Southeast Asia from 2000 to 2019. They found that natural ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, mangroves, and peatlands, continue to store and absorb large amounts of carbon. However, this natural absorption is not enough to offset human-driven emissions resulting from land-use change and burning of fossil fuels.  

“Southeast Asia has some of the most carbon-rich forests and wetlands in the world, but the region is still adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than it removes,” said Masayuki Kondo, associate professor at The IDEC Institute, the study’s lead and corresponding author. “The primary reasons are continued deforestation and the drying and draining of peatlands. Fires and the fast-growing use of coal are making things even worse.”   

The study found that cutting down forests and converting them to other types of land released more greenhouse gases than any other activity during the 20-year study period.   

“Forests are trying to grow back, but they can’t keep up with the rate at which land is being cleared,” says Kondo. “If countries protect and restore forests, they will see immediate and meaningful climate benefits.”  

Fires, including extensive peat fires during El Niño dry years, were the next biggest contributor, and peat decomposition from drained peatlands also released large amounts of emissions.  

The researchers also found a dramatic 48% rise in emissions from fossil fuels. Oil was the leading source of emissions in earlier years, but coal use began rising sharply after 2005 and surpassed oil emissions in 2018. Without substantial changes in energy policy, the study warns that coal could remain a major driver of future emissions.  

“The jump in coal emissions is something we’ve never seen before in this region,” said Kondo. “If all the planned coal plants are built, the power sector’s emissions could increase even more, making it much harder for Southeast Asia to reach climate neutrality.”  

The study also notes that parts of the region still lack basic greenhouse gas monitoring systems, making it difficult to provide highly accurate estimates. More measurement sites, better models, and closer links between scientific data and national policy decisions will all be needed.  

To help address this gap, the researchers have launched a new international network called the League of geophysical research eXcellences for tropical Asia, or LeXtra. The network aims to strengthen greenhouse gas monitoring, improve models, and support data sharing across Southeast Asia.  

By clearly identifying where greenhouse gases come from and where they are absorbed, the study offers guidance for more effective climate strategies. “The biggest impact would come from reducing emissions from land-use change and fossil fuels,” said Kondo. “Southeast Asia still has a chance to grow its economy while protecting the climate, but the window of opportunity is getting smaller.” 

The research team included Prabir K. Patra, JAMSTEC and RIHN (Japan); Josep G. Canadell, CSIRO (Australia); Philippe Ciais, Ronny Lauerwald, Marielle Saunois, Université Paris‐Saclay (France); Richard A. Houghton, Woodwell Climate Research Center (USA); Akihiko Ito, The University of Tokyo and NIES (Japan); Chandra S. Deshmukh, Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd. (Indonesia); Tomo'omi Kumagai, The University of Tokyo, Nagoya University (Japan) and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (USA); Xiangzhong Luo, National University of Singapore (Singapore); Umakant Mishra, Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA); Atul K. Jain, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (USA); Wei Li, Tsinghua University (China); Gerbrand Koren, Utrecht University (The Netherlands); Stephen Sitch, University of Exeter (UK); Ben Poulter, Spark Climate Solutions (USA); Hanqin Tian, Boston College (USA); Ana Bastos, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Germany); Judith A. Rosentreter, Southern Cross University (Australia); Tazu Saeki & Nobuko Saigusa, NIES (Japan); Ingrid T. Luijkx, Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands); Takashi Maki, Meteorological Research Institute (Japan); Takashi Nakamura, Japan Meteorological Agency (Japan); Kirari Hirabayashi, Hiroshima University (Japan); and Takeshi Hirano, Hokkaido University (Japan). 

This study was funded by the Integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Processes Study (iLEAPS); the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II (ArCS-II) project by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT); the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan; the JSPS KAKENHI; French state aid, managed by ANR; and the NASA LCLUC program. 

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About Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 5 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

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Journal

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

DOI

10.1029/2024GB008256 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The Greenhouse Gas Budget of Southeast Asia for 2000–2019 and Pathways Toward Climate Neutrality