It's the Brian Lair Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Bridget Bergen in for Brian today.

Are you fascinated by families whose kids have all achieved great heights in their often very different professions?

Maybe you think the parents get the credit or maybe the blame for their children's achievements?

Who's had the biggest influence on your life, your successes or failures, your interests and talents?

Was it your parents?

My next guest has spent years researching and interviewing families and researchers on this topic

and argues that the influence of siblings is underappreciated.

Journalist Susan Dominois is a New York Times Magazine staff writer and the author of a new

book, The Family Dynamic,

a journey into the mystery of sibling success that talks about high-achieving siblings,

some of whom you've probably heard of, the effective class on these dynamics, the costs of

being one of a set of brothers and sisters set on success, and the latest research on the nature versus nurture

question. Susan, welcome back to the show. I'm looking forward to hearing more about this.

I'm so thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Now, we're going to get back to the idea of

super achieving families, but first, let's talk about the influence of siblings in general.

In the New York Times article adapted from your book, you begin with a bit of a story.

It demonstrates this idea of sibling influence and also a bit meta in explaining how it

came to, how it came by you to write this story. Can you share that and how you, that story about you and your

older brother? Oh, sure, absolutely. I was a ninth grader who was basically lying around

reading one afternoon. And my brother, who was home from college, said, you know, I think you

should join the high school newspaper, but our high school actually

didn't have a high school newspaper at the time, which I told him. And he was very outraged by this.

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