What if the type you describe and the people you actually date have nothing to do with each other? Kalilah Price — predictive-systems researcher, reluctant “dating-app expert,” and proud ABD — comes to the den to take apart the gap between what people say they want and what they actually do. Along the way: why a “match” isn’t a match, why dopamine isn’t pleasure, and why your dealbreakers are doing more work than your wish list. Plus the debut of a certain peer-reviewed guest lecturer, and the buzzer-beater pun the whole episode is named after.
This is not a dating-advice episode. It’s a behavioral-systems episode wearing a dating episode’s drawls — and you may leave understanding your own choices a little less than when you started.
Guest: Kalilah Price
Harlem-based researcher who came up in political science (she figured she’d end up a campaign pollster) and landed, almost by accident, in recommendation systems and dating-app consulting. She guest-lectures around the world, takes the occasional adjunct quarter, and is ABD — “all but dissertation,” with no particular urgency to finish. Warm, fast, and allergic to oversimplifying anything, she rejects the “doctor,” the “expert,” and the “guru” labels with equal ease — and is consistently a cut above