1272: Left-Handedness | Skeptical Sunday

23:56I will say it is why everyone shakes hands with their right hand. And that and shaking with the right hand is, you know, it's an old school peace signal. Yeah, it's probably pretty aggressive to offer your poop hand as a greeting. Like, hello, yes. And the right hand was the weapon hand. So offering it meant, look, you know, no dagger. And the up and down shake part is basically a medieval TSA check to make sure nothing pops out of your sleeve. Weapons on the right, hygiene on the left. Oh, God, yeah, definitely. I mean, in parts of India and the Middle East, it's still considered rude to eat or handle food with your left hand because it's associated with hygienic duties.

24:39So if you're traveling and you're a lefty, maybe don't reach for the non without thinking. Right. If you travel internationally, you'll definitely want to be mindful of what hands you're using for sure. So we're not just born this way. We're trained this way. It seems to be, at least for some people. I mean, my experience has left me ambidextrous. Admittedly, I don't write with pen and paper as much anymore. But before phones and laptops, I'd switch hands while writing without even noticing. But beneath all of this, the brain's wiring drives a lot of it. Left-handed people are shown to have a larger corpus callosum.

25:16Why does that sound like a penis part? Is that a left hand? Is that a left hand in your pocket? But what is that? What is that thing? The bridge that connects the two hemispheres of our brain. So lefties often have a larger one, which means faster communication between both sides. I always knew lefties were hung in the brain. So our brains are basically the high speed Wi-Fi of the brain world. Nice. Sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, that inner hemispheric connection helps with multitasking and creative problem solving. So lefties are better multitaskers. Is that the case? Lefties seem to have an advantage in multitasking because you process information more quickly.

25:57This gives lefties an advantage in activities like video games or sports. And according to research, lefties can oftentimes be better multitaskers because they have that larger corpus callosum or part of the brain that facilitates communication between the two hemispheres. So multitasking is just the ability to use both sides of the brain simultaneously. simultaneously. That's one way to put it. Sure. It's more of a fast like ping pong thing going on. That's also why more left handed people are found in creative fields. So creative lefty, that thing is not that's not just a stereotype. There's some truth to it.

26:34Lefties tend to rely a bit more on the right hemisphere, which is the one link to creativity, imagination and spatial skills. Again, not a guarantee, but it's more likely. There are some uncreative lefties out there too, but there are lots of claims that left-handedness means creativity, a high IQ, and artistic talent. I always figured my lefty brain gave me a unique edge somehow, but usually the everyday annoyances wash that out. Many left-handers do have more creative talents since lefties more often utilize the right side of the brain, which, you know, it's just touted as the more artistic side, and that's according to the National Library of Medicine.

27:15Okay, so our bigger brain bridge lets us communicate between both sides of our brain at once. But it's a team effort, man. DNA, hormones, superstitions. I can only speak from my experience, but lefties are, I've heard, more intelligent too, right? People always say that, but it kind of sounds like one of those pat yourself on the back urban legends and not really science. And you're better at the humble brag, apparently. Oh, yes. Masters. Masters of humility. Left-handedness has been linked to higher IQ scores in several studies, with more left-handers scoring over 140 than right-handers. Yeah, thank you.

27:50Again, I've been waiting for this validation. Yeah, well, you're welcome. But settle down. Lefties aren't automatically geniuses. Okay, fine. But again, I have been told that there's a difference in how lefties process languages and stuff, for example. Are we wired differently for that as well? Some studies suggest, yes, left-handers process language using both hemispheres of the brain. while right-handers mostly stick to just the left hemisphere. I see. Okay, so, yeah, losers. Got it. Well, it just means lefties have more inter-hemispheric communication, meaning more crosstalk between the two sides of the brain.

28:26But it does come with a higher rate of dyslexia, especially among mixed-handers, you know, the people who switch hands a lot. Anecdotally, I've never experienced dyslexia, but a lot of lefties do. Interesting. But that's only because you, the nuns made you learn how to do that. So you switch hands, but maybe you wouldn't have if you weren't getting beat with a ruler. Right. I don't think so. And I mean, I can write. I can bat. I can play pool with both hands. OK, maybe then. Yeah, but eating with my right hand is really uncomfortable. I can't bowl or throw a dart or throw a ball with my right hand, though.

29:02Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to try those. I'm at the point where I'd have to try many of those things to even know because I can do weird stuff with both hands that people don't expect. And then it's like, here's a fork. And I'm like, I can't, how does it work? Right? So I really have to try everything. I doubt I could play pool with both hands. There's no way I could bat with both hands. I probably do golf or something left. I right left, throw left, but I don't know if I could bowl or throw it. I don't think I'd throw a dart or a ball right-handed either. So it's, I don't know if I'm ambidextrous then, because it's just such a crapshoot at what I'm going to be able to do with either hand.

29:38And it's weird, right? I mean, you don't even think about it. It's just, this is what I pick something up with. And even how you draw can reflect which hand your brain prefers. Like left-handers often sketch people facing the right side of the page, probably because of how the hand moves across the paper. And it's the opposite for righties. and this is true for drawings by adults and children. Art imitating ergonomics. I would never notice that, but now I'm gonna have to go back and look at my sketchbook, which doesn't exist because I can't draw at all. But I also, you know, I also shoot weapons right-handed, but that's also kind of like more to do with my eyes maybe than my hands.

30:16Right. Because if I put the firearm in my left hand and I close one eye, stuff moves. So that doesn't really work. Anyway, I got missed with the drawing gene. So again, you use both hands because your weird Catholic school nuns who were abusive beat you into it. But can people actually adapt to a different hand? It seems like you probably could if you had to. Yeah, I mean, to a degree. I mean, the brain is plastic, so you can train it. But most people still have a dominant side. Cultures, you know, like we were talking about East Germany, they try to control what hand you write and eat with, but it can't control every movement you make in the world.

30:53Evolutionary theories suggest left-handedness might have offered an advantage in combat because opponents weren't prepared to defend themselves from that angle. So it's not a sucker punch. It's just an evolutionary advantage. Like in baseball, I've heard lefty pitchers have a huge advantage somehow, and it has to do with the term southpaw, right? I mean, everyone thinks that. I thought that. The idea that it's because the left-handed pitcher's arm is on the south side of the diamond, But the term Southpaw showed up in 1813 in a publication called Tickler. OK. Decades before baseball existed. I mean, anything called Tickler now is pornographic.

31:33They were more innocent about it back then. Yeah. 200 years ago, I guess. We'll let it slide. OK. So this is not a baseball term. I guess I always assumed it was a baseball term. Yeah, me too. But it actually originated from boxing. So historically, north and right were associated with heaven and angels. South and left, that's the devil's territory. So paw meant hand, and south was linked to sinister, which is Latin for left. So a sinister punch was described with the slang southpaw. It's just another linguistic reminder that lefties were literally seen as evil. I mean, devilpaw would be cooler, I think.

32:14That would be so much cooler. Yeah. But the word was seen in a few political cartoons as well in the 1800s, describing, like, debate beatdowns. But then baseball came along in the 1840s. So boxing created it, baseball popularized it, and now nobody knows where it came from. Right, yeah. I mean, baseball changed the meaning a bit. So fields were best designed with home plate facing east so batters wouldn't stare into the sun. That meant a left-handed pitcher's throwing arm ended up on the south side of his body. So baseball just borrowed the term and changed its origin story. That makes sense, because I feel like I've chat GPT'd this or Gemini'd or whatever this ages ago, and it told me it was a baseball term or somebody told me it was, and that was the end of that.

32:59So, all right, baseball became so big, everyone just associates Southpaw with a left-handed pitcher. That makes sense. Yeah, right. And in fact, left-handed athletes dominate sports where you face an opponent. So sports like boxing, baseball, tennis and fencing. You know, lefties win more fights and boxing matches. And research has shown that left-handed boxers win more because they confuse opponents with their stance. So left-handed athletes don't have a disadvantage. It's actually an advantage. Yeah. A lot of times it's the advantage. Yeah. I guess it does seem like more and more major league baseball players bat left-handed these days.

33:35Or is that just my imagination? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot more tend to bat left and right. And that has to do with them trying to get the advantage on the pitcher, whether the pitcher's right or left handed, especially a pitcher, because they can generally throw curveballs and sliders and other trickier pitches that make it harder for those at bat to hit successfully. All right, y 'all, you don't need genius mermaid astronaut genes to make smart decisions like checking out the fine products and services who support this show. We'll be right back.

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36:04rope for half an hour has a little bit of an edge on me. And also getting punched in the face kind of sucks. This isn't for me. I suppose it makes it harder for a right-handed pitcher to throw to a lefty batter. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and left-handers are overrepresented in sports, like left-handed water polo players are rare, but they offer a competitive advantage because they're able to face both the goal and be responsive to teammates. If you, and water polo is not that popular, but it is an interesting formation how they can take advantage over their right-handed opponents. It's similar to tennis.

36:39A left-handed tennis player has an advantage over their right-handed counterparts because playing tennis as a lefty, it forces the opponent to respond to different angles and spins and serving positions. That makes sense. I guess I should be out there hustling all the righties. Yeah, you might be able to. I mean, left-handed pool players have an advantage because they have better angles for certain shots. They can often shoot righty as well from the simple fact of just adapting to a right-handed world. And fencing gets interesting when a lefty is an opponent. It just confuses everything a right-handed person trained for.

37:17There's even a classic scene about it in that movie, The Princess Bride. Right, because they're throwing from an angle nobody expects. It's like the Jedi mind trick of athletics. Yeah, for sure. And this is in athletics. But another interesting fact is that astronauts are more likely to be left handed. So you're telling me lefties are not only better athletes, we're also literally leaving the planet. About 60 percent of astronauts are left handed, which is a rate much higher than the general population. That's wild. Do we have any reason why that is? I mean, there's nothing solid, but it does point back to how those cilia are formed in the womb.

37:55Since they influence our hearing and vision, that seems to be a factor for things like astronauts, pilots, even underwater divers. Why would it affect divers? This is weird and not sure what it means evolutionarily, but studies overwhelmingly show that left-handed people adjust more easily to seeing underwater and have far better vision below the surface than righties. OK, lefties are better. Athletes, astronauts and mermaids, this is getting unfair. I guess I feel better about all those scissor and pencil on my hand incidents throughout the years now. Yeah. I mean, it's in everything. It's not just with our hands.

38:33We have dominant feet. You know, consider skateboarders and surfers who ride with what's called goofy footed. Even animals show handedness. Cats, dogs, horses, chimps. You know, male cats are more likely to be left pawed. Left pawed. So the animal kingdom's got lefties and righties. I had no idea. Yeah, many animals are handed or pawed. So handedness in animals is a widespread phenomenon, not an exception, and can provide insights into evolution and brain development. So studies on cats and dogs show a significant portion of each species has a dominant paw. Though the ratio of left-to-right pawed individuals can vary, but male cats are more likely to be left pawed when completing tasks like getting food from the bowl or things like that.

39:23Other mammals like horses, squirrels, and chimpanzees also show limb preferences for tasks like cantering, stripping acorns, or using tools. I never considered what hand or paw my pets were. So even my cat is in on this. I knew it. He's been knocking over cups with his left paw this whole time for science. Why is that? I wonder. I mean, it's all tied to brain lateralization, where different functions are concentrated in one of the two hemispheres of the brain. So we see it in every species. For example, like young chicks tend to peck grain on one side. Tortoises consistently turn to one side to right themselves when flipped over.

40:03In the animal kingdom, there's an evolutionary advantage to favoring the left, even if you don't have hands. Like snails with left coiling shells have an advantage against predators who have adapted to crack more common right coiling shells. Isn't that crazy? Remarkable. Yeah, that is crazy. Wow. Don't tell me fish are left and right finned or whatever. Actually, they seem to be. The blue whales perform specific movements like barrel rolls to feed with a preferred side, showing a consistent handedness or finned, whatever you want to call it, in their behavior. Yeah. The octopus, which, by the way, is my least favorite animal on the planet, has eight equally nimble arms, but they show a preference for using one tentacle to inspect or handle objects.

40:52So they favor a tentacle. It's kind of their dominant arm. That is cool. So the animal kingdom is basically full of lefties, righties, the terrifying octopus. Love a good octopus. But what's your beef there? I don't understand. I mean, this is off topic. It's just my lifelong phobia. I can't even watch The Little Mermaid, Jordan. Oh, get out of here. It's not just me. It's called chapitaphobia, and it sucks because I surf all the time. I've come face to face with a giant one once, which still gives me nightmares. What? I am not suggesting this is rational, but I mean, even a photo will make me panic.

41:27And literally talking about it right now, my hands are clammy. Wow, that's crazy. So I take it you have not watched My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. No, no. Face your fears. That is crazy. I never heard of this. Yeah, it's not something I'm proud of, but let's move on. All right, fine. But reptiles and birds also show favoritism to one side. And any species from kangaroos to lizards. You know, we learn a lot about handedness from animals. And handedness is often task-specific, so it can be influenced by whatever task is at hand. For instance, you know, some great apes don't show hand preference for social tasks, but exhibit it for tool use.

42:10I have a friend who can only snap with her left hand. Like, why? Why is that? Nobody knows. Some people don't always golf or bowl or shoot a gun, like we said, to match the hand they write with. It goes back to what you said about the eyes, because it's not just handedness. We have dominant eyes, feet, sides we chew on, which nostril we're breathing out of. And they don't always favor the same side. Right. It's not random chaos. It's evolution's way of saying, hey, let's specialize here. So being a lefty isn't weird. It's just nature having a good time. Just thinking about all these physical expressions.

42:46Is it doing anything we can't see? Like, you know, are there health issues that affect lefties? You know, when we did the redheads thing, it was like, oh, skin cancer and temperature and all this stuff. It's like, oh, my gosh, your hair color can affect all that. Is there anything also linked to TUBB4B that's like, oh, and also you're going to, you know, your liver's bigger or something? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we think so. I mean, there's definitely some things in lefty fine print. It's very early on in the research. But left-handed people tend to hit puberty later than their peers. There was a study that showed left-handed boys reached puberty about a year later than their right-handed peers.

43:23More studies are needed on this, though. I was a bit of a late bloomer. Now I have a medical excuse, I suppose. Yeah, it's because you're left-handed. There you go. There's another weird biological fact, and this isn't just a left-handed phenomenon. on. It's true for both right and left-handed people. Whichever is your dominant hand, your nails grow faster on that hand. Really? How weird is that? I've never noticed that, but now I'm definitely going to be comparing my pinky nails. Yeah, I know. I've been checking it out since I read that. And there's less fun facts, too. I mean, according to a few studies, left-handers have a higher chance of developing immune disorders and conditions such as allergies.

44:01This isn't to say every left-handed person suffers from bad allergies, but if you're a lefty and tend to get a runny nose or itchy eyes, then this may be connected to those modified microtubules. It's currently being researched. A small price to pay for all the advantages that we seem to have, I guess. I don't know. Not a big deal. I'll take a runny nose. No problem. I'm going to space. Another inexplicable health effect is that left-handed people are more likely to drink more often. So the research on this is really limited, but there have been some studies showing a significant correlation between left-handers and an increase in alcohol consumption.

44:39This isn't to say that left-handers will become full-blown alcoholics, but on average, they do tend to drink more. I mean, in my 20s, that was definitely true slash early 30s. Yikes. So evolution made us better athletes and more fun at parties. Great. Maybe. A lot of this is correlation, though, not causation. But another thing seen in higher rates in lefties is that they report more vivid dreams. Of course we do. We're so busy dreaming about being left-handed astronauts with 140 IQs and perfect underwater vision. I don't know, but it seems from what I've read, it's probably because their brains won't stop multitasking in both hemispheres.

45:18But studies indicate left-handed individuals are better able to recall having vivid dreams at night. And on the flip side, left-handed people are more prone to insomnia. So if you have difficulty sleeping and are left-handed, then that could be a reason why. Huh. Okay. So all of these little traits seem to be connected to this specific genetic coding. And at the end of the day, does any of it really matter? It definitely does. You know, handedness is a window into how the brain organizes itself before we even take our first breath. It's a mix of genetics, environment, and these little dashes of randomness.

45:55So some people are born ready to strum a guitar upside down, and the rest of us are just trying not to smudge the ink. I guess it depends on a few other factors. Yeah, so many things. And that's just one way to sum up 50 years of neuroscience, I guess. It is interesting to observe the high rates of lefties in the arts, though. You know, Oprah, Lady Gaga, Hugh Jackman, Bill Gates, Julia's Child, Gordon Ramsay, Da Vinci. It's a really long list and the rates are higher than in the general public. So again, it's not the Jews running Hollywood. It's the lefties. Or is it all of us left-handed Jews?

46:35So lefties run daytime TV, pop music, tech, and dinner. Great. What's next? The White House? Actually, I'm curious about that. Are there any lefty presidents? Yeah, it already happened. 20 % of U.S. presidents have been left-handed, including Obama and Clinton. A high percentage of politicians through the ages have been lefties, much higher than the general population. Julius Caesar and Napoleon were left-handed. Bill Clinton being a lefty explains why the writing on my Eagle Scout Award was something you get a letter from the president and the writing on there is it's pretty messy. There's probably another Bill Clinton joke in there I could have chosen.

47:11But let's let's let that one just slide up by. So conquerors, presidents and us. OK, lefties, we get it. We're historic. We're cool on a historical level. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, that tracks Tina Fey, Cardi B, Chuck Norris, all lefties. Of course, the roundhouse kick comes from the left side. They never see it coming. Yeah. And we can celebrate this rare trait every August 13th, which is left handed day. That's a thing. OK. Yeah. Whomever sets these kind of things suggests everyone try using their left hand as much as possible that day. I'm on it. And it's fun to see how long you can try and use your less dominant hand for things because it's such second nature.

47:52It's just you forget, you know, it's just who we are. I like that. You know, just try eating with your less dominant hand for one day, listeners, and report back. I think eating is one of the hardest things to do with your non-dominant hand, aside from writing. Yeah, I think so too. But it just comes down to a chance of so many different variables. We think that most instances of left-handedness occur simply due to random variation during development of the embryonic brain without specific genetic or environmental influences. but we will understand it more and more as we continue to decode our genes.

48:27You know, there's just no doubt handedness is complex. It's not just inherited. It's part genetics, part environment, part chaos. You know, it's a small club. And what it means evolutionarily, we're still figuring out. So being a lefty just reminds us how wonderfully weird the human brain is. And if you're left-handed and listening, congrats. This episode was made for you. The rest of you, everything else on the planet was designed for you, so I don't want any complaining. Thanks, Jess, for getting us on the right side of being left. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com.

49:04Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all on the website at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. in. Jessica can be found on her sub stacks between the lines and where shadows linger. And we'll link to those in the show notes as well. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And yes, I might be a lawyer, but I'm certainly not your lawyer.

49:34Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact checked. So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. What if we're not just close to building matrix-level simulations?

50:03We may already be inside one. You're about to hear a preview of our episode with Rizwan Virk on clues we're living in a rendered world. The simulation hypothesis is basically the idea that what we think of as the physical world, you know, like this table, this chair, that all the physical reality is actually part of a virtual world. The simulation hypothesis, the subtitle is, an MIT computer scientist shows why AI, quantum physics, and Eastern mystics agree we're in a video game. There have been a number of physicists who are looking at the world as information now. So there's a whole branch of physics called digital physics.

50:36Instead of looking at things like conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, you're looking at conservation of information. Does information get created or get destroyed? And some have even said that the world itself is basically a quantum computer, if you think about it. And so that would be whatever computational substrate is being used around the simulation would have to be a lot more advanced than what we think of as computers today. I use the metaphor of video games, that the world is a type of massively multiplayer online video game because that's sort of my background was in building video games in Silicon Valley.

51:08Now, there's a lot of different flavors of simulation theory when you kind of delve deep into it. And probably the most popular expression of that in the media has been the film The Matrix. Because, you know, Neo thought he was in a real physical world, but it turns out he was actually in a virtual world. But now AI is moving so fast that I think we'll get to that point much more quickly. and certainly within the next 50 years. 100 years at the max. For the full conversation that will make you question every assumption you've ever held, check out episode 1239 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Rizwan Virk.