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Hey cryptic cuties! This week we have a wild ep focusing on just some of the different types of twins out there in the world. Kelsey has a collection of some famous conjoined twins over the centuries and how being conjoined effected their lives. Alanna takes things in the opposite direction, with the stories of some twins who were intentionally separated at birth and raised by different families in a study of nature vs. nurture. Closing the ep out are some anecdotes of twin telepathy. 

Happy listening! Let us know if you know any twins and do they experience twin telepathy? 


Darkcast spotlight promo is Mountain Murders

Transcript

Introduction to Darkcast Network

00:00:03
Speaker
Darkcast Network. Indie pods with a dark side.

Haunted Castles and Cryptids

00:00:28
Speaker
You are listening to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. And I'm your host, Alanna. And I'm Kelsey. And we are at episode, drumroll, 191. Yeah.
00:00:45
Speaker
yeah But don't ask us what's happening for the 200th yet, because we don't know. What do you want to happen?
00:00:54
Speaker
We have to decide what we're doing first. Right. Yeah, maybe we'll do something little different. Who knows? Maybe we'll just do some of the favorite stuff that we like. I know. Something easy, please.

Podcast Collabs and Challenges

00:01:11
Speaker
Reddit stories. Yeah, I don't know. Well, actually, it's funny because sometimes we do get emails about people that want to guest on podcast shows, and I'm just so shy that I'm like...
00:01:26
Speaker
do I, I would love to have a guy on talk about his like Bigfoot book, but I'm like shy. And then I'm like, I don't know. We're not like a huge podcast. Like, you know, cause sometimes people just sending out feelers and stuff. Like they're marketing. Right.
00:01:42
Speaker
And then don't want like, yeah, come on my show. And then they look at our actual like analytics and they're like no, you're not big enough. I'd be like crushed. Can you imagine?
00:01:53
Speaker
Because shit like that's happened on Instagram before, where people were like, yeah, we should do a collab. And then I was like, ha ha ha, with little old us. And then I never heard anything back. And I was like, okay. But also, I'm bad at scheduling that stuff.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah. I was like, we are not good at social media. And we can barely plan between the two of us, let alone somebody that i don't know might not be in our time zone or anything it can be tough and i i kudos to all the people that get all the guests and stuff because yeah it's it is tough coordinating that kind of stuff especially on like a regular basis if that's what they do all the time like good for you people and and i know when you do more collabs and stuff because that's how people find your podcast
00:02:44
Speaker
By the way, rate us on freaking Spotify, please.

Using AI in Podcasting

00:02:47
Speaker
um But yeah, social media is hard, but I played around with AI. Did you see? I've made a post. Yeah, it was cute.
00:02:57
Speaker
Did it? Was it? I only saw like one like or something and I was like, come on, people and i honor watching Yeah. v I was leaving work last night when I saw it. So I was like, oh, that's cute.
00:03:16
Speaker
Oh, yes. I did it. I played around. I was like, it's 930 at night.
00:03:23
Speaker
like, look at this better when I get home.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. But Instagram's got a bunch of um like new features with AI that every time you go to post, it's like, do you want to post a regular post?
00:03:38
Speaker
Or this. And I was like, maybe, but I'm scared. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it is fun. Because was trying to make one for, her yeah our Patreon episode, which is up now, you guys.
00:03:56
Speaker
We rated a bunch of movies. well don't know what rated. Discussed our favorite movies and our some of our least favorite movies. Yeah. Some of which of yours was surprising and I loved it. It was fun.
00:04:08
Speaker
I thought so. Yeah. That's why i was making the, I want Bigfoot rating movies. Make it for me AI. And then it does. And then you can like talk to it. and i was ah, what is happening? Oh, i don't like that.
00:04:24
Speaker
I've created ah digital monster. He's literally a monster. He's a cryptid. Yeah. very bizarre, Kelsey. I don't know.
00:04:37
Speaker
Creepy. but Yeah, that's not what we're here to talk about today. Other than go follow us on Instagram and Spotify and rate us. Thank you. Yeah, please do. Please do. Because sometimes I do announce if we're going to be like off for the week or whatever. And I'll put it on our some of our socials trying to be communicative.
00:04:59
Speaker
ah But yeah. And if anybody wonders if there's no new episodes, usually my brother texting me. Good pods, Glitch?
00:05:10
Speaker
He's like, are you guys being lazy again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. my Exactly. um Scheduling conflicts. Right. all that Yeah, this one we were recording a little later than we'd like to usually, but that's okay stuff.
00:05:28
Speaker
We had Patreon. Yeah, I'm off on Thursday, so I can work on it too. That helps. It's nice having the Thursday off. It can be like the ah fallback.
00:05:42
Speaker
Exactly. Otherwise, I'm like, think if I left all the editing to the last minute, because of course I do. And then I'm like, I'll have to do it all'll after work. Yeah. Yeah. and I'd much rather be at work and see the notification that says you just finished it. I'm like, my post-production is complete.
00:06:00
Speaker
Nothing is more satisfying. Oh, really? You notifications for that? It sends you an email through Zencaster, yeah. Oh, that's annoying. It's a little unnecessary to get an email about it, I guess.
00:06:13
Speaker
You're like, yes, thank you. I just did that. i know. Sometimes I've already moved away from my computer because I'm tired of waiting for it. So it's it can be kind of handy. Weird. gosh. Anyway, sorry. Here, I'm like, I'm tired. and then we get on here and I'm like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Twins in Media and Society

00:06:31
Speaker
Just excited to talk about twins. Twinning. Yeah. Yes. Have you known any twins in your lifetime?
00:06:44
Speaker
Yes, actually. ah Growing up, i had ah like fraternal twins that. i Oh, my gosh, it would have been like in.
00:06:59
Speaker
starting in about elementary school maybe um to kind of like part way through middle school to almost high school i think before they like you have more schooling options so then we ended up going to different schools and stuff um but i was pretty close with them we hung out all the time oh really okay yeah yeah we knew some in elementary so school I think maybe because I veered off into the French junior high or whatever. So then a lot of the other students and people went to the other, a different school.
00:07:39
Speaker
um But yeah, there was the twins that when their dad, I remember the story because when their dad called one day to ask you about them or something, their last name is King. And he said to my mom, hello, this is Stephen King.
00:07:52
Speaker
And she's like, what?
00:07:55
Speaker
And she's like, oh, so-and-so-and-so-and-so's, you know, father, like his twin girls or whatever. and she's like, oh, okay.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, who always makes me laugh. Yeah, I always thought it was kind of funny. um They never told me about any, like, twin phenomena or whatever that they ever experienced, I guess.
00:08:21
Speaker
um Okay. But they had younger sisters that were also fraternal twins. so it was like the two sets of twins. Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
Two sets of twin girls? Yeah. Yep. Oh, shit. And then they got, um they adopted dogs that were, like, born in the same litter that were brothers or something. So I was like, oh, twins and twins and twins.
00:08:47
Speaker
So I thought it was... And twins have twins, like, genetically or whatever. Yeah, did run across when I was, like, looking stuff up that it said technically that twins aren't, like, a...
00:09:03
Speaker
um like genetic thing that can be passed on there's actually no proof that it is like to make you more genetically likely to have or like give birth to twins if you are a twin or anything and i was like oh yeah because you hear that a lot yeah yeah they're like oh twins run on this side of my family they're like no it's always 100 random and i'm like Is it?
00:09:28
Speaker
are we Are we sure on that? No, because I was like, I found like, yeah, some of the stuff in the intros to the articles I was reading too was like, well, there this is how a fraternal twin is different from an identical. And I was like, oh, like the way that egg forms or split. Yeah. Anyway, cool. Interesting. Yeah, because like.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's really weird. and I was like, I've always kind of heard the opposite, that yeah it can like run in sides of the family and everything. So I was like, okay. I didn't dive more into that.
00:10:06
Speaker
but Right. Yeah, because but the thing i read, if if identical twins is sort of more of a fluke or something, as they were saying, then I guess maybe that wouldn't be something that could be inherited necessarily, but Maybe. Yeah, I've never looked into it. Yeah.
00:10:25
Speaker
You just believe whatever you hear. Yeah, because I remember like my mom or somebody telling me that somebody she knows their family um twins is like every second generation, like going back.
00:10:40
Speaker
However many generations has had twins in it every time. And it's like, wow, seems like that's crazy. Right. Yeah. like, oh, shit. Yeah.
00:10:50
Speaker
and don't know. let us know write us in the comments yeah all smarter than us so if you guys are a twin let us know what you guys have experienced and if it runs in your family or seems to oh my favorite twins i like the well they used to go by the bella twins when they were in the wwe so nikki and brie bella or garcia is there okay and then they would They would do like twin magic stuff, like one of them fighting in the ring. And then like they'd have the other one, especially when they really like had the same like hairstyle and everything, because they are really hard to tell. yeah They're identical.
00:11:29
Speaker
um They would have one of them come up from underneath, like the wrestling ring from under the mat and like switch out and like magic. Yeah, it was like their thing.
00:11:42
Speaker
Which is kind of a cool shtick, I mean. Yeah. yeah I... My biggest one was probably Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
00:11:55
Speaker
Aw, with all their movies. All the movies, even the books. My parents bought me the books, and then there was a TV show. Wow.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. um Well, the I guess the books were like It was so stupid. It was like um like Nancy Drew type books where they're solving crime.
00:12:19
Speaker
don't know. Nice. Nice. I mean, I was into the Babysitter's Club and i i I remember this. Yeah, them they really having a moment. Early 90s genre. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:31
Speaker
All their New York. Well, I don't know. I don't know what the movies are. I think it was a little maybe. New York Minute. I was gonna say something like that but I was like I don't know this feels like me trying to make a Spongebob reference like it's just not my wheelhouse yeah so that was probably and then I really like I can't remember their names i did run across them when I was looking up twins um they were in the the twitches movies the teen witches um they're also like identical twins yeah they were really I'll see if I can find their names
00:13:07
Speaker
I also really liked them too. um I think they're in like TV shows and stuff too. I forget what I was listening to. I wonder if it was like Wiki Hole or someone someone that does um little puzzles and quizzes and stuff. And they were like talking about famous people and asking if they were twin or nah or something. And I was like, oh yeah. Cause there's some that you forget how like Scarlett Johansson, Alanis, Morissette, like they both have twins.
00:13:36
Speaker
And they're famous. and oh yeah. Yeah, there's something that happens. I think i went through that whole thing. A lot that have fraternal twins that... Right. um Yeah, it's Tia and Tamara Mowry.
00:13:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah, them Right. Yeah, they've been in, like, they were in a TV show when they were younger, too, that I don't really remember ever watching any of the other stuff that they were in, but...
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, me neither, but they were always in People magazine because then they were famous. Yeah, very like Disney Channel. Yeah. came out in 2005. I was like, ooh, I was 10. It was the perfect age. The spooky witch movie. 18 over here, yeah. Yeah. Or whatever, something like that.
00:14:30
Speaker
Ugh. um So I'm going to send you the link because then you can like follow along with my thing because I didn't get any pictures um or anything like that because this is just like a listicle.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, there's probably some I can upload. This is Siamese twins or conjoined twins, I'd say is probably better word for it.
00:15:00
Speaker
um Right.

Life of Conjoined Twins

00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think we stopped saying that one, but I didn't even think of those. Interesting. Yeah, I ran across one of them, and then I was like, oh, yeah, I've always...
00:15:15
Speaker
um I remember, like, watching, actually, the first ones, Abby and Brittany Hensel. or um They had a TLC show. And...
00:15:28
Speaker
and Yeah, I remember. yeah the learning channel.
00:15:38
Speaker
Learning about very different things. Exploiting people for the sake of money. like and feel much every show where to go with that yeah i feel like every show on there I watched, looking back, was awful.
00:15:54
Speaker
It was like, oh, John and Kate Plus 8? Yeah, sure. I'm watching this. I'm watching... ah little people big worlds i'm watching uh my 600 pound life and i was gonna say is that the one that has those shows okay and hoarders and oh my mom loved that show my mom loved that show and we also watched um i can't remember their show was called but um yeah abby and britney they got
00:16:27
Speaker
pretty big popularity they live in the u.s and yeah there was kind of interesting the little blurb it has here on the listicle they were born 1990 in carver county minnesota um It's like two years after me. Yeah. Been a week.
00:16:53
Speaker
they share like their torso and then each of their heads is kind of like side by side on the like at their necks. And then they each control one of their one of the arms and one of the legs.
00:17:07
Speaker
and That's actually not terrible. It's kind of a classic setup. You got an arm? it's probably... Yeah, like, they have had to learn a lot of coordination.
00:17:21
Speaker
i think they used to play soccer and everything like that, too, which was pretty cool. And then they also, like, documented them learning how to drive and that kind of stuff.
00:17:33
Speaker
ah Which is kind of interesting because they are really... I look at it like if they can only control one arm and one leg each, then they probably can't feel too much on the other side.
00:17:49
Speaker
Like, I'm not too sure. so yeah it would take a lot of coordination and teamwork for, yeah, like walking and all that stuff.
00:17:59
Speaker
It says that they were born with two hearts, two sets of lungs, and two separate brains. um but they've defied all the odds and have learned to live a happy and comfortable life um yeah so they can drive and even ride a bike and in 2012 the twins graduated from bethel university with a bachelor of arts degree in education um oh wow good for them Yeah, and people always ask about, like, separation, but in their case, like, I don't think there's any safe way to do it. Right. say in the thing that the- Because they're just, like, two heads on a body. Like, yeah, I was- Yeah, for the most part.
00:18:45
Speaker
um Yeah, so I remember, like, watching their show and everything up. ah which was pretty interesting.
00:18:58
Speaker
um I think one of them even recently has gotten married. And oh yeah, there's like a whole bunch of different like living situations I ran across with people.
00:19:13
Speaker
Talk about sister wives. Yeah. It's gotta difficult challenging. Yeah. um Yeah, some of these, i will say theirs, because they were born fairly recently in the 1990s, their life has definitely had a more positive um life than lot of the other people um that are conjoined twins that you run across in any sort of looking up a lot. It's a lot of like abandoned at birth, sold into twins.
00:19:50
Speaker
I don't know, like circus or freak shows owned by different people and exploited, taken on. Yeah. So there's a lot of that. And I did find this listicle didn't really talk about any of that kind of glossed over.
00:20:06
Speaker
um so ah just an umbrella, almost all the other cases that happened. Um, if anything was before, like, I don't know, 1980, um So, yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
um Because this one doesn't really talk about it. But, yeah. um I think each of these you could, like, look up individually if you were interested in learning more. um It's kind of fascinating, yeah. You're like, what? Yeah. ah I do remember a couple of the other ah sets of conjoined twins. I remember watching stuff.
00:20:48
Speaker
um about them and like some of them have done surgeries to separate and that kind of stuff which i remember hearing about but uh so the second one no sometimes one or both of them end up dying um Which I can't imagine like how hard that would be for parents to have to decide. Because you're looking sometimes at quality of life or like no life, I guess.
00:21:24
Speaker
i ah Yeah. Fucking talk about Sophie's choice are just the hardest thing. Yeah. And then sometimes it's not even just like quality of life. It's literally um how they're conjoined is like um harming one or the other or both of them so they do have to attempt to separate them just for like safety reasons so yeah i think that would be the scariest to be like oh we have to do this but uh the next is ladan and leah bijani they were born january 1974
00:22:12
Speaker
I think I saw their picture. In Iran. Yeah, so they're born kind of like the sides of their head is together. um That's rough.
00:22:24
Speaker
So, yeah. Just be like... um
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, they were um are very different in terms oh they're very different in terms of personality. um They note that one of them is more shy and the other one's more outgoing.
00:22:47
Speaker
um And then this one is kind of sad. In 2002, they met a... ah In Asia, they met a neurosurgeon and insisted to them that they wanted an operation to separate...
00:23:03
Speaker
And they were eventually operated on in ah at Raffles Hospital in Singapore on July 6, 2003. It says against the surgeon's advice.
00:23:18
Speaker
And they did end up dying. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. No elaboration. yeah. and which yeah but They did die on July 8th, 2003 due to complications associated with that surgery.
00:23:39
Speaker
that's rough. Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
Which, I mean, it doesn't really talk about where all they're connected. It really looks like it's just their head. But I mean, if you're talking like brain matter and that kind of stuff, it's.
00:23:57
Speaker
could get dicey really quickly. Yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
And they just, that they wanted to do it, but the surgeons were like, no. And they were just like, I guess so. Or maybe they talked to a, like, maybe they talked to certain surgeons and they didn't want to do it. And then they talked to like a different group that was like, yeah, sure. We'll do it.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Gosh. So yeah, that one's kind of picture. Yeah. Right? That's the thing. It said that they were, like, speaking at news conferences and they would, like, share their story and stuff, I guess, but... They wear one hijab over their head.
00:24:42
Speaker
oh Yeah. And they're smiling. Ugh, that makes me so sad. Right? Yeah. Aww. So I... Yeah, I'm sure if you, like, looked up more, it would have their, like, reasons, maybe, if they talked about that ever. But, yeah, that one's pretty sad.
00:25:02
Speaker
um Another one, these are, I think, um I think these are the...
00:25:12
Speaker
That one's 1811. Is this one a... Oh, this is the second oldest ones I ran into, I think. Oh, really? It's... Giacomo and Giovanni Batista... want to say, like, Takoy or Tucci?
00:25:34
Speaker
It looks like Tucci, but it's not Tucci. It's not Stanley Tucci. ah Oh, Tucci, but with an O. talk cheek super italian yeah however you say it yeah tri um oh yeah they were they don't know the exact date of birth born sometime between 1875 1877 lacona italy And it said that they were handed over to the Royal Academy of Medicine in Turin when they were just one month old.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I think I remember like some other stuff happening, but they at one point ended up spending about 20 years traveling to different countries for all these like exhibitions, which were basically just like freak shows and stuff. Wow. Yeah.
00:26:32
Speaker
that's crazy that they were able to be born at that time like they almost look wow that's a good point the first girls you talked about were it like it's almost like they're facing more together like i don't know that's yeah they're kind of like torso to torso yeah yeah and they they have another arm they each have two arms It's just different. I'm like, wow. Can you imagine that coming out of the birth canal? Holy. Yeah. Crazy. um Yeah, this one was ah kind of weird because in it said 1897 they decided to retire to Italy because they had like saved up a bunch of money.
00:27:21
Speaker
um i think it said...
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah, something. I ran across, I think, something that said they had over a million dollars um that they, like, got from something. Maybe today's money? Yeah, i was like, yeah, it said, like, converted, it was a million dollars in today's money, and it said they bought, like, this nice little plot of land and decided they were just going to retire and live a nice life, and it's like, okay, good for them.
00:27:53
Speaker
Hell yeah. I mean, maybe it was a million. There was some chick of Wall Street or don't know. was listening to the dollop. I don't remember now, but she had more money before like JP Morgan.
00:28:05
Speaker
And she was like this eccentric. I think she lived on Wall Street until I can't remember now, but I was just like, wait, what? I didn't think that women women could have that much money at that time. like Yeah.
00:28:20
Speaker
oh that's crazy. um Yeah, so they bought a villa, they retired in Venice. It said they later married sisters and lived in seclusion. And that there are several c clintont conflicting reports about their death, with some sources claiming that the two brothers died in 1906.
00:28:39
Speaker
sex um But then in 1911, another report confirmed that they were still alive, and then some other things say that they died in 1940. Wow. So we don't really know.
00:28:53
Speaker
Because if they were born in 1870-something, then like 1906, they wouldn't have been very old. But... No. Yeah. um We'll split the difference. Say it's, call it 1920.
00:29:07
Speaker
but Yeah. Somewhere in the middle.
00:29:12
Speaker
So... Oh, never mind. I was like looking. I was like, didn't I just do number three? And I was like, no, this list is numbered wrong. It was like, it was goes one, two, three, three, four. Cool.
00:29:23
Speaker
It's not me. It's the list. This listicle is wrong.
00:29:30
Speaker
Good lord. You see this? You see this shit? This cat staring at me?
00:29:41
Speaker
I just saw his mouth open after he did that. I don't know what he was doing.
00:29:46
Speaker
ah the The next pair are Krista and Tatiana. I love that name. so nice. you too Hogan. And they are Canadian, which is pretty cool. Yeah.
00:30:01
Speaker
Any relation to Hulk Hogan? I don't think so. Actually, I don't know if he's Canadian. I know the Hart brothers are. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:12
Speaker
I don't think Hulk Hogan is. but Oh, they're little. No, I think you're right. He's probably from like fucking California or something.
00:30:23
Speaker
They were born October 25th, 2006 and they're, it says they're joined at the head and share a brain. um I don't think they would. oh Any chance of separation, but they were. Yeah. Sorry.
00:30:39
Speaker
yeah sorry ah They were given just a 20% chance of survival at birth. And um they obviously survived. it's ah They're now teenagers.
00:30:54
Speaker
And all it really says is that they appeared on, I wouldn't call these reputable TV shows, ah but including the Tyra Banks show.
00:31:04
Speaker
Smize. Time to smize, ladies. Yeah, That's all it really says about them. That's kind of disappointing. i forgot it had so little about them. Hopefully they're doing and doing well. feel like a share of brain, though.
00:31:29
Speaker
like Yeah, like, I i wonder... um
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. yeah like, would you have different personalities, then? Yeah, I don't know. or could you, like... um be like saying two things two different things at the same time like telling two different stories and like your brain being able to follow the two trains of thought and send off like the same signals to like make your mouth move and like form the words at the same time like like yeah one's controlling the left side and one the right or something yeah yeah
00:32:16
Speaker
Confusing to think about, but we also don't understand very much about or our brains and our minds. but but ah Very little, even even now.
00:32:28
Speaker
We're trying. getting there. but Yeah. um The next pair are Millie and Christine McCoy.
00:32:39
Speaker
And they were African-American conjoined twins. Also born... quite a while ago on july 11th 1851 in north carolina here and yeah they were um conjoined kind of like kind of like the tailbone and um oh yeah yeah they almost look like they're standing back to back in this photo but
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah. If they're like leaning more in I think this is one of the only pictures I saw of them. People like drew pictures of them because they also had oh yeah it really there was a lot of history if you look them up um that was like really hard to read through about them like being sold to different people because they're um They got sold to like their plantation owner or something. And then that person like sold them to other people. And then they were taken to different freak shows. And they, um because they were conjoined twins, they like, a lot of times they weren't allowed to wear clothes so that people could see how they were attached. And yeah, it was a whole thing. it was very, very sad to read through.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, which is kind of why I didn't want to do deep dives on a bunch of these because a lot of it was a lot um to read through. so hard enough just to live back in some of those times, let alone be literally joined at the hip, as they say.
00:34:25
Speaker
Like, they look like they are joined at the hip, honestly. Yeah. um It's how the twins spent their entire life globetrotting, performing songs, and dancing for entertainment.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah. I remember um reading something that like they also learned how to play the violin and... um can't remember what other instruments, but they learned different ways of dancing and all that kind of stuff that they were said to be really good at.
00:34:55
Speaker
I wonder if it is like yeah trying to do a three-legged race or how easy it is to coordinate. when like They don't share a brain, but they...
00:35:07
Speaker
share a body yeah um they did have a bunch of stage names i feel like i should look this up because they only list like two of them here and it's not even the good ones was like no they had a way better stage name oh i looked up hulk hogan and he is from america he's from georgia oh okay i was like yeah that tracks
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, they're kind of like conjoined at the back and then it looks like they have four legs still. ah Oh my gosh. So yeah, they were called the United African Twins, the Carolina Twins, the Two-Headed Nightingale, and then also the Eighth Wonder of the World.
00:35:56
Speaker
but of course yeah everything's neat yeah the little little thing says um overcoming years of slavery forced medical observations and forced participation in fairs and freak shows and i was like oh great this would be a fun read um yeah so they um They died on October 1912, to tuberculosis.
00:36:25
Speaker
And... eighth nineteen twelve due to tuberculosis and I didn't really realize this was possible until I was reading about this one that um Christine passed away 12 hours after her sister.
00:36:44
Speaker
So she was like, yeah, um yeah, her sister had passed away and then she passed away. i think both of them were pretty ill.
00:36:55
Speaker
But then I started reading or I mean, running into a lot of these where one of them passes away and then the other one basically just dies because they're connected and get like blood poisoning and I was like god I mean yeah i guess you would have something and one of the ones I ran into right one of the ones I ran into said that the one had passed away like between two and three days after the other one did and it was like
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, like, I can't imagine that. Like, like, how does that even happen or work? Yeah, like, part of your own body is, like, poisoning you. Yeah, that would be, like, devastating because there's nothing you can do at that point.
00:37:50
Speaker
um Last thing you want to do is, like, emergency surgery or something.
00:37:57
Speaker
alright well I don't like it. I don't like that. don't like to think about it
00:38:05
Speaker
it. The next twins are Donnie and Ronnie Galyon.
00:38:16
Speaker
daily i ah I remember seeing them on TV before. ah Because they have a, yeah, they have a very different um configuration. They were joined from the, it says from the groin to the sternum. So like basically partway through their chest.
00:38:36
Speaker
um And then it kind of looks like they're basically just sitting on each other's laps because their legs are kind of folded together. And then they basically just.
00:38:48
Speaker
are like sitting all the time. um yeah And then they're like fully facing each other. Yeah. Okay. gotta look. And they were, this one has them number five, but again, there was two number threes.
00:39:04
Speaker
So, um yeah, they're the ones that are like sitting on the floor. Yeah. Oh,
00:39:18
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Again, with the, like, you're, like, facing each other, which is just... Yeah. how you ever get any privacy?
00:39:27
Speaker
yeah i don't like it. ah But good for them. Yes. they What else are you going to do? can' Right? Like, they were born on October 1951 in dayton ohio and said they were abandoned by their mother and were raised by their father and stepmother, which kudos for them. like way to step up.
00:39:55
Speaker
oh That's nice. So sad, Kelsey. I wish I remembered like some of these, but I i watched like our think things about them when I was so young, I guess. It's like so long ago.
00:40:15
Speaker
um it's like oh sometimes it's like oh I vaguely remember yeah it exactly like oh I vaguely remember hearing or seeing something about them but Not so often you always go down a conjoined twin rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
So that the galleon or egalian um twins, they died on July 2020 at the age of 68. So they did live oh wow quite a while. They do talk about sometimes like people not living very long and that kind of stuff. Yeah.
00:40:59
Speaker
yeah So much strain on the the body's processes, I would imagine.
00:41:05
Speaker
i would think, yeah. like Especially if you have like two sets of a lot of things. like If you're sharing things, it might not be so bad. But if you have two hearts and like um two stomachs or like how much extra work is everything doing...
00:41:28
Speaker
If you're having to like consume like double the amount of food and double the amount of water. and Yeah, and I'm like, this is all speculation. I would have no idea how any of that works. It just confuses the mind to think about.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah. yeah But damn, like yeah, exactly. If you have more than one organ, there's twice as much chance for like disease and everything, I would think. Yeah.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah. i The next twins are Ahmed and Ibrahim. They were born in 2001 in Egypt, and they were joined at the top of the head.
00:42:13
Speaker
And if I remember correctly, they were like... Basically, the crowns of their head were together, so they were like kind of just laying head to head. That's not very...
00:42:27
Speaker
easy no um i remember watching stuff about them because they did do a separation surgery and saw that pictureic i remember like yeah leading up to it and everything i remember there was like videos of them trying to crawl and everything because they were just they were really really young um they were like two when they did the decided to do the surgery um And yeah, thankfully, it was really successful. There was like multiple um teams of doctors that kind of
00:43:05
Speaker
um went through because it was like a 34 hour surgery that happened in Dallas, Texas. So they had different like rotations of doctors that came in in the 34 hours like shifts.
00:43:18
Speaker
I mean, you got told me that their heads got so flattened in some accident from that picture. And I would have been like, okay, yeah, like, yeah, looks like flat from where it was attached, I guess.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, they weren't like, yeah, it was kind of like the crown and then like kind of to the side. it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. um Yeah, not good, but it said that you yeah so they're back living in Egypt and doing well.
00:43:50
Speaker
I hope that's the case. I mean, no updates, I guess, since 2001. So hopefully everybody's okay. Holy shit. Yeah.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, we hope they're doing well. I don't know if I can bear to look into it right now, but... oh Yeah, but was like this article isn't even that old. Why doesn't have like any updates about these?
00:44:19
Speaker
wish them well. Yeah. um Next is Lori and George Chappelle. um They were born Lori and Dory.
00:44:34
Speaker
Aww. Yeah. Just keep swimming. oh Just keep swimming.
00:44:41
Speaker
They are conjoined. The only picture really I saw is like the one they have here in the article that looks like um they're conjoined kind of like the side and then the front of their heads, but they're kind of facing opposite each other.
00:45:00
Speaker
like Yeah. um But it looks like it's messed up. Like, their one eyes. um so they only have, like, really the one eye.
00:45:12
Speaker
um But they're each, like, facing. So, like, one's looking out the back of the other kind of thing. Like, they can look forward and behind it's the same time, I guess. same I don't really know. Oh, my God. Kelsey.
00:45:27
Speaker
Kelsey.
00:45:31
Speaker
Oh, how do they live?
00:45:36
Speaker
think they're doing okay. I mean, they were born September 18, 1961 in sinking spring, Pennsylvania. um And then, i guess, Dory in 2007 said that they were suffering from a gender identity disorder since childhood and that they identified as male. And then that's when they decided to change their name to George.
00:46:05
Speaker
So they're now listed as the only... um
00:46:12
Speaker
like, conjoined twins that aren't the same gender in the world, I guess. um Because of George.
00:46:23
Speaker
So, yeah, they... hope they're doing well. I mean, this would be really hard. um And everything. i think it said that they were, like... Oh, it does have some more information. Yeah, his gender transformation made him and Lori the first same-sex...
00:46:42
Speaker
Siamese are conjoined twin to be identified as different genders and George has performed as a country singer and has won LA Music Award for Best New Country Artist while Lori is a successful bowler.
00:46:59
Speaker
ah At 61, they are the oldest known surviving conjoined twins. I think I saw something because there's a bit like up debate about like because of birthdays and birth years of some of the older conjoined twins it's hard to say who actually is like the oldest or has who lived for the longest wouldn't they it says they're born in 61 when so they're yeah how old now they would be like 39 at the time this was written it said 61 so okay but that i i think is like what
00:47:45
Speaker
math today. I had to tell someone what their total that their fines was. And it was like, i don't know, 175 plus 95. And I was doing it longhand on a piece of paper because I just, I don't know. When I'm on the phone, I'm like, I don't know. I think I panic a little bit.
00:48:04
Speaker
And then after I looked at it, I went like, I couldn't have just gone like, oh, what's 170 plus 100? It's five less than that. I was like, oh my God. i was here like, carry the one, you know, like, like because I'm on the phone and I'm trying not to like, don't know.
00:48:20
Speaker
We're only allowed to tell them like the total of their fines, not like how many fines they have or any details or anything. Cause it's over the phone. you know, sleep and privacy and whatever. Oh, I tell you, but the amount of people that don't know what the fucking cars they have are and what license plates they have.
00:48:41
Speaker
It's astounding. Oh my God. Oh yeah. Yeah. You have six vehicles. Which one failed? Well, it's this one with this license plate. Well, I don't know what that is. Well, I don't know either, sir.
00:48:52
Speaker
It's something. Oh, God. Yeah. That's stupid. um Just have a couple more. I haven't heard of any of these ones, I don't think.
00:49:08
Speaker
Oh, I had at least ah three of them that I remember... hearing about yeah just how how worldly how worldly tlc was just um i keep thinking of like i thought there was one called big jim and the twins but ah they were and maybe in the guinness book for something else i don't know maybe there were a tall guy and the shortest twins or something
00:49:41
Speaker
Oh, okay. Mother, am I making this up? Yeah, they love do that. Yeah, I know it's also like a euphemism. Big Jim and the twins. But like, I swear I'm picturing like fat twins on like little motorbikes or something. I don't remember.
00:49:58
Speaker
I know. Since my childhood. No. strange. So next is Rodney and Roger Brody. They were born so September 1951 in Rock Island, Illinois.
00:50:15
Speaker
And they're also joined at like the tops of their heads. Okay. Yeah, like the crown basically looks like from like basically one forehead kind of like merges into the other forehead. So very, very joined.
00:50:32
Speaker
my gosh. It said they had separate blood and nervous systems. However, they shared a sagittal sinus. sa Yeah, it must be sagittal sinus.
00:50:47
Speaker
ah The canal that drains blood from the brain to the heart.
00:50:55
Speaker
And yeah, this one's also pretty sad. December 17th. Yeah. yeah It's like you said, they're like four heads just blended to one another. Like they're one big long head. I cannot get over this.
00:51:12
Speaker
ah December 17th, 1952, it medical team attempted to separate them in a surgery that lasted 12 hours and they were 15 months old at the time.
00:51:24
Speaker
um It was somewhat successful. said Roger Brody died 34 days after the operation while Rodney died in 1963, nearly 10 years after the surgery.
00:51:38
Speaker
So, I mean, it somewhat successful. would like say that I don't consider that somewhat successful. Well, one of them did live for 10 years, but who who's to say how long they would have lived still, like, conjoined like that,
00:51:53
Speaker
but yeah i just was looking at the picture and reading it as you're going to it and i was like oh my god this is breaking my heart oh that's rough this is the last one this is uh much well if you look up their history it's also very exploitation um That kind of stuff. But what it has here is so nicely written out and glosses over any badness.
00:52:30
Speaker
that um These ones, Chang and Ng Bunker, they were born in Siam, which is great yeahym now known as Thailand.
00:52:45
Speaker
And they are kind of... um that's believed to be where the name Siamese twins came from. Oh, okay. They're kind of dubbed the original Siamese twins. So, yeah.
00:53:02
Speaker
And Siamese cats? ah The first of those were there, too. Not true about that. But they were, it says they were connected at the breastbone by just a small piece of cartilage, a type of connective tissue. So, like, not a whole lot.
00:53:20
Speaker
You can pierce through that shit, yeah. I know, you could have just, with a knife. ah They're like the cats, we are Siamese if you please.
00:53:31
Speaker
We are Siamese if you don't please. They're just like, nah, we're good. Cut us off. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff about them, like...
00:53:42
Speaker
um they were born i think i might have not said this they were born may 11th 1811 a long long time ago um i think out of the entire list of conjoined twins i read they were the second oldest like born the second earliest date out of anybody listed there was one that was like 1700 and something and i was like jesus that's even insane Like, yeah.
00:54:09
Speaker
If there were earlier ones, I can't imagine they would have survived very long, unfortunately. no like, even the even the like infant mortality rate was so high in general, let alone... Well, because if... Yeah, if they went breach or anything, like, they're not in the right position they're supposed to be.
00:54:26
Speaker
Like, if your midwife can't get her hand up in there and turn that shit around, like, yeah, you're... Yeah. You're not gonna do well before we had the C-section... Well, the C-section's been around for a long time, but before we had a safe one that was like, mother's gonna live too, you know? Yeah.
00:54:45
Speaker
Oh, God. Bring back abortion care. oh my God. What is happening? Yeah. We're in the hands handmaid's tale now, Kelsey. Anyway.
00:54:56
Speaker
Almost done. anyway i almost done They to the u s in and settled in North Carolina.
00:55:08
Speaker
And this is ah where things, I think, get fun. They had like bought a huge plot of land as well. They got married to two sisters and reportedly had more than 20 children between the two of them.
00:55:25
Speaker
Oh my god. I think it said that the sisters like lived in different houses and they like alternated three days at a time at each of the sisters' houses.
00:55:40
Speaker
To maintain a sort of separation because there's no separation when you're having the sex talk about handsmaid tale if one thing stuck out to me when we had to read that book for book club it was that the wife was there and the other chick was there and they were both yeah there while the banging was going on I didn't it didn't make a lot of sense to me yeah but um it's a scary thing yeah yeah never watched the show I don't think I finished the book it just is too dry for me I don't like just straight drama or whatever books so it was like oh I could not get into it at all starting it right now yeah it's too dark it's too close to home no I can't
00:56:27
Speaker
um yeah so reportedly they have more than 20 kids they lived for over 60 years a lot of things say that they're the oldest they're like they lived the longest um okay but yeah not too sure on that one they died on january 1874 and
00:56:48
Speaker
four And it said that Ng died several hours later after Chang. Oh. Yeah. That's two days before your birthday.
00:57:01
Speaker
oh But not in 1874.
00:57:04
Speaker
ah Yeah, a hundred or so years before.
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah. Only 121 years. My brain likes the connection. Yeah, but I find that one interesting because like you said, it is just kind of like piece of tissue like a lot of a lot of things and when you look them up kind of say that been like why would they choose not to like separate at that point especially once they're not doing because they did shows so they would like um they learned english and then they once they started doing shows english they would sit down and they would just like talk and like present stuff and then they would
00:57:52
Speaker
It was kind of like a lot more formal and like fancy and they would make sure they were dressed really well and everything like more upscale. It was nice in this one.
00:58:02
Speaker
Yeah, so... Chang and Ing? Yeah. yeah yeah Yeah, it is kind of like, oh after after you guys were out of the public eye, you made quite a bit of money, and you had your land and everything, why wouldn't you choose to try and get like a surgery or something if it is just some skin and cartilage? like Yeah.
00:58:27
Speaker
Except just a surgery at that time was... not as pleasant because they couldn't put you under they maybe had ether but like so little keeping you together i feel like if they just both walked off in separate directions they just pull apart i know they make it sound like it's piercing it's like piercing your like nose cartilage or something like when you say cartilage i'm like oh that's just easy to get through yeah yeah But, like, in all the pictures I saw of them, it's, like, one or two inches of, like, skin that's connecting them and stuff. It's, like, really? It's not. Oh, that's weird. Yeah.
00:59:05
Speaker
I feel like one day I'd get fed up and be, like, done just walk away. Like. Literally just take a fucking knife. Yeah. Like, it's very little compared to a lot of.
00:59:20
Speaker
like everybody else in this listicle it's not the top of your fucking head but yeah anyway who are we to judge they chose you know they had they had a happy life they had a bunch of children um hopefully they had happy everybody had nice lives yeah yeah i mean it seems like it worked for them so So often, like, that's two or three you mentioned that married their own sister wives.
00:59:48
Speaker
So it's like they have some idea of what it's like to be so close to your sibling. I don't know. like because Yeah, these ones married well these ones married sisters. I think the other some of the other ones just got married.
01:00:00
Speaker
But I don't think they married sisters. But yeah, it is kind of the same thing. You gotta be a very close-knit group. and Oh, yeah. Even regular twins.
01:00:12
Speaker
Like the Bella twins. I'm like, They spend so much time with their sister. Like, if you didn't get along with your twin spouse, like, I mean, come on. That just wouldn't work out.
01:00:24
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's hard enough if you don't get along with regular family. Exactly. oh Well, that was great. um Yeah.
01:00:35
Speaker
How am I to top it? I got some Everybody learned something. yeah I don't think i knew about most of those.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, I just knew about a couple. and then I was like, okay, like, interesting. yeah in Different ways people lived and everything.
01:01:02
Speaker
And then I took all the other topics. I was like, I'm doing some separated birth and some twin telepathy. No.
01:01:09
Speaker
Poor Kelsey was like, I'm trying to find something. I was like, okay, I'm sorry. yeah But that was really good. I enjoyed it. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for... This is tuco.co.ke for this listicle.
01:01:30
Speaker
Thank you, Tuco. And we will be right back.
01:01:50
Speaker
I'm Heather. And I'm Dylan. We are Mountain Murders, an Appalachian true crime podcast dropping weekly episodes every Sunday. Our show offers well-researched cases with unique storytelling and Southern flavor.
01:02:03
Speaker
Stories so good you'll want to sop them up with a biscuit. Ooh. I pull back the curtain on lesser known and often obscure regional cases from Georgia to Maine, exploring

Ethical Concerns in Twin Studies

01:02:13
Speaker
the darkness that lurks deep in the heart of Appalachia.
01:02:17
Speaker
And I react with profound statements. you You mean profoundly stupid statements. Something like that. We're not your stereotypical hillbillies. But we do like moonshine. It'll tickle your inwards.
01:02:29
Speaker
Join us every Wednesday for Mountain Murders Offbeat. All righty then. So...
01:02:38
Speaker
the normal and appalachiancentric subject fond mountain murders anywhere you download podcast hit subscribe today to catch up on our latest episodes or binge our catalog righty then so apropos of talking about twins that are very close together we're going to talk about some twins that are that were raised very far apart yeah yeah um because apparently there was at least one um sort of study that deliberately did that to twins to raise them apart to see like the whole nature is nurture debate and whatnot yeah it's pretty crazy
01:03:26
Speaker
It was called ah the Minnesota Twin Family Study, and that was the major research on twins who were raised apart. And apparently approximately 10,000 people took part, which I don't know if they were like asked nicely or and just forcibly told. I don't know. It sounds so sketchy and weird.
01:03:49
Speaker
Like that's a lot of people. right And like... experiments on people generally not a good thing I'm just gonna go and say it yeah yeah it's like I was listening to an episode of the constant where they were talking about oh sometimes they try to figure out what would happen if you didn't have people speak English to babies or speak language to babies and if they would learn on their own it's like no they'll if you don't give them any love and like language and care they like
01:04:24
Speaker
basically just die and you're fucked up for trying to like experiment with that yeah like they're only speaking because they're mimicking your voice so if you're not talking they wouldn't even attempt to other than crying I guess yeah and how how important is this information that we have to deliberately neglect children and I was just like oof yeah um
01:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's kind of crazy that this kind of thing actually happened. um One of the pairs that ah was a pair that was kept apart was Elizabeth and Anne.
01:05:08
Speaker
These twins ah spent 78 years apart. Holy! Yeah, ah but when they met, they found out that they had both married ah someone named Jim.
01:05:22
Speaker
One of them became a Hamel, one of them became a Hunt. They were both widowed at the time, which kind of to be expected at 78 years of age. Gordo!
01:05:33
Speaker
You know? Gordo is unimpressed. Um... So, before we were so rudely interrupted, um Elizabeth and Anne both married gyms, one a Hamill and one a Hunt.
01:05:49
Speaker
Both were widowed religious people, as they were described, and they were also, like, being described as kind of hamming it up for the camera, or not being camera shy the opposite, rather. Hey, they're like 78. Yeah.
01:06:06
Speaker
Or at least they spent 78 years apart. Yeah. Like, holy shit. You know how they found each other, honestly. um That's so cute.
01:06:17
Speaker
I know. i like that one a lot. But probably the most famous twins that were part of this study were known as the Jim twins and have been featured on, you know, different podcasts and a documentary called Three Identical Strangers.
01:06:36
Speaker
Oh. Wait, so they were the triplets. Uh-oh. I confused myself.
01:06:48
Speaker
Um.
01:06:54
Speaker
I think I ran across them when I was looking up stuff.
01:07:00
Speaker
And were they gym twins or were they triplets? That's where I get confused.
01:07:11
Speaker
Three identical strangers.
01:07:16
Speaker
Ah, my notes don't make no sense.
01:07:22
Speaker
guess there's three of them.
01:07:29
Speaker
Sorry, I think I got mine a little mixed up at some point. Because they're the Jim twins, I feel like, are the pretty famous ones. But then there was a documentary about three identical strangers. So I think that was about different triplets.
01:07:45
Speaker
Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay, so... Yeah, think the more important one that people won't know about is the three identical strangers. and And they met when the brother number one, as we'll call him, his name was Eddie Gland.
01:08:04
Speaker
He had attended New York College, that brother number two then enrolled in. Yeah, sorry. I don't know why had a little bit about the Jim Twins because this is different people.
01:08:15
Speaker
so eddie starts going to new york college and then when he left um another guy starts going there and the guys there are like hey eddie and they get mad when he doesn't respond or remember them but yeah doubt that there is another one and those two brothers went on uh the news as long lost twins and And that's when a third ah brother, David Kelman, sees this and thinks he's literally seeing double because they look just like him.
01:08:44
Speaker
And then they end up making the media rounds as these long lost triplets, like doing the Today Show and a cameo alongside Madonna and desperately seeking Susan.
01:08:56
Speaker
Not that great movie, I think, but... Never, never seen I was like, I've heard it! Yeah. Yeah. um dont know shoot sorry yeah i think i got confused it didn't have all three brothers names but they did share some similarities they found out all were wrestlers um enjoyed the the same brand of cigarettes the same favorite color and a taste in older women
01:09:28
Speaker
i had a quote as kevin fallon writes in the daily beast They shared the same exact mannerisms, even sitting the same way. They were all wrestlers, liked the same colors, had the same taste in older women, and even bought the same brand of cigarettes.
01:09:41
Speaker
Each also had an adopted sister, and all three sisters were the same age. Just like weird little things. Yeah. That they can't really control. It's weird, but that they didn't have control over, I guess. Yeah.
01:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's not going to be genetically determined or whatever. Yeah. The story of these triplets turned sinister though.
01:10:10
Speaker
The three born to a single mother who gave them up for adoption. Uh, oh yes. We're purposely separated at birth for the aforementioned nature versus nurture type experiment and placed in three different socioeconomic households.
01:10:26
Speaker
So like purposely, you know, like poor middle-class rich type of thing, put them in three different yeah categories. Um, Over the course of their lives, they were visited by researcherses researchers posing as adoption agency officials.
01:10:42
Speaker
So outright lying to them, I guess. Yeah, that's crazy to me. It's so cruel. It said, but they were never told about the experiment or each about each other and the results of the study have never been made public.
01:10:56
Speaker
And yeah, one of them said it was cruel. It was wrong. Kelman told the Washington Post early 2018. Yeah. Yeah.
01:11:04
Speaker
yeah but I don't like any of the the separated separated intentionally kind of things. Like I get if somebody yeah gives them up and they get separated because different families adopt them. But if you're like 100% intentionally like stopping a family from ah knowing there's two of them. Even allowing them the chance to adopt both. Yeah.
01:11:34
Speaker
That's so sad. Yeah. Yeah. I can't see many instances where it is advisable to experiment right on people. Yeah.
01:11:46
Speaker
It's not great. The next one, Elise. Oh, God. Sheen. Shine. Sorry. um Was born in New York City and was living in Paris and looking for her birth mother when she found ah her sister.
01:12:05
Speaker
And this was 2004. They, at the time, were 35 years old and they had met at a cafe in New York City. Like, when they decided to meet after they tracked each other down, I should say.
01:12:19
Speaker
um Because, yeah, this was just ah kind of a listicle as well, yeah. And the first thing they did was look each other up and down, assessing the differences. Because, of course. Yeah.
01:12:32
Speaker
How do you look? And, um... Bernstein. Okay, so that must be the second sister that we haven't named yet. Was concerned about her twin's knees.
01:12:43
Speaker
I remember I said, do you have chubby knees? Bernstein told NPR. Chubby knees. That's weird.
01:12:53
Speaker
I guess she's sensitive about her knees. um And it said, and I kind of glanced down below the hem of her skirt and saw that her knees were quite cute.
01:13:04
Speaker
And I always thought of mine. You got some cute knees there.
01:13:09
Speaker
are we? That's what she thought. She thought, why did she get the cute knees?
01:13:17
Speaker
I don't know. Jealousy. Immediate jealousy. ah Because what do girls do when they see each other? We size each other up like guys. Just like anyone. my god. Yeah. Knees.
01:13:28
Speaker
Knees. Knees. Is going to be the new new surgery? gosh.
01:13:38
Speaker
Right? But did she have cute feet? I'm not as concerned about knees. I mean, knees just kind of always look weird to me. I don't know. Yeah, it's like being like, oh, that's a cute elbow. Like,
01:13:51
Speaker
no so It's a wrinkly thing of skin. and it so Not a hot body part. Yeah. Ooh.
01:14:02
Speaker
Ooh, knees. What are knees and elbows called? Oh, God, whatever. i was just... that limbs, joints joints probably see yeah like I can't think of words and one of the podcasts I listened to I think it was Fuck My Work Life had a ah listener story on their um promo where it was like someone fell down the stairs and went and I fell down the stairs and I hit all of my knees and elbows on the way down so both it was good
01:14:40
Speaker
Um, so the controversial study that split up Schein, Bernstein, the Triplett, Bernstein, who knows? The Bernstein Bears?
01:14:52
Speaker
How's it spelled? and Right? Oh, God. I'm gonna be started. The Triplett Brothers and many others were helmed by Austrian child psychologist Peter Neubauer, who died in 2008.
01:15:08
Speaker
Okay. So the same one as the Minnesota one? i don't know. In interviews before his death, he showed no remorse for the decision to separate siblings and to keep information about their birth from them.
01:15:19
Speaker
He claimed it was all in the name of science.
01:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, but like, what all did we learn from it? We still argue about nature versus nurture. Like, did we really have some great breakthrough as a result of this study? I don't think so.
01:15:39
Speaker
I mean, not usually, right?
01:15:42
Speaker
um The nonprofit Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, which was connected with the since-closed adoption agency responsible for the child separations, released a statement to the Washington Post in early 2018 disclaiming responsibility and urging any subjects of the study to come forward.
01:16:01
Speaker
um Quote, the Jewish Board does not endorse the study undertaken by Dr. Peter Neubauer, and is appreciative that the film Three Identical Strangers has created an opportunity for a public discourse about it.
01:16:13
Speaker
We hope that the film encourages others to come forward and request access to their records. Yeah. I can't imagine why the Jewish board would be against experiments and exclusions like this.
01:16:29
Speaker
Right? I can't imagine why. what they're not into eugenics either oh my god wasn't wasn't hitler obsessed with twins too like oh my god i don't know was he yeah fuck i hate that he was obsessed with the occult i'm like fuck you you're not cool enough
01:16:54
Speaker
but he was a shitty painter
01:17:01
Speaker
did you ever see that painting he did of the window in behind a staircase oh makes no sense no he literally he painted a building and the window is like ah behind the staircase that would get from the second to the third floor or like the first to the second floor and on the outside of a building and they're like uh so that's not where a window would go this building I'm pretty sure. Hold on. Let me find it.
01:17:28
Speaker
Maybe I'm making this up.
01:17:32
Speaker
I don't know. It's reminded me of... I've been watching a little bit of this show you can find on YouTube called Taskmaster. Where they kind of make a bunch of comedians do weird stuff. ah It's kind of improv-y. It reminds me of Whose Line Is Anyway a bit.
01:17:49
Speaker
And I was watching it and they were like... they have to bring in like some stuff for the first task that like they win as the prize at the end of the episode if they win it. and I don't know, they they had to bring in something weird or something. This guy was like, um it's these medieval paintings of cats when they didn't know how to draw cats.
01:18:09
Speaker
yeah Oh my God, I love those. And the cat has like a weird human face. A person's face. Yeah. It's awful. It's scary. Yeah. Okay, here's Hitler's... It's such a British show, it's so funny.
01:18:23
Speaker
Okay, here's Hitler's really bad window picture. I was right, I didn't hallucinate this. So, oh on the window right here... The window right here is like behind the staircase.
01:18:37
Speaker
The bottom. oh So it's like, yes, that's exactly where a window would be. The window gets cut off by the stairs. makes no sense. But there's apparently mathematically, they're like, oh, yes, the all the angles and points of view, everything is like off, like the perspective is warped.
01:18:57
Speaker
They're like, yes, this building is not a flat wall with like the perspective. They've like mapped it out and been like, oh yeah, the perspective is completely off. This wall would be like, yeah, would be flat. It'd be like me trying to do painting. It'd be like shadows everywhere. None of them make any sense. Nothing looks like the same time of day.
01:19:18
Speaker
Shading's all off. So that's what I think of. And I was like, oh yeah, it's a shitty painter painted this window behind a staircase. Yeah. Wait, and did he fail math too? Or was that Einstein? Oh, I better not equate those in the same sentence.
01:19:32
Speaker
Anyway.
01:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, he sucked.
01:19:38
Speaker
oh So, um um yeah, we're still talking about these, uh... said twins bernstein told npr that finding her twin compelled her to think more about nature versus nurture twins really do force us to question what is what it is that makes each of us who we are since meeting elise it is undeniable that genetics play a huge role probably more than 50 percent bernstein told npr in 2007
01:20:11
Speaker
even though she didn't get the cute knees or whatever yeah those brothers are just genetically predetermined like older women my gosh yeah that was the most random connection of them ah this one said it's not just our taste in music and or books it goes beyond that in her I see the same basic personality and yet eventually we had to realize that we're different people with different life histories um and the next pair uh one of them was don't know if it's pronounced like anias the i had that fancy um two dots over it umlaught oh i have no idea it had the two dots
01:21:04
Speaker
Um, so Anais or however you say it, she was from France. She had a friend point of that. She looked just like this actress, uh, called Samantha, an American actress called Samantha. I think it's fooderman almost looks like future man. Yeah.
01:21:22
Speaker
but with ah fooder man future man no um uh samantha was american so she didn't think too much of it ah different countries whatever then she saw their birthdays and they were exactly the same november 19th 1987 so she ends up messaging the actress saying so yeah i look like you you imagine how terrifying so I can be your stunt double.
01:21:53
Speaker
The best stunt double you could ever hope for The same person. I could not message any actor. Hey, I look like you. This is not at all.
01:22:06
Speaker
She says, so I don't want to be too Lindsay Lohan well, but how to put it, I was wondering where you were born?
01:22:16
Speaker
Good for her. So brave. Oh. So they end up, yeah, but realizing they're born in South Korea. They get to know each other through Skype.
01:22:27
Speaker
um They were both adopted. They had their DNA tested. And then they end up doing their own documentary called Twinsters. Because, of course. I mean, one's already an actress.
01:22:38
Speaker
but Yeah.
01:22:42
Speaker
They wrote a book called Separated At Birth. At being the at symbol. A true love story of twin sisters reunited. By the way, the at symbol learned in a podcast centuries old.
01:22:55
Speaker
Fun fact. Really? Apparently. ah can't remember if it was supposed to denote like a ah unit of measurement or something. It was just like a short form.
01:23:08
Speaker
But I was like, wow. That's crazy. Blew my mind.
01:23:15
Speaker
Sorry, I listened to a lot of weird like history podcasts and There's some fun facts sometimes. um Both these sisters, these twinsters, separated at birth, learned that they both um happened to hate cooked carrots, which was probably the most specific thing about them. Because then it was just like they tended to have their nails and hair done kind of at the same time and then realized after that they had done that.
01:23:46
Speaker
um Oh, yeah. I know, not super huge similarities maybe, but, and they also said their taste in music was quite different. um It said Bordier likes old and classic rock and roll or electro techno music, while Fooderman or Futureman or whatever, it likes to rock and roll, soul, funk, and pop singers such as Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.
01:24:10
Speaker
Bieber. Did I say Bieber? I don't know. My chair made a weird sound when you were... saying.
01:24:21
Speaker
All good. I did not hear it. um And as Bordier told The Guardian in 2015, we're so similar. She reacts to things the same way I do.
01:24:34
Speaker
We're both awkward and have the same strange sense of humor. She doesn't have to explain herself to me and she understands me perfectly too.
01:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that would be nice. ah Yeah. Okay. It's nice to have a sibling to be close to. i was going say a sister. um I like being close to my sister. We were pretty close growing up.
01:24:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:00
Speaker
So, this one, we'll call it Twin Brothers from Bogota. Bogota. Oh my god! What is wrong with my brain?
01:25:12
Speaker
i hate it when I'm on mic and I forget how to pronounce everything in the world. Um, sorry. So they're from Columbia and this is interesting when I thought, so in 2013, a woman named, uh, Jeanette pause, pause, pause, pause I don't know that I'm saying that right at all.
01:25:31
Speaker
So sorry.
01:25:33
Speaker
P-A-E-Z. And her friend Laura visits a guy at a butcher shop in Bogota for some pork ribs for a barbecue. The woman's friend Laura is astonished to see someone who she knows.
01:25:49
Speaker
Like, she's like, I work with you. You're my coworker. You're Jorge. You work with me at Strycon. Yeah.
01:25:58
Speaker
He's like, no. Yeah. She's like, what the fuck? Jorge? um That's Jorge, right? J-O-R-G-E. I used to think it was George, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced Jorge. Mexican. Yeah, I don't know.
01:26:16
Speaker
I mean, Spanish, you know, because they're not from Mexico. They're from Colombia. And also i told Rain the other day that, well, at least you don't call it Germish anymore. And she's like, what do you mean? i was like, that's what you used to call German.
01:26:31
Speaker
So cute. Okay. But this guy's name is not Jorge. It's William. And she's like, weird. Okay. You look just like a guy work with.
01:26:44
Speaker
um And then when she's back at work, she says, you must have a twin, Jorge. And he's like, well, yeah, actually I do. But he doesn't work at a butcher shop. His name is Carlos.
01:26:56
Speaker
And he looks nothing like me because we're fraternal, actually.
01:27:02
Speaker
So weird as that was. Oh, I heard about this one. Really? across it Yeah. Okay. I thought it was so cool. I don't think I had. That's why I'm like, yeah, there are twins, but also not.
01:27:21
Speaker
um So you're like, okay, so like they all four grew up together. These are like four long lost. quadruplets or whatever at least that's what i thought reading the article yeah um and then uh just more details was a month or so later when janet gets a job at strike on and she sees this jorge and she's floored that it looks like an exact match and she shows her friend which was the a butcher named william who laughs off the resemblance as a complete coincidence but yeah um quote after six months janet left strike on for another job but even then whenever she and her boyfriend ran into william she wondered if she should have told jorge about his double that question tugged at her until finally on september 9th 2014 slow day at her new job janet texted laura an image of william to show jorge laura went upstairs to
01:28:20
Speaker
piping to get Jorge's reaction to the photo. Jorge, smiling, took a look at her phone. He swore, that's me, he said. He stared at the image.
01:28:30
Speaker
William was wearing a yellow Colombian soccer jersey, practically a national uniform on the day of big matches. Jorge often wore one just like it, which made it all the more apparent just how thoroughly the young man in the photo looked like him.
01:28:43
Speaker
um yeah yeah that'd be like before I moved here I used to tell Pat you were the only one I knew that wore an Euler's jersey and like if I could see someone wearing and just used to walk down the street it was Pat but now chaos it's fucking everyone and have to look yeah no that's not you um but you know what i mean like if they have the same build and whatever it's easier and they're wearing the same thing easier to mistake them yeah um
01:29:14
Speaker
I can always tell my brother is It's like, oh, yeah, because he's tall, like he's and then he's got like his beard and he's always he's always wearing like a baseball cap and that kind of stuff. So...
01:29:30
Speaker
my his silhouette sometimes the other ah couple months ago we were in a restaurant and they had like the curtains kind of blocking off the outside entrance like the window and I saw somebody walking past went there's Trav I could tell just from his silhouette I'm like that's him like totally totally yeah yeah side profile that's him that's awesome yeah
01:30:00
Speaker
Oh yeah, i thought this was funny. ah A friend was walking by Jorge's desk and Jorge flagged him down for a second opinion. Tell me what you think of this photo, he said to his friend handing him the phone.
01:30:13
Speaker
This photo of you? He's like, you look fine, friend says. Except it's not me, who Jorge said. He could not stop staring at Laura's phone.
01:30:26
Speaker
Jorge gave up on getting any work done. He sat down with Laura in the office kitchen so they could talk. Maybe his father, who was never more than an occasional visitor to their home, had another child he never mentioned.
01:30:37
Speaker
It's possible. Yeah. um Jorge started flipping through more of William's Facebook images, now on his own phone. Uneasily, he noted one of williams one of William in a butcher's smock, looking just the way Jorge did on the rare days he had to wear a lab coat.
01:30:58
Speaker
I know. And that's if it did upload properly, there is pictures of these guys because like, ah yeah yeah, they look similar. But once you see the twins and which ones are supposed to be when you're like, okay, yeah, no, those guys are identical, right? Like, yeah, the one the one picture I saw had like all four of them in the same picture together. And I was like, oh, damn, like,
01:31:28
Speaker
That's what I was trying to get a good picture. Because I had so many pictures them all together in the New York Times article that I go to download them and they're like, by the way, create a free account and like sign in and blah, blah, blah. was like, fuck off. I was just reading this article like the other day. Bastards.
01:31:50
Speaker
um
01:31:54
Speaker
Uneasily, he noted one of William. Oh, yeah, I said that. Sorry. He glanced at picture of William holding a shot glass, a friend by his side. It was his fraternal twin, Carlos, sitting next to his doppelganger.
01:32:06
Speaker
Well, it was his spitting image, anyway. His brother was the book-smart one. He was an accountant. They were both raised by their mom in Bogota, along with his sister, Diana. he shows his picture or He shows his brother, Carlos, the pics.
01:32:22
Speaker
It is not Carlos in the shots by the bar pic. He asked his twin, who are they? Sorry, I confused myself writing these notes. I'm so sorry if it's not clear.
01:32:34
Speaker
The names were tripping me up.
01:32:38
Speaker
um So Jorge only knew that they were raised in the rural town of Santander, known as a rough kind of spot where people... Well, the article in New York Times said they kind of loved their guns, but fuck off. America doesn't.
01:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I've learned that New York times may have a little bit of a bias. Yeah. oh Anyway, um, they were born in December of 1988, just as the other brothers had been.
01:33:09
Speaker
So a definite mix up was suspected at this time. And they both knew if one was not biologically related of these twins, it was probably Carlos who looked less like his siblings and their mother.
01:33:21
Speaker
They had always assumed he must look more like his dad who was out of the picture. but Okay. Can you imagine finding out that you're like, no, it's because you're like, not related. um Yeah, that would be weird. Like, I don't know what I would do if I found out, like, if somebody just came out to like, your family's not your family.
01:33:46
Speaker
and like But I kind of look like them though, right? Because like... Yeah, i have to say out of these four, like... um I can imagine even how hard it would have...

Twin Identity and Lifestyle Differences

01:34:00
Speaker
how hard How much harder it would have been to tell them apart as, like, infants.
01:34:04
Speaker
Exactly. Because looking at the four of them, you're like, oh like, you kind of have to really... Exactly. Look. Like, they look similar enough and have enough similar features that you could be... If they're not sat side by side, you're like, okay, that one's that one's twin. Yeah.
01:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, because they like have a bit of a different nose, but as a baby, like you don't have that as much. Yeah, and it's not... Yeah, and not by much, even. No, they are like quite similar. I was surprised.
01:34:40
Speaker
I find it funny that in this this one picture, three out of the four of them are basically the same height, and then the one guy is just like three inches taller. Oh, really? that's Yeah. That's really quite a fascinating article, like... ah obviously couldn't quote all of it but like talking about how they had been raised different and how that had an effect on their lives and it's the ultimate test it's two twins two two two identical twins in the same house yeah exactly one of each kind living the poor life it's like rich life
01:35:19
Speaker
They were. It's that guy it's that guy's dream. and it was It's the prince and the fucking pauper, man. It's fucking, yeah. It's city mouse and country mouse or whatever.
01:35:31
Speaker
be like so that's what i'd look like if i ate healthy food grew up with money no but seriously though like i yeah i think i might have a little bit but um uh so this is a quote that carlos never looked like jorge and diana was obvious so i think diana was the sister his siblings shared their mother's more delicate frame her high cheekbones her eyes Yeah.
01:35:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:03
Speaker
um the contrast was not merely physical carlos had always felt like an outlier in his family although he preferred to think of himself as independent oh yeah as a child carlos had no interest in joining the elaborate games of make-believe that his mother and siblings played the funny voices they each put on play acting for hours Since their mother died, he checked in with Diana far less often than Jorge did.
01:36:28
Speaker
he was the only one in the family who cared about fashion, and God knows he was the only one who could dance.
01:36:35
Speaker
Savage. know, I forget who was writing this, but... um carl Carlos and Jorge had always assumed that Carlos took after their father, but they did not know him well enough to be sure. Yeah. Yeah.
01:36:49
Speaker
But since carlo loved Carlos loved his mother very much, this was a shock, of course. um Meanwhile, William is working at the butcher shop and talking about his double with his cousins and his brother, Wilbur.
01:37:05
Speaker
So there's a William and a Wilbur, so forgive me, but That's good time. Um... janith was dating william's cousin brian who worked at the shop uh the butcher shop she suggested that maybe they'd been to the bogota hospital as infants for some reason because they lived in the rural area but bogota is the capital so like maybe you come to the bigger hospital big city i mean yeah if you're giving birth to twins you're probably going to the big city or there could yeah exactly could be some complications
01:37:40
Speaker
and that's i think what happened um
01:37:44
Speaker
They call William's aunt who confirms this theory. She said he and wil but Wilbur were delivered at just 28 weeks and William had digestive problems. The aunt said he was treated at the Materno Infantil in the city.
01:37:59
Speaker
um Janeth went about asking Jorge if he could confirm he'd been born there too. When William found out it was a yes, he was devastated.
01:38:10
Speaker
Of his five siblings, he was the closest to his mom, always there for her. But when he told Wilbur, Wilbur shrugged it off, saying, so? We were swapped. You're still my brother. This made me cry.
01:38:24
Speaker
I know.
01:38:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. and that's when the article had the thing about, like... I didn't quote it, but I, I, I, um, summarize it by saying that twins are two sperm, two eggs. Identical ones are one fertilized egg that divides by a fluke or accident.
01:38:43
Speaker
So it's like different genetic material, I guess. i don't know. Um, Janet arranged a meetup. Wilbur called Jorge to ask if his cousin Brian could come. They noticed they did not sound alike, uh, for twins.
01:38:59
Speaker
Um, On their voices, Williams was huskier, and of course there was ah the Santander accent. William also called Jorge, sir, a formality typical of people from the countryside.
01:39:14
Speaker
Oh, that's so cute. I know, sir.
01:39:18
Speaker
Jorge thought he liked this person's voice. He sounded not just nice, but good. my god. That's really sweet. I know some of this was very touching. I just kept including more. couldn't help myself.
01:39:32
Speaker
um The meeting was awkward and shy. After William met Jorge, they went to Carlos's house. But he was too scared. Yeah, because Carlos didn't want to meet up with the other two at first that thought they were twins.
01:39:46
Speaker
I don't know. ah feel like He was too scared. Let's go play pranks on people right now. Like... Can you imagine though? like ah It's not even just like finding out you have another sibling. It's like another you.
01:40:01
Speaker
o But the the I don't know. Maybe the best thing about it is because it happened with like The pair of them, you know at least, yeah, that like the brother you have that you grew up with is going through the exact same thing you are. Exactly.
01:40:24
Speaker
Of like... Yeah. Can you imagine if it was just one them? I guess the other one. i guess i guess it's the other one from the other family is going through the same thing of in like... So you do have somebody to talk to about it that knows exactly how you feel, I guess?
01:40:38
Speaker
Yeah. Because all four of them just would have found out that they had a twin that was not their twin that they grew up with. Yeah.
01:40:49
Speaker
It's a lot. so Yeah. And it was like, oh, well, like, i'm I'm not with, like, my right family. And then they're not with theirs. But they know what I'm going through. And then this person just found out your brother isn't actually your brother, but you do have a brother. It's this brother. You're a brother from another mother.
01:41:12
Speaker
no it it's so much. And it's like, it's little stressful. They were like, didn't I don't, one of the mothers has passed away, so it's very, hard think,
01:41:28
Speaker
yeah oh
01:41:33
Speaker
Sorry. It's just rough. oh Oh, yeah. to When they went, William and Jorge, to Carlos's house, he had been too scared to go meet them, and then he was too scared to open the door at first.
01:41:46
Speaker
And then they said when he finally did, he and Wilbur, his, I guess, twin, one looked at each other, yelped, aye! And turned away. like, aww.
01:41:59
Speaker
and one of the articles and it's true right yes it's true one of them had like their first meeting or whatever from the the first two twins where they like first saw each other in the street oh my god i was like oh that's crazy yeah you can like watch the video Oh yeah, they both shouted, aye, and turned their back. Oh, sorry, this was a quote.
01:42:21
Speaker
They took a quick peek at each other. They both shouted, aye, and turned their backs, covering their eyes, each turning red. well Wilbur started speaking, but Carlos was having a hard time catching what he was saying.
01:42:34
Speaker
Instead of rolling his R's, Wilbur spoke with hard D's. The speech impediment, Carlos had won as a child, but overcame it with speech therapy.
01:42:47
Speaker
the only thing that makes me think of is when uh fez from that 70s show is they're trying to teach him to become an american citizen he can't pronounce america he says america and they're like well how do you say eric and he just goes like it's totally like different tone of voice it's so stupid
01:43:11
Speaker
um Okay, so that's about it on them They're looking for their differences. Some of them had callous hands compared to the the city mouse.
01:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, even I can tell which one is. The guy with the the tie and the glasses. that i The one that actually is taller than them. Taller, literally.
01:43:37
Speaker
i think it said that they... That might be further on my notes, but that the taller ones were the ones that got to live in the city. and like, so it must have to do with their lifestyle. And I was like, that's crazy.
01:43:51
Speaker
Shit. I think I have it here later on. um Yeah. One of them had cow's hands. The other ones, Wilbur's hands were like manicured, clear nail polish, which apparently was popular with these Metro City guys.
01:44:07
Speaker
And the most important part was that they all supported the same soccer team. Atletic Nationale. ah Yeah. I mean... Isn't it?
01:44:19
Speaker
It's very popular. It's very important in Colombia. Yeah, there were some weird...
01:44:35
Speaker
things that came up about the study they did and minnesota that separated the twins such as like there was this quote from this thomas bouchard they said he was a psychologist at the university of minnesota who began studying twins in 79 ah now i'm nervous why i included this but He said researchers have claimed to divine a genetic influence in such varied trait as traits as gun ownership, voting preferences, homosexuality, job satisfaction, coffee consumption, rule enforcement, and insomnia. That's wide range of topics.
01:45:20
Speaker
Right? I would never have guessed any of those at the of my head. That they're all a genetic influence on these traits? Weird. Okay.
01:45:33
Speaker
Like... Okay.
01:45:42
Speaker
But they... oh yeah one unexpected finding in his research suggested that the effect of a pair's shared environment, say their parents, had little bearing on personality. Genes and unique experiences...
01:45:54
Speaker
a semester abroad an important friend were more influential um okay i find that kind of interesting don't know i think everything works together yeah because obviously people could grow up in the same household same parents be totally different people like we have some of the same dna but yeah different from my siblings as you are and of course yeah
01:46:24
Speaker
this was sweet jorge got a tattoo of his fraternal brother carlos on his chest to include him as that was the one he grew up with and his brother carlos was starting to i think feel abandoned because he connected so much with his actual twin that he got a picture on his chest a tattoo right next to his mother's face tattoo
01:46:49
Speaker
that's sweet yeah Yeah. And they've continued to kind of like try to get to know the family, the biological parents in that rural area of Santander.
01:47:01
Speaker
Um, that I don't remember who their biological children were, but they were just like, those were the alive parents. And they were like, you know, there's so many feelings to navigate and things they had to go through. And they're just trying like get to know what it would have been like.
01:47:18
Speaker
Um, And they were like, Carlos would probably not have been an accountant. And Carlos was like, sure it could have been, but like it was really hard to get to school if he lived in the rural area.
01:47:31
Speaker
yeah I think he had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he might not have been if he had a grown up somewhere different. You know, his life would have been totally different. and Yeah, it's like, you're like opportunity.
01:47:45
Speaker
Exactly. You're like, okay, you're born like a rich white man in America, or you're born like a poor ass fucking boy in like Columbia or like, God forbid something even worse, like a woman somewhere else.
01:48:05
Speaker
Yeah. um Oh yeah. They, they got into some bio things that, Seemed very interesting, but also had a hard time understanding.
01:48:18
Speaker
okay. Yeah. There's some sort of study available that if was like, oh, this case is so wonderful. We can look into two different sets of twins raised in two different places. And it it will be a rare insight into these epigenetics or something like that.
01:48:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:48:41
Speaker
um okay does this make any sense the meta-analysis published this spring in nature genetics which examined 50 years of studies of twins arrived at a conclusion about the impact of heredity and environment on human beings lives they're really trying to do that nature versus nature versus nurture environment or heredity nature versus nurture how how differently can we say on average the researchers found any particular trait or disease in an individual is about 50 percent influenced by environment and 50 percent influenced by oh my god isn't that ne who would have guessed it's both
01:49:27
Speaker
50, 50, right? And how do they come up with the exact 50?
01:49:33
Speaker
Another study? don't know. Oh, Hopefully not. Guess what? Chat GPT or AI or whatever. can make up fake uh citations for studies that don't exist oh my god i was just reading an article from a letter or is it can from medium that was like yeah that little thing robert kennedy put out or whatever that had citations for his make america fit again they were like
01:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, you gotta to look at those citations, because those are just made up by chat GPT, because they're like, we know what a citation looks like! It's not a real study! Oh my god. This is crazy.
01:50:20
Speaker
Oh, it's crazy, guys. I hate... i just... so i hate it I hate all of it. Just had to throw that in there. oh But yeah, 50%, 50%.
01:50:33
Speaker
I don't know. There's definitely some things they think about our genes. It said interacting with the environment, switching on, switching off, depending on the stimulus. Sometimes with lasting results that will continue on in our genome past to the next generation. I'm like, I don't understand, but it's crazy.
01:50:51
Speaker
It's like... Whatever. Yeah.
01:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, but definitely... from what some reach researchers have concluded environment could certainly have an impact and i think i agree with that it sounds like it does yeah with like how many things yeah we don't have to put a number on it we just realize that it's a truth your environment infects affects your life like not a shocker um So that's the end of my separated twins.

Twin Telepathy and Connections

01:51:33
Speaker
And I, where are we at? 52? I had a couple blurbs of ah twin telepathy. and I'll do a couple. I'm almost at an hour, so.
01:51:45
Speaker
Yeah. um Okay, so little blurb anecdotes about um twin telepathy, sort of when they knew stuff. Oh, know, some of my sad story.
01:51:57
Speaker
my aunt woke up in the middle of the night from an odd dream she even woke my uncle up to tell him about it in the dream my dad told her to take care of my sister and i he told my aunt he was leaving and needed her to look after us she said the dream really shook her the morning that morning we found out my dad died in sleep by indeent lee o is me know some of are sad sorry like this, yeah, the precog dreams or whatever, almost.
01:52:29
Speaker
Yeah. or Or is it precog if they're at the exact same time? Yeah.
01:52:37
Speaker
In high school, we took a quiz on the assigned reading we had done from To Kill a Mockingbird. One of the questions was, what does Scout dress up for as, dress up as for Halloween? ham.
01:52:50
Speaker
What? How did you know that? a ham. Because I saw the movie and read the book in high school. It's a ham. It's like a honey ham or whatever.
01:53:01
Speaker
A ham bone. I did not know that. Like, I know some references from To Kill a Mockingbird, but they had to put in breakfast. Breakfast? Brackets? It's actually very, very cute.
01:53:13
Speaker
It's a very cute costume. Aw, that is so cute.
01:53:18
Speaker
Um...
01:53:21
Speaker
That's so funny. And it said, in brackets, a ham. And then my brother and I included similarly drawn pictures of stick figures wearing ham costumes in the margins of the quiz.
01:53:34
Speaker
And that was apparently a submission by Oatmeal Raisin Bagel. Oatmeal Raisin Bagel? I've never heard of an oatmeal bagel. I know. i was just chewing on that in my mind, too. No,
01:53:47
Speaker
no I mean, if you've seen the movie, it's very cute.
01:53:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah, right. I don't know that I've seen the whole movie. I've just seen it referenced so many times.
01:54:02
Speaker
The next one. During Woodshop, my twin thought, I wish I had that sandpaper. I thought he had said this aloud and handed him the sandpaper to him without saying anything. No one around us heard him say he wanted the sandpaper and is still one of our greatest moments.
01:54:16
Speaker
By Call Me Kenneth.
01:54:23
Speaker
One of us was going up the stairs and the other was playing in the living room. My mom was stood in the doorway of the hallway and the living room so she could see both of us. Whoever was on the stairs fell and banged their knee, but was fine.
01:54:34
Speaker
Instantly, the twin in the living room, who couldn't see the stairs and was unaware anything had happened, suddenly grabbed his knee and started crying. Oh my god. By jack his back. One, two, three.
01:54:46
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Are you ready Here's the ham. Here's the ham costume. It's like literally just a blob with like a top for her eyes to stick up. It's hilarious. it says ham. Yeah, it's like they haven't cut the ham in half or anything.
01:55:03
Speaker
And it it's literally labeled ham. Ham. It's free. Yeah, it makes me so happy. It's like stupid. It makes me think of The Simpsons. I feel like they were always making them freaking costumes.
01:55:17
Speaker
But I have to be California. Yeah. If you had asked me literally anything other than a boat to kill a walking bird other than what she dressed as, I would not have known the answer. I was about to say the brackets, ahem, when you were like, ahem. I was like, okay.
01:55:36
Speaker
Cool, bitch. She knows this. Yeah. It's a book about racism. And I was like, yes. Wait, so what does the ham mean? I don't know. They're doing a Thanksgiving.
01:55:49
Speaker
I think it's I wouldn't have remembered it was for Halloween. I thought it was like a Thanksgiving play or something. So. Oh, yeah. Right, right, right.
01:56:01
Speaker
This one said, I used to date a twin a long, long time ago before smartphones and internet and his twin brother came back from vacation with a broken leg. My ex said, oh, so matter of factly.
01:56:12
Speaker
Oh, I wondered why my knee was hurting.
01:56:17
Speaker
creepy
01:56:21
Speaker
All right. ah My father is a twin. When my uncle was on his honeymoon, my parents were robbed. When my dad discovered the break-in, my uncle, sitting at his campsite, jumped up and told my aunt, pack your shit. Something happened with, in brackets, my dad. We gotta go.
01:56:35
Speaker
They were 1,500 miles away. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. That's crazy.
01:56:47
Speaker
Okay, my twin and I were both sport camp counselors a couple summers ago. To decide which team would go to bat first, my twin and I would play rock, paper, scissors. We shot, quote unquote, the same hand nine times in a row.
01:57:03
Speaker
That's pretty good, yeah. Damn it! don Damn it! Yeah. Be like, do it with your eyes closed! ah Facing opposite directions! Jumping on one leg! Right.
01:57:16
Speaker
I know. Some podcasters I know, that like, let's try and do it from far away. I'm holding up this card.
01:57:24
Speaker
um The next one was the very short. I knew she was pregnant with her first child before she did. oh um And then I have twin daughters. They are 18 months, so they haven't had a lot of time to do something too freaky.
01:57:39
Speaker
However, once I came to pick them up at daycare and they were still playing while I was talking with the teacher. They were on opposite sides of the room from each other, each pushing a play stroller with a baby doll in it.
01:57:51
Speaker
At the exact same time, with no discernible communication made, they both stopped, walked to the other side of the room, and started pushing the other stroller. It was crazy. oh I know, that sounds like a glitch in the Matrix.
01:58:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:08
Speaker
Oh, God. Okay. Uh, twin here in high school. I was out four wheeling with a friend at the time. My twin on the other hand was about 50 miles away from me at work while screwing around that day. I flipped my buddy's truck and almost got us killed.
01:58:22
Speaker
So being in the middle of nowhere with no cell service, we figure out a plan to get help. A few hours later, after we make it back home into cell service, I see i have a missed call from my twin.
01:58:34
Speaker
I give him a ring to tell him this crazy story about wrecking a truck. He answers in a panic, asking me if I'm okay and what happened. Slightly caught off guard, I ask, what do you mean? He said he was working, and at the exact same time I flipped this truck into a ditch, he was hit with this wave of something going terribly wrong.
01:58:52
Speaker
He knew it involved me, but didn't know what had happened. After the phone call, it took I look at my phone to realize his call came in one minute after I'd crashed the truck. ah Throughout our lives, there's been other instances of this.
01:59:09
Speaker
Couldn't you just get like a minute or two before? that would be much more helpful. but Yeah. Don't flip the truck. Yeah. I could tell you were in trouble, but cell service was shit. yeah ah data da Oh yeah, this was a weird one.
01:59:27
Speaker
I'm an identical twin. My brother and I are very close. There was a brief period of time where my brother and I would longboard either stoned or drunk or both. you were teens that's dangerous i know it doesn't sound great but they're being honest um i had an extremely vivid dream one night of my brother's funeral the dream started with me at an altar and a crowd of people sitting in pews i looked down at the altar and noticed a sheet of paper so i began reading it aloud it described in detail how my brother died longboarding down a hill and getting hit by a car
02:00:04
Speaker
I remember reading it and having this incredibly eerie feeling like I was having some sort of premonition or something. um Like what I was reading was something that was going to inevitably happen. After this realization, I looked up and every everyone in my dream was standing and looking at me with wide eyes.
02:00:19
Speaker
When I looked down at the page, I had just been reading the text read in giant, bold lettering, wake up, warn him, wake up, warn him, wake up, warn him. Wow.
02:00:32
Speaker
Everybody in the pews suddenly started rushing the altar, choking and crushing me. i woke up sobbing incredibly hard, finding it hard to breathe, as if I had actually been trampled and suffocated. I'm not usually one to believe in dreams or premonitions, but this scared me shitless.
02:00:47
Speaker
I wrote a lengthy text describing my dream and asking him to promise not to longboard under any sort of influence anytime soon. We both quit longboarding shortly after. N-E-G-H. don't know how you say that.
02:01:03
Speaker
That's good. Scary.
02:01:10
Speaker
some of them are about the most terrifying things. My wife's best friends growing up were a set of twins and a few years ago one of them died after a lung battle with cancer. Her twin was talking with us after the funeral and saying how she could feel the cancer winning and knew what her sister was going to find out from them the doctor and could even tell the third time the cancer came back before the sister did.
02:01:34
Speaker
It doesn't seem helpful if you can't do anything about it. No. Um, back in 2004, my twin brother got married and I went to Hawaii several months later on a delayed honeymoon.
02:01:49
Speaker
Around Tuesday, I started to feel really hot and felt heat radiating off my skin. The next day it was a little worse. That night they called and said where they were at. I asked them if Jason had gotten a sunburn and his wife confirmed he had gotten his back sunburned.
02:02:05
Speaker
less traumatic yeah but i mean you know they're going on vacation they're probably gonna get a sunburn i know you could you could almost infer that on your own but it is interesting if they like feel it getting hot yeah um the rest of that one was there have been other times i was thinking about something and he would start talking about the same subject once we were kids i was thinking how awesome pizza would be for dinner and then he asked mom if we could get pizza But kid doesn't want pizza. Okay.
02:02:38
Speaker
At any time. Yeah. I have pizza the time. Another time in an English class, we had to write an essay at the end of a test. The teacher thought we had somehow cheated. Both essays were identical with the same grammar mistakes.
02:02:50
Speaker
We were sitting opposite sides of the room during the test. That's pretty good. No, we just both don't know how to spell definitely. Definitely. I just definitely don't know to spell definitely or restaurant. always spell it wrong.
02:03:06
Speaker
oh Oh, this reminds me of that Modern Family. Seriously, I'm not making this up. We were playing a game of Pictionary. We were not cheating, just playing regularly. I drew two thirds of a circle and he blurts out, King Tut!
02:03:20
Speaker
That was the answer.
02:03:24
Speaker
Because there's an episode of Modern Family where Cam and Mitch are like, and then I just like, and he makes like piano playing like fingers, right? Like as if he's going to play on piano. And then Mitch just goes, Casablanca.
02:03:40
Speaker
And that was the answer. So stupid. Damn. Ugh. Yeah, I would see if I was a twin, I'd be doing shit like that all the time. Anytime I would be bored, I'd be like, say pickle, like in my head, just be like, I'm gonna.
02:03:57
Speaker
And my twin would be so mad because it'd constantly be like, if you can read my mind right now. You'd be working on their telepathy. I would be screaming at them in my head at all times.
02:04:12
Speaker
I mean. We could get it going. sure.
02:04:18
Speaker
We don't have to be twins. the
02:04:23
Speaker
I don't want the, um, the twin pain thing. No, that sucks. No, no, no. I'm good. I'm good without that.
02:04:34
Speaker
No, only the fun things. Only the fun things. Um, But yeah, there's like so many. I mean, that was that was part of the reason I was able to get these notes done. I found a bunch on like little anecdotes and and that was really fun. So then I just found some of the other ones.
02:04:55
Speaker
was like, oh, look what happens when you separate them at birth. Not so fun.

Upcoming Podcast Teasers

02:05:01
Speaker
No, definitely not so fun. Yeah.
02:05:06
Speaker
ah Well, anyway, I guess we'll be back next week to talk about some other shit. Yeah. We're doing... What did we even decide on?
02:05:19
Speaker
i was like... I wrote down bodies in the water. Because I think that's a song or something. But yeah, we were like, talking about how there's so many cases um around the water yeah i have a bunch like saved was like why do i have all these boating accidents saved i mean ask ask mr ball and why is a whole series of like people going to places they're not supposed to go to yeah like yeah it's sad but like keeps his stories going i don't know oh yeah yeah that should be interesting
02:05:56
Speaker
um there's many ways you can die in and around bodies of water on ships in the water. gi out
02:06:08
Speaker
Kudos to you that choose to work on the water, like my sister who works in the Navy. Good job. You're brave. You're very, like, isolated and... oh shit, yeah.
02:06:24
Speaker
I don't get, like... marine I could not. I don't get claustrophobic, but is there something of... There has to be something of, like, a fear of, like, just a... I don't know, like, a the open ocean?
02:06:40
Speaker
There's gotta be a fear of that, right? There's very specific fears surrounding the ocean. There's, like, one of, like, giant things in the ocean, like, megalo...
02:06:52
Speaker
something phobia i don't know it's yeah mine's more like at least on land if you're in a big open space and you need to escape you can just keep walking but if you're in the ocean where do you go are you gonna swim and tread water for four hours while you wait for rescue like what's the plan exactly it is it's very scary almost get offended though sometimes i don't know if it was you or was pat just saying maybe that he was like Oh, I love a lake. Love a river. Swim in the ocean. Nope.
02:07:25
Speaker
And I know some people are like that. But having grown up. near the rugged Atlantic Ocean I'm like I love the ocean but also terrified like I don't want to be out in the middle of it like fuck that I don't really like I don't like water I can't see the bottom of so oh god where it gets all black and shit and you really can't see the bottom that is scary yeah so whether it's like a lake or ocean or anything like that anything where I can't it gets deep enough that like I can't see what I'm walking on I don't love
02:07:59
Speaker
because it can just be scary we were just we went down to the river valley for a walk and just walking there's sharks there's sharks in lakes there's sharks in lakes that are closed off away from the ocean i just couldn't get over how like green our river here looks i was like oh yeah mean obviously there's not gonna be like a clear ass like you know bermuda water or whatever but i was like huh no that'd be nice though i can't see the bottom of that uh yeah kind swimming in Yeah, we took the dog. He got he got to the point where like we've never seen him lay down on a walk, but he was hot and tuckered out for a bit after we across the bridge.
02:08:42
Speaker
and there There was a little, yes, pal, I'm talking about you. There was a little path that went down towards the water and we started to kind of see, because it's real steep, right? Like you can't get down to the river at most points.
02:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like. Yeah. And like, it was like, no, we can't reach the water. But then he like kind of sat down in the shade. looked like he was not going to get back again. He's like, I'm done, carry me back. Carry me back.
02:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, where they're like pulling their dogs. yeah i was like oh god we cannot carry you yeah i talked about lee the leash from pat was like come on then we'll go slow we'll go slow i was like i don't want you a stroke like yeah well because usually we walk up early in the morning right and then this was like yeah twenty four in the afternoon we just thought we'd take a you know drive down to the river valley and it was cool when you're on the bridge and by the water but yeah it really hot too yeah damn poor little guy my parents so one of their first uh house i think they lived in together it was um what my grandpa had the house there my dad said and then they like moved in with him basically and then um it was in the river valley right by the um like mutart conservatory or whatever the
02:10:03
Speaker
plant my god thing there yeah it's like a gorgeous garden area they have yeah tiny tiny houses though was like yeah very very small but it was like right there in the river valley very cute Yeah, to be in the heart of things. like It's nice, but i'm we had one people that were like, oh, you guys could do rent to own and buy the property. And like we didn't end up doing that. And I'm glad. I'm glad we live in the burbs.
02:10:36
Speaker
so Yeah. Much easier to live in a fairly new house. Yeah. Gotta say, it's not bad. Yeah.
02:10:47
Speaker
o We cause all the problems to it. As Fenrir like rips apart the I can hear him. Can you? I heard him scratching right time. You're supposed to do that on the I know. struggle to get him his nails trimmed.
02:11:05
Speaker
Hi, pal. He's gonna pull Gordo. What are you doing, mom? Okay, bye. I just opened the door. Now I'm leaving. and you're not being interested the photo still sleeping i think it's a sign um yeah thank you guys i want to go sleep yeah you're gonna sleep yeah i'm tired i've been up since 5 30 this morning oh god that's gonna be me when i'm working at eight oh no
02:11:40
Speaker
I'll get up like an hour before I have to go in. That's my, that's my like max. Terrible. I know. all right. the Catch next week.
02:11:55
Speaker
Bye.
02:12:15
Speaker
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02:12:29
Speaker
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02:12:44
Speaker
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02:12:56
Speaker
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