This Documentary Uses Science To See Who Loves The Hardest

Six adults (and one kid), one fMRI machine, five minutes to love someone (or something) as hard as possible. In The Love Competition, a short documentary first featured in McSweeney’s Wholphin #15, filmmaker Brent Hoff and Stanford University neuroscientists try to see which type of love makes the brain most active.

Contestants — including a couple married for 50 years, a young woman who clearly adores her boyfriend, a man mourning his breakup, and a woman who’s never been in love — have five minutes in the machine to “love someone as hard as they can”. The person whose love makes their brain light up the most wins.


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