Identical(ish)

Hannah Fry (0:03)

I'm Hannah Fry.

Dara Ó Briain (0:04)

And I'm Dara Ó Briain.

Hannah Fry (0:05)

And this is Curious Cases.

Dara Ó Briain (0:07)

The show where we take your quirkiest questions, your crunchiest conundrums, and then we solve them with the power of science. I mean, do we always solve them?

Hannah Fry (0:14)

I mean, the hit rate is pretty low.

Dara Ó Briain (0:15)

But it is with science.

Hannah Fry (0:17)

It is with science.

Dara Ó Briain (0:23)

Can I ask you a question? Science, like a really, really serious science question.

Hannah Fry (0:27)

I mean, that is the format of the show, Dara.

Dara Ó Briain (0:29)

Let's say, in the name of science, you're being chased down an alleyway. Yeah. Would you be more scared if you were being chased by twins or clones?

Hannah Fry (0:38)

Hang on. What species are the clones?

Dara Ó Briain (0:40)

Oh, no, the humans. They're humans. All humans. Yeah, exactly. We've been changed by human twins or a cloned dinosaur. No, they're all, let's keep that.

Hannah Fry (0:48)

I'm going for clones. There's something a bit freaky about clones.

Dara Ó Briain (0:52)

I mean, and we can't obviously in the radio say there's something freaky about twins because there are very many lovely twins we're listening in who go, really? Again?

Hannah Fry (1:00)

I mean, we can't say it, but we're all thinking it.

Dara Ó Briain (1:01)

We're all thinking it. We're always all thinking it. And that must be, it must be a burden to carry.

Hannah Fry (1:06)

The only thing is, though, OK, if you had clones, I mean, unless they were cloned from an original source and then born at the same time, if you had the original and the clone, one would be much older than the other. Whereas if you got twins, they're both the same age. You could hope, I could hope, that the two that are chasing me down the corridor, one of them is like a granddad.

Dara Ó Briain (1:25)

Oh, that's true.

Hannah Fry (1:25)

You know what I mean? And I could kick him in the shins.

Dara Ó Briain (1:29)

So at some point, one of the clones goes, you go on, you get them.

The other thing is they also, clones aren't telepathic like twins are, which we're saying is a fact here. We're just saying that on this shines program, we're saying twins are telepathic.

Hannah Fry (1:47)

You know what, though? I think this is something we could find out today. I think this is something we can establish as whether it's fact or not.

Dara Ó Briain (1:52)

Way to finally settle this question.

Hannah Fry (1:53)

Way to finally settle this question because we have a question that was sent in by listener Chris to curiouscases.bbc.co.uk. Here is that question.

Chris (2:01)

Hi, Hannah. Hi, Dara.

My name is Chris and I live in Milton Keynes. I have an idea for curious cases. I have often wondered if two identical male twins were to marry two identical female twins and they had children at roughly the same time. Could those babies turn out looking identical or even just unusually similar? I guess my question is, how close can nature get to make it a human clone? Thank you.

Dara Ó Briain (2:28)

Okay.

Hannah Fry (2:28)

Well, first off, Chris is adorable.

Dara Ó Briain (2:30)

Yes, he is adorable. Also, I often wonder. Chris, Chris, you think about twins again? You think about twins and clones?

SPEAKER_6 (2:38)

No.

Dara Ó Briain (2:40)

No, I'm just in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_6 (2:43)

You're thinking about twins and clones again? Yeah, yeah.

Hannah Fry (2:46)

Look, we can bring an end.

Dara Ó Briain (2:48)

We can bring an end to that long suffering.

Hannah Fry (2:50)

Chris' long suffering family who've continually wanted to get his attention on child things. Because today, we are joined by Xand van Tulleken, who is a doctor, a broadcaster, an honorary associate professor of infection and population health at University College London, rolls off the tongue as a title. He's also an identical twin himself, slash clone. We're about to find out what the difference is. Kevin Sinclair, who is a professor of developmental biology and head of animal sciences at the University of Nottingham, who has done a lot of work with the sisters of arguably the most famous clone of all time, Dolly the Sheep.

Xand and Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Excellent to have both of you here. Xand, I think we should probably start with you. As the person who has actual experience in being a twin.

Xand van Tulleken (3:36)