Dov Fox

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dove Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Foxman.

[2] Dove Fox.

[3] He was lovely.

[4] Dove Fox is our guest and we've both incorporated some of his name now.

[5] I love my part.

[6] Monica Foxman's a great name.

[7] Yeah, really good, really strong.

[8] And Dove Shepard's really good too.

[9] Not as good as Dove Fox.

[10] Well, Dove Fox is a professor of law and a Herzog endowed scholar at the University of San Diego Law School, where he directs the Center for Health, Law Policy, and Bioethics.

[11] A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Harvard College, Yale Law School, and the University of Oxford, where he received a doctorate in political philosophy.

[12] He has a new book, Birth Rights and Wrongs, How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking, Reproduction and the Law.

[13] Now, this is a juicy -ass episode, because it's about this crazy story, Donor 9623, which he has a podcast entitled Donor 9623, which everyone should listen to.

[14] It's so fascinating about these people who got sperm, basically, and it was not the sperm they thought they were going to get.

[15] It's a really interesting, thought -provoking topic.

[16] It really is.

[17] And just to say, Audible just named it the number one podcast and submitted it for a Pulitzer.

[18] So it's a damn good podcast.

[19] Everyone should check it out.

[20] Donor, 9623.

[21] Please enjoy Dove Fox.

[22] subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[23] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[24] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[25] He's an armchair expert.

[26] How you doing?

[27] Good.

[28] How are you?

[29] Such a big fan.

[30] Oh, get out of here.

[31] I find that impossible to believe my self -esteem will not permit this compliment.

[32] Make a case, though.

[33] Make a case.

[34] Tell us why you love.

[35] Monica.

[36] You can just keep it to Monica.

[37] No. She's true.

[38] Oh.

[39] There's no bullshit.

[40] Whether it's the viewer, guess, tells it like it is.

[41] I'll tell you what she's not as a yes woman.

[42] She is a no woman.

[43] I am not a yes woman.

[44] Proudly.

[45] First of all, you're in a closet.

[46] What a privileged point of view we have of your life, because you can really learn a lot about someone from, of course, their closet.

[47] Although, now I'm starting to think maybe it's your wife's closet.

[48] Is it a shared closet?

[49] Yeah, it's a shared closet, but you got the division about right.

[50] Yeah, because at first I was like, oh, I see maybe your dress shirt hanging.

[51] I was like, well, those are definitely women's boots, and that's definitely a women's pair of athletic footwear.

[52] Nice pair of...

[53] I wouldn't say definite.

[54] Well, it's a beautiful white Nike with a peach swoosh.

[55] It's pretty.

[56] I don't mean to profile, but let's just say this.

[57] I've got to bet my family's life on it one way or another.

[58] I'm definitely going, that's a female trainer.

[59] When Rob was getting me set up in here, our oldest, I hear him outside the room, he announced to his first grade Zoom class, my daddy's in the closet.

[60] That's fantastic.

[61] Dove, you were born in Israel.

[62] At what age did you make your way over here?

[63] That was three.

[64] And did you move in with Grandma and Grandpa?

[65] Yeah, my folks were American, and they had gone to Israel to try to make Aliya with the idea that they would immigrate there.

[66] And it didn't work out.

[67] My dad was pretty scary when he was around, and then he left.

[68] And my mom brought me and my younger brothers to move in with my grandparents.

[69] And my grandparents were in Connecticut, so that's where I grew up.

[70] And that was an amazing house.

[71] My grandfather was a World War II veteran.

[72] He was a Navy lieutenant with an underwater demolition team in the Pacific.

[73] Oh.

[74] And it came back on the GI Bill, went to law school, and then did a lot of pro bono work.

[75] Some of my earliest memories are holding his hand walking around the supermarket and people just thanking him for the work he had done for them.

[76] Oh, man. Yeah, he and my grandmother just had this incredible sense of gratitude and service.

[77] I don't know if it was that generation.

[78] Well, he probably grew up in the Depression or shortly thereafter.

[79] Yeah.

[80] And then it was just, you know, the greatest generation.

[81] We have a lot of similarities, it sounds like, because my father split at three.

[82] And then I spent generally the summers with my Papa Bob, who to this day is the best human being I've ever met my life.

[83] He was just this gentle giant that took such good care of my brother and I. And yeah, he's probably my favorite male relationship I've ever had.

[84] Whoa.

[85] So can I ask, have you talked to your kids about your dad?

[86] our youngest just asked the other day about you know they got two grandmas and one grandpa and what about your dad and i don't know what to say well i think this is where we do differ is that your father was straight out of the picture yeah and remains out of the picture so my dad was around you know he's supposed to have us every other weekend he was an alcoholic he did get sober when i was 13 14 and then he he got more involved for sure but the every other weekend was really one week and a month and he drove us straight to my my papa Bob and grandmas, which again was fine by me because I loved it over there.

[87] But he did die right before my eldest was born.

[88] So there are a lot of questions about who he is.

[89] It's a great situation for me to go like, what story do I want to pass on?

[90] Because I have a woe is me self -pity story about him.

[91] But there's also a story where he was incredibly loving and affectionate and I think was doing the best he could and I'm trying to come to terms with that.

[92] But mostly just serving my ego, I want them to know I'm doing a much.

[93] better job than my dad did with me. I think that's probably my real motivation in all those conversations.

[94] Can you relate at all to that?

[95] Oh yeah.

[96] Oh yeah.

[97] Yeah, so do you say, oh, you know, your grandpa was confused and had some struggles and some issues and he probably did the best he could and he did a bad job?

[98] Or do you go, you know, your grandfather was a piece of shit.

[99] Let's just get this out on the table.

[100] It's hard because if I'm channeling my inner monica, I want to be really honest and like straight with them, you know?

[101] And I don't want them to grow up with these secrets or these lies or just, you know, kind of like half -truths because I'd always thought about my relationship to him and his presence or absence in my life as my story and part of my identity.

[102] But now when you have kids, it's like it's theirs too.

[103] But then I do worry that, you know, the full truth at this age, our youngest just turned four.

[104] Our oldest is six.

[105] you know, it could leave them feeling, you know, insecure or maybe like, well, could that happen to me, you know, like you said.

[106] So I want to leave them feeling like a sense, like that's not going to happen to you, you know, like I'm here to stay.

[107] Well, first of all, we have the exact same gap in same years.

[108] We're just one year ahead of you on both.

[109] And I've taken the path of I'm an alcoholic.

[110] Your grandfather was an alcoholic.

[111] There's a genetic component.

[112] There's a trauma and nurture component.

[113] Like, I go straight at it personally for whatever reason.

[114] I tell him I was molested.

[115] I just tell them everything.

[116] You're kidding.

[117] No. How do they do with that?

[118] That's heavy stuff for a kid that age.

[119] You know, they just deal with it.

[120] Like always my fear of how it'll go is either they're not even that interested, which is probably the majority of the time.

[121] But, you know, I'm regularly saying to them, you know, an adult should never have their privates out in front of you.

[122] You should never have yours.

[123] If an adult ever wants to see your privates, that's a no -go.

[124] If they tell you that they're going to kill me, don't worry, I can kill anyone.

[125] You know, I go through the whole.

[126] You know, I go through the shabang and quite often they're just like oh okay wow I'm impressed you're giving me more confidence in what they can handle it'll make me feel like I'm babing them a little bit yeah I mean like I didn't know you know like when like kids in cages you know and like they notice that like me and their mom were stressed out you know yeah we didn't feel comfortable going there just don't want to you know just kind of explain like the world's like people are complicated and like the world can just suck sometimes yeah I don't know want to preserve a little sense of that like fantasy, happy land for at least a couple of years.

[127] But there was, you know, recent occasion to let go of the idea that, like, I'm Superman, you know?

[128] One of the things I did know about my dad that I got was like this ferocious bedwetting, like till like my bar mitzvah.

[129] And like, hey, don't be worried about that.

[130] I had.

[131] It's okay.

[132] Yeah, yeah.

[133] I think they feel vulnerable and scared about all the many things they'll have to eventually learn how to do.

[134] And I try not to give a list to them of my accomplishments, rather, all the ways I failed at that age and how scared I was because they already see somebody who seems to be fearless.

[135] So I don't feel like I really need to tell them, you know, this is how you end up going to UCLA or this is how you blank.

[136] Like, they already kind of think I'm that.

[137] So I think the most comforting thing is like, I went the bed.

[138] I was scared and I used to ride my bicycle in circles because I didn't like the violence that was going on my house.

[139] I found a way to escape.

[140] I was uncomfortable when my Christian.

[141] and friends prayed at the table and I didn't know what was going on.

[142] You know, I take that approach, I guess.

[143] It's kind of probably an AA approach.

[144] Hmm.

[145] All right.

[146] Might be time.

[147] Well, each kid is different, too.

[148] So it is important to, like, you know.

[149] I have no advice.

[150] I'm only saying what we do.

[151] And it could totally backfire.

[152] So we both had these single mom, super moms too.

[153] Yeah, yeah.

[154] But it's funny.

[155] My mom definitely did not hold anything back.

[156] Like, she was like total.

[157] I heard everything.

[158] We didn't have a TV in our house, but we used to go to movies, and she was totally fine with anything.

[159] We got to see, like, you know, operated movies from a young age, and I thought that was a lot of learning.

[160] Do you think maybe for our moms, there was a sense of, like, there's not a man here, and the man, at least back then, is kind of in charge of telling the kids about the rough and tumble nature of life, and then, you know, there's threats, and you've got to learn to protect yourself and all that.

[161] And I wonder if some of these single moms are just like, Well, shit, I got to tell them about the world.

[162] Like, I can't pull any punches because there's no one else here.

[163] I can't just be solely nurturer.

[164] I've got to do it all.

[165] I think so.

[166] I mean, things were a little different in my house.

[167] So my grandparents were amazing, but my family was in a car accident.

[168] It was Martin Luther King Day when I was in fifth grade, and they were killed.

[169] One of my brothers had a traumatic brain injury.

[170] My other brother and I were knocked around pretty good.

[171] And, you know, that left my mom on her own without her parents and with a lot of medical bills.

[172] You know, there was no child support ever, health insurance from my dad.

[173] So she had to work three jobs pretty consistently and could only be home for a few hours at night.

[174] And I was the oldest and took that responsibility pretty seriously.

[175] I've listened to enough armchair episodes to know that that was you too.

[176] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[177] Time to mean an adult.

[178] Yeah.

[179] So, you know, getting them up and out to school in the morning and back home and helping with, you know, therapy and homework and dishes and laundry.

[180] meals and tucking them in at night and leaving my mom a note.

[181] So it was that sense of, you know, here's the world, you know, kind of take responsibility and I have trust and faith in you to, you know, grow up quickly, being adult.

[182] But I think it was more through just having that trust, leaving us alone, kind of, you know, me being in charge and yeah, you grow up quicker.

[183] I mean, that gave me a real sense of purpose in my life.

[184] Like I knew what I was for.

[185] Yeah, yeah.

[186] And it's also, it's so confidence -inducing, right?

[187] Like, you're actually handling things that you know are supposed to be the domain of adults.

[188] And it really, again, there's some downsides, obviously.

[189] I think those are well documented.

[190] But the upsides are that.

[191] And I'm wondering if when you took your first child home from the hospital, if your wife was much more nervous than you were.

[192] huh i think that's probably right but maybe for a different reason well maybe not i think it's just i have a real healthy self -esteem there's no business having it right sure sure that's the best kind yeah but i just kind of have like a silly sense like you know maybe that's right and maybe it does come from like a place from when you're little like you know kind of overcame a lot of adversity or you learn to abide it and like now the stuff that you see like doesn't seem as heroin.

[193] Yeah, I think so many of our friends have talked about the moment they put the baby in the car and you leave the hospital and they have this feeling like, I cannot believe you guys are going to trust us to handle this.

[194] But I was like, oh, I changed diapers.

[195] Cloth diapers with safety pins.

[196] When I was six and a half, it was so nerve -wracking.

[197] I was so afraid to stab my sister.

[198] I was just like, oh, God, I did this at six and a half.

[199] I'm quite certain I can do it at 38 with much better diaper technology.

[200] Yeah, you know, it's right.

[201] I remember going to college and having like a little bit of an identity crisis because I had come from that place where home was everything and I knew exactly what I was doing and what my purpose was.

[202] And then it was like, whoa, now it's just me. And I remember scaring away that early girlfriend because I just really wanted to have kids.

[203] Like I wanted to like form a new family.

[204] Like from an uncomfortably early age.

[205] It didn't really have, you know, it didn't make sense to be thinking or talking about that, really.

[206] But, and I think it was just kind of, I wanted that back.

[207] Well, you kind of had like reverse empty nest syndrome.

[208] Instead of them going away, you went away.

[209] Yeah.

[210] Inverted an empty nest.

[211] I think you're right.

[212] And by the time, you know, then the kids did come, it's like, man, it's been waiting for this.

[213] Yeah, yeah, got it.

[214] I felt the same way.

[215] And I obviously was assuaged of that misconception right away.

[216] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[217] I guess I underestimated how much.

[218] much my mother was involved because I was like, oh, no one comes in here to tap me out.

[219] Okay.

[220] Totally.

[221] Now, speaking of your school experience, you were quite successful.

[222] Monica's going to love these accolades.

[223] So, Road Scholar.

[224] Oh, and oh, we love her.

[225] Our list grows.

[226] Yeah.

[227] It's also a feather in the cap to us that we have had so many Rhodes Scholar.

[228] I'm going to draft on your accomplishment.

[229] We're going to make it our accomplishment.

[230] Yes, yes.

[231] So it's now a shared accomplishment.

[232] So you studied at Oxford and then after that you went to Yale Law School, you became the editor of the Yale Law Journal.

[233] And I thought, I mean, really, what really wanted to do is follow my grandfather's footsteps.

[234] He was a trial lawyer and, you know, did a lot of civil rights work.

[235] And then I was really fortunate for, you know, a couple of years to go to Oxford and, you know, sit in my underpants and got to teach and research, you know, things I was really interested in.

[236] and, you know, just made me realize, like, God, what an amazing life, you know, just to kind of be a student forever.

[237] Yeah, very romantic.

[238] If you're a daydreamer, like, arrive at Oxford that had to have been a fantasy and then you're there.

[239] Oh, I mean, it was awesome.

[240] But it definitely, when I came back for law school, I had a totally different idea of what I wanted to do.

[241] I mean, I think that's what that time, you know, really gives you.

[242] It's just like a gift of a break to, you know, just think about what you.

[243] really want to do.

[244] You know, in the course of our lives, things are so busy and you're kind of jumping through hoops.

[245] And then it's pretty rare.

[246] Yeah, it's a really nice privilege to try on some identities, isn't it?

[247] Is it supposed to like going immediately to the factory in your town?

[248] And then it's like, oh, well, now I have a mortgage and now I have this family.

[249] And now, there's no time to evaluate at that point.

[250] The ship has sailed.

[251] I think that's exactly right.

[252] You know, I remember in college, just feeling like I was surprised that folks, and I was, you know, I was, was among them.

[253] You know, we were just like sleep deprived and, you know, really stressed out because these were kids who, you know, done really well and, like, ostensibly, you know, made it.

[254] But it was, I think, just like a nonstop hoop jumping, you know, took a psychological toll.

[255] You know, it was like the ranking and sorting.

[256] Yeah.

[257] And you don't get a chance for that break.

[258] Well, also, I would imagine you're really locked into an economy of comparing yourself to everyone else, which I find to be a dead -end street, ultimately.

[259] So I remember that my first week in college, I was in the same dorm as one of your guests, Colin Jost.

[260] And he got into every group that I really wanted to get into.

[261] And he had come from his famous high school with a bunch of friends.

[262] I had come from Fat Camp.

[263] Okay.

[264] Different feeder schools?

[265] Yeah.

[266] Yeah.

[267] Anyway, it was just like, I mean, I got cut from, like, the comedy journal and every improv group and like 73 acapella groups.

[268] And I think, like, by the time it spits you out, it makes it easy for those who come out on top to believe that their success is their own doing.

[269] Yeah, yeah.

[270] And for people who lose, like, to think there's, like, no one to blame but themselves.

[271] Or you blame the system and start believing in conspiracy theories.

[272] You've got two options.

[273] Yeah, either.

[274] Yeah, yeah.

[275] One of the two will suit your needs.

[276] I love thinking, like, there are more than enough qualified people here for, like, either to, like, get in or to, like, be part of, you know, your special comedy group that you won't let me in.

[277] Why not, like, take those names, like, put them in a hat and then just take them at random and give everyone an equal chance.

[278] Uh -huh.

[279] Well, the comedy performance might suffer a little bit from that.

[280] See, I don't think so.

[281] You don't think it's a maritime.

[282] I think that we're not so good at predicting success around like 18, 19, 20 years old.

[283] Well, that I agree immensely with.

[284] I think if you read Malcolm Gladwell's last book, there's a couple great chapters about people who do good on the LSAT, then comparing that 20 years later with the outcome of their careers and there's zero correlation virtually, especially for law students, right?

[285] Like what school you graduate from has pretty little relevance to how good your career will be, as a lawyer.

[286] So what do you think for comedy or for acting?

[287] I don't think you can outwork people.

[288] So I think in those other disciplines, you can outwork people.

[289] But I don't think if you're not innately kind of funny, certainly you can better yourself through very hard work.

[290] And the theater I was involved with the groundings, there's a bunch of writing.

[291] So obviously the people that wrote more, we're going to have more up at bats.

[292] That's in the mix.

[293] But, you know, some people are funny and they're not.

[294] I don't really know.

[295] I think there's, you know, it's the nature -nurture thing.

[296] So Tom Brady, right, he's making the Patriots look stupid now.

[297] Uh -huh.

[298] So he's like the greatest quarterback of all time.

[299] By a lot.

[300] But even when he was coming out of Michigan, didn't the NFL teams, like the Powers that B, pick like 198 players ahead of him?

[301] Yeah, and he was so embarrassing to watch in the Combine.

[302] We interviewed him recently, so I like watched all that stuff.

[303] He's so gangly and goofy.

[304] And even he said, I can't run on a play.

[305] I'm the slowest runner on the whole field in any game.

[306] And yet, and now look.

[307] But you'd have to argue that a big part of that job, well, A, despite him not be on the run far, he wouldn't be Tom Brady at 511.

[308] Like, he has this great genetic advantage that he's 6 '4 so he can see above everybody.

[309] He clearly has some kind of chess level genius as far as, you know, strategy.

[310] So he's got some mental component.

[311] You know, he's an incredibly hard worker, but also at best, it's always going to be some proportional thing, right?

[312] There's no way I'm going to have to say that's probably not going to happen.

[313] Yeah, but however many NFL teams, when it came down to it, they picked other people.

[314] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[315] They shit the bed, for sure.

[316] So in college, it led me to do things that didn't require.

[317] tryouts or outside.

[318] So I met Adam Grant at a conference.

[319] And we didn't know each other in college, but we realized that we had been there at the same time.

[320] We bonded over the fact that we kind of gone outside the usual groups.

[321] He became like a professional magician.

[322] And I did stand -up comedy.

[323] That wasn't good.

[324] Well, just really quick, if we can just say, I find it very hard to believe that you didn't work as hard as every other stand -up comedian.

[325] I'm assuming you have an incredible work ethic given your academic trajectory.

[326] So why weren't you great?

[327] Well, it wasn't funny.

[328] I'm not.

[329] Okay.

[330] So we were agreeing that's bad.

[331] Okay, okay, okay.

[332] Sorry.

[333] Adam Grant, we're talking about Adam Grant now, our very favorite person on planet Earth.

[334] Oh, what a man. Oh, my God.

[335] He just lives to please.

[336] Slash shame other people for their lack of connectivity.

[337] It's a mix.

[338] That's your issue, not Adams.

[339] I don't know.

[340] I'm kind of with you there.

[341] Like, he's one of the few people I've ever met who lives his philosophy.

[342] And like, it's a pretty tough philosophy to live by.

[343] Oh, yes.

[344] So true.

[345] I do think when you email him and he responds in under 15 seconds, I do think when he hits he's like, fuck you, motherfucker.

[346] No. I say that with love and I'm joking.

[347] He's just the most beautiful person.

[348] I can't accept it.

[349] Your brain doesn't know how to cooperate in it.

[350] Yeah, I don't have that much faith in humanity that there's an Adam Gran on planet earth.

[351] I've got to poke a hole in it.

[352] So going to Oxford was a really, you know, kind of magical place.

[353] I remember getting off the bus with Jared Cohen.

[354] We were roommates.

[355] And we were a couple of dorky Jews from Connecticut.

[356] Oh, my God.

[357] You know all of our guests.

[358] You should be booking the show.

[359] I don't know why you're not.

[360] I wasn't just name dropping.

[361] I'm trying to make a connection.

[362] Oh, we love Jared.

[363] Yeah, he was just like the most curious person.

[364] I know.

[365] Like, he just has this incredible curiosity.

[366] And I think I share that, but I feel really insecure about it.

[367] Like, I was always trying to hide it.

[368] I was kind of ashamed.

[369] And he totally owned it.

[370] Like, whatever it was that he was studying, he would throw a house party with that theme.

[371] Oh, wow.

[372] That's so fun.

[373] He was studying the Cold War.

[374] And he put a wall, like a Berlin Wall in the middle of our house and dressed up as Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark.

[375] Oh, wow.

[376] Wow, wow, wow.

[377] Wow.

[378] Was he already collecting presidential hairs at that point?

[379] Oh, that was from a young age.

[380] Yeah.

[381] Okay.

[382] So you end up teaching law down at University of San Diego, where you still teach, and you have an interesting focus, which is bioethics, and you have this incredible, I just started it today.

[383] Donor 9632, a podcast that is a riveting.

[384] It's tasty like Dr. Death was.

[385] I can't wait for you to start it.

[386] No, it is really good.

[387] It's really, really well produced.

[388] Like the music's great, the transitions are great, the way the dialogue's coming in and now.

[389] It's just very beautifully done.

[390] And then just a tasty, fucking salacious story on top of it.

[391] So let's talk about that a little bit.

[392] And then we can go into like where law is going to step in.

[393] What's the future of that?

[394] What are the things we now have to consider legislating that previously we didn't think we needed to do?

[395] But let's start with this juicy example of donor.

[396] 9632.

[397] So a couple years ago, I got really interested in these headlines I was seeing of cases of reproduction gone awry.

[398] So things like freezer meltdowns where rob all these infertile same -sex couples have the last chance to have a biological kid or he's defectively packaged birth control pills.

[399] At least like hundreds of women with the child, they'd, you know, been trying to avoid having or lab mixups.

[400] So a clinic would.

[401] use sperm from a stranger instead of a person's spouse or an embryo with the very disease that an at -risk couple had used IVF to try to screen out.

[402] Oh, wow.

[403] What struck me about, I mean, hundreds of cases is that however obvious it was that some medical professional was at fault or how much it had upended people's lives, The courts, you know, just gave like a big, fat shrug.

[404] That Pinkalicious, that book was ever hit in your house?

[405] No, I've never heard of it.

[406] Oh, so we read it twice last night and again this morning.

[407] Anyway, there's a line says you get what you get and you don't get upset.

[408] That's basically the legal system's approach to these cases.

[409] So the book tried to introduce a new way of thinking and talking about these mix -ups.

[410] And you say driven a bit by Roe v. Wade, right?

[411] This stuff all kind of starts, all this kind of fertility science and medicine starts just in the wake of Roe v. Wade, which is that why it's kind of complicated?

[412] Yeah.

[413] So it's really unregulated because of complicated questions that go back, but even before Roe and since, I thought that after the book, I just kind of go back to, you know, my academic life as usual, but this one case.

[414] Let me just say in the book you're talking about is birth rights and wrongs, how medicine and tech are remaking, reproduction, and law.

[415] So after writing that book, you were like, did it next chapter of my life and no. Well, there was just one case that I couldn't stop thinking about.

[416] And because it blew the lid on, you know, a multi -billion dollar industry.

[417] If I'm honest, I spent a lot more time thinking about laws than people.

[418] but I was really lucky for amazing producers.

[419] Amy Standen, who's now the editor of Ear Hustle as a podcast about St. Quentin Prison and a really gifted journalist, Heather Juan Tessarero, who was herself adopted and had this vision for what this project's, you know, Audible Original could be.

[420] Can I add one thing before you launch into it?

[421] In addition to being a multi -billion dollar industry, also I think it might shock people to know that one in 50 kids in the U .S. are born.

[422] in a petri dish.

[423] So it might be a number a little bit higher than people thought that 2 % of children are scientifically aided.

[424] I was blown away those couple years in my underpants before going to law school and deciding to write.

[425] I found out that I was born the same week as Elizabeth Carr, who's the first American baby conceived in a petri dish.

[426] Oh, wow.

[427] And since then, over a million American babies have been born through IVF alone, not to mention sperm or egg donate.

[428] So, yeah, it's a lot.

[429] And 1 in 50 today.

[430] And the U .S. is actually on the real low end of developed countries that use this technology.

[431] But, yeah, we're talking about a lot more than people may realize.

[432] Wow.

[433] So this guy was sold as the perfect donor.

[434] And for over a decade, scores of families from around the world picked him to have kids.

[435] So he was this neuroscience PhD, an internationally acclaimed drummer.

[436] Oh, my.

[437] six sports and spoke five languages.

[438] His IQ was so high and his looks were so fetching.

[439] Let me think.

[440] Fetching.

[441] In terms of like recent armchair guests, it'd be like a cross between Tom Brady and Bill Gates.

[442] Whoa.

[443] Right, because he claimed that his closest celebrity lookalike was Tom Cruise, yet he was also six -four.

[444] He's Tom Brady's height, but looks like Tom Cruise.

[445] And he's got a 160 IQ, which is what Einstein had, just to add.

[446] he was ambidextrious, which I am, so I'm pissed he stole my thing.

[447] You're not.

[448] Yes, I am.

[449] You are?

[450] Yes, I throw in my baseball with my right hand.

[451] But you're writing, writing.

[452] That's not what ambidextreous strictly means.

[453] It just means you do things with both hands.

[454] Yeah, it's not that you can do everything with both hands.

[455] I love how Monica is your greatest heckler.

[456] Oh, she hates me. You'll fact check this.

[457] We will learn the boring definition of ambidextrousness.

[458] I just know that the most impressive version of ambidextrous is being able to write with that.

[459] I don't even think that's associated with being ambidextrous.

[460] But we'll find out.

[461] We'll find out in the fact check.

[462] You might claim to be anvidextrous, but it's like a sucky water down version deck just so you know.

[463] No, I would argue Monica's created her own definition.

[464] That's super impressive.

[465] But just general ambidextarity.

[466] Ambidexterity.

[467] Thank you.

[468] I think it's just you favor both.

[469] You favor both hands.

[470] Go on.

[471] So the sperm bank never checked whether any of this stuff was true.

[472] And turned out, like, a lot of it was lies.

[473] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[474] What's up, guys?

[475] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[476] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[477] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[478] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[479] And I don't mean just friends.

[480] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[481] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[482] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[483] We've all been there.

[484] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[485] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[486] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[487] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[488] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[489] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[490] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[491] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[492] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[493] Okay, so I just want to add to my own personal experience.

[494] So I was dead, fucking broke for the first 10 years I lived in L .A. And I went to UCLA.

[495] And I noticed in the Bruin, the school newspaper, that they were paying pretty good amounts for sperm from the students.

[496] And so I checked it out.

[497] I went to this sperm bank.

[498] and I filled out a form, and if I'm being dead honest, mind you, I was 20, I was also a functioning addict.

[499] I definitely talked about my grades at UCLA, my impressive height, my blue eyes, I don't know, whatever other things I thought were marketable.

[500] And I definitely downplayed the dyslexia, the addiction in the family.

[501] I don't think when I did the medical history, I was bulletproof on what kind of generational diseases existed.

[502] Man, I did, wanted that 150 bucks, and I was quite desperate, and I don't know that they ever verified any of that stuff.

[503] Lucky for all people wanting sperm in L .A., I didn't have a high enough sperm count.

[504] So, you know, side story, you go into a room, and they had every dirty magazine, and they had pornoes playing on different channels, so you kind of pick your proclivity.

[505] And I thought, this is going to be awesome.

[506] If this works, if once a week I can go get 150 bucks to have unlimited porn and jerk off, this is going to be the dream solution to my problems.

[507] And again, unfortunately, my sperm count wasn't enough.

[508] But I could have almost been one of these guys where, sure, the baby would have been tall, but they would have been like, huh, this kid's an addict, this kid can't read.

[509] You can't write with both hands.

[510] So you knew that they weren't going to check on any of these things that you were suggesting about yourselves.

[511] Like they really wanted it to be true.

[512] didn't know, but I thought I'm in a zero risk situation because if I checked those things, they're not going to buy my sperm.

[513] And then if they verify it and they find out, then they're not going to buy my sperm.

[514] And there's some percentage chance that they're just going to take my word for it.

[515] And this was before the boom in genetic testing.

[516] So it was like, who was ever going to find out?

[517] Well, and can I also make a defense for myself, which is I understand the unethicalness of what I just said I did.

[518] But at the same time, you have to imagine yourself going, well, I'm not that big of a piece a shit that if someone ends up with me, they're going to be furious.

[519] You know, like, as low as my self -esteem is, I also think it's fine that I have dyslexia.

[520] It's fine.

[521] I have cancer in my family.

[522] Everyone's got cancer in their family.

[523] Like, if you're mad you got me, then I don't feel that bad for you.

[524] So it's complicated.

[525] Also, I was 20.

[526] So these sperm banks, right, they have the ads all around like elite university campuses, like UCLA.

[527] Probably not Georgia, but yeah, continue.

[528] Yeah, because they're smart enough to know people are going to to cheat the system.

[529] Yeah, so they promise this easy, anonymous way to make serious money.

[530] I mean, the ad say, you know, trade in your ramen for steak.

[531] Ah.

[532] Right.

[533] And so you're a college age kid.

[534] You don't have much money or maybe even you're down on your luck and they're not going to check on this stuff.

[535] And you're paying to go to the school.

[536] So you kind of think, oh, maybe I could kind of balance out what I'm paying to be here by kind of profiting on being here.

[537] Wow.

[538] So.

[539] So you have a real personal connection and insight into this situation.

[540] I could be getting sued right now, but for not my low sperm count.

[541] So you really feel for the guy?

[542] No, I think, okay, so I did not add anything.

[543] I did not say I spoke multiple languages.

[544] I didn't inflate.

[545] I omitted.

[546] So on the spectrum of like a pathological liar, I'm certainly on it.

[547] But I think this person was a 10 and I was, I want, maybe I'm being generous, I was a three.

[548] no monica oh my she's gunning for me today you know why she's mad at me can i just tell you doff yeah she clearly just woke up before she got here and i said did you just wake up and she goes no i got up at night and i said yeah but did you go back to sleep and then she said no but she did not now she's mad because i called her out because he just makes all these assumptions no one should want you you walked into a minefield and i apologize for it so i had a personal connection to this story too, and that like you, I didn't know my dad.

[549] And when he left, it left me with a lot of questions about who he really was and, you know, whether I'd turn out like him.

[550] I think it's hard to tell your life story without knowing how it begins.

[551] I think that's such a brilliant observation.

[552] And I wonder like me, because I did not respect the decision my dad made and I didn't really admire the lifestyle he had, I actually was trying to define myself in opposition of him and then just regularly finding out like, man, a lot of my genetics are him.

[553] And I'm just becoming him despite my desire.

[554] Oh, totally.

[555] I said we didn't have TV.

[556] My mom's dropped me out of the movies.

[557] One of them we saw the Elm Theater, 75 cents, was with honors with Brendan Frazier.

[558] Is that one you remember by a chance?

[559] That's a Monica movie, I feel like.

[560] I don't know it.

[561] Okay.

[562] I didn't see it.

[563] So he grew up without a dad, and he goes to Harvard.

[564] And he writes a thesis that he loses, which is found by Joe Pesci, who lives in the streets of Harvard Square and holds his thesis hostage.

[565] And anyway, I thought if I went there, too, like, I could find a dad.

[566] And I went looking, and I was always looking for that.

[567] And I latched on to this incredible professor, like, early on.

[568] It got weird, right?

[569] Sure.

[570] I really wanted him to be my dad.

[571] He didn't know that.

[572] Yeah.

[573] I have a friendship with my friend Tom Hansen.

[574] he's 70.

[575] And to him, we're friends.

[576] And I'm like, yeah, but you're my dad.

[577] And he's like, you know, we're friends.

[578] You also went in search.

[579] Oh, God.

[580] Yeah.

[581] Yeah.

[582] Yeah.

[583] And he taught this class, the biggest classroom on campus.

[584] It was like a thousand kids.

[585] And I read every one of his books, went to every office hours.

[586] And he taught we can know a good together that we cannot know alone.

[587] And I was, like, just totally obsessed.

[588] And he came to one of my comedy shows.

[589] I remember, I was, like, so moved that he had, you know, come.

[590] I leaned in for a hug.

[591] And he leaned out.

[592] And it was like, there's the line.

[593] Oh, you're not my dad.

[594] I was always looking for that father figure.

[595] And, like you said, just trying to define myself through them, but also through things that I was doing or thinking, in contrast, not position.

[596] Right, right.

[597] Totally.

[598] Feeling like it was like, am I going to be like that?

[599] I said the one thing I don't want to do.

[600] I want to care about people and be good to them.

[601] And I was just so worried that I was going to, like I was faded.

[602] I mean, that was one of the real takeaways for me for working on this project was I had, I mean, definitely grown up thinking about my dad in these binary terms as like this hero.

[603] that I had wanted him to be in my mind.

[604] And then, you know, this villain or monster who had, you know, abandoned us and just left me with this, you know, person -sized hole in my life story.

[605] And yeah, having kids and getting to know this donor actually, yeah, people are really complicated.

[606] Yeah.

[607] And they rarely fit into these stories, especially involving family secrets that are kind of woven into our greatest tales, like from the Bible to Star Wars.

[608] Yeah.

[609] And it's villain hero and no one's either.

[610] It's really jarring when as an adult you find out, you know, about some family affair or, you know, adoption, you know, or rape or IVF or donor insemination.

[611] And I think it can upends, like your whole story that you've told yourself about who you are and where you come from and what side you're on of that story and whether it's a lot more complicated than you had always assumed yeah we desire simplicity so much and it's just it's very elusive unfortunately i almost hope that if we don't imprint our kids with this simplistic thing they won't be searching for it they'll accept it much earlier that no it's fucking complicated and no one is evil and no one's a saint and we're all on a spectrum and you'll find yourself there too and you'll be disappointed in yourself.

[612] It doesn't mean you're evil if we only have this binary options.

[613] So when they fuck up, then are they evil?

[614] Because we've not told them about everyone else fucking up.

[615] One of the things I thought, you know, when I heard from some of the families after they listened to the podcast.

[616] Can you tell us about Wendy?

[617] Yeah.

[618] Yeah, tell us about Wendy.

[619] No, so Wendy Norman had a child.

[620] She didn't know how many like her who picked donor nine, six, two, three.

[621] And her kid had a lot of trouble from a young age, really lashing out, was really violent, kind of kept himself, and had these problems that no matter how many doctors saw him and different medications they tried, nothing seemed to work.

[622] He even just vanished from elementary school, right?

[623] Like maybe second grade.

[624] She gets a call that the police are involved.

[625] They cannot find her son.

[626] And he is just up and left school.

[627] He was two miles away.

[628] So he was diagnosed with things like ADHD.

[629] or bipolar, but nothing fit and none of the meds worked.

[630] There's a lot of hope in it, I'll just say, because as you're learning what Wendy's experience was when Alex was, you know, whatever, five through, I think eighth grade, she pulled them off all the medication eventually.

[631] It was just like, we got to go back down to baseline and just start over.

[632] But that whole period, if you're a parent, you are most certainly predicting doom.

[633] This kid's going to end up in prison.

[634] And as parents, I know I can relate to that.

[635] Like, you see one behavior for three weeks, and your mind just goes off to the races.

[636] Oh, my gosh, she's got some disassociative, you know, it's so scary.

[637] You just want to know how you can fix it, make it better, what's going on.

[638] And they couldn't do that because they didn't have the information.

[639] Yeah, so when he pulled up that article discovers all of a sudden at 14, he's sitting with this information by himself.

[640] He found it, you know.

[641] Wendy, his mom didn't know.

[642] You know, it said that his donor had, you know, wasn't getting his.

[643] PhD, he dropped out of college freshman year and he'd been convicted of felony burglary and he'd been diagnosed with really serious mental illness with a strong genetic component.

[644] And so he went from his donor being this, you know, hero that he was so proud of to, well, what do I make of that?

[645] And then coming around to the idea that, like you said, you know, like it would be a mistake to reduce the donor and these decisions about you know existence and non -existence you know do you choose this person to be the biological parent gives half the genes to your child to reduce that person to you know one genetic red flag or you know any kind of worst moment in his life but rather like a really complex person you know when he get to meet him and know him the person I got to know was really complicated yeah I thought you know he had a lot to a population apologize for, but he wasn't so bad a guy.

[646] I think, you know, it would be a mistake also from those headlines to think, oh, it's just a ego monster with a Messiah complex who, right, our kids are, you know, destined to be, you know, homeless and, you know, criminals and have no connection to reality.

[647] Like, it's a lot more complicated.

[648] And dozens of women receive this sperm, right?

[649] We don't know how many.

[650] At least 36, probably a lot more.

[651] Oh, wow.

[652] Among the aspects of this industry that are unregulated is that there are no limits on the numbers.

[653] I mean, sperm banks don't even track how many kids are born from any particular donor.

[654] What's their defense of that?

[655] They can only do it for a window of time, though, correct?

[656] Because they couldn't get the same sperm donor from their first child because that had expired.

[657] Am I right in that?

[658] There's no limit so long as the person keeps donating and they don't age out.

[659] My sperm can be frozen for a long time.

[660] This donor provided samples for almost 14 years, and those can be cryopreserved for a really long time.

[661] Each sample, you know, you can create eight kids.

[662] Wow.

[663] And you can come in two, three times a week.

[664] So numbers can get really high.

[665] Yeah, and the sperm bank was charging.

[666] They paid $1 ,600 for that sperm, as I recall.

[667] Yeah, it can be up to $1 ,000 per vial.

[668] and most people, you know, buy a few, you know, in case one doesn't work or they want to have other, you know, genetic kids from the same donor.

[669] Yeah.

[670] My own personal connection was just feeling so conflicted about the pull of biological ties.

[671] I think the biggest disagreement my wife and I ever had was we knew that we wanted to have kids.

[672] We definitely wanted to have more than one, but we weren't sure how.

[673] Whether we were going to try to have the old -fashioned way or just, try to adopt.

[674] I'd inherited all these question marks from half of my family tree that were mostly scary or embarrassing.

[675] And my wife's mom was the last to Holocaust survivor of her family.

[676] And for her, that genetic connection was, it was like DNA was like a repository of lost memories.

[677] It could be forgotten if you didn't, you know, connect like the past and the future in that way.

[678] Well, yeah, I imagine she would maybe feel like she's not fulfilling her obligation to her grandmother or her family to keep it alive in, in essence.

[679] Yeah, so I think the social meaning of genetics is just different for different people.

[680] And it's just way more complicated than I appreciated.

[681] Well, what I was going to ask was, in the wake of this big scandal, and I'm not sure how much press it got, I don't think I was necessarily aware of this case until I listened to your podcast.

[682] but did any legislation come out of this?

[683] Is legislation being written to address some of this stuff?

[684] So right now, these are cases in the courts.

[685] And everyone had been dismissed before the podcast came out.

[686] And now, since then, there's going to be the first ever trial that's going to consider the facts of the case.

[687] and let the families bring claims against the sperm bank for failing to vet the donor.

[688] The question they pose is what's reasonable to expect of the fertility industry.

[689] Yeah.

[690] You know, is it like the health and safety that we insist on in the cars that we drive or the food that, you know, restaurants serve us?

[691] Or is making babies just a crapshoot, you know, however you do it?

[692] Yeah, you pointed out in the podcast like, virtually everything's regulated.

[693] Oh, everything else.

[694] Yes.

[695] I mean, virtually everything's regulated, but not this.

[696] This is, I think, like, a domain of life that we think of as distinctly outside of our choice and control that is subject to, you know, fate or God or chance or the randomness of genetic recombination that, you know, ultimately, you know, pink delicious, you get what you get.

[697] Yeah, yeah.

[698] But it's naive because we're in an era of ten.

[699] technology where that is not the case.

[700] It's not to people fucking under the harvest moon in a field, you know.

[701] That was what drew me to this area in the first place.

[702] You know, when Elizabeth Carr came around, when I was born, you know, that first IVF baby, and revolutionized is not just how we had kids, but the kind of children we have.

[703] I mean, and to me, it sounded like science fiction.

[704] Yeah.

[705] You know, you can combine sperm and egg in the laboratory, and you get this eight -cell organism that you can remove one or two cells, do a biopsy, and then do genetic testing on that cell to determine, you know, simple genetic conditions like sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis.

[706] And that organism grows back the cells, like a salamander's tail.

[707] Yeah.

[708] You know, it's not like Gattaca exactly, you know, where you choose for like the odds of shyness or obesity.

[709] Yeah.

[710] Well, there couldn't be a harder probably set of guidelines to come up with because you get into Trismy 21 Down syndrome.

[711] There's a lot of people that would.

[712] There's people that wouldn't.

[713] You know, it's going to be nearly impossible for everyone to agree on what is worthy of selecting for.

[714] Oh, so that's really hard.

[715] What's okay to want in a child when you're in a position to choose?

[716] And when does it cross a line between, you're just one of the best for your future kids?

[717] to designing a child to suit your tastes.

[718] It's eugenics, right?

[719] Could you tell us just a bit about what eugenics is and maybe a two -minute history of it and how we're now kind of possible again or there's a rebirth potentially of it?

[720] So eugenics means choosing good genes.

[721] And it's easy to forget that it started here, right?

[722] We think we associate it with the Nazis in World War II, mass genocide.

[723] But they got the idea from us.

[724] One of the first texts that Hitler had the Fuhrer translate from English to German was a 1927 U .S. Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell.

[725] This is where Oliver Wendell Holmes said three generations of imbeciles is enough.

[726] And that case held that the states could sterilize anyone that it deemed feeble -minded.

[727] And they explained it like this, that better than waiting to execute degenerate offspring for their crime or let them starve for their imbecile.

[728] facility, we should just prevent them from continuing their kind.

[729] They're so manifestly unfit.

[730] And that case is like almost 100 years old.

[731] It's still good law.

[732] It's never been overturned.

[733] So it's precedent for, you know, California prisons, ICE attention facilities to justify sterilizing people of color may have seen in the news.

[734] But there's a very big difference, I think, between, you know, forced sterilization or antimisagination laws, immigration laws that deprive people of freedom and then having the government come in and choose for you or if not the government some overarching agency or authority making the choice of what kind of people are worth creating or who's worthy of being a parent yeah the podcast tells a story of uh one is the earliest sperm banks it's an escondito so a little north of me south of you It tried to mass breed genius kids from Nobel Prize winners to combat hordes of stupid people from degrading the American gene pool.

[735] So in the 80s and 90s, when we were kids, so it limited the recipients to straight white women who were married and were Mensa members, so really smart.

[736] Yeah.

[737] And this eugenic vision, it turned out, was pretty unpopular.

[738] It shuttered its doors in 99.

[739] So Sperm Banks stopped trying to, you know, engineer perfect babies from superior sperm instead looking to cater to, you know, consumer preferences.

[740] And that's when they came up with these shopping catalogs with detailed profiles, you know, race and height, baby pictures, celebrity likeness, SAT scores, you know, personality tests, religions, hobbies.

[741] And that's what really raises this question about eugenics.

[742] You know, is it eugenic in the sense of it's something bad that we want to avoid if instead of the government or the sperm bank or some other authority telling you what kind of people to create or who's worthy to come into existence or what sort of people should be parents or should pass along their genes?

[743] It's individual would -be parents making these decisions for themselves and their families and their kids.

[744] Well, it's interesting because they're working towards the same thing that they are antithetical, right?

[745] So one is basically a genetics genocide.

[746] It's like, this is undesirable.

[747] We're going to kill all these off.

[748] And the other one's like preferred propagation.

[749] Like we're going to bet on these.

[750] So it's weird.

[751] It's like the outcome is similar, but they are also opposite.

[752] It's very interesting.

[753] Right.

[754] So one is like negative eugenics and one is positive.

[755] Yeah.

[756] Yeah, yeah.

[757] You think one is obviously bad and one is okay?

[758] No, I think one is worse than the other is what I think.

[759] Oh, okay, so get rid of the hatred and the violence and the racism, you know, and the force.

[760] You still think that something's kind of unsettling about, you know, trying to handpick a child with these traits and those characteristics.

[761] Well, I think this is why this is such a hard legal decision to make because I think there's multiple realities going on.

[762] On the surface, as a philosophical question, no, I think we don't really know what's going to be a valuable asset, actually.

[763] So I think it's a little arrogant to think we actually know.

[764] Yeah, currently, I'm sure you could model it out.

[765] And right now you have an advantage to be a six foot three white dude.

[766] I'm sure that's an advantage, right?

[767] But we actually don't know if that's an advantage in 30 years.

[768] But I will go a step further, which is we live in a completely artificial world now.

[769] To pretend we don't live in an artificial world where there is a billion times more stimuli daily than the hunting and gathering society's experience and that we travel at speeds that we're not designed to travel at and that the result of which is probably mass epidemic level depression, you're getting into a pretty interesting.

[770] zone of, well, what is ethical then?

[771] Should we not be favoring the people that can live in this artificial, bizarre, an increasingly technological world?

[772] Or should we castigate all of them to suffer?

[773] So, you know, I don't know.

[774] There was a recent survey of a couple thousand Americans that asked, who should decide the genes that kids are born with?

[775] And nine out of ten people said either God or nature, but definitely not parents.

[776] Yeah, yeah.

[777] I would agree.

[778] Those same people were asked if you could enhance your own child's resistance to disease, would you, like a prenatal coronavirus vaccine that was safe and effective?

[779] Yeah.

[780] And nine out of ten said yes.

[781] Yeah.

[782] So that doesn't bother me. This is similar to often, I have a political stance of I'm against the death penalty And a very common response to that, if I dare tweet it, is what if your daughter was raped and murdered?

[783] And I say, I would go murder the person.

[784] There's no question.

[785] I, as an individual, would murder anyone who fucked with my family.

[786] But I also know that me as an individual isn't nearly as good or ethical as the community thought.

[787] And so I defer to community thought.

[788] And I also don't think people that were victims of such a heinous crime should be setting policy.

[789] So all things are true.

[790] That's definitely a way.

[791] West Wing episode.

[792] No, I totally agree with you that it's not plain God because of where we are.

[793] I mean, recognize all the artificial aspects of our lives to make them better.

[794] Not in a way that's necessarily objectionable.

[795] I have a different takeaway from that survey, though, which is that health is different from other traits because it's not something that we're competing for.

[796] I mean, nobody's trying to be the healthiest man a lot.

[797] Well, maybe Rob Lowe's character from Parks and Recreation.

[798] But otherwise, it's not something we're trying to beat other people at.

[799] You know, the same way, you know, sexiest alive or fastest or smartest.

[800] Yeah.

[801] You're not going to generate an advantage because you have longevity.

[802] There's really, yeah, you're not going to earn more because you just lived longer.

[803] Yeah.

[804] So for those kind of traits, there's non -medical traits that are, you know, widely thought.

[805] ought to be the raw ingredients of success.

[806] I do worry that if you replace the hand that, you know, fate or nature dealt us with the one that our parents chose for us, that it could make it harder to appreciate the role of luck in the way that our lives turn out.

[807] You know, like a sense that, like, your adversity could be mine.

[808] You know, like, there but for the grace of God, go I or my child.

[809] Oh, I have for a personal example that just illustrates this.

[810] I grew up dyslexic.

[811] It was really hard.

[812] I felt alienated.

[813] I went to the special ed room.

[814] I've got all this baggage because of it.

[815] I knew that my odds of going to prison were twice as high.

[816] It's not until I read the Malcolm Gladwell book that I realized, oh, in your odds of becoming a CEO or twice as high.

[817] And now when we have kids, I actually remember thinking I hope they have dyslexia, or at least one of them does.

[818] I actually would prefer it.

[819] But yes, there was a period of my life where I probably, if I had two eggs sitting in the petri dish, and they told me one of them didn't have dyslexia, I would have said, let's not have it.

[820] It's that empathy that I think, you know, inspires social and economic support for those who are less fortunate and also that more complex view that you have of a trait that is widely stigmatized and leads a lot of people to hide it or shy away, maybe not to get treatment or, you know, not even tell their friends and family.

[821] You know, like you were brave enough to open up about your relapse a days before.

[822] a presidential debate in which one dad mocked another for having a kid with a drug problem.

[823] Yeah, as if that's such a unique experience in America.

[824] But it is exactly how a lot of families in this story, I think quite understandably, reduced the donor to this one aspect of who he was.

[825] You know, this part of his genetics or his life story, like the worst or lowest moments in a way that, you know, denies that richness that you just spoke to with your, experience with dyslexia.

[826] Well, and it's also telling of the values of our society that no one's in search of who's the kindest, most benevolent, generous, helpful baby.

[827] What are the markers of that?

[828] What are the metrics?

[829] That's what I want.

[830] I want my donor to have a history of volunteering at a soup kitchen.

[831] I promise no one's screening for that.

[832] Well, also, that's pretty like genetically complex.

[833] I mean, not just genetically complex, but, you know, I mean, that's like gadical level, like trying to get, like, personality traits or behavior.

[834] I mean, for those kind of traits, I mean, I totally agree with you.

[835] That's, like, awesome to want a kid to be like that.

[836] And maybe to look for those kinds of qualities in a donor if, you know, that's what you turn to.

[837] But, you know, for compassion, let alone, like, intelligence or even height.

[838] I mean, we're kind of like cakes where, like, the ingredients are those myriad genetic and environmental influences.

[839] and the recipe is, you know, their complex interaction, like the processes of development.

[840] So you wouldn't expect a simple correspondence between like the distinctive taste or texture and like any particular, you know, egg or flour or sugar.

[841] Yeah.

[842] And just to make that very digestible.

[843] So yes, you could make 26 cakes with the exact same ingredients if you add them in a different order, if you bake them at different temperatures, if you pull them out at different times, dramatically different cakes.

[844] stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare let me ask you when you were dating Kristen did this question ever cross your mind like not what you were attracted to or the chemistry that you shared i can tell you it was the only it was priority number one it was priority number one for the very first time ever dating someone where i was most interested in the thought that she would be a great mother so not just that she'd be a a great mother.

[845] And I totally fell for that too.

[846] Yeah.

[847] But also what kind of kids.

[848] So a lot of that obviously comes from having a loving, awesome mom too.

[849] But how your kids might be born like, you know what they would turn out, like the mix of your genes and hers.

[850] Yeah.

[851] So I guess I thought trait that I admired in her was that she was clearly very industrious.

[852] She was a very hardworking person.

[853] It wasn't like, oh, I hope my kids look like her.

[854] I hope they can sing like her.

[855] It was, you know, my value set.

[856] I want hardworking kids.

[857] And I want them to have a mother that is loving and patient and empathetic.

[858] That's beautiful.

[859] It sounds like you're focused more on, like, how she would raise your kids.

[860] Because those things aren't.

[861] Well, what would she model?

[862] What would she model?

[863] Is she going to sit around all day and be angry?

[864] She didn't get X, Y, or Z?

[865] or is she's someone who gets up and pounds the pavement?

[866] So when you say you weren't worried about looks, it's not just like you're not superficial.

[867] You were looking more than skin deep, but also you were less worried about the things that were more genetic and more of the things that you would model in your behavior and like the home that you guys would make.

[868] Yeah.

[869] Okay, so I wonder, though, when you were looking to have kids, had needed a donor, an egg donor or a sperm donor, and you were handed a catalog with hundreds of profiles, chock full of, you know, physical features and personality quirks and the meticulous medical history of every blood relative.

[870] I know what I would do.

[871] I would be trying to get someone as identical to me as possible.

[872] I actually wouldn't be trying to get someone better than me or different than me. I think my narcissistic and egotistical goal with raising kids is I want to provide the support, I guess I wish I had.

[873] So I want someone who, I understand and can help navigate the things I had to learn how to navigate.

[874] I think that goes back to our shared history.

[875] Oh, okay.

[876] Maybe.

[877] I don't want to psychologize you.

[878] But like, same for me. Like, if anything, I felt a little alienated from my genes.

[879] Yeah.

[880] And for you, you wanted somebody similar, but only for that sense of like emotional bond or connectedness.

[881] But really your focus was on like the love that you would give and the home you would make.

[882] Well, I think I'm a little more egocentric than that.

[883] I think I want to heal the child.

[884] in me. I want to nurture the child I was.

[885] Oh, that is really self -absorbed.

[886] Yeah.

[887] So you're right, you really want to like relive your own childhood through that.

[888] I think my desire is to be a great aid to a kid that might have my issues, but I think only another millimeter down in the Situ reading would suggest I wish I could be there for myself as a kid.

[889] Oh, that is deep.

[890] I think I haven't quite gotten to the point where I can admit that.

[891] But probably there's a lot of truth in that to my story too.

[892] Well, we might have different philosophical views that I actually think there isn't an act that can be taken on planet Earth that's not selfish.

[893] It can have incredibly altruistic outcomes and seemingly selfless outcomes, but I don't really believe in a non -selfish motivation.

[894] I think that's never more true than when it comes to having kids.

[895] like a lot of people will say like I want to choose a donor who is really healthy or really smart because I want them to be better off I want them to be healthy and happy I think that'll be good for them but of course there is no child yet who could be made better than he or she otherwise would and it's about you it's about enacting your vision for the kind of person you want to raise the kind of parenting experience you want to have I mean there is no other person yet to care about to.

[896] I mean, there's the idea of a person, but it really is really selfish.

[897] Yeah, yeah.

[898] And I think the quicker you own it and then you go, okay, well, what can be the best outcome of my selfishly motivated actions?

[899] Because part of my selfish motivation is also I'm telling a story about who I am as a person and I want to be a certain kind of person.

[900] I think American courts are in denial about this exact idea.

[901] And it's what led every court to throw out this case up until now.

[902] So the sperm banks, and this one wasn't unique.

[903] I mean, what they sell is this is the top 1%.

[904] The one CEO told me, he goes, our donors are, you know, creme de la creme.

[905] They only use gray boubon.

[906] Oh, yeah.

[907] I was thinking of it in kind of crude terms.

[908] In a podcast, we hear the head recruiter who also recruited this donor, you know, sweet talking him like you when you were at UCLA you know a guy was promised you know a college age kid you know an anonymous way to make money and you hear her like go to him you know kind of inflate his IQ and his advanced degrees and i mean they're looking to make the samples more pricey and more popular to sell more and they're a little trying to have it both ways so when they're selling the samples they tell prospective customers these would be parents they say trust us like you'll know more about this donor than you could possibly know about your own partner.

[909] But then if they get sued for misrepresenting those donors in serious ways, then they kind of throw up their hands and say, no, this is just random.

[910] Like you get what you get.

[911] It's an honor system.

[912] Like they're not required to run background checks.

[913] We know from genetics that even if every statement that had been made about 9632 was accurate, that in itself is absolutely no guarantee that that's not that those genes those you know whatever dominant ones in him are going to be the ones that are past so they do have a little bit of a leg to stand on which is also it's a lottery that point is really well taken but that's just not how they sell their donors that's not what they represent yeah yeah they got to pick a lane yeah they're given you know these exhaustively detailed profiles but they're not required to run background checks or test for hereditary conditions or follow up with these young men like you were, you know, whether, you know, in 10 or 20 or 30 years, they learn that a parent develops breast cancer or heart disease.

[914] They don't limit the numbers or find out whether donors have provided sperm to other sperm banks.

[915] So the parents feel betrayed by the professionals, but how can they complain?

[916] I mean, and that's what the courts say.

[917] Yeah.

[918] Because if they were told the truth, then you'd have picked a different donor.

[919] And that means you'd have a different kid.

[920] So suing is almost like saying you wish your own child, the one you have now.

[921] You wish they had never been born.

[922] It sounds like buyer's remorse.

[923] On the surface, it sounds like buyers.

[924] Like damaged goods.

[925] Yeah, yeah.

[926] Well, just they say that you can't be selfish in that way.

[927] They say like, you know, babies are blessings.

[928] How dare you, you know, think about this child.

[929] as opposed to recognizing what you were saying before.

[930] Like, this is an inherently selfish enterprise and recognizing the harm not as, like, the kid you got, like the birth of your child, but, you know, the thwarting of family planning, which is like a legitimate thing to want, like an interest to have.

[931] Now, is the ease and cheapness now of mapping an individual's genome aiding in this?

[932] I mean, obviously now all the donors, I have to imagine this day and age would get like a 23 -a -me test.

[933] and they really couldn't lie about certain hereditary things.

[934] So you asked about the unregulated nature of this market.

[935] And it all goes back to before, you know, the invention of the Internet and, you know, explosion, you know, 23Mee, you know, Ancestry .com, a testing where you could punch in a number or, you know, spit in a cup and send it away and find out all the people who have done that to, you know, all your blood relatives you don't know about.

[936] Yeah, the regulatory vacuum and assisted reproduction goes back to Elizabeth Carr and Roe v. Wade.

[937] You know, liberals were worried about opening the door to restrictions on who could be apparent or what kind of, you know, people you could make.

[938] And, you know, conservatives thought, you know, it was a free market enterprise.

[939] That's good.

[940] And also worried that setting any kind of rules would confer some kind of, you know, implicit approval on something that a lot of their constituents regarded as plain God.

[941] Yeah.

[942] And so this industry developed under the shadow of stigma and shame.

[943] Donor insemination, well, just needing a donor, like, was this profound failure, you know, like a personal failure, a sexual failure, marital.

[944] And that gave doctors cover, even before sperm banks came along to do really shady things.

[945] Like, like, we know now that a lot of obstetrician gynecologists in the 70s and 80s used their own sperm without their patient's consent to create, you know, dozens and dozens of kids and deceive people in other ways.

[946] The podcast tells a story of the very first mention of sperm donation in an American medical journal.

[947] It was 1909 and this Philadelphia couple, the guy was a lot older, goes to this famous doctor called Pancoast saying that they were having trouble having kids.

[948] and at Pankosa, the doctor looks at him and finds out that this older guy, his sperm didn't work, I guess he traced it back to gonorrhea he had, but he didn't tell them that.

[949] Instead, he calls the wife back under the guise of a routine follow -up and chloroforms her in front of a half -dozen medical students and tells the best -looking among them to go produce a sample.

[950] Oh, boy.

[951] And he eventually, the doctor told the dad, who was apparently pleased, but then no one ever told the mom or the kid until 25 years later when the dad and the doctor were dead.

[952] And one of those medical students published their story in that journal.

[953] Oh.

[954] And, you know, in a bad story, I have to say, I did experience a moment of great relief that the handsomest student wasn't asked to mount the chloroformed.

[955] I thought that's where it was going.

[956] So, you know, little silver lining to a terrible story.

[957] You know, but these kind of secrets have been lurking.

[958] And, I mean, I think one huge turning point was the genetic testing, like you said.

[959] Another one was the AIDS crisis because before that, fresh sperm was predominantly used.

[960] Cryopreservation is processed so that you mix the sperm with glycerol solution and freeze it down to minus 196 centigrade.

[961] That was invented in the 50s, but it was really only used.

[962] for social insurance for infertile men, you know, married couples who were straight.

[963] After the AIDS crisis hit, then you couldn't detect the virus in sperm right away.

[964] So it had to be frozen, so it could be retested a few months later.

[965] And a frozen sperm could be stored and banked, and you could offer choice among, you know, the people that came from.

[966] And so that was really liberating because now once the stigma was lifted and you move, from this model where the medical doctors were the gatekeepers, you know, all straight, white, married women, now the sperm banks could offer it to, you know, single women, same -sex couples, and you could make non -traditional families.

[967] But there also was this problem about regulation and lawmakers unwilling to put any rules, you know, this industry that, you know, creates human beings.

[968] Like, how could it be any higher stakes in that?

[969] Yeah, yeah.

[970] Well, listen, and Dov, I think you picked a great time in history to be interested in this because it's already a dense legal and regulatory issue.

[971] And then obviously with CRISPR, it's going to explode in so many other ways.

[972] And we already talked about the Chinese doctor who for some bizarre reason edited in an anti -HIV gene, you know, like, so you're really in the catbird seat as far as something to be interested in and to be studying and to be thinking about legally.

[973] So it's been so much fun talking to you.

[974] This is such a fascinating topic.

[975] And I really look forward to your continued work in this world of, you know, designing babies.

[976] Thanks for having me. You rule, Dob.

[977] The sound in the closet, it was the right choice.

[978] Everything is primo.

[979] And if you want to slide on your white and peach, Nike's before we leave, we'll watch.

[980] But if not, you want to do it solo, we can also give you some privacy.

[981] Yeah, I did have my own.

[982] Thanks.

[983] All right.

[984] I really look forward to talking to you again.

[985] I'm sure there's more fun stuff coming from you.

[986] Thank you guys so much.

[987] All right.

[988] Be well, Dob.

[989] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[990] Steady, are you ready?

[991] Jess?

[992] What's going on?

[993] What's going on, guys?

[994] We have a buddy here visiting today.

[995] Long time.

[996] No, here's ceased.

[997] Jess, do you still love boys?

[998] I still love them and I talk to them all the time and don't mean any of them.

[999] Can you believe that was this year?

[1000] I can't.

[1001] I really can't.

[1002] I was looking back at the guest list of this whole year and it's a Monica and Jess in there and I was like, oh my God, that feels like so long ago, so much has changed.

[1003] It really has.

[1004] Nothing's new on my love front.

[1005] Still chatting with guys, but like most people cancel dates because they're insecure, don't want it, but now they're canceling because of life.

[1006] They're choosing life.

[1007] Yeah, they're choosing life and wearing masks.

[1008] Well, also, it made your last challenge, which was celibacy a lot easier.

[1009] You didn't really have a choice, except the masturbation.

[1010] Well, that...

[1011] Did you break it?

[1012] I think he's fucked in quarantine, for sure.

[1013] I did not last 90 days.

[1014] I think I lasted 23 days.

[1015] For masturbation?

[1016] Yeah.

[1017] But you haven't fucked.

[1018] No, no fucking.

[1019] Yeah.

[1020] No, but masturbation was part of it.

[1021] I know.

[1022] And then COVID happened and like, oh, that is really hard.

[1023] Too hard.

[1024] Yeah, very hard.

[1025] Hmm, ding, ding, ding.

[1026] You guys get it?

[1027] Ding, ding.

[1028] Yeah, yeah, that's why I said ding, ding, ding.

[1029] That's how I let you know I got it.

[1030] Yeah.

[1031] Everyone else is good.

[1032] I'm happy.

[1033] I have a new, brought a new addiction to the group, which is called Spades.

[1034] That's right.

[1035] You guys play like three times a week during the week.

[1036] Maybe more.

[1037] Yeah, four times a week.

[1038] We love it.

[1039] Yeah.

[1040] Monica doesn't really work on the show anymore.

[1041] She's a professional spades.

[1042] AIDS player.

[1043] Yep, exactly.

[1044] We might have some fun stuff coming up next year.

[1045] We're going to see.

[1046] COVID is always a, you know, a wrench.

[1047] It's a barrier.

[1048] It's a barrier.

[1049] So we have to kind of get through the vaccine and then we might see you again, folks.

[1050] Yeah, hopefully.

[1051] Get all the vaccines, you know?

[1052] I'm into all the vaccines, yes.

[1053] Have you gotten the HPV vaccine?

[1054] You were young, so that was out.

[1055] Yeah, that's great.

[1056] We didn't have that when we were growing up.

[1057] I love people that are saying, like, I don't want to put that in my body.

[1058] And then the cut two memes are them, like, eating butt or, like, doing a lot of cocaine.

[1059] Yeah, one's like if you ate out of the ranch vat in your dorm cafeteria, don't worry about the vaccine.

[1060] Well, I certainly know it's like to have a sliding scale of, what would you go?

[1061] A hygiene.

[1062] Sure.

[1063] You know, like, I would, like, not want to shake someone's hand or I'd be nervous to shake someone's hand.

[1064] And, yeah, I've eaten strangers' asses.

[1065] And, you know, it's like when it's, when it's convenient for me, my standards shift pretty dramatically.

[1066] Yeah, I think that's, that's common, yeah.

[1067] I agree.

[1068] Anyway, I just wanted you to pop in and say hi because we missed you and I want the listeners to know that I'm still alive.

[1069] You're alive and this, you know, this won't be the end of you.

[1070] Amazing.

[1071] Okay.

[1072] Well, but stay right.

[1073] You just stay, yeah.

[1074] You just hang for the rest of it?

[1075] Yeah, sure.

[1076] Do you have somewhere to, you can't possibly have somewhere to be.

[1077] That's mean?

[1078] No, it's not.

[1079] Huh?

[1080] It's good.

[1081] You stop working.

[1082] Oh, yeah.

[1083] Not by choice.

[1084] I stopped.

[1085] I have no restaurant for me anymore.

[1086] We're back on lockdown in L .A. No more outdoor dining.

[1087] And you've worked out twice.

[1088] I've worked out twice already today.

[1089] Oh my gosh.

[1090] That's a big update.

[1091] Let's update that.

[1092] Yeah.

[1093] I got a little crazy there.

[1094] I got up to 246.

[1095] Okay.

[1096] Yeah.

[1097] Pounds.

[1098] Yeah.

[1099] So I've been on a little bit of a journey there.

[1100] And that's been really fun too.

[1101] I wake up early.

[1102] And you look fantastic.

[1103] Oh, thank you.

[1104] You do.

[1105] I sometimes don't.

[1106] I sometimes don't.

[1107] want to say that because I don't want you to think that's what it's about, but you do look fantastic.

[1108] Thank you so much.

[1109] How much have you lost?

[1110] I'm at 24 pounds, but now I'm moving pounds to muscle where I can keep the same weight and still transform.

[1111] Should we meet at 215?

[1112] Me and you?

[1113] Yeah.

[1114] I would love that.

[1115] That's my, actually my goal is 215.

[1116] Oh, yeah.

[1117] It'll be hard for me to get there, but.

[1118] Oh, you want a 215 muscle.

[1119] Me, yeah, I want to go up to 215 of muscle.

[1120] And you come down to 215 a muscle.

[1121] And then we fuck all day.

[1122] You love that.

[1123] 2001, Jess, would love that.

[1124] I don't know if I can fuck my dad now.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] Look how evolved you are.

[1127] You learned a lot this year.

[1128] Okay, well, Dove.

[1129] Dove Fox is who we're fact -checking today.

[1130] And he has an insanely interesting podcast about these people who bought sperm from a sperm bank.

[1131] And they were told that the person was a, medical student with expert drummer, expert this, expert that, healthy, healthy.

[1132] Come to find out later, very severe mental health issues, lied about most of the stuff.

[1133] It's incredible.

[1134] Incredibly.

[1135] Really thought provoking on what's ethical, what's not, and what should be allowed and regulation.

[1136] How much should you be able to, yeah, design your child?

[1137] Yeah.

[1138] It's very tricky territory.

[1139] It really is.

[1140] And is it true?

[1141] Like these babies are coming out like that, or is this all a hoax?

[1142] No, no, it's true.

[1143] Yeah, yeah.

[1144] These women who had had two children, the second one that they bought this sperm from this donor, he started having some very serious issues, violence, just leaving school at eight years old, like a lot of stuff.

[1145] He was, he's now older and he's doing much better.

[1146] And they, you know, tried every kind of medication route.

[1147] And that didn't help.

[1148] And then that, that, that, that, that.

[1149] boy learning what he thought was his dad and then learning out kind of the reality of what his dad was like there's every single philosophical question is embedded almost in that the dad was like um presented as superman like a tom cruise face a genius level IQ speaking all these languages like that in the catalog is how he was listed and then turns out who was none of those and the little boy thought that like and he's like having all these problems.

[1150] So you could imagine like what he must have thought the expectations for himself were going to be versus how life was going.

[1151] It's, uh, wow, what a, what a story.

[1152] Yeah.

[1153] And then, you know, the other element is that guy could have not been, I mean, he was lying.

[1154] We now know that, the sperm donor, but he could have been 100 % accurate and the kid could have been the exact same.

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] Like, it's not a one to one ratio.

[1157] Yeah.

[1158] And it came out in there that I had lied when I tried to donate sperm.

[1159] He donated.

[1160] sperm and he lied about it.

[1161] Yeah, because when I was at UCLA, I'd see all these ads in the brewing, like, 200 bucks or 150 for a shot of sperm.

[1162] I was like, I need that money.

[1163] And then when I went in there and I filled out the thing, of course, I left out like my dad's heart disease and some cancer.

[1164] Because I'm like, I wanted to sell that sperm and I was desperate.

[1165] I mean, I really had, I was going to UCLA, but that's about it.

[1166] And I was really six -two -ish, but.

[1167] You had a really good body then, too.

[1168] I should have put that.

[1169] I would have put that for you.

[1170] I would have put it in quotes and then wrote your name, really good body.

[1171] I was your agent.

[1172] Because your sperm donor agent, but he didn't have a high enough sperm count.

[1173] So everyone's in the clear.

[1174] His sperm did not get disseminated.

[1175] I didn't, no. Well, it's not that I didn't have, it's not that I had a low sperm count, but they are looking for people with high sperm counts specifically.

[1176] And I did not meet that expectation.

[1177] What's your sperm count looking like?

[1178] I would like what I would know.

[1179] I don't know.

[1180] What's high, like 40 or like 700?

[1181] Okay.

[1182] Because there's like, you know, a billion little sperm and a billion.

[1183] sperm's per load?

[1184] Hi.

[1185] Should I back check it?

[1186] Let me check it.

[1187] Real -time fact -check?

[1188] Yeah.

[1189] How many sperm is in sperm?

[1190] How much sperm is per load?

[1191] Well.

[1192] Per load.

[1193] Well, that's how Jess asked you.

[1194] A fertile male human ejaculates between two and five millimeters of semen on average a teaspoon.

[1195] In each milliliter, there are normally about a hundred million sperm.

[1196] If the concentration falls below 20 million sperm per millimeter, there is usually some trouble with fertility.

[1197] Interesting.

[1198] Yeah, so I've heard about these mega sperm donors and they're like, yeah, they have over a billion sperm per shot.

[1199] This guy had a, he used to run a studio too, a very weird guy at a birthday party.

[1200] He told us this 30 minute story and the punchline was that he had 1 .5 billion sperm per load.

[1201] It was a really lengthy brag.

[1202] Real long way to the joke.

[1203] Yeah, or just like at the end of the whole story, I was like, oh, the point of that story was you have a ton of sperm, and it took 20 minutes to learn that.

[1204] And you think that makes you super masculine.

[1205] Right.

[1206] Yeah.

[1207] So, okay, so Dov said that his parents wanted to make Alia with the idea to immigrate to Israel.

[1208] And I didn't know what it meant.

[1209] So it means immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the land of Israel, historically, which today includes a modern state of Israel.

[1210] So do you know what the diaspora is?

[1211] from the diaspora right so originally jews were you could think of as an ethnicity they were all coming from mesopotamia but over the centuries you had people convert to judaism in russia you had them convert to judaism all over the the planet so all those people that converted and aren't ethnically jewish are called the diaspora and they were invited when israel became a state to have Israeli citizenship even though they were born outside or they were ethnically the diaspora.

[1212] Wow.

[1213] Got it.

[1214] Cool.

[1215] Cool or not very cool?

[1216] I'll forget it.

[1217] Okay.

[1218] I was impressed by you, though.

[1219] Dov mentioned Pinkalicious.

[1220] I do believe you guys own Pinkalicious, just as a fact check.

[1221] What is Pinkalicious?

[1222] The girls, it's a kid's book.

[1223] And he had asked, he brought it up a couple times.

[1224] He said, has that made its way through your house?

[1225] And you said, no, you didn't know it, which I'm not saying you did know it.

[1226] But I think I've seen that in the household.

[1227] Oh, okay.

[1228] It's a popular children's story about pink girls.

[1229] What are pink girls?

[1230] They wear pink.

[1231] Oh.

[1232] Let me just look at it.

[1233] I just, from the title, I'm not drawn to it.

[1234] It sounds like, um, pink they are.

[1235] Yeah, it sounds like, um, these kind of, there's one, by the way, I think it's a good show, but the title triggered me, which is fancy Nancy.

[1236] Oh, yeah, fancy Nancy.

[1237] Because I don't want my kids to try to be fancy.

[1238] So I initially just thought like, oh, I don't know.

[1239] I don't want them reading a book about being fancy.

[1240] I thought that was gay guys.

[1241] Are gay guys referred to as fancy nancy's?

[1242] Definitely nancy's.

[1243] And they could be fancy.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Well, I got to watch it.

[1246] You might learn a thing or two.

[1247] Do you like fancy people, Jess?

[1248] No. Yeah.

[1249] Do you like Monica fancy people?

[1250] I don't mind them.

[1251] I don't have a chip on my shoulder about fanciness at all.

[1252] I do.

[1253] I know.

[1254] Like someone in an ascot or something?

[1255] I'm like, oh, yeah.

[1256] I mean, I will have an issue with some Tinder pictures with certain way they dress, yeah.

[1257] Like they're about to go on a yacht?

[1258] Yeah, a little bit.

[1259] You would love to go on a yacht.

[1260] Well, sure.

[1261] Everyone would love to go on a yacht.

[1262] If the guy was chilling just wore, like, sweats a lot.

[1263] I don't know.

[1264] You're lying.

[1265] I don't know what fancy means, to be honest.

[1266] Oh, exactly.

[1267] That's exactly the point.

[1268] They interpretive fancy because there's just can be really fancy people that are so down to earth.

[1269] So it's about their personalities.

[1270] I'll do my, can I do my stereotypo with the person I'm referring to?

[1271] So I'm a guy on your, let's start texting.

[1272] You saw me. Jess.

[1273] Oh, God.

[1274] Are you into things that are nautical?

[1275] Not really.

[1276] I mean, like.

[1277] Well, we're having a blast cashing in my father's, my deceased father's 4 .1K.

[1278] Okay, block.

[1279] Block.

[1280] Block.

[1281] Immediately block.

[1282] Where did you matriculate, Jess?

[1283] Okay.

[1284] Now, that's fancy.

[1285] I don't know.

[1286] That's my stereotype cartoon of fancy.

[1287] These people vacation down in Orlando.

[1288] Apparently there's some kind of amusement park down there that everyone just crawls around and shares germs.

[1289] Epcot?

[1290] Yeah, it's fun.

[1291] Is that what it's called?

[1292] Epcot.

[1293] Yeah, there's like, what's that stand for?

[1294] You can drink around the world and go to different countries.

[1295] It's pretty fun.

[1296] I know Epoch, which is an era of time.

[1297] Oh, wow.

[1298] Does it have any bearing on that?

[1299] Not really.

[1300] Just.

[1301] Let's just fuck.

[1302] I think I'm losing you.

[1303] Yeah, you are losing me big time.

[1304] You hon?

[1305] Yeah.

[1306] We're raging five inches, which is the biggest in four generations.

[1307] I've never blocked twice.

[1308] I think if you're going to have compassion for all types of people, you should probably have compassion for them.

[1309] That's the life they grew up in.

[1310] Oh, I've been the first to admit on here.

[1311] My issues with fancy people are my insecurity that I'm less than.

[1312] Right.

[1313] Yeah, it's all me. It has nothing to do with them.

[1314] I felt less than around people with money when I was younger.

[1315] And I have a chip on my shoulder about it.

[1316] And even though I'm smart enough to know that, I still am triggered.

[1317] I see that ascot, hear them talking.

[1318] I bristle.

[1319] Maybe I'll start using bristled instead of triggered in 2021.

[1320] Do you think that?

[1321] That bristled me. That sounds fancy.

[1322] Okay.

[1323] Oh, boy.

[1324] Oh, boy.

[1325] Before I get in.

[1326] into this.

[1327] Dex don't say anything.

[1328] Jess, what do you think it means to be ambidextrous?

[1329] Ambidextrous means that you can write with your right hand and your left hand.

[1330] Yeah, baby.

[1331] So it does mean that you can do things with both hands.

[1332] But you were so outraged by the idea that I said, mainly it's about writing.

[1333] And you said you thought I made that up.

[1334] No. Yes, you did.

[1335] My issue with it then and now is that is a very narrow definition of ambidextreous.

[1336] It's the most common.

[1337] That's fine.

[1338] Okay.

[1339] But that's not what it means.

[1340] It means you do things with both hands.

[1341] It doesn't mean exclusively you write with both hands.

[1342] It doesn't mean exclusively.

[1343] But that is the most common version of it.

[1344] And then you said you thought I made that up.

[1345] I don't think you made that up.

[1346] I think a lot of people think that.

[1347] And you're saying people would hammer with their left hand as much as they hammer with the right?

[1348] So I'm ambidextreous because I throw a ball with my right hand.

[1349] and a football and a hockey stick, and I write with my left hand, I eat with my left hand, I brush my teeth in my left hand.

[1350] But I favor my right hand sometimes and my left hand sometimes, which is ambidextrous.

[1351] But Monica was saying because I don't write with both hands, I'm not ambidextrous.

[1352] And I was saying that's not true.

[1353] Technically, ambidexterity means being able to do things with left and right hands equally.

[1354] So I do think it means like anything you can do with your right hand, you can also do it with your left hand.

[1355] Yeah, so we still disagree about that.

[1356] It means you do things with both hands.

[1357] It doesn't mean you have to do both things.

[1358] Nobody on planet Earth can throw a ball with their left and right hand the exact same.

[1359] That's not possible.

[1360] All right.

[1361] Yeah, you read me the definition again.

[1362] Ambidexterity means being able to do things with left and right hands equally.

[1363] Yeah.

[1364] So I just named three things I do with my left and I named three things I do with my right.

[1365] We're probably going to have to agree to disagree on this.

[1366] Okay, great.

[1367] I thought it means having sex.

[1368] on land and in water.

[1369] It also means that.

[1370] Can you do that?

[1371] Webster's...

[1372] In water?

[1373] Definition ambidextreous.

[1374] I tried.

[1375] I'm not a big shower.

[1376] Yeah, yeah.

[1377] Using both hands with equal ease or dexterity.

[1378] Webster's definition.

[1379] It doesn't say you have to do the same task or doing one thing with both hands.

[1380] It's just you use both hands.

[1381] All right.

[1382] I think that's a tie, guys.

[1383] It's a tie.

[1384] I'm here for you.

[1385] Tiebreaker.

[1386] Tie breaker.

[1387] Let's see.

[1388] You said that you said that something was a little lower on the, what did you say?

[1389] Situ reading, situ reading.

[1390] Oh, yeah.

[1391] What is that?

[1392] Insight two is how you, when you're doing, on an archaeological dig, you do in situ reading.

[1393] So you go down like a millimeter and you're digging in a perfect box so you have a grid.

[1394] And so you'll say basically what coordinates and how far down.

[1395] and that's the Insight 2 reading.

[1396] So if you found a coin, you would know exactly where in three dimensions the coin was found.

[1397] Oh, interesting.

[1398] All right.

[1399] Well, that's it for Dove.

[1400] Dove Fox.

[1401] It was very interesting.

[1402] I can't wait to check out his podcast.

[1403] I'm going to do it over the holidays.

[1404] The holy days.

[1405] We're in.

[1406] The high holy days.

[1407] We're in.

[1408] We decided, yeah.

[1409] Jess and I decided yesterday.

[1410] It's holiday time.

[1411] Yippee.

[1412] Yep, yep.

[1413] Well, Jess, thanks for joining us.

[1414] I love you guys.

[1415] Thank you so much.

[1416] Love you.

[1417] Love you.

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