Recently, with the generous support of Gordon Getty, the Gruter Institute held two conferences on the Evolution of Kissing, the first at the Royal Society in London (March 2024) and the second in San Francisco (March 2025). The conferences provided an interdisciplinary examination of the role of kissing and social contact from a scientific perspective. Papers from the conferences are published in a special volume of Evolution and Human Behavior. As the recent pandemic highlighted, kissing and proximate social contact pose perhaps the highest rate of pathogen exchange between humans and as such are potentially “high risk” behaviors in terms of human health. This topic was thus ripe for this preeminent, interdisciplinary group of scientists, legal scholars, historians and others to convene and explore several themes, starting with the impacts of kissing and close physical contact on the immune system, mate selection, bonding, and biome sharing across populations. Several articles in the special volume in the Evolution of Human Behavior garnered national media attention in outlets such as CNN, BBC News, ABC News, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times, Scientific American, The Washington Post, and the Conversation Blog. Among the publications featured were Catherine Talbot and Stuart West‘s paper, “A Comparative Approach to the Evolution of Kissing” and Lydia Hopper’s paper, “Evolution of Kissing: Physical Contact, Contagion, and Intimacy.” Links to the media coverage can be found below.
News outlets
BBC News; The Guardian; The Independent; The Times; NewScientist; Scientific American; CNN; ABC News; The Washington Post; The New York Times; El País
Television interviews
BBC Breakfast (live) ; BBC News (live); CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley
Radio interviews
BBC Radio 4 What’s Up Docs & Doctor’s Notes (with Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken); BBC Radio 4 The Today Programme; BBC World Service; Times Radio with John Pienaar; Scientific American, NPR Short Wave (two separate interviews); ABC Triple J Hack
Magazines
The New Yorker, Animals Say Hello, But Do They Say Goodbye?
Blogs
The Conversation Brindle, M. (2025). When did kissing evolve and did humans and Neanderthals get off with each other?