Selects: Is birth order important?

Hey, everybody, Chuck here with this week Saturday Select. That's when Josh and I curate specially selected episodes to rerun that may be a few years old. They may be oh heck, they may be ten years old, maybe even older. You never know, because a lot of people don't know these episodes even exist. So that's why we do this. So anyway, this one's on birth order. It's called is Birth Order Important? I believe this was originally a Chuck

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Aby, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff If you Should Know. Jerry cast Jerry, were you a uh what was your birth order? Oh, Jerry's a middle child two of two or two of more. So you're the baby.

You don't know this?

No? Did you? Sure?

No? I've know Jerry for like thirteen years. Hey, So have I, Well, not that long twelve years, so have I? No no comment?

What am I?

I don't know? That's right, I know what I'm the baby, you know that.

Yeah, I didn't ask what you were. I know you know what you are? What am I?

This isn't quiz not You're not gonna just yeah, yeah, I wasn't calling you out. Oh well I was calling you out. You were in a humorous way, and I called you out. It's hard not to look at this stuff through your own lens though, of your own family.

You know, are you changing the subject?

Well, no, I'm getting on with it. Oh okay, because as the youngest of three and all of us have three distinct personalities, it's hard not to kind of like think about birth order right and if that's a thing right, And it may be and it may not be. Yeah, depends on which scientist you're asking.

I tend to think like, there's just no way it doesn't have any effect.

Now there, I think it definitely has an effect. But as we will see, it is one part of a huge pie.

Yes, that.

Indicates what kind of person and personality you might have. Well.

Plus also it's devilishly tricky to analyze to study because of how big that pie is. Yeah, there's so much going on with your personality that to just pinpoint one thing, even a big thing like that where you're born in a family, but it's just tough to pin down. So you're the youngest, right, good guess, Yes, I am. I knew you were the youngest. I'm like, I wear that on my sleeve.

I feel like I kind of do too.

Mmy, I guess in some ways, but like I was reading this checklist for the youngest. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I guess. So let's let's let's do it.

Should we go over that that stuff first?

Yeah? Totally all right.

So this is like the sort of macro view of how a lot of people think of birth order pop psychology.

Yeah, so if you were born into a family, there's basically four ways that you can be born in some sort of order. You can be the first born, you can be a middle child, or you can be the last born. And then if you're a real outlier, Okay, you're right, so there's five or triplet. Oh god, yeah,

The yeah, and there were I mean a lot of this are these are generalizations, but they are generalizations. Like you said, that kind of everyone who's ever been in a family can kind of say, yeah, that's kind of true, right. You know, when you have an only or your first kid, they this article references as that first sort of experiment. You don't know what you're doing yet You're probably going all in, depending on how lazy you are, how motivated you are as a parent with this, you know, being

Other kids on the side.

Not exactly. I wasn't fair old by any means, but I was. I did not have rules imposed on me like my brother and sister did. I did not have. I was allowed to go to Panama City for spring break and they weren't. I was allowed to kind of do my own thing, and I was trustworthy, so that probably had a lot to do with it. Yeah, if I would have been a real problem, they might have clamped down a little more, or maybe not.

And they probably wouldn't have necessarily clamped down like we need to give Chuck way more attention and guidance than we have been. They would have probably been.

Like crime and punishment.

They would have been like we're sending Chuck to rehab or whatever, you know what I mean, Let rehab take care of her, reform school or something like that. Because once you get X number of kids in, you're just so tired. Yeah, so tired. And you're older too. Sure, like when you're chasing a little kid around in like your forties or fifties, that's different than when you're chasing a little kid around in your mid twenties.

I can't imagine a world of difference.

You know. So there's there's there's a lot of resources, not just you know, parents' attention, but also their time, intellectual attention that they'll give a kid, like and say like hanging out, teaching the kid to read that kind of stuff, and just attention in general, and also financial resources, the family's resources in general, are a pie that must be divided among.

All the financial, emotional, all that stuff instructive. So generally speaking, firstborn's, people say, tend to be very conscientious and structured and reliable and achieve high achievers.

Yeah, because their parents are focusing like a laser on them. They know everything that kids got going on, maybe a little too much, and the kid is responding to this by basically becoming a perfectionist and really wanting to be around their parents and.

Their parents' friends.

More mature, very much mature, because they're all of the people are most of the people are hanging out with are adults.

Yep.

Okay, so that's a firstborn typically, right, everybody knows it. Don't try to deny it.

Middles in general are people pleasing, which is so my brother.

That's weird to me because when I think of middle children, I think of jam Brady and Jan Brady was not a people pleaser. She was just you know, a lump, like a lump with a cloud over head.

Poor Jan.

But that's true, Like I would not characterize jam Brady as a people pleaser, would you know? Like she was going to burn something down eventually. If the Brady bunch had stayed on the air long enough.

Was also a blended family. So what was uh yeah, who was the It was Bobby and then Peter was from.

The lateral, I guess you'd call it was he was he a people pleaser or just Jan more than Jan. But blended families do confound things. We'll get into that yet for.

Sure, but people pleasing, somewhat rebellious, which is not my brother at all, large social circle, not really my brother, and a peacemaker, totally my brother. He's the best, He's the best. And then the youngings, youngies young'in's like us, most free spirited, fun loving, uncomplicated, manipulative. I've been called some of these things severing degrees, self centered, attention seeking and.

Outgoing check and check.

But combined you and I and we're sort of like the proto youngest uncomplicated.

Though I'm like, I don't get that. I'm exquisitely complicated.

I'm on the surface you wouldn't think it, but I'm pretty complicated, sure, as we all know in this room.

But that's the only one that I'm like that I question. Yeah, all the rest of them are like, yeah, that makes sense.

It's like the Chinese zodiac. You look at that menu and you're like total dog.

Yes, and movie guy pant sounds great right now?

Only no siblings. You are what they call almost like a super firstborn.

So sounds scary.

All the traits of a firstborn on steroids, very much perfectionists, very much more mature for your age, conscientious, diligent, prone.

To be leader, can leap over tall buildings.

And then this is where it gets interesting, and this sort of starts.

To finally, everybody, this is where it starts to get interested.

Well, this is where it gets in a little bit, like how complicated it can get because there's so many factors at play, Like what if you're in a blended family, because that kind of throws it all out of whack. Yeah, dude, can.

If you're born a firstborn and you your parents, your parents get divorce and you go with your mom who gets remarried to a dude who has.

Brady Yes to a smashing cool architect.

For sure, and he has a kid that's a little older than you, Greg, Greg's the firstborn. You're not the firstborn anymore. The best you can hope for is to form some sort of confederacy or alliance with Greg to rule the rest of the siblings. But you're not the head honcho anymore. You're not in charge. That's a big deal. I can't imagine many more traumatic experiences, especially when that follows closely on the heels of your parents divorce or

Yeah, and that's we were talking about, like the firstborn, like the baby of the family. If all of a sudden there's a younger, no good, no, Like I remember my parents for some reason talking about adopting a kid. I can't remember how old I was. I must have been about seven, and I remember breaking down and crying and just being like, you can't do this, you cannot bring it someone younger and cuter right than me. And that happens blended family. All of a sudden, you have

I can't compete with that.

You gotta kill that baby.

Well, that's what happened too. When Brady Bunch started to lose ratings. Apparently your family was losing ratings. So they brought in cousin Oliver a new baby, and I don't think Bobby was very happy about that either.

No, but just think about jan it all makes a little bit more sense. Like she was like, I'm the middle child, and then they brought in three more and she was like, I'm even more.

Middle Yeah, you're deluded. The middle child is deluded. And if you have multiple middle children, forget about it.

That's right. However, here's the thing with blended families. They say by about the age of five that a lot of your personality is set. So if you're older than five and all of a sudden your family is blended, they say, it may not make that much of a difference.

No, no, No, that's where it's trouble. If you're younger than five and you your personality is a little more plastic. If you were born a baby of the family and suddenly you're a first born or you're not there, or you're a middle kid, yeah, you'll adapt to that a lot better than you would if you're like older and you're you're more solid in your birth order.

Yeah. I didn't mean not trouble. What I meant was like, if you're like twelve years old and the family blending happens, it's trouble, but it's not like your personality is like all of a sudden, I'm the youngest or you know what I mean, Like, you don't all of a sudden swap to a different birth order personality, I don't think.

Right, But if you're younger and it happens, you.

Do right under the age of five, which.

Goes to show that if this is a thing, and we'll talk about whether it is or not soon. Yeah, it has nothing to do with biology, has everything to do with with nurture, not nature, because a kid can adapt depending on when this happens, they can adapt to a change in birth order if they're young enough. Yeah, that means it has nothing to do with biology. It's all the environment you're raised in, which is the most boneheadedly obvious thing on the planet.

And then before we take a break, there are also gap children. Supposedly, if there's at least a five year gap between births, then it just sort of resets.

That was like me and my oldest sister. She was thirteen years older than me, right, she was just like this older, cool person, but not like an old, older sister, not at all overbearing, like really like for me, I guess a little bit, yeah, or like a second mom kind of to an extent.

Because that does happen too if there's a big gap or a big family. Like I dated a girl in New Jersey that had that was like six or seven of them, and by the time she came around, she was kind of fully being raised by her siblings.

Right, right, So what happens when there's enough of a gap, a new family birth order forms. So like if you have an oldest and then there's multiple years, like say ten years between your oldest and your middle and then two years between your middle and your baby, the middle and the baby are going to form a firstborn and a last born type relationship.

Yeah, and the last born is always going to be the last born, yes, regardless of gap.

But then twins, like you were saying, is one last confounding thing. They twins or triplets multiples as you call them. Yeah, I think so. They form their own family unit within the family two with each other. And apparently no matter where they're born, twins never act like middle kids. They always act like the firstborn or the baby, but to one another.

Right, and I think they generally come together to kill the parents.

Basically, right, they hold hands, it's like an elevator of blood washes around them.

And then finally, with adoption, they say that depending on when your child has adopted, the same kind of scenario scenario happens as in like with gapped and blended.

Families, Whereas, if the kid's young enough, he or she will tailor their their their birth ordered to the family that they're adopted into. But if they're older, there'll be trouble.

All right, that's a good overview, I think.

I think it was a great overview, Chuck. We're glowing from it.

We're gonna you do have that overview, glow. We're gonna take a break, and we're gonna talk about science right after.

This, all right, Chuck, as promised, we're going to talk about science, because, like I said, this is so owe headed and obvious that every single person who's ever been born into a family, everybody knows the stuff. But as far as science is concerned, this is not proven that birth order effects as they're called, actually exist. That science is saying, hold your cell, your role, everybody. We can't

Yeah, But what they all agree on is that it is therapy.

Cash cow right, that, yes, it's a good it's a useful framework to approach psychotherapy from it.

They all want to talk about it at high hourly rates.

See. To me, I'm like, this is sure, this is exactly what forms your personality. But I get science's position. I respect it.

So if we go back in time to the early nineteen hundreds, it was a man named Alfred Adler. He was a part of a He was a contemporary of Freud, and this is when all these dudes were getting together to talk about all this stuff. In this burgeoning science, and they all thought they were so cool and important, And he was one of the only ones among his peers though at the time, that was talking about birth

In the world at large in general, like your perceived power, place of position, or status.

Right. Yeah, And if he believed in birth order having a significant influence on your personality, then that in turn would influence how powerful you may or may not feel.

Yeah, Because the Adler, if how you perceived your own power not necessarily how powerful you were, but your own perception of power was the driving force of like how you interacted with the world your personality, birth order would make total sense because birth order, as everybody knows, is nothing but positions of superiority or inferiority. Yeah, And it's

Or protect you, like my big brother did. That's great from his friends that were jerks to me. Right, he wouldn't stand for it.

No, a couple of.

We went at it too, you know, we were brothers. But sure he never picked on me. No, you know why, because you chuck and he's Scott.

Right.

In the eighties is when, I mean, there were always studies starting since Adler and freud'stein, but in the nineteen eighties is when it really blew up thanks to the Big Five in cocaine, the Big Five personality trait view of things, and that's when things in the eighties, that's when everybody was just like eating the stuff up.

Yeah, because so the Big Five personality inventory is we've talked about it before, but basically it is a self reported measure that is actually valid. It actually works, like you can say this person is highly neurotic, or this person is extroverted or well three others that I can't bring to mind right now. But these things are also kind of broken into subcategories, like these are big umbrella

Yeah, They're like we can put people further into a box and label them. Sure, or did you? Because that is sort of the paradox that arrive that we arrive at, which is you pointed to it a little bit earlier. There are so many, so many influences that go into what makes you you that it's hard to look at

Well, okay, so we'll go back to that example. So you've you've just gone to your peers and said, look, I have just proven that middle children are highly neurotic compared to other children in birth orders. Right, yeah, then you're shaking your own fists around your your shoulders in triumph. And they said, well, wait a minute, Wait a minute, did you control for socioeconomic background? And you go no, I didn't. Well wait did you control for race?

No?

Did you control for gender?

No?

And so all of a sudden you realize there's all these different independent variables out tons in this case would be confounding variables that might actually be the thing influencing it. It might be the fact that they are women born into families of a low ceoeconomic state that is driving neuroses. That that's actually the thing that is driving it rather than birth order. It has nothing to do with being

Yeah, Like when you start to think about, like if you were just to sit there and sort of jot down things as non scientists, just regular schmos like us, and just jot down a list of what other factors might be at play, we could probably come up with a list of one hundred things between.

Us let's start now.

But that would like if I was studying the stuff and I started to make that list, I would just walk away and go into another line of study. Sure, I would be like, dude, I just you know where your parents married, where they divorce, When did they get divorced?

Did you like hot dogs?

You live with mom or dad? How far apart did they live? What could do? Were you suburban? Were you Urbana? Where did you live in an excurb Did you grow up in the woods? Did you start work at twelve? For you like old timing, I started to work at twelve. I guess I did too. I had a paper route. Yeah, I was a bus boy.

Oh nice? Oh wait was that where the guy put his foot into the Yeah, brothers do what a criminal?

I told you that's a title Max. Now that restaurant, but not too long ago. Yeah, go JJ's barbecue title Max. Now they're putting their foot on titles, just stomping on them.

Yeah, but they got your money, your money, your real money.

They're never gonna sponsor us. Now. Another few things that can confound these studies are things and and Ed helped us put this research together, things like demographic shifts. So he gave a great example of like the baby boom, if there's a big population bulge that also coincides with a lot of other stuff. And the example he uses prevalence of cigarette smoking. There may be a false correlation there between being a first born and smoking, whereas if

Child maybe, but that's even more confounding. The point's still valid, sure that, Like, there's just way more firstborns who smoke than second borns. But that's because those spoking was more prevalent when there were a bunch of kids born who were all of the same cohort and all firstborns. Right, that's just one of the ways this thing can be confounded.

Yeah, well, this one really speaks to me, which is labeled as growth. When a birth order effect does appear, it is strongest when they subject is with their siblings.

Yeah, when you're a family or union, its back into It is.

So funny how that happens. Yeah, I see myself do it. Like good example, I turned forty eight a couple of weeks ago. My family, my sister and her husband happened to be in town. Didn't come for that, but we were texting and I was like, hey, let's all you know, this is great, let's all go out to dinner. She's like, oh, I didn't want to. I just figured you wouldn't want to spend your birthday with your friend. You'd want to spend your birthday with your friends and not your family.

I think everybody is around their family so strange.

So this is when it sort of started me down the path of like what is personality? Is a personality trait? Is it? This? Just is it repeated behaviors? Is it a set of behaviors, Like is that personality?

Are you asking me?

Yeah? I mean I don't even know, Like what is personality? We should do a show on that.

Oh, we totally should. But from what I understand, just kind of briefly put it, personality is the kind of predictable way that you'll react to the world. Right. Is it easy for somebody to press your buttons? Are you laid back? Are you like could somebody? However, if somebody were presented with this is going terribly If somebody represented with a like an event in life, Okay, you could say, Josh would probably respond to like that, Yeah, that's a personality.

Right, But is that something inherent or is it birth or order or no? Is it just a collection of learned behavior?

I think it's a collection of learned and reinforced behaviors too. If you're told you're the baby the family all the time, you're gonna act like the baby of the family. You're gonna act self centered, you're gonna act manipulative. It's reinforced. If you're told you you can do anything, you can go out and do anything. You can literally walk through walls because someone told you to. They reinforce that behavior. But I think that's what personality is. And this is

Yeah. At that same birthday dinner, I picked up the check for everyone, and there was a bit of a not an argument letty's struggle. My mom and I were, you know, kind of off to the side with the people who work there doing the credit card battle, and she wasn't super happy and I should have just let her pay. But it's part of that thing, like I'm the baby of the family, and I kind of just finally told a sec Listen, Mom, it's like it's my turn to pay nice. You know, I'm not the baby anymore.

Do you do you catch this?

I mean I generally just put it in my kid's bank account.

Oh that's a good thing, you know. Yeah, we don't catch the ones.

Because I also don't want to take away the joy that she gets from writing me that hundred dollars. Yes, sure, that's not cool. No, it's like I don't need that from her, but like that's what brings her joy.

Yeah, giving you money, it's complicated. So let me teach you a little trick. Oh okay, if you don't want to get into that tussle, if you just wanted to be done, sorry, it's too late. When you order, when you hand the menu back to the server, just have be holding your credit card with your thumb and give them a look. It's universal, dude, They all know, and they'll take it and be like, and you got to first. Nobody else does that. They always wait and they pretend

You know what I did? What when we got to the restaurant, the very first thing I did was go up to the manager while everyone was being seated. I said, listen, dude, my mom's going to try and pay, or one of these other trumps in my family's going to try and pay. He's like, I don't want any of them paying. It's like twelve people. I picked the place. I picked a nicer place. It's like I don't want to do that. And I was like, so, just here's my credit card.

They didn't follow your orders.

No, because my mom she tried to jump me later on the side and didn't realize I had already jumped her.

So it should have been done.

I know. But then when we went over there, he was like, listen, man, your mom is over here now, like she's the mom. We generally side with the parents on this stuff.

What place was this?

It was just a restaurant.

I demand to know. I'm mad.

I my move should have just trumped all moves because it was No. I agree, and that's what I basically said. And I was like, listen, man, I was like, there are factors at play here that I don't want to talk about. It's like, just please. And my mom got a little mad, and then.

I was I blame this manager. I think you should expose them. Well, I'm glad it all worked out in the end.

Man, Should we take a break.

I thought we were right now.

No, all right, we'll be back right for this.

All right, we're back, Chuck. Yes, And like we said, we showed science is kind of like we're not quite sure about the birth order effect. That hasn't kept like a whole cottage like field of psychology from continuing since the eighties basically non stop. Like if you go look at birth order effects, there's it's very rare you're going to run into anything that says like this is all b Yes. Most of it's like, yeah, this is true.

Yeah, they did.

It was a pretty a lot of legwork and a lot of research, he determined that first borns are much more likely to support the status quo, whereas second borns or later borns he calls them, are much more likely to support revolutionary thinking.

Yeah, and just one example, as far as he used Darwinism, he said, later borns between eighteen fifty nine and eighteen seventy five were four point six times more likely than firstborns to support Darwinism.

Thinking yeah, yeah, so yeah, And that was one of many examples that I think there were one hundred and twenty one historical events with sixty five hundred individuals either supporting or opposing them. So it was a big, big work for sure.

Yeah. And one of his I mean he put some reasoning behind it too. He was like, if you're a later born, you might have a hard time competing with your older who might have a tighter bond with the parents. Maybe, and so that sort of symbolically forces you as to be almost an out within your own family. So you may be more prone to join up with an outsider opinion.

Right to go, look outside of the family union and all of the values and the ideas that it holds, to make your own mark in order to get attention or support or whatever from your parents. Whereas if you're a first born, you just got the easiest thing to do is to just fall in line with your parents and hence support the status quo. It makes sense, but Born to Rebel was torn apart by some scientists. Sure it's like this is just pure pop psychology tripe. I

Another part plucked from his research I thought was pretty interesting was the idea that part of this less rebellious nature of a firstborn might be due to the long standing but now sort of antiquated practice of primogeniture, which is, the firstborn gets the inheritance, so they're more likely, just through thousands of years of this, more inclined to like not ruffle the feathers of the parents, right.

And then the later borns who are like, I've got basically zero chance of inheriting the family titles in a state, I'll just go do my own thing. I don't have to fall in line. That makes sense as well.

And the other interesting thing with that is another factor was the removal of a child from a family. He's found that a later born who was removed from the family and reared by relative will end up behaving like a typical firstborn. And again I'm assuming if that's under the age of like five.

But I wonder so I'm wondering if that just is supported by other research, or if all of the parenting magazine articles that mention that whole, you know, the personality is tailored, is really just citing that work. Because that's one of the big problems with pop psychology in general is it's self reinforcing. One person says one thing and it gets picked up by a bunch of people and

Well, yeah, like in his case, he likes to cite this Norwegian study. It found a difference of two point three IQ points between first and second and born children, sample size of two hundred and forty one thousand subjects.

That's big.

It is big, But then you know ed sort of brings up a good point, like okay, maybe, but like is a two point three first of all IQ tests are problematic, they're bond for like a lot of reasons, possibly bunk. But even if they're not, is a two point three IQ point difference even meaningful? Yeah enough to be like, well look two points.

So no, it's not meaningful in that like you know, that doesn't that's not going to lead to any like closed doors or open doors or anything. It's just such a narrow difference but if that's like an average, and it's it is found across you know, firstborns and later borns, like like in a very large population like that it is, it does make you wonder, like what would that come from?

Well, I guess that brings us to this really interesting thing that I had never heard of before. Oh, y, had you heard of this fraternal birth order effect? Which is basically the idea and a lot of studies have backed this up. Meta analysis of tons of studies have backed this up. The idea is that if you have multiple boys in your family, each successive boy that's born and this is it's just boys, has a higher chance of being gay.

Right.

I didn't think And when I first saw that, I was like, that can't be real, right, And then I did a lot more poking around. I was like, Wow, it is real. The statistics sort of bear it out.

Yeah. If there's a big disagreement about whether actual just regular birth order effects exist. This one is much more

Now, so that means if you're born into a family and you're the youngest of four brothers.

I did this math.

What does that mean? Because I know these people family.

Zero percent chance, I guess that that you are going to be hetero, that you were one hundred percent chance going to be gay?

Right, Well, how many it could be one hundred and sixty percent? Right, it just keeps going right, Yeah, I think that can't be right.

Eventually you become so gay you pop out the other side and you're straight because you have like ten brothers.

Well, I did see that meta analysis of multiple multiple studies indicated that between fifteen and twenty nine percent of gay males owe their sexual orientation to this effect.

Supposedly Okay, so so, and we should say there are some studies that have not found this. There was a big one that had it was like a survey of British young men that surveyed like eleven thousand of them or whatever and did not find this. But so many studies have found it that science is like this, this actually might be a thing, and we're not quite sure

Yeah, so this is so just mind blowing and interesting. So the increase in probability of a boy becoming gay is only only if that boy is right handed. Right handed yep, So if you're left handed. Among left handed men, there was no statistical difference in the incidence of homosexuality, even if you've got a thousand brothers.

And the weird thing about that is that they've found if you are taking birth order out of the equation, if you are left handed, there is a slightly higher incidence of being gay, just period, yes, for being left handed, and that's with men and women apparently, So the idea that not only does it not make you more likely to be gay in as far as fraternal birth order is concerned, it actually negates the effects of fraternal birth order.

If you're ambidextriousity bisexual, I guess so, where's that study that makes sense? So I did a little more digging in this, but I don't understand it at all. But more recently, as in just a couple of years ago, they think they found an actual physiological biological explanation for that. Oh, did you understand that.

I don't know if they found it or if somebody made it up, and everybody's.

Like, no, I read a bunch of papers that said that, you know, they think this may be it, okay, but I didn't get it.

So what they think is that a mom. When a mom carries a boy, her body has a reaction to the male male proteins, the stuff that makes him a male creates an allergic reaction of sorts in the mom, and the mom produces antibodies. The first time the mom's bodies totally caught off guard, has basically no effects whatsoever

That summary was so much better than the scientific paper summaries that I read today. Good John, thank you you should do that.

Thank I do for a living. I just did.

Well, that's a good point. I thought this was interesting too. I mean, we've kind of gone over most of these birth order theories I think in general, but this one I don't think we super touched on, and I think

But the dumb baby gets a leg up exactly.

That's when you play tennis against someone better than you. Eventually, that's called the tutor effect. They surpassed that firstborn.

The student becomes the mass. That's right, exactly, and your skin turns to alabaster.

Really interesting, says Sting said Sting. Well the Police, Oh okay, Oh sure, I thought you were like a dream of the Blue Turtle. Sting.

No, I'm more of a nothing like the sun.

Yes, synchronicity, that's good too. I'm still mad at them for that reunion tour.

Oh yeah, they really phoned it in. You said, just phoned it in? Hey, I saw for some so I just thought of the Police, and then Stuart Copeland, which made me think of Less Claypool. Remember he's in that band with Less Claypool and Trey Anastasio.

Yeah, it's called kill Me.

No, it's the three talented individuals. But then that made me think of Less Claypool, who was in a documentary I just saw on The Residents. Have you seen it?

No? The Residents were the mystery band, right, that were the big ping pong heads.

Eyeballs, eyeballs right, still are a mystery band, still going really Yeah, they're good, but it's good. It's like it's an intellectual kind of like examination of their history and everything, but it's really interesting. But Less Claypool's in it.

Do you think when Less Claypool, fish guy what's his name?

Tresso and Stuart Copeland.

And Stuart Copan you think when they got together to form that band, all they did was just sort of work out who's solo is next. Probably it's like, I want to do the bass solo first, and then we can go right into the guitar solo and then the drum solo and then the song's over.

Hopefully the birth order of the three worked out so that it all They were like, yes, this all makes sense to me.

Man, there's nothing better than old videos of Stuart Copeland pitching fits.

Oh Diddy, I always heard it was thing that was a jerk to Stuart Copeland. Was Stuart Copeland's jerk?

Well, Stuart Copeland was a hot head and Steven was a could poke his buttons. Oh yeah, it's pretty fun. There's Stuart pretty Opland. No, don't feel bad for Stuart Copeman.

He might be. I think he might be the best drummer I ever lived, everybody says Neil Pert. I don't know, man, Stuart Copeland was pretty good.

Oh yeah, and like crazy, uh, like doing his own thing.

And he's from Macon. What yeah, Macon, Georgia, Macon, Georgia.

Wow, I didn't know that.

This concludes this episode of stuff you should know. If you want know more about birth order, go talk to your family. We don't care. Since I said that's time for listener mail.

Did you watch the Motley Crew movie yet on Netflix?

No? No, I didn't know. It's out.

Yeah, it's out.

Okay. Is it good?

Uh? No?

Is it based on that book?

It's not good, but it's great, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's based on the book. Okay, but it's so I mean, it feels like one of those VH one Are you literally making a note? It's sort of like when of those VH one movie music movies. Okay, like the Jackson's one. It's it's it's.

Good, Okay, I'll check it out, all right, who plays Vince Neil?

They're all, you know, the only one of the not the only thing. There's a lot of distracting parts. But the guy who plays Vince Neil and his hair looks a lot like Garth, looks not like Dana Carvey is Garth, So it's kind of hard to fully go there. The guy who played Tommy Lee is pretty good?

Was it Christian Navarro? No?

Did he wants? He can't play Tommy Lee? He could. Tommy Lee's like six'.

Five that kid can play. Anybody, well, NO i. Agree all, right it's time for listener, MAIL i, Said.

Chuck the bar is more mc mars. Guy, okay all, right here we.

Go is that From is That? Dawkin, No Mick marsh's mot?

Legruw who is?

That he's a guitar?

Player oh the Old?

Creep, yeah, yeah SURE i know who you're talking. ABOUT i GUESS i never knew his.

Name by, creep he was a. Creep he was. Creepy, sure that's WHAT i.

Mean still is all?

Right here we? Go this is From. Sam i'm just gonna call this. Heartfelt it's always nice to hear. This, hey guys probably could have sent this a million, times but TONIGHT i really felt the need. To you were with me WHEN i transitioned from high school to. College you were there the night my dad died two years, ago and now you're here As i'm in the process of dealing with my girlfriend dumping me up to three.

Simple help keep me sane and playing and.

Simple not that we keep them playing and. SIMPLE i read that.

Wrong it's like eight shoots and. Leaves that's.

RIGHT i have depression and anxiety and the podcast is a huge help on nights like this when nothing seems to help or it's. COMFORTING i can tell if things get really, bad if even the podcast doesn't. Help you guys have also been like role models for. Me so this is all just to say thank you so much. Much, guys who knows how much darker some spots of my life have been without? You could say much, more BUT

Bottom oh, good that's how we got.

Here that's.

Great nice. Work if you want to get in touch with us Like sam. Did thank you very. Much, sam by the, way that was very sweet of you to tell us all that hope you're pulling.

Through, yeah hang in, there.

Man you can get in touch with us by going to stuff Youshould know dot com and clicking on our social, links and you can also send us an email Like sam. Did don't forget to spank it on the bottom to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot.

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