Selects: Is birth order important?

26:32Well, wait, did you control for race? No. Did you control for gender? No. And so all of a sudden you realize there's all these different independent variables. Oh, tons. What in this case would be confounding variables that might actually be the thing influencing it. It might be the fact that they are women born into families of a low socioeconomic state that is driving neuroses. Right. That that's actually the thing that is driving it rather than birth order. It has nothing to do with being a middle child. It's just a fluke, a coincidence. Yeah. And like you said, there's so many confounding variables and so many things that make our personalities who we are that some people who are like birth order effects do not exist.

27:18Basically say that any birth order study that shows that they do exist has some confounding variable that's the actual hidden thing that's driving it. That you can't possibly control for everything to make a perfectly designed experiment for birth order. Yeah, like when you start to think about, like if you were just to sit there and sort of jot down things as non-scientists, just regular schmoes like us. Right. And just jot down a list of what other factors might be at play. We could probably come up with a list of 100 things between us. Let's start now. But that would, like, if I was studying this stuff and I started to make that list, I would just walk away and go into another line of study.

27:58Sure. I would be like, dude, I just, you know, were your parents married? Were they divorced? When did they get divorced? Did you like hot dogs? Did you live with mom or dad? How far apart did they live? Yeah. Were you suburban? Were you urban? Yeah. Did you live in an exurb? Did you grow up in the woods? Did you start work at 12? Were you like old timey? I started work at 12. I guess I did too. I did a paper route. Yeah. I was a busboy. Oh, nice. Oh, wait. Was that where the guy put his foot into the... Yeah, yeah. Brunch of stew. What a criminal. I told you that's a title max now, that restaurant.

28:33I drove by it not too long ago. KJ's barbecue. Tidal Max. Now they're putting their foot on titles. Just stomping on them. Yeah. They got your money. Your money. Your real money. They're never going to sponsor us now. Another few things that can confound these studies are things, and Ed helped us put this research together, things like demographic shifts. So he gave a great example of, like, the baby boom. If there's a big population bulge that also coincides with a lot of other stuff, and the example he used was prevalence of cigarette smoking, there may be a false correlation there between being a firstborn and smoking, whereas if you were secondborn 12 years later, I guess that would fall outside that range, though, of gap child.

29:23Maybe. But that's even more confounding. The point's still valid. Sure. That like there's just way more firstborns who smoke than secondborns, but that's because smoking was more prevalent when there were a bunch of kids born who were all of the same cohort in all firstborns. Right. That's just one of the ways this thing can be confounded. Yeah. Well, this one really speaks to me, which is labeled as growth. When a birth order effect does appear, it is strongest when the subject is with their siblings. Yeah. When you're a family reunion, everybody falls back into that. It is so funny how that happens.

29:59Yeah. I see myself do it. Like, good example. I turned 48 a couple of weeks ago. My family, my sister and her husband happened to be in town. Didn't come for that. But we were texting and I was like, hey, let's all, you know, this is great. Let's all go out to dinner. She's like, oh, well, I didn't want to. I just figured you wouldn't want to spend your birthday with your friend. You'd want to spend your birthday with your friends and not your family. And I saw Michelle when she got in town and she said the same thing in person. And I was like, dude, I'm 48. Yeah. It's like, I'm not 22-year-old Chuck.

30:30I'm not some burnout. Like I used to be. Yeah. And she just sort of laughed. But that's a perfect example of how, like, no matter what happens in my life, I will always be the baby. Yeah. And she will probably feel like she has to look out for me, which is a nice feeling. It is. I see Emily fall into patterns with her family. What is she? Well, she is a, she's an interesting case because she was an only and then has a half brother and a half sister. Okay. Her dad, yeah, her dad went and had a son with another woman. And then her mom got married to her father-in-law, Steve, who already had a daughter.

31:12So it's a sort of a weird mix. But I just mean in general, not even with siblings, you know, just in how their family dynamic is. she's a different person when we go over there. Yeah, I think everybody is. And it happens to all of us. I think everybody is around their family. It's so strange. Yeah.

31:28So this is when it sort of started me down the path of like, what is personality? Is it a personality trait? Is it repeated behaviors? Is it a set of behaviors? Like, is that personality? Are you asking me? Yeah, I mean, I don't even know. Like, what is personality? We should do a show on that. Oh, we totally should. But from what I understand, just kind of briefly put it, personality is the kind of predictable way that you'll react to the world, right? Is it easy for somebody to press your buttons? Are you laid back? Are you, like, could somebody, however, if somebody were presented with a, and this is going terribly, if somebody were presented with a, like, an event in life, Okay.

32:16You could say Josh would probably respond to it like that. Yeah. That's a personality. Right. But is that something inherent or is it birth order? No, it's— Or is it just a collection of learned behaviors? I think it's a collection of learned and reinforced behaviors too. If you're told you're the baby of the family all the time, you're going to act like the baby of the family. You're going to act self-centered. You're going to act manipulative. It's reinforced. If you're told you can do anything, you can go out and do anything. You can literally walk through walls because someone told you to.

32:48They reinforce that behavior. But I think that's what personality is. And this is just me talking. I also believe in birth order effects, by the way. But I think that that is, it's learned and reinforced, which means it can be unlearned. You can learn to be different. Yeah. At that same birthday dinner, I picked up the check for everyone. Oh, nice. And there was a bit of a, not an argument. Bloody struggle? My mom and I were, you know, kind of off to the side with the people who worked there doing the credit card battle. And she wasn't super happy, and I should have just let her pay. But it's part of that thing.

33:27Like, I'm the baby of the family. And I kind of just finally told her, I said, listen, Mom, it's like, it's my turn to pay. Nice. You know, I'm not the baby anymore. Like, quit writing me a check for$100 on my birthday. Do you cash those? Yeah, I mean, I generally just put it in my kid's bank account. Oh, that's a good thing. You know? Yeah, we don't catch the ones from our dad. Because I also don't want to take away the joy that she gets from writing me that$100 check. Yeah, sure. That's not cool. No. It's like, I don't need that from her, but that's what brings her joy. Yeah. Giving you money.

33:56It's complicated. So let me teach you a little trick. Oh, okay. If you don't want to get into that tussle, if you just wanted to be done, sorry, it's too late. When you order, when you hand the menu back to the server, just be holding your credit card with your thumb and give them a look. It's universal. Dude. They all know, and they'll take it and be like, and you got to it first. Nobody else does that. They always wait and they pretend to go to the bathroom like after everybody's done it. It's so obvious. You got to start before the food even comes, before the drinks even come. You know what I did?

34:26What? When we got to the restaurant, the very first thing I did was go up to the manager while everyone was being seated and said, listen, dude, my mom's going to try and pay or one of these other chumps in my family is going to try and pay. I was like, I don't want any of them paying. It was like 12 people. I picked the place. I picked a nicer place. It's like, I don't want to do that. And I was like, so just here's my credit card. Please make sure that the server, there's no battle. They didn't follow your orders? No, because my mom, she tried to jump me later on the side and didn't realize I had already jumped her.

35:02So it should have been done. I know. But then we went over there. He was like, listen, man, your mom is over here now. Like, she's the mom. We generally side with the parents on this stuff. What place was this? It was just a restaurant. I demand to know. I'm mad about this. Well, you think my move should have just trumped all moves. Yes. No, I agree. And that's what I basically said. And I was like, listen, man, I was like, there are factors at play here that I don't want to talk about. Yeah. I was like, just please. And my mom got a little mad. I blame this manager. I think you should expose them.

35:36Well, I'm glad it all worked out in the end. Oh, man. Man, should we take a break? I thought we were right now. No. All right, we'll be back right after this.

35:56New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeVolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.

36:31Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.

37:10We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.

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38:31All right, we're back, Chuck. Yes. And like we said, we showed science is kind of like, we're not quite sure about the birth order effect. That hasn't kept like a whole cottage, like field of psychology from continuing since the 80s, basically nonstop. Like if you go look at birth order effects, it's very rare you're going to run into anything that says like this is all BS. Most of it's like, yeah, this is true. Everybody knows it. There have been some like prominent people in favor of like that say, yes, there is such thing as birth effects. And there was one guy in particular who made a big splash in 1996 with a book called Born to Rebel.

39:13Yeah, Soloway? Yeah, Frank Soloway. Frank J. Soloway, if you want to be fancy about it. And he got a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1984 to kind of study this and write about it. And he did. He wrote a book called Born to Rebel. It was about birth order. And the whole premise of the book was he looked at scientific revolutions throughout the ages. It's pretty interesting. Identified which scientists were on which side of it, either in support of this revolutionary thinking or opposed to it, meaning that they were in favor of keeping the status quo, and then determined what birth order they had. And he found after this study, which is really, it was a big study that he did.

39:56It was a lot of legwork and a lot of research. He determined that firstborns are much more likely to support the status quo, whereas secondborns or laterborns, he calls them, are much more likely to support revolutionary thinking. Yeah, and just one example as far as he used Darwinism. He said later borns between 1859 and 1875 were 4.6 times more likely than first borns to support Darwinism. Yeah, this revolutionary thinking. Yeah, and that was one of many examples. I think there were 121 historical events with 6 ,500 individuals either supporting or opposing them. So it was a big, big work for sure.

40:43Yeah. And one of his, I mean, he put some reasoning behind it too. He was like, if you're later born, you might have a hard time competing with your older. Right. You might have a tighter bond with the parents maybe. And so that sort of symbolically forces you as to be almost an outsider within your own family. So you may be more prone to join up with an outsider opinion. Right. To go look outside of the family union and all of the values and the ideas that it holds to make your own mark in order to get attention or support or whatever from your parents. Whereas if you're a firstborn, you just got the easiest thing to do is to just fall in line with your parents and hence support the status quo.

41:24It makes sense, but born to rebel was torn apart by some scientists. Sure. It's like this is just pure pop psychology tripe. Yeah. I think that's an unfair characterization of it. Like the guy worked for basically 20-something years on this stuff. Yeah. And it was a very robust study. One of the pitfalls that he seemed to have run into, though, was he was analyzing historical figures, which is really sticky stuff. Yeah. Like you can't analyze people even from afar, even if they're contemporary, let alone they've been dead for a couple hundred years. So to base it on that is kind of difficult and tricky, but I just want to say he worked really hard on it.

42:11Another part plucked from his research I thought was pretty interesting was the idea that part of this less rebellious nature of a firstborn might be due to the longstanding but now sort of antiquated practice of primogeniture, which is the firstborn gets the inheritance. So they're more likely just through thousands of years of this, more inclined to like not ruffle the feathers of the parents. Right. And then the later borns who are like, I've got basically zero chance of inheriting the family titles in a state. I'll just go do my own thing. I don't have to fall in line. That makes sense as well.

42:49And the other interesting thing with that is another factor was the removal of a child from a family. He's found that a later born who was removed from the family and reared by a relative will end up behaving like a typical firstborn. Right. And again, I'm assuming if that's under the age of like five. But I wonder, so I'm wondering if that just is supported by other research or if all of the parenting magazine articles that mention that whole, you know, the personality is tailored is really just citing that work. Because that's one of the big problems with pop psychology in general is it's self-reinforcing.

43:25One person says one thing and it gets picked up by a bunch of people and they're all pointing to the same thing. But since so many of them are pointing, there's so many of them out there doing the pointing. Right. It seems like it's a very robust and like widespread body of work when really it was just one study that said one thing that everybody's citing. Well, yeah. Like in his case, he likes to cite this Norwegian study. It found a difference of 2.3 IQ points between first and second born children. Mm-hmm. Sample size of 241 ,000 subjects. That's big. It is big. But then, you know, Ed sort of brings up a good point, like, okay, maybe, but, like, is a 2.3?

44:03First of all, IQ tests are problematic. They're bunk. For, like, a lot of reasons. Because they're bunk. Possibly bunk. But even if they're not, is a 2.3 IQ point difference even meaningful? Yeah. Enough to be like, well, look, two points. So, no, it's not meaningful in that, like, you know, that's not going to lead to any, like, closed doors or open doors or anything. It's just such a narrow difference. But if that's like an average and it is found across, you know, firstborns and laterborns, like in a very large population like that, it does make you wonder, like, what would that come from? It does raise more questions.

44:44Yeah. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's an insignificant difference as far as, like, actual intelligence goes, but it does suggest that there's something weird going on there that does have to do with birth order. Well, I guess that brings us to this really interesting thing that I had never heard of before. Oh, yeah? Had you heard of this? Mm-hmm. Fraternal birth order effect, which is basically the idea, and a lot of studies have backed this up. Yeah. Meta-analysis of tons of studies have backed this up. But the idea is that if you have multiple boys in your family, each successive boy that's born, and this is if it's just boys, has a higher chance of being gay.

45:31Right. I didn't think – and when I first saw that, I was like, that can't be real. Right. And then I did a lot more poking around. I was like, wow. It is real. The statistics sort of bear it out. Yeah, if there's a big disagreement about whether actual just regular birth order effects exist, this one is much more supported by the data. Yeah. The fraternal birth order effect. And so much so that there is a sexologist, which if that were my field of study, I'd be like, call me sexologist Josh, please. I can't find his name. It's Ray something. He said, and I'm not sure what he was basing this on, but he said that there is an increase of 33 % in likelihood that you will be gay with each additional older brother you have.

46:19Now, so that means if you are born into a family and you're the youngest of four brothers. I did this math too. What does that mean? Because I know these people. It means that there's a 0 % chance, I guess, that you are going to be hetero. that you're 100 % chance going to be gay, right? Well, how many? It could be 160 % chance. It just keeps going, right? Yeah, I mean, that can't be right. Eventually, you become so gay, you pop out the other side and you're straight because you have like 10 brothers. Well, I did see that meta-analysis of multiple, multiple studies indicated that between 15 % and 29 % of gay males owe their sexual orientation to this effect.

47:04supposedly. Okay. So, and we should say there are some studies that have not found this. There was a big one that had, it was like a survey of British young men that surveyed like 11 ,000 of them or whatever and did not find this. But so many studies have found it that science is like, this actually might be a thing and we're not quite sure what it is. And at first they explained it that the more boys there are, the less social pressure there are for you to be like hetero and responsible for carrying on the family line. Right, right, right. Like after two, three brothers who are going to carry on the family line, go, go crazy, go do what you want.

47:47And that that was the idea behind why it became likelier that you would be gay if you had more older brothers. There's a couple of things with that kind of suggests that like being gay or not is a choice or being straight or not is a choice rather than something biological. Right. Whatever. That has kind of gone out the window with another really surprising finding that has to do with handedness that really undermines that whole idea. Yeah. So this is so just mind-blowing and interesting. So the increase in probability of a boy becoming gay is only, only if that boy is right-handed. Right. Handed.

48:27Yep. So if you're left-handed, among left-handed men, there was no statistical difference in the incidence of homosexuality, even if you've got a thousand brothers. And the weird thing about that is that they found if you are taking birth order out of the equation, if you are left-handed, there is a slightly higher incidence of being gay. Just period. Yes, for being left-handed. And that's with men and women, apparently. So the idea that not only does it not make you more likely to be gay as far as fraternal birth order is concerned, it actually negates the effects of fraternal birth order. It negates it.

49:06It shows that social pressure from brothers doesn't have anything to do with it. Right. Because a right-handed or a left-handed kid is not going to be under any more or less social pressure from older brothers to be straight. Right. That makes zero sense whatsoever. And that would also suggest in this handedness that it has something to do with genetics, too. If you're ambidextrous, are you bisexual? I guess so. Where's that study? That makes sense. So, I did a little more digging in this, but I don't understand it at all. But more recently, as in just a couple of years ago, they think they found an actual physiological, biological explanation for that.

49:47Did you understand that? I don't know if they found it or if somebody made it up and everybody's like, all right, that'll do for now. I read a bunch of papers that said, you know, they think this may be it. Okay. But I didn't get it. So what they think is that when a mom carries a boy, her body has a reaction to the male proteins, the stuff that makes him a male, creates an allergic reaction of sorts in the mom, and the mom produces antibodies. The first time the mom's body is totally caught off guard, has basically no effects whatsoever on the boy's development as a boy. As more and more boys are born and gestate in that same poor mom, the antibodies get better and better at recognizing these proteins and can actually get to the point where they affect the expression of these proteins.

50:45And so what makes the boy straight from the basis of these proteins is actually affected, and they develop differently, starting in the womb, because the mom has developed antibodies to basically maleness, which is the most mind-boggling, amazing idea I've ever heard. That summary was so much better than the scientific paper summaries that I read today. Thank you, Chuck. Good job. Thank you. You should do that. I do for a living. I just did. Well, that's a good point. I thought this was interesting too. I mean, we've kind of gone over most of these birth order theories, I think, in general. But this one I don't think we super touched on.

51:23And I think it's really interesting, the confluence theory. So this is sort of like resource dilution of parents that we were talking about. Like only so much emotional support or financial support to go around. But this takes it down to the sibling level, and it's sort of basically like if you were first born, you are then have a degraded emotional environment and intellectual environment once you get a younger. So it's like playing tennis against better or worse competition. If you're the better tennis player, you're not going to play as good against a lesser tennis player. and they're saying that that kind of happens with firstborns because they have to spend time with this dumb kid, this dumb baby.

52:08But the dumb baby gets a leg up. Exactly. That's when you play tennis against someone better than you. Right. Eventually, that's called the Tudor effect. They surpass that firstborn. The student becomes the master. That's right. Exactly. And your skin turns to alabaster. Really interesting. It says Sting. Is that Sting? Mm-hmm. Well, the police. Oh, okay. Oh, sure. I thought you were like Dream of the Blue Turtles thing No, I'm more of a nothing like the sun Yes, synchronicity No, that's good too I'm still mad at them for that reunion tour Oh yeah, they really phoned it in You said, right? Just phoned it in Hey, I saw So I just thought of The Police And Stuart Copeland Which made me think of Les Claypool Remember he was in that band with Les Claypool And Trey Anastasio?

52:56Yeah, it's called Kill Me No, it's three talented individuals. But then that made me think of Les Claypool, who was in a documentary I just saw on The Residents. Have you seen it? No, The Residents were the mystery band, right? Yes. That were the big ping pong heads? Eyeballs. Eyeballs, right. Still are a mystery band. Still going. Really? Yeah, they're good. But it's good. It's an intellectual kind of examination of their history and everything. But it's really interesting. But Les Claypool's in it. Do you think when Les Claypool, Fish Guy, what's his name? Trey Anastasio. Trey Anastasio. And Stuart Copeland.

53:33And Stuart Copeland. You think when they got together to form that band, all they did was just sort of work out whose solo is next? Probably. It's like, I want to do the bass solo first, and then we can go right into the guitar solo, and then the drum solo, and then the song's over. Hopefully the birth order of the three worked out so that they were like, yes, this all makes sense to me. Oh, man, there's nothing better than old videos of Stuart Copeland pitching fits. Oh, did he? I always heard it was Sting that was the jerk to Stuart Copeland. Was Stuart Copeland the jerk? Well, Stuart Copeland was a hothead, and Sting could poke his buttons.

54:07Oh. Yeah, it's pretty fun. Poor Stuart Copeland. No, don't feel bad for Stuart Copeland. Man, he might be. I think he might be the best drummer ever lived. Everybody says Neil Peart. I don't know, man. Stuart Copeland was pretty good. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and like crazy, like doing his own thing. And he's from Macon. What? Yeah. Macon, Georgia? Macon, Georgia. Wow. I didn't know that. This concludes this episode of Stuff You Should Know. If you want to know more about Birth Order, go talk to your family. We don't care. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Did you watch the Motley Crue movie yet on Netflix?

54:43No. No, I didn't know it was out. Yeah, it's out. Okay. Is it good? No. Is it based on that book you read? It's not good, but it's great. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's based on the book. Okay. But it's so, I mean, it feels like one of those VH1, are you literally making a note? I can't wait to see it. It's sort of like one of those VH1 music movies. Okay. Like the Jackson's one. It's good. Okay. I'll check it out. All right. Who plays Vince Neil? They're all, you know, the only one of the, not the only thing, there's a lot of distracting parts, but the guy who plays Vince Neil in his hair looks a lot like Garth.

55:21Looks a lot like Dana Carvey as Garth. So it's kind of hard to fully go there. The guy who played Tommy Lee is pretty good. Was it Christian Navarro? No, did he? He can't play Tommy Lee. He could. Tommy Lee's like 6 '5". That kid can play anybody. Well, no, I agree. All right, it's time for Listener Mail. I said, Chuck. Navarro's more a Mick Mars guy. Okay. All right, here we go. Is that from, is that Dokken? No, Mick Marshal's Motley Crue. Who is that? He's a guitar player. Oh. The old creep. Yeah, yeah, sure. I know who you're talking about. I guess I never knew his name. By creep, he was a creep.

55:57He was creepy. Sure. That's what I mean. Still is. All right, here we go. This is from Sam. I'm just going to call this heartfelt. It's always nice to hear this. Yeah. Hey, guys, probably could have sent this a million times, but tonight I really felt the need to. You were with me when I transitioned from high school to college. You were there the night my dad died two years ago, and now you're here as I'm in the process of dealing with my girlfriend dumping me after three years. You're always there, guys. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I want to tell you that on tough days, you really help keep me sane, plain, and simple.

56:30You help keep me sane, plain, and simple. Not that we keep them plain and simple. I read that wrong. That's like eat shoots and leaves. That's right. I have depression and anxiety, and the podcast is a huge help on nights. like this, when nothing seems to help or is comforting. I can tell if things get really bad, if even the podcast doesn't help. You guys have also been like role models for me. Oof.

56:57So this is all just to say thank you so much, guys. Who knows how much darker some spots in my life have been without you. Could say much more, but I think I got the message across. That is from Sam, and he says, P.S., I am a he-him, and I spanked this email on the bottom. Oh, good. That's how it got here. That's right. Nice work. If you want to get in touch with us like Sam did, thank you very much, Sam, by the way. That was very sweet of you to tell us all that. Hope you're pulling through. Yeah, hang in there, man. You can get in touch with us by going to stuffyoushouldknow.com and clicking on our social links.

57:31And you can also send us an email like Sam did. Don't forget to spank it on the bottom to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

57:43Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

57:58Hey, it's Joel. And Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom Podcast.

58:33Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight.

59:17You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.