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So, let me start off this video by saying that I do not believe in the Zodiac.
But then again, I am a Taurus Rising, which probably explains why I’m so skeptical.
Regardless of whether or not you’re a Zodiac Thriller, though, it turns out that there’s
actually cold hard evidence of the hot soft idea that your birth month affects your life.
Now, if you’re the type of person who loves starting sentences with, “hey, did you know,”
then you’ve probably read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers—and thus, you’ve probably heard
of something called the relative age effect.
Basically, ol’ Malc did some calc and found that people born in the earlier months of
the year—January, February, and March—tend to have various advantages over people born
later in the year.
The classic example comes from a 1985 study into elite junior hockey leagues.
This is a graph of how many kids are born, on average, each month, and this is a graph
of the month that players in the OHL—the Ontario Hockey League—were born.
As you can see, there are way more players born in the earlier months of the year as
opposed to the later months.
Now, the reason for that isn’t that January gives Canadians magic hockey powers—the
only way to get those is to sacrifice a moose.
The reason that January is arbitrarily extraordinary is that age cutoffs for most youth hockey
leagues are on January 1st—that means that if a kid was born in January, they’ll compete
in the same age group as kids born in December of that year, but they’ll be almost a year
older than them.
And when the kids are only eight or nine, an eleven-ish month advantage means they’ll
be significantly more physically developed, and thus better at hitting the slippery disk
into the rope cage.
Now, of course, by the time a player is old enough to reach an elite league like the OHL,
an 11-month age difference won’t lead to as significant an advantage anymore, but in
the meantime—and this is the important part—the kids with January birthdays, because they
were better developed early on, will have been singled out years ago, and given more
coaching attention, put in the game more, be more likely to make competitive youth teams,
and be less likely to regularly leave their skate guards on and fall immediately upon
entering the rink.
Not that that ever happened to me.
The point is, once those kids with January birthdays are older and their relative age
advantage has worn off, they’ll have actually gotten better at hockey than the kids with
late birthdays, because of that positive feedback loop.
To be clear, this phenomenon doesn’t actually have anything to do with being born earlier
in the year—it’s just about what month the heartless bureaucrats of youth sports
decide to put in their age cutoffs.
In England, the age cutoff for soccer is September 1st, which is why kids born in September through
December tend to do best.
57% of players at Premier League academies were born in September, October, November,
or December—and only 14% were born in May, June, July, or August—and according to this
stock footage guy who does all my math calculations, 14 is less than 57 by “at least 5, maybe
more.”
And it’s not just sports: academic years in the US also tend to start September 1st,
which is why kids with September birthdays tend to excel, and kids with August birthdays
tend to struggle.
And like the bullying that comes with having nine fingers, the relative age effect continues
even past school: US Senators and Representatives all tend to be on the older side of their
grade.
See, it turns out Washington isn’t just biased based on age, race, gender, and wealth!
It’s also biased on birth month!
But we’re not here just to repeat things from Malcolm Gladwell books—that’s a job
for your sister’s fiancé.
In fact, we’re here to be the opposite of Malcolm Gladwell.
We’re Buen-go Sadsick, because we’re going to tell you about a second, opposing effect
that does the exact opposite of the relative age effect: it’s called the underdog effect.
You see, while sports leagues do tend to overrepresent people who are relatively older in their age
groups, a 2013 study showed that when you consider not just athletes in professional
leagues, but star athletes in those leagues—the elite of the elites, the crème de la crème,
the Joe of the Jonases—you see a reverse of the relative age effect.
If we look again at hockey, we see that while it’s true there are more players born from
January to March, we also see that players who were younger for their age grouping—born
from October to December, are better players.
They last longer in the league, they’re paid more, and they hit the slippery disk
into the net cage more than their early-month counterparts.
For US sports, given the traditional September 1st cutoff, an August birthday makes you as
young as possible for your grade—and yet, two of the last eight people to become NBA
MVPs—Kobe Bryant and James Harden—were both born in August.
Not to mention, Tom Brady, probably the best American football player of all time, was
translated from a J Crew mannikin into a real boy in August, as was Mike Trout, who’s
widely considered the best player currently in the MLB.
The idea behind the underdog effect is, basically, that if a younger athlete manages to overcome
the relative age effect, it was probably for a reason—like talent, or skill, or grit,
or being really good at deflating footballs.
Further, they might benefit from playing against relatively older kids—providing them compelling
competition that can push them forward.
There are also, by the way, some actual physiological differences between people born in different
months—mostly based on seasonal trends seen in expectant mothers’ diet and hormones.
And I also read online that if you’re born in early November, that makes you something
called a Scorpio, which means you’re resourceful and brave, but also jealous and… oh wait
no that’s the Zodiac again.
The Zodiac is made up—don’t @ me—but you know what’s real?
My hour-long documentary Alaska’s Silent Summer, which is about a small town in southeast
Alaska whose entire economy was based on cruise ship tourism, going through a year where every
cruise ship in the world sat empty in a harbor.
It’s an important story, and we worked really hard on it, so I hope you’ll check it out.
It’s up right now exclusively on Nebula, and the best way to get access to Nebula is
through the Nebula-CuriosityStream bundle, where for less than $15 a year, you’ll also
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