Comedians of the world often share this one little thing.
What is it?
They are often the last born in the family.
It sounds crazy at first glance, but it has to do with a younger sibling’s ability, or preference, to do risky things.
You know how much of a ham the baby of the family often is…
Turns out, this is the case in baseball too.
Statistically, there should be an equal number of firstborns and lastborns. When I tracked the birth order of these hundred original comedians, though, forty-four of them were the lastborn, compared with only twenty firstborn. They came from families with an average of 3.5 children, yet nearly half of them were the baby of their families. On average, they were born 48 percent later in the sibling order than they should have been by chance. Comedians with siblings were 83 percent more likely to be born last than chance would predict. The odds of that many great comedians being lastborn by chance are two in a million.
-Adam Grant, Originals