The tea on twins

WAMU 88.5 | By Haili Blassingame

Published April 17, 2024 at 8:27 AM EDT

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BERLIN, GERMANY - MAY 19: Twins Debbie (L) and Rabea Schoeneborn during a training session in Grunewald, the largest forested area in the western part of Berlin on May 19, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. With only three German tickets for the women's marathon in Tokyo twin sisters, Debbie and Rabea became competitors in pursuit of their Olympic dream. Competitors - but also sisters, training partners, flatmates. They share the same coach and the same club and both ran below the Olympic standard of 2:29:30. However, only Debbie has a safe ticket. Her time is 8 second faster than her sisters - a blink of an eye in a race 42,195 km long but the difference between a ticket to Tokyo or no ticket at all. Her twin Rabea who is now in the alternate position, will probably focus on the Berlin Marathon in autumn instead. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

Most of us like to thinkthere’sno one else like us, thatwe’reunique in every way. But there’sone group of people that complicates this idea.

Today, we’re talking about twins. (Siblings seem to be on the brain here in the public radio sphere.)

Between 1980 and 2009, the twin birth rate rose by 76 percent, according to a CDC study from 2012. And a study from 2021 published in the National Library of Medicine found that since the 1980s, the global twinning rate has increased by a third.

Studying twins doesn’t just benefit people with biological other halves. We dig into what twins can teach nontwins about what it means to be close to another person while maintaining your sense of self. And what our fascination with them says about us.