Determinative Decisions Before Birth: Genes and Names

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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Konakova.

And today, my co-host, Nate Silver, is gallivanting in Norway, I believe.

And so I have an amazing guest co-host, an old dear friend of mine, brilliant writer, incredible thinker, David Epstein.

David is the author of two international bestsellers, The Sports Gene and Range.

Both are incredible, highly recommend, and a book that will be out next year, Inside the Box.

And we'll have him back on when that comes out.

And I'm really glad to have him here today to talk about a topic that

he knows a lot about.

Today on the show, our first segment is going to be about genetics and designer babies and the ethics of it, the implications of it, kind of what kind of world we want to live in.

And after that, we'll be talking about a different kind of determinism for what ends up happening to you in your life, which is does your name matter?

Welcome to the show, David.

Thank you so much for being my co-host today.

Nate's lost my gain.

I'm glad to be here.

Thanks for inviting me.

Of course, of course.

All right.

So

first up, we're going to talk a little bit about genetics.

So there is a new startup, ORCID, that's been in the news.

And the ORCID pitch is that we can help you determine all sorts of genetic things about your embryos so that you can choose one that avoids the risk of certain diseases, et cetera, et cetera.

They are doing different sorts of testing, different types of testing.

They don't release their client lists, but it has been said that

a lot of them are among the elites of Silicon Valley, tech entrepreneurs, people who are kind of the movers and shakers of the modern world.

So first, David, what do you just think in general about the whole concept of being able to determine, you know, you have tons of embryos and

we can pick the ones that we want based on certain factors.

And by the way, like little caveat, people have been doing this in terms of disease for multiple years now, right?

If we can test for a disease risk, if I have a family risk, for instance, of

schizophrenia, something like that, we can try to mitigate that somehow.

Schizophrenia was actually a really bad one to choose because that's a polygenic, very difficult one.

But that's the general idea originally.

As we have just said, this goes further.

So what are your initial thoughts on something like that?

Yeah, in a very broad way, by the way, I think this gets an issue where, like, everyone's talking about how AI is going to change our lives.

And I've thought genetics and gene editing and genetic selection in the long term

have the potential to more fundamentally change our lives than AI does.

But I think the issue, I don't know a lot about ORCID.

I mean, I looked at a very little bit about them specifically.

So, I don't know all the services they do, but obviously they're emphasizing the health stuff, which I think is

a matter of degree difference from what people are already doing, right?

Like people already screen for chromosomal abnormalities, you know, Down syndrome being a familiar one.

And then they have the choice of whether or not to do anything about that or not.

Nobody's compelled.

So to the extent that what they're doing is, it seems that they have a technology that allows them to amplify DNA really well.

So they really, really early after conception, they can get a few cells.

get a reliable DNA signal from it and screen for a whole bunch of potential diseases.

So that I I think is just a difference in degree of things that are already going on.

And as someone who, you know, I got off training to be a scientist and got into journalism because I was a competitive runner and had a training partner who died at the end of a race from a genetic condition.

So, the idea that we could prevent stuff from that, you know, these genetic mutations that we know of that

like rip through families like a forest fire,

I think that's a good option for parents to have.

But I think there are a lot of more difficult questions, right?

Like you mentioned polygenic traits.

So a lot of the monogenic stuff is more, it is easier in some cases.

You see a genetic variant.

You know it causes some disease.

You can select, you can take it out, right?

People, you know, if someone,

there may be moral questions about dispensing with the embryos, but that's the case for IVF in general anyway.

So

I think the reason that this is pretty controversial, probably two reasons.

One is that it will be much, you know, it will be wealthy people that adopt it, right?

So then you have this question of, are we like bifurcating the world into people who can prevent diseases in their children and people who can't because they have money?

So that's one question.

And that just feels icky, right?

When it comes to health, like no, nobody feels, you don't feel as icky about wealthy people having nicer cars as you do about being able to be healthy.

But then the kind of third rail, I think, is when you start selecting for things that are more traits than diseases, right?

Like intelligence or athleticism or whatever it is.

And in those cases, I think up to now, it hasn't been that feasible because those things, unlike some

diseases, most things are not caused by one gene.

Most things are caused by all sorts of parts of your DNA.

Genes are the parts that code for specific proteins.

And now we know like maybe every single gene and a bunch of other parts of your DNA that aren't even genes that interact to create like, you know, even how tall you are, maybe every single gene that has some influence in that, each one in a little way.

And it hasn't been very feasible since we have no idea what most genes do to actually select for that stuff.

But there's now some work where you do this thing called polygenic, like gene scores.

We have a huge database of a huge number of people and you've sequenced their genomes and you have their health information and you can kind of score, give them a score based on a large number of genes.

You may not even know what those genes do.

But this configuration looks like it might change someone's cognitive ability a little or their height a little bit or some other trait about them.

And that's where you get into these things things that are not preventing someone from dropping dead, but things that would just be nice to have or bigger advantages for your child.

And so I think that's like the third rail, right?

So I think the reason that it's so controversial is that people see it as like the first domino to fall en route to that, which is something that is now.

you know, even though I think if you selected for a lot of those polygenic traits, you'd only make a tiny difference.

But if you do that generation after generation after generation, like that's how breeding works.

Yeah, no, for sure.

is exactly how breeding works.

And, you know, I think you've raised a few really interesting points.

One that we still like, we really don't know how this shit works a lot of the time, right?

And sometimes you think that you might be selecting for something really, really good, but you are also like.

it comes with a trade-off, right?

That you just do not know about, right?

Sometimes that is, that's even true of diseases, right?

There are some things that make you susceptible to one disease, but are protective against other things.

And we don't actually know all of those genetic interactions.

That's right.

I mean, a classic example, right, is that some of the genes that cause sickle cell trait and sickle cell anemia are protective against malaria, which is why people of like recent West African descent have those that condition a lot, even if they now live in the United States, for example.

Yep, yep.

That was the one that I was thinking.

That is a very classic one that we know, but now we know, right?

But we didn't know before.

So I think that that's part of it, right?

That we, a lot of this stuff is just incredibly complicated.

But I do think that like when someone is promising, okay, you know what, like I'll make your kid smarter and more likely to be a star athlete and more likely to be Mozart

or whatever it is,

that there are ethical things on a few levels.

One, there's like the ethical, the ethics of the promise, right?

Of taking money for something that...

With something like schizophrenia, right?

This was the example I used at the beginning.

And I said, this is actually a very bad example because schizophrenia is something that is determined by so many different factors.

We don't know really what causes it.

And it's not going to manifest for, you know, 18 years, 19 years, 20 years.

It usually happens in the late teens, early 20s.

And so in the meantime, this company can be making claims that, oh, we're screening for these things,

not actually be doing it successfully.

And we have no way of knowing.

So there's like the ethics of promising something that you're not really sure about.

But then also if we can, like let's assume we can do that.

I do think that there are concerns both with the haves and have-nots, but also with the like, I'm selecting now for blue eyes and blonde hair, and I want someone who's a little bit taller.

And it's so funny to me.

You know, there are people who are now quoting Gattaca, the movie, as this wonderful thing, like, oh yeah, we're making Gattaca babies.

I was like, that movie was not

positive about this kind of technology.

That was a dystopia.

Like, that is something that we absolutely don't want.

That's like Selman Khan's book, Brave New Words, which is obviously referencing Brave New World, which I didn't really think of as kind of a good connotation for children and their schooling necessarily.

Yeah, that's that's not a book that I have very positive associations with in terms of the kind of future we want to be living in.

Totally.

And I think, you know, to your point, like, I don't want to compare this company in particular to 23andMe, but like 23andMe, I was since I was writing a book about genetics, I signed up for a bunch of direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies in the early days before the FDA was really paying attention to them.

So you could get all kinds of information.

And

like, I remember there'd be, say, it would say, you know, am I allergic to gluten or something like that?

And it would show some of my gene variations compared to the population.

It would say, oh, well, people with your genotype are,

you know, your, your odds ratio is like.

1.02 or something.

You know, you're like slightly more.

So one would be if you have the same risk of getting this thing as the

typical person.

so you're slightly slightly increased risk and then a month later they'd find some other associated gene variant and be like well now you're actually at slightly decreased risk and then there'd be like three more found and they'd be like you're at elevated risk again right so there's this question of you don't know what a lot of stuff is doing and so it was like depended when i checked in if i were at increased or decreased risk and again that was some pretty unsophisticated stuff um my like motto for genetics is genetics more complicated than we thought um you know because people used to think we'd have like 100 000 genes and then it turned out we only have like 20, 23,000, you know, and onions have way more DNA than we do.

So it was kind of disappointing.

Like we're not that complicated.

Onions are smarter than we are.

That's no, I mean, who would argue with that?

That's why so many people don't like them.

They're just jealous.

I'm allergic to them.

What does that say about my intelligence?

You're allergic to onions?

Yeah, I'm allergic to raw onions, all raw onions.

Onions, shallots, scallions, chives.

And you shouldn't say stuff like that in public.

Your kryptonite is now like out on the internet.

I know, I know.

So this is genetic.

This is actually something that you can look at in your genes.

And my body doesn't have the enzyme that can break them down.

So, as soon as they're cooked, I can eat them.

But in any raw form, I'll become incredibly, incredibly sick.

So, this is potentially actually, you know, bringing it back to our topic at hand.

This is something that Orchid or whatever company could potentially test for.

And then I might not exist because they'd be like, oh my God, onion allergy.

No, we can't have this onion allergy.

It might not.

I mean, I think we can all agree that we would get rid of that embryo from an onion allergy, for goodness sake.

Like, it just changes the whole conversation.

If you can pick that up, it does.

It does, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, so I don't want to compare them because I think some of the disease stuff, I think, is just a more powerful version of things that people are already doing.

And by the way, I mean, I guess that's true to some degree for genetic selection.

Like, I wrote an article years ago about height in sports for ESPN.

And I was like, it turned out that in most, almost every

like sperm donation clinic, like I couldn't donate because I'm not tall enough, right?

I was was division one athlete and all this stuff, you know, did well.

That's insane.

Wait, are you serious?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But so it's like when push comes to shove, people do do this stuff, right?

Yeah, that's crazy.

And so, I guess the question is:

you know, if it becomes widespread, though, that's yeah, that's the thing.

Well, you know, it's interesting that you say when push comes to shove, because people do already, like,

if you know, so I don't have kids, um, so I, and I've never gone through IVF, fertility treatments, et cetera.

But if I were to do that and I was looking for a sperm donor, I could go through binders, you know, of backgrounds of people and choose who I would want, right?

And it would say things like, you know, height and eye color and all of these things, where you went to school, you know, so I could be like, I want someone smart.

I want someone from the Ivy League.

Did you look at the, I'm sure in your college newspaper, there were advertisements for egg donors like crazy, right?

Absolutely.

And it would say like, and they would advertise in like the Harvard Crimson for a reason, right?

Yeah.

Oh, no.

I was hit up for egg donations so many times.

But they didn't know that you were allergic to onions.

They did not.

They did not know.

Maybe the two balance.

No, they don't balance out, do they?

The onion allergy is much worse.

Yeah.

I understand.

Damn.

But yeah, that is absolutely true.

And you could make a lot of money, right?

By being an egg donor.

Like that.

Sperm donors don't make that much.

Egg donors make a lot of money.

I can't imagine why, but unfair.

Unfair.

Pay gap.

This pay gap needs to be addressed.

Yes, gender pay gap.

Gender pay gap for sure.

So yeah, so these types of things have been available in some way, shape, or form for a long time.

But I do think that, you know, the if this becomes the norm, then it becomes problematic in many respects.

And one other issue that we haven't talked about that

people have raised is if this becomes the norm, right?

And then then people who don't actually have fertility issues, who don't need IVF,

end up doing this so that they are not kind of

the same way that people opt sometimes to have C-sections when they don't need them because

they don't want to give vaginal birth, right?

If people then make that choice just simply because they want that selection, that is also kind of an interesting ethical area

and has repercussions for a lot of society in the sense that, so ORCID, and we're not picking on ORCID, it just happens to be one that is like in the news.

Topical for the issue.

Exactly, exactly.

So, but ORCID specifically charges $2,500 per embryo.

Now, you would be, you'd need to make multiple embryos, and it can become much more expensive if you want other testing, et cetera, et cetera.

So, there is kind of another, there are more issues that keep piling up here.

And we'll be back right after this.

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I don't think that it is particularly difficult to envision a scenario where IVF becomes like basically the norm because you want to be able to do embryo selection, right?

I'm not saying that I think there'd ever be an instance, well, at least in the foreseeable future, that where everybody would make that choice because there are a lot of different, obviously, ethical considerations.

But I don't think it's that hard to see that.

And I think you could end up in a kind of collective trap where, because some people are doing it, you know, and if it turns into real advantage, maybe there's pressure for insurance companies to then cover it or,

you know, just for moral reasons, like it shouldn't be limited access so i i actually i don't know which way we're going to go but i don't think it's like sci-fi to imagine that ivf would become like the standard mode of procreation yeah and people say you know oh but it's still a personal choice well what you said about um pressure kind of peer pressure to do it i think is actually huge so when i just graduated from college uh moved to new york wanted to be a writer it's really hard to make a living as a writer you don't make a lot of money so i tutored um i did a lot of private tutoring for very wealthy families.

And, you know, people, that becomes something that, like, if you don't do it, right, you are disadvantaging your child and you're a bad parent.

At that point, everyone expects that, like, oh, well, you'll get tutoring in all of these.

You'll get SAT prep, you'll get this, you'll get that.

And if you're one of the people who don't get it, then you're like, oh, my parents don't care enough, right?

That they're not giving me that extra step.

Now, by the way, I never got any sort of tutoring when I was a kid.

I didn't get SAT prep or anything like that.

But it was, I was shocked at the fact that some of the kids really did need it and others, like, it was just something that I was being paid basically to act as a tutor and to kind of be a tutor.

Technically, I was like, this is a smart kid who could do this by themselves, but, but no, because this is something you're required to do.

And so I think that people might feel pressure to select,

even if we don't know if it works, right?

Just on the off chance that it might work and that this sort of stuff might be testable and that you might be giving your kids minute advantages.

Now, one of the themes of risky business is that minute advantages matter, right?

Small percentages matter.

As a poker player, you know that if you get an extra 1% edge, that's huge.

So even if we know that things like intelligence, you know, things like height, that they're determined by so many different variables that nothing is, well, with few exceptions, nothing is all genetics, like one gene.

And if even if you can eke out an extra percentage point, right?

An extra tiny bit for your kid, that could be huge.

And are you negligent if you don't make that choice?

If you say, you know what, I just want to have sex and see what happens.

So quaint.

Yes.

And I think, you know, like parental neuroses is like a bottomless well of spending, right?

So there's a lot of business opportunities there.

But I do think there is now, and I wouldn't have said this not that long ago, that there's real reason to believe that some of these traits

could be accurately selected for in a small way.

Again, that doesn't say anything about, are you accidentally then getting something you don't want, right?

There's a lot of unknowns.

But I think for the first time, some of these other non-disease traits, we could load the dice a little bit, a little bit.

And then over multiple generations, that could become more and more and more.

But again, I think those are separate from the issue of making the screening screening for disease

better

much earlier and more extensive.

Yeah.

No, I think that just to put this out there, I think that the screening for disease is great.

You know, I think that that is, I think that's a very good thing.

I think that, you know, being able to...

I don't know that everyone would agree with that, right?

Yeah, maybe not.

You're still like selecting for embryos of

the same thing.

I think it's less controversial.

I think that a lot of people won't agree with that.

Yeah, because they don't think you should be able to select for anything.

But, you know, I'm an Ashkenazi Jew.

Ashkenazi Jews have predilections, you know, for a lot of different genetic conditions.

You know, if we can reduce TASACs, right?

If we can reduce Huntington's, if we can reduce the risk of some of these really devastating conditions,

yeah, that would be amazing.

Right.

I think, I think, personally.

But, you know,

related to this, we also do have emerging technologies, CRISPR, you you know, that can edit, right?

So that it's slightly different, right?

You're not choosing embryos, but we have technology that is becoming better and better where we can actually go into

the genome and say, okay, snip, snip, let's, let's try to, let's try to fix this.

And let's try to, not literally, by the way, people, you don't actually go in with scissors.

It's not that different, though.

That's a pretty good analogy.

But so we have technologies like that

that don't require IVF.

You know, it's interesting, like it's very, very complicated because

there are certain things about this that I think are amazing.

There are certain things that really give me pause.

And then there are things I actually am kind of scared of the unknowns.

And I know that, yes, we shouldn't be afraid of a technology because we don't know the side effects.

But, you know, there are certain things like maybe when you are trying to

kind of control for the schizophrenia cluster genes, you're also getting rid of artistic talent, just because

I say that as like a cliched thing that often goes together.

But like, maybe we're actually getting rid of some good things and some natural variation mutations that we have no idea what they do, and they might have existed in this embryo, and we just will never know.

That's an interesting point on two counts.

One, I mean,

we know there are things, like to give to give a sort of extreme example, years ago this was with earlier forms of gene therapy, but there were some tests on boys with what I think it's called X-linked combined immunodeficiency syndrome.

People commonly know it as bubble boy syndrome because the boy has so it's linked to the to an X chromosome and and because boys only have one there's not another copy to correct it so some some X linked diseases are in boys and so bubble boy syndrome meaning they basically have no immune system so they can't go anywhere they have to like live in a bubble.

And the gene therapy,

this was a more rudimentary form.

It wasn't CRISPR like gene editing, but using a gene created in the lab, and it gets like shuttled into the cells with a deactivated virus, basically.

It cured some of them, which is incredible, right?

But then like a number of them got leukemia.

So there was like this incredible cure, but also this incredibly devastating effect.

And so you don't know, right, some of the stuff that's going on.

And to your point about

that example, you mentioned like schizophrenia and artistic talent.

I think there have been some studies showing that you don't want mental illness to be creative, right?

Because that incapacitates you in all these ways.

but that that tends to be more in the family of people who are extremely creative.

And it's like, if there's all these genes that have a small effect, some people will have too many of them and they'll have mental illness.

And some people will have a bunch of them that make you kind of an unusual thinker, but not so many that you're incapacitated.

I remember some years ago after I wrote about genetics,

a psychiatrist who served Harvard students coming to me and saying like they definitely are overrepresented in all these conditions that are like borderline mental illness, you know?

So like you and your peers, you know, it's not just your onion

allergies, like you're weird in other ways that might also be useful.

This also happens obviously with like new drugs.

Like for instance, you were saying the bubble boy, they end up dying of leukemia.

We know that there were some drugs that showed amazing promise, right?

And then ended up like devastating your liver and kidneys and you die, right?

Or something like that, where like, oops, we had no idea or, you know, causes horrific birth defects or whatever it is.

Those types of horrible moments, unfortunately, are all too common in medical history.

But I think the difference there is you were trying to cure a person who was incredibly sick.

And here you have someone who's healthy and potentially in the future someone who is perfectly fertile, doesn't need IVF, doesn't need any of this, and is choosing to do something which might then introduce these sorts of

downstream effects.

That's a whole, you know, it's like a saying among doctors, it's like it's very hard to make an asymptomatic patient better.

You know, there are cases where that's true where you catch stuff ahead of time.

But as a general rule, if someone doesn't need medical intervention, it's usually better to avoid medical intervention.

So I think you're hitting on an important point.

I mean, I wonder, what do you think?

Let's say, because we've talked about how there may be sort of off-target effects that you don't want when you do some of this stuff.

Let's say we get it all figured out someday.

I mean, I don't think we're ever gonna get it all figured out because this is this complex interplay between all these environmental stimulus and genetics.

So there's no, like, to the extent that no two lives are the same, we're not gonna have it all figured out.

But theoretically, if we did, and then it's just a matter of selecting for stuff you want the way that you would with like a dog breed,

what then?

Like, then it's like just a kind of how do we want society to be a question.

And that's, that's, that is quite dystopian if we also consider that it might be, if we pair that with what you said at the beginning, right?

The divide between the haves and have-nots, where some people can afford this like state-of-the-art technology and others can't.

And so, we have a very specific type of person selecting for what they want.

Um, and yeah, to me, like that is dystopian.

And that's kind of, that's kind of frightening because we know from psychology that people will, you know, select people who are like them quite often, right?

We like people who look like us.

And it becomes...

Eugenics is a bad word for a reason, but it becomes very eugenics-like, where you are saying, you know, these traits are inherently superior.

But even, I'm actually curious from your standpoint of someone who was a Division I athlete who knows a lot about sports.

Like, even with

sports genes and things that we know are really cool mutations, there are sometimes like you will find an athlete who doesn't look like other athletes who ends up being the best or who ends up discovering kind of a new way of doing something that absolutely changes a sport or

a way of competing.

And are we also like when we select for kind of this

one

ideal that whoever has in their mind are we potentially homogenizing society to the point where that's going those types of breakthroughs are actually going to become quite rare if if they happen at all yeah I mean like variation is is necessary for

like both natural selection to happen but I think also artificial selection or whatever you want to call it I mean maybe artificial selection is not the right word but for

new stuff, like new ideas and all those things.

So I think that's way, way down the road because there's a ton of variation.

But if we really start going down this path, then I think those are things to think about way ahead of time.

And you can imagine, you know, I think it's already like troubling enough some of the ideals of perfection that you have on Instagram or whatever.

And so if that's then being applied to like all the genomes, I think you have to start asking questions of like,

maybe there are things where we could be better at certain things we know about, but how do we want life to be?

You know, I think that's an important question with technology that should be asked.

Like, I'm, I'm, I like innovation.

I think invention technology is like really cool.

You know, I started playing with AI immediately as soon as I could.

At the same time, I don't think, you know,

we should always just forge ahead on everything without asking, like, how do we want life to be and unfold, right?

Yeah,

I think that's really important.

And I will just add one last thing to that,

which is that

we're also ignoring a potentially huge mental health crisis if this ends up happening.

You know, how do we want life to be?

Well, what happens if you know like you're a designer baby that your parents selected these certain things for and you feel like you would have liked to be something else?

You feel like things were chosen for you.

I mean, I think that,

you know, from a psychology standpoint, there might be a lot of issues with that.

And we might have kind of a crisis in the generations of children who are subjected to this.

So yeah,

a lot of things to think about.

This is a really, really complicated thing.

You know, it's a really morally, ethically, medically, just every single level complicated topic.

And I think something that people should really give a lot of thought to for the long term because,

you know, as with so much technology, just because we can doesn't mean we should.

No.

And like people, I think it's been pretty good.

The discussion about AI has been vibrant and the potential positives and the potential negatives, the ethical concerns, et cetera, what we want the future to look like.

Again, I think genetic technology in the long term has a potentially much larger impact than AI does on fundamental aspects of our life.

And those conversations have been kind of one note.

You know, it's every once in a while something like ORCID pops up and there's a discussion, but I don't think it's been diverse and constant to the extent that it has with AI, even though I think it's at least equally as important.

Yeah, I think that this is a very important note of caution and also call to action that these conversations are important and need to be had.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll talk about a pet psych topic for me and David: nominative determinism.

A much more deterministic aspect of your life than genetics.

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David, for a number of years, you and I have been exchanging text messages about names that we come up with, that we see in the news, and that make us both giggle

because they are examples of nominative determinism, which is a psychology concept which means that your name doesn't just matter, but is in some ways deterministic.

It determines your career path or

move over jeans.

It's not the genes that matter.

It's the name that matters.

And, you know, the most simplistic example is something like someone with the last name Baker is going to go on to become a baker.

And this would be, you know, a hilarious joke if it didn't happen so incredibly often.

And some people take it a little bit further.

Like they'll say, oh, well, it's just the first letter that matters.

So like, if your name is Lindsay, you're more likely to become a lawyer.

I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think so.

But so there are people who take it to an extreme.

But basically, the idea is

your name matters more than you think.

Yes.

And so people have funny names that are associated with their jobs.

And I think the idea, well, before we get to the idea of if there's any like real psychology behind this, I have a quiz for you if you're willing to take it.

All right, let's do it.

I went back through some old uh of my favorites i don't think i've told you these ones you may know them because you're an enthusiast a collector a connoisseur a collector of names as i'm i um so i'm gonna give you the name and you're gonna tell me their job okay okay so okay burt beverage

um he works in the beverage industry created tito's vodka

oh my gosh yeah big okay tito's tito's creator's last name is beverage burt beverage i did not know that i tell you okay i've got some more for you Okay.

Keith Weed.

This one has a bonus.

Keith Weed.

Does Keith Weed work in the pot business?

Head of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Mother's maiden name, Hedges.

Oh no.

Double A.

Double A.

Okay, so I went the wrong kind of weed, but this one also.

You were in the pot.

I was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joshua Butt.

Come on.

Is he a fitness trainer coach?

I love that you guessed guessed that.

Gastroenterologist.

But should be finishing.

Sue

you.

Lawyer.

Yes, correct.

Prosecutor, probably.

Sue you.

Lieutenant Les McBurney.

We may have done this one.

Yes, Les McBurney is a firefighter.

That one you and I did together.

Okay, okay.

Last one.

This one kind of up your alley.

Walter Russell Brain, otherwise known as the Right Honorable Lord Brain.

Is he a psychologist?

He's a world-famous neurologist.

Close enough.

Neurologist.

Score for that one.

Those are some good ones.

Those are some good ones.

One of my favorites that

I actually, I mean, I think you said that it was a hoax, and I had to look up the whole biography to make sure it wasn't.

Nick, Nick Burns Cox.

He is a urologist and he invented something that is called the pee in pot.

That is, that's like a little too on point.

Right?

We had a doctor doctor recently.

We did have a doctor doctor.

And I thought that that was very funny.

But the question is, so now that we've entertained you with some of our famous, famously funny names, the question is, is there...

actually

anything to this and um so the science on it is all over the place like this is a hard thing to study because even though um

there are these hilarious examples, like there are billions of people in the world.

Right.

And what's the chances there wouldn't be a doctor, doctor?

And what's the chance that there wouldn't be a urologist whose last name was Burns Cox?

That I think the chances are very high that that wouldn't happen.

I'm glad we live in this one of the multiverse where we got Dr.

Burns Cox.

But yeah, and

We also have base rate stuff.

So like if your last name is Baker, like and you happen to be in the baking industry, like, come on, how many bakers are there?

Like, Like, so, so there, it's, there are lots of confounding factors.

And it's not like people have looked at lists of every single profession, every single name in the world, and tried to do any sort of comprehensive study.

So, all of the data I could find, some find evidence of it, some don't.

I think it's a wash, right?

Like, I don't think that there's hugely strong evidence for it.

But on the other hand, it being that these people are actually more likely to go into professions associated with the project.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But on the other hand, there are some reasons to believe that this would be a thing.

So for instance, if your last name is Baker, like chances are you are descended from a family of bakers because

there is, and this is true not just in English.

So in the Russian language, this is true of last names.

And I know in a lot of different cultures, this is true.

names were given to families based on the family's profession.

Causality is running in the other direction.

Exactly.

So Carpenter, you know, was a family of carpenters.

And it's really interesting because we were just, you know, we were talking about genetics.

And so if you are in a family that was in a certain kind of craft, so to speak, then you might have a genetic predisposition for it, a talent for it, et cetera, et cetera.

So then exactly, it's reverse causality that you were named this.

You still have a family name because it's something that your family has been good at for multiple generations.

And what do you think about, I don't know, you know, I've never really done a deep dive in this literature because I just desperately want it to be true.

And, you know, that's fair.

I don't think you should.

But what do you think about the idea?

I mean, I seem to recall when I read a little bit about it that there was the theory was

that

People are like one just more aware of jobs that might be related to their name or people tell them like oh you should be you know sue Yu.

Oh, you should be a lawyer.

Or they're like more positively disposed to those things because kind of people like things with their names on them, right?

Like that's why like Coke puts people's names on a bottle.

You're like, I see my name.

I like it.

And then maybe they have like a little more positive association with some of those professions if it feels like related to their name.

Like they find it fun just like we do.

Oh, I think there's actually evidence for all of these things because that does happen all the time, right?

Like people do say, oh, you should do X or Y if you have a funny name, if you have a memorable name.

Yeah.

So like as crazy as it sounds, there's some actually like not very

insane theories for like why like maybe there's some reality.

It's just like more salient to you.

And as we've talked about with genetics, you know, what kinds of traits are you more likely to select for?

you do tend to gravitate to things that are familiar and that are comfortable, that remind you of you, of your parents, of people you know, and these sorts of biases manifest themselves incredibly early on.

right?

We're talking infants, right, that are 10 months old already show some of these preferences for faces that are the same skin color as their parents.

It's not something that happens at birth, but it does actually start manifesting incredibly early, just because, you know, it is familiar, right?

It is what you know.

And so, if you do have a name that is Coxburn's, then

maybe, you know, you

end up

subconsciously, consciously, on some level, thinking more about those types of things.

Maybe if your last name is Judge, you're like, ha ha, wouldn't it be funny if my name was Judge Judge?

Or, you know, if I'm Doctor Doctor or something like that.

So, you know, on the one hand, this is just hilarious and it seems like an artifact, and we collect these funny names.

On the other hand, there are both psychological and historical reasons why this effect might actually

be

an effect.

And obviously it's weak, right?

And like with anything, things are multiply determined.

And it's not like,

you know, you end up

doing something just because of this one thing.

And you might have a last name that's incredibly salient and yet do nothing

with that.

My last name in Russian, by the way, is related to horses.

And I'm allergic to horses.

So, you know, I'm

definitely not going to be doing anything about it.

It's with you, the horse line.

I was thinking of Russian, there was a Russian, a great Russian hurdler named Maria Stepanova, which sounds like step on over, you know, like a hurdler.

Yeah.

But I don't know what it means in Russian.

So that probably wouldn't be

of Stephen.

Of Stephen.

Okay.

Yeah.

I wonder if the effect carries, if you're sort of named for someone.

too, right?

Because then you'd have those associations

named for some prominent person.

For sure, sure, for sure.

And I'm thinking now back to kind of early colonial days, right?

Think of the names, like, think of your early U.S.

history where people were named virtues or things that they were, that you wanted them to exhibit, you know, chastity or virtue, grace, like all of these absolutely, yeah, crazy names.

Some of them are just absolutely temperance.

These names that just sound completely insane to us now, but I think that was one of the reasons they thought that maybe if that's your name and you're constantly temperance don't are you sure you want another drink temperance i feel like that could go either way like my parents named me temperance so i'm going off the rails like forget them yeah um and as i kind of as i casually mentioned at the beginning you know base rates are also important here right if we if we're looking at this you need to look at it from a statistically savvy as opposed to kind of this name just stands out more right so i gravitate toward it and I pick and choose the ones that I say, see, nominative determinism.

Yeah.

So I think that that's that that's important and that's an analysis that's really hard to do because where are you going to get those data sets?

Yeah.

Right.

Like you can't

really randomize people to life, you know, and

give them different names and see how things turn out.

Right.

That would be funny.

Yeah.

So basically the bottom line is I'm just going to continue to believe that it's completely deterministic and text you every hilarious name that I see in the news.

And I will laugh every time and I will text you back other hilarious names.

So yeah, I think for now we can just keep on thinking this is funny.

For anyone listening and wanting tips on whether what they name their kid matters, yes, it does, but don't please don't name your kid Temperance.

That will probably backfire.

That's probably that's probably not what we're going for.

Name them YouTuber instead.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Influencer.

Influencer.

TikTok star.

I'm actually officially changing my my name to TikTok star.

I feel like there's a strong chance this has already happened.

Yeah.

Like when I was,

I have a son and when we were naming, I like downloaded a bunch of data from the Social Security Administration on naming.

And it was, I think it was like

they gave you every name that was used at least, I don't know, three times or five times, whatever it was, they didn't include in the data names that were only used once.

And so these, the names that were used the least, but three or or five times were like literally someone hitting their head on a keyboard.

And those were used like three to five times in a given year.

So

there's for sure somebody has been named TikTok.

Well, apparently there is

a

baby that was born this year who was named after Chat GPT.

So it's a baby girl and her name is Chat Yepti.

It's a Colombian baby.

So

we are, yes.

Is this like angling for an endorsement or just in technological enthusiasm or like what's behind what's going on there?

I'm not sure, but on August 15th, chat Yippee Bastidas Guerra was registered at the local national registry.

Have they used GPT-5 though?

I don't really like it that much.

Maybe they should rename the baby Claude or something.

Or Anthropic, yeah.

You know, well, for the company, you know, you can.

Perplexity.

Perplexity.

Gemini.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those are actually all better names than that.

But what if Gemini isn't a Gemini?

I mean, that's going to be incredibly incredible.

There's a lot of considerations.

This is serious business.

Yeah, this is a serious business.

So listeners, please consider choose wisely before choosing a name.

But yeah, this is, you know, something that I will continue looking at the literature and see if any interesting studies come out.

I can't help but feel that there might be something to this, right?

Because there are so many reasons why.

And because there are some data sets that show that, yes, there is kind of a,

some sort of an effect.

And it's interesting.

It's an interesting mix.

Usually when you hear something kind of ridiculous, it's probably not true in psychology.

In this case, behind this ridiculous thing, there are actually some pretty sort of almost common sense, like, oh, someone's just more aware of this profession, or people say, oh, you should do this.

You should look at that, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Which is not that hard to understand.

So there you have it, people.

Whether it's genetics or names, today's episode is.

all about things that determine your future and the future of the world.

Thanks so much for being such an amazing co-host, David.

I hope you will come back both as a guest and as a guest co-host when Nate inevitably ends up in Norway and can't host the show.

No, I would love to.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you.

That's coming up right after the credits.

And if you're not subscribing yet, I mean, what's up with that?

Please consider signing up.

For $6.99 a month, you get access to all that premium content and ad-free listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.

Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Konikova, and by my fabulous co-host, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.

Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.

Sally Helm is our editor and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

Mixing by Sarah Bouguer.

If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too.

Thanks for tuning in.

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