What Twins Tell Us

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Arts, Science, Performing Arts, Social Sciences

4.6 • 40.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In December 1988, two sets of identical twins became test subjects in a study for which they had never volunteered. It was an experiment that could never be performed in a lab, and had never before been documented. This week, we revisit this fascinating story, told by psychologist Nancy Segal, about the eternal tug between nature and nurture in shaping who we are. If you like our work, please consider supporting it! See how you can help at support.hiddenbrain.org. And to learn more about human behavior and ideas that can improve your life, subscribe to our newsletter at news.hiddenbrain.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.
0:03.4	In October 2014, Psychology Professor Nancy Siegel heard a story.
0:10.0	It was about her specialty, the study of twins.
0:16.2	It's December 1988.
0:19.0	A woman from a remote farming village in Colombia makes a day-long trek to a hospital.
0:25.1	She gives birth there to a pair of identical twin boys.
0:29.5	One of the twins needs more advanced medical care that isn't available.
0:34.1	One of them was extremely sick.
0:36.4	Since the mom is still recuperating, a relative takes him to another hospital,
0:41.4	six hours away in Bogota, the capital.
0:46.4	At the Bogota Hospital, another set of identical twin boys has just been born.
0:51.8	Their mother is a seamstress who lives in the city.
0:56.0	The scene was quite chaotic.
0:57.8	The hospital staff is tired and overworked.
1:00.9	It was approaching Christmas time.
1:03.0	People were thinking about the holidays.
1:05.0	Now, nobody knows exactly what happens next, but something goes wrong.
1:11.7	The baby from the countryside is switched with one of the babies born to the mother from the city.
1:20.8	By the time all the babies are sent home, one boy from each pair of identical twins
1:27.0	is in the wrong family.
1:29.4	Each family thinks their twins are fraternal.
1:35.6	The homes the boys grow up in are in totally different places, 150 miles away from each other,
	...

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