Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: Someone asked me on Facebook what the w stood forward?
Speaker 1: You see that? And I thought, and you said, will Amina, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not true, but I'm not telling I know what.
Speaker 1: It's Dandsbard. I don't know if I know your name.
Speaker 1: I'm not telling. Why don't I know that? I'm doubting
Speaker 1: reality right now? Okay, all right, moving on? What's your
Speaker 1: shut up? Buddy? Um, I don't really have a setup, Chuck. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little sick of my own setups? Do
Speaker 1: you have one? Okay, let's talk about Twins? That is
Speaker 1: not a tuma. How's that? That's pretty good from the
Speaker 1: movie Twins. Yeah, No, that's from Kindergarten Cop. It's so lame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I give that. It's okay, man, you
Speaker 1: got the you got the exit down. Perfect. Twins was
Speaker 1: when he sang the yackac don't talk back, don't talk back,
Speaker 1: don't talk back. You. Okay, So twins, Yes, we're talking
Speaker 1: about twins obviously, um or we're talking about kindergarten cop
Speaker 1: to toss up at this point. Actually, um, let's go
Speaker 1: with twins, chuckers. All right. So you've known some twins,
Speaker 1: I'm sure in your life. Yeah, I've done a few.
Speaker 1: I used to know a lot more back when I
Speaker 1: was in school. Um, I knew twins. I don't know
Speaker 1: any now, I don't think. Yeah, I don't know actively
Speaker 1: know any twins. You never jog with any of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you are familiar then, as I'm sure most people are.
Speaker 1: There not entirely uncommon, although there's a lot fewer of
Speaker 1: them than one might imagine, especially identical twins. Right, Fraternal
Speaker 1: twins are actually way more common. Uh, And we'll get
Speaker 1: into how these things are made. And by these things,
Speaker 1: I mean people who are twins to will soon be
Speaker 1: corralled like gingers. Right, Yes, two thirds more common I
Speaker 1: think is is the fraternal twins. Okay, Um, I guess
Speaker 1: to to get to the point of how twins are made,
Speaker 1: we should maybe talk a little bit about how babies
Speaker 1: are made. And what we're talking about are called singletons
Speaker 1: like you me, Jerry, Jerry, you're not a twin, are you? Okay,
Speaker 1: Jerry says no, So we're all singletons, is what people
Speaker 1: like us are called, very unique little snowflakes. Yeah, uh so, Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how a singleton is made. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: get the ball rolling. We're not going to talk about
Speaker 1: the nasty, dirty things that go into making babies. We'll
Speaker 1: just go with the science of it all. Uh about
Speaker 1: midway through a women's menstrual cycle, she releases an egg. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's what it sounds like. Think so as it
Speaker 1: travels down the fallopian tube, and then, uh, that single
Speaker 1: egg is for eyes by a little swimmer, a little
Speaker 1: spermy guy, right, and a bunch of them are coming
Speaker 1: at it at once. Yeah, imagine that's rather intimidating. And
Speaker 1: apparently I understand that um, brothers brother sperm related sperm
Speaker 1: can recognize one another in the uterus and will tag
Speaker 1: team to like get there faster. They'll draft, or they'll
Speaker 1: they'll connect, and they'll try to like put other people
Speaker 1: out teammates in a NASCAR race exactly. But um, when
Speaker 1: they get to the egg gets every man for himself, right,
Speaker 1: And so the sperm gets to the egg and fertilizes it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then um, what you have About a day and
Speaker 1: a half later, it's conception, and then it's called a
Speaker 1: z I got right. And then after that it divides
Speaker 1: into the fertilized egg divides into two yeah. Uh, and
Speaker 1: this is we're talking about single tents. Don't don't get
Speaker 1: all crazy yet, the twins. The fertilizing divides into two.
Speaker 1: And then right four days later it is about one
Speaker 1: d cells keeps dividing and it's called a blast asist. Right, well,
Speaker 1: you keep hogging all the great words. And then the
Speaker 1: sixth day after that, the blast assist and plants the
Speaker 1: uterine wall. And that's where it just states into human being.
Speaker 1: And along the way, we all developed vestigial tails. Did
Speaker 1: you know that? Yeah, I've heard that fall off for
Speaker 1: most people. Yeah. And if not, what are you called
Speaker 1: or what is it called? It's called a vestigial tail. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't know there's a name for like being born
Speaker 1: with stuff like that, And I can't remember. We have
Speaker 1: an article on this site. I think Clambert wrote it. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so chuck uh. Week nine, you've got a fetus Prior
Speaker 1: to that, it's an embryo, and as the baby develops, um,
Speaker 1: it's surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac right, that's
Speaker 1: where it gets all of the food and oxygen and
Speaker 1: all the things little little fetus needs to progress, right,
Speaker 1: and it evacuates its bowels and its little tinkler into
Speaker 1: the umbilical core. Right. Yeah. Uh and so today, nine
Speaker 1: months later, approximately singleton, a little singleton, not necessarily simpleton,
Speaker 1: but definitely singleton, right, right, So that's normal, regular old,
Speaker 1: straight up, I have a new, little single baby. Right.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you have twins? There's two types? Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: we talked about identical infraternal. There's much more egg heading
Speaker 1: names for those than that. Yeah, monozygotic is identical and
Speaker 1: dizygotic is fraternal. So we're we'll go with can we
Speaker 1: call him identical infraternal? Okay? Uh so starting with let's
Speaker 1: we'll start with fraternal, right, Yeah, that's an easy one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty simple in fraternal. Twins, by the way, don't
Speaker 1: have any more shared DNA than you know, Chuck and
Speaker 1: his very handsome brother share. Yeah, I wish I shared
Speaker 1: that much with my brother. Um, so what what happens
Speaker 1: is the the mom releases two eggs rather than one
Speaker 1: in the dad uh hits them with the sperm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like fifty million sperm, right, and then one gets in
Speaker 1: and then another gets in and you have to developing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's basically the same thing. It's like having two Singleton's
Speaker 1: at the same time, baking two buns in the same oven. Right.
Speaker 1: And with with the die zygotic twin, I'm sorry, a
Speaker 1: fraternal twin, you've got three possible sets of combinations, two males,
Speaker 1: two females, or a male and a female. And actually
Speaker 1: male and female are the most common. They represent half
Speaker 1: of all, um fraternal twins. Yeah, those are my favorites.
Speaker 1: Mine to love it. Stephen Katie Duty. I don't know
Speaker 1: any personally, although Scott and Stacy Freylick were my brother's age,
Speaker 1: and um, I just always thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all they're very close, they're they're always very sweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you're sweet. Yeah, and plus the whole you know,
Speaker 1: the brother protecting the sister and the sister setting up
Speaker 1: their brother with her friends. Yeah, it's a great It's
Speaker 1: it's the perfect superlation and boy girl fraternal twins are
Speaker 1: super cute. Yes, we need a T shirt that says
Speaker 1: that not like those weirdos that look alike. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: chuck uh. The same thing can happen with multiple births, triplets.
Speaker 1: We have triplets that listen to us as we know,
Speaker 1: tri zygotic, right and so on. Sure, Now with a
Speaker 1: monozygotic birth, UM, you've got one egg that is fertilized
Speaker 1: by the sperm, and it splits into two after it's
Speaker 1: fertilized and starts developing two identical human beings. That's called
Speaker 1: cool science. It really is the fact that this can happen.
Speaker 1: I love it. And the sooner the split happens, say
Speaker 1: within day two, the more independent the children are going
Speaker 1: to be in utero. Right, they're they're going to have
Speaker 1: their own amniotic sacks. They're going to have their own placenta.
Speaker 1: As time wears on the U and the division occurs later,
Speaker 1: they could have the chance of having fused placenta UM,
Speaker 1: fused amniotic sacks. And this is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: you can UM if you share a placenta. And sometimes
Speaker 1: the twins will not develop equally because one twin is
Speaker 1: hogging all the nourishment then the other and that's called
Speaker 1: fetal growth restriction with just like Danny DeVitto and um
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwartzen, Yes, that was that the scenario. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember they said, they said, Uh, Danny DeVito was like
Speaker 1: an accident. They weren't expecting him. He comes to realize
Speaker 1: that he's after birth and it was really sad. It
Speaker 1: was a sad point in the movie. That's what he said.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm after birth, right, it was sad slash
Speaker 1: funny frank, Yeah, but I imagine that that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Arnold just kind of took all of the a nourishment
Speaker 1: for himself, leaving little Danny DeVito with very little. The
Speaker 1: stingy governatory and Josh. Another thing can happen called twin
Speaker 1: to twin transfusion syndrome, and that is when the twins
Speaker 1: are sharing circulation, so they can actually transfuse blood from
Speaker 1: one to the other. But that can be bad because
Speaker 1: the donor twin can you know, hog some of that
Speaker 1: some of the blood and uh will be unusually small,
Speaker 1: whereas the recipient twin will have too much blood and
Speaker 1: be unusually large for their age, developing baby small baby
Speaker 1: in the same womb at the same time fighting for
Speaker 1: their stuff, right what It's something that UM I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. In this article, which is written by
Speaker 1: Catherine Near, she's one of our head editors in A
Speaker 1: Twin and a Twin UM, she refers to herself in
Speaker 1: first person as the author in this throughout UM. She
Speaker 1: mentioned that, UH, twins that have UM undergone twin to
Speaker 1: twin transfusion syndrome or t T t S for those
Speaker 1: in the know, UM can actually the circulation can be
Speaker 1: separated by laser. Do you know how much Dough, the
Speaker 1: surgeon who who performs in utero operations charges, I imagine
Speaker 1: where does that fit into the health care package? That's
Speaker 1: what I want to and the accounts for like sixty
Speaker 1: of it and that's like one surgery. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: my calculation. I would imagine that really tricky specialized stuff.
Speaker 1: It really is, but it can be done, and you
Speaker 1: kind of want to do it because one twin can
Speaker 1: come out of nemic the other can just be enormous.
Speaker 1: Again like Arnold Swartzenegger and Danny de Vito, right, and
Speaker 1: identical twins Josh. Obviously, UM can only be two males
Speaker 1: or two females. Because they share identical genetic material. True
Speaker 1: debt check. There's also a syndrome that's pretty that's a
Speaker 1: lot more frequent than we once imagine, called vanishing twin syndrome,
Speaker 1: where you start out with twins or multiples, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're down one. And they used to
Speaker 1: think that this was a very rare and frequent thing.
Speaker 1: And actually, I imagine an old timey eras they had
Speaker 1: no idea that this was happening. For the ultrasound, sure right, uh.
Speaker 1: And then once yeah, once the ultrasound came around, we
Speaker 1: could start to kind of track what was going on.
Speaker 1: We discovered that the mother was actually absorbing one during
Speaker 1: her pregnancy. Yeah, that's gotta feel a little odd. Well,
Speaker 1: and they set of multi fetal gestations has happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's way more than I would thought. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's just nature's way of saying, like, no,
Speaker 1: eight is too many. You know, seven that's fine, but
Speaker 1: eight now eight is enough? Uh? And then of course, chuck,
Speaker 1: we get to a different kind of twinning called conjoined twinning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got to mention this, and this is awesome, uh,
Speaker 1: in that no one really knows how this happens. But
Speaker 1: the prevalent theory is that the the z I got right. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the zigo splits very late, like twelve days, which apparently
Speaker 1: is late during just station uh, and it never fully
Speaker 1: uh divides, It doesn't have a chance to fully divide,
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden you have can join twins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes that seems to be pretty logical. It definitely does. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole slew of different kinds of conjoined
Speaker 1: twins and it's all based on where the body is fused, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I won't go over all the the different categories within
Speaker 1: the subcategories within the category, but I will give the
Speaker 1: three main terrata didema. That's if you're joined at the
Speaker 1: lower portion of your body. And I have to say
Speaker 1: that includes an issio fagus which lakshmid Tatma, the little
Speaker 1: Indian girl who was born with her twin, her headless twin.
Speaker 1: She basically looked like the goddess Lakshmi. Yeah, and actually
Speaker 1: I checked I checked it out and make sure she's
Speaker 1: still going strong and uh. A January twenty eighth article
Speaker 1: in The Daily Mail had a picture of her post
Speaker 1: surgery going to school, wearing a little plaid skirt and
Speaker 1: a tie and waving hute cute is a button. I
Speaker 1: thought you said Podma Lachama from Top Chef or whatever
Speaker 1: her last name is, and I thought she was a
Speaker 1: conjoined twin. No nice work. Well, she does have that
Speaker 1: scar on her arm, but I knew that was from
Speaker 1: a arm. Just thought it could have been she could
Speaker 1: have been joined at the forearm. You know a lot
Speaker 1: about Padma. I'm a top Chef nut. Uh. So then
Speaker 1: we have the terrata and a didema, and that is
Speaker 1: with one single upper body with a double lower half,
Speaker 1: or if you're connected by a single body part, like
Speaker 1: connected at the head, let's say, or this also includes
Speaker 1: kids with like a from the waist down have two
Speaker 1: sets of legs, but everything else above is just single, right,
Speaker 1: And then the final one is terata and a katata
Speaker 1: didema and a di didema. And that's joined somewhere at
Speaker 1: the mid section, so maybe joined at the chest. You
Speaker 1: might share a heart, you might share some other organs
Speaker 1: or back to back, let's say above the spine, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, and chuck, that includes umflow Pegas
Speaker 1: and you know who is M flow Pegas can joined twins,
Speaker 1: don't you Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie and Donnie Gallian. That's right,
Speaker 1: the world's oldest living can join twins from Ohio somewhere, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then they turned fifty eight last October. Yeah. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did a bit on them on the webcast and they
Speaker 1: there as you would expect, kind of cantanker us with
Speaker 1: each other, but also like love and hug on each other.
Speaker 1: I think it's Donnie who is uh, he gets he's
Speaker 1: afraid of the dark, so Ronnie like cuddles him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really sweet. If you haven't ever seen any footage
Speaker 1: of Ronnie and Donnie Galleon right hanging out, you should
Speaker 1: look it up. They also punch each other in the
Speaker 1: face when they're watching TV when well, they have two TVs, right,
Speaker 1: and then they'll be watching them obviously at the same time,
Speaker 1: and one will turn the volume up and the other
Speaker 1: trains his volume up and it keeps going and then
Speaker 1: somebody gets punched in the face. It's kind of funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is uh that moves us on. Josh to another
Speaker 1: form of conjoined twin called parasitic twining, and this is
Speaker 1: when one conjoined twin is a lot smaller and maybe
Speaker 1: not as fully formed. And sometimes this is when you
Speaker 1: can get like a limb and an odd part of
Speaker 1: your body, like an arm growing out of your back
Speaker 1: or something like that. Right, And a subset even rarer
Speaker 1: than this is uh parasitic twinning. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Andy Garcia was born with the parasitic twin. Didn't know
Speaker 1: that until I read this. I didn't either. But a
Speaker 1: very rare form of um parasitic twinning is fetus and feetsu,
Speaker 1: which is where the twin, the unformed or underdeveloped twin,
Speaker 1: is found in the body of the living twin, the
Speaker 1: surviving twin UH, and often in it in the form
Speaker 1: of a taratoma. You'll find teeth, hair, um, spinal bones, segments, bones,
Speaker 1: uh and these are all just called teratomas. What makes
Speaker 1: it a fetus and feet you, is when there's a
Speaker 1: recognizable trunk and limbs. Imagine finding that in your abdomen,
Speaker 1: which is commonly where it grows. It's really it's really sad,
Speaker 1: is what it is. It was about to say creepy,
Speaker 1: but but I mean imagine it's it's just a tragedy.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you and your parents never had any idea
Speaker 1: that you were part of a twin and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like, oh, here he is. Well
Speaker 1: that's where he got to, you know, and you got
Speaker 1: would be kind of shaking. That happens a little more
Speaker 1: often than my I'm comfortable with it, said one and
Speaker 1: every five hundred thousand. Oh, I thought you were about
Speaker 1: to reveal your own story. No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: But I just saw one in every five hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: My first thought was, oh, wow, that's really rare. Then
Speaker 1: I thought, there's a lot of people on the earth,
Speaker 1: and that's not as rare as I would like it
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, And with conjoint twins, actually they're rarer
Speaker 1: than I thought. Um. Apparently, by Catherine Near's estimate, there's
Speaker 1: only about fifty un conjoined conjoined twins unconnected conjoined twins
Speaker 1: uh in the world today, he said, I think one
Speaker 1: and every forty verse but only one in every two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand live births because of conjoined twins are still
Speaker 1: born or die you know, a day or two after birth,
Speaker 1: which is really sad. Right, So about of conjoined twins
Speaker 1: don't make it past the day. So the ones that do, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then that that five percent. Probably most of them
Speaker 1: are going to be disconnected at some point yea if possible. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course there have been some famous ones, right Ronnie
Speaker 1: and Donnie. Uh, yeah, who who are the Guinness guys?
Speaker 1: Hang and Chang bunker Archie their brother Hang and Chang.
Speaker 1: We're born in eighteen eleven and Siam which we call
Speaker 1: Thailand now uh. And pretty early on they realized like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can make a lot of money off of ourselves,
Speaker 1: so they started touring the world. Um, and they did
Speaker 1: make a pretty respectable sum for themselves, and they actually
Speaker 1: um retired. They think Wilkesboro, North Carolina, didn't get married
Speaker 1: to They married sisters Sally and Adelaide Yates and the
Speaker 1: couples together uh had to combine twenty one children and
Speaker 1: they were never separated. That's the word I was looking
Speaker 1: for that connected. Now they were where at the chest?
Speaker 1: They were at the chest and and an autopsy performed
Speaker 1: on them afterward, um, after their death, which accounts for
Speaker 1: the word autopsy. UH found that they shared no organs.
Speaker 1: They could have just gone skin graft. They did two
Speaker 1: sexual organs. They had two of everything, except they were
Speaker 1: joined at the chest, so they had two sexual Organs,
Speaker 1: and they fathered twenty one kids with two sisters. But
Speaker 1: they had to be a weird Saturday night. It was room.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, yeah, everybody's in the room. That's a
Speaker 1: managa whatever. I don't even know what that is, right.
Speaker 1: But they lived to be sixty three actually, and then
Speaker 1: I think they were the oldest living conjoined twins of
Speaker 1: their time. I imagine it's probably in history. And there
Speaker 1: was another set that's fairly um well known, I guess I.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear them until this article. Did you read
Speaker 1: this part? I did not about the bidden In Maids
Speaker 1: Mary and Eliza chulk Hurst. They were born a d
Speaker 1: in England, I take it. And they were pago pagas.
Speaker 1: That's a fun way to say say that pig pegas. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were pago pagas. So they were connected along their
Speaker 1: lower back and the butt hawks so they're not facing
Speaker 1: each other, no, which I think would probably be a
Speaker 1: real pain. Yeah. Well, I mean there's probably no scenario
Speaker 1: that's really easy to live with about it. They lived
Speaker 1: to be thirty four though, that's pretty old, especially back then.
Speaker 1: And I think Chang and hang and uh, the Biddenden
Speaker 1: Maids died within hours of each other, which is fairly frequent.
Speaker 1: Remember when we were researching Ronnie and Donnie. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: doctor was talking about how, you know, sometimes people can
Speaker 1: live up to eighteen hours, but usually it's not very long.
Speaker 1: So can we talk about my other two favorite types
Speaker 1: of twinning? Though favorite too. Sometimes, Josh, a woman can
Speaker 1: release two eggs, like you would when you would have
Speaker 1: fraternal twins, but maybe one might be let's say, two
Speaker 1: weeks later than the other. Your husband or boyfriend or whoever, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're having your baby with you still liberal fertilizes both
Speaker 1: eggs at different times, and you're actually pregnant with quote
Speaker 1: unquote twins, but one would be born two weeks after
Speaker 1: the other, right, depending on the moment of conception. And
Speaker 1: that's called superfication, and that's at never heard of that.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of blown away. Yeah i am too. I'm
Speaker 1: even more blown away, Chuck by a little term called
Speaker 1: super feet condition. Yeah. They'd added a little extra few
Speaker 1: letters in there because because it's like bonus. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: if a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation, uh,
Speaker 1: and two different males fertilize the eggs, so you get
Speaker 1: sperm from one male and then spurn from another male
Speaker 1: and both of them are fertilized and take in just
Speaker 1: eight she can have siblings half siblings at the same time,
Speaker 1: virtually the same time. But boom, super fee condition and
Speaker 1: actually the first one you talked about, superfetation. They can
Speaker 1: lead to half identical twins where um, the egg splits
Speaker 1: before fertilization and is infertilized by two separate sperm. So
Speaker 1: these twins actually share sev their d n A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: polar body twins. Yeah, pretty cool term. Yeah, so that's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing, except it's not two eggs to
Speaker 1: begin with. It's one egg that splits. That makes sense. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about some you want to just
Speaker 1: put some twin myths down, take them around the barn
Speaker 1: and shoot them. Sure, or we can validate them. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: There's a study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart,
Speaker 1: and it's an ongoing four part deal where their study um,
Speaker 1: fraternal and identical twins raised together and separate to see
Speaker 1: like what the big all the hullabaloo is all about.
Speaker 1: And what they found a lot of times is that
Speaker 1: twins separated at birth identical twins, uh or I guess
Speaker 1: fraternal too. They share a lot of the same characteristics
Speaker 1: in life. And Jim and Jim Lewis and Springer were
Speaker 1: separated at four weeks old, right, and they were adopted.
Speaker 1: So note both of their first names are the same.
Speaker 1: They were given the same first name by their adoptive parents, right,
Speaker 1: instead of the same last name. Very odd. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were apart until they were thirty nine years old. They
Speaker 1: both grew to six ft tall weight exactly a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty pounds when they were little boys. Each one
Speaker 1: had a dog named Toy right. Each one had been
Speaker 1: married two times. The first wives of both were called Linda,
Speaker 1: and the second wives of both were called Betty yea.
Speaker 1: Each one had a son they named James Allen, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. They and and here's another little fact for you.
Speaker 1: My dad's name is James Allen and he had a
Speaker 1: twin that died at birth. This is getting out of hand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when my dad first told me that. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh. And then a couple of years later
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, that's so weird to think that
Speaker 1: I would have had an identical twin uncle. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: just never happened. That would have changed the course of
Speaker 1: your life entirely. Uncle look alike? How it called him? Uh? What? What?
Speaker 1: What other things that they have in common? Each one
Speaker 1: had driven a had a light blue Chevrolet, and they
Speaker 1: both vacationed at past a grilled beach in Florida. Right,
Speaker 1: here's my favorite. Uh. They both enjoyed Salem cigarettes and
Speaker 1: Miller Lite beer. Yes, I love that one too. Um.
Speaker 1: They were both nail biters, they both held part time
Speaker 1: job as sheriffs. They both had migraines. And then the
Speaker 1: little love note thing. Yeah, and uh, and how the
Speaker 1: Mind Works, I think is what it's called Stephen Pinker's book. Um.
Speaker 1: He he off handedly mentions that. Uh. And he's saying,
Speaker 1: is there a gene for leaving love notes around the house?
Speaker 1: And he's saying, twins rude apart kind of suggest Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: they both left love notes for their wives. It's so odd.
Speaker 1: It is what an odd characteristic to share. So they
Speaker 1: were obviously studied in that in that Minnesota study of
Speaker 1: twins reared apart, But they do mention I thought this
Speaker 1: is funny that they had different hairstyles. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like it is easily sensationalized you know, and you
Speaker 1: you you've got to say, like, you know, those facts
Speaker 1: lead you to believe that they were the exact same
Speaker 1: person in every single way. So when they said had
Speaker 1: the mop top Beatles haircut and one had like the
Speaker 1: pompadoor Johnny Cash with the sideburns even longer CIDs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe they just listened to different music and well
Speaker 1: another one was more articulate than the other, and the
Speaker 1: other was a better writer than the articulate one. Alright, yes,
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. Imagine having a twin with the same first
Speaker 1: name being like hey Jim, Hey Jim. They get old
Speaker 1: really fast, nice sideburns, nice mop top, let's go smoke
Speaker 1: some Salem's let's oh boy um and then uh forty
Speaker 1: eight hours the TV show did did a special on
Speaker 1: identical twins raised Apart, and they found interesting things like
Speaker 1: Barbara and Daphne that were twins and they both had
Speaker 1: miscarriages and then had two boys and one girl. A
Speaker 1: little bit of a connection there, I don't know, however,
Speaker 1: the top that is though, are those the giggle twins? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they apparently had the same laugh. Well they crossed
Speaker 1: their arms and giggle in the same way, right, which
Speaker 1: you could have picked up from watching ALF. They could
Speaker 1: have both been watching ALF. Yeah you never know? Yeah
Speaker 1: did you watch ALF? Yeah? I didn't watch OFF. I
Speaker 1: never got it. It's like a puppet. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen Permanent Midnight? Oh yeah, that's the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: the first season of ALF. That's what Permanent Midnight is about.
Speaker 1: If you go watch Permanent Midnight and then you go
Speaker 1: watch the first season at ALF, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like kind of really quick, dark funny things in there
Speaker 1: that My favorite part of that movie is when he
Speaker 1: and Owen Wilson are had lost their drugs and Owen
Speaker 1: Wilson says, if I was a Perka Dan, where would
Speaker 1: I be? Great line and chuck. You know, um, twins
Speaker 1: root apart is like a perfect natural experiment to try
Speaker 1: to settle nature versus nurture. Yeah right, Um, it's not
Speaker 1: always a natural experiment. And I'm making air quotes for
Speaker 1: those of you who can't see. There's a group in
Speaker 1: New York that was affiliated well, they had an end
Speaker 1: with a your adoption agency in New York and I
Speaker 1: think the sixties, and they were basically like, oh, you've
Speaker 1: got some twins up for adoption. Make sure that this
Speaker 1: goes this one to this family, and this goes to
Speaker 1: this family, and then they kept tabs. So they were
Speaker 1: like purposefully separating twins and in the adoption through the
Speaker 1: adoption agency and then studying them like this huge longitudinal study. Uh.
Speaker 1: And actually, uh, they apparently got some really great results,
Speaker 1: but they became so afraid. Is apparently the public sentiment of,
Speaker 1: you know, separating twins for the study of nature versus nurture.
Speaker 1: Public sentiment changed. So by the eighties, I think they
Speaker 1: concluded this twenty year study. Um, they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just going to never talk about this for the
Speaker 1: next sixty years. So they sealed it and I think
Speaker 1: it's in like a the Yale University Library under lock
Speaker 1: and key. But it's coming out in the next like
Speaker 1: ten or twenty years. I think, Yeah, it's gonna rock
Speaker 1: our world. Yeah that in the whole Kennedy assassination, the
Speaker 1: truth will be out there. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: one's overcoming out. We'll know when their dates set for
Speaker 1: it is there. Yeah, I think so where the records
Speaker 1: are gonna be open? Awesome, can't wait. I need to
Speaker 1: watch more stuff they don't want you to know. Huh. Yes,
Speaker 1: are awesome Conspiracy Theorist podcast. Yeah, uh so, Josh, we
Speaker 1: do know that, Um, we don't know what causes the
Speaker 1: uh the MZ twins right now, but we do know
Speaker 1: that the rate is consistent throughout the world, which is
Speaker 1: about one and two fifty right now. That's that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that, like it's every time there's what did
Speaker 1: you say, one in to fifty or four in a thousand?
Speaker 1: One in fifty is a little easier, okay, But it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that every time there's a thousand births, you
Speaker 1: know there's four equally distributed. No, of course, not right.
Speaker 1: But if you take the birth statistics across the entire world,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find about four per one thousand, and actually
Speaker 1: by ethnic group, uh it changes. African Americans tend to
Speaker 1: have far more twins than any other group. And Africans
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry African people of African descent um, and
Speaker 1: Africans themselves. Sure that I think they said that Yoruba
Speaker 1: tribe in Nigeria has forty five per one thousand births,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot. That is a whole lot. Uh.
Speaker 1: On the low end, Chinese people have eleven point two
Speaker 1: per one thousand berths right, right, And that that's in
Speaker 1: the United States, by the way, not in China. Chinese
Speaker 1: people living in the United States, So Chinese Americans have
Speaker 1: eleven point two per one thousand, but if you go
Speaker 1: to China, it's like eight hundred per one thousand. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the right number. That is not the
Speaker 1: right number. But um, there are a couple of factors involved,
Speaker 1: chuck real quick. Um the the uh. I think the
Speaker 1: follicle stimulating hormone can cause a woman to have more
Speaker 1: than one egg. Um. And that's usually found more frequently
Speaker 1: in heavy women and older women. Uh. And we've been
Speaker 1: kind of trending towards he and right as far as
Speaker 1: parents go. So twinning as a result in the US
Speaker 1: has risen eighty or thirty eight percent and sixty five percent.
Speaker 1: Since that's pretty big jump. Okay, so let's move along
Speaker 1: and get rid of some myth. Dude. Twin language josh right,
Speaker 1: also known as idea glossia and cryptophagia. That is, uh,
Speaker 1: when some people say it, twins have like a secret
Speaker 1: language that they speak to each other, sort of not true.
Speaker 1: What the deal usually is is, um, let's say when
Speaker 1: they're developing. Let's say the first little twin has like
Speaker 1: a slower development with the language than the second twin.
Speaker 1: The second twin will kind of hang back or mimic
Speaker 1: and mimic mirror neurons, maybe mimic the other twin, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden they kind of developed this
Speaker 1: code if you will, right. Uh, so twin language, no
Speaker 1: technically no, all right? Uh? And then you always hear
Speaker 1: about twins having esp like one of them gets injured
Speaker 1: somewhere and the other one across the country knows about
Speaker 1: it right then or or something. So this have been
Speaker 1: tested actually, and uh. In one experiment, it's kind of clever.
Speaker 1: They took two twins and they put one. They put
Speaker 1: them in separate rooms, split them up. Well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to, or else they'll just cheat like crazy. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they faked it though, and they're like they
Speaker 1: really thought they had Donnie when they had Ronnie. Yeah
Speaker 1: you have both, yeah, yeah, um, but you split one.
Speaker 1: You split them up and you give one some cards
Speaker 1: to pick to choose from with different illustrations on it,
Speaker 1: and then the other one has the same set of
Speaker 1: cards in another room. So you have the one that
Speaker 1: chose to the card, the sender send the image telepathically
Speaker 1: to the target, the recipient twin, and then the recipient
Speaker 1: twin is supposed to choose that card. Well, the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is is, in the first round of this experiment
Speaker 1: they got it right like half of the time, which
Speaker 1: is pretty significant. But then they altered the experiment a
Speaker 1: little bit and they had a an assistant choose the
Speaker 1: card for the twin, and then the twins sent them telepathically,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it dropped the right. And
Speaker 1: they think that it was because the twins were hitting
Speaker 1: at because of shared preferences, not uh tell telleth telepathy.
Speaker 1: There's something really wrong with me today. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably the deal. That a lot of experiments don't
Speaker 1: show any kind of special bond. Some do, but the
Speaker 1: same experiments show that special bond between let's say a
Speaker 1: mother and a daughter or a brother and a sister
Speaker 1: that aren't twins, and they think that it probably just
Speaker 1: has more to do with um, like you said, growing
Speaker 1: up together, shared preferences and interest, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to do celebs or movies
Speaker 1: famous twins? Josh, have you ever heard of Mario Andretti
Speaker 1: race car driver. Yes, no, I have been either. That's see.
Speaker 1: I highlighted the ones that I was like. I didn't
Speaker 1: know they had a twin because some of them obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, like Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yeah, but they're
Speaker 1: for turn A right. Uh yeah, Giselle Bunch in the
Speaker 1: smoking hot model. Yeah, Jesus sister. I imagine a smoking
Speaker 1: hot sister. She is good looking, she's her manager. She's
Speaker 1: not model hot, but she is very attractive. Are they
Speaker 1: identical or fraternal? Their fraternal? Vin Diesel really yeah? He
Speaker 1: has a kind of a funny looking brother named Paul Vincent.
Speaker 1: A picture of him. How do you name your kid?
Speaker 1: Paul Vincent? And then Vin Diesel's a stage name, dude.
Speaker 1: I wonder if his name is Vincent Paul. Oh. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe his parents were very unamazed innative, or maybe Paul
Speaker 1: Diesel changed his name to Vincent because he thought it
Speaker 1: was too you know. Gear Head Scarlett Johansson has a
Speaker 1: brother named Hunter. They look a lot alike Ashton Kutcher,
Speaker 1: Did you know that? I think that rang a bell? Actually? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The Cutch has a brother named Michael, who has cerebral palsy. Sadly. Yes,
Speaker 1: that does ring a bell. Yeah, and he like it's
Speaker 1: his kind of lives for him him and has brought
Speaker 1: a lot of awareness to that um altist. Morrissett as
Speaker 1: a brother named Wade who cares. And Wade Morrisset is
Speaker 1: a singer, yoga dude and a cureton. It's just like
Speaker 1: an Indian chanter. Can we be done now? Uh? Parker
Speaker 1: Posey as a brother named Chris Cool. I'll bet he's cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Keifer William, Frederick Dempsey, George Rufus Sutherland. Did
Speaker 1: you know he had that many names? Yes, he has
Speaker 1: a fraternal twin sister named Rachel. Why would you give
Speaker 1: a kid that many names? Donald Southerland is probably smoking
Speaker 1: a lot of something back in the day. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: at least he did an animal House. And then, of
Speaker 1: course my favorite twins, Kim and Kelly deal. Kim deal
Speaker 1: with the Breeders. Okay, well they're both in the Breeders
Speaker 1: and Kim was in the Pixies. Pixies Uh. And before
Speaker 1: we move on, I want to put a call out
Speaker 1: because I saw a special one time on a TV
Speaker 1: show about these two twins. Two I think like twelve
Speaker 1: year old black girls in England, and they mimicked everything exactly.
Speaker 1: They spoken stereo at the same exact time, they walked
Speaker 1: exactly the same in synchronousy. It's like the twins in
Speaker 1: the Shiny It's very creepy and that's exactly what they were.
Speaker 1: And you know what happened. But one day they found
Speaker 1: one of them drowning the other one in a creek.
Speaker 1: Did they save the one? I don't know and I
Speaker 1: can't find I saw this like years ago and I
Speaker 1: have never, ever ever been able to find anything on it.
Speaker 1: So putting the call out there to the s Y
Speaker 1: s k army anyone knows about this, I'm dying to
Speaker 1: know the story. Well, if you want to read one
Speaker 1: of the better articles on how stuff works, check out
Speaker 1: twins is type twins in the handy search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and that leads us to listener mail. Yes, Josh,
Speaker 1: I have a couple of quick ones. This is from
Speaker 1: Adrian and Canadian City, fredericton n B. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Yeah, probably he's eleven. It's called
Speaker 1: Canadian City, New Brunswick. Or he's saying, yeah, it's hey, guys,
Speaker 1: my name is Adrian. In case you're wondering, I'm a boy,
Speaker 1: and surprisingly enough, I am only eleven years old and
Speaker 1: I listen to your podcast every night. I can I
Speaker 1: believe that thanks to you guys, I'm the smartest boy
Speaker 1: in my class in the subject of interesting facts. And Jerry,
Speaker 1: I have not forgotten about you. I believe that without you,
Speaker 1: the sound effects would run for the hills. Keep up
Speaker 1: the good work, people. Please put this in your next podcast,
Speaker 1: because if I heard myself on the show, then it
Speaker 1: would be one of the highlights of my life. Well,
Speaker 1: technically you're not hearing yourself, but you're hearing Chuck read
Speaker 1: you Adrian. But that's close enough. That's right. Jerry loved this.
Speaker 1: When Jerry Ford did this after we had already seen it,
Speaker 1: did she go cute, Well, i've the sound effects. They
Speaker 1: would run for the hills and that's adorable. No, she
Speaker 1: just wanted to remind us of her place and exactly.
Speaker 1: And then this is from Abu and this is another
Speaker 1: kind of call out to the fans because we said
Speaker 1: something about Arthur the weather man in our little YouTube
Speaker 1: bar last well, which one was at And do you
Speaker 1: remember I had nothing to do with whatever we were
Speaker 1: talking about it now, I don't remember. It will probably
Speaker 1: come out after this one. No, it already came out. Okay,
Speaker 1: But we heard from Abu that Arthur the weather Man
Speaker 1: actually perished in the Hate the earthquake. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's true, but we don't know if that's true. I
Speaker 1: looked it up on the Internet and everything points back
Speaker 1: to the single source that isn't reputable. So if anyone
Speaker 1: out there has any information on Arthur, No, Arthur, if
Speaker 1: you're out there, let us know you're alive. Please. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're praying and hoping that you're alive. It's gonna be hot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have any information on Arthur the weather Man
Speaker 1: or you live in a Canadian city. And by the way,
Speaker 1: thank you Adrian and Abu Uh. Send us an email.
Speaker 1: We love getting emails. Chuck loves responding to emails. Jerry
Speaker 1: loves forwarding emails. Just send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other time fixed, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
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