Can These (Specific) 36 Questions Lead to Love? This Reality Show Thinks So

The devil works hard, but reality TV works harder. This month, a new video podcast about dating dropped just in time for those of us who already slammed all the Love Is Blind reunion episodes in one sitting, and which introduces a new gimmick into the world of reality dating. Titled 36 Questions Later, the show invites a handful of would-be couples on blind dates, and asks them to run through the 36 questions that lead to love from psychologist Arthur Aron’s famous 1997 study, which first went viral in a 2015 article from The New York Times “Modern Love” column and have inspired endless article hot takes and even card games. 

The show comes to us from Sycamore Content, and is hosted by TikToker Mady Maio. The trailer and first two episodes were released on Valentine’s Day, and new episodes will air every Tuesday through March 7 on YouTube to ask the important questions, such as, When did you last sing to yourself? Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Would you like to be famous?

Aron’s study was designed to explore whether intimacy could be accelerated between two total strangers based on a series of ostensibly simple, but increasingly intimate questions. In total, the questionnaire takes about 45 minutes to complete, and is broken up into three rounds; things start off light (the first question is, “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”) and end on a more involved note (the final question is, “Share a personal problem and ask [the other person’s] advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen”). As the author of the viral New York Times article writes, Aron was in fact successful in making two complete strangers fall in love in the lab, so maybe there’s something to his love sorcery. When the NY Times writer applied Aron’s techniques to her own life, she “found [herself] standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four minutes,” which at least sounds love-adjacent.

Granted, a lot has changed since 1997. But there’s a generous, heaping tablespoon of sincerity that seems to anchor 36 Questions Later thanks to the inclusion of Aron’s questionnaire format, and we’re here for it. No shade to Love Island—or MTV’s Next, the GOAT of unhinged reality dating shows—but it’s nice to see a series that digs a little deeper. 

Watch new episode of ‘36 Questions Later’ every Tuesday on YouTube.

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