("Heart Wish")
- [Voiceover] Let's talk about you.
You could have been anybody, you know.
But, very luckily you ended up being the very specific
wonderful you that you uniquely are.
So, how'd that happen?
What are the odds?
Well, there's a countless multitude of factors
that contributed to you being you
in all your spectacular wonder.
But let's take a very hypothetical look
at a mere three of them,
your parents meeting,
your parents sticking together,
and you parents having a child that is
the specific combination of reproductive cells
that resulted in your magnificent residency on this planet.
So let's look at your parents.
For the purposes of this scenario
let's give your dad the benefit of the doubt
and say that between the ages of 18 and 40
he at least interacted with one new woman
every day in some small way.
That means he'd have socialized with roughly 8,000 women.
What a popular guy.
And let's say, assuming he's not a hermit in the woods,
that he very well could have potentially met
anyone from say, oh a tenth
of the world's female population,
which would be about 360 million.
The odds that your mother was in that tiny group of people
that he met are about one in one in 45,000.
Now, there's no guarantee that they'll get along,
so let's say that your father was engaged
in a quality conversation with oh, one out of every 10
women he met.
From there, let's assume that out of those women
he went out on a date with one out of every 10.
And let's say out of those women,
he settled down with one,
and there was a one in 10 chance of those two
crazy kids deciding to stick it out.
And let's give them a 50/50 chance of sticking together
and deciding to have kids.
That's one out of 10, times one out of 10,
times one out of 10, times one out of two,
which equals one in 2,000.
Alright, apologies in advance,
but let's talk about your parents having sex.
The average male produces about
525 billion sperm cells in his lifetime.
The average female has about 300,000 eggs at puberty,
but releases around 400 in her reproductive lifetime.
So, out of all those cells,
there was one unique sperm and one unique egg
that needed to match up perfectly to make you specifically.
And the odds of that happening are kind of staggering,
one in 210 trillion.
So if you wanna factor in your parents meeting,
sticking together, and having sex
to make you specifically,
the odds are about one in 45,000,
times one in 2,000,
times one in 210 trillion,
which comes out to about 1 in 18.9 sextillion,
which is a whole lot of zeros.
So let's just say that you are pretty lucky to be here.
And frankly, we're all pretty glad it worked out for you.
("Heart Wish")