Profs and Pints presents: “Sex, Love, Orgasms, Marriage, and Evolution” with Rui Diogo, associate professor of anatomy at Howard University’s College of Medicine and resource faculty member at George Washington University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology.

For far too long, scholarly research on sex and love was based on the researchers’ personal prejudices or on pseudo-scientific ideas divorced from scientific observation. Today, fortunately, we are in the process of gaining a more objective understanding of how sex, love, and marriage have evolved throughout human history. Researchers from fields such as psychology, neurobiology, anthropology and evolutionary biology are using archeological research into extinct human groups, studies of primates and other animals, and comparative studies of various subgroups of modern humans to gain a much better understanding of how couples end up on the alter or what takes place under the sheets.

Join Professor Rui Diogo, who previously enthralled Profs and Pints audiences with his talks on evolutionary medicine and on evolution and racism, for a fascinating discussion of the findings of such research. He’ll take up longstanding questions related to nature versus nurture and clear up confusion rooted in racism, sexism, and other prejudices. He’ll discuss how culture might lead to differences in ability to reach orgasm, and how sexuality was since long an obsession of organized religions and continues to be a cultural taboo. Young children see adults close their doors to ‘do it’, as if it is a horrible, forbidden act, and the empirical evidence shows that parents’ promotion of such thinking has negative implications throughout life.

Professor Diogo also will describe how various social changes, such as the rise of capitalism, have influenced human sexuality, and in particular had allowed love to conquer marriage, for the better or the worse. He’ll also show how homosexuality occurs naturally in other species, not being unique to humans or anything ‘unnatural’, and how monogamy may be mainly a social construct mainly related to humanity’s shift from hunting and gathering to a more sedentary lifestyle with the rise of the first cities.

Profs and Pints normally allows audience members under 18 if they’re accompanied by an adult, but you’ll probably want to leave the kids home for this one. You might not emerge from the talk a better lover, but you’ll probably end up being a more thoughtful one. Your ancestors up in the trees missed out on such learning opportunities. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, save $2 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts about 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself sufficient time to place any order and be seated and settled in. )