Speaker 1: Guess what, Gabe's that will So I've got a word
Speaker 1: for you. Are you familiar with the term cryptophasia? Not.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've heard the word before, But if
Speaker 1: you give me a second, I'm going to lean on
Speaker 1: all those S A T. Prep books from years ago
Speaker 1: and through my roots. So, uh, crypto, I know that
Speaker 1: means secret and uh pasia, I don't know what is
Speaker 1: that like? Speech? Nicely done, Gabe, Yeah, secret language. And actually,
Speaker 1: in today's case, I'm referring to twin languages or you know,
Speaker 1: the secret languages that twins developed that nobody else knows.
Speaker 1: And of course, almost every little kid makes up at
Speaker 1: least a few words, but cryptophacia supposedly occurs in about
Speaker 1: half of all twins, and researchers think much of the
Speaker 1: reason it develops is because, you know, like most kids,
Speaker 1: twins will mispronounce certain words, but then because they understand
Speaker 1: each other so well, they just reinforce those words and
Speaker 1: develop a new language out of them. Okay, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, But it was actually a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to read about. Matthew and Michael Jolden. These are
Speaker 1: the twins, they're now adults, and they took this idea
Speaker 1: to another level, and instead of leaving behind that secret
Speaker 1: language early in life, they just decided to really develop
Speaker 1: it and fully flesh out this language, complete with an alphabet,
Speaker 1: grammatical rules, everything. Now the language is called Mary, and
Speaker 1: over the years they've continued to develop it. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking thousands of words, and today the brothers have a
Speaker 1: decent online following where they share their learnings from something
Speaker 1: like twenty other languages they've learned over the years. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty awesome. And I mean, I know it's a
Speaker 1: little weird to say, but I gotta admit I'm pretty jealous.
Speaker 1: I get a game. But it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course, cryptophasia isn't the only thing
Speaker 1: people find fascinating about twins. I think most of us
Speaker 1: have probably thought about what it would be like to
Speaker 1: be a twin. That is, of course, those of us
Speaker 1: who aren't already twins. So you know, today we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a look into the history of twins, what different
Speaker 1: civilizations have thought about them, some of the surprising facts
Speaker 1: around the science of twins, how the idea of evil
Speaker 1: twins emerged, And of course we couldn't resist doing some
Speaker 1: digging into non human twins, so let's dive in. Y
Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and today I'm joined by our friend and
Speaker 1: researcher Gabe Lousier. Mangesh is still on vacation. I am
Speaker 1: happy to report my voice is back from its vacation.
Speaker 1: It feels good to be speaking normally again. But Gabe,
Speaker 1: how's it going. Hey, it's going well. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on, of course, and on the other side of
Speaker 1: the soundproof glass boarding a fetching new goatee. I wish
Speaker 1: you could see this thing, Gabe. That's our friend and
Speaker 1: producer Tristan McNeil. Oh, well, I'm not so sure about that.
Speaker 1: If if Star Treks taught me anything, it's to beware
Speaker 1: the sudden appearance of well sculpted facial there. So it's
Speaker 1: usually a sure sign you're dealing with an evil twins
Speaker 1: to watch yourself well. Honestly, though, unless you know how
Speaker 1: to work the sound equipment, I think we're just gonna
Speaker 1: have to take our chances here. And besides, if that
Speaker 1: is Tristan's evil twin, then I have to at least
Speaker 1: given props for staying on theme here. It feels appropriate
Speaker 1: because today's show is all about twins, duos, doubles, and
Speaker 1: because this is a bit of a grab bag episode,
Speaker 1: we can start pretty much anywhere we want. So, so, Gabe,
Speaker 1: you're joining us today. What what sounds good to you?
Speaker 1: Where do you want to start? Um? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go too dark too quickly, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to stick with the whole evil twin thing for a minute,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, because on one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just such a weird leap to make right, like
Speaker 1: just because two people look the same, they must be
Speaker 1: polar opposites in terms of morality. But I mean, on
Speaker 1: some level, the ideas really struck a chord with us,
Speaker 1: because it's not like Evil Spock was the first of
Speaker 1: his kind or anything. And in fact, humans have a
Speaker 1: long track record of being distrustful of doubles, like the
Speaker 1: birth of twins was long thought to be a bad
Speaker 1: omen in many cultures, and there's all kinds of folklore
Speaker 1: from throughout Europe and Africa that tells about these so
Speaker 1: called changelings, and these were said to be like a
Speaker 1: supernatural children, the offspring of fairies or demons, and they
Speaker 1: were supposedly left in place of stolen human children, so
Speaker 1: they would look identical, but they secretly harbored all these
Speaker 1: sinister intentions. Well, you know, the example I always think
Speaker 1: back to for evil twins is that German idea that
Speaker 1: everyone has their own doppelganger or double goer, and this is,
Speaker 1: you know, supposedly a kind of specter that each of
Speaker 1: us has that looks exactly like us. And the myth
Speaker 1: was that seeing your double three times would cause you
Speaker 1: to die shortly thereafter. And the term itself was coined
Speaker 1: by a German author named Jean Paul. This was back
Speaker 1: in seventeen nine six, but you know, you have similar
Speaker 1: ideas popping up around the same time in both English
Speaker 1: and Irish literature as well. And in these cases, the
Speaker 1: spiritual double was called effect because the concept was pretty
Speaker 1: much the same. You know, if you catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of yours and you're unfortunately a goner. You know, Also,
Speaker 1: this is kind of random, but that John Paul guy
Speaker 1: mentioned he actually came up with two words to describe doubles. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's appropriate, right, yeah, But sadly the second
Speaker 1: term hasn't endured quite so well. It was actually just
Speaker 1: the same word, but with a T dropped in the middle,
Speaker 1: So I guess it's doppeled ganger. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how to say it, but it was used to describe
Speaker 1: a meal where two courses were served at the same time.
Speaker 1: I love how the more practical term is the one
Speaker 1: that fell out of use. Like, you know, somebody had
Speaker 1: to ask, should we keep the word for eating soup
Speaker 1: and salad at the same time or the one that
Speaker 1: refers to sinister look alikes to predict our own deaths?
Speaker 1: Let's keep that one. Well, you never know. I mean,
Speaker 1: this could be the first step to bringing back the other,
Speaker 1: meaning we'll see what we can do. But I do
Speaker 1: have to admit that the concept of doppelganger lends itself
Speaker 1: pretty well to literature. I mean, it's a clever way
Speaker 1: to dig into that duality of humans that a lot
Speaker 1: of literature refers to, and that kind of that light
Speaker 1: and that dark side that we have. And that's probably
Speaker 1: what's at the root of the whole evil twin trope
Speaker 1: thing in the first place. Don't you think, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, to
Speaker 1: be fair, though, doppelgangers aren't exclusive to folklore and novels,
Speaker 1: there are some real world cases where people claim to
Speaker 1: have seen their doubles, and true to all those myths,
Speaker 1: those people, you know, they died prematurely. For example, Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: he actually claimed to see a double reflection of himself
Speaker 1: in the mirror just after he was elected, and one
Speaker 1: face looked normal, but the other was said to look
Speaker 1: eerily pale and kind of ghost like. Yeah, Lincoln said
Speaker 1: this happened two more times to him, but no one
Speaker 1: else was ever there to witness it. And I mean,
Speaker 1: he did tell his wife, Mary Todd about these visions,
Speaker 1: and strangely enough, she actually took them as a sign
Speaker 1: that Lincoln would serve two terms as president, one for
Speaker 1: each of these faces. But you know, she also interpreted
Speaker 1: the kind of ghost like face to mean that he
Speaker 1: would die before the end of that second term, and
Speaker 1: you know, of as he did. Wow, that's so strange,
Speaker 1: and it's also, of course a little bit unsettling. But
Speaker 1: come on, I mean, there has to be a scientific
Speaker 1: explanation for this kind of stuff. I mean, Lincoln was
Speaker 1: under a ton of pressure, you know, and a lot
Speaker 1: of other doppelganger sightings involved people who are either half
Speaker 1: asleep or seriously ill. So I would think maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a trick of the brain, like a hallucination brought
Speaker 1: on that by this fatigue or illness, don't you think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as fun as it is to speculate, you're
Speaker 1: probably right. Like I even read about this one neurological
Speaker 1: condition called hugo scopy, and it's it's where you basically
Speaker 1: hallucinate your own image at a distance. And you know,
Speaker 1: something like that is probably at play in cases like
Speaker 1: Lincoln's where only one person ever sees the double. But
Speaker 1: still there are cases where multiple witnesses have claimed to
Speaker 1: see somebody else's double, and those are a little harder
Speaker 1: to make sense of. Learned a new word. What you
Speaker 1: said was called hugo scopy, huge scopy. Okay, good one.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's leave at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of mystery intact on this one. But I think we
Speaker 1: should leave the folklore behind and talk instead about a
Speaker 1: more literal kind of double, which of course is twins.
Speaker 1: And once again, appropriately enough, there are actually two ways
Speaker 1: that a woman can conceive twins. Now. The first is
Speaker 1: when two eggs are released during ovulation and both are
Speaker 1: fertilized and both become embryos, and this results in what
Speaker 1: we call fraternal or non identical twins, and they share
Speaker 1: about fifty of their genes with each other, which is
Speaker 1: actually the same as any siblings born at different times. Now,
Speaker 1: the other way to conceive twins is for a single
Speaker 1: fertilized egg to be split into early in its development,
Speaker 1: and in this case you wind up with identical twins.
Speaker 1: And because the two embryos resulted from the same combination
Speaker 1: of a single egg and sperm, they share roughly ninety
Speaker 1: nine point nine percent of the same DNA. And the
Speaker 1: weird thing is, we actually aren't really sure why an
Speaker 1: egg splits like this. I mean, technically speaking, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a biological malfunction or you know, a birth anomaly. Well,
Speaker 1: what about like conjoined twins, are they also identical twins? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So conjoined twins are essentially identical twins that have joined
Speaker 1: together in utero. And whether or not this happens really
Speaker 1: comes down to timing. So if the fertilized egg takes
Speaker 1: longer than twelve days to split, then it generally won't
Speaker 1: separate fully and the resulting identical twins will be conjoined
Speaker 1: in some way. Okay, I see. So it's like if
Speaker 1: the egg is fertilized mid split and then never completes
Speaker 1: the process, then the embryo it develops into is kind
Speaker 1: of stuck that way as well. Yeah, exactly. And there's
Speaker 1: actually another subset of identical twins based on the crucial
Speaker 1: timing of that egg split. Now they're called mirror twins,
Speaker 1: and scientists think they come about when the fertilized egg
Speaker 1: separates later than usual, but not as late as with
Speaker 1: conjoined twins. So if the split occurs anywhere between seven
Speaker 1: and twelve days after fertilization, then the resulting embryos will
Speaker 1: likely be these mirror twins. Interesting, So what are mirror twins?
Speaker 1: Exactly like? It kind of sounds like the good twin
Speaker 1: bad twin thing all over again. And now it's it's
Speaker 1: not exactly that, or it's not that at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: the term means that the twins have the same physical
Speaker 1: features except asymmetrically opposite. And I find this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff so fascinating. So, you know, just take as an example,
Speaker 1: if one twin is right handed, the other one will
Speaker 1: be left handed. If one has a birthmark on his
Speaker 1: right arm, the other one will have a birth mark
Speaker 1: on the left arm. Now there are even some extreme
Speaker 1: cases where twins have mirrored internal organs as well, so
Speaker 1: that one, you know, might have an appendix or even
Speaker 1: a heart on the right side, while the other will
Speaker 1: have the organs on the left. And it's pretty wild
Speaker 1: to think about, especially when you consider that this is
Speaker 1: actually the most common type of rare twins. I think
Speaker 1: it's like one in four pairs of identical twins are
Speaker 1: also mirror twins. That seems like a lot. Yeah, although
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess twins in general have become more
Speaker 1: and more common lately. Like I came across this birth
Speaker 1: data report from the CDC and apparently the birth rate
Speaker 1: for twins has nearly doubled in the US and the
Speaker 1: year since. So it used to be that only nineteen
Speaker 1: sets of twins were born per one thousand berths, but
Speaker 1: nowadays it's thirty four sets per one thousand, oh also,
Speaker 1: so nearly doubling. What's going on there, Well, it's really
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Like one is just that women
Speaker 1: are choosing to have kids later in life than they
Speaker 1: used to, so instead of getting pregnant in their twenties.
Speaker 1: You know, a growing number of ladies are waiting until
Speaker 1: their thirties, and and so how does that actually lead
Speaker 1: to more twins? Well, so this is something I didn't
Speaker 1: know until doing the research this week, but apparently hormonal
Speaker 1: changes tend to make older women release more than one
Speaker 1: egg at a time during opulation, which of course increases
Speaker 1: the likelihood of fraternal twins. And actually the peak age
Speaker 1: for this is thought to be about thirty five years old,
Speaker 1: and the chances of conception in general tend to decrease
Speaker 1: from there, but thirty five is kind of the sweet
Speaker 1: spot if you want the best odds of twinning. Okay,
Speaker 1: so think about the timeline you gave with the increase
Speaker 1: of twins spiking after the eighties. I'm guessing the other
Speaker 1: factor would have to be like the assist of reproductive methods.
Speaker 1: You know, I've definitely read about in vitro fertilization and
Speaker 1: and the fact that that I think can up the
Speaker 1: chances of multip births. Right, Yeah, that is right. And
Speaker 1: I mean, now we have stuff like artificial insemination and
Speaker 1: fertility boosting meds, but in vitro is definitely the most
Speaker 1: popular method for people struggling to conceive, so it probably
Speaker 1: plays the biggest role in the twin boom that we're seeing.
Speaker 1: And in fact, according to the Washington Post, thirties six
Speaker 1: percent of all the twins born in the US were
Speaker 1: the results of fertility treatments, with in vitro being the
Speaker 1: most common. Oh wow, I didn't realize it was that high.
Speaker 1: And so did you get a sense of why I
Speaker 1: v F in particular results in so many twins? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the treatment usually involves multiple rounds or cycles, and
Speaker 1: during each one, doctors typically implant multiple embryos at the
Speaker 1: same time. And the thinking is that, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: this procedure is in cheap, and there's no guarantee it
Speaker 1: will work the first or even a second time around,
Speaker 1: so let's maximize our chances and hope that at least
Speaker 1: one of these will, you know, be viable. But the catch,
Speaker 1: and this is something we didn't know until more recently,
Speaker 1: is that the odds of conception actually increase with each
Speaker 1: round of IVF, and that's up until the ninth round. Okay,
Speaker 1: I see that makes sense. So if a doctor implants
Speaker 1: multiple embryos in like the fifth or sixth round or
Speaker 1: something like that, then I guess there's a fair chance
Speaker 1: the parent might wind up with two or three, or
Speaker 1: I don't know, heck even eight kids in the case
Speaker 1: of the notorious Optimom Right, Yeah, I know exactly, And
Speaker 1: I mean doctors have caught onto this by now, so
Speaker 1: most of them, you know, won't implant more than two
Speaker 1: embryos at a time anymore. And that's actually a big
Speaker 1: reason why the birth rates for twins remains so high,
Speaker 1: while that of like triplets or higher has dropped significantly. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: there's definitely more twin science that I want to talk
Speaker 1: about before we get back into some of the more
Speaker 1: offbeat stuff. But before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius and
Speaker 1: we're talking about the double lives of twins. So gave.
Speaker 1: I think most of us have wondered, at one time
Speaker 1: or another what it would be like to have a twin,
Speaker 1: especially an identical one. Now, there's just something strangely appealing
Speaker 1: about sharing, you know, not only the same family and
Speaker 1: childhood experiences, but the same face, the same d n
Speaker 1: A as another person. That must be so interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course they've always had that, but it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: to imagine what it might be like for those of
Speaker 1: us who aren't. Of course, some of that comes down
Speaker 1: to all the fun perks that go with it. You know,
Speaker 1: think about confusing your friends or I don't know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you just want to tag out of those boring social functions,
Speaker 1: not to mention always having the perfect scapegoat for whatever
Speaker 1: crimes you might commit. So, did anything like this ever
Speaker 1: make you wish you had a twin? Yeah? I mean, well,
Speaker 1: maybe not the whole frame your twin angle. I mean
Speaker 1: I definitely daydreamed about it once or twice as a kid, sure,
Speaker 1: And I mean I grew up in the nineties, so
Speaker 1: it was kind of hard not to. Like, twins were
Speaker 1: all over pop culture like the old and twins were
Speaker 1: still in the limelight. Plus there were shows like Sister Sister,
Speaker 1: that remake of The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan had
Speaker 1: the Weasley twins, and Harry Potter, like the list just
Speaker 1: goes on. Yeah, and I kind of wonder if that
Speaker 1: visibility had anything to do with the twin baby boom
Speaker 1: that we were talking about, because you know, there were
Speaker 1: suddenly more twins in the world and it felt like
Speaker 1: time to give them their due in the media and now.
Speaker 1: Of course, many folks who weren't bombarded with twins growing
Speaker 1: up still find themselves fascinated by the idea of them,
Speaker 1: and some people even feel like they should have been
Speaker 1: born a twin, like something is missing from their lives
Speaker 1: without one, and as it turns out, they just might
Speaker 1: be onto something. So what do you mean by that, Well,
Speaker 1: it's actually said that one in ninety live births resulted
Speaker 1: either fraternal or identical twins, but one in eight of
Speaker 1: those live births actually began as twins, and this is
Speaker 1: something called the vanishing twin phenomenon. And the current thinking
Speaker 1: is that this is either the result of one of
Speaker 1: the twin fetuses being absorbed into either the body of
Speaker 1: the mother or the body of their surviving twin, And
Speaker 1: this is something we've known about for a file now,
Speaker 1: but we still aren't quite sure why it happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually pretty creepy, I mean, because it would mean
Speaker 1: a good percentage of us Singleton's had a twin who
Speaker 1: actually vanished sometime during pregnancy, right, is that what you're saying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean somewhere around fIF or more by most counts,
Speaker 1: And this can lead to all kinds of weird effects
Speaker 1: for their surviving twin. Like sometimes when fraternal embryos merge
Speaker 1: into a single body, that person will actually have two
Speaker 1: sets of DNA and different parts of their body. So
Speaker 1: if you were to take a swab of the cheek
Speaker 1: of one of these people, you would get one read out,
Speaker 1: but if you draw their blood you could actually get
Speaker 1: a completely different one. So weird. It's like some kind
Speaker 1: of highly specific, not all that useful superpower, right, But
Speaker 1: you know, there's actually a ton of useful research that's
Speaker 1: come from twins studies. In fact, studying identical twins has
Speaker 1: proven so useful that many researchers now make an annual
Speaker 1: pilgrimage to the appropriately named Twinsburg, Ohio, just for the
Speaker 1: chance to study them in mass alright, so wait, back
Speaker 1: up a second. Is Twinsburg like a town entirely populated
Speaker 1: by twins? I mean not exactly, but it was found that,
Speaker 1: or more like refounded by a set of identical twins
Speaker 1: named Moses and Aaron Wilcox. Now this was back in
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen. The tiny town was still called Millsville, but
Speaker 1: once the Wilcox twins arrived, they made the town an
Speaker 1: offer that it couldn't refuse, so in exchange for renaming
Speaker 1: the town in their honor, the twins donated six acres
Speaker 1: of land to be used as public space. And if
Speaker 1: that wasn't enough, they even threw in twenty bucks twenty
Speaker 1: whole dollars to help build a new school house. Yeah
Speaker 1: big spenders, huh. But I mean, obviously these guys must
Speaker 1: have taken the twin thing pretty seriously, I guess now.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no question about that, because not only
Speaker 1: were the Wilcox's business partners for life, they also married
Speaker 1: women who were sisters, had the same number of kids,
Speaker 1: got sick from the same disease, and even died within
Speaker 1: two hours of each other. But they didn't let a
Speaker 1: little thing like death stopped them from twinning it up.
Speaker 1: Because get this, the brothers were actually buried in the
Speaker 1: same grave in Twinsburg, one stacked right on top of
Speaker 1: the other. It's hard to say that, actually, Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so clearly they were just you know, nuts. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if the town was just named for one set of
Speaker 1: twins that happened to live there like two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: then why are researchers still flocking to Twinsburg today. Well,
Speaker 1: because Twinsburg is home to the Twins Day Festival, of course.
Speaker 1: I mean, Gab, I know you've heard of twins Days
Speaker 1: and it's actually the largest annual gathering of twins in
Speaker 1: the free world. Okay, yeah, I actually do remember you guys.
Speaker 1: I think you briefly mentioned this on an episode like
Speaker 1: sometime last year. That's right. This is actually the twenty
Speaker 1: second year of the festival, which by the way, pulls
Speaker 1: in between two to three thousand sets of multiples each year.
Speaker 1: So the weekend typically features you know, themed events for
Speaker 1: twins and they get to compete in these different contests,
Speaker 1: live performances, cook offs, like you name it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was poking around on the event's website and apparently
Speaker 1: the theme this year is two player mode, so attendees
Speaker 1: are encouraged to dress up like their favorite video game
Speaker 1: or board game characters. Oh wow, that actually sounds pretty
Speaker 1: fun to me. But there's gonna be so many Mario's
Speaker 1: and Luigi's running around that weekend, can even imagine. But
Speaker 1: you know, aside from all the fun and games, there's
Speaker 1: also the research Plaza, and this is where hundreds of
Speaker 1: researchers set up shop, and then they're looking to get
Speaker 1: help with their projects from the many identical twins that
Speaker 1: are there in attendance. So what kind of stuff are
Speaker 1: they working on? All kinds of stuff. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the hottest fields right now is, of course, facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology. We've talked about this in a couple of
Speaker 1: recent episodes, and it's obviously of interest to anyone from
Speaker 1: Apple to the FBI. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to test accuracy of this kind of software
Speaker 1: is actually to see if the program can spot these
Speaker 1: often minute differences between identical twins. But more broadly, twins
Speaker 1: are a great way to tackle the old nature versus
Speaker 1: nurture problem because you know, by observing and testing the
Speaker 1: development and even the decay of these identical twins, you
Speaker 1: wind up with a pretty effective and natural way to
Speaker 1: help distinguish between these environmental factors and the genetic ones. So,
Speaker 1: for example, imagine a pair of identical twins. You know,
Speaker 1: they exhibit a trait of shyness or something like that,
Speaker 1: for example, maybe more so than a pair of fraternal twins.
Speaker 1: And if you see this, maybe that suggests that that
Speaker 1: similarity and shyness is due to these genes, which would
Speaker 1: be the nature piece of this rather than the environment,
Speaker 1: which is of course the nurture piece. Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm curious that is shyness just a random example you picked,
Speaker 1: or is that really something twin studies have helped with
Speaker 1: Now that this is this is a real one, and
Speaker 1: and thanks to the twins, that's just one personality trait
Speaker 1: that researchers now believe is at least somewhat determined by genetics.
Speaker 1: But there are many others too, like the willingness to
Speaker 1: take risk, and even the likelihood that someone will hold
Speaker 1: religious beliefs like those have been linked to our genes
Speaker 1: as a result of twins studies. And it's not just
Speaker 1: psychological or personal traits either. Twin studies have proven that
Speaker 1: the genetic risk of inheriting a whole host of diseases,
Speaker 1: think about things like asthma osteoporosa's heart disease and others.
Speaker 1: That there's that nection. Wow, And I mean this is
Speaker 1: the stuff that's you know, the result of the kind
Speaker 1: of research that goes on at these twin festivals. Like
Speaker 1: how does that work? Because I mean I'm picturing a
Speaker 1: bunch of twins just kind of running a gauntlet of
Speaker 1: like blood tests and X rays and whatever else. It
Speaker 1: sounds weird, but that's pretty much how it works. And
Speaker 1: you know, if the attendees feel like lending a hand,
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of ways for them to help out,
Speaker 1: everything from filling out surveys to having their picture taken,
Speaker 1: maybe submitting a DNA sample through their hair or their spit.
Speaker 1: But here's a rundown of the battery of tests that
Speaker 1: a set of twins went through at the last Twinsday festival.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote from one of them. We were recorded
Speaker 1: reading the same strange passage about rainbows and pots of gold,
Speaker 1: so that a computer program could try to tell us
Speaker 1: apart by voiceprint. We submitted spit to have our DNA
Speaker 1: sequence to confirm our identicality. We sipped and swished shots
Speaker 1: of milk to gauge ability to taste fat and clear
Speaker 1: liquid tinctures to measure our sensitivity to sweet and bitter.
Speaker 1: And we took surveys on social media use and online
Speaker 1: news habits to see if we're both news junkies. Wow,
Speaker 1: it still sounds pretty strange, but it is cool that
Speaker 1: so many twins and multiples are willing to help out
Speaker 1: like that. So, I mean it's probably sort of nice
Speaker 1: to feel like the bell of the ball like that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have all these researchers tripping over themselves
Speaker 1: just to get a look at your saliva or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. And you know it's not just their egos
Speaker 1: that that benefit from all the attention. I mean, twin
Speaker 1: participants are usually given some sort of compensation for their
Speaker 1: time as well. I was looking into this to see
Speaker 1: if they were were paid at all, and that's typically
Speaker 1: you know, ten to fifteen bucks, but more importantly, usually
Speaker 1: some sort of gift back, Gabe, So I get it.
Speaker 1: I see why they participate. Yeah, and now I definitely
Speaker 1: wish I had a twin. You know, I don't want
Speaker 1: all of this to go to their heads. So what
Speaker 1: do you say we shift gears and talk about some
Speaker 1: unique twins of the non human variety. All right, let's
Speaker 1: do it. But before we do that, let's take one
Speaker 1: more quick break. Al Right, Well, so far we've stuck
Speaker 1: two cases of human twins, both natural and supernatural, and
Speaker 1: that's largely because twins, or at least the identical kind,
Speaker 1: we're pretty rare outside of our own species. But now
Speaker 1: I thought we could widen our scope just a bit
Speaker 1: and maybe do kind of a rapid fire around to
Speaker 1: cover some of the more unusual sets of twins we
Speaker 1: came across this week. Yeah, that makes sense. And actually,
Speaker 1: let's stick to animals for a minute, because what you
Speaker 1: pointed out that was actually something I didn't know before.
Speaker 1: We were doing our research for this episode, and I
Speaker 1: came across a recent case where an animal totally bucked
Speaker 1: that no twins trend that you mentioned. And this happened
Speaker 1: in August of two thousand sixteen, when a veterinarian named
Speaker 1: Kurt D. Cramer was performing a surgery in Johannesburg, South Africa,
Speaker 1: and his patient was this Irish wolf found who was
Speaker 1: in dire need of a C section. This is kind
Speaker 1: of embarrassing, you might laugh at me, But an Irish
Speaker 1: wolf found. That's that's some kind of dog, right. It's
Speaker 1: not like a wolf or something spoken like a like
Speaker 1: a true cat. Person there gay, but yes, this is
Speaker 1: in fact the dog. All right, please continue? Okay, sod
Speaker 1: Cramer is in there and he's doing his thing when
Speaker 1: he comes across something he's never encountered before. To live
Speaker 1: puppies attached to the same placenta. Now, right off the bat,
Speaker 1: the vet suspects that this means the puppies were identical twins,
Speaker 1: even though their markings were somewhat different. But a blood
Speaker 1: test actually confirmed the suspicion, and the two pups, named
Speaker 1: Cullen and Romulus, were officially declared as the first identical
Speaker 1: twin puppies ever discovered. Twin puppies. I'm not a big
Speaker 1: fan of dogs, but I have to admit that even
Speaker 1: makes my heart melt a little bit. I'm curious, like,
Speaker 1: did you read anything about why twins are so rare
Speaker 1: and other species? Yeah? I did. I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit on this. The way the BBC explained it
Speaker 1: is that the placenta of other animals that they just
Speaker 1: aren't able to support two fetuses at once. It's although
Speaker 1: identical twins might form in the wounds of other animals
Speaker 1: pretty often, rarely if ever carried to term. So when
Speaker 1: you think about it, those little pups were really one
Speaker 1: in a million. But you know, okay, before you say
Speaker 1: anything about this, just don't tell their five letter mates.
Speaker 1: They're probably already feeling a little overshadowed by all this already. Well,
Speaker 1: you have got to stop making me sympathetic to dogs.
Speaker 1: That that's my goal here today. Gave just making you
Speaker 1: sympathetic to dogs. Finally, Okay, well, I'll see your identical
Speaker 1: twin puppies story, and I will raise you one about
Speaker 1: a carton of eggs that all contained double yolks. I
Speaker 1: didn't know where you're going this, but I don't feel
Speaker 1: like that's anywhere near as endearing as the puppy story.
Speaker 1: But but go ahead, Well, yeah, we can let the
Speaker 1: listeners be the judge of that, because this story doesn't
Speaker 1: have the most emotional appeal. But it's still a really
Speaker 1: strange one. And you know, it helps to know that
Speaker 1: it's pretty uncommon for a hen to lay an egg
Speaker 1: with two yolks. In fact, your odds of finding a
Speaker 1: double yolked egg or about one in a thousand. It's
Speaker 1: so unlikely that some European folklore actually interprets finding even
Speaker 1: one of these eggs as a sign of good fortune
Speaker 1: or even as foreshadowing, you know, for the birth of
Speaker 1: human twins. Actually, it's kind of a nice change of
Speaker 1: pace from all the folklore about twins being bad omens.
Speaker 1: But but you said, somebody found a whole carton of
Speaker 1: double yolks? So what what kind of omen is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I have no idea really, but I mean the seventeen
Speaker 1: year old who have found the full dozen, he took
Speaker 1: it as a sign that, you know, he should probably
Speaker 1: buy some lottery tickets. That. To be fair, most eggs
Speaker 1: sold in stores are packaged by weight, so that increases
Speaker 1: the odds of double yolks being packaged together, and you
Speaker 1: know cartons of heavier like jumbo eggs for for instance.
Speaker 1: But finding a full run like that is still super rare,
Speaker 1: and you know it would never really happen outside of
Speaker 1: a grocery store. All right, Well, I mean I still
Speaker 1: feel like the twin puppies were better. But but but
Speaker 1: but let's move on from the animal world and talk
Speaker 1: about a very different type of twin. I mean, a
Speaker 1: very different type of twin and a strangely named one,
Speaker 1: the twin bed. Oh god, I'm so glad you're bringing
Speaker 1: this up, because you know what, I've always thought that
Speaker 1: was a weird term. Like, I mean, I only had
Speaker 1: one of them as a kid, so it just makes
Speaker 1: it sound like you have like in a strange bed
Speaker 1: or something like. There's just some long lost twin bed
Speaker 1: out there that was carved from the same tree. And well,
Speaker 1: to be fair, actually the U s is the only
Speaker 1: place that seems to have this problem, you know, just
Speaker 1: looking at what they call it in other countries. In England,
Speaker 1: for example, a one person bed is just called a
Speaker 1: single and then the term twin bed is really only
Speaker 1: used in cases where you actually have two single beds
Speaker 1: in the same room. Okay, well, I mean hats off
Speaker 1: to the UK then, because if that's the case, then
Speaker 1: they are doing beds right. Okay, you obviously looked into this.
Speaker 1: So how did the selling point for single person beds
Speaker 1: become the fact that you know, you could if you
Speaker 1: wanted by two of them, like we're bed makers marketing
Speaker 1: specifically to families with twins or what. Well, it's not
Speaker 1: a bad guess, but it actually has more to do
Speaker 1: with married couples than it does with their children. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen old episodes of certain TV shows like
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy or you know something, where the married
Speaker 1: characters sleep and separate twin beds, and that was it
Speaker 1: just for TV. Like twin marital beds were common both
Speaker 1: in the US and England right up until the late
Speaker 1: sixties and even in the early seventies when they were
Speaker 1: finally deemed like prudish and kind of old fashioned. All right,
Speaker 1: But I mean, how was that ever the fashion in
Speaker 1: the first place. Like, I know, some research claims that
Speaker 1: like couples sleep better when they sleep in different beds,
Speaker 1: but if we're talking about like the nineteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: it was probably some kind of puritanical concern, right, like
Speaker 1: something to do with morality. Yes, I was looking at
Speaker 1: the origins of the practice, and it seems like sleeping
Speaker 1: in separate beds has always been tangled up in concerns
Speaker 1: over everything from morality and social status to of course
Speaker 1: potential health risk. Like I was reading this great article
Speaker 1: on Atlas Obscura that explained how communal sleeping was. It
Speaker 1: was really the norm for entire families, not just couples.
Speaker 1: And this was right up until the Victorian era. But
Speaker 1: once the upper class began as signing separate bedrooms to
Speaker 1: family members, the public gradually came to see communal beds
Speaker 1: as unsanitari and decidedly low class. Even then, as the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century war on, you know, people started to worry
Speaker 1: that it might even be dangerous for married couples to
Speaker 1: sleep in the same bed. For example, there was this
Speaker 1: housekeeping guide published in eighteen ninety two that warned readers
Speaker 1: that quote, the air which surrounds the body under the
Speaker 1: bedclothing is exceedingly impure, as it has been impregnated with
Speaker 1: the poisonous substances that escaped through the pores of the skin.
Speaker 1: I just love that line for some reason. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is so ridiculous. It's really it's it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: couples sleeping in separate beds for like over a hundred years,
Speaker 1: just on the strength of arguments like that, I know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's true they did. But to be fair,
Speaker 1: there's reason to think that some good did come from
Speaker 1: this twin bed arrangement because as the women's rights movement
Speaker 1: came to the forefront in the late nineteenth century, separate
Speaker 1: marriage beds came to symbolize this shift in power between
Speaker 1: husbands and wives. So this is how an author named
Speaker 1: Hillary Hines described this shift in an article called Together
Speaker 1: and Apart. Here's what she writes. Twin bed are visually
Speaker 1: equal to each other. They take up the same amount
Speaker 1: of space. There's a kind of pause between one bed
Speaker 1: and the other. There would have to be some kind
Speaker 1: of conscious negotiation or at least some conscious decision to
Speaker 1: move from one to the other. Isn't that wild? Like?
Speaker 1: Who would have thought the twin bed could be a
Speaker 1: symbol of early feminism? Yeah, that is pretty cool. See,
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're thinking outside the box with some of
Speaker 1: these twins. And and actually for this last one, I
Speaker 1: want to think way outside the box, all the way
Speaker 1: to outer space in fact, because it turns out twins
Speaker 1: aren't something that's exclusive to life on Earth. According to
Speaker 1: a report from Harvard and UC Berkeley, just about every
Speaker 1: star in the sky is likely born with a twin,
Speaker 1: including our very own son. And you know, they determine
Speaker 1: this after noticing this peculiar distribution powder and of a
Speaker 1: crop of newborn stars. And this was in the constellation Perseus.
Speaker 1: So the study authors they tried a bunch of different
Speaker 1: mathematical models to explain why the stars ended up in
Speaker 1: their specific locations, but in the end, only one of
Speaker 1: them made sense with what they were seeing. And that's
Speaker 1: the idea that most stars had twins at one point. Right,
Speaker 1: So the idea is that any star with a sun
Speaker 1: like mass is likely born with a distant twin, and
Speaker 1: after about a million years or so, roughly of those
Speaker 1: twins move in closer to one another, while the majority
Speaker 1: tends to split up and go their separate ways. You know,
Speaker 1: you know it, gave. I have to be honest, it's
Speaker 1: always sad when families drift apart, even these cosmic ones
Speaker 1: that you're mentioning. Yeah, that's true. But in the case
Speaker 1: of the sun that lights up our own galaxy, we
Speaker 1: actually might have dodged a bullet into What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Well, researchers of long hypothesize that our
Speaker 1: son once had a non identical twin of its own,
Speaker 1: one that eventually escaped the gravitational pull of our Sun
Speaker 1: and then spiraled off into some other galaxy. And so
Speaker 1: I say we dodged a bullet on that because there's
Speaker 1: reason to think that this missing twin was actually the
Speaker 1: evil one. So in fact, scientists even have a name
Speaker 1: for this theoretical son. Get this, They call it nemesis. Okay,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're full circle on the evil twin thing,
Speaker 1: and all right, so I'll buy it on this one.
Speaker 1: What exactly makes the sun evil? Okay? So you know
Speaker 1: that asteroid that's supposedly wiped out all the dinosaurs, Well,
Speaker 1: researchers suspect that the nemesis son was the one that
Speaker 1: knocked it into Earth's orbit in the first place. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I will admit you have won me over.
Speaker 1: Like depriving the world of dinosaurs is about as evil
Speaker 1: as it gets. But to avoid going out on a
Speaker 1: sour note, what do you say we dedicate today's fact
Speaker 1: off to some of the more upbeat and non evil
Speaker 1: twins out there. Okay, yeah, so like the kind that
Speaker 1: didn't prompt extinction level events, right exactly. It kind of
Speaker 1: feels like a long shot, but sure, let's give it
Speaker 1: a dry m all right, Well, then you know, it's
Speaker 1: actually possible to have twins who are the offspring of
Speaker 1: two different authors. In fact, there was even a court
Speaker 1: case in New Jersey a few years ago where a
Speaker 1: mother of twins claimed that a certain man was the
Speaker 1: father of these children. So he took a paternity test
Speaker 1: and they found that he was in fact the father,
Speaker 1: but only of one of them. According to this DNA test,
Speaker 1: and biologists have shown that one in every twelve pairs
Speaker 1: of fraternal twins are born from successful fertilizations that occurred
Speaker 1: at two different times, and in some cases that might
Speaker 1: mean from different men. Wow, I've actually never heard that before.
Speaker 1: But okay, I know you spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in New York. Did you ever get the chance to
Speaker 1: go to, uh, the Twins restaurant in NYC? This was
Speaker 1: maybe back in the mid nineties. I didn't, and honestly
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. Well, you missed out, because
Speaker 1: it must have been a pretty interesting place to visit,
Speaker 1: because other than the chef and the restaurant manager, everyone
Speaker 1: else who worked there was an identical twin. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there were twenty nine sets of twins working as the
Speaker 1: waite staff, bartenders, hosts, and hostesses and and so on.
Speaker 1: And each set of these twins would work at the
Speaker 1: same time, where the same clothing, and of course if
Speaker 1: one called in sick or even got fired, then you
Speaker 1: know the other one had to follow that their lead
Speaker 1: and not come in or have employment either. So, as
Speaker 1: Ruth Rachael from The New York Times put it, quote,
Speaker 1: Twins sounds like a pretty silly gimmick until you get there,
Speaker 1: when you're greeted at the door by two gorgeous and
Speaker 1: identical hostesses. Then glance at the bar to find two
Speaker 1: identical men pouring drinks. The idea begins to grow on you.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, twins did close in two thousand, but every
Speaker 1: once in a while you'll hear talk of a new
Speaker 1: one opening up, so, you know, keep your fingers crossed.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised that that didn't make it. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. All right, Well, let's talk longevity, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that identical twins are more likely to
Speaker 1: make it to retirement age than the general population. Our
Speaker 1: researchers believe that, you know, part of this might be
Speaker 1: the social bond between them, and we've talked about before
Speaker 1: that that power of meaningful human connections and longevity. But
Speaker 1: there actually maybe another contributing factor. So think about the
Speaker 1: fact that most twins were born prematurely, so in times
Speaker 1: when they had to work harder to survive, they were
Speaker 1: building up a resiliency that actually may have helped them
Speaker 1: live longer. That makes sense. Well, I was reading a
Speaker 1: few stories of some twins who you know, have remarkably
Speaker 1: similar lives and that's despite being separated at birth, and
Speaker 1: the one that stood out maybe the most to me
Speaker 1: was that of two brothers, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer,
Speaker 1: who were each adopted in and didn't come back together
Speaker 1: until they were nearly forty years old. And despite all
Speaker 1: that time apart, just listen to what they had in common. Okay,
Speaker 1: They were both given the name Jim by their respective
Speaker 1: adoptive families. They were both married twice, first two women
Speaker 1: named Linda and then two women named be. They both
Speaker 1: grew up with dogs named Toy, and they both had
Speaker 1: sons whom they named James Allen, though they did spell
Speaker 1: Alan differently, you know, one with an E, one with
Speaker 1: an A. So that's something that but that's not all.
Speaker 1: They also were both sheriff's deputies. They drove the same Chevy,
Speaker 1: drink the same beer. It's so strange. So these guys
Speaker 1: did not see each other until they were right around
Speaker 1: forty years old, and yet had all of these things
Speaker 1: in common exactly. It's like the Wilcox brothers, except you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't coordinate. It weird. That is unbelievable. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should put one myth to rest, and
Speaker 1: that's about twins and their fingerprints. While they may share
Speaker 1: nearly all of their DNA, their fingerprints are not identical.
Speaker 1: And that's because it actually turns out that the ridges
Speaker 1: and ripples on your fingers are often changed by experiences
Speaker 1: in the womb. So even very small differences like a
Speaker 1: slightly long umbilical cord and some other things like that,
Speaker 1: they can actually change your print. That's pretty wild. Well,
Speaker 1: all right, I have another restaurant one. So have you
Speaker 1: ever been a regular at a restaurant and you kind
Speaker 1: of felt like the owner the manager just lived there
Speaker 1: because they were, you know, always there working. Oh definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, the restaurant business is a really
Speaker 1: tough business. So I feel like when I'm at most
Speaker 1: really good local rest runts, it seems like the owner
Speaker 1: of the manager is always there. Yeah, exactly. Well, now
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think that some of those people may
Speaker 1: be pulling one over on us. And that's after reading
Speaker 1: about a pair known as the Robot Couple. So this
Speaker 1: is actually what locals called a married couple in you Wu, China,
Speaker 1: and they got the nickname because they kept their restaurant
Speaker 1: open twenty one hours a day and you know, they
Speaker 1: were always there and I mean always there. But what
Speaker 1: their customers didn't know was that both the man and
Speaker 1: the woman were identical twins, and all four of them
Speaker 1: worked at the restaurant. They you know, they take different
Speaker 1: shifts just in order to keep the restaurant open, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much all the time. And so most locals just
Speaker 1: thought it was one you know, endlessly energetic couple that
Speaker 1: didn't need to sleep, you know, like robots. And it
Speaker 1: actually wasn't until a few years after the restaurant opened
Speaker 1: that one of the twins finally did an interview and
Speaker 1: revealed the truth. Wow, that's wild. It kind of makes
Speaker 1: me wish though, that they had never revealed the truth
Speaker 1: and just kept this going for because twenty one hours
Speaker 1: a day, I mean honestly though, twenty one hours a
Speaker 1: day with two shifts, just keeping that going. That's impressive,
Speaker 1: even when it's for people. So I can't imagine seeing
Speaker 1: what you thought were just two people running this all
Speaker 1: the time. All right, Well, we need to decide on
Speaker 1: a winner today. And you know, I feel like, in
Speaker 1: honor of this whole evil twin thing, I wish you
Speaker 1: could see this game because it is really impressive. So
Speaker 1: I know that was a great last fact from you,
Speaker 1: but I think I want to give today's fact Off
Speaker 1: trophy to Tristan's evil Twins goatee. What what do you
Speaker 1: think about that? Yeah, that sounds very you need to
Speaker 1: stay on his good side. I guess that's right. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks again for joining us today. Gabe Mango would be
Speaker 1: back for tomorrow's episode. Now if we forgot any good
Speaker 1: facts about twins, I'm sure we did. We always love
Speaker 1: hearing those facts from. You can email us part Time
Speaker 1: Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit us
Speaker 1: up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much for listening, Yea,
Speaker 1: thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
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Speaker 1: begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel
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Speaker 1: blues Yar is our lead researcher, with support from the
Speaker 1: Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
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Speaker 1: Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who