Nancy Segal (on twins)

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dak Shepard, and I'm joined by the Duchess of Deleuze.
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Speaker 1 Nancy Siegel is an evolutionary psychologist and a behavioral geneticist. But most importantly, long time coming,

Speaker 1 she specializes in studying twins.

Speaker 2 Mary Kate and Ashley types.

Speaker 1 I feel like twins is almost tied with sim

Speaker 1 for us.

Speaker 2 As much as we talk about.

Speaker 1 Yes, as much as we've needed an expert but didn't have one for a yeah true i mean this is long overdue she has uh several incredible books on the topic entwined lives born together reared apart accidental brothers deliberately divided so this one is awesome as we all know twins is really the only way we can learn about human behavior yeah well and especially if they're ideally if they're separate

Speaker 1 so we get to learn a lot But yes, it's incredible.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad we got to talk to Nancy. So please enjoy Nancy Siegel.
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Speaker 1 Were you offered all the many beverages?

Speaker 3 I just wanted water, but I was offered everything. Oh, good.

Speaker 3 I don't take sparkling because I'll burp during the talk.

Speaker 1 I'm not that.

Speaker 1 And coffee?

Speaker 3 I don't do well with caffeine.

Speaker 1 You don't?

Speaker 3 No, I don't.

Speaker 1 Okay, already we're in your research, weirdly. Oh, we are.

Speaker 1 Yes, because I'm a humongous consumer of caffeine. And I was delighted when I took a 23ME test to see it say, you're someone who would like caffeine more.

Speaker 1 And I felt the absolution of guilt. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I don't know that that would actually absolve you, but at least it would help you understand.

Speaker 1 There we go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I suppose if you have a genetic marker for road rage, it doesn't get you out of your responsibility.

Speaker 3 It doesn't. But keep in mind that genes are just predisposed.
They don't determine.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 Very important.

Speaker 1 Can we start in Boston? Yeah. Place of your birth.
Yeah. Yeah.
What kind of child did you have in Boston?

Speaker 3 I was born in the Boston Lying Inn Hospital, and I was born six weeks early. You know, I'm a twin, and I have a fraternal twin sister, and I nudged my way out first.
You did? Yeah, naturally.

Speaker 3 And I was only three pounds, 11 ounces and she was four pounds seven. We moved to New York City when I was five to a building with lots and lots of friends.
We lived near the school.

Speaker 1 What did mom and dad do?

Speaker 3 My dad was a lawyer and my mom didn't go past high school, but she was a very bright lady. And she worked as a dental hygienist once we got into junior high school.

Speaker 1 Already you mentioned something and I'm curious. Does any pattern emerge between fraternal and or identical from arriving first? Is there anything predictable about what baby comes out first?

Speaker 3 The only thing predictable about when baby comes first is that the firstborn twin, if it's a natural delivery, is in much better physical shape because of the way the uterus contracts.

Speaker 3 The secondborn twin is more likely to have some sort of difficulty, even demise, higher mortality.

Speaker 1 Because they're in there longer.

Speaker 3 It's not so much that they're there longer, it's the process of being delivered.

Speaker 1 Right. So I guess I meant being delivered longer.

Speaker 2 The first one has already caused chaos.

Speaker 3 The delivery changes the uterus. You know, because human females are not built to have two babies or three or four.
They're built to have one.

Speaker 3 And so when you put two in there, that complicates matters.

Speaker 1 So they generally are the healthier of the two.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of circumstances that can affect that. But basically, the first one has a better chance.
But my sister was actually the healthier twin. She went home after two days in the incubator.

Speaker 3 I took up a residence of a month. Oh, wow.
And I mean, it was really kind of nice. I had my own room, you know,

Speaker 3 and I was spoon-fed.

Speaker 1 The last bit of single attention you'd ever get. Yeah, I know.
So, with the healthier start, start, do they tend to have 1% better educational achievement, income, any of those downriver things?

Speaker 3 Not with twins raised together, but you do see that with twins raised apart, which I've studied for many, many years.

Speaker 3 And sometimes you do see that the twin who's adopted by the better-off family has more educational resources, better health care.

Speaker 3 But the question also becomes, does that make a difference in how they turn out?

Speaker 3 My feeling from studying lots and lots of twins is that as long as they're raised in middle-class homes with enough resources, parental attention, care, all that sort of thing, your genes will predispose you to a certain group of people, places, events, things that are compatible with who you are.

Speaker 3 As a great example, we studied a pair of British twins, one raised in a very educationally active family and one raised in a family where education was not a high priority.

Speaker 3 But the second twin loved to read, got herself a library card, and when the twins met at the age of, I think, 34 at the University of Minnesota.

Speaker 3 They had the same IQs, they read the same books by the same authors. They met at the University of Minnesota as part of the Minnesota Study of Twins Race Department.
Roger.

Speaker 3 Extreme environments, though, if twins are separated, can overwhelm genetic potential, as I know from my studies of these switched-at-birth Colombian twins. I'm in my office one day.

Speaker 3 I get an email from this woman who's Colombian, but a social worker at Columbia University.

Speaker 3 And she tells me, I've heard of your work. Do you know that in Colombia now, there was a set of identical twins born in one place and identical twins born in another place.

Speaker 3 And somehow somehow they exchanged places. I knew right away I was going to Bogota because this was a case that I have never heard of before.

Speaker 1 Unparalleled potential here with what you studied.

Speaker 3 Not only was it two sets of twins switched apart, but it was a pair of unrelated of the same age that I call virtual twins because they give you a pure sense of environmental influence because they're the same home but different genes.

Speaker 3 But one pair was raised in the lively, rich city of Bogota and the other raised in this very rural area called La Paz. Do not confuse with La Paz, Bolivia.
This is La Paz, Colombia.

Speaker 3 It's the middle of nowhere. I went to visit them there.
We took a car from Bogota to Velez. Then from Velez, you take a four-wheel drive to someplace else.

Speaker 3 And then you put on a pair of boots and you walk for an hour. I had a choice of hiking or riding a horse.
I'm thinking, which is less dangerous? Probably the mud. So

Speaker 3 I mean, there's nothing. Then all of a sudden, there's a house with three different sides on it.
And I see our lunch being cooked outside. How would you like a freshly slaughtered cow on sticks?

Speaker 3 So that's what we had for lunch.

Speaker 3 But the whole process of this study was fascinating and I have a book that came out in 2018 called Accidental Brothers where I document not only the research findings but also just the impressions I had.

Speaker 3 It was absolutely amazing to see. the similarities and the differences.

Speaker 3 But when I say that extreme environments, because the guys up in the country didn't go past the fifth grade, whereas the guys in the city went to college and had advanced certificates.

Speaker 1 And the guys in the country had a lot more physical activity out there.

Speaker 3 They did. And in fact, that reminds me, we did a fascinating study on them, on their vision.
And it turns out that the guys in the city had much poorer vision than the guys in the country.

Speaker 3 And people thought it was, well, because they're reading computers and all that. It wasn't that.
It was that the guys in the country were out in the fresh air. No artificial lights, no sunglasses.

Speaker 3 But what was interesting was, so usually when I see twins raised apart, the rear depart twins do very similarly in ability tests.

Speaker 3 These guys did more like the unrelated brother they were raised with because it was an extreme environment where the two guys in the country simply didn't have the education.

Speaker 1 Yes, let me ask you this. Were the unrelated twins closer to one another on all these tests than their identical twin? Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And see, for someone like me, a fraternal twin who I can see genetics all over the place, and someone who has studied twins raised apart, the findings initially shocked me.

Speaker 3 But it's good for me because I'm very genetically predisposed to genetic explanations.

Speaker 3 And so to see something where the environment of an extreme nature overwhelmed was just a good lesson and gives me much more appreciation for environmental experiences.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's been interesting. The period of time that you've studied this, the goal keeps kind of flip-flopping as new scientific advances come.
So I think we should start at the beginning. From Freud.

Speaker 1 till twin studies almost.

Speaker 1 The main consensus among psychologists was we are a product of our nurture, that all of our behaviors can be kind of explained by how we were brought up and how we were nurtured. And

Speaker 1 your studies start to poke at that.

Speaker 3 It wasn't just our studies that started poking. There were pokes before that.

Speaker 3 And in my book, Born Together Rear to Part, I talk all about this and how these developments sort of led to the perfect time and place for the University of Minnesota twin study. Was that the first?

Speaker 3 It was actually the fourth or fifth rear to part twin study. There's a whole legacy of these things, but it's the best one

Speaker 3 for a lot of reasons. But there began to be some advances in medicine.
For example, they were able to link certain conditions like phenylketenuria to genes.

Speaker 1 What's phenylketenuria?

Speaker 3 Phenylketenuria is a recessive condition where a child is unable to convert phenylalanine into tyrosine, which you need for normal metabolism.

Speaker 3 And so there's a built-up phenylalanine in the brain, and that can cause mental retardation.

Speaker 3 It can be treated if you just give them a phenylalanine-free diet.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.
Oh, man. How heartbreaking to learn that after the fact, probably.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 But now we're able to treat this. So, at any rate, people began to see differences between different breeds of dogs, different mouse strains.

Speaker 3 You could train an animal, for example, to avoid noxious noises when you paired it with food, but when you paired it with something else, it wouldn't work.

Speaker 3 So people began to see the constraints on the environment. It just wasn't a full explanation.
Then there was a case study of reared apart twins done by Paul Popineau in, I think, the 1920s.

Speaker 3 And these twins, Bessie and Jesse, they were so much alike despite their separate rearing.

Speaker 3 So all along, there were these developments where people were just realizing environment does not explain everything and genetics absolutely plays a role.

Speaker 3 But resistance to genetics came about because of the Holocaust, the Germans trying to make value judgments among different types of groups based on their different genetics.

Speaker 3 And also then there was the women's movement of the 60s and civil rights. And so discrimination or value judgments on different groups of people people was not something that you welcomed.

Speaker 3 And then there was a lot of rejection of sex differences too.

Speaker 3 But what I tell my students is, and I use the quote from this very famous evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Jubtansky, that differences are not deficits. Differences are just differences.

Speaker 3 And if you attach a value judgment to them, well, it's not appropriate. Now, we know, for example, that males tend to do better in visual spatial activities, females in verbal.

Speaker 3 So maybe if I'm lost in a cave, I might value visual spatialization a little more.

Speaker 3 Or if I need someone to help me in a difficult law case where you have to do a choreographic dance of verbal gymnastics, maybe I'd prefer a female.

Speaker 3 But in general, you can't say, and depending upon circumstances, certain talents are going to be more valuable.

Speaker 3 But at any rate, so twin studies began to gain popularity after, of course, Joseph Mengelo. He was a German doctor who came to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration camp in Poland.

Speaker 3 He gathered twins and dwarfs and anybody with a medical condition, and he exploited them for his own purposes. He was fascinated with twins.

Speaker 3 I actually went in 1985 with the remaining Holocaust twins to their 40th anniversary reunion.

Speaker 3 And I have a wonderful little annotated collection of photographs I took there that I published about two years ago. But so Joseph Mengele gave twin research a really, really bad name.

Speaker 3 And so it kind of stalled for a while, but made a comeback in about the 1980s.

Speaker 3 Once people began to realize that you needed genes to explain certain things that you couldn't explain otherwise, then people began to get a little more receptive.

Speaker 3 Now, there still was rejection and criticism for many, many, many years.

Speaker 3 Again, what I always tell people is you can study, you can read, you can learn, you can make yourself better, but we're not going to have everybody being the same. No.

Speaker 3 And we need the talents of different people in order to survive as a population.

Speaker 1 Our variation is our strength.

Speaker 3 Exactly. So I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Always interested in twin studies, and I'm going to tell you now how I got into twin studies.

Speaker 1 And then let's also talk about evolutionary psychology.

Speaker 3 We will. So just briefly how I got into this and how I made it just the most glorious fun career of my lifetime.
The only career. So I was an undergraduate at Boston University.
I was a psych major.

Speaker 3 I liked psychology. No topic set me on fire till I was a senior and I was in abnormal psychology class and my professor said that we had to write a personal essay.
on some aspect of development.

Speaker 3 So I decided to write about separating twins in school. And I found that I loved doing that.
I loved the literature. I loved everything about it.
And that was it. I was hooked.

Speaker 3 That was my field forever and ever and ever. I was always interested in twin studies.
I was working on a twin study for my doctoral thesis.

Speaker 3 And then in 1981, Professor Bouchard organized this Minnesota study of twins raised apart, which was launched by a pair of twins called the Jim Twins, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer in Ohio.

Speaker 3 Isn't that great?

Speaker 1 They're both Jim. They don't have the same last name.
Yeah. They're the Jim Twins.

Speaker 1 They're both named Jim.

Speaker 3 They were separated and they were each named Jim by their adoptive families. Oh.
Oh. And so they met when they were 39, and they were so similar in so many ways.

Speaker 3 They both bit their fingernails to the nub. They both had light blue Chevrolets.
They both were woodworkers. They both worked in McDonald's.
I mean, you can name a million things about them.

Speaker 1 But the craziest is they both married Linda first. They married Linda.
They divorced.

Speaker 3 They married Betty. And then married Betty.
And then one of them divorced Betty and married Sandy. And so I imagine the other Betty was pretty nervous, especially if a Sandy came around.

Speaker 1 The odds of all that are so incalculable. Because even if they both want the same thing, the notion that they would both meet a better

Speaker 1 thing.

Speaker 3 Well, the beauty of rear-depart twins is that they give you new hypotheses about why things happen. You can say the Betty and the Sandy and the Linda and all that were completely coincidental.

Speaker 3 Maybe there's something about the name that attracts them. I don't know.
I wrote a paper about what people call coincidence. I don't think it's coincidence.

Speaker 3 I think that there are better scientific explanations for why twins have these similarities. And, you know, we all have our own habits, ways of doing things.

Speaker 3 I think it's a function of who we are in large part.

Speaker 3 How do you explain two identical twins raised apart who never met till their 40s, and they both washed their hands before and after using the bathroom? Fear of germs, this need to be clean.

Speaker 3 Another pair of twins we met, they met at 25. They both used brill cream.
I mean, who didn't in those days? Right. But they both used a very rare brand of Swedish toothpaste called Vatty Makeum.

Speaker 3 Now, that's impressive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who cares? First of all, it's impressive you remember the name of the toothpaste. Let's just add that.

Speaker 3 Vaddie Bakeum or Vaddie Makeum. I said it so many times.
Why would they do this? So let's think about why. Maybe they like the unusual name, makes them different than other people.

Speaker 3 Maybe something about the taste. Maybe they have affiliations with Sweden.
They like the Swedish culture. I think the toothpaste was not.
made with fluoride, so maybe that's what they wanted.

Speaker 3 But it gives you all these different ways of thinking about things. So a common occurrence doesn't interest me, but a rare one does.

Speaker 3 A rare one does. Yes.
And that's where I think the genes make a difference. We had these twins who like coffee warm, but not hot.

Speaker 1 There was a pair that like their coffee cold.

Speaker 3 And why is that? Maybe they're afraid of burning their tongue or they like the sensation. But see, this gives us ways of thinking about things.

Speaker 3 And rather than just saying, oh, it's chance or, oh, it's random. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I think most people understand evolutionary biology. They understand Darwinism to a degree.

Speaker 1 In general, when we were studying evolution, we were thinking of mostly how we developed as this species. Not so much emphasis put on our psychology.

Speaker 1 How does evolutionary psychology emerge and what is it attempting to answer?

Speaker 3 So with evolutionary psychology, basically when you think about the evolution of the mind, you think about complex problems that we as a species had to solve if we were going to survive. And so

Speaker 3 those people

Speaker 3 who figured out the solutions would pass them on and the people who would adopt them are the ones who would survive and the ones who didn't would not.

Speaker 3 So let's think about, for example, fear of snakes. That's a very easy explanation and example I can give you.
People are afraid of snakes even if they've never had any exposure to a snake. But

Speaker 3 the people who were afraid of snakes way back were the ones who survived.

Speaker 1 They didn't get bit by snakes. That's right.

Speaker 3 They're the ones who survived. So they passed on genetically based potentials to their ancestors, which is why we're afraid of snakes now, even if we've never even seen them.

Speaker 2 That is interesting. People who aren't afraid of snakes, could we say that maybe they come from a line that wasn't exposed to many snakes to begin with?

Speaker 3 It's possible, or maybe these are more risk-taking behaviors. There is such a thing to be said about risk.
Sometimes the risk, you have great benefits.

Speaker 1 It's part of mate selection quite often. It's a mechanism within evolution.

Speaker 1 You have big, loud feathers that attract predators. That's a disadvantage in the wild, but it's a big advantage in mating.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm scared of snakes and I'm not thinking like, well, snakes are in India.

Speaker 1 Oh, big time.

Speaker 3 This gives you a new way of thinking about why you are the way that you are.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so quickly for anyone who's confused on fraternal versus identical, fraternal twins are two different eggs and two different sperms that get fertilized and then you're a person and you have the same genetic similarities as you would a normal sibling.

Speaker 1 It's not increased at all because you were in the womb at the same time. No.

Speaker 3 Fraternal twins do tend to be somewhat more alike on average than ordinary siblings. And why? Because they're the same age.
Yes. So they're part of the same quote-unquote generation.

Speaker 3 But identical twins result when a single fertilized egg divides within the first 14 days after conception. And these twins share all their genes.

Speaker 3 Now, having said that, there are exceptions because there can be mutations along the way.

Speaker 3 But nevertheless, despite these, and despite the fact that being in a womb for identical twins actually is more conducive to differences and similarities because they can develop these mutual circulation systems where one literally bleeds into the other.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow. So while people say, oh, sharing a womb makes you alike, it doesn't.
It makes you more different.

Speaker 3 So to me, the fact that identical twins are as alike as they are is pretty amazing, given that there are all these factors that are trying to make them different. And they're not exactly alike.

Speaker 3 Whenever we look at twins, we find differences between them, but they're still overwhelmingly more alike than fraternal twins or any other pair of people.

Speaker 1 When did kinship genetic theory come out?

Speaker 3 That was with Hamilton in the 70s. Kinship genetic theory is that we are predisposed to be more altruistic towards individuals with whom we perceive as having genes in common with us.

Speaker 3 So that means that you would be predisposed to be nicer, say, to a mother than to an aunt, or to an identical twin than a fraternal twin, or to a cousin versus someone unrelated.

Speaker 3 Although with cousins, you don't share a high proportion of genes with them, so it's hard to know who a cousin is.

Speaker 3 Now, Hamilton extended this further to a concept called inclusive fitness and inclusive fitness is that it pays for me to be kind to you because you share my genes so i'm getting my genes out in the population through you but i also get my genes out through me for any child i create this gets into richard dawkins and selfish gene theory that really genes are evolving not the species so it pays for me to be reproductively active but i get a boost if i get my genes out through you.

Speaker 1 Yes. But you do have to then think about it's not just the survival of the individual animal, it's the survival of the genes.
That's what you're seeing. It's misleading a little bit.

Speaker 3 Of course, none of this goes on at the conscious level. I don't think to myself, well, my sister and I are fraternal, so I won't be so nice to her.
If I'm an identical, I'd be nicer.

Speaker 3 This just does not go on at the conscious level. But what it does is I think it's maintained at what we call the proximate level, which is the here and now, whereas ultimate refers to genes.

Speaker 3 At the proximal level, it makes me feel happy to do good things for my sister, makes me happy to do good things for my parents. It gives me pleasure.

Speaker 3 And I think that that is what maintains this kind of differential treatment of different relatives.

Speaker 1 How does the concept of in-groups are more empathetic to themselves than they are to out-groups? And if you look the same, it's easier for you to empathize with another person.

Speaker 1 What about when you're identical? It seems like there would also be a very natural extension of the self when you look so similar.

Speaker 1 There could be the genetic aspect, but then there could also be this when you truly can see yourself and the other person because they are you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this whole theory is not perfect, obviously. You can certainly make mistakes.
And there's a whole field of study of doppelgangers, people who look alike and are unrelated. And I've studied them.

Speaker 3 I find them absolutely fascinating for a lot of reasons. Oh, tell me.
Well, doppelgangers are people who happen to look alike.

Speaker 3 And the way I discovered this, there's a photographer up in canada he was a doppelganger he found his lookalike and he began to be fascinated with this and developed a whole project called i'm not a look-alike that's his name of this project but they are lookalikes yeah anyway it occurred to me that these kinds of people would be a great way of testing a certain criticism against twin research so the criticism is that identical twins are alike in personality because people treat them alike based on their appearance.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good theory. Well, I don't agree.

Speaker 3 It makes sense at one level, but personality is in your brain. It's not in your face.

Speaker 3 So I decided to test out how similar these unrelated look-alikes were in personality and compare that with twins raised apart and twins raised together.

Speaker 3 And actually, the best comparison is twins raised apart because look-alikes were raised apart and identical twins raised apart shared genes, share their resemblance, but are raised apart.

Speaker 3 And so I said, if my data support my hypothesis, then it's the case that identical twins are treated more alike, but it's because they evoke the same treatment from those around them. Yes.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 So I did this study and we replicated it twice with different personality questionnaires and I was dead on right. The correlations were something like 0.02 for one case and 0.04 for the other.

Speaker 1 So doppelgangers aren't going to have the same personality.

Speaker 3 No, they're not. And what makes me a little bit sad is that we have these websites now.
for looking for your doppelganger.

Speaker 3 And I think that the people who scour those websites are those who are looking for something in their life and they are not going to find it i also did a study of these doppelgangers in terms of their social closeness to their newly found double and they're not close a few are of course i'm starting to think it's more types than it is actual one-for-one correspondence between features i was gonna say yeah a six-two guy is gonna have some predictable outcome yeah or at least people might perceive it that way but the doppelgangers are fascinating and unlike identical twins raised apart who are close when they meet and become closer over time, the doppelgangers are not close when they meet and they become less close over time.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, it just fits the genetic expectations perfectly. Interesting.

Speaker 1 Now, you point out in your TED Talk this neat concept where twins fundamentally challenge how we think the world works.

Speaker 1 Like we're supposed to be all individual and just seeing them kind of threatens our understanding of the world.

Speaker 1 And I wondered, does that vary between countries that prize individuality versus those who don't? More collectivist society? Are they less enamored with twins or intrigued?

Speaker 3 As far as I know, people are enamored with twins everywhere. And I don't think anyone has really looked at it in terms of individualistic versus collectivist societies.
One could certainly test that.

Speaker 3 I think it'd be a very interesting thing to test. But people everywhere are fascinated with twins.
I've never gone anywhere. I mean, I've traveled a lot of different countries.

Speaker 3 I just came back from Greece, for example. They have a democracy there.
The whole reason I was there was an invitation to a twin conference.

Speaker 3 People celebrate twins, and when they hear that I'm a twin, I mean, suddenly they're all over me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 And I actually think I'm kind of low on the twin-type totem pole because I'm only a fraternal race together.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Boring.

Speaker 3 Thank God I have a sister, not a brother.

Speaker 3 But actually, I should really qualify that statement, and that is that twin research would not be what it is today if you didn't have fraternal twins, because the classic twin comparison is identical versus fraternal.

Speaker 3 It's not so much the identical twin similarity, it's their similarity relative to fraternal fraternal twins.

Speaker 3 That's where the information comes from.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you did numerous studies, and one of them was to test cooperation between identical twins versus cooperation between fraternal twins, and it was a very interesting outcome.

Speaker 3 It was. You're talking about my puzzle completion studies, yes.
I got the idea for that because I was visiting the home of a woman who had four-year-old fraternal twins.

Speaker 3 And I saw those kids fight over that puzzle like you wouldn't believe. And I realized what a great thing for my doctoral dissertation.
And I thought, how would my sister and I have done this?

Speaker 3 And I think what would have happened there is because she's so much bigger than I am, she's bigger and she's stronger. I think she would have taken the whole thing to her side of the table.

Speaker 3 At any rate, I like to do semi-naturalistic studies, which is where you bring the same thing to the same homes, but it's still something that the twins would do anyway, work on a puzzle together.

Speaker 3 So I brought this puzzle, same puzzle, put it down exactly as it was. The kids sat on one side of the table, and I just said to everybody, solve it together.

Speaker 3 The identical twins were like a beautiful coordinated synchrony. Really? They faced each other.
The puzzle pieces were gently placed and no fighting and happy smiles and they were quite good at it.

Speaker 3 They finished it faster than the fraternals, as I remember right. But the fraternal twins did one of two things.
Either one child completely took the pieces over to her side of the table

Speaker 3 or some people took a few to their side and they took a few to their side. And of course you couldn't do the puzzle.
So then I remember one little boy snatched the puzzle from his sister.

Speaker 3 It was really quite amazing. I would sit there with my breath held because I would tell the mothers, you can't come in because mothers would say, oh, play nicely.

Speaker 3 If mothers told me play nicely, I'd kill that mother.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 3 one of the most amazing things I saw were two fraternal twins and one kid put her arms like this and took all the pieces over.

Speaker 3 She's sobbing and the other little girl is kind of going, I want to be part of it. Then the little girl finally looked up to the camera, did this to me.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 that's the one that I showed all my lectures. It's absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert,

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 3 Now there was overlap. There were some identicals that weren't that cooperative and some professionals that were.
But the information you get about human behavior comes from the many, not the few.

Speaker 2 I think potentially the fraternal twins are seeking individuality a little bit more.

Speaker 2 They're already being lumped together so much in life that I could imagine them being like, no, but we're different. Whereas identical twins, sorry, this should fail.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 3 Actually, Monica, I think it's the absolute reverse because with fraternal twins, they don't have to try so hard to be individuals. They look very different.
They are very different.

Speaker 3 They have different tastes and preferences and things like that. And it's very easy for parents to treat them differently.

Speaker 3 Now, some parents will lump them together, but usually the twins can't be lumped. Now, with identical twins, they will tell you that they are separate individuals.

Speaker 3 And a lot of times, they don't even see the similarities. It's quite striking when you hear that because you see two identical people.
I remember a mother who brought her little girls to my lab.

Speaker 3 Now, she brought them on different days. Fraternals, she said, and this was a biology teacher.
And then I'm thinking, second day, why is she bringing the same girl back?

Speaker 3 And I realized these were identical twins.

Speaker 2 And she thought they were fraternal.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.
How often does that happen? Because pre-genome mapping, you couldn't have found out.

Speaker 3 hospitals don't routinely do dna test in which they should for all same-sex twins because the same behavior can have different interpretations if twins are identical or fraternal if identical twins are quite different to something say an ability test maybe one child has a problem fraternal twins if they're very different could be they're different genes so i'm all in favor of that but parents are more likely to think identical twins are fraternal than fraternals are identical and that's because they're so sensitive to subtle differences between the children that they don't even see the similarities.

Speaker 1 Which is great. That's what you would want from your mother or your father.
Just to see you as an individual.

Speaker 3 But I think parents of identicals have to reach a kind of happy balance because, after all, this is a special relationship. And the twins tend to be very, very close to one another.

Speaker 3 And they want to be together. And so to separate them all the time may not be what they want.
Or to make them do different things all the time is not what they want.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you probably have this fear as a parent as all parents are fearful. Like, oh, I got to make them independent.
They can't go through their whole life together.

Speaker 1 I have to break them up and make them find their own way. And I could see what your fear would motivate you to do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I think that parents can stay sensitive. I think that parenting is so important when it comes to just being vigilant and paying attention to children.

Speaker 3 And I often tell parents, you don't bring up your child. Your child brings you up.
Because parents find that what works with one kid doesn't always work with the other kid.

Speaker 1 I love what you say that parents of one child are generally

Speaker 3 environmentalists. And parents of two are geneticists.

Speaker 1 Couldn't have been more true for me. You just described us to a teeth.
For two years, we were like, we're crushing this. She's already potty trained.
She talked before everyone. You took pride.

Speaker 1 This is the product of our hard work as parents. And then Delta arrived and we're like, oh, no, this girl's completely different.

Speaker 3 The people I think are the best informed parents without even book learning are the parents of fraternal twins because they've got kids at the same moment and they can just see how different they are.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you, honestly, they know more about human behavior and development than a lot of my colleagues. Really?

Speaker 3 A lot of my colleagues kind of give lip service, yes, genetics, but it's all the environment.

Speaker 1 I know no one with two kids would say that.

Speaker 3 And another fascinating thing is that Rearda Park twins often think that their behaviors are environmentally influenced until they meet their twin.

Speaker 3 And suddenly they do a complete revision of everything they thought about. It's quite striking.

Speaker 1 Okay, so your work, along with all the twin stuff, is, I imagine, one of the main sources that we get that lead us more to embrace that at best, this is a mix of nature and nurture, and it might be more nature than we think it is.

Speaker 1 I wonder, you must have seen Three Identical Strangers, that documentary. Yes, it's so great.

Speaker 1 And as a parent, it's an interesting experience to watch it.

Speaker 1 The premise for people who don't know, triplets are separated at birth and they slowly start discovering each other in their early 20s, I think at college. 19.

Speaker 1 At first, you're going through all the similarities, right? They smoke the same cigarettes, they like the same t-shirts. And when you're a parent, you're going, well, what's even the point?

Speaker 1 I don't even have really a role in this. But as the doc unfolds and they do a great job of it, you learn, oh, no, there's a lot of nurture also going on.

Speaker 1 And so that to me brings up the question of how do you correct for the kind of confirmation bias that's just so right in that you're going to bring together two separated, identical twins.

Speaker 1 You're naturally going to focus on the similarities that are peculiar, defy explanation, the same toothpaste from Switzerland.

Speaker 1 And you're going to miss tons of ways that they're completely different because you're in search of it. You're wrong.
Okay, great.

Speaker 3 We did not focus on the similarities. They came up.
We simply looked at a lot of different measures, medical measures, psychological measures, physiological measures.

Speaker 1 Like intelligence, athletic assistance.

Speaker 3 Blood pressure. I mean, all kinds of things.
We'd let the data just tell us what happened. And quite frankly, we were surprised at how similar the twins were.

Speaker 3 We expected things like in social attitudes and religiosity, there'd be differences, but they were very similar.

Speaker 3 And when you think about it, see, the early studies in twin research looked at religiosity. What is that? How much you participate in religious activities.
How spiritual are you?

Speaker 3 But they they study children. That was the mistake.
They study children who are under the thumbs of their parents. Yes, so they're going to do what they're going to do.

Speaker 3 So the identical fraternal twin differences never emerged. When you study adults who are free to choose, then the genetic factors start to emerge.

Speaker 3 So when we say that behavior has genetic influence, it certainly does. I think that...

Speaker 3 Nature certainly plays a role, but what happens is that more behaviors than we previously would have thought have a genetic influence, like social attitudes, like religiosity, reactions to films.

Speaker 3 Now, Three Identical Strangers. Let's get back to that for a second.
I love that movie. And I wrote a book about that unethical twin study that they were part of.

Speaker 3 In the 1960s, there was a psychiatric consultant, Viola Bernard, who worked with Louise Wise Services, where mothers would come and they would leave their babies. These were single Jewish moms.

Speaker 3 And if they had twins, this consultant said twins should be separated because if they grow up together, then they're not going to be able to individuate. There was no literature to back that at all.

Speaker 3 There was a doctor named Dr. Peter Neubauer who knew Dr.
Viola Bernard, who was the consultant, and he decided to study these twins.

Speaker 3 And the parents who had one twin were told your child's in a child development study, but they were never told that it was a twin study. And this all came out later when the triples met.

Speaker 3 I was fascinated with this, and everyone came up to me and said, you have got to do the book on this.

Speaker 3 And I was hesitant because I knew that it was going to be controversial, but I knew I was the best person in the world to do it. Yeah, yeah.
So I did it.

Speaker 3 My book, Deliberately Divided, came out in 2021.

Speaker 3 But at any rate, everyone thinks that it was Viola Bernard's idea to separate the twins and that Peter Neubauer then took advantage of the situation and studied them. I'm not so sure.

Speaker 3 I have a feeling that maybe he wanted to study them because he always thought about it and he was seeking a reason to separate. I think that's a possibility.

Speaker 3 I'm putting that forward with no real hard evidence. There were five sets of identical twins who were in this study and the one set of triplets.

Speaker 3 In fact, one set was actually dropped, which was such bad science because they were adopted at very different times and at different birth weights. But that's not good science.

Speaker 3 You keep in the different ones.

Speaker 1 Anything that's inconvenient, you don't get to just throw out.

Speaker 3 Of course not. You're going to bias your data that way.
The Minnesota study of twins raised apart, we looked at fraternal twins too, which was a new thing. The previous studies had not done that.

Speaker 3 And I will say that in this unethical study in the 1960s, they studied the identicals, but they separated the fraternals and didn't study them.

Speaker 1 Oh. You have to ask yourself why.

Speaker 3 Of course, fraternal twins would not have a problem with individuation so much because they look so different.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you would think you'd be using it as a control group, but you're not even studying it. So it's not.

Speaker 3 And there were at least four or five sets of fraternals that we know about. The identicals met like the triplets, confused identity.
But fraternals are not going to undergo that.

Speaker 3 So they're never going to know. There are probably fraternal twins running around out there that will never know that they were twins.

Speaker 3 And I will say that maybe you don't know, but another movie came out about this situation called The Twinning Reaction. Oh, no, I haven't seen it.
Yes. It's an excellent movie also.

Speaker 3 It got less attention. I was asked to be a consultant on Three Identical Strangers, but I'd already put my loyalties in this other one.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 But I am in the other one.

Speaker 1 I'm a very loyal person.

Speaker 3 The Twinning Reaction. And if you need a link to it, I can send that.
It's out. It's a fascinating movie.

Speaker 1 Oh, I would love that because I love Three Identical Strangers.

Speaker 3 I thought the reenactment and that was superb. It was very accurate and exactly as it had happened.
I know a lot about those triplets.

Speaker 1 So now here's what I'm saying about the full arc of this exploration, which is fascinating.

Speaker 1 Initially, identical twins that are separated provide this really unique opportunity to demonstrate the power of your DNA, your genetics. At that time, when you start, we have not mapped the genome.

Speaker 1 So we can't do a genetic test, but now we can. Now we can look at genes.
We're starting to learn certain genes are predictive of a lot of different things. I said the caffeine thing.

Speaker 1 Mesophonia is one that comes up on a genetic test, right?

Speaker 3 Many, many things. Yes.

Speaker 1 The value of twins almost flips at this point because now, as opposed to bringing them back together, seeing the similarities to prove the genetics have a role in this, now you're bringing identical twins together to see these differences that have emerged in pursuit of...

Speaker 1 proving how powerful the epigenome is, which becomes a kind of new area of exploration. So let's talk about the epigenome.

Speaker 3 I see what you're saying, that twin studies have a kind of different function now than they had in the past. Yeah.

Speaker 3 When the Minnesota Minnesota study was in play, that was 1979 to 1999, we brought in the twins to study their behavior.

Speaker 3 And now you can actually look at their genes and you can get all different kinds of things. So a study like we did would probably not fly right now, although I do all kinds of studies with twins.

Speaker 3 I will say that even though we're in an era now where we're looking at the molecular side of things, I think there's no substitution for actually having a pair of flesh and blood twins in front of you and watching them.

Speaker 3 There are so many things we still have to study. Now, when we talk about the epigenome, we're talking about genetic expression and how that can change based on circumstance.

Speaker 3 And this is where identical twins can be enormously valuable. This is where it's so important for learning about other people, non-twins.

Speaker 3 And I think people had this wrong impression that twin research is for twins only. It's not.
It's a model for understanding human behavior writ large. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Suppose one identical twin has Alzheimer's, which the other one does not. We've seen cases like that.
And so what is it that turns on the genes for one and not on on the other?

Speaker 3 Why is it that one identical twin is homosexual and the other one isn't?

Speaker 1 Do you have that?

Speaker 3 Yes. Is there a gene or a group of genes it flips on? Is it some hormonal exposure? I've studied identical twins where one undergoes transsexual reassignment surgery.

Speaker 1 Oh, no kidding.

Speaker 3 Why does one identical female twin feel like a male from the age of three and the other one does not? Yes. Why is that?

Speaker 3 These are things that we can understand. So now, think about schizophrenia.
40% similarity rate in identical twins. Why is that? And we can look at the epigenome.
We can look at birth factors.

Speaker 3 We can look at brain structures, lots of different things. And there's probably not just one explanation.
There's probably many, many explanations for this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what are some of the explanations that you found looking at that?

Speaker 1 Because when I went to college and I had an abnormal psychology class and they were explaining that schizophrenia in particular is a genetic predisposition, but then there's a stressful event in this window of time that can activate it.

Speaker 3 So it could be a stressful event. It's diathesis stress theory that you have a predisposition, but if you're not stressed, it may never be expressed.

Speaker 3 They find differences in brain structure where one identical twin has it and the other one doesn't. One of the most fascinating cases was the Jenane quadruplets.
Do you know about that case?

Speaker 1 Oh, tell us.

Speaker 3 Oh, it was an amazing case. This came out in 1963 at the time when genetics didn't basically exist in people's psychological themes and everything was environmentally oriented.

Speaker 3 So there were four identical quads quads born in Michigan. And they all had schizophrenia, but to varying degrees of severity.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so a book came out called the Janane Quadruplets. Now, Janane is not their real name.
Janane means dreadful birth or dire gene.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 3 And they were given the names NIMH, Nora, Iris, Myra, and Hester after NIMH. the National Institute of Mental Health, and they were studied.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Now, I was privileged to know their real names because my first year in grad school, I rode away to all these places to try to get a summer job.

Speaker 3 And I got a couple of offers, but the one I took was to be a research assistant on the study of the genetic quadruplets.

Speaker 1 Are at U of M?

Speaker 3 Know it and IMH. And so I got to read all the correspondence that they sent to the investigator.
And I was coding it and looking for certain themes. I mean, it was a dream job.

Speaker 3 Wow, that's so I was thrilled about that. But they came at a time when genetics was not a major explanation for psychopathology.
So it kind of rattled the boat.

Speaker 1 People were probably quick to say those parents did something if all four of them turned out schizophrenic.

Speaker 3 I will say that there are still critics of genetics, but they're fewer and far between. You can't explain certain things without reference to genetics.
You just can't.

Speaker 1 Right. And so what was the explanation you guys felt most confident in about these varying outcomes of the same illness?

Speaker 3 Part of it had to do with how parents treated them in terms of their birth order. That's just one of many explanations.
But I remember that there was a preferred pair and a non-preferred pair.

Speaker 3 The preferred pair was birth order one, birth order three, and the non-preferred pair was birth order two, birth order four. And the fourth one was really, really sick.

Speaker 3 I mean, she was the sickest of all. So the second born didn't want to be with her.
They think that part of her resentment came into play. Birth order three, who was paired in the preferred pair, she

Speaker 3 actually was less affected than others. And she actually married and had some kids and wrote an autobiography.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 But nevertheless, she had some strange behaviors. It's amazing that they were all so different.
It could have been something epigenetic.

Speaker 3 We really can just speculate as to to why they came out so different.

Speaker 2 Did they all get it at the same time?

Speaker 3 Pretty much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because there's a window, right? It's like from 17 to 25 or something.

Speaker 3 Most young adults, yeah, that's usually when it is. But they had strange behaviors even before, and there was some evidence of child abuse and things like that.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's drill down a little further on epigenome because what's really fascinating about this new field that we're learning more and more about epigenetics is

Speaker 1 it brings back Lamarckian evolution in a way. In that, know your environment, your body could real-time respond.

Speaker 1 And although it couldn't alter your overall DNA, it can certainly alter how the DNA is used. So far, there's a lot of people that believe you can pass that on.
You can. Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 3 That's fascinating. So the fact that parents can pass on genes to children is well known.
The fact that they can pass on altered expression also can happen.

Speaker 1 We hear this about trauma quite a bit, that it seems to be transferable.

Speaker 3 It seems to be, because if you look at Holocaust survivors, children have certain kinds of behaviors that are not typical.

Speaker 3 Some people say, well, it's because they're around their parents, but it could also be something passed down in the genes.

Speaker 1 It would be interesting to see if the orphans of those people had the same outcomes or similar. Right.

Speaker 3 My understanding is that these epigenetic changes that are passed on eventually may fade over time

Speaker 3 as people have different experiences and things of that sort, but the DNA stays intact.

Speaker 1 Right. The epigenome's fluid and the DNA is fixed.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 2 It is weird that Mary, Kate, and Ashley are fraternal twins and they look identical.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about that. But isn't that just turned up? They've never taken a DNA test.

Speaker 3 I have seen many pictures of them, and I know they have a store in Los Angeles clothing stores. They're identical.
I mean, there's no question about that.

Speaker 1 Oh, Monica, that was a slam dog for me.

Speaker 3 There's no question. And I think they're doing a real disservice by not having a DNA test.

Speaker 2 Do we know for sure they haven't?

Speaker 3 Maybe they have, and it's never come out. I don't know.
But I would bet my money on them being identical. Also, one's right-handed and one's left-handed.
25% of identical twins are opposite-handed.

Speaker 3 That's the same for fraternal twins too, but still their faces look a little asymmetrical to me, which is consistent with that.

Speaker 1 Listen, again, I dated one of them and I was around the other quite a bit. And I was fascinated by the fact that they were definitely identical and definitely quite different.

Speaker 1 I found that endlessly interesting.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 You know what I find endlessly interesting, and I'm working on this right now in the book that I'm writing, is I'm interested in why someone like you might be attracted to one identical twin and not to the other.

Speaker 3 And I'm also interested in the other way way around, why one of the twins finds one person attractive and the other one does not. I find that fascinating.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And I think that maybe in the second scenario where you've got two twins and one is attracted and the other one isn't, they could have both been, but one sets up something, the other one kind of backs off.

Speaker 3 And the reason I say that is because I was in England to do a TV show. And a lot of times TV has these gimmicky little experiments.
But this one was brilliant.

Speaker 3 They didn't realize how brilliant it was.

Speaker 3 So they had four pairs of identical twins in different rooms, and they brought in identical twin actors and actresses to meet these twins as potential dating partners.

Speaker 3 And the twins found the same potential dating partners attractive. Not all identical twins are going to meet identical twins.
You know, there's a limit. So I think that's what happens.

Speaker 3 But I will also say that I've studied identical twins who've married identical twins.

Speaker 1 It has to be very rare.

Speaker 3 It's not as rare as you think. A lot of them go to Twinsburg, Ohio, where they have these festivals in August, the Twins Days Festival.
And some of them go specifically to meet twins. twins.

Speaker 3 And why is that? Because they want their spouse to understand just how meaningful this relationship is so the spouse won't get jealous.

Speaker 1 And easier to marry the two. Like if you want to stay in constant contact, but also get a partner, it's helpful if your partners are also in the same situation.

Speaker 3 And if you have babies, you got a built-in babysitter too.

Speaker 1 And then your children.

Speaker 1 Hang on a minute. Let's jump to the channel.
Let's get to the children.

Speaker 3 Because I have a lot of fascinating things to say about the kids. I met these identical twins who married identical twins, and I went out and hung out with them for a couple of days.

Speaker 3 And I assumed naively that it didn't matter who you married, married, everybody's genetically interchangeable. Oh, I was really wrong.
I picked this one. She's got a sweeter, gentler face.

Speaker 3 That meant a lot. I picked the one who was the firstborn.

Speaker 3 I picked the one who was the more dominant because I'm submissive and two dominants would hit each other and submissive was never getting along.

Speaker 3 There were real reasons why certain pairs went together. And I've read about a couple or so that met recently.
And it's almost immediate who goes with whom. It's just amazing how it gets decided.

Speaker 3 When identical twins marry identical twins, of course, the children are legal first cousins, but the genetic full siblings. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And what is more common, though, is identical twins who marry unrelated people and their children are genetic half-siblings.

Speaker 3 And in those cases, the aunt is the mother and the father is the uncle, if it's the twin mothers or twin fathers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do think that's confusing when your mom and aunt are identical. We interviewed someone whose mother died and then their identical twin sister stepped in to help.

Speaker 1 And I thought, well, that's as good as it's ever going to get for somebody who loses their parent.

Speaker 3 And now, one case I want to tell you about, and I'll come back to that, is I met one family with identical twins who married identical twins, and they had children on the same day.

Speaker 3 Can you calculate the relationship between those kids?

Speaker 1 Can I calculate the relationship between them? Oh, so they were born on the same day.

Speaker 1 They have the exact same two contributing genetic pools. So they're the same person.
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 They are fraternal twins, genetically speaking.

Speaker 2 Oh, because they were in separate.

Speaker 3 They're not strictly twins because they didn't share the womb, but they were born on the same day to the same parents.

Speaker 1 The same sperm and ovum. Right.

Speaker 3 So they're like fraternal twins.

Speaker 1 Yes. Because you asked me, I was certainly way more attracted to the one I was with.

Speaker 3 I think studying a situation like yours would tell us a lot about mate selection, about the very subtle things that spell the difference between loving and liking.

Speaker 3 Twins are ideal for studying mate selection.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Don't you think some of this leads to just that attraction is environmental then?

Speaker 3 I don't know. I think attraction is too complicated to just attribute it to one set of features.

Speaker 2 Sure, maybe it's a multiple layer.

Speaker 3 This smell? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, pheromone.

Speaker 3 I mean, we tend to like somebody who's sort of like us, but not too much like us or not too different. It's a lot of things.

Speaker 2 I did used to have a theory that people are attracted romantically to people who have some sort of similar features to themselves, even if things are very different, like race is different or overtly they don't look the same.

Speaker 2 But once you really start looking, it's like, oh, actually, they both have prominent this or big eyes.

Speaker 3 You're very smart because we find that similarities attract, right? Birds of the feather. It's not that opposites attract.
Now, the biggest features that attract people are values, things like that.

Speaker 3 Height and weight, not so much. The physical features, not so much, but it's values at educational levels.
Those are really important.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're about to say the new book you're writing.

Speaker 3 No, I was going to say that a study that I'm writing. Oh, yeah, yeah.
A study. We got from these twins married to twins.
It's all framed with an evolutionary psychology.

Speaker 3 And so I hypothesized that identical twins would be more heavily invested in their identical twin sisters or brothers' children than would fraternal twins. And that's exactly what I found.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a behavioral genetic design to look at an evolutionary-based hypothesis. That's what I did.

Speaker 1 What was the construct of that? Like, how do you test for that?

Speaker 3 So what I did was I constructed a questionnaire that had 36 items in it asking about, does this child look like it could have been your child? How much time do you spend with this child?

Speaker 3 Do you think of this child as your own? Questions along those lines. And the identical twins came out with higher scores than the fraternal twins did, which didn't surprise me at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, again, this is insanely anecdotal, but it's just been my own personal experience. My kids, well, one in particular is a little shyer, very slow to warm up to new kids her age.

Speaker 1 That's pretty consistent across the board. I have my cousin down with his kids.
She knows their cousins. Immediately it's on.
There was none of that self-consciousness. The shyness is gone.

Speaker 1 It was stark. It's like, oh my God, they just arrived.
They don't know each other. And they're immediately at ease with each other.
And I'm like, is this something genetic happening?

Speaker 1 That just wouldn't happen with a stranger entering the house.

Speaker 3 It's hard to know. It could be just a meshing of personalities that the kids have.
But one of the most striking things I ever saw was a reunion between identical female twins.

Speaker 3 They were born in China and they were separated because of the one-child policy.

Speaker 3 One day I get this telephone call from the mom in Sacramento who told me she was raising a twin raised apart from China and the other twin was in a little town in Norway in the fjords.

Speaker 1 Oh, what a different nurture.

Speaker 3 So here's what happened. About that time, the BBC contacted me and said, got any good stories for us?

Speaker 3 I said, if you will fly the Norwegian family to Sacramento and fly me from Fullerton to Sacramento, you've got yourself a story.

Speaker 1 And they did. And were you there for the first time they met? Oh, yes.
Oh, my goodness. Yes.
What was that like?

Speaker 3 And so the little girl runs out of her house, and the little girl outside is jumping up and down. And then this other one comes out, looks exactly like her, and she starts jumping up and down.

Speaker 3 How old were they? Six. Six.
And of course, one spoke English, one spoke Norwegian. But I observed the kids playing, and they played together like knowing each other all their lives.

Speaker 3 They somehow figured it out. And I had a wonderful picture that I took of the kids where they're standing back to back, they're holding hands.

Speaker 3 And I happened to go back to Norway about eight years later for a conference in Oslo, but I went out to Freswik in the fjords and I positioned the same way this most amazing Thomas photography because the one who was taller before is a little taller now.

Speaker 3 I remember seeing them at age 14 where the other one can now speak English. And they would just leave the adults and they'd go somewhere and just talk.
They had this world of their own.

Speaker 3 That's what identical twins do. And I think that many people envy that closeness.

Speaker 2 Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1 You probably never went down this path because it wasn't your discipline by maybe like linguists would be interested in this, but did you ever explore how much they can communicate?

Speaker 1 I think that's a fascination we have.

Speaker 3 It is a fascination. And I have not studied it systematically, but I've observed many, many cases.
I've gone to twins' homes where I'll say, who's going first? They look at each other.

Speaker 3 Suddenly, one leaves and one stays. And what is transpiring there, I don't know.
People call it twin language, but it's really not a language.

Speaker 3 It's a system of communications, words, gestures, phrases. The twins often evolve because they're so close together.
Identical twins and fraternal twins will both do it.

Speaker 3 My sister and I had little games that we used to play sometimes, but the identical twins do it to a much greater degree. And it'll just be like they hold up an object, they give it a name.

Speaker 3 And it's very fascinating to watch it, but it's not a language. It's just a system of communication.
And what it can do is delay the onset of normal language in twins. Oh.

Speaker 3 And so parents have to be mindful of that because if they spend too much time together, they won't be able to converse in appropriate ways with their peers or with adults.

Speaker 1 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2 What a fascinating topic.

Speaker 1 I know. I'm I'm kind of jealous that you guys are.
You should be.

Speaker 3 You should be because I discover stuff all the time,

Speaker 3 new things all the time.

Speaker 1 I guess my last question about them is, do they over-index in just self-esteem? I feel like if I had a built-in partner that I would just be a little less fearful about the world in general.

Speaker 3 I think that's true to some extent because I've interviewed a number of twins who say that they never had the peer pressures that other people had. They didn't feel like they had to conform to things.

Speaker 3 They were very comfortable with each other, didn't need a lot of friends, and felt very good about it. And I think along those lines, I've just been so impressed with how selfless identical twins are.

Speaker 3 And what I mean by that is athletes, kids who run for student government, you think that everybody wants to win? It doesn't matter to them if they win or their twin wins.

Speaker 3 And I found that really hard to understand at first.

Speaker 1 But it's true.

Speaker 3 I spoke to these twins who ran for student government, and they both ran as presidents. And they didn't care who won.
They said, we will be president.

Speaker 3 They used a lot of we's.

Speaker 1 I see a lot of weeks.

Speaker 3 It's too bad the rest of us can't feel that it's very special it's a good thing to feel like a we as opposed to an oh you're absolutely right it's such a non-judgmental accepting relationship that you can be yourself completely and what a luxury to be yourself and know that you're always going to be loved and always accepted.

Speaker 3 That's what people are really after. And I think that's what's driving people to find their doppelgangers.

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 1 You know, we interviewed an identical twin and she was saying that she thought the gift of it is when you got into middle school and high school and you're trying out identities, she basically got to watch someone do experiments for her.

Speaker 1 Her sister would try a new hairstyle and she could sit back and go like, well, that's how it'll work out for me.

Speaker 1 And she just took this role of like, yeah, you run the experiment and I'll keep what works. And I was like, oh, that's a neat strategic way.

Speaker 3 I read an article in the New Yorker magazine.

Speaker 3 And it was about sort of the paths untaken and how we all can imagine how our lives would turn out if we'd married someone else or gone to a different school or taken a different job.

Speaker 3 The experiment that you're describing with different hairstyles, that's on kind of a low level.

Speaker 3 But identical twins raised apart are the only people in the world who can really see themselves in a life unlived. Really, it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they meet up and go, wow, okay. So if I would have gone to that school, this would have happened.
Yes, I would imagine. Yes.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you know the case of the twins where one was raised Jewish and one was raised in Nazi Germany.

Speaker 1 Tell me that one.

Speaker 3 Jack and Oscar, they were born to a Romanian Jewish father and a German Catholic mother in Trinidad. The couple met on a boat heading to Trinidad.
And they had a little girl.

Speaker 3 And then three and a half years later, they had Jack and Oscar, identical twin boys. When the marriage soured, Jack stayed with his father in Trinidad and was raised Jewish.

Speaker 3 And Oscar went back to Nazi Germany with his mom and was raised Catholic. And he was not a Nazi, as many of the newspapers will tell you.

Speaker 3 was 12 years old when the war ended. He was in the Hitler youth, but he thought it was a great opportunity to play sports, go camping, not go to church.

Speaker 3 And so when they met, they met at 21 for the first time, and they didn't get along at all because they had very different political understandings. They couldn't speak the same language.

Speaker 1 Had his brother been in a concentration camp or anything? No.

Speaker 3 The Jewish one had lived in Trinidad. Oh, sorry.
And he had been to the Israeli Navy. So then they met again at 40 when the wife of one of them discovered.
the Minnesota study of twins raised apart.

Speaker 3 So by now the twins are 40 and they're thinking, let's give this a shot. And it turned out they had the most amazing love-hate relationship.

Speaker 3 But the most fascinating thing about them was that they both knew that had their positions been switched, they would have embraced the ideology and understandings that they currently despised. Yes.

Speaker 3 And I find that fascinating. That's a very good example of an environment.
Now, how did they handle their respective situations? It's interesting.

Speaker 3 So, Jack, raised in Trinidad, was afraid that somebody would discover his German roots, so he became very pro-British.

Speaker 3 And Oscar was afraid somebody would discover his Jewish roots, so he became very pro-German. The content was different, but the approach was the the same, right?

Speaker 1 Survival incentives. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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Speaker 1 Okay, my last question is, are there any cases of these twins reuniting and not carrying on with a relationship? Or they all develop a relationship?

Speaker 3 There have been a few, but every pair has been very, very grateful to have met the other one. They have learned so much about themselves, their medical history, where their habits come from.

Speaker 3 They've all been very, very pleased to understand their backgrounds. But there have been a few cases.
I remember there was one where one was quite religious and one wasn't.

Speaker 3 And that didn't really work out very well.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I heard this horrible sad story. A friend of a friend, when she was like six or seven, I think, her twin, I believe identical, was killed.

Speaker 2 And she was talking about her life since then and how she has such a hard time in romantic relationships. And she said, I think I'm always sort of looking for her.

Speaker 3 That's exactly what happens because you expect other people to have that same insight and acceptance and they simply don't. And you're always testing this out.

Speaker 3 I have a long study going on of twins whose twins have passed away. And I do find grief intensity higher among the identicals and the fraternals.

Speaker 3 So it's another approach to the same class of questions we've been talking about all afternoon. It's a devastating event.
And many twins will tell me that they wish they had gone first. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I also, yeah, I could imagine you could be underwhelmed with a relationship if you're an identical twin.

Speaker 1 Like you've experienced a closeness that you would expect to be there romantically and then wouldn't be and be a little underwhelmed with the experience.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And some twins have said, we share things with each other that we'll never share with our husbands.

Speaker 3 And that's why I think for some twins, it makes sense to marry a twin because then they understand the situation.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I just want to go on to the one I read about, or I guess you discussed them in your TED Talk about the two women that were reunited, the giggle twins this is my fantasy of if i discovered an identical twin at some point what was their reaction to meeting each other they were thrilled and the interesting thing about the giggle twins was they they only giggled in the presence of the other one yeah they were rather shy women but they would giggle uncontrollably when they were together and this was a real problem i was on a tv show with them once

Speaker 3 and i mean they wouldn't stop giggling and finally the host really had to stop the segment because we weren't getting anywhere oh my god they had a lot of similarities, those two.

Speaker 3 They had a very crooked, pinky finger, and they concocted a drink called Twin Sin. I can't remember all the ingredients, but I know that blue curacao was in it.

Speaker 1 And cream. And cream.
Yeah. And you tried it and you're like, this is not

Speaker 1 a drink.

Speaker 3 It wasn't quite my thing. And they were both very apolitical.
They both met their husbands at dances.

Speaker 2 Were they separated and then

Speaker 3 they met, I think, in their late 20s, early 30s, something like that.

Speaker 1 Okay, I lied. It feels like more hijinks and funny business was going on in the fertility world in the 70s and 80s and that we've somewhat straightened this out.
Are examples of this declining?

Speaker 1 Separated identical twins? Does that happen as much now as it did in the 80s or 70s?

Speaker 3 It's a very hard question to answer because I don't know if it's any less, but I do think it's for different reasons. Twins were separated, say, in Argentina during some political times.

Speaker 3 I just came back from Greece. Between 1960 and 1980, there were a lot of illegal adoptions going on where twins were born.

Speaker 3 The hospital would take one, tell the parents the twin had died, and sell it to a couple

Speaker 1 who was childless.

Speaker 3 Those kinds of things go on. Do you know what is amazing is when people have IVF in vitro fertilization, they know the chances of twinning are higher.

Speaker 3 Now we're back to implanting only one embryo because they're better able to manage it. But when it began, they would plant two, three, four sometimes.

Speaker 3 But anyway, the very first case of twins, the mother gave away the little boy.

Speaker 1 She kept the little girl.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking to myself, how do you do this? You know, when you paid all this money for it, you knew the risks.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 And you obviously wanted a kid so bad you went through right and so to have two is a blessing yeah but there have been some mistakes you still read about them where somebody's embryos get wrongly planted or they mix the wrong sperm with the wrong egg or something like that those things do happen or you find out it was your doctor's sperm yeah that was a big thing in early ivf but yeah this like switched implanted a different embryo is i'll hit you with an incredible one they have not genetically tested their kids but i have a friend who had a couple kids naturally Then the wife had some complication during a delivery and she knew the uterus was going to be destroyed and they froze eggs and they had a bank of eggs.

Speaker 1 And so they implanted one of the eggs and then this daughter is born. Then they have another kid with another egg.

Speaker 1 Then they have a kid again and the kid comes out and even me, who's not the parent, I'm like, Boy, she looks a lot like, I can't say her name, but the older daughter. And they're like, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 And this continues to the point where they finally get a hold of the fertility doctor and said, is it possible that they're identical twins, that those two eggs had split?

Speaker 3 Oh, I see what you're saying. So in the petri dish, something could have split.
That is possible. They should do the DNA test.

Speaker 1 They should. And can you imagine that would be the most fascinating study for you to ever approach? Because now you have identical twins separated by like six years of age chronologically.

Speaker 3 Still, I have criteria for what's an identical twin because I've thought a lot about how twins inform our understanding of human reproductive cloning. And I would not consider them identical twins.

Speaker 3 Why? They don't share their birthday and they didn't share a womb. And in fact, if you assigned that label to them, it could be a problem.

Speaker 1 Okay. But you'd still be interested in studying them? Because my, I'm like, if this is real.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes.
Because if it's real, think about knowing what you will look like in six years your whole life is such a bizarre.

Speaker 3 Or if the older one made a terrible life choice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 See, that's why when I talk about human reproductive cloning, I just wrote a big paper on this from a conference.

Speaker 3 Everyone raises these challenges, and there are certainly challenges that are legitimate, but in some ways it could be a benefit because the parent who's the donor could maybe understand the psyche of the child and maybe help that child along to avoid different pitfalls in life.

Speaker 1 So this would be an example where someone had a child, the child died, and then they cloned that child? No, the cloning of yourself.

Speaker 3 No, you just clone yourself.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 1 oh.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Yeah, suppose you're infertile. Suppose you're the last person in the family line.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what's your position on cloning yourself?

Speaker 3 Well, I have no problem with it because not everybody's going to do it. We can get women who are 70 years old pregnant with donated embryos.

Speaker 3 You don't see 70-year-old women running out to have children, do you?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 3 People are still going to want to have children the old-fashioned way. And if you clone yourself, at least you have some knowledge of.
what you're getting.

Speaker 1 I would want to clone myself, but I would say that's egomaniacal.

Speaker 3 Adoption is a great alternative if you've got an infertile couple, but it's still a bit of a risk. You don't know the genes you're going to get.
This way, at least you know.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's not predictive because there's different generations, but still it's something. And I think that I'm fine with it.

Speaker 3 We have issues of safety and ethics and financing and decision-making a lot.

Speaker 3 But I use the twin model to challenge the challenges that have been raised, which are just provocative and emotionally driven.

Speaker 1 Yes, and probably religious undertones. Would you want to have

Speaker 2 what if I cloned your kid?

Speaker 1 Oh, a delta. You wanted a delta?

Speaker 2 Their youngest. That's also very interesting.
Environmental being raised with different parents. It's a similar thing.
It's exactly a similar thing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like twins raised apart.

Speaker 3 But remember, if you clone somebody, even the donor who clones himself, it's not an exact replica. Different generations.
There can be cell errors. It's not exactly the same.

Speaker 1 Right. Rarely does your phenotype perfectly match your genotype.
Yeah, do you want to have yourself now?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I don't know why. It feels egomoniacal, right? It feels egomoniacal.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm just going to make make another one of me.

Speaker 1 Dority, the challenge as a parent is to remind yourself they're not you. They're not an extension of you.
Let them be themselves. I mean, how hard would that be? No, they are you.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 But can I ask you something? How many parents look at their children and say, an extension of me? They do.

Speaker 2 That's what

Speaker 1 they do.

Speaker 1 We all do.

Speaker 3 They do. And one of the criticisms of cloning is that you see the child as an extension.
But I say ordinary parents do as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right. It's not different.
It's not different, but it is something compounded. It is.

Speaker 2 It would be like, so you're definitely going to join the play in a couple of years.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, you know now.

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 1 And then you get to find out. You could find out some terrible realities, which is like in my story, had I been supported as a kid, I have this aptitude for driving.

Speaker 1 And if someone had paid for a race team, I would have definitely been a Formula One driver. And I could provide that for my kid and be like, oh, I guess I caught it.

Speaker 1 You'd find out the hard way you were.

Speaker 3 Slippery. Maybe the kid wouldn't have any interest in car racing.

Speaker 3 It's not the sport du jour.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes, it is slippery, though, because you're almost wanting to give yourself the life you wish you had, which is what you do as a parent.

Speaker 1 But that all parents,

Speaker 1 yes,

Speaker 1 you do that. You're right.
And I did it, and then they don't want to do that because you want what you don't have. That's right.

Speaker 1 It's unavoidable reality.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 1 So, anything else? No, that was wonderful, Nancy. That was so fun.
We've been talking about twins for seven years and dawning to have an expert on. And you're just so perfect for that.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm glad. I had fun.

Speaker 1 We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

Speaker 2 I hope it's not gonna explode.

Speaker 1 Oh, I hope it does.

Speaker 1 No!

Speaker 1 That'd be so viral. Oh, that's true.

Speaker 1 A huge AC explosion.

Speaker 2 Yes, that is true.

Speaker 1 Well, if that thing blew up, and then when all the smoke settled, your sides were shaved.

Speaker 2 That'd be your dream come true. That's your 11-11 wish.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think if I'll ever have an anniversary that would warrant you.

Speaker 1 Or maybe if I get diagnosed with something terminal. Don't say that.
You could shave your sides.

Speaker 2 I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2 No, you won't. Now, because of this, then you jinx.

Speaker 1 I don't know where to knock.

Speaker 2 I don't know how to do it.

Speaker 1 Deathbed wish you won't shave the sides?

Speaker 3 No, because you...

Speaker 2 You implanted this. You made it happen.
I'll blame you.

Speaker 1 Only if you're... For your fun new life.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Wait till you see how your life takes off once you have that shaved side.

Speaker 1 You're going to be like going to different clubs and stuff. I am.
You're going to have a whole new chapter of your life.

Speaker 2 I am very happy with my life. Speaking of that, I've been playing a lot of solitaire.

Speaker 1 I just learned it. With a deck of cards?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 You just learned solitaire.

Speaker 2 Yes. And I'm still not sure I have the rules 100% correctly

Speaker 1 correct.

Speaker 2 But I love it. I've been playing it a lot.
And I told Eric that I've been playing a lot. And he said, oh,

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 You know, as he is, as he does.

Speaker 1 It doesn't sound, when you learn someone's been playing a lot of solitaire, it does make you a little bit concerned about that.

Speaker 2 I know, but that's like a weird stigma. If you're watching TV by yourself, no one says that.
It's like the game by yourself thing really makes people upset.

Speaker 1 It does. Yeah.
It makes me like feel like you're bored. No.

Speaker 1 And lonely.

Speaker 1 I know. Like, this is crazy.

Speaker 2 This is crazy.

Speaker 1 And isolating.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 it's so wrong. It's like, instead of what everyone else is doing is just staring at their phone and scrolling Instagram all day, I'm like, I'm going to get my brain going.

Speaker 1 Well, when Eric tells you he plays video games all day, how do you feel?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't like that. But I think that's because that's like screen.
Like that's screen time?

Speaker 2 Yeah, if he was playing solitary for six hours a a day on his phone.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, however anyone wants to pass their time on this trip on Planet Earth. Yeah.
That's fine.

Speaker 1 It does make someone feel sad in the same way that someone played video games six hours of the day.

Speaker 2 Whoa, but that's so.

Speaker 1 Like reading a book is obviously going to be beneficial to you.

Speaker 2 So is solitaire. Solitaire is a game for your brain.

Speaker 1 Kinda.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? I mean, it's not that hard, right? Well,

Speaker 2 I and you get lucky. Maybe I'm stupid.
Like, I don't think it's that easy. In fact, it's not easy at all.
I don't win, like, most of the games.

Speaker 1 Right. But, but it's not like there's some crazy way to play it, right? There's a...
Like strategy. Yeah, you kind of either get lucky with...

Speaker 2 I think there's a tiny bit of strategy.

Speaker 1 I think there's a tiny bit. I think people can be bad at it.
Yeah. But I think you can be.
perfect at it pretty soon. Are you doing three card draw or one card draw? Three.
It's cards. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Three makes it a little more challenging.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I didn't even know that's what it was called. Three-card draw.

Speaker 1 Or one-card draw.

Speaker 1 Rob, are you playing a lot of Solitaire by yourself? I mean, my family was big card game people, so I've played a lot of Solitaire, yeah. And double Solitaire and triple Solitaire.

Speaker 2 Because that's with other people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you have the aces up top in the middle, and you're kind of racing. Why stand corrected? It sounds like it's a pretty good time.
It's it does.

Speaker 1 I agree agree with him, though, that it does sound a little sad.

Speaker 2 This is upsetting.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 1 If someone's watching TV, whatever. But minimally.
Or on their phone. If they watch TV, they could watch the same show as a friend and then they could chat about it.

Speaker 1 Whereas no one's going to talk to you about your solitaire game.

Speaker 1 Because it was just you. I mean, it's called solitaire.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because it's one player.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because it's solitary.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because instead of just sitting and watching TV or being on your phone.

Speaker 1 or even a book.

Speaker 2 Why is a book better? So that's, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it's going to educate you, potentially.

Speaker 2 Not necessarily, but sure. Maybe, maybe.

Speaker 1 All the ones I'm reading.

Speaker 1 Well, I do. I just read a bunch of biographies.
So I learn about a time period and I learn about an industry. You're making it.

Speaker 2 It's very in you. Okay.
Cause like

Speaker 2 there's so much fiction.

Speaker 1 You're right. And but those, so even

Speaker 1 you're on all fours. You read it.
You talked about it a ton. A lot of your friends read it.
You guys got going about it.

Speaker 1 It was this whole social event reading that book.

Speaker 1 Whereas if you have solitary and someone else, like, I played two, you go,

Speaker 1 did you, did you win?

Speaker 2 I guess. Rob and I just had a great conversation.

Speaker 1 That was.

Speaker 1 Well, okay. That was, you know.
Yeah. You guys did have that great conversation a second ago.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was really good.

Speaker 1 And there's just no one's ever going to talk to you. You're not going to bond with anybody over, with the exception of this great conversation, you guys just have

Speaker 1 bond over your solitaire game or the video game you played because I wasn't playing the game with you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but so that's also a you thing, like it's not about what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 It's not about everything I do isn't for a conversation, right? Right.

Speaker 2 It's to engage in my day.

Speaker 1 It is time for just you. That's not

Speaker 1 lovely. Yeah.
Oh, sorry. I was just being honest.

Speaker 2 I really, I'm shocked because I actually really thought you were going to be like, God, Eric, like he just will say the craziest thing. And that's so silly.

Speaker 1 But it does.

Speaker 1 It does sound.

Speaker 1 Rob, when you just hear someone's playing a lot of solitaire, does it make you sad or happy or neither?

Speaker 1 Neither.

Speaker 2 That's the right answer. It doesn't need to make anyone happy.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't need to make anyone sad. It's just something I've been doing.
Like, I've also been watching Mr. Beast.

Speaker 1 Oh, you have?

Speaker 2 Mr. Beast Games.

Speaker 1 Beast Games. The Beast Games? Yeah.
And you like it?

Speaker 2 Okay, so I'm so behind. Obviously,

Speaker 2 we're like months behind.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Maybe a year.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 I had a

Speaker 2 dinner while you were gone. We missed you guys, but it was a friend pod dinner out, adults.
So fun.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 see i have so much i have so much social interaction that i need some solitary

Speaker 2 otherwise the solitaire time is work so i need solitary time that's not those things that's playing yeah yeah so anyway or maybe i'll try it it's it's been a long time since i played solitaire I mean, and to be fair, like, I've been also playing with people.

Speaker 2 Like, if I'm out with Jess or with Anna, sometimes we'll play together. Right.

Speaker 1 Not dual.

Speaker 2 We'll like both be playing. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's fun too. Now, your phone is interesting.
That's a good analogy because

Speaker 1 in general, I also think your phone's kind of a time suck, but it is.

Speaker 1 You do see things. We all see the same things on Instagram.
So that's also a bonding conversation.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. But it's bad for your brain.

Speaker 2 And this is good for your brain.

Speaker 1 Yeah, potentially.

Speaker 2 Your brain is working.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 You are thinking. That's true.

Speaker 1 Problem solving. Oh, please hold.

Speaker 2 I forgot to put. I'm re-entering too.

Speaker 2 Okay, anyway. So, Beast Games.

Speaker 1 Yeah, tell me.

Speaker 2 So, have you watched it? I tried.

Speaker 1 I couldn't do it. Really? Yeah, I don't.
With the kids? I don't enjoy. Yeah, the kids watch the whole thing.
Oh. I don't enjoy watching people have to make decisions, compromising decisions for money.

Speaker 1 I don't like it. But I understand the appeal.
I'm interesting.

Speaker 2 Did you like Squid Game?

Speaker 1 Yes. But quite a bit.
And Squid Game, the

Speaker 1 reality show? Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's the same.
I mean, it literally is the same thing. Except there's more money on the table here.

Speaker 2 It's the most money.

Speaker 1 And they have to do more dastardly things. Like, it's almost every round you have to betray people, right?

Speaker 2 Well, ish, but that went that happened on Squid Games

Speaker 1 too. Yeah, it did.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the beginning. Sorry, spoiler.
I mean, I'm not finished, so I can't really spoil very much, but

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 right when they enter, there's like a thousand people there or something.

Speaker 1 It's outrageous. The episode I saw where they're all standing in that grid.

Speaker 2 Yes, they're all standing in a grid. There's the chance to win $5 million

Speaker 2 in this game, the most they've ever given out on a game show.

Speaker 2 In addition, there's a side challenge that happens where they could win a $1.8 million island, private island.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yes.
Probably more work than it's worth.

Speaker 2 So I won't spoil what happens there. But

Speaker 2 I am past that part. So, okay, at the beginning, they have the opportunity when they first arrive before the game even starts.

Speaker 2 There's $250,000.

Speaker 2 And he says,

Speaker 2 if if you want to go home now

Speaker 2 go over there if one person goes over there they get all 250 000 if two people goes they split it if three it starts splitting you know yeah and some people like enough people did it so that it was like twenty one thousand dollars each people got yeah i was like fuck yes

Speaker 2 i that is Definitely how I'm playing that game.

Speaker 1 I am a rapper.

Speaker 1 21 grand and get out of there.

Speaker 2 Get out. You haven't wasted any.
You got that's literally free money. You haven't had to do anything.
You haven't had to hurt anyone or betray anyone or do anything physical.

Speaker 1 That's like 11-ish people picked that or 12 or something. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 2 So I was.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're probably happy now, a year later.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, but then it depends because there are other opportunities throughout to make money.

Speaker 2 Like one guy ends up, I think

Speaker 2 this is a person who really went out. Obviously, someone who wins $5 million, great, right?

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 2 and the person who wins the island, great. But there's still a lot of like stress and strife in that.
Yeah. One guy leaves with $450,000 and

Speaker 2 kind of in this sort of easy-ish way. And I was like, that's, he really won.

Speaker 1 He won because he didn't have to go through much. Exactly.
And he still got a big old chunk of change. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I would definitely be the person who leaves first day, gets my money, something's better than nothing.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. Bird in a hand's worth two in a bush.

Speaker 2 Yes, because also like the chances of nothing are so high.

Speaker 1 Yeah. A thousand to one.

Speaker 2 You got to get something.

Speaker 2 So that's how I would play. Would you, what would you do? Would you keep playing?

Speaker 1 No, I feel like I would try to get money midway through. Yeah.
I'm a pessimist, though, right? I wouldn't think, I'm not the type that'd be like, I'm going to win this whole thing.

Speaker 1 I don't have that mindset.

Speaker 2 Yeah, which is so weird.

Speaker 1 I know. You're mixed messies.
I know. I'm this weird mix of competitiveness and I surrender easy.

Speaker 2 I feel like you would actually be very good in it because there's like mind,

Speaker 2 you know, there's like brain stuff and there's physical challenges. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One of them, they're on a team and they like have to pull a monster truck like with their body and get it over speed bumps and stuff.

Speaker 2 I think you'd like that one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, physical. That sounds fun.

Speaker 2 There's like sprinting. Anyway, so, but there is a lot of betrayal and then there's a lot of self-sacrifice.
And it was making me think a lot about that.

Speaker 2 Like the people who they just walk away to help other people. There's also, and I'm, because I don't think this is a spoiler enough people have heard about this.
There's a challenge where

Speaker 2 there's four lot. There's all these people, right? Four lines of them.
And then those are the teams. And then the four teams have to pick a captain from each team to represent the team, basically.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they go up and

Speaker 2 number amount starts increasing on the clock, the money amount.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they,

Speaker 2 if they press the button, they get to keep that amount of money and stay in the game, but their whole team gets eliminated.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 So they're picking people who are going to be like, no, I'm definitely, I promise I won't, I just won't press it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that's so much trust.

Speaker 2 How high do you think that dollar amount gets to?

Speaker 1 $500,000.

Speaker 2 A million dollars. Nobody presses it.

Speaker 1 Nobody pressed it.

Speaker 2 I was so moved

Speaker 2 and like.

Speaker 2 But then like later in the game, I'm like, then they leave?

Speaker 1 That's probably why I don't like the game. Okay.

Speaker 1 We're probably getting to the.

Speaker 2 Because you think it's unfair?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 I know I would be selfish.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'd feel bad about being selfish. And when I watch it, it's just like

Speaker 2 there are good people.

Speaker 1 All these opportunities. And I just picture me at 24.
I know.

Speaker 1 And if I could have had a million dollars and these strangers got nothing, and I'd already convinced myself they're not getting anything anyways. I know.

Speaker 1 Like, that's probably why I don't like it because I know I would probably be selfish.

Speaker 2 But you probably wouldn't get picked.

Speaker 1 Probably not.

Speaker 2 Or, cause do you think you'd be the type? Because yes, you might be the type to press it, but would you be the type to be like

Speaker 1 exactly? No, so wherever my shadiness on the spectrum exists, I'm a six or whatever. Yeah.
Where like I think I'd be unhappy with my decisions, but also I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't have the full lying thing. It's like, let's put it this way.

Speaker 1 I don't want to say a regret because I just love, I love everyone I ever had sex with. I feel grateful for it.
Great. I do.
Okay. So I don't really have regrets like I want to take any back.
Right.

Speaker 1 But I recognize some girls liked me a lot and I hurt a lot of girls. Okay.
And I hate that part. Sure.
That's nice. But then what I tell myself is, well, I've never been one that was like, I love you.

Speaker 1 I'm in love with you. I want to be with, like, I've never.

Speaker 2 But were you saying it with like your actions?

Speaker 1 That's where it gets gets confusing is that I, oh, we've already talked about this. I already have kind of

Speaker 1 a comfort level of talking about emotions and stuff. Intimacy.
That I do think was misleading.

Speaker 1 I think it felt unique for some people in a way that signaled we're in love.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 I feel bad about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But also I feel good about the fact that I also was never deceptive like a lot of dudes I know that told girls they loved them, told me they didn't have a girlfriend. Straight up lie.

Speaker 1 No, I told people if I had a girlfriend. I told people.

Speaker 2 But straight up lying is different than deception.

Speaker 2 Lying is a part of it.

Speaker 1 No, I didn't deceive either. I didn't act like I was more into them than I was, which a lot of guys did.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Like a lot of girls are like, he told me he loved me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that's

Speaker 2 lying. But if you with your actions

Speaker 2 showed love.

Speaker 1 Well, if I'm just being me.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 I'm being authentic to who I am. I can talk on the phone for three hours.

Speaker 2 Like, Yeah.

Speaker 1 For some guys, the only person they can talk on the phone for three hours to is the person that they fall in love with. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So I have like a mixed bag of guilt about that.

Speaker 2 Sure. I understand.
So, but yeah, I don't think you would be in front of the team, I don't think, and be like,

Speaker 1 guys, I'm the most honest person here. I'm so selfless.

Speaker 2 Never, it doesn't matter if that thing gets to $5 million. I'm not pressing it.
You wouldn't say that.

Speaker 1 No. Right.
No. Unless I really believed it.
And maybe I could. Maybe I could fall in love with everyone there.
Right. The way you do in a film set or something.

Speaker 2 But do you think you, you would believe it and then get up there and be like, oh no, like I have to.

Speaker 1 Again, I was like, I was stealing stuff. I was, I had bad,

Speaker 1 I felt in

Speaker 1 blowed.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 That was, that's the other thing that's interesting is some of these people are like, I'm meant to be here.

Speaker 2 It's, it's working out for me. And I'm like, because all those people left on their own volition, like, it's not you're meant to be here.
It's people sacrificed for you. And now you're here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I don't like that, that there's no like,

Speaker 2 wow, a lot of people gave up a lot of opportunities for me to be standing here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I guess I feel like I've only stayed as moral as I have with a lot of effort. And I just don't need any situations tempting my morals.
I'm just too insecure about my own moral compass. Then,

Speaker 1 not now, I could play the game.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, obviously now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We can't think about when you have means.
Like, obviously,

Speaker 2 that's a different scenario.

Speaker 1 I think about this all the time, though. It really is, like, I don't think anyone really even knows who they are

Speaker 1 in a sense. I agree.
Like, I am.

Speaker 1 I'm the product of so much good fortune. I think a lot of people would describe me as super generous.
I was also super greedy and wanted money so fucking bad, I would have stole. So

Speaker 1 in this abundance, I've been able to help a lot of people. Yeah.
And I'm a version of myself now that I'm quite proud of. But I have to be honest about that.

Speaker 1 I'm in a situation where it's a lot easier for me to do that now. Exactly.
So like, that's another thing. It's not really fair to judge the people in the situations who are really desperate.

Speaker 1 No, I know.

Speaker 2 That's why this is complicated. That's why it's so interesting.
It's like, I don't really blame a lot of the people who are, I mean, they're like, I'm here to win. And like, I understand that.

Speaker 2 That's why they're there. They're there for a game.
Yeah. But there's also like

Speaker 2 invisible lines that are just getting crossed.

Speaker 2 Like there are these two brothers that there's this one game where they're broken up into threes and then they have to go in this cube and decide one person has to leave. Okay.
Or they all leave.

Speaker 2 And within five hours, they have to decide this.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And in one of the cubes there is these two brothers and this like young girl and they're being they're so manipulative so manipulative and horrible to her and like bullying and bad and i was like i

Speaker 2 hate

Speaker 1 you guys yeah and i understand you're there to win but this is up like there's there are lines yeah I guess what I'm saying is, and this show is not, I'm not in judgment of this show.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, I know, yeah.

Speaker 1 But overall, I think people are pretty critical of people in rough situations that have never been in those situations. And that's a little bit of a sensitive spot for me, right?

Speaker 2 I fully agree.

Speaker 1 Like when people are judging how people are acting in the fucking white trash neighborhood or in here, I'm like, yeah, you just, you're not there. You really got to be there to.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I absolutely agree. I think

Speaker 2 over time,

Speaker 2 through hearing people's experiences and having my own, like, I don't,

Speaker 2 there used to be, I used to feel like, oh, there are things I would absolutely never do. I would just never do them.
It would never happen.

Speaker 2 And now I don't think that. I think there are scenarios in which I would do anything.

Speaker 2 And knowing that is helpful because it gives grace to everyone else's doings.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So just when I see a situation that's been constructed to test people who are

Speaker 1 vulnerable, it's hard for me to enjoy it.

Speaker 2 I understand. but there is like, there is real,

Speaker 2 there are human people, yeah, that are like, I'm gonna go, like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do it for these people.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 And it's that's beautiful. Like, and it is a sweet reminder that we can make those hard decisions.
We can make the decision to be selfless.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 2 one of the guys who didn't click the million, he was like maybe gonna

Speaker 2 did he get kicked off or maybe he was about to get kicked off? It was whatever, something.

Speaker 2 And Mr. Beast was like, Do you wish you had taken the million? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he was like, I was happy with who I was before I was offered that. I'll be happy afterwards.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Well, that's a great attitude, but heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 I know. Then I really wanted him to have a million dollars.

Speaker 1 I know. I just want everyone there to get a million dollars.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 yeah, and also just people

Speaker 2 people are there for a lot of different reasons. There's like horrible, sad stories.
There's just like, I'm here to play this game, which is, I think, fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Then that becomes tricky. It's like, do they not get to because this other person has a like

Speaker 1 to trigger any of your

Speaker 2 until now?

Speaker 1 Oh, why?

Speaker 1 I can see where.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. It's like this single person versus a family.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I know that's a zone for you.
Yeah, that's not fair. Okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I don't like that at all.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it's interesting. It is.
It's an interesting thought, like human experiment.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm swirling with all this because, again, as I've updated you several different times, I have really enjoyed being somewhere else for two months and really observing how everyone does everything.

Speaker 1 I've been finding it endlessly fascinating. Yeah.
I mean, I really feel like I'm doing an ethnography on yeah, it's fascinating. And I got into a fun conversation over dinner with hays uh huey's wife

Speaker 1 about kids and i'm like look i i see that kids are raised differently here in the south and i also see the value of it and

Speaker 1 i also

Speaker 1 have a different kind of philosophy What do you think the philosophy is there? Well, like there, most of the kids all say, they'll say Miss Kristen or Miss, right? You always say Miss or Mr.

Speaker 1 So that's like deference and

Speaker 1 respect, respect for elders, which is lovely. That's a great thing.
I think I'm really good at assessing what a potential outcome is that I have to take very seriously and work backwards from that.

Speaker 1 I think I'm a good reverse engineer. So I'm like, look, I know Lincoln.
I'm the same way. It was a big thing for me that my vote wasn't the same as everyone else's.

Speaker 1 I didn't understand why my being younger meant I had less value in any situation. It was very hard for me.
And when my dad wanted to break that

Speaker 1 spirit of mine, I just wrote him off. Right.
And it was so easy for me.

Speaker 1 It was hard for him and super easy for me because I'm so determined. And if you fuck with me and try to tell me I can't be who I'm going to be, I'll just, I'll go nuclear.
Right.

Speaker 1 It's a character defect. I don't like that I'm this way.

Speaker 2 But again, again, again, when we've talked about this before, and I do want to say that you're not like your dad. Your dad left you.

Speaker 2 There are lots of reasons for you to have a skepticism of his authority. Like you are not like that.

Speaker 1 That's true, but I think

Speaker 1 I would have been the same even if he was better, right? Like I think.

Speaker 2 I don't know. We don't know.

Speaker 1 I think if I get it in my head, you're trying to prevent me from having the experience I deserve to have here

Speaker 1 in my autonomy to. choose my experience.
If I think you're standing in the way of that, then it's not hard for me to be away from you.

Speaker 2 It's so interesting, though, because

Speaker 2 yeah, and like

Speaker 2 it might be a disservice to getting along with other people. Like, if it's just like, it's my way and I'm going to do it.
I'm not going to listen.

Speaker 1 This is a character defect. This is not a, this is not a virtue of mine.
I'm, I know that this is a character defect. Okay.
Um, no, in my head, I, it sounds different than you just framed it, right?

Speaker 1 For me, which is like, I'm not going to ask you to be anything you're not. And in respect, you're not going to ask me to be anything I'm not.
Right. Like,

Speaker 1 I think I have an ethic in my mind that is very defendable. Right.

Speaker 2 But there's cooperation and there's, there's sacrifice. I mean, there's life isn't just we both exist in our in our bubbles as we are.

Speaker 1 Like there's compromise.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 We're not on islands.

Speaker 1 And you have to really trust that the person you're compromising with has your best interests in mind. Whatever.

Speaker 1 yeah these are this is this is character defect yeah yeah yeah this is not a virtue of mine right this is interesting yeah but i i think lincoln has that ability and i think her and i are both we have the same condition which is like we both think we have the best plan we've thought this out for a long time and here it is and isn't that great

Speaker 1 so i was like i'm just working backwards from reality which is if i try to do this parenting style call everyone miss and Mr., act this way, go up there, no, you know, all this stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just won't have a relationship with her. She'll just, she'll just write me off.
She won't, she's not going to bend. I'm not going to bend or break this girl, nor am I going to try to.

Speaker 1 I,

Speaker 1 now look, it's totally different calculus with Delta. I don't have those

Speaker 1 similarities with her where it's problematic. So I just go, do you think you as a southern kid who acted that way, did anything different than I did as a southern kid?

Speaker 1 Did you drink and did you hook up with boys? Do you do all the things you weren't supposed to do? And I'm like, yeah, everyone does the same shit.

Speaker 1 I don't want my kids to lie about it. Yeah.
That's that's it.

Speaker 1 All I'm after is like, I have some sense of what's really going on and they feel safe to let me in on that. And so it's a trade-off.
It's all a trade-off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 My kids are probably more difficult at times in public. Like they're going to fight back and I'm going to have to hear their case in court.

Speaker 1 But hopefully they're not, they don't feel like they have got to hide stuff from me. Yeah.
And pretend they're someone that other than who they are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't think one's better than the other. It's just like whatever trade-offs you are comfortable with.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 and that's the one I'm comfortable with. And it's, it's all interesting.

Speaker 1 I just, I, I think it's all, I'm just very aware of like, I think so often people want to say this way is better or that way is better, or they do it wrong there, or they do it right here.

Speaker 1 And I just look at it like, oh, yeah, everything's got trade-offs. Everything's got, there's a ton of stuff that comes with that.
That's awesome. I see it.
Yeah. It's enviable.

Speaker 1 And then there's other stuff that I don't want. And I don't, it's not worth that cost.

Speaker 2 But I don't know. It's interesting.
And everyone's triggered in different ways by the different options out there, I guess. But like, I don't like having to call adults Mr.
and Mrs.

Speaker 2 and that type of thing at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because it's also teaching kids that the adults are always right.

Speaker 2 That they, like, they deserve just

Speaker 2 by the fact that they're adults, they deserve.

Speaker 1 That's my other baggage with it, right? Which is like, no,

Speaker 1 the adults I knew, quite a few of them, should not have been respected or trusted or listened to or obeyed. Well, right.

Speaker 1 So once you've had that experience, you're like, that's not really a good policy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. When you get into a scenario where it's like you learn that all these adults are hurting children and they're teaching the kids to be like, yes, sir, like that's a problem.

Speaker 2 You need to also be pretty clear that not all people

Speaker 2 deserve. to be listened to or respect.
But also like, to me, politeness, politeness is a big southern thing. Yeah.
And I do think that's really important.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 2 I think it's so important.

Speaker 1 Yeah, their little kids are always like, yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.
You know, and I love it.

Speaker 2 And they don't even have to, but to me, politeness doesn't have to do with like the authority. It's just like we're, we're generally going to be nice to people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to be civil. We're going to be civil because it's hard for everyone to live together.

Speaker 2 We're just going to be civil and polite. Like when someone is serving you a meal, you say thank you.
That's a nice thing that happened.

Speaker 2 Like the manners, basic manners and politeness to me is much different than like

Speaker 2 you should respect your elders or you need to listen to everything they say and take it as the, you know, like that's a different thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it gets convoluted.

Speaker 1 It does. It does.
Again, there's nice sides and then there's other sides where I'm like, yeah, well, you know,

Speaker 1 time will tell how all these.

Speaker 1 How everyone ends up. Yeah.
Everyone will end up great. I mean, that's fine.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Everyone will be fine.

Speaker 1 But I'm loving it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 also so i down there say yes ma'am a lot and yes sir and i like it okay it kind of this is the other reality it's like the thing you and i have debated in the past about like asking your future father-in-law for permission

Speaker 1 it's like i get that the premise is flawed for sure

Speaker 1 and then i know the results of having done that which is lovely

Speaker 1 And I think a lot of the things fall under that category where it's just like, it's confusing.

Speaker 1 Like, do I, i i i do i reject the premise or am i rejecting the outcome of it because those are both valid ways it's kantian or utilitarianism it's like well the outcome for you you like the outcome for you and you like the outcome for her yeah i can only judge it from me when i call the woman ma'am at the gas station i well like the outcome you know yeah for you yeah yeah but but

Speaker 2 yeah because she seemed seemingly liked it right yeah so that's like, but the premise of the asking the parents for the daughter's hand in marriage is about the daughter's reaction.

Speaker 2 So if like, if for me, it's if

Speaker 2 I am

Speaker 2 going to,

Speaker 2 if someone's going to propose to me,

Speaker 2 I want them to ask me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they'll have to. What do you mean? You can't get married without asking.
No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Ask me, hey, is it important to you that i talk to your dad ask you to marry exactly that i talk to your dad or how how do you how do you want me to go about this yeah and then i'd be like not important to them or me yeah and definitely if you're gonna do it which you sure if you want if that's important to you fine but you better talk to both of them right yeah yeah everyone's gonna have their own rules for it and it's just asking the woman who you're marrying what she wants right as opposed to these men just decide making decisions on their own that's the that's where the premise is faulty yeah you don't like the notion of the it's the father's right to give the daughter to a man yeah and that and that is and the husband's right to be like

Speaker 2 like i'm want i

Speaker 1 yeah so that's the premise right so that's what i'm saying yeah the premise is flawed exactly but the act

Speaker 1 itself isn't will you give me permission to marry your daughter? Because we both know I will, whether you say yes or no. So it's not, I'm not really asking permission.

Speaker 1 What I'm doing is saying, I'm joining your family and I'm coming with a big act of humility.

Speaker 1 And that's lovely. That's a wonderful thing for someone entering the family to do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we've just discussed this. Like, I, I mean, I just really don't understand why

Speaker 2 the mother wouldn't be involved in that is like wild. Like if, if someone wants to marry, they can have a separate conversation with you, like a man-on-man fun conversation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I'm entering your family is the whole family. And like it should, it should, there should be an equal

Speaker 2 respect for the mother in that scenario too. I think

Speaker 2 personally. And again, that's me.
So I would make that clear. So all I would need is my husband to one, just know me and know like that's right.
That's what she would want.

Speaker 2 Or just ask, like, hey, if I end up, if we end up doing this whole thing, like

Speaker 2 I would like to talk to your dad. And then I would say, great, you can do that.
I would really like if you talked to both of them. And then you can also talk to my dad.
I don't know, but I just think

Speaker 2 the woman needs to have a say in how that goes down. And if I didn't, if my, if my husband went to my dad, I mean, I wouldn't honestly, I wouldn't like be mad.

Speaker 2 But also when I told my dad this, he was like,

Speaker 1 this is crazy. He didn't want anything to do with that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like, why would they do that?

Speaker 2 For him, and he said, he was like, you need to, like, me, Monica, needs to do that. He was like, you need to come to us and say,

Speaker 1 hey,

Speaker 2 I'm like, this is serious with this person.

Speaker 1 We're probably going to get married.

Speaker 2 Not can I. There's no,

Speaker 2 they are under no

Speaker 2 illusion that they are.

Speaker 1 I don't think anyone is, you know.

Speaker 2 No, no, but they really are not. Like, they are not like, you owe us that.
They're just like, you're our kid.

Speaker 2 You are the one that needs to communicate with us. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which was good for me to know, too, because I could see me being like, oh, yeah, we got engaged last month.

Speaker 1 They'd be upset. They're married last week.
Yeah, we're married.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just different ways of being so. So, traditions are

Speaker 2 cultural and they're different, and nothing's right or wrong. Yeah.
It is, to me, what's right or wrong is whether the people think it's right or wrong. That's at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 That's right. If everyone enjoyed the whole thing, then great.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. All right.
Well, I'm going to keep watching Beast Games. I'm going to keep playing Solitaire.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. Happily.
Okay, great.

Speaker 1 And And I'm going to be excited for you that you're playing solitaire. It's a real good activity.
It's good for your brain. Yeah.
And you're enjoying it. I am.
Yeah. You're not very good at it, but

Speaker 2 it's just that I miss it. It's like, wait, I could have moved this over a long time ago.

Speaker 1 So you are seeing some room for improvement. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And you know, me, I like to be the best version of myself.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 And it's, I'm impressed you're sticking with Mahjong because you're you're losing pretty.

Speaker 2 No, Mahjong is not a game like that.

Speaker 2 Like, you aren't gonna win every game if you win once it's like great effort it's hard but you were just beat by a 10-year-old repeatedly three times yeah yeah that speaks more to her than it does to anyone that's impressive yeah very impressive um

Speaker 1 all right let's do some facts okay all right this is for nancy twins oh what a fascinating episode twins we're never gonna be sick of talking about twins twins for the wins yeah this won't be our last twins episode, I'm predicting.

Speaker 2 We love this. There really aren't very many facts, again, because she provided them.
I'm going to like, you know, we talk about the Olsons. She feels like they're identical.

Speaker 2 You feel like they're identical. But I am

Speaker 2 obligated to say that.

Speaker 2 They believe they're fraternal. It's on the internet that they're fraternal.
Obviously, they haven't done any DNA testing.

Speaker 1 They have said they never did DNA DNA tests, which means they actually just don't know. They don't know.

Speaker 2 So that's what I'm going to, like, we don't know.

Speaker 1 Right. They don't know, but the twin expert and I know.
No.

Speaker 1 And she's an expert, and I dated one of them. So I feel like that's pretty qualified.

Speaker 2 No, you're not. Nope, you're not.
I do think

Speaker 2 they look so similar. I am going to give you guys that.

Speaker 1 You never knew when they were babies before nurture got involved. It's not not like you, anyone in the world ever knew when they swapped them out on that show.

Speaker 1 You can't swap out fraternal twins and get that kind of consistency.

Speaker 2 But sometimes maybe you can sometimes.

Speaker 1 They're definitely identical. I agree with her.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, that's not definitely because this is a fact check and I'm here to say we don't know.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 She quickly mentioned something about men being better at spatial

Speaker 2 awareness,

Speaker 2 which they are. A common test used to assess spatial ability involves mentally rotating 3D objects.
Studies consistently show that on average, men perform better on these tasks than women.

Speaker 2 However, this doesn't apply to all spatial tasks.

Speaker 1 Just the important ones. Okay.

Speaker 2 For example, some studies

Speaker 2 show no significant difference between men and women on tasks involving spatial navigation or spatial working memory.

Speaker 2 There's also, she also said women are better, women perform better conversely on verbal tasks. Um, I didn't look that up.

Speaker 1 I was brainstorming about the difference between men and women a little bit because, of course, as we had guests, Kristen and the other mom were like

Speaker 1 really bonding over whatever new food everyone's supposed to eat. And, you know, it's like women really find out about quinoa about a year before men do.

Speaker 1 And then they, you know, I forget what, what this, oh, carmen,

Speaker 1 carminum, carminum, cardamom, cardamom, cardamom. You know, They're going on about cardamom.
Blake and I'm like, what the hell is cardamom? But I was thinking.

Speaker 2 Cardamom's been around for so long.

Speaker 2 It's actually used in Indian food constantly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's having a resurgence right now. You can get it in a lot of drinks and stuff.

Speaker 1 It's not like it was an add-on in the 80s, but now it's a pretty popular add-on.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I was thinking evolutionarily, it does make so much sense because

Speaker 1 when you live in an area and you're hunting, you're hunting the same three animals every single day. It doesn't change.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 there are so many seasonal berries that are in bloom. Then there's seasonal

Speaker 1 tubers that are in bloom. Then seasonal fruit.
Like it makes sense that women were way more on the lookout. for whatever was new and in season.
Whereas guys are just like, I killed deer.

Speaker 1 That's what I do. I don't ever have, I'm never going to be killing, you know, a unicorn.
There's not going to be any new animals that pop up this season. This is like, this is what I hunt, period.

Speaker 1 Done thinking. I don't know.
I was just thinking about that has to be in the mix of explanation. How all the women always know all the new things and all the dudes are like, what? What is the thing?

Speaker 1 Hmm.

Speaker 2 Interesting. It's also hard, though, because

Speaker 2 women talk to other women.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 some women are into it and then they're spreading the information to other women and then they know. Like, I don't know that ever, all the women are seeking that out.

Speaker 2 So, like, Kristen is constantly seeking that out. Like, she's like always like, she's a gatherer.

Speaker 1 I mean, she's like a textbook gatherer. She's like surveying the land.
What's out there? What could be better? What's more nutritious? What, you know, she's on, she's on the gather.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but she

Speaker 2 on the scale, like, you know, she'll send us the girls stuff

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 those things, or like when the air was bad, like lots of stuff about the air. Like, she's on top of that, or she's really, she cares a lot about that.
It's just a scale, I guess. Like, and no, right.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a huge spectrum among women for sure, and then there's a huge scale among men, but just on the average, those gaps are pretty enormous. You know, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 Cardamom is a good spice used in Indian food since the beginning of time. My mom cooks with it a lot.
It's strong. It's a strong spice.

Speaker 2 It's also used in some sweet things like cardamom buns is a thing and that's sweet. And then like rice puddings.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 she mentioned a toothpaste that these two separated twins both use. That was random.
Vaddie Makeum. It's an herbal toothpaste.
Oh.

Speaker 1 If anyone wants to try it.

Speaker 1 If anyone wants to try it. If anyone wants to be third member of this twin pair.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's herbal.

Speaker 2 I looked up where snakes are the most prevalent. Countries with most snake species.
Mexico. Oh, most snake species.

Speaker 1 That's... Right, not overall volume.
Ugh. It never

Speaker 2 understands me. This is under World Population Review.
Anyway, Mexico has the most species.

Speaker 2 Then Brazil, then Indonesia, then India, then Colombia, then a lot more, but I won't go to 100 because I know how you feel.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And that's it. It's just, twins are interesting.
What can we say?

Speaker 1 Ah, they sure are. Fascinating.
Identical copy of yourself.

Speaker 1 Would you want one or not? Yeah. Well.
Wow. I don't want one.

Speaker 2 In theory, I want one because...

Speaker 2 I want to know what it feels like to be that connected with someone. Like you in the womb womb with someone connected.
But

Speaker 2 in practice, I probably don't. I probably would feel competitive.
But maybe you don't because you, you just love them so much.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't be about my relationship with my twin as much as I'd be envious of having to split my attention with the rest of the world all the time.

Speaker 2 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Like there's two of us. So whatever amount of attention exists for this version of a human, I'm splitting that in half.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you might be a lot more subdued. You'd have no choice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would be like, I guess I'm not going to be able to be unique. There's already another one in me.
You know, I have terminal uniqueness. That's why I'm saying that it wouldn't be a good.

Speaker 2 But it would actually be a good. It would be good.
It would be like the cure. But also, the irony is that

Speaker 2 the irony is that

Speaker 2 it is the most unique

Speaker 2 to have a twin, an identical twin.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess you get a bump from being a freak show. You know, like people are going to be more interested in you for that aspect.
But I have a twin. His name's Aaron.

Speaker 1 That's, he's a good twin.

Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's a really funny episode of Friends. Phoebe has a twin.
Phoebe lives with Rachel. Okay.
And Rachel is buying.

Speaker 2 a bunch of stuff from Pottery Barn, but Phoebe doesn't like the stuff from Pottery Barn. She wants her stuff to be unique and vintage, one of a kind.

Speaker 2 And so they go over to Ross's house to watch a T movie or something. And he also has a piece from Pottery Barn that Rachel had.

Speaker 2 She had lied and told Phoebe that it was unique and vintage and from the days of old. And so she freaks out and she's like, you have to cover this up.
Like Phoebe will see it. And she thinks ours is

Speaker 2 unique. He said, oh, it's because she's a twin.
Twins are so so weird. And she's like, No, she's not weird.
She just wants her stuff to be one of a kind.

Speaker 2 And he says, You know what's not one of a kind? A twin.

Speaker 1 Yes, he's right.

Speaker 2 It's very funny. God, it's a great.
That one's called The One with the Apothecary Table. If anyone wants to watch that, I believe it's season maybe six.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 Everyone can look that episode up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Love you, loved her, love twins.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she was so cute.

Speaker 1 Love twins.

Speaker 2 We love twins. All right.
Bye.

Speaker 3 Love you.

Speaker 1 Love you.

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