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Selects: Is birth order important? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here with this week Saturday Select. That's
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: when Josh and I curate specially selected episodes to rerun
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that may be a few years old. They may be
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: oh heck, they may be ten years old, maybe even older.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You never know, because a lot of people don't know
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: these episodes even exist. So that's why we do this.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: So anyway, this one's on birth order. It's called is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Birth Order Important? I believe this was originally a Chuck
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: idea to begin with. This is from April twenty three,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and I am just pretty obsessed with birth order,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and so that's why I picked it to begin with,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and that's why I'm picking it again right now.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Charles Aby, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: is Stuff If you Should Know. Jerry cast Jerry, were
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: you a uh what was your birth order? Oh, Jerry's
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: a middle child two of two or two of more.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: So you're the baby.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: You don't know this?
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: No? Did you? Sure?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: No? I've know Jerry for like thirteen years. Hey, So
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: have I, Well, not that long twelve years, so have I?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: No no comment?
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: What am I?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know? That's right, I know what I'm the baby,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you know that.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't ask what you were. I know you
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: know what you are? What am I?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: This isn't quiz not You're not gonna just yeah, yeah,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I wasn't calling you out. Oh well I was calling
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you out. You were in a humorous way, and I
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: called you out. It's hard not to look at this
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: stuff through your own lens though, of your own family.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: You know, are you changing the subject?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I'm getting on with it. Oh okay, because
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: as the youngest of three and all of us have
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: three distinct personalities, it's hard not to kind of like
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: think about birth order right and if that's a thing right,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And it may be and it may not be. Yeah,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: depends on which scientist you're asking.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: I tend to think like, there's just no way it
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: doesn't have any effect.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Now there, I think it definitely has an effect. But
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: as we will see, it is one part of a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: huge pie.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, that.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Indicates what kind of person and personality you might have. Well.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Plus also it's devilishly tricky to analyze to study because
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: of how big that pie is. Yeah, there's so much
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: going on with your personality that to just pinpoint one thing,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: even a big thing like that where you're born in
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: a family, but it's just tough to pin down. So
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: you're the youngest, right, good guess, Yes, I am. I
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: knew you were the youngest. I'm like, I wear that
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: on my sleeve.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like I kind of do too.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Mmy, I guess in some ways, but like I was
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: reading this checklist for the youngest. Yeah, I'm like, yeah,
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: I guess. So let's let's let's do it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Should we go over that that stuff first?
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Totally all right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So this is like the sort of macro view of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: how a lot of people think of birth order pop psychology.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you were born into a family, there's
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: basically four ways that you can be born in some
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: sort of order. You can be the first born, you
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: can be a middle child, or you can be the
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: last born. And then if you're a real outlier, Okay,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: you're right, so there's five or triplet. Oh god, yeah,
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: get me started. Let's just say a multi okay, a multi,
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: or you can be an only child too, sure, and
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: all of them have distinct personalities, again according to pop psychology,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: but also according to every person who's ever been born
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: into a family, especially and so with the firstborn. The
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: whole theory of basically birth order, where you're born into
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: the family unit that you're born into, and what effect
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: that has on your personality and how it develops, It
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: all seems to come down to this idea that you
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: are born into a family where there is a finite
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: resource called parental attention, and then that is a pie
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: that gets increasingly divided up into smaller and smaller pieces
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: the more and more children that are born, because your
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: parents can't possibly give five kids the same amount of
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: attention that they could give an only child. It's just
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: not possible. And so what dynamics are created in the
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: personality of the kids born into that family depending on
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: how many others are born and depending on where they
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: fall in that birth order. That's kind of the premise
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: of the whole thing. And over time people have said, well,
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: this is what the firstborn's like, this is what the
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: middles like, this is what.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: The yeah, and there were I mean a lot of
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: this are these are generalizations, but they are generalizations. Like
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: you said, that kind of everyone who's ever been in
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a family can kind of say, yeah, that's kind of true, right.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: You know, when you have an only or your first kid,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: they this article references as that first sort of experiment.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: You don't know what you're doing yet You're probably going
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: all in, depending on how lazy you are, how motivated
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: you are as a parent with this, you know, being
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a super parent. And then if supposedly as you have
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: more children you get it's not only as your attention divided,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I think, but there's the notion that you also are like,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I probably don't need to be as crazy
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: with number two and number three, leave them to their
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: own devices as a third kid. I'm not going to
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: get into too many depressing details of my family growing up,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: but like by the time I was ten and eleven,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: my parents had other things going on. Yeah, and I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't fair with.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Other kids on the side.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Not exactly. I wasn't fair old by any means, but
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I was. I did not have rules imposed on me
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: like my brother and sister did. I did not have.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I was allowed to go to Panama City for spring
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: break and they weren't. I was allowed to kind of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: do my own thing, and I was trustworthy, so that
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: probably had a lot to do with it. Yeah, if
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I would have been a real problem, they might have
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: clamped down a little more, or maybe not.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: And they probably wouldn't have necessarily clamped down like we
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: need to give Chuck way more attention and guidance than
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: we have been. They would have probably been.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Like crime and punishment.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: They would have been like we're sending Chuck to rehab
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: or whatever, you know what I mean, Let rehab take
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: care of her, reform school or something like that. Because
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: once you get X number of kids in, you're just
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: so tired. Yeah, so tired. And you're older too. Sure,
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: like when you're chasing a little kid around in like
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: your forties or fifties, that's different than when you're chasing
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: a little kid around in your mid twenties.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine a world of difference.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: You know. So there's there's there's a lot of resources,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: not just you know, parents' attention, but also their time,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: intellectual attention that they'll give a kid, like and say
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: like hanging out, teaching the kid to read that kind
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: of stuff, and just attention in general, and also financial resources,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: the family's resources in general, are a pie that must
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: be divided among.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: All the financial, emotional, all that stuff instructive. So generally speaking, firstborn's,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: people say, tend to be very conscientious and structured and
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: reliable and achieve high achievers.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because their parents are focusing like a laser on them.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: They know everything that kids got going on, maybe a
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: little too much, and the kid is responding to this
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: by basically becoming a perfectionist and really wanting to be
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: around their parents and.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Their parents' friends.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: More mature, very much mature, because they're all of the
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: people are most of the people are hanging out with
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: are adults.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, so that's a firstborn typically, right, everybody knows it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Don't try to deny it.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Middles in general are people pleasing, which is so my brother.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: That's weird to me because when I think of middle children,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: I think of jam Brady and Jan Brady was not
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: a people pleaser. She was just you know, a lump,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: like a lump with a cloud over head.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Poor Jan.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: But that's true, Like I would not characterize jam Brady
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: as a people pleaser, would you know? Like she was
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: going to burn something down eventually. If the Brady bunch
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: had stayed on the air long enough.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Was also a blended family. So what was uh yeah,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: who was the It was Bobby and then Peter was from.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: The lateral, I guess you'd call it was he was
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: he a people pleaser or just Jan more than Jan.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: But blended families do confound things. We'll get into that
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: yet for.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Sure, but people pleasing, somewhat rebellious, which is not my
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: brother at all, large social circle, not really my brother,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and a peacemaker, totally my brother. He's the best, He's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the best. And then the youngings, youngies young'in's like us,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: most free spirited, fun loving, uncomplicated, manipulative. I've been called
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: some of these things severing degrees, self centered, attention seeking and.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Outgoing check and check.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: But combined you and I and we're sort of like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the proto youngest uncomplicated.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Though I'm like, I don't get that. I'm exquisitely complicated.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I'm on the surface you wouldn't think it, but I'm
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: pretty complicated, sure, as we all know in this room.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: But that's the only one that I'm like that I question. Yeah,
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: all the rest of them are like, yeah, that makes sense.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It's like the Chinese zodiac. You look at that menu
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: and you're like total dog.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, and movie guy pant sounds great right now?
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Only no siblings. You are what they call almost like
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: a super firstborn.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: So sounds scary.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: All the traits of a firstborn on steroids, very much perfectionists,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: very much more mature for your age, conscientious, diligent, prone.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: To be leader, can leap over tall buildings.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And then this is where it gets interesting, and this
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: sort of starts.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: To finally, everybody, this is where it starts to get interested.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Well, this is where it gets in a little bit,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: like how complicated it can get because there's so many
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: factors at play, Like what if you're in a blended family,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: because that kind of throws it all out of whack. Yeah, dude, can.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: If you're born a firstborn and you your parents, your
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: parents get divorce and you go with your mom who
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: gets remarried to a dude who has.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Brady Yes to a smashing cool architect.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: For sure, and he has a kid that's a little
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: older than you, Greg, Greg's the firstborn. You're not the
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: firstborn anymore. The best you can hope for is to
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: form some sort of confederacy or alliance with Greg to
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: rule the rest of the siblings. But you're not the
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: head honcho anymore. You're not in charge. That's a big deal.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: I can't imagine many more traumatic experiences, especially when that
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: follows closely on the heels of your parents divorce or
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: the death of like your other parent. That's got to
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: be one of the most traumatic things a kid can
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: go through is to lose their identified perch in the
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: family order.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's we were talking about, like the firstborn,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: like the baby of the family. If all of a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: sudden there's a younger, no good, no, Like I remember
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: my parents for some reason talking about adopting a kid.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I can't remember how old I was. I must have
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: been about seven, and I remember breaking down and crying
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and just being like, you can't do this, you cannot
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: bring it someone younger and cuter right than me. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: that happens blended family. All of a sudden, you have
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: be a younger or god forbid, a baby. Just forget
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: I can't compete with that.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You gotta kill that baby.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what happened too. When Brady Bunch started to
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: lose ratings. Apparently your family was losing ratings. So they
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: brought in cousin Oliver a new baby, and I don't
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: think Bobby was very happy about that either.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: No, but just think about jan it all makes a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: little bit more sense. Like she was like, I'm the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: middle child, and then they brought in three more and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: she was like, I'm even more.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Middle Yeah, you're deluded. The middle child is deluded. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: if you have multiple middle children, forget about it.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: That's right. However, here's the thing with blended families. They
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: say by about the age of five that a lot
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: of your personality is set. So if you're older than
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: five and all of a sudden your family is blended,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: they say, it may not make that much of a difference.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: No, no, No, that's where it's trouble. If you're younger than
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: five and you your personality is a little more plastic.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: If you were born a baby of the family and
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: suddenly you're a first born or you're not there, or
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: you're a middle kid, yeah, you'll adapt to that a
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: lot better than you would if you're like older and
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: you're you're more solid in your birth order.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't mean not trouble. What I meant was like,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: if you're like twelve years old and the family blending happens,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: it's trouble, but it's not like your personality is like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm the youngest or you know
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, you don't all of a sudden
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: swap to a different birth order personality, I don't think.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Right, But if you're younger and it happens, you.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Do right under the age of five, which.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Goes to show that if this is a thing, and
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: we'll talk about whether it is or not soon. Yeah,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: it has nothing to do with biology, has everything to
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: do with with nurture, not nature, because a kid can
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: adapt depending on when this happens, they can adapt to
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: a change in birth order if they're young enough. Yeah,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: that means it has nothing to do with biology. It's
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: all the environment you're raised in, which is the most
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: boneheadedly obvious thing on the planet.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: And then before we take a break, there are also
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: gap children. Supposedly, if there's at least a five year
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: gap between births, then it just sort of resets.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: That was like me and my oldest sister. She was
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: thirteen years older than me, right, she was just like
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: this older, cool person, but not like an old, older sister,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: not at all overbearing, like really like for me, I
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: guess a little bit, yeah, or like a second mom
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: kind of to an extent.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Because that does happen too if there's a big gap
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: or a big family. Like I dated a girl in
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: New Jersey that had that was like six or seven
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of them, and by the time she came around, she
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: was kind of fully being raised by her siblings.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Right, right, So what happens when there's enough of a gap,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: a new family birth order forms. So like if you
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: have an oldest and then there's multiple years, like say
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: ten years between your oldest and your middle and then
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: two years between your middle and your baby, the middle
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: and the baby are going to form a firstborn and
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: a last born type relationship.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the last born is always going to be
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the last born, yes, regardless of gap.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: But then twins, like you were saying, is one last
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: confounding thing. They twins or triplets multiples as you call them. Yeah,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: I think so. They form their own family unit within
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: the family two with each other. And apparently no matter
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: where they're born, twins never act like middle kids. They
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: always act like the firstborn or the baby, but to
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: one another.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Right, and I think they generally come together to kill
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the parents.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Basically, right, they hold hands, it's like an elevator of
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: blood washes around them.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And then finally, with adoption, they say that depending on
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: when your child has adopted, the same kind of scenario
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: scenario happens as in like with gapped and blended.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Families, Whereas, if the kid's young enough, he or she
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: will tailor their their their birth ordered to the family
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: that they're adopted into. But if they're older, there'll be trouble.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: All right, that's a good overview, I think.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: I think it was a great overview, Chuck. We're glowing
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: from it.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: We're gonna you do have that overview, glow. We're gonna
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: take a break, and we're gonna talk about science right after.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: This, all right, Chuck, as promised, we're going to talk
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: about science, because, like I said, this is so owe
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: headed and obvious that every single person who's ever been
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: born into a family, everybody knows the stuff. But as
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: far as science is concerned, this is not proven that
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: birth order effects as they're called, actually exist. That science
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: is saying, hold your cell, your role, everybody. We can't
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: actually prove that what everybody knows is actually true. Some
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: studies show that, yes, there is such a thing as
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: birth order effects. Other studies show that there is no
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: birth order effect whatsoever. And then some studies suggest that
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: if there are birth order effects, they're so small that
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: they are basically a blip on your personality. That all
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: the other factors that form your personality, things like the
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: socioeconomic status of the family you're born into, your racial background,
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: your gender, all the other stuff that is what really
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: forms your personality, not the order you're born into your family.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: That's kind of science's position right now.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But what they all agree on is that it
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: is therapy.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Cash cow right, that, yes, it's a good it's a
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: useful framework to approach psychotherapy from it.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: They all want to talk about it at high hourly rates.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: See. To me, I'm like, this is sure, this is
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: exactly what forms your personality. But I get science's position.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I respect it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So if we go back in time to the early
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, it was a man named Alfred Adler. He
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: was a part of a He was a contemporary of Freud,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and this is when all these dudes were getting together
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: to talk about all this stuff. In this burgeoning science,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and they all thought they were so cool and important,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And he was one of the only ones among his
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: peers though at the time, that was talking about birth
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: order that early. And he went on to form what
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: we know is Atlarian psychology or individual psychology, and it's
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: based therapy based on how you perceive your own level
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: of power in your family, at your workplace.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: In the world at large in general, like your perceived power,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: place of position, or status.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, And if he believed in birth order having
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a significant influence on your personality, then that in turn
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: would influence how powerful you may or may not feel.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Because the Adler, if how you perceived your own
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: power not necessarily how powerful you were, but your own
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: perception of power was the driving force of like how
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: you interacted with the world your personality, birth order would
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: make total sense because birth order, as everybody knows, is
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: nothing but positions of superiority or inferiority. Yeah, And it's
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: as simple as that. Because when you're born and you're
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: a little kid, and you're born into a family with
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: an older sibling, they are a couple of steps ahead
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: of you because they've already been through a bunch of
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: stuff Yeah, so they're inherently superior to you. They can
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: also beat you up on a very basic level. They
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: can twist your arm behind your back until it feels
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: like it's going to break. And Maria, how many times
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: you say uncle, uncle? Uncle? They won't stop until they're satisfied.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Or protect you, like my big brother did. That's great
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: from his friends that were jerks to me. Right, he
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: wouldn't stand for it.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: No, a couple of.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: We went at it too, you know, we were brothers.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: But sure he never picked on me. No, you know why,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: because you chuck and he's Scott.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: In the eighties is when, I mean, there were always
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: studies starting since Adler and freud'stein, but in the nineteen
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: eighties is when it really blew up thanks to the
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Big Five in cocaine, the Big Five personality trait view
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of things, and that's when things in the eighties, that's
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: when everybody was just like eating the stuff up.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because so the Big Five personality inventory is we've
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: talked about it before, but basically it is a self
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: reported measure that is actually valid. It actually works, like
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: you can say this person is highly neurotic, or this
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: person is extroverted or well three others that I can't
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: bring to mind right now. But these things are also
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: kind of broken into subcategories, like these are big umbrella
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: terms have more specific subcategories. But it's actually valid, Like
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: somebody who fills this survey out, it's going to be
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: an accurate assessment of their personality. So if you have
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: somebody's personality, that's huge, Right, you can say, all right,
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: if this person's neurotic, they're highly neurotic. Let's see what
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: birth order they are. Oh, they're a middle child. Let's
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: compare them to other middle children who filled out this
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: personality survey scored high on neurosis, And all of a sudden,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: we can show if you're a middle child, you're a
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: far likelier to be highly neurotic under the Big five
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: personality inventory. Then a firstborn is right, boom bam, you
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: just proved that birth order effects exist? Or did you?
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, They're like we can put people further into a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: box and label them. Sure, or did you? Because that
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: is sort of the paradox that arrive that we arrive at,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: which is you pointed to it a little bit earlier.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: There are so many, so many influences that go into
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: what makes you you that it's hard to look at
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: birth order as a mere small part of that. Yeah,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: so so like you can't account you can account for
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: some of these and studying it, right, you know, there's
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of studies over the years and they do
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: their best, but you can't account for all of them.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: Well, okay, so we'll go back to that example. So
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: you've you've just gone to your peers and said, look,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I have just proven that middle children are highly neurotic
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: compared to other children in birth orders. Right, yeah, then
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: you're shaking your own fists around your your shoulders in triumph.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: And they said, well, wait a minute, Wait a minute,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: did you control for socioeconomic background? And you go no,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't. Well wait did you control for race?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: No?
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Did you control for gender?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: No?
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden you realize there's all
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: these different independent variables out tons in this case would
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: be confounding variables that might actually be the thing influencing it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: It might be the fact that they are women born
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: into families of a low ceoeconomic state that is driving neuroses.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: That that's actually the thing that is driving it rather
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: than birth order. It has nothing to do with being
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: a middle child. It's just a fluke, a coincidence. And
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: like you said, there's so many confounding variables and so
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: many things that make our personalities who we are. That
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: some people who are like birth order effects do not exist.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Basically say that any birth order study that shows that
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: they do exist has some confounding variable that's the actual
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: hidden thing that's driving it that you can't possibly control
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: for everything to make a perfect, perfectly designed experiment for birthwork.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like when you start to think about, like if
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you were just to sit there and sort of jot
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: down things as non scientists, just regular schmos like us,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and just jot down a list of what other factors
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: might be at play, we could probably come up with
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a list of one hundred things between.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Us let's start now.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: But that would like if I was studying the stuff
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and I started to make that list, I would just
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: walk away and go into another line of study. Sure,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I would be like, dude, I just you know where
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: your parents married, where they divorce, When did they get divorced?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Did you like hot dogs?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: You live with mom or dad? How far apart did
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: they live? What could do? Were you suburban? Were you Urbana?
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Where did you live in an excurb Did you grow
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: up in the woods? Did you start work at twelve?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: For you like old timing, I started to work at twelve.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I guess I did too. I had a paper route. Yeah,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I was a bus boy.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Oh nice? Oh wait was that where the guy put
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: his foot into the Yeah, brothers do what a criminal?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I told you that's a title Max. Now that restaurant,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: but not too long ago. Yeah, go JJ's barbecue title Max.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Now they're putting their foot on titles, just stomping on them.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but they got your money, your money, your real money.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: They're never gonna sponsor us. Now. Another few things that
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: can confound these studies are things and and Ed helped
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: us put this research together, things like demographic shifts. So
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: he gave a great example of like the baby boom,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: if there's a big population bulge that also coincides with
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff. And the example he uses
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: prevalence of cigarette smoking. There may be a false correlation
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: there between being a first born and smoking, whereas if
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: you were second born twelve years later. I guess that
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: would fall outside that range though of gap.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Child maybe, but that's even more confounding. The point's still valid,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: sure that, Like, there's just way more firstborns who smoke
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: than second borns. But that's because those spoking was more
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: prevalent when there were a bunch of kids born who
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: were all of the same cohort and all firstborns. Right,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: that's just one of the ways this thing can be confounded.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this one really speaks to me, which is
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: labeled as growth. When a birth order effect does appear,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: it is strongest when they subject is with their siblings.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're a family or union, its back into
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: So funny how that happens. Yeah, I see myself do it.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Like good example, I turned forty eight a couple of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. My family, my sister and her husband happened
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to be in town. Didn't come for that, but we
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: were texting and I was like, hey, let's all you know,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: this is great, let's all go out to dinner. She's like, oh,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to. I just figured you wouldn't want
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: to spend your birthday with your friend. You'd want to
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: spend your birthday with your friends and not your family.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: And I saw Michelle when she got in town, and
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: she said the same thing in person, and I was like, dude,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I'm forty eight. Yeah, it's like I'm not twenty two
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: year old chuck, I know some burnout like I used
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to be. And she just sort of laughed. But that's
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a perfect example of how like, no matter what happens
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: in my life, I will always be the baby. Yeah,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: and she will probably feel like she has to look
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: out for me, which is a nice feeling. It is
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I see Emily fall into patterns with her family. Well,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: she is a She's an interesting case because she was
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: an only and then has a half brother and a
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: half sister. Her dad. Yeah, her dad went and had
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: a son with another woman, and then her mom got
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: married to her father in law, Steve, who already had
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a daughter. So it's this sort of a weird mix.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: But I just mean in general, not even with siblings,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you know, just in how their family dynamic is. She's
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: a different person when we go over there, all of us.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: I think everybody is around their family so strange.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So this is when it sort of started me down
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the path of like what is personality? Is a personality trait?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Is it? This? Just is it repeated behaviors? Is it
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: a set of behaviors, Like is that personality?
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Are you asking me?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I don't even know, Like what is personality?
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: We should do a show on that.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, we totally should. But from what I understand, just
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: kind of briefly put it, personality is the kind of
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: predictable way that you'll react to the world. Right. Is
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: it easy for somebody to press your buttons? Are you
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: laid back? Are you like could somebody? However, if somebody
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: were presented with this is going terribly If somebody represented
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: with a like an event in life, Okay, you could say,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Josh would probably respond to like that, Yeah, that's a personality.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Right, But is that something inherent or is it birth
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: or order or no? Is it just a collection of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: learned behavior?
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I think it's a collection of learned and reinforced behaviors too.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: If you're told you're the baby the family all the time,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: you're gonna act like the baby of the family. You're
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: gonna act self centered, you're gonna act manipulative. It's reinforced.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: If you're told you you can do anything, you can
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: go out and do anything. You can literally walk through
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: walls because someone told you to. They reinforce that behavior.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: But I think that's what personality is. And this is
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: just me talking. I also believe in birth order effects,
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: by the way, but I think that that is it's
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: learned and reinforced, which means it can be unlearned. You
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: can learn to be different.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. At that same birthday dinner, I picked up the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: check for everyone, and there was a bit of a
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: not an argument letty's struggle. My mom and I were,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of off to the side with the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: people who work there doing the credit card battle, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: she wasn't super happy and I should have just let
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: her pay. But it's part of that thing, like I'm
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the baby of the family, and I kind of just
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: finally told a sec Listen, Mom, it's like it's my
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: turn to pay nice. You know, I'm not the baby anymore.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Like quit writing me a check for one hundred dollars
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: on my birthday.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Do you do you catch this?
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I mean I generally just put it in my kid's
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: bank account.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Oh that's a good thing, you know. Yeah, we don't
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: catch the ones.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Because I also don't want to take away the joy
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: that she gets from writing me that hundred dollars. Yes, sure,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that's not cool. No, it's like I don't need that
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: from her, but like that's what brings her joy.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, giving you money, it's complicated. So let me teach
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: you a little trick. Oh okay, if you don't want
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: to get into that tussle, if you just wanted to
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: be done, sorry, it's too late. When you order, when
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: you hand the menu back to the server, just have
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: be holding your credit card with your thumb and give
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: them a look. It's universal, dude, They all know, and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: they'll take it and be like, and you got to first.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Nobody else does that. They always wait and they pretend
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: to go to the bathroom, like after everybody's done. It
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: so obvious. You got to start before the food even comes,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: before the drinks even come.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: You know what I did? What when we got to
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the restaurant, the very first thing I did was go
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: up to the manager while everyone was being seated. I said, listen, dude,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: my mom's going to try and pay, or one of
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: these other trumps in my family's going to try and pay.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: He's like, I don't want any of them paying. It's
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: like twelve people. I picked the place. I picked a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: nicer place. It's like I don't want to do that.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And I was like, so, just here's my credit card.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Please make sure that the server there's no battle.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: They didn't follow your orders.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: No, because my mom she tried to jump me later
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: on the side and didn't realize I had already jumped her.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: So it should have been done.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I know. But then when we went over there, he
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: was like, listen, man, your mom is over here now,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: like she's the mom. We generally side with the parents
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: on this stuff.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: What place was this?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: It was just a restaurant.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I demand to know. I'm mad.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I my move should have just trumped all moves because
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: it was No. I agree, and that's what I basically said.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And I was like, listen, man, I was like, there
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: are factors at play here that I don't want to
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: talk about. It's like, just please. And my mom got
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a little mad, and then.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: I was I blame this manager. I think you should
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: expose them. Well, I'm glad it all worked out in
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: the end.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Man, Should we take a break.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I thought we were right now.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: No, all right, we'll be back right for this.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: All right, we're back, Chuck. Yes, And like we said,
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: we showed science is kind of like we're not quite
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: sure about the birth order effect. That hasn't kept like
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: a whole cottage like field of psychology from continuing since
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: the eighties basically non stop. Like if you go look
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: at birth order effects, there's it's very rare you're going
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: to run into anything that says like this is all
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: b Yes. Most of it's like, yeah, this is true.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Everybody knows it. There have been some like dominent people
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: in favor of like like let's say, yes, there is
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: such thing as birth effects. And there was one guy
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: in particular who made a big splash in nineteen ninety
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: six with a book called Born to Rebel. Yeah sol Away, Yeah,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Frank Soloway, Frank J. Soloway, if you want to be
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: fancy about it. And he got a MacArthur Genius grant
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty four to kind of study this and
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: write about it, and he did. He wrote a book
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: called Born to Rebel. It was about birth order and
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: the whole premise of the book was he looked at
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: scientific revolutions throughout the ages. It's pretty interesting identified which
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: scientists were on which side of it, either in support
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: of this revolutionary thinking or opposed to it, meaning that
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: they were in favor of keeping the status quo, and
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: then determined what birth order they had. And he found
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: after this study, which is really it was a big study.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they did.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: It was a pretty a lot of legwork and a
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: lot of research, he determined that first borns are much
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: more likely to support the status quo, whereas second borns
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: or later borns he calls them, are much more likely
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: to support revolutionary thinking.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and just one example, as far as he used Darwinism,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: he said, later borns between eighteen fifty nine and eighteen
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: seventy five were four point six times more likely than
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: firstborns to support Darwinism.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Thinking yeah, yeah, so yeah, And that was one of
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: many examples that I think there were one hundred and
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: twenty one historical events with sixty five hundred individuals either
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: supporting or opposing them. So it was a big, big
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: work for sure.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of his I mean he put some
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: reasoning behind it too. He was like, if you're a
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: later born, you might have a hard time competing with
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: your older who might have a tighter bond with the parents. Maybe,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and so that sort of symbolically forces you as to
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: be almost an out within your own family. So you
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: may be more prone to join up with an outsider opinion.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Right to go, look outside of the family union and
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: all of the values and the ideas that it holds,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: to make your own mark in order to get attention
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: or support or whatever from your parents. Whereas if you're
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: a first born, you just got the easiest thing to
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: do is to just fall in line with your parents
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: and hence support the status quo. It makes sense, but
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Born to Rebel was torn apart by some scientists. Sure
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: it's like this is just pure pop psychology tripe. I
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: think that's an unfair characterization of it. Like, the guy
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: worked for basically twenty something years on this stuff, and
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: it was a very robust study. One of the pitfalls
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: that he seemed to have run into, though, was he
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: was analyzing historical figures, which is really sticky stuff. Yeah,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: you can't analyze people even from Afar, even if they're
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: content prairie let alone, they've been dead for a couple
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: hundred years. To base it on that is kind of
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: is kind of difficult and tricky, But I just want
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: to say he worked really hard on it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Another part plucked from his research I thought was pretty
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: interesting was the idea that part of this less rebellious
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: nature of a firstborn might be due to the long
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: standing but now sort of antiquated practice of primogeniture, which is,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: the firstborn gets the inheritance, so they're more likely, just
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: through thousands of years of this, more inclined to like
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: not ruffle the feathers of the parents, right.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: And then the later borns who are like, I've got
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: basically zero chance of inheriting the family titles in a state,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: I'll just go do my own thing. I don't have
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: to fall in line. That makes sense as well.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: And the other interesting thing with that is another factor
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: was the removal of a child from a family. He's
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: found that a later born who was removed from the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: family and reared by relative will end up behaving like
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: a typical firstborn. And again I'm assuming if that's under
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the age of like five.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: But I wonder so I'm wondering if that just is
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: supported by other research, or if all of the parenting
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: magazine articles that mention that whole, you know, the personality
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: is tailored, is really just citing that work. Because that's
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: one of the big problems with pop psychology in general
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: is it's self reinforcing. One person says one thing and
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: it gets picked up by a bunch of people and
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: they're all pointing to the same thing. But since so
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: many of them are pointing, there's so many of them
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: out there doing the pointing, right, it seems like it's
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: a very robust and like a widespread body of work,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: when really it was just one study that said one
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: thing that everybody's citing.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, like in his case, he likes to cite
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: this Norwegian study. It found a difference of two point
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: three IQ points between first and second and born children,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: sample size of two hundred and forty one thousand subjects.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: That's big.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: It is big, But then you know ed sort of
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: brings up a good point, like okay, maybe, but like
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: is a two point three first of all IQ tests
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: are problematic, they're bond for like a lot of reasons,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: possibly bunk. But even if they're not, is a two
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: point three IQ point difference even meaningful? Yeah enough to
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: be like, well look two points.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: So no, it's not meaningful in that like you know,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: that doesn't that's not going to lead to any like
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: closed doors or open doors or anything. It's just such
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: a narrow difference but if that's like an average, and
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: it's it is found across you know, firstborns and later borns,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: like like in a very large population like that it is,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: it does make you wonder, like what would that come from?
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: It does raise more questions. Yeah, you know what I mean. So, Yeah,
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: it's an insignificant difference as far as like actual intelligence goes,
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: but it does suggest that there's something weird going on
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: there that does have to do with birth order.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess that brings us to this really interesting
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: thing that I had never heard of before. Oh, y,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: had you heard of this fraternal birth order effect? Which
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: is basically the idea and a lot of studies have
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: backed this up. Meta analysis of tons of studies have
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: backed this up. The idea is that if you have
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: multiple boys in your family, each successive boy that's born
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: and this is it's just boys, has a higher chance
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: of being gay.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't think And when I first saw that, I
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: was like, that can't be real, right, And then I
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: did a lot more poking around. I was like, Wow,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: it is real. The statistics sort of bear it out.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. If there's a big disagreement about whether actual just
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: regular birth order effects exist. This one is much more
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: supported by the data. Yeah, this the fraternal birth order effect,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: and so much so that there was a sexologist, which
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: if that were my feel is study, I'd be like,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: call me sexologists, Josh, please, I can't find his name
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: is Ray something he said, and I'm not sure what
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: he was basing this on, but he said that there
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: is an increase of thirty three percent in likelihood that
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: you will be gay with each additional older brother you have.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Now, so that means if you're born into a family
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and you're the youngest of four brothers.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I did this math.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? Because I know these people family.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: Zero percent chance, I guess that that you are going
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: to be hetero, that you were one hundred percent chance
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: going to be gay?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, how many it could be one hundred and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: sixty percent? Right, it just keeps going right, Yeah, I
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: think that can't be right.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Eventually you become so gay you pop out the other
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: side and you're straight because you have like ten brothers.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I did see that meta analysis of multiple multiple
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: studies indicated that between fifteen and twenty nine percent of
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: gay males owe their sexual orientation to this effect.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Supposedly Okay, so so, and we should say there are
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: some studies that have not found this. There was a
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: big one that had it was like a survey of
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: British young men that surveyed like eleven thousand of them
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: or whatever and did not find this. But so many
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: studies have found it that science is like this, this
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: actually might be a thing, and we're not quite sure
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: what it is. And at first they explained it that
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: the more boys there are, the less social pressure there
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: are for you to be like hetero and and responsible
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: for carrying on the family line right right, right, like
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: after two three brothers who are gonna, you know, carry
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: on the family line, go go crazy, go do what
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: you want, And that that was the idea behind why
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: it became likelier that you would be gay if you
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: had more older brothers. There's a couple of things with that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: It kind of suggests that like being gay or not
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: as a choice, are being straight or not as a
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: choice rather than something biological, right whatever, That has kind
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: of gone out the window with another really surprising finding
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: that has to do with handedness that really undermines that
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: whole idea.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is so just mind blowing and interesting.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: So the increase in probability of a boy becoming gay
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: is only only if that boy is right handed. Right
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: handed yep, So if you're left handed. Among left handed men,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: there was no statistical difference in the incidence of homosexuality,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: even if you've got a thousand brothers.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: And the weird thing about that is that they've found
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: if you are taking birth order out of the equation,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: if you are left handed, there is a slightly higher
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: incidence of being gay, just period, yes, for being left handed,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: and that's with men and women apparently, So the idea
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: that not only does it not make you more likely
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: to be gay in as far as fraternal birth order
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: is concerned, it actually negates the effects of fraternal birth order.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: It negates it. It shows that that social pressure from
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: brothers doesn't have anything to do with it, right, because
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: a right handed or a left handed kid is not
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: going to be under any more or less social pressure
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: from older brothers to be straight. Right, that makes zero
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: sense whatsoever. And that would also suggest it's handedness, that
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: it has something to do with genetics too.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: If you're ambidextriousity bisexual, I guess so, where's that study
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that makes sense? So I did a little more digging
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: in this, but I don't understand it at all. But
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: more recently, as in just a couple of years ago,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: they think they found an actual physiological biological explanation for that. Oh,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: did you understand that.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if they found it or if somebody
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: made it up, and everybody's.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Like, no, I read a bunch of papers that said that,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they think this may be it, okay, but
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't get it.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: So what they think is that a mom. When a
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: mom carries a boy, her body has a reaction to
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: the male male proteins, the stuff that makes him a
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: male creates an allergic reaction of sorts in the mom,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and the mom produces antibodies. The first time the mom's
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: bodies totally caught off guard, has basically no effects whatsoever
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: on the boy's development as a boy. As more and
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: more boys are born, and just state in that same
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: poor mom, the antibodies get better and better at recognizing
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: these proteins and can actually get to the point where
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: they affect the expression of these proteins, and so what
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: makes the boy straight from the basis of these proteins
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: is actually affected and they develop differently starting in the
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: womb because the mom has developed antibodies to basically maleness,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: which is the most mind boggling, amazing idea I've ever heard.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: That summary was so much better than the scientific paper
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: summaries that I read today. Good John, thank you you
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: should do that.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Thank I do for a living. I just did.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a good point. I thought this was interesting too.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've kind of gone over most of these
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: birth order theories I think in general, but this one
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think we super touched on, and I think
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: it's really interesting. The confluence theory. So this is sort
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: of like resource solution of parents that we were talking about, Yeah,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: like only so much emotional support or financial support to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: go around, But this takes it down to the sibling level,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: and it's sort of basically like if you were first born,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: you are then have a degraded emotional environment and intellectual
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: environment once you get a younger. Yeah. So it's like
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: playing tennis against better or worse competition. If you're the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: better tennis player, you're not going to play as good
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: against a lesser tennis player. And they're saying that that
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: kind of happens with firstborns. Because they have to spend
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: time with this dumb kid, this dumb baby.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: But the dumb baby gets a leg up exactly.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: That's when you play tennis against someone better than you. Eventually,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: that's called the tutor effect. They surpassed that firstborn.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: The student becomes the mass. That's right, exactly, and your
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: skin turns to alabaster.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Really interesting, says Sting said Sting. Well the Police, Oh okay,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, I thought you were like a dream of
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the Blue Turtle. Sting.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: No, I'm more of a nothing like the sun.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, synchronicity, that's good too. I'm still mad at them
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: for that reunion tour.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they really phoned it in. You said, just
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: phoned it in? Hey, I saw for some so I
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: just thought of the Police, and then Stuart Copeland, which
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: made me think of Less Claypool. Remember he's in that
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: band with Less Claypool and Trey Anastasio.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called kill Me.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: No, it's the three talented individuals. But then that made
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: me think of Less Claypool, who was in a documentary
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: I just saw on The Residents. Have you seen it?
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: No? The Residents were the mystery band, right, that were
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the big ping pong heads.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: Eyeballs, eyeballs right, still are a mystery band, still going
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: really Yeah, they're good, but it's good. It's like it's
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: an intellectual kind of like examination of their history and everything,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: but it's really interesting. But Less Claypool's in it.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Do you think when Less Claypool, fish guy what's his name?
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Tresso and Stuart Copeland.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And Stuart Copan you think when they got together to
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: form that band, all they did was just sort of
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: work out who's solo is next. Probably it's like, I
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: want to do the bass solo first, and then we
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: can go right into the guitar solo and then the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: drum solo and then the song's over.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Hopefully the birth order of the three worked out so
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: that it all They were like, yes, this all makes
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: sense to me.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Man, there's nothing better than old videos of Stuart Copeland
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: pitching fits.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Oh Diddy, I always heard it was thing that was
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: a jerk to Stuart Copeland. Was Stuart Copeland's jerk?
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Well, Stuart Copeland was a hot head and Steven was
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: a could poke his buttons. Oh yeah, it's pretty fun.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: There's Stuart pretty Opland. No, don't feel bad for Stuart Copeman.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: He might be. I think he might be the best
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: drummer I ever lived, everybody says Neil Pert. I don't know, man,
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: Stuart Copeland was pretty good.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and like crazy, uh, like doing his own thing.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: And he's from Macon. What yeah, Macon, Georgia, Macon, Georgia.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: This concludes this episode of stuff you should know. If
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: you want know more about birth order, go talk to
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: your family. We don't care. Since I said that's time
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: for listener mail.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Did you watch the Motley Crew movie yet on Netflix?
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: No? No, I didn't know. It's out.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's out.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Okay. Is it good?
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Uh? No?
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Is it based on that book?
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: It's not good, but it's great, you know what I mean?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's based on the book. Okay,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: but it's so I mean, it feels like one of
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: those VH one Are you literally making a note? It's
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: sort of like when of those VH one movie music movies. Okay,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: like the Jackson's one. It's it's it's.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Good, Okay, I'll check it out, all right, who plays
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: Vince Neil?
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: They're all, you know, the only one of the not
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: the only thing. There's a lot of distracting parts. But
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the guy who plays Vince Neil and his hair looks
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: a lot like Garth, looks not like Dana Carvey is Garth,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of hard to fully go there. The
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: guy who played Tommy Lee is pretty good?
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: Was it Christian Navarro? No?
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Did he wants? He can't play Tommy Lee? He could.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Tommy Lee's like six'.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: Five that kid can play. Anybody, well, NO i. Agree all,
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: right it's time for listener, MAIL i, Said.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Chuck the bar is more mc mars. Guy, okay all,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: right here we.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: Go is that From is That? Dawkin, No Mick marsh's mot?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Legruw who is?
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: That he's a guitar?
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Player oh the Old?
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: Creep, yeah, yeah SURE i know who you're talking. ABOUT
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: i GUESS i never knew his.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Name by, creep he was a. Creep he was. Creepy,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: sure that's WHAT i.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Mean still is all?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Right here we? Go this is From. Sam i'm just
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: gonna call this. Heartfelt it's always nice to hear. This,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: hey guys probably could have sent this a million, times
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: but TONIGHT i really felt the need. To you were
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: with me WHEN i transitioned from high school to. College
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you were there the night my dad died two years,
• 50:16
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• 50:18
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• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Years you're always, there. Guys sure you hear this all the,
• 50:23
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• 50:25
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• 50:29
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• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Simple help keep me sane and playing and.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Simple not that we keep them playing and. SIMPLE i
• 50:37
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• 50:37
  Speaker 3: Wrong it's like eight shoots and. Leaves that's.
• 50:39
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• 50:42
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• 50:45
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• 50:47
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• 50:51
  Speaker 1: guys have also been like role models for. Me so
• 50:58
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• 51:00
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• 51:02
  Speaker 1: life have been without? You could say much, more BUT
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: i THINK i got the message. Across that is From,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: sam and he, says, PS i am a he hymn
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: AND i spank this email on the.
• 51:13
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• 51:15
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• 51:15
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• 51:19
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• 51:21
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• 51:22
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• 51:24
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