WEBVTT - Birth Order: So nice, we did it twice 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.440 Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.040 our last three shows of the year. Boy, this is 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:08.799 a good show this year are taking place very soon 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:10.120 and tickets are still available. 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:12.400 Yeah, so get in the saddle and come out and 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:16.200 see us partners in Orlando, Atlanta, and Nashville. 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:18.720 Just go to stuff youshould know dot com and click 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:20.520 on the tour link and you can get all your 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:21.639 tickets right there. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:31.320 Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.560 Hey, and welcome to the podcast again, right Chuck. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.319 That's right, everybody. This was a very strange case, very 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:46.040 rare in which we actually recorded an entire episode again 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.320 that we had already recorded. It was my fault for 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.600 picking it, but to be fair, nobody else noticed either. 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:54.040 Nope, not at all. 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.720 But we decided to release this anyway because we listened 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:00.200 to the episodes and we thought it was kind of 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.520 fun and it might be kind of like a live 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:04.000 in Laura is a bit of a stuff you should 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:04.959 know easter egg right. 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:07.520 Yeah, exactly, And we really wish we could say it 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:09.800 was unique rather than just rare. But this is the 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:13.120 second time we've done this. See our Black Holes episodes 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.120 that's right. So here we go again, everybody with the 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:20.440 Birth Order, Episode round two. We hope you like it. 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:28.679 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.880 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:39.000 there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry He's here. And 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.400 you put the three of us together, you got pretty 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:44.440 good zip ship going zipship? 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:45.199 Is that a word? 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:47.440 Oh, he didn't read that one thing I sent you. 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.680 I did, but I didn't pick out that word. 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:56.400 Yes, sibship it is the total siblings in a family. 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.240 I love that, isn't that neat? Yeah? 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.680 And you can have high sib ships That means your 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.080 parents got it on a bunch of times without any protection. 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.960 The second is the low sib ship, which means your 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.560 parents were maybe be a little cold to one another. 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.480 And then the third one the midsig sib ship, which 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.359 I just made up, but I like. 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:22.839 Threes or low means they they got it on a lot, 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:24.720 but you know, used protection. 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:27.640 Yeah, Or they're highly intelligent don't want to ruin the 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:33.000 planet with extra people. It's another possible interpretation. 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.000 I'm sure you won't hear about that one at all. 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.560 No, definitely not. It's not me. I'm talking about the 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.160 people who are into that kind of thinking other people. 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:44.960 I can't remember there's a society for that, and I 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:50.519 cannot oh the something first, it's like society for human extinction. 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.560 They're like, we don't want to kill anybody alive, but 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.160 we just want to stop reproducing because we're ruining the planet. 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:58.680 I can't remember the name of them. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.680 I wonder if it's a named as an acronym that 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:02.680 just spells. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:10.919 Ugh it spells die die die. Oh goodness, Well, Chuck, 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:12.919 I'm excited about this one. This is a good pick 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.600 from you, and it was a great assist from our 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:21.200 friend Dave Ruse. And we're talking about birth order, and 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.000 it's one of those things that like everybody knows birth order. 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:25.880 I mean, it was even on the Brady bunch, like 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:30.160 jan was clearly the middle child, yeah, the middle daughter 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.800 at least, and really kind of bore that chip on 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:38.160 her shoulder. Little Bobby Brady, he was the youngest, and 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.280 he was often neglected as a result. He had to 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.760 kind of make his own way and find out that 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:48.080 he was really into pork shops and apple shawsh and 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.640 so on and so forth right. So everybody knows about 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:53.520 birth order. But it turns out I didn't realize this. 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:58.040 It's had a long history of being presented scientifically and 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.200 then refuted scientifically, and then we'll come back again, and 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:02.960 then it's gone again, and then it's going to come 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:04.840 back at you one more time. Kind of like that. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:07.800 Yeah, so we're going to go over those ups and downs. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.000 I'm sure we'll toss in our own opinions here and 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.480 there that have no basis in sciences. Sure, because I 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.719 have a as everyone knows, I'm the youngest I know. 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.120 I have an older brother that's three years older. Yep, Scott. 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.159 We've talked about a lot, so great, he's the best. 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:29.479 And I have a sister that is six years older. Huh. 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.599 She is the eldest. My sister Michelle, she's also great, yep. 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.560 And so it's like, you know, three years apart, three 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.440 years apart, nothing. Because I think some of this stuff 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:40.880 can be sort of taken with a grain of salt, 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.680 Like if you have, you know, the surprise baby that's 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.160 you know, fourteen years younger than anyone else in your family, 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:49.600 things might you know, be different. And then some people 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:53.080 say it makes no difference at all about your eventual personality. 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.240 But I guess to recap we should just go up 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.800 over how it typically breaks down, which is, if you're 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.320 the first born, then people will say, Oh, you're probably 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.320 gonna be bossier. You're probably gonna be an overachiever, maybe 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.960 a perfectionist, maybe a little neurotic. If you're the middle 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.440 child or the second born, you're probably gonna be a 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.520 peacemaker and a people pleaser. And then if you're the 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:22.359 baby of the family, then you're just a little spoiled brat, 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:25.480 but you're probably gonna be adventurous because you were left 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.760 to your own devices and you answer to nobody, so 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.520 you just go off and join the Peace Corps or something. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:36.160 Sure, then there's also only children, which are kind of 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:37.039 their own thing. 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.000 But they, yeah, we should do a whole thing on onlies. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:43.960 I think sure, they very much resemble of the other ones. 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.840 They much more resemble the firstborn child. Yeah, but a 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.600 weirder version of a firstborn. So the thing is is, like, 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.760 all of this sounds totally true and obvious, but it 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:02.000 just is not fully born out in the research. It's 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.960 kind of Dave compares it to a horoscope where you 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.880 can kind of see yourself or your siblings, and you know, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.480 any one of these things. It just kind of makes sense. 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:16.040 And we have this selection bias and confirmation bias where 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.840 we just pick out the stuff that agrees with us, 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:22.560 and we ignore the points about say a middle child 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.800 or a a firstborn child that don't quite fit. We 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.719 just kind of discard that stuff. And because all of 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:34.080 us have some form of family, typically we all have 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.920 like anecdotal experience with that. And even if you don't 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.360 have a family, you're probably a friend of somebody who 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.039 has a family, so you've observed it yourself. So that 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:45.080 means that it's just supported that much more through your 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.159 own experience, which means it's been really hard to shake. 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:53.000 That's right. And that horoscope thing, not to say Dave 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:55.719 is not a free thinker, but a lot of people 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.719 compare it to horoscopes. As it turns out. 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:00.920 Yeah, and another thing, you can call it his pop 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:02.240 psychology for sure. 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:09.040 Yeah. So we should go back to the beginning, I guess, 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.080 which is to say the nineteenth century. As far as 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:16.080 the science on birth order goes to eighteen seventy four 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:18.880 with someone named that we've talked about a few times 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:23.040 on the show Francis Galton. I know that we talked 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.880 about Galton on episodes where he talked about eugenics, but 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:28.880 I'm sure other things have come up as well. 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:30.960 Yeah, he was a polymath, but he was well known 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:37.880 for eugenics, genetics. He came up with fingerprinting catalogs like 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:38.960 he did all sorts. 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.280 Of stuff, that's right. So he was the half cousin 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:46.840 of Charles Darwin, and he had a book called English 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:50.640 Men of Science. Kind of sounds like Real Men of Genius. 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.280 I was going to say it was adapted into a 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:53.840 series of bud like commercials later. 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.560 Yeah, that's what it seems like. Colon of course their 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.240 Nature and Nurture in which he he basically was kind 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.200 of keen to investigate the origin of genius. So what 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.560 better place to go than to study the gentlemen of 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.120 the Royal Society, Royal Society of London at the oldest 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.800 scientific academy in the world. And he got ninety nine guys. 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.600 It's very strange that he didn't get one hundred, but 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.360 he didn't get one hundred, and he did a lot 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.120 of research and got a lot of data on these gentlemen, 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.000 including birth order stuff. 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:31.360 Yeah, but also mother's hair color. He measured their heads. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.719 He really went to town on these ninety nine englishmen 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:37.559 of science. And what he found out when he kind 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.440 of crunched all the data was that sixty one of 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:44.760 the ninety nine members that he profiled of the Royal 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:49.880 Society were among the oldest in their family. They were 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.320 either only children, only sons I should say they were 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.120 only or they were eldest sons, or if they were 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.960 middle born, they were toward the top of the middle born, 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:04.360 the earlier side of the middle born cohort. That's right, 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.800 And if there was no effect on birth order and genius, 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.480 then it should have been basically forty five and a 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:15.199 half forty five and a half, right, and spare a 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:16.760 thought for those poor half people. 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:19.280 That's right. What about the other ten percent? Though? 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:29.400 I think that's uh, that's jerry Okay, So wait wait, yeah, yeah, 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.679 you're right, you're right. So no, no, yeah, forty did 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:35.600 I say forty nine and a half or forty five. 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:38.680 And a half? Well what do you think? 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.560 Let me rephrase that and say forty nine and a half. 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.400 Okay, Okay, I got you, because you came up with 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.520 ninety one I did, and yeah, so I got it 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:50.040 wrong too. I said, what about the ten people? It 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:50.920 was really nine people? 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.360 Yeah, plus you said ten percent. So this whole thing 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.679 was screwed up, right, just royally all right. 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.240 So he concluded based on this, and this is a 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.840 quote that I would I don't know if you take requests, 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:04.640 but I would love for you to read this in 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:05.520 the voice of Smigel. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.800 Okay, let's see. Do you remember I think I do so. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:17.920 I like to think Snegel lives in you in some 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:19.520 way a little bit. 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:26.000 Okay, so we said that, oh man, elder sons have 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:31.160 on the whole decided advantages of nurture over the younger ones. 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.280 They're treated more as companions by their parents and have 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:40.160 earlier responsibility, both of which would develop independence of character 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.680 and in less well to new families. The oldest child 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:49.240 has the advantage of better nourishment in his infancy compared 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.920 to the later board siblings. 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:59.280 Pretty close. I feel like that was Smiegel's brother, Spiegel 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.640 Spiegel not bad though. 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.640 So how do you ever remember what Snigel sounds like? 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.200 I listened to that every night. Okay, this might go 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:09.839 to bed music. 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:10.520 That makes sense. 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:16.040 So if you were too uh, disadvantaged in being thrown 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:21.480 off by Josh's hilarious reading. Just a quick recap basically is, 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:25.760 if you're the oldest, then you have an advantage because 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.000 you're like your parents' buddy. You got a lot more responsibility, 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:30.960 so you're gonna be more independent. 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:31.840 Uh. 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.800 And then if you're a family that's maybe doesn't have 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.520 as much money, then if you're the oldest and you're 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:39.360 gonna you're gonna get the chicken on the table and 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:42.000 not be fighting for that chicken like your little brothers 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:42.800 and sisters will. 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.120 Be, especially in infancy because you were the only one, 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:46.680 so you got all the baby food. 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.840 Yeah, this doesn't sound I mean, I know a lot 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:52.880 of this poo poos the science, but this doesn't sound 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.560 wildly unreasonable to me as a you know. 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.640 No, it's echoed still today in our ideas of birth 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:04.280 order and explaining it. Yeah. So that was Francis Galton. 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:09.600 We'll leave him and I think probably until I guess 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.760 about the Actually, not that far after I think he 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.960 was speaking. He wrote in what the last quarter of 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:21.760 the nineteenth century, right, So, I mean just less than 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.560 fifty years later, a guy named Alfred Adler, who was 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.360 a psychologist kind of picked that up and ran with it, 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.080 not just entirely birth order, but birth order was a 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:38.120 part of his larger theory called Adlerian psychology or individual psychology. 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.680 And there were basically three founders of psychotherapy as we 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.839 know it today. There was Adler, Freud and Jung. And 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.199 Freud and Jung's ideas have been largely dismissed. Alfred Adler's 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:54.160 ideas are basically the premise for how we approach psychology today. 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:58.040 Yeah, and he's a he's an interesting guy. He was 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.240 a colleague of Freud, and I think through history it 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.360 seems obvious that a lot of people have kind of 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.000 said like he was an acolyte or Freud was his mentor, 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.640 and he went through great pains over the years to 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.480 say he called me first, Like he would go to 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.520 reporters and say, look, here's a telegram where Freud got 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.440 in touch with me and wanted to talk to me. 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:23.080 Oh he was like that, huh. 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:24.920 Well, I just think he had a little bit of 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:31.160 a sort of maybe younger sibling syndrome, and that will 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:32.719 you know, you'll see that kind of plays out a 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:35.280 little bit in his own sibling dynamic. Yeah, his research. 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:39.200 His older brother was named Sigmund two, so I just 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.880 been freudiant he might have been. 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:44.640 Yeah, they were together, he and Freud for about nine 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.040 years studying, but then when they split apart, and some 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.040 people say that it had a lot to do with 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:54.280 this sibling dynamic and birth order thing. I think it 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.080 was more complicated than that, definitely, But they never talked 0:13:57.120 --> 0:13:59.640 again after that. No, they were done. 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.760 Yeah, but Adler's ideas went on. It's definitely worth looking into. 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:09.360 He basically says that the whole basis of our individual 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.960 psychology comes out of our social interactions. We learn how 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.600 to approach life in the world through our interactions early 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.359 on with our family. That's he called that our lifestyle. 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.880 There's a web of interactions between parents and kids and 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.880 also among siblings he called the family constellation. And then 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.120 he also said that like, basically the point of life 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:36.000 was to be a good, contributing member of a society 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:40.040 that is working toward positivity and equality. He was way 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.240 ahead of his time, because this guy was writing one 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.880 hundred years ago and now we're just starting to adopt 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:50.280 his philosophies. Is like not just valid, Like that's the 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:52.479 point of individual psychology. 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.960 Yeah, he has a good quote too, and again this 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.520 seems very reasonable to me when he says, it is 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.000 a common fallacy to imagine that children of the same 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.240 family are formed in the same environment. Of course, there's 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.840 much which is the same for all in the same home, 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.680 but the psychic situation of each child is individual and 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:14.240 differs from that of others because of the order of 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:15.040 their succession. 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:15.720 Yeah. 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:20.360 So he's basically saying something that like you said, a 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.400 lot of people hang their hat on, which is like, hey, 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:24.680 just because you grew up in the same house doesn't 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:26.280 mean you grew up in the same house. You know 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:26.800 what I mean. 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.440 Exactly, And he gave an example of that that kind 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.760 of really figured into his theory about birth order, which 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.680 was to him another big driver personality that came out 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.560 of the early experience in the family is that especially 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.840 older and middle children, or actually I guess older and 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:47.320 middle children only went through the trauma of being dethroned. 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.040 They were, you know, at one point, if you were 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.360 the firstborn, the only one, and then all of a 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:55.840 sudden another one comes along and you're not the shining 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.000 star of your parents' universe any longer. You have to 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.560 share that with somebody, and he identified that as a 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:06.080 trauma and that that alone would significantly contribute to a 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:09.160 child's personality, and that was based on birth order. 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.040 All right, boy, that's a great setup, I think. So 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:20.280 let's take a break. Yes, yes, Smiel, what do you think? Yes, perfect, 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.320 and we're going to come back and break down his 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.680 thoughts on this whole dethroning of what that meant right 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:51.800 after this shot shot. All right, So this isn't that 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:55.320 much different as far as what birth order means, but 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.400 it's a little more specific to his own findings and 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.080 thoughts on the matter. So, if you're oldest, like you said, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:06.240 you're dethroned once there's a sibling below you, and when 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.560 that happens, there's a chance you might become a problem 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:10.920 because you're trying to get that attention again, you might 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.480 act out. You will likely feel responsible for your younger 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:18.680 siblings as if you're a parent, that can make you 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:23.119 pretty neurotic. So that checks that box, and you really 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:25.000 may act as a parent. You may kind of help 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.879 raise the kids, especially back then when the parents are 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:29.639 away or the parents are busy. You might be that 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:33.080 parental authority in a lot of cases. So you may 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.480 have a positive view of authority, and because of all 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:39.919 of this stuff, you're probably gonna be pretty hard working, 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.600 and that perfectionist thing comes in pretty conscientious. 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:47.560 Yes, So that's the oldest, right, that's right next to 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.399 second born. If there's two, there's just two kids, this 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:56.040 applies to them. They are constantly keeping up or trying 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.480 to compete with the older sibling. So life is a 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.040 little bit exhausting. And this is something that Adler himself 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.639 went through with his older brother Sigmund he as he 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.600 kind of identified the older sibling then having more of 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:14.359 an influence in some cases than the actual parents do 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:16.840 on the child's development. Which makes a lot of sense too, 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.720 because that older child is being a mini parent to 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:23.400 the second child. Right If they if the kids finding 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.400 like they're just constantly are being beat by the by 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:28.879 the older sibling, who doesn't even seem to be aware 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.760 that they're in a competition, they're still winning, they might 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.399 just go off in a totally different direction and whatever 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.960 they've identified the older sibling to be, like Alex P. 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.920 Keaton young Republican type, they're going to go the exact 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.240 opposite way and start following the grateful. 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.600 Dead like Tinay others did exactly. 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.760 Man that name, it doesn't matter Tena others. It's the 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.960 ultimate name. It was. There's Mallory, Alex and. 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:56.920 Others. 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.200 Yeah, if they didn't use Tenay others, I think that 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.000 was a big miss that the writers walk. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.040 Past, I know, and that should They should only have 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.640 called her by teen the others, not Peter right exactly. 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:08.800 And then like in the credits, it says tiny others 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:10.080 as Tina others. 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.560 Yeah, as herself. So we mentioned earlier I think I 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:19.720 did about Adler's own situation at home, and it turns out, 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.680 beyond Freud, he had an actual older brother, like you said, 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:29.119 whose name was Sigmund, and he sort of had issues 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:30.879 with it. He always was trying to live up to 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.919 this older brother. Sigmund right complained about it a lot. 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:36.760 It seemed like I think there was a biographer when 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.040 he was a little bit older where he said, my 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:41.960 eldest brother, he was always ahead of me. He's still 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:42.640 ahead of me. 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:45.679 Which is true. He's never going to catch up to 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:47.560 his eldest brother, at least in birth order. 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:48.720 Well, that's right. 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.600 He also had two younger brothers. One adored Adler kind 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:57.000 of bucked the trend. The other one felt competitive with Adler, 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.600 so he was in the position that Adler was with Sigmund. Yeah, 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.480 the middle child. So say you're having your parents are 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:06.320 just hitting it fast and loose, and they're having more 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:08.920 and more children. The middle children are going to have 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:13.080 their own kind of baggage to carry around. They're frequently 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:19.399 they frequently feel forgotten, ignored, neglected, jam bradyish. They may be. 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:24.159 They may decide that life is extraordinarily unfair, that they're invisible, 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.879 and that might really make them neurotic in their own way. 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.199 And then this really makes a lot of sense to 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:36.119 me too. They may find that family constellation that Adler 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.360 said was so important in your development and in your 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:42.399 youth elsewhere outside of the family, they're the kid that 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:44.600 goes off and is like, yeah, whatever, you guys have 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.200 your fun little you know, family barbecue. I'm going to 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:49.679 go hang out at my friend's house instead. I like 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:50.600 their family more. 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.199 Yeah, which is interesting because I think that flies in 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:56.879 the face a little bit of the typical middle child 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.520 thing of being a people pleaser and a uni Uh. 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:04.760 Yeah, that's funny because I think of the younger child 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:05.800 as a people pleaser. 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.200 Oh really, because that's usually the middle child thing. 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.719 This is the thing, this is where it exactly fall apart. 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:16.240 Exactly. Well, because also in my family, like you know, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:18.960 my sister, she did fine in school, I did fine 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:21.520 in school, but my brother was like right in the middle, 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.600 and he was the he's the really smart guy. Sure, yeah, 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.199 so he set the bar as number two. But I 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:30.800 also felt like I never felt like I had to 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:31.359 live up to that. 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.200 Oh that's good, that's healthy and lucky. 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.199 Lucky because I didn't strive to. I wasn't like, no, 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:39.040 I can't be as smart as Scott, so I'll just 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:41.080 do my own thing. I just didn't really think about it. 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.040 And my parents, well I was about to say they 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.280 didn't put that kind of pressure on me, but they 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.600 just there was not a lot of attension on me 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:49.760 by the time I came around. 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.240 Oh yeah, you was your own thing, right, yeah, exactly. 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:56.160 So well, here we are then, at the youngest, I'm 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.240 talking about myself pampered and spoiled, which I was not, 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.240 because less is expected. Like we mentioned earlier, you're probably 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.919 going to be a little more adventurous. I definitely was 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:10.840 more adventurous and as sort of the black cheap in 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.360 my family, but I don't think it was because less 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:16.879 it's expected of me. And then, you know, Adler at 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.600 the end talks about how the successful men of our 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:24.560 time and I think of all times oftentimes were the youngest, 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.639 and he mentions like people in the Bible, and he 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:29.679 even mentions, this is where he lose me a little bit. 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:32.600 I mentioned fairy tales and I'm like, so the people 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:36.040 in these made up stories, the youngest were more successful. 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.120 So that means something to science. 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:41.680 Right, Yeah, that's where I actually wrote careful Adler after that, 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:44.120 because it's he got you know, he had some really 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:45.879 great theories. And then one of the big problems of 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:48.960 early twentieth century psychologists is they just look out in 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:52.200 places that didn't really apply and use them as proof. 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:54.480 And that's a good example of that, because his theories 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:56.240 are very sound and they make a lot of sense. 0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:58.719 They're well thought out. It's just you don't run out 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.919 to the Bible to your point. It doesn't that's not 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:03.240 how science works typically. 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:06.360 Yeah, look at King David exactly. 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:09.439 And then we're at only Children, which okay, we'll do 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:13.159 a whole episode on them, but they have they have 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:18.240 the advantage of being the sole recipient of their parents' 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.399 attention and focus and love and adoration, just like a 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:23.720 first board child. But they never go through the trauma 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:29.199 of being dethroned, so they are basically little kings and 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:29.960 queens who. 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:30.880 Run the show on top. 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:31.480 Essentially. 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:36.480 Yeah, yeah, a king who's not dethroned. He's a king exactly. 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:39.600 That's true. And Adler wrote that they retain the center 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:42.680 of the stage without effort. They're generally pampered, and they 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:45.000 form a style of life based on being supported by 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:47.320 others and at the same time ruling them. 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:52.120 Great combination, Yeah, totally. Hodgman talks a lot about being 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:54.120 an only child. It's very funny to hear him muse 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:59.360 on the stuff. All right, So these theories were out 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:05.639 there in the nineteen twenties basically through for about sixty 0:24:05.680 --> 0:24:08.960 something years, it was sort of just commonly accepted that 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:11.200 this was the case. They had done studies it backed 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:13.600 up a lot of this, and then a funny thing 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:17.280 happened in the nineteen eighties. In fact, in nineteen eighty three, 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:21.160 there were a couple of Swiss psychologists, Jules Angst and 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.280 Cecil Ernst, and they said, you know what, this is 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:27.840 all poo poo, and we're going to write our own 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:33.920 book called Birth Order Colon. It's poopoo. Actually it's birth 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:38.720 order its influence on personality. And they went back looked 0:24:38.720 --> 0:24:41.600 at all these studies, like fifteen hundred studies from the 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:44.760 mid forties to nineteen eighty. A lot of these studies 0:24:44.880 --> 0:24:49.320 had backed up Adler's theories and stuff like this. But 0:24:49.359 --> 0:24:51.040 they said, you know what, the closer we looked, the 0:24:51.119 --> 0:24:52.879 more we picked this apart. There are a lot of 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:56.480 fallacies in here. There are a lot of methodological pitfalls. 0:24:56.760 --> 0:25:00.200 And basically I think that there is like birth order 0:25:00.200 --> 0:25:03.080 effect really doesn't have anything to do with personality at 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:05.840 least no much more than anything else that we could 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:06.640 kind of find out. 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:09.080 Yeah, they definitely poo pooted it. One of the examples 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:12.879 they gave was that there was a meta analysis of 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:20.560 previous previous studies of birth order findings, which means that 0:25:20.560 --> 0:25:22.720 it's a they compile a bunch of findings from a 0:25:22.720 --> 0:25:25.560 bunch of different studies and apply statistical analysis of it. 0:25:25.560 --> 0:25:29.320 They turned these smaller sample sizes into one large sample size, 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:34.600 and of course it found a positive correlation between the 0:25:34.880 --> 0:25:41.200 birth order and personality traits. But those particular researchers said, well, 0:25:41.200 --> 0:25:43.800 we didn't actually include any studies that didn't find a 0:25:43.800 --> 0:25:47.680 positive correlation between birth order and personality traits. We only 0:25:47.720 --> 0:25:52.080 studied ones that did show that. That's like does some 0:25:52.200 --> 0:25:54.120 junk science right there. And that's the kind of thing 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:57.119 that Angst and Ernst were saying, like, this is the 0:25:57.200 --> 0:26:00.840 quality of the studies heretofore and when you really look 0:26:00.880 --> 0:26:03.760 at the methodology and all the like their findings, like 0:26:03.800 --> 0:26:06.120 it just does not add up that you can't replicate them. 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:08.920 Yeah, they in fact it they had a pretty sick burn. 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:13.399 They called it post hoc theory, which is basically like 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:16.960 you can go into these studies and you can find 0:26:17.040 --> 0:26:20.240 whatever you're looking for if you kind of just pick 0:26:20.240 --> 0:26:23.040 apart different parts of it and cherry picked different parts 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:25.959 of it. And they use one good example they use 0:26:26.160 --> 0:26:31.120 was anxiety and which children in a family had the 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:35.200 highest anxiety levels and reported those levels. And they said, 0:26:35.359 --> 0:26:37.800 you know, if you look if you're Adler or others, 0:26:38.600 --> 0:26:40.920 you have an explanation for all of them. So if 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:45.280 it's the youngest, it's because you're the weakest sibling. Which 0:26:45.880 --> 0:26:46.399 is that true? 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:50.600 I think they mean physically, your older siblings are generally 0:26:50.760 --> 0:26:52.080 bigger and stronger than you. 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:53.160 Is that true? 0:26:53.480 --> 0:26:56.640 Typically? Sure? I mean you compare like a tripy four 0:26:56.720 --> 0:26:58.840 year old to a ten year old. Ten year old 0:26:59.119 --> 0:27:00.720 beat up on the four year old any day of 0:27:00.760 --> 0:27:01.160 the week. 0:27:02.080 --> 0:27:04.000 Well, we'll get to the snapshot in time thing. Because 0:27:04.359 --> 0:27:07.520 I thought they meant overall, like I grew up to 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:08.959 be the smallest and weakest. 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:11.560 No, but yeah, you just touched on a huge problem 0:27:11.600 --> 0:27:12.320 that we'll get you there. 0:27:12.520 --> 0:27:15.879 Don't No, I didn't NeSSI put it in it in 0:27:15.880 --> 0:27:20.240 my brain. If the oldest of the family reported being 0:27:20.240 --> 0:27:23.680 the most anxious, then they said, oh, well, it's because 0:27:23.680 --> 0:27:27.080 they had an experienced mother, and if it was the 0:27:27.119 --> 0:27:30.479 middle it was because they were neglected. So they're like, 0:27:30.800 --> 0:27:31.560 you can't do that. 0:27:31.560 --> 0:27:35.280 That's not science, right exactly, And they pretty much definitively 0:27:35.400 --> 0:27:40.680 removed birth order influencing personality as a field of psychology 0:27:40.760 --> 0:27:42.840 like psychology turned its back on that, and that was 0:27:42.920 --> 0:27:46.960 it for a dozen years essentially, maybe a little more. 0:27:47.760 --> 0:27:51.160 But before their book, or Angston Ernst's book came out 0:27:51.640 --> 0:27:55.320 back in the seventy I think actually nineteen seventy, there 0:27:55.400 --> 0:27:59.359 was a psychologist named Frank Solaway. He was working on 0:27:59.359 --> 0:28:03.119 his doctorate think at the time, and he had a 0:28:03.160 --> 0:28:06.639 professor that that was into birth order as this is 0:28:06.720 --> 0:28:09.600 again this is before the Swiss study of the Swiss 0:28:09.600 --> 0:28:12.960 book came out and made Swiss cheese a birth order. 0:28:14.920 --> 0:28:19.320 And the Soloway's professor said, you know what, Charles Darwin, 0:28:19.600 --> 0:28:21.640 let's just talk about Darwin for a second. He said, 0:28:21.680 --> 0:28:23.680 sit down, Soilhaway, sit down, I've been wanting to talk 0:28:23.680 --> 0:28:27.120 to you about this. Charles Darwin came up with one 0:28:27.160 --> 0:28:31.440 of the most radical theories that science has ever produced 0:28:32.200 --> 0:28:36.320 in coming up with natural selection and evolution. Right, But 0:28:36.640 --> 0:28:40.400 did you know that Darwin's mentor the person that had 0:28:40.440 --> 0:28:44.160 the greatest influence on his work his entire career, a 0:28:44.240 --> 0:28:49.000 geologist named Charles Lyle, did not accept that that we 0:28:49.040 --> 0:28:51.440 have all from apes. Did not accept natural selection. He 0:28:51.520 --> 0:28:55.960 could not accept it. And in fact, Lyle was in 0:28:56.080 --> 0:28:58.880 quite a quite a pickle because he prized science and 0:28:58.960 --> 0:29:02.160 reason and his protoce had just used science and reason 0:29:02.720 --> 0:29:09.040 to show that humans are no different than animals, and 0:29:09.160 --> 0:29:12.040 Lyle was like, no, reason is what separates us from animals. 0:29:12.040 --> 0:29:14.680 So he had a really hard time accepting that, and 0:29:14.760 --> 0:29:19.280 so Sos College professor pointed to Darwin being a later 0:29:19.400 --> 0:29:23.080 born and having a much more ability to think freely 0:29:23.560 --> 0:29:26.840 and Lyle being a firstborn and thinking much more conservatively 0:29:27.080 --> 0:29:30.200 as the explanation to that very famous gulf between the two. 0:29:31.000 --> 0:29:35.320 Yeah, which is a stretch for me, even though I 0:29:35.360 --> 0:29:37.600 think there's a lot to birth order. That one is, 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:40.640 I don't know. It's a stretch. But Soloway it was like, interesting, 0:29:41.160 --> 0:29:43.160 let me look into this a little more. I want 0:29:43.200 --> 0:29:47.080 to see if this is a reasonable assumption or theory 0:29:47.080 --> 0:29:49.680 at least. And he ended up writing a book in 0:29:49.760 --> 0:29:55.040 nineteen ninety six called Born to Rebel colon Birth Order, 0:29:55.160 --> 0:30:00.000 Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, and he did his own 0:30:00.240 --> 0:30:03.080 meta analysis of all of these studies that are out there, 0:30:03.760 --> 0:30:08.280 and he basically went on to poo poo Oxton Ernst 0:30:08.640 --> 0:30:12.040 and said Adler was right all along. There's a lot 0:30:12.040 --> 0:30:15.320 of significance to birth order and how it ties to 0:30:15.360 --> 0:30:19.440 your personality. And here's why I think this is true 0:30:19.960 --> 0:30:24.200 because a child occupies a niche in a family, and 0:30:24.240 --> 0:30:27.360 that niche is determined according to your birth order. So 0:30:28.520 --> 0:30:30.960 we're calling a birth order, but what it really is 0:30:31.040 --> 0:30:34.719 is a proxy for what The real things are behind this, 0:30:34.800 --> 0:30:38.400 which is how big you are, what's your status in 0:30:38.400 --> 0:30:41.520 that family, what is your power dynamic in that family, 0:30:41.840 --> 0:30:43.760 what's the age difference and stuff. 0:30:43.480 --> 0:30:45.320 Like that, right, and that those are the things that 0:30:45.440 --> 0:30:50.040 really influence your personality. But they all are, at the 0:30:50.120 --> 0:30:52.080 end of the day, tied into birth order. It's just 0:30:52.200 --> 0:30:54.680 not birth order in and of itself, but the qualities 0:30:54.720 --> 0:30:55.600 that come with birth order. 0:30:55.680 --> 0:30:58.800 Right, Yeah, which seems like splitting hairs, but maybe no 0:30:58.840 --> 0:31:00.000 one had split that hair yet. 0:31:00.040 --> 0:31:02.800 I mean, it makes sense to me. It definitely removes 0:31:02.840 --> 0:31:05.960 it from any kind of like astrological stuff, because birth 0:31:06.080 --> 0:31:08.360 order if you're like, yeah, you're a middle child, so 0:31:08.400 --> 0:31:11.240 you're all these things, not oh yeah you're smaller than 0:31:11.240 --> 0:31:15.240 your older brother, so you have a you don't like 0:31:15.280 --> 0:31:19.160 being touched kind of thing. I don't know. It makes sense. 0:31:19.200 --> 0:31:21.680 It takes it and actually provides an explanation to it. 0:31:21.760 --> 0:31:23.080 And by the way, I just want to point out, 0:31:23.160 --> 0:31:26.200 get this, chuck. So he started this research in nineteen seventy, 0:31:26.480 --> 0:31:30.880 release the book in nineteen ninety six, right smack dab 0:31:30.880 --> 0:31:34.040 in the middle of that twenty five ish years of research, 0:31:34.440 --> 0:31:37.400 that Swiss book came out. Can You imagine dedicating thirteen 0:31:37.520 --> 0:31:39.640 years of research and then all of a sudden some 0:31:39.680 --> 0:31:42.880 book comes along and completely disproves everything you've been working on. 0:31:43.720 --> 0:31:44.040 Yeah. 0:31:44.080 --> 0:31:46.320 But Frank's al always was the kind of be like, Nope, 0:31:46.360 --> 0:31:48.600 they're wrong, I'm right, I'm going to keep going. 0:31:49.400 --> 0:31:52.680 Yeah, And for him, family dynamics all came down to 0:31:54.440 --> 0:31:59.680 a Darwinian power struggle basically between these siblings for affection 0:31:59.720 --> 0:32:03.280 from their parents. So again, if you're first born, you're 0:32:03.360 --> 0:32:07.320 gonna basically act as a surrogate parent to your younger siblings. 0:32:07.680 --> 0:32:10.080 Not because you have some great desire to teach those kids, 0:32:10.360 --> 0:32:12.080 but you're looking at mom and dad and saying, like, 0:32:12.240 --> 0:32:14.720 see how much I'm helping, Like I'm helping be like 0:32:14.760 --> 0:32:18.560 little mommy or little Daddy. It's why they respect authority, 0:32:18.600 --> 0:32:21.200 it's why they're conscientious, and it's why they identify more 0:32:21.240 --> 0:32:25.560 with parents. The younger kids they and again this says 0:32:25.920 --> 0:32:28.520 lacks of physical strength. I guess presumably just because they're 0:32:28.720 --> 0:32:31.440 younger in that snapshot in time, which we'll get to 0:32:31.560 --> 0:32:36.400 don't spoil in, Chuck, but they have what he called 0:32:36.440 --> 0:32:40.760 low power strategies. So still had strategies as far as 0:32:40.800 --> 0:32:43.400 this power struggle, in the family, but more like, hey, 0:32:43.480 --> 0:32:46.920 let me use humor or social intelligence to get their 0:32:46.960 --> 0:32:49.880 affection instead of you know, like physical things. 0:32:50.000 --> 0:32:52.040 They were the kids that were more likely to spend 0:32:52.080 --> 0:32:54.600 their allowance on a bow tie that spins. 0:32:56.600 --> 0:32:57.480 Do you ever have one of those? 0:32:57.720 --> 0:33:02.640 No? I never did. I added like a little clip 0:33:02.680 --> 0:33:04.920 on bow tie for Easter if I remember correctly. 0:33:05.520 --> 0:33:07.520 Yeah, it's a thing. I know a couple of bow 0:33:07.560 --> 0:33:08.000 tie guys. 0:33:08.120 --> 0:33:10.520 I learned how to tie a bow tie for mine 0:33:10.520 --> 0:33:11.280 and Yumi's wedding. 0:33:11.440 --> 0:33:16.560 Actually, so you were one then yes? Are you like, nah, 0:33:17.200 --> 0:33:22.200 just practice? Yeah. I can't pull off a bow tie. 0:33:22.200 --> 0:33:23.360 It's not a good look for me. 0:33:23.840 --> 0:33:25.640 Oh yeah, I'd like to see that. Let me be 0:33:25.720 --> 0:33:27.960 the judge of that. Okay, all right, okay, well you 0:33:28.000 --> 0:33:30.080 tie it for me. I yes, I will. I know 0:33:30.120 --> 0:33:32.160 how to. I'm a little rusty, but I can get 0:33:32.160 --> 0:33:32.520 it back. 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:34.200 Well, you know, you got to stand behind me and 0:33:34.200 --> 0:33:35.520 wrap your arms around me and do it that way. 0:33:35.560 --> 0:33:38.320 Of course, if you do it in front, it's like 0:33:38.360 --> 0:33:38.800 it's weird. 0:33:38.840 --> 0:33:40.800 And then afterwards we'll do that funny thing where it 0:33:40.800 --> 0:33:43.440 looks like you have four arms and I'm hiding behind you, 0:33:43.480 --> 0:33:45.600 and we'll do all sorts of weird stuff. 0:33:45.480 --> 0:33:47.520 And then after that, I'll get behind you and teach 0:33:47.520 --> 0:33:48.640 you how to swing a golf club. 0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:51.040 Okay, fair enough, it's all in the. 0:33:51.040 --> 0:33:55.440 Hips, all right. So from that power dynamic to wrap 0:33:55.440 --> 0:33:57.120 it up and that power struggle, we also have the 0:33:57.160 --> 0:34:01.120 middle children. And these are the ones again because you're 0:34:01.160 --> 0:34:03.640 in the middle, you're more likely to cooperate, you're more 0:34:03.640 --> 0:34:08.200 into diplomacy, and you're probably mediating fights between the oldest 0:34:08.239 --> 0:34:11.560 and the youngest, which did not track in my family. 0:34:11.600 --> 0:34:13.879 My sister and my brother and I didn't fight a lot, 0:34:13.920 --> 0:34:16.120 but if there was sibling fighting going on, it was 0:34:16.200 --> 0:34:18.320 usually me and my brother because we were closer in age. 0:34:18.360 --> 0:34:20.680 My sister was six when I was born, so I 0:34:20.760 --> 0:34:23.759 was her little baby boy, and so she and I 0:34:23.800 --> 0:34:26.400 never had a lot of fights and stuff, gotcha. 0:34:28.880 --> 0:34:31.920 So one of the other things that Soulo we spent 0:34:32.040 --> 0:34:34.759 his time on was he basically did the same thing 0:34:34.760 --> 0:34:37.600 Francis Galton did. He profiled a bunch of different people 0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:43.319 to kind of support his point. I read that he 0:34:43.320 --> 0:34:46.319 he basically created a database of sixty five hundred and 0:34:46.360 --> 0:34:51.000 sixty six historical people who were meaning they were all dead, 0:34:52.080 --> 0:34:54.440 who were involved in one hundred and twenty one different 0:34:54.480 --> 0:34:58.640 political and scientific upheavals from the scientific or sorry, from 0:34:58.680 --> 0:35:03.400 the French Revolution, Protestant Reformation, Darwin's theory of natural selection. 0:35:04.640 --> 0:35:08.200 And then he looked at a bunch of different factors, 0:35:08.239 --> 0:35:11.360 but one of those factors was birth order. And what 0:35:11.520 --> 0:35:14.680 he found was I saw an interview with him. He 0:35:14.680 --> 0:35:16.759 said that, yeah, there's a bunch of different stuff that 0:35:16.840 --> 0:35:19.880 influence our personality, our behavior. I think he controlled for 0:35:19.920 --> 0:35:24.240 two hundred and fifty six different ones like age, religion, class, education, 0:35:24.800 --> 0:35:27.919 and he said, yes, some of those things influence our personality, 0:35:28.160 --> 0:35:30.960 but he said nothing packs the wallop of birth order. 0:35:31.200 --> 0:35:33.640 He basically said, it's birth order everybody. 0:35:34.200 --> 0:35:36.239 Yeah, yeah, And. 0:35:36.160 --> 0:35:38.000 He gave some examples. 0:35:38.080 --> 0:35:40.759 Right, well, yeah, I mean if you look if he 0:35:41.320 --> 0:35:43.000 did sort of the same thing that others have done, 0:35:43.040 --> 0:35:46.200 which is to point at famous people in history and say, well, see, 0:35:46.239 --> 0:35:47.840 look at this person. They were the first born and 0:35:47.880 --> 0:35:50.520 they did this. Look at King David, right, look at 0:35:50.600 --> 0:35:55.040 King David. In this case, he said, look at Mussolini 0:35:55.080 --> 0:35:59.160 and look at Stalin. I believe Stalin was not the firstborn, 0:35:59.239 --> 0:36:03.399 but his siblings died in infancy, so he was sort 0:36:03.440 --> 0:36:04.560 of de facto firstborn. 0:36:04.640 --> 0:36:07.360 Yeah, they call it the psychological firstborn. That's the emphasis 0:36:07.360 --> 0:36:08.000 they put on it. 0:36:08.560 --> 0:36:12.799 Yeah. So he said, look at these people, they were 0:36:12.800 --> 0:36:16.120 firstborns and they were monsters. And look at Marx and 0:36:16.200 --> 0:36:19.440 Darwin and Gandhi and they were all later borns. And 0:36:20.040 --> 0:36:22.480 you know, when you start breaking it down, though, and 0:36:22.520 --> 0:36:26.160 you say, oh, what about like Isaac Newton or Einstein? 0:36:26.920 --> 0:36:29.800 That goes against your idea because both of those guys 0:36:29.800 --> 0:36:32.680 were firstborns, and it went against the common thinking that 0:36:32.719 --> 0:36:34.719 the later borns were going to be the ones to 0:36:34.760 --> 0:36:36.360 come up with these revolutionary thoughts. 0:36:36.440 --> 0:36:36.920 Yeah. 0:36:37.000 --> 0:36:39.560 And he said, oh yeah, but you know what, the 0:36:39.560 --> 0:36:42.040 people that supported them were two to ten times more 0:36:42.120 --> 0:36:43.360 likely to be later born's. 0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:46.240 Right. So he did the opposite in those two cases 0:36:46.239 --> 0:36:49.080 when he pointed to something like he said, Lincoln was 0:36:49.120 --> 0:36:53.120 a second child and he had the revolutionary thinking of 0:36:53.360 --> 0:36:58.560 ending slavery. Yeah, and that's an example of basically being reductivist, 0:36:58.680 --> 0:37:02.279 Like he boiled down these huge historical machinations down to 0:37:02.320 --> 0:37:06.359 one individual to point to prove his point. Right, Yeah, 0:37:06.400 --> 0:37:08.480 Lincoln and in slavery and he was a second born. 0:37:09.160 --> 0:37:12.839 And then he does the opposite with examples that don't 0:37:12.880 --> 0:37:15.359 fit like you said. Einstein and Newton, well they were 0:37:15.360 --> 0:37:18.200 first born, but their supporters were two to ten times 0:37:18.239 --> 0:37:20.719 more likely to be later born. So now he takes 0:37:20.719 --> 0:37:23.160 it from the individual and boils it back out to 0:37:24.239 --> 0:37:26.440 a bunch of different people having to do with these 0:37:26.640 --> 0:37:31.080 revolutions and thinking. It's pretty emblematic from what I've read 0:37:31.080 --> 0:37:32.440 of his argument. 0:37:33.200 --> 0:37:36.839 Yeah, and I love Dave rus who put this together. 0:37:36.920 --> 0:37:40.160 He inserts little jokes here and there just for us, 0:37:40.480 --> 0:37:42.879 but sometimes we like to bring them out on the show. 0:37:43.080 --> 0:37:46.720 He wrote that ten times more likely and then put whatever, 0:37:46.840 --> 0:37:50.200 pal right, it's good stuff. 0:37:50.239 --> 0:37:55.600 Yeah, so Born to Rebel was a rebel. I've been 0:37:55.640 --> 0:37:58.920 wanting to say that the whole time. Okay, it should 0:37:58.960 --> 0:38:02.040 be elll e really if you think about it. But okay, 0:38:03.400 --> 0:38:06.279 so it became, I think when a bestseller. It was 0:38:06.320 --> 0:38:10.000 a really popular book despite being pretty scientific. I think 0:38:10.360 --> 0:38:15.360 half of it was scientific annotations and bibliography. But I 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:18.040 believe he wrote it in like a way that you know, 0:38:18.080 --> 0:38:21.319 the average person could could digest, and it really made 0:38:21.400 --> 0:38:24.320 waves because again he comes along thirteen years after psychology 0:38:24.400 --> 0:38:26.840 was like, okay, great, that's done. Birth order has nothing 0:38:26.840 --> 0:38:29.319 to do with anything. He said, Nope, it's the most 0:38:29.400 --> 0:38:33.440 important driver of personality everybody. So he was widely criticized 0:38:33.480 --> 0:38:38.520 for it, including by another controversial thinker in psychology, Judith 0:38:38.600 --> 0:38:42.600 rich Harris. And she was controversial, like I said, because 0:38:42.719 --> 0:38:45.920 she was kind of tangential to the field. She was 0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:50.400 kicked out of Harvard during while she was working on 0:38:50.440 --> 0:38:54.560 her doctorate, and later on was awarded with a prestigious 0:38:54.560 --> 0:38:58.320 award that was named after the director of the psychology 0:38:58.360 --> 0:39:01.120 department who kicked her out, So she came full circle. 0:39:01.160 --> 0:39:03.640 But she was kind of considered like an outside thinker. 0:39:03.840 --> 0:39:06.400 But her whole jam was actually parents have like the 0:39:06.480 --> 0:39:10.080 least influence on kids' genes and peers that really shape 0:39:10.120 --> 0:39:15.120 people's individual personalities. And she basically said, no, Soloway is 0:39:15.280 --> 0:39:17.279 just totally full of it and this doesn't hold water 0:39:17.360 --> 0:39:17.719 at all. 0:39:18.480 --> 0:39:21.279 Yeah, and she had her own sick burns. Yeah, that 0:39:21.320 --> 0:39:24.719 I think was sicker than the earliest sickburn she said. 0:39:24.800 --> 0:39:27.799 Quote it is never surprising when the originator of a 0:39:27.880 --> 0:39:31.319 theory produces evidence that supports the theory. The real test 0:39:31.320 --> 0:39:35.000 of the theory is whether other people, working independently of 0:39:35.040 --> 0:39:37.719 the originator of the theory produce evidence that supports it 0:39:39.520 --> 0:39:40.200 pretty good burn. 0:39:40.280 --> 0:39:43.200 It is a great burn. So I say we take 0:39:43.239 --> 0:39:46.200 our second break, because that basically puts sol Away away 0:39:46.239 --> 0:39:50.160 for now. This is ninety six, and he got shouted 0:39:50.200 --> 0:39:54.560 down typically, but his work definitely brought it back into 0:39:54.560 --> 0:39:57.960 the popular mainstream, which is why still today you see 0:39:58.200 --> 0:40:01.000 like parenting sites and psychology sites like referring to the 0:40:01.000 --> 0:40:05.359 stuff as if it's true and real. So but yeah, 0:40:05.480 --> 0:40:08.359 I say we move on, and we use an ad 0:40:08.400 --> 0:40:09.640 break as a transition for that. 0:40:10.400 --> 0:40:18.800 Let's do it and shot shot. 0:40:34.719 --> 0:40:37.640 Okay, So slow Away really roughle a lot of feathers, 0:40:38.000 --> 0:40:40.840 And it took another decade or two before people finally 0:40:40.880 --> 0:40:46.000 like got around to conducting about as legitimate a meta 0:40:46.040 --> 0:40:49.560 analysis of the previous studies that you could possibly do, 0:40:50.280 --> 0:40:55.200 or they compiled their own studies based on really large 0:40:55.200 --> 0:40:59.640 sample sizes. Because if birth order is a thing, and 0:40:59.719 --> 0:41:03.960 birth order applies to everybody, including only children, then if 0:41:04.000 --> 0:41:06.160 you get a bunch of people together, birth order is 0:41:06.160 --> 0:41:08.319 going to show up in some way, shape or form, 0:41:08.360 --> 0:41:11.480 because it's there among everybody. It's not like some people 0:41:11.760 --> 0:41:14.520 have some sort of birth order. Everybody who's ever born 0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:18.480 has some sort of ranking, even only children. And yet 0:41:18.719 --> 0:41:22.360 when you look at really good data using really good methodology, 0:41:22.640 --> 0:41:25.000 it just does not come to the surface. 0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:28.880 That's right. This one was very large in twenty fifteen. 0:41:28.920 --> 0:41:32.360 It looked at data from three hundred and seventy seven 0:41:32.480 --> 0:41:36.480 thousand high school students in the United States. Then there 0:41:36.520 --> 0:41:39.000 was another study in the same year that analyzed data 0:41:39.000 --> 0:41:43.080 from about twenty thousand students in Europe and Germany in 0:41:43.120 --> 0:41:46.279 the US as well and UK. And there were a 0:41:46.280 --> 0:41:51.520 couple of psychologists, Rodika Damien and Brent W. Roberts from 0:41:51.640 --> 0:41:55.160 the Fighting Aliini of the University of Illinois. I'm not 0:41:55.200 --> 0:41:56.400 sure what an Aliini is. 0:41:56.840 --> 0:42:01.200 It's an Illinoianite, is it all right? 0:42:01.200 --> 0:42:04.480 And that sounds about right? Okay, But they fight, I 0:42:04.560 --> 0:42:10.160 know that, right, They're always fun. But they they isolated 0:42:10.200 --> 0:42:12.640 that they tried to do, you know, controls for everything 0:42:12.680 --> 0:42:15.840 as well, and they looked at everything, which included of course, 0:42:16.560 --> 0:42:19.920 birth order and then you know, the sex of the 0:42:20.080 --> 0:42:23.640 of the kid, and the number of siblings, size, socio 0:42:23.680 --> 0:42:26.319 economics of it all, and all this stuff. And they 0:42:26.320 --> 0:42:29.000 basically said, this is the largest study that we've ever done, 0:42:29.160 --> 0:42:32.400 the most sophisticated of its kind, and there is little 0:42:32.400 --> 0:42:35.719 to no functional relation between birth order and personality like 0:42:36.200 --> 0:42:37.239 full stop. 0:42:37.040 --> 0:42:40.720 Right, Yeah, full stop is right. And those same psychologists, 0:42:40.800 --> 0:42:43.799 Damien and Roberts, they wrote something they wrote basically like 0:42:43.840 --> 0:42:47.280 an editorial in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 0:42:47.320 --> 0:42:49.880 which also published their study of the three hundred and 0:42:49.920 --> 0:42:52.719 seventy seven thousand high school students. That is such a 0:42:52.800 --> 0:42:57.439 huge sample size, and they basically said in this editorial letter, 0:42:57.680 --> 0:43:01.200 here are all the problems from the previous study. There's 0:43:01.280 --> 0:43:05.160 just flaws galore. And they basically divided the types of 0:43:05.200 --> 0:43:09.000 studies for examining birth order into two different categories. There 0:43:09.040 --> 0:43:12.320 was the between family study design and the within family 0:43:12.320 --> 0:43:15.520 study design. And the between family study design said it 0:43:15.600 --> 0:43:17.560 just looked at a bunch of people who weren't related 0:43:17.880 --> 0:43:20.440 and then pulled them about their birth order and then 0:43:20.760 --> 0:43:24.879 looked at their individual personality traits. Within family design looked 0:43:24.880 --> 0:43:27.400 at the actual members of a single family or multiple 0:43:27.480 --> 0:43:30.880 single families, and then examined the personality traits based on 0:43:30.920 --> 0:43:34.200 their birth order in relation to the other members of 0:43:34.239 --> 0:43:35.560 their family, their sibship. 0:43:36.440 --> 0:43:38.919 Yeah, and it seemed to hold a lot more water 0:43:39.000 --> 0:43:43.840 when you just looked at the family designs within a 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:46.800 family and not between a bunch of these different families. 0:43:46.960 --> 0:43:49.120 Like this is when it started to make sense a 0:43:49.160 --> 0:43:52.920 little more for me. But at the same time, like, 0:43:54.040 --> 0:43:56.799 I don't feel it's too horoscopy to see that there's 0:43:56.840 --> 0:43:59.319 a lot of correlation between some of these traits, right, 0:43:59.640 --> 0:44:03.360 but the science doesn't hold up then it's just anecdotal basically. 0:44:03.400 --> 0:44:05.200 Well, what they were saying was so like, if you're 0:44:05.239 --> 0:44:08.400 looking at a between family design, you're not taking into 0:44:08.960 --> 0:44:13.080 account typically the number of siblings total. You're just taking 0:44:13.080 --> 0:44:16.600 account the birth order. And that they're saying that if 0:44:16.600 --> 0:44:20.200 you look at something like the number of firstborns versus 0:44:20.320 --> 0:44:23.600 later borns, there's more later borns than firstborn so there's 0:44:23.640 --> 0:44:25.719 only one firstborn in a family, but there can be 0:44:25.840 --> 0:44:30.440 multiple later borns, right, And that firstborns typically are smarter, 0:44:30.680 --> 0:44:32.920 they have a higher IQ. That will get to in 0:44:33.000 --> 0:44:35.360 a second is actually true, and that a lot of 0:44:35.400 --> 0:44:38.360 it has to do with them coming from families of 0:44:38.440 --> 0:44:42.480 high socioeconomic status, and that that's not controlled for. If 0:44:42.520 --> 0:44:45.640 you don't control for the SIB ship size, then your 0:44:45.960 --> 0:44:49.520 methodology is just crud. That was just one of multiple 0:44:50.239 --> 0:44:51.399 problems they had with it. 0:44:52.080 --> 0:44:54.840 Yeah, and if you're the what if you're from a 0:44:54.920 --> 0:44:59.520 large Catholic family of like eight kids and you're seven, 0:44:59.719 --> 0:45:03.360 six eight or five of eight, Like, does all this 0:45:03.400 --> 0:45:05.120 stuff just go out the door at that point? 0:45:05.960 --> 0:45:10.000 If birth order is is true, then no, it wouldn't 0:45:10.040 --> 0:45:12.840 like there you would have multiples in the middle, like 0:45:12.880 --> 0:45:16.359 sharing similar traits. I would guess, right, But that's not 0:45:16.440 --> 0:45:19.520 the case. And then they did another little victory lap 0:45:19.560 --> 0:45:21.279 and they basically said, oh, there's a couple of other 0:45:21.320 --> 0:45:24.080 things that are sacred cows in the field of birth 0:45:24.160 --> 0:45:28.480 order and personality. One is that it's it's it differs 0:45:28.520 --> 0:45:31.600 by gender, that birth order personality traits show up way 0:45:31.600 --> 0:45:34.400 more in males than females. And they were like, no, 0:45:34.680 --> 0:45:37.239 that's not true at all. We study that as part 0:45:37.280 --> 0:45:40.120 of this meta analysis. Nope, it's not correct. The other 0:45:40.160 --> 0:45:43.120 one is that, okay, birth order really starts to get 0:45:43.120 --> 0:45:47.320 diluted when you look at the full range of siblings 0:45:47.640 --> 0:45:51.120 in a family, especially if there's you know, a decade 0:45:51.200 --> 0:45:54.920 or more in between the oldest and the youngest, because 0:45:55.040 --> 0:45:57.920 really birth order only shows up between siblings that are 0:45:57.920 --> 0:45:59.960 separated by no more than five years. So it gets 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:01.719 I louted if you'l like at the whole thing, and 0:46:01.760 --> 0:46:03.960 they said, nope, we shrunk everything down to just five 0:46:04.040 --> 0:46:08.840 year gaps between siblings tops, and it still did not 0:46:08.920 --> 0:46:11.840 show up. So they just absolutely trounced down the theory 0:46:12.160 --> 0:46:14.640 in every single way they could, using the best data 0:46:14.880 --> 0:46:18.359 in the best methodology, and they said, guys, it just 0:46:18.640 --> 0:46:21.520 it's not real. Can we please stop talking about this? 0:46:23.320 --> 0:46:26.720 Yeah, and someone else is going to come along because 0:46:26.760 --> 0:46:29.960 people can't stop talking about and researching berth On. 0:46:30.120 --> 0:46:33.000 It's true, Yeah, if we look for it. 0:46:32.280 --> 0:46:34.440 It really is. Because as I was doing this, I 0:46:34.480 --> 0:46:36.480 was sort of into thinking about if I felt this 0:46:36.560 --> 0:46:38.880 is true or not, or what about my family? And 0:46:38.920 --> 0:46:41.960 then I was like, who cares? H And that's I 0:46:41.960 --> 0:46:45.480 guess why. It's pop psychology to a certain degree. I mean, 0:46:45.520 --> 0:46:49.120 these findings are sort of interesting, I guess, But what's 0:46:49.200 --> 0:46:52.360 the end game as far as what are we really learning, 0:46:53.719 --> 0:46:56.320 as far as like what makes it us better families 0:46:56.400 --> 0:46:59.959 or better as a as a human race? Like probably nothing. 0:47:00.120 --> 0:47:05.360 Well to me, it's an example of that that trait 0:47:05.440 --> 0:47:09.960 of twentieth century science that's like a compulsion to find 0:47:10.520 --> 0:47:13.960 the one reason that something happens, and this is a 0:47:13.960 --> 0:47:16.279 great example of that. But it's also again I think 0:47:16.320 --> 0:47:19.640 it's because we're all like confronted one way or another 0:47:19.680 --> 0:47:22.279 with birth order and made our own observation. So it's 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:26.000 it's just kind of almost a folk psychology, you know. 0:47:26.760 --> 0:47:29.880 Yeah, I agree. So we were going to talk about 0:47:29.920 --> 0:47:33.920 IQ because it is true that when you look at 0:47:33.960 --> 0:47:39.360 the data in the numbers that firstborn's score highest on 0:47:39.719 --> 0:47:43.759 IQ tests. It's not a lot. What I found was 0:47:43.800 --> 0:47:47.560 like a point, so it's not some huge difference on average. 0:47:47.560 --> 0:47:49.080 I don't think it's not a shameful difference. 0:47:49.520 --> 0:47:51.960 It's not a shameful difference, but it was there, and 0:47:52.000 --> 0:47:55.080 there's a guide that has a really interesting take on 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:59.000 all this. As his name was James, I don't know 0:47:59.000 --> 0:48:01.160 how you would say it. Junk is the only way 0:48:01.160 --> 0:48:02.160 I can say it. 0:48:02.640 --> 0:48:06.680 Yeah, that's what people call him in the bars, probably. 0:48:07.040 --> 0:48:11.240 Z A j O N c ze yunk oh XEONK. 0:48:11.280 --> 0:48:14.200 I'm going with James ze yunk, right, and the whole 0:48:14.360 --> 0:48:18.560 the whole name flows like teeny others. James Zyunk is. 0:48:19.040 --> 0:48:23.960 The youngster yea. So uh he he looked at SAT scores. 0:48:24.120 --> 0:48:27.360 I found this pretty interesting. Actually, he started in nineteen 0:48:27.400 --> 0:48:30.560 sixty seven, when there was a big drop in verbal 0:48:30.680 --> 0:48:34.359 SAT scores that went on for about ten years, and 0:48:34.520 --> 0:48:36.239 of course people at the time were saying, oh, it's 0:48:36.239 --> 0:48:38.800 because of this, it's because of that, it's because these children. 0:48:38.840 --> 0:48:41.600 These days, our society is just going down the drain. 0:48:42.000 --> 0:48:45.719 People are getting dumber. But later than that, about ten 0:48:45.800 --> 0:48:48.280 years later, in seventy six, he said, here's what I predict. 0:48:48.840 --> 0:48:51.000 SAT scores are going to continue to go down for 0:48:51.040 --> 0:48:54.200 about four more years, and then in nineteen eighty they're 0:48:54.200 --> 0:48:57.840 going to start to go up again. And this is why, everybody, 0:48:58.280 --> 0:49:01.440 because there was a baby boom in our and there 0:49:01.440 --> 0:49:04.040 were a lot of firstborn children because of that baby 0:49:04.040 --> 0:49:07.759 boom that were born in nineteen forty nine, so that 0:49:07.800 --> 0:49:10.120 means they would be taking the SAT in about nineteen 0:49:10.160 --> 0:49:13.840 sixty seven. That's when scores peaked because firstborns, as we 0:49:13.880 --> 0:49:17.760 all know, are smarter. And then as each successive child 0:49:17.840 --> 0:49:20.640 is born from sixty seven on, they're not going to 0:49:20.719 --> 0:49:23.680 be as smart, and so these SAT scores are going 0:49:23.719 --> 0:49:26.600 to go down. But once we hit nineteen eighty, at 0:49:26.640 --> 0:49:30.040 all resets, because that baby boom stopped in sixty two, 0:49:30.360 --> 0:49:32.200 and if you were born in sixty two, you're going 0:49:32.280 --> 0:49:34.880 to take the SAT in nineteen eighty, So these scores 0:49:34.880 --> 0:49:36.919 are going to go back up, and they did. 0:49:37.080 --> 0:49:39.960 Yeah, because between nineteen forty nine and nineteen sixty two 0:49:40.600 --> 0:49:43.239 there was it was much likelier that you were a 0:49:43.320 --> 0:49:46.600 second born than a first born compared to the beginning 0:49:46.680 --> 0:49:49.480 of the baby boom. So he basically just dropped the 0:49:49.520 --> 0:49:51.720 mic right there because it turned out that that's exactly 0:49:51.760 --> 0:49:54.520 what happened, Like his prediction came true. And what he 0:49:54.600 --> 0:49:57.760 showed was like, yep, birth order has to do with IQ. 0:49:58.000 --> 0:49:59.880 It's just as simple as that. It was later followed 0:49:59.920 --> 0:50:02.840 up or supported by a study from the Netherlands of 0:50:02.880 --> 0:50:06.239 four hundred thousand military recruits. They found the same thing 0:50:06.640 --> 0:50:09.319 with IQ score. And remember the SAT test used to 0:50:09.360 --> 0:50:16.120 test your IQ. And so what did I come up with? Zionk? Yeah, sure, 0:50:16.239 --> 0:50:19.319 James Zionk. He had a pretty neat theory or an 0:50:19.360 --> 0:50:22.880 explanation or hypothesis of why that would be true. And 0:50:23.120 --> 0:50:25.560 he said that it was based on what we talked 0:50:25.560 --> 0:50:27.880 about earlier, that if you're an older sibling, even like 0:50:27.880 --> 0:50:29.960 a second born sibling, as long as you're not the baby, 0:50:31.200 --> 0:50:34.640 you have the ability or you have the opportunity I 0:50:34.680 --> 0:50:37.560 mean to teach somebody else and to teach stuff. You 0:50:37.600 --> 0:50:39.640 have to know stuff. You have to be paying attention, 0:50:39.719 --> 0:50:41.840 you have to be aware, you have to be absorbing information, 0:50:42.480 --> 0:50:45.680 and that you have less and less of an opportunity 0:50:45.719 --> 0:50:48.320 to teach as more and more kids are born, because 0:50:48.320 --> 0:50:52.000 you're sharing that function with other second or later born kids, 0:50:52.320 --> 0:50:54.280 and then if you're the baby, you have no opportunity 0:50:54.360 --> 0:50:56.560 to teach. So you're just the dumbest of the bunch essentially, 0:50:56.800 --> 0:50:59.960 at least as far as Xiank's theory went, and again 0:51:00.040 --> 0:51:02.960 it's backed up by SAT and IQ scores. But thankfully 0:51:03.000 --> 0:51:05.640 you're saying that it's not that ridiculous of a difference 0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:07.800 between firstborn and last born. 0:51:08.719 --> 0:51:11.920 Yeah, I think that teaching function carries a little weight. 0:51:12.040 --> 0:51:13.600 Definitely, it makes sense at least. 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:15.319 Yeah, it makes sense. A lot of this makes it. 0:51:15.440 --> 0:51:18.080 But if there was any warning from this entire episode, 0:51:18.120 --> 0:51:20.720 it's that just because it makes sense doesn't mean it's correct. 0:51:21.920 --> 0:51:25.120 Exactly, because we mentioned this a few times, put that 0:51:25.160 --> 0:51:27.480 pin in it, We're going to take that pin out 0:51:27.520 --> 0:51:30.960 because a very sort of keen thing to be aware 0:51:31.000 --> 0:51:33.520 of with all of this is when they do these studies, 0:51:33.960 --> 0:51:36.239 you are looking at a point in time, a snapshot 0:51:36.280 --> 0:51:39.399 in time of when someone does this study, it might 0:51:39.480 --> 0:51:44.279 be when the siblings are eighteen, fourteen, and nine. You 0:51:44.360 --> 0:51:47.319 do that same study with that same family when you 0:51:47.320 --> 0:51:50.200 know ten years later, and they might you might get 0:51:50.239 --> 0:51:52.600 wildly different results on who these people are and what 0:51:52.600 --> 0:51:56.600 their personality is like. So it's you know, you really 0:51:56.600 --> 0:51:58.479 have there's so many things to account for. I don't 0:51:58.520 --> 0:52:01.320 know that you can draw some sweet conclusion, like everyone 0:52:01.400 --> 0:52:02.920 keeps desperately trying to do right. 0:52:03.280 --> 0:52:05.600 Yeah, and it makes sense too, because I mean it's 0:52:05.600 --> 0:52:07.719 called the perfect age compound if you're looking at just 0:52:07.719 --> 0:52:09.879 a snapshot in time. Of course, the eighteen year old 0:52:09.880 --> 0:52:12.560 oldest born is going to be more conscientious than the 0:52:12.640 --> 0:52:14.799 nine year old baby of the family. That's just how 0:52:14.840 --> 0:52:17.120 it works. That has to do with growing up right, 0:52:17.520 --> 0:52:21.320 not where you were born, in your sibship, your position. 0:52:21.600 --> 0:52:23.680 And then also, of course the nine year old's going 0:52:23.719 --> 0:52:25.680 to be more likely to wander off into the woods 0:52:25.880 --> 0:52:28.480 and have fun with their friends than the eighteen year old. 0:52:28.719 --> 0:52:31.480 That's just part of being young. So that definitely explains 0:52:31.480 --> 0:52:32.920 it quite a bit to me if you ask me. 0:52:33.960 --> 0:52:36.040 Yeah, and I think where I end up is like 0:52:36.520 --> 0:52:38.200 I think there is a lot to birth order and 0:52:38.280 --> 0:52:41.600 I think it's bound to have an effect on who 0:52:41.640 --> 0:52:44.719 you turn out to be, along with a lot of 0:52:44.760 --> 0:52:46.640 other factors in your life. But I think it's one 0:52:46.640 --> 0:52:46.880 of them. 0:52:46.880 --> 0:52:50.399 Okay, well there you go. Well Chuck said he thinks 0:52:50.400 --> 0:52:53.279 it's one of them, which of course triggers listener me. 0:52:56.560 --> 0:53:00.600 I'm going to call this a follow up on France's Kelsey, 0:53:00.640 --> 0:53:02.880 which I thought was pretty cool. We did a shorty 0:53:02.920 --> 0:53:06.520 recently on Francis Kelsey, one of the heroes of the FDA, 0:53:07.280 --> 0:53:11.600 and we got a letter from Katie entitled, my sister's 0:53:11.640 --> 0:53:16.840 hero was Francis Kelly. Dearest Josh, Chuck, Jerry, and Dave's spirit. 0:53:17.400 --> 0:53:22.000 David appreciates that. Thank you. You guys have no idea 0:53:22.080 --> 0:53:24.320 how thrilled I was to listen to today's short stuff 0:53:24.320 --> 0:53:28.000 about Francis Kelsey. This woman is my sister Sarah's hero. 0:53:28.760 --> 0:53:31.560 Like Sarah put a portrait of doctor Kelsey in her 0:53:31.640 --> 0:53:35.799 child's nursery. Hero, my sister Sarah has been telling us 0:53:35.800 --> 0:53:38.960 for years about the important contribution that Kelsey made to 0:53:38.960 --> 0:53:42.120 public health and women's health as a whole, but specifically 0:53:42.520 --> 0:53:46.880 to maternal, infant, child, and adolescent health. And that sounds 0:53:47.040 --> 0:53:48.320 after I read this, I was like, oh man, I 0:53:48.360 --> 0:53:50.480 wish we could have done a full thing on Francis Kelsey. 0:53:51.239 --> 0:53:54.840 Sarah works tirelessly in adolescent sexual health despite all the 0:53:54.880 --> 0:53:57.360 fire public health has been under for the past few years. 0:53:57.719 --> 0:54:00.719 Her devotion to protecting the health of teens, regardless of 0:54:00.719 --> 0:54:04.640 their gender, sexual orientation, or citizen status makes me proud 0:54:04.960 --> 0:54:07.720 to be her sister. I'm so happy at Public Servant 0:54:07.719 --> 0:54:10.239 was highlighted on your show. Thanks from the bottom of 0:54:10.280 --> 0:54:13.719 my heart for sharing the story so more will know 0:54:14.080 --> 0:54:19.240 about doctor Kelsey's works. From a long time listener, Katie. Katie, 0:54:19.280 --> 0:54:22.080 this is great and Sarah love that you're doing this 0:54:22.160 --> 0:54:26.200 good work. It's amazing and I'm curious about your birth 0:54:26.280 --> 0:54:26.640 order now. 0:54:26.719 --> 0:54:29.360 Very nice. That was a great email, Katie. That was 0:54:29.400 --> 0:54:31.680 a very sweet thing to send us, So thank you 0:54:31.760 --> 0:54:34.880 for it. And hats off to YouTube Sarah. Like Chuck said, 0:54:35.239 --> 0:54:37.080 and if you want to look up to your older 0:54:37.120 --> 0:54:40.680 sibling or younger sibling or whatever, we'd love to hear that. 0:54:40.920 --> 0:54:42.840 You can send it to us in an email to 0:54:42.960 --> 0:54:47.280 Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. 0:54:48.640 --> 0:54:51.520 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For 0:54:51.600 --> 0:54:55.799 more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, 0:54:55.920 --> 0:55:02.200 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.