Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, it's February. No, it's not. It's not that
Speaker 1: at all. But we're gonna go back in time today
Speaker 1: because that's what we do every Saturday with our Saturday
Speaker 1: Selects Picks, and we're going back to February because I
Speaker 1: want to talk about lefties. Are you a lefty? Get
Speaker 1: kick with your left hand? You have punch people with
Speaker 1: your left hand? You're right with your left hand. Do
Speaker 1: you eat with your left hand? Do you? Well? I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about other things that you might
Speaker 1: can do with left hands or right hands, but you
Speaker 1: get the picture. Here's the episode, everybody, Why do Lefties Exist?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know? A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there too,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should not the podcast. Man,
Speaker 1: oh man. I would love for people to just the
Speaker 1: fly on the wall in the studio sometimes and get squashed.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of fun prerecord today. People. I hate
Speaker 1: that you miss out on that kind of stuff, But
Speaker 1: you know what, that's a that's for us. We we
Speaker 1: deserve a little something. Yeah, And that's called pre show
Speaker 1: fun fun hammering out the details, hammer and other details.
Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoyed researching this one. Oh really, it burned
Speaker 1: my brain a little bit. It burned my brain a
Speaker 1: little bit too. But um, I just I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about handedness and uh no not really don't use
Speaker 1: your hands much. Well, I mean as far as uh
Speaker 1: why you are left or right handed or ambidextrous. It
Speaker 1: was all kind of new information for me. I feel
Speaker 1: like I had read that IO nine article, which we
Speaker 1: should give a huge shout out, because I was in
Speaker 1: forming partially the basis of this um episode. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: are so few people left handed? From IO nine and
Speaker 1: they sourced a lot of great stuff and Discover magazine
Speaker 1: and their articles so and science and science. So it's legit.
Speaker 1: It is legit, uh possibly even to legit to quit yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I could not do with my left hand. I
Speaker 1: guess I can't. I just did it. You just did
Speaker 1: to your sign sign signing to me. Yeah, I'm equally
Speaker 1: bad at at doing too legit to quit finger motions
Speaker 1: with either hand. I'm right handed, by the way, what
Speaker 1: about you, I'm right handed, but that is weird since
Speaker 1: you have your MC hammer pants on. I thought you
Speaker 1: would be good at that. That's all. Just it's not
Speaker 1: hard to put on pants. It's hard to do too
Speaker 1: legit to quit finger motions. Yeah, I'm right handed. Um
Speaker 1: to well, I was about to say to a fault,
Speaker 1: but heavily heavily right handed, because after reading this, I
Speaker 1: do believe that there is a bit of a spectrum.
Speaker 1: I think, um, oh, yeah, yeah, I think. I think
Speaker 1: some people are way dominant with their one hand, and
Speaker 1: some people skew more towards you. I can do some
Speaker 1: things with this hand. Uh, and some people are ambidexterous,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about very few though fewer than you think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, I am heavily heavily right handed. I cannot
Speaker 1: do many uh what's the word I'm looking for, um,
Speaker 1: trying to find my not like my fine motor skill tasks.
Speaker 1: I cannot do very well with my left hand. I
Speaker 1: can just like club things and smack things and knock
Speaker 1: stuff over and knock stuff over like Frankenstein clearing at
Speaker 1: table pretty much. What about you? And can you do
Speaker 1: anything with your left hand? I used to think I was,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much just strictly right handed, but then
Speaker 1: I I especially researching this. I paid attention, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I used my my left hand a little more than
Speaker 1: I thought. I'm definitely not ambidextrous, and if there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as a dominant hand, it's clearly my right.
Speaker 1: But this this article points out, or actually it was
Speaker 1: a science Um article that said, there's there's this idea
Speaker 1: that there isn't a dominant hand that you have uses
Speaker 1: for both hands in one kind of specializes in one
Speaker 1: thing and one specializes in another. And the the example
Speaker 1: they used to illustrate that was um cutting like meat
Speaker 1: with a fork and knife. Yeah. I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: you about that, you know, like I was thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I do use
Speaker 1: the knife pretty well with my left hand. I thought, crazy, No,
Speaker 1: my fork is in my left hand. My knife is
Speaker 1: in my right hand too, and then I switched the
Speaker 1: fork over to my right hand. That's what I did too.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you that. So I'm definitely right handed,
Speaker 1: but you know, my left hand does a great job
Speaker 1: holding the steak in place with my fork while I
Speaker 1: cut it with the knife. Yeah, well, I come to
Speaker 1: think of it, though, I play guitar in drums, So
Speaker 1: I mean I have some left hand skill, I guess, um.
Speaker 1: And I know if you break your dominant hand, you're
Speaker 1: gonna learn pretty quickly how to adapt, So it's possible
Speaker 1: to learn, uh force do. Yes, it's all very interesting
Speaker 1: to me. It is, and we should say if you
Speaker 1: happen happen just randomly to be listening to this episode
Speaker 1: on August Happy National Left Handed Day, Yeah, I looked
Speaker 1: out when I looked that up, I was like, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be one of those another stuff you should
Speaker 1: know coincidence if this was happened to be released that No,
Speaker 1: not even close. Yeah. Um. And it's good that left
Speaker 1: handed people have their own day because they've been fairly
Speaker 1: maligned throughout the millennia. Yeah, let's talk about that. Actually, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: throughout history. In fact, even if you look at the
Speaker 1: words throughout history, there is a you know, uh the
Speaker 1: poopoo left handers basically, Yeah, Like the word l y
Speaker 1: f T left yeah, from Anglo Saxon means weak and
Speaker 1: that's where the word left comes from. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: word sinister from Latin is the word for left. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anybody who saw that episode of the Simpsons where Ned
Speaker 1: Flanders opens the left Toorium knows that because he says,
Speaker 1: I have a a sinister reason to invite you all here,
Speaker 1: sinister meaning left handed man. And that was when he
Speaker 1: announced the Leftorium. That show was so smart, you know,
Speaker 1: very smart. So many of those jokes like just flew
Speaker 1: over my head back in the day. Well they're coming
Speaker 1: back to roost. Uh. There's a long list of um.
Speaker 1: Countries who have languages that link the word right with
Speaker 1: being good, uh, in the left with being bad or wrong. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in some countries even making hand gestures with your
Speaker 1: left hand is a no no well and a lot
Speaker 1: of countries are a lot of cultures that eat food
Speaker 1: with their hands rather than utensils. Um. Using the left
Speaker 1: hand to eat or do a lot of things with
Speaker 1: is considered taboo because it's exactly right. You use the
Speaker 1: right hand to eat with, use your left hand to
Speaker 1: wipe with right and um, I think if you pay
Speaker 1: attention and notice, I'll bet you have a hand that's
Speaker 1: dominant and that that um activity wipe in your butt.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I'm already are you Oh yeah, okay, But
Speaker 1: if you if you try the other hand, I'll feel
Speaker 1: very weird. Whatever whatever hand you use normally, it's gonna
Speaker 1: feel weird if you use the opia, and you'll just
Speaker 1: end up very messy. Sure, I wonder if you had
Speaker 1: a subconscious thing like you know, I was just eating
Speaker 1: these candy pecons with my right hand, and I know
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back and eat them with my
Speaker 1: right hand. Oh, I don't even use my hands to eat.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little too germ conscious. I scoop food
Speaker 1: up in the croak of my elbow, which is very
Speaker 1: clean because it doesn't come in contact of other stuff,
Speaker 1: and then I eat out of the croak of my elbow.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. Um. So why have people been I mean,
Speaker 1: why have they picked on left handed people? There are
Speaker 1: some theories that it's just a minority. You know, ten
Speaker 1: of people are left handed, and throughout history minorities have
Speaker 1: been picked on. That's right, this one thing. Um, there's
Speaker 1: there's at least a couple of cultures that equate left
Speaker 1: handedness with clumsiness. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Some
Speaker 1: hypotheses theorized that UM tools tool making. For a very
Speaker 1: long time time, UM has been done following right handed techniques.
Speaker 1: Still is in many cases. Um, and so when a
Speaker 1: lefty was trying to make tools or do whatever using
Speaker 1: right handed tools, they would have been clumsy with them.
Speaker 1: And therefore the idea that left handed people were clumsy
Speaker 1: or weak or whatever could have developed and carried on. Yeah, like, uh,
Speaker 1: colonial day, dad is teaching his two sons. Let's go
Speaker 1: with the son and a daughter even, let's mix it up,
Speaker 1: how to use a saw. And you know, the son's
Speaker 1: left handed and he keeps he can't saw. Well, so
Speaker 1: the dad's just like he favors the daughter because she's
Speaker 1: you know, she's better with the saw. It's just it's
Speaker 1: easy to see how that could happen. Like he's mad
Speaker 1: at Roger but pleased with Prudence because Prudence she's always
Speaker 1: sawing things. Well that's a colonial name. Yeah, sure, well
Speaker 1: I feel like it is. Okay, Well what else is there? Who? Goody?
Speaker 1: Uh goody Alice. Okay, it's timeless, um, but there's still that.
Speaker 1: If you're lefty today, you might be frustrated with things
Speaker 1: like scissors and can openers and spiral notebooks and things
Speaker 1: that sort of favor the right handed. Yeah, you're sitting
Speaker 1: next to a right handed person at dinner. The elbow thing.
Speaker 1: It's the worst. It's because there's so few left handed people.
Speaker 1: If you're planning a dinner party, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: just common courtesy to know the handedness of all of
Speaker 1: your guests and then to put them appropriately right. To
Speaker 1: put the left handed person at the end of the
Speaker 1: table so that their left hand is their left elbow
Speaker 1: is off the table, and they don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about bumping into other people. Yeah, my mom is left handed,
Speaker 1: my father is right handed, and you came out right
Speaker 1: handed crazy, I sure did so. Um, despite everybody knowing
Speaker 1: that there's a right handedness and a left handedness, it
Speaker 1: turns out, after investigating this kind of thing, science is
Speaker 1: really baffled as to what exactly is going on. Why
Speaker 1: we would have handedness, yeah at all, where it comes from.
Speaker 1: Why the proportions seem to be steady. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of questions that you know, come up when you look
Speaker 1: into handedness. Whereas you know the average person who just
Speaker 1: kind of taken for granted, but no, not the average scientists. No, No.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of interesting theories though. Um. One
Speaker 1: is is that, uh, as we all know, we have
Speaker 1: a left hemisphere in the right hemisphere of our brain,
Speaker 1: and we are one of the only mammals that are
Speaker 1: very much um, have a it's called brain lateralization when
Speaker 1: primarily and this isn't across the board, but primarily one
Speaker 1: hemisphere controls certain things and the other controls other things.
Speaker 1: And that is primarily controlling the opposite side of the
Speaker 1: body as the hemisphere. UM. But language and um controlling
Speaker 1: your you know, fine motor skills like things you do
Speaker 1: with your hands and your fingers have often been linked
Speaker 1: because uh, they are generally on link together and on
Speaker 1: one hemisphere of the brain right for for the most part,
Speaker 1: people who are right hand and they make up the
Speaker 1: vast majority of human beings. By the way, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw as low as seventy, but nothing lower than that,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty didn't Yeah, you're right, sorry, exactly, UM.
Speaker 1: Those people have their language center in the left hemisphere,
Speaker 1: and I guess also their motor cortex in the left hemisphere,
Speaker 1: and the know, the left and the Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about why this would be when the
Speaker 1: brain supposedly is a is always looking for efficiencies as
Speaker 1: much as possible. So they're saying, okay, well, these are
Speaker 1: two very human activities speech, language, and using your fingers
Speaker 1: to do stuff right right, So, um, they're also some
Speaker 1: of the more complex activities that humans engage in. So
Speaker 1: it makes sense that you just leave it up to
Speaker 1: one side of the brain so that these things can
Speaker 1: um not have to cross over the corpus colossum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just like cluster together. It makes sense. It
Speaker 1: does make sense, but it's also a pretty thin explanation.
Speaker 1: If you you could also say the other the exact opposite,
Speaker 1: that it would make more sense that our motor skills
Speaker 1: and our language skills would be in opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the brain to give each other a break, rather than
Speaker 1: just weighting it down on the same side. The point is, though,
Speaker 1: is if you crack open a human brain and you
Speaker 1: look for the motor cortex and the language region, the
Speaker 1: language center, you're going to find them most likely, statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: on the left hemisphere. Hence more right handedness right because
Speaker 1: of what you said that, um, that brain lateralization where
Speaker 1: stuff that's carried out in the left hemisphere is going
Speaker 1: to manifest itself in the right. So if you're shaking
Speaker 1: somebody's hand using your right hand, the left hemisphere is
Speaker 1: blowing up. That's right. If you're taking in um visual
Speaker 1: information with just your left eye because you got right
Speaker 1: eye closed or it was poked out by a seagull
Speaker 1: or whatever, then your right hemisphere is going to be
Speaker 1: active rights right. Interestingly, though, if the opposite isn't true,
Speaker 1: If you have your language center in your right hemisphere,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always mean that you're going to be left handed.
Speaker 1: It means you're more likely to. But um, I like
Speaker 1: the way this article looked at it. It's it's an
Speaker 1: evolutionary rule of thumb. It's not. I think they said
Speaker 1: between sixty one and seventy of lefties have the language
Speaker 1: centers on the left um over of right handed people right,
Speaker 1: which raises a really great question. Are is there such
Speaker 1: a thing as right eas and lefties or is there
Speaker 1: such a thing as right ees and non right ees?
Speaker 1: Because if there, if if a righty and a lefty
Speaker 1: are equally exactly the same thing, if handedness is completely
Speaker 1: u binary like that, Yeah, then if you're a lefty,
Speaker 1: your language center should be on the right hand side,
Speaker 1: and that, like you said, that's just not the case
Speaker 1: in most lefties even Yeah, that's true, And the I
Speaker 1: nine article also points out that it's they don't know
Speaker 1: why necessarily, but this is just how we evolved. It
Speaker 1: could have just been the opposite and then we'd have
Speaker 1: more lefties. Right, Yeah, well that's the idea. But I think, um,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of the explanations, possibly of genetic
Speaker 1: mutations along the way too, In particular, uh one about
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand years ago that basically mutated us to
Speaker 1: the fact that we are going to be more right
Speaker 1: handed in the in the language center is going to
Speaker 1: be on the left hand side. Uh. And then more recently, um,
Speaker 1: there's a theory that there was a second mutation uh
Speaker 1: two between twenty thousand and a hundred thousand years ago
Speaker 1: where that basically balanced things out or it canceled that out,
Speaker 1: which means the possibility of left handedness became a thing,
Speaker 1: or else we would have all been right handed. Right.
Speaker 1: That makes sense too. It does make sense and that
Speaker 1: the humans possibly evolved to use their hands more, and
Speaker 1: by using their hands more, our brains were forced to
Speaker 1: become specialized and basically forced to choose. So then some
Speaker 1: sort of gene was set up that made the developing
Speaker 1: human brain most likely to be a right handed person, right,
Speaker 1: and then that second gene came along and canceled that
Speaker 1: out in some parts of the population. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it's the D gene and the C gene. Um. There
Speaker 1: are two alleles, which is the manifestations of a gene
Speaker 1: at the same location. And the D gene is more
Speaker 1: frequent in the population, so it's more uh, promotes the
Speaker 1: right handed preference. The C gene is less likely within
Speaker 1: the gene pool. Uh. And so there you have like
Speaker 1: a fifty fifty chance of being left handed if you
Speaker 1: have that C gene. Okay, I got you. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: you don't have a fifty chance of being a left
Speaker 1: handed person in general. You have about it only if
Speaker 1: you had chance. Yeah, because the D gene is more prominent,
Speaker 1: and that means almost certainly you're going to be right handed. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the caveat we should add to all of this
Speaker 1: is that, um, this is all just strictly conjecture. Um.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to a little more of this conjecture
Speaker 1: right after this. So, Chuck, we were saying that it's
Speaker 1: possible that genetic mutations far back in human history account
Speaker 1: for this, and um, there is a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: that there have humans have been mostly right handed for
Speaker 1: about the last two d thousand years. Fossil evidence suggests this.
Speaker 1: Looking at um neanderthal skeletons early human skeletons, UM, you
Speaker 1: can see evidence on the skeletons of right handedness, and
Speaker 1: they think that it's so obvious and obviously prominent because
Speaker 1: these people were using things like spears, So if they
Speaker 1: did have a hand preference, then a spear would definitely
Speaker 1: develop that arm connected to that hand, and it would
Speaker 1: stay in the fossil record through the skeletons right They
Speaker 1: also have looked at other fossils as far back as
Speaker 1: one point six million years. There's a skeleton called I
Speaker 1: want to say the Kokomo Boy even though it's not,
Speaker 1: but I love that song. It's the Nariokotome Boy. Sure
Speaker 1: uh and he is a one point six million year
Speaker 1: old Homo air gaster and um they he he was
Speaker 1: clearly right handed as well. Other fossils have turned up
Speaker 1: evidence of right handedness the the teeth. Striations on the
Speaker 1: teeth suggest eating with their right hand. So what we
Speaker 1: what we can say with a pretty decent amount of confidences,
Speaker 1: at least for the last two hundred thousand years, humanity
Speaker 1: has been a majority right handers, and there's been maybe
Speaker 1: about this constant ten proportion of left handed people, which
Speaker 1: makes the mystery even more crazy to me. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it also makes sense that um an early tool building
Speaker 1: and teaching how to use tools. UM, I mean it
Speaker 1: holds true today. They've done studies that you know, you
Speaker 1: teach your son or daughter to tie a tie, and
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be more difficult if they're left
Speaker 1: handed and you're right handed for them to try and
Speaker 1: do it with their left hand. So there they'll pick
Speaker 1: it up easier if they go against their instinct and
Speaker 1: learn it how you've talked with. The studies have shown that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you learned faster from watching somebody and then using
Speaker 1: the same hand. The Yeah, and that makes sense. Back
Speaker 1: in the you know, with Took took In showing his
Speaker 1: pal how to use the bone to smash skull. You know,
Speaker 1: it's if he picks of his buddy picks up with
Speaker 1: this left hand, Took Took's gonna shake his head, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: use right hand or they're just gonna you know, they
Speaker 1: want everyone wants to fit in, even back at in
Speaker 1: the old days. Well that's actually a suggestion of why
Speaker 1: left handedness is possibly not a little more prevalent among
Speaker 1: a certain age group today because it was equated with
Speaker 1: being weird or off or crazy or whatever. Um, and
Speaker 1: parents and teachers would force children to learn how to
Speaker 1: write with their right hand, effectively wiping out a lot
Speaker 1: of the left handed population. Yeah, and um, just jumping
Speaker 1: back a minute, I wanted to mention something important that
Speaker 1: the whole correlation versus causation thing um with the whole
Speaker 1: language center link. Uh, it's not necessarily that that's a correlation.
Speaker 1: They appear to be strongly linked, but no one is
Speaker 1: saying that because the language hemisphere is on the left
Speaker 1: side of your brain, that's causing you to be right handed. Right.
Speaker 1: They there, And again, the reason that they are linked
Speaker 1: in a lot of scientists minds is that speech and
Speaker 1: fine motor skills are basically uniquely human, almost uniquely human.
Speaker 1: And it's just a little it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: red flag or a signal that they're both usually in
Speaker 1: the same hemisphere, and they do seem to be connected.
Speaker 1: And one hypothesis for why they're connected, I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty smart. Um. The idea that language spoken language emerged
Speaker 1: out of gestures hand movements, which would require fine motor skills,
Speaker 1: right that I don't have trying to do the two
Speaker 1: legit to quit things. But the idea that language emerged
Speaker 1: out of that would suggest some sort of connection between
Speaker 1: the two, Like maybe the fine motor skill section is
Speaker 1: the more ancient of the two, and then language evolved
Speaker 1: out of that. But we also still need our fine
Speaker 1: motor skills to like eat with a fork and knife.
Speaker 1: And I mean, so it stuck around. It didn't become
Speaker 1: obsolete just because we started speaking. Yeah, I like that theory. Um.
Speaker 1: We we did mention that this is a largely uniquely
Speaker 1: human trait um, But they have followed. Uh, they've basically
Speaker 1: been looking at our closest ancestors to try and figure
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff out. Although it did see
Speaker 1: some studies that said that, like cats are left handed
Speaker 1: because they'll go to swat things with their left hand,
Speaker 1: but um, I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: not only is it difficult apparently to um test or
Speaker 1: do you attribute handedness to an animal, it's also difficult
Speaker 1: to attribute handedness to a person because the idea of
Speaker 1: whether or not you're left handed or right handed. Um,
Speaker 1: it's still questionable, like if you write with your right hand,
Speaker 1: but you actually can write better with your left hand
Speaker 1: or something like that. Which what are you? Yeah, is
Speaker 1: the one you're comfortable with, the one you that you're
Speaker 1: actually better with. Yeah, that's a good point. Um. But
Speaker 1: they have been looking at our our primate ancestors since
Speaker 1: about the nineteen twenties, and they have found patterns. Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently lemurs and are more left handed, and other prosim uh,
Speaker 1: prosimians um. Macaques and old World monkeys for the most
Speaker 1: part are evenly split, and guerrillas and chimpanzees are about
Speaker 1: thirty five lefty. Um. But this is interesting. The more,
Speaker 1: as they say here, the more primitive the primate, the
Speaker 1: more likely it is to be a lefty, which goes
Speaker 1: in the opposite of the gene mutation. It's the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: It implies that we were originally left handed right as primates,
Speaker 1: and then as we evolved we became right handed. So
Speaker 1: therefore right handed people are more involved than left handed
Speaker 1: people in some weird way. Yeah. So again it's another
Speaker 1: inconsistency where and of course this is in primates too. Um.
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean it's the same thing with you. No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. But I mean, if you're looking at our
Speaker 1: ancestry and trying to figure out where handedness came from,
Speaker 1: you have to go pretty far back right, And I
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good example of how this body of
Speaker 1: work or knowledge is very contradictory. Still, yeah, it's baffling,
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Hey, Chuck, Hey, you sent me something
Speaker 1: about um ambidextrous nous. Yeah. I thought this was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting from mental flaws, like, like, it was just
Speaker 1: kind of my understanding that anybody who said, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: ambidextrous knew what they were talking about. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that's really just not the case. For the most part.
Speaker 1: It's a very rare um condition. I guess you'd call
Speaker 1: it yeah, um, because I don't know if there is
Speaker 1: a is a strict definition for what constitutes being ambidextrous.
Speaker 1: Like a you know, a switch hitter in baseball doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean they're ambidextrous. It means they've taught themselves to
Speaker 1: hit from the other side of the plate. Um. If
Speaker 1: you notice, as a baseball fan, you're never gonna see
Speaker 1: a player that hits uh equally as well on both sides.
Speaker 1: Like you know, the great Chipper Jones here from Atlanta,
Speaker 1: he favored one side of the plate. Although he was
Speaker 1: a switch hitter, he was a much better hitter. I
Speaker 1: think it was as a lefty and not as a righty.
Speaker 1: So that's not image extrous now, someone who's taught themselves,
Speaker 1: because it's a valuable skill in sports to be somewhat
Speaker 1: embed extrous or in a lot of sports. UM. But
Speaker 1: as far, I think writing is one of the things
Speaker 1: that they can look at UM as a clear indicator
Speaker 1: of which hand, uh you're you're best at And they
Speaker 1: say about only about one percent can write equally as
Speaker 1: well with either hand, So that's like super low UM
Speaker 1: apparently too. So this handedness in this UM lateralization of
Speaker 1: the brain and division of labor and all that has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with how your brain is connected,
Speaker 1: and apparently handedness is a part of that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like for example, UM, people who are ambidextrous UM
Speaker 1: are more likely to suffer from schizophrenia, to have schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: And there it's not just UM ambidextrous people. Apparently lefties
Speaker 1: UM show a greater propensity towards schizophrenia. Something like people
Speaker 1: with schizophrenia are left handed, which is a very high
Speaker 1: proportion considering the general populations about ten and um. More
Speaker 1: than that, dyslexia and stuttering as well, right, which suggests
Speaker 1: that left handedness has an effect on how your brain
Speaker 1: is wired. It's not just as simple, Oh my my
Speaker 1: hand is I use my left hand. My my brain
Speaker 1: is otherwise the exact same as a right handed person.
Speaker 1: The brain does appear to be different in some ways,
Speaker 1: especially in the ways that it's connected. Yeah. The um
Speaker 1: we we talked about synesthesia before, one of our favorite
Speaker 1: Uh what do you call it? A condition? Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it? Sure? I always just think of condition is
Speaker 1: something that's uh, you know, derogatory. Yeah, like a malady
Speaker 1: or something. I mean I think that falls under that
Speaker 1: one is one, but the other one isn't necessarily that one.
Speaker 1: So like a malady is a condition, but excipition isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily a malady anyway. That's my long windway of saying.
Speaker 1: Synist eats are awesome. Uh. And the rate of and
Speaker 1: u ambidextrian synist eats is much higher, uh and left
Speaker 1: handedness than in the general population. Right, So we have
Speaker 1: some clues here, like UM, it's it's handedness has to
Speaker 1: do with how your brain is wired, and if your
Speaker 1: brain is wired in such a way that you are
Speaker 1: left handed, your brain is wired differently from a person
Speaker 1: with a right handed brain. Right, and a lot of
Speaker 1: studies have backed that up and have come up with
Speaker 1: things like, it's entirely possible that if you're a left
Speaker 1: handed person you've got some advantages in life. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about those right after this. So, Chuck, one of the
Speaker 1: things that UM left handedness possibly bestows confers upon you
Speaker 1: as a benefit is the idea of thinking quicker, to
Speaker 1: be able to process information more quickly. Yeah. Uh, they
Speaker 1: have done some studies on this. UM did did a
Speaker 1: couple of studies, one of which UM they sat down
Speaker 1: a hundred people, eighty right handers, twenty left handers and
Speaker 1: basically to show them a computer screen with a single
Speaker 1: dot either on the left or the right side, and
Speaker 1: you had to press a button. It's just a speed test, basically,
Speaker 1: like which side is it on? Left or right? Right?
Speaker 1: So something shows up on the left side. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have a clicker in your left hand and clicker
Speaker 1: in your right hand. You click the left hand clicker,
Speaker 1: but this is all happening very fast. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: and left handed subjects were overall faster. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: other tests they had to match up multiple letters that
Speaker 1: appeared in some cases on either side of the line
Speaker 1: and in other cases on just one side. And again
Speaker 1: left handed, Uh, we're faster, but just at matching letters
Speaker 1: that were on both sides of the line, right, which
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting well, and that supports this idea
Speaker 1: that um, the the brain. The fact that um, some
Speaker 1: left handed people's motor skills and language centers are on
Speaker 1: different sides in their brains, uh, could make them talk more.
Speaker 1: The side of their hemispheres of their brains are more connected,
Speaker 1: there's more white tissue where their corpus colossum is more efficient.
Speaker 1: It makes sense in a way, but at the same
Speaker 1: time you're like, wait, that doesn't make any sense. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of this data should be taken and just
Speaker 1: locked away in a box until we understand the whole
Speaker 1: thing more, because it doesn't really do do a lot
Speaker 1: at this point. We don't know enough to make it fit.
Speaker 1: And it's actually kind of contradictory to some other stuff
Speaker 1: too as far as handedness goes. Yeah, but they do
Speaker 1: say that if you're left handed, you may be like
Speaker 1: a better gamer or or a pilot, because you're able
Speaker 1: to just process this quick information super fast, like rapid
Speaker 1: fire stuff coming at you. It also suggested to that
Speaker 1: language can be processed in both hemispheres among left handed people,
Speaker 1: which again would require a lot more connections between the
Speaker 1: two hemispheres, faster communication between the two and hence quicker thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that you in the long run, as you age
Speaker 1: in your brain deteriorates, you may be in better shape
Speaker 1: as a lefty because your other hemisphere may be able
Speaker 1: to pick up that slack more easily. Whereas if you're
Speaker 1: just a dumb right hander, you're just you know, screwed,
Speaker 1: You're in You're in trouble. And of course this has approven.
Speaker 1: This is just there postulating here, right, But I mean,
Speaker 1: as to this mystery, Yeah, you definitely haven't an advantage
Speaker 1: in sports in a lot of cases. Though, Yes, but
Speaker 1: not in the way that you would think. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily because your brain is communicating. The hemispheres are of
Speaker 1: your brain are communicating. It's more because your opponent is
Speaker 1: statistically likelier to be expecting you to be a right
Speaker 1: handed person to have trained against the right handed person
Speaker 1: exactly to be used to playing a right handed person.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're a left handed person, they're playing you. Now,
Speaker 1: you're going to throw them off guard. You're gonna catch
Speaker 1: them off guard. You're gonna be able to get the
Speaker 1: drop on them because they're not used to you. Whereas you,
Speaker 1: being a lefty, you're still statistically likelier to have played
Speaker 1: right handed people, so you know how to handle them.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to handle you. You're the wild card, baby,
Speaker 1: you win your Rocky. Yeah, Rocky was left handed. Apparently. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of sports figures in real life
Speaker 1: that we're left handed, and apparently it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where they're disproportionately represented. Yeah, as far as successful
Speaker 1: athletes go compared to the to the population at large. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, um, a lot of times you'll hear
Speaker 1: about like m M A or boxing. Tennis is another
Speaker 1: big one because if you're used to playing right e's
Speaker 1: most of your life, that left handed server comes up
Speaker 1: there and it's it's different, it's weird, right, And the
Speaker 1: difference is so pronounced that, like if you are a
Speaker 1: pro tennis player or something like that or pro boxer.
Speaker 1: You're gonna train against the lefty before a match against
Speaker 1: the lefty. Yeah, you know, you're gonna do what you
Speaker 1: can to prepare yourself. Yeah. And I think Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: wrote this on how staff forks are left handers quicker,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, better at sports and um. He also points
Speaker 1: out that through history, uh, this probably comes from like
Speaker 1: soldier training, mainly training and fighting and jousting and sword
Speaker 1: fighting and everything against other right e's as well, So
Speaker 1: a lefty would have a left handed warrior might be
Speaker 1: more prone to be, you know, the great leader, like
Speaker 1: perhaps Alexander the Great right who was a left handed
Speaker 1: What's weird though, is if that has been the case,
Speaker 1: if humans have been left handed and right handed, the
Speaker 1: proportions have been roughly the same for the last two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years. If you're left handed combatant, wouldn't then
Speaker 1: the proportion of left handed people have grown over time
Speaker 1: because of natural selection because you you have an advantage
Speaker 1: in battle or something like that. So therefore the population
Speaker 1: of right handed people would drop in relation to the
Speaker 1: population of left exactly. That makes sense. And I remember this,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't happened. Yeah, I remember our podcasts on
Speaker 1: castles like eighty years ago. Remember they built the staircases
Speaker 1: going on the right hand side. I can't even do
Speaker 1: you remember how mine fending lee difficult? That was for
Speaker 1: me to understand. Did you have our time with Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to re record it I think twice because
Speaker 1: I kept getting it wrong. Yeah. We also got in
Speaker 1: trouble for for a cussword in that one too. Those
Speaker 1: that was a dark day many years ago. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the Yeah, the the castle steps would wind up
Speaker 1: on the right side of the wall to give the
Speaker 1: advantage to the person higher on the stairs swinging a
Speaker 1: right handed sword because obviously you couldn't swing a right
Speaker 1: handed sword going up the stairs because the wall is
Speaker 1: on your right. But a left handed combatant advantage taken
Speaker 1: away even though you have the higher ground, because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're cutting the guy's knees off. They
Speaker 1: were cutting them off at the knees. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that hurts. It does. But also included with natural selection
Speaker 1: two is if there were any real disadvantages to being
Speaker 1: a left handed person, or there were advantages to being
Speaker 1: a right handed person, this population shouldn't have remained steady
Speaker 1: over that long of a period too. I see what
Speaker 1: you mean, you know, unless the advantage isn't so great
Speaker 1: as to you know, cause uh, that natural selection to occur,
Speaker 1: you know. Maybe. Um, there are more US presidents that
Speaker 1: have been left handed, more MENSA members for whatever that's worth.
Speaker 1: Half half of the twelve US presidents, so it's World
Speaker 1: War two have been left handed. So whereas the normal populations,
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen percent lefties US presidents of World War
Speaker 1: two has been And apparently in the campaign all three
Speaker 1: candidates H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Pero were left handed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a percent of the population. Peroh man, he was
Speaker 1: fun to watch. He was Dana Carvey was fun to
Speaker 1: watch doing Pero too. Oh yeah. Uh. And they say
Speaker 1: more musicians more or musicians are more likely to be
Speaker 1: left handed. Maybe, um. And it does run in families,
Speaker 1: even though identical twins can have opposite hand preferences. Oh weird,
Speaker 1: And um there is In the nineteen eighties, it was
Speaker 1: a Harvard neurologist that said that, ah, lefties are right
Speaker 1: eas whose brain centers in the womb change because of
Speaker 1: high testosterone. Yeah, so there's there's theories that we become
Speaker 1: handed in the womb because of something like that, or
Speaker 1: birth trauma or some sort of trauma while we're in
Speaker 1: the womb and that, Yeah, it just adjusts the the
Speaker 1: the construction of our brains. Um. Supposedly, a mother's age
Speaker 1: has an impact on her kids. That's crazy. Statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: a mother UM over forty who gives birth is has
Speaker 1: a higher likelihood of having a lefty kid, way higher,
Speaker 1: like h or something. Yeah, like that's pretty high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more than I don't even know what that means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I guess your hand preference emerges about by
Speaker 1: seven months, but then it's like set by age three,
Speaker 1: So before seven months you're just flinging poop with both
Speaker 1: hands equally as well. Pretty much. Yeah. I wrote a
Speaker 1: story about a guy who found out as an adult
Speaker 1: that has mother had suspected he was left handed when
Speaker 1: he was a baby, so she immobilized his left hand
Speaker 1: so that he would be forced to learn with his
Speaker 1: right hand. He didn't seem to take it like that,
Speaker 1: but he did see it came across like he felt
Speaker 1: like something had been kind of taken from him. He
Speaker 1: said it also explained a lot that he was like
Speaker 1: so so with stuff that involves its right hand seemed
Speaker 1: to be better with his left and um that he
Speaker 1: looked into it, and that by doing that, which is
Speaker 1: very popular, like kids were forced to become right handed
Speaker 1: through the twentieth century. Um that you are basically making
Speaker 1: a a less pronounced copy of the person. You're taking
Speaker 1: the original and making like a slightly dimmer effect simile
Speaker 1: of it, like forcing their being to reorganize like that
Speaker 1: interesting whereas they thought they were trying to give them
Speaker 1: an advantage, to actually give them a disadvantage exactly. But
Speaker 1: I would imagine that if you did that till say
Speaker 1: age eighteen, and then all of a sudden started using
Speaker 1: your dominant hand that you were naturally born with. It's
Speaker 1: all like Spinley in week right, but then once you
Speaker 1: once you train it to to to bulk back up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine your brain would would be better off
Speaker 1: like that, be fuller. So to continue the abuse right
Speaker 1: until eighteen, discontinued the abuse, and then bam, you got
Speaker 1: a super kid on your take your little old man
Speaker 1: Spinley hands and fingers like, um, build them back up
Speaker 1: and Mr Show character remember Titanico and they were crossed
Speaker 1: in the hospital. You know they're getting back together. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exciting. So p FT tweeted something some picture is
Speaker 1: very exciting, the whole gang. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about Paul if Tompkins or Handedness or Mr Show
Speaker 1: or any of that jazz, you can type that stuff
Speaker 1: into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Since I said search parts, time for listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this Christian shout out. Hey, guys started listening
Speaker 1: of a few months ago and I've already listened to
Speaker 1: about a hundred and sixty episodes. Um. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we mentioned this a lot, but if you're just on iTunes,
Speaker 1: say and you think, boy, these guys have got three
Speaker 1: hundred episodes one yeah, we've got like how many now
Speaker 1: seven change? Yeah, seven hundred plus that you can find
Speaker 1: on our website. UM, stuff you should know dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as a little pro tip, if you go onto
Speaker 1: stuff you should know dot Com a k the website
Speaker 1: with one of the worst searches in the world, just
Speaker 1: do control F and open up your web browsers search
Speaker 1: and then type it in and on our podcast archive page.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for something, yes, okay, it'll bring it up.
Speaker 1: Don't search for it don't bother searching for it using
Speaker 1: our search tool on the site. Are we working on that?
Speaker 1: I hope so, because this is really bad, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't bring up anything really Yeah, wow, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it even there, I don't know. I guess for
Speaker 1: looks lame. Um. So getting back to this, we do
Speaker 1: have a lot of podcasts out there, for those of
Speaker 1: you who don't know, we have seven hundred plus talking
Speaker 1: about He's uh. He listened to a hundred and sixty episodes.
Speaker 1: His favorite thing about them is how you don't poo
Speaker 1: poo anybody's beliefs. I'm a Christian, So when I was
Speaker 1: very much so begrudgingly, ah, listen to your evolution suite,
Speaker 1: I was expecting to be mad, but to my surprise,
Speaker 1: I heard a very non biased view of evolution. Um.
Speaker 1: I do believe in evolution, but it's a long story.
Speaker 1: By the way, after many years of hearing creation a
Speaker 1: slam uh, people talk about evolution is a very pleasant surprise.
Speaker 1: So I just want to say thanks for putting your
Speaker 1: hearts but not your opinions into that episode. That is
Speaker 1: from Matt very sincerely, and we've been taking a task
Speaker 1: here and there We try to do our best matt
Speaker 1: um to keep things on the level like that, but
Speaker 1: we are human and we do uh flounder here and
Speaker 1: there with that, but we we try, and we appreciate
Speaker 1: your kudos for that. Yeah, thanks man. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to give us kudos, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: about that. Or if you have any great stories that
Speaker 1: has to do with handedness, let us know if you
Speaker 1: had your arm tied to your waist till you're eight
Speaker 1: as a baby. Uh. You can tweet to us at
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