February 26, 2013 • 32 mins
To what extent are we shackled to genes? How does our upbringing, environment and our grandfather's life choices affect the expression of our genome? Join Julie and Robert as they discuss epigenetic research and ponder underlying questions of free will.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and this is our second
episode that deals with epigenetics. It deals with the ghost
in our genes, the basically getting down to the sort
(00:25):
of nature and nurture aspects of who we are. Uh
and uh. In the last episode, we we really went
down and discussed us some of what's actually happening at
that the genetic level, uh, what is happening at the
epigenetic level, and then and then how all of that
expresses itself in the phenome, which is who and what
we are? What? How an organism exists, it's phenotype. So
(00:48):
in this episode we're going to talk about studies that
have involved humans that's and uh and exactly how we
see epigenetic changes carried on from one generation to the next.
And it really gets down to discussions about how much
choice do I have? Mean any discussion of epigenetics and
nature and nurture, there's this undercurrent of free will to
(01:12):
what extent in my shackle do my genes? To what
extent is everything about me? Just laid out in the
original code work that was that came together in the womb,
and then how much of it is, and then how
much of it is also out of my hands because
of the environment that I am in, in the environment
that I'm raised in, the environment that I grow up in,
or as we're going to discuss more the environment that
(01:34):
my mother grew up in, or the or that that
her mother grew up in, right, like, how much of
it is? Uh, it's just sort of set in stone
to a certain extent before we even have a SASA. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought up the free will angle about
this too, because when we look at epigenetics UM, it
does sort of bring into question to what degree UM
(01:55):
are we just sort of dealing with on off switches
of our genes and how they're expressed, and how much
of this um is a genetically clean slate. Because it
used to be that we would assume that, of course
you would you would get your eye color, or your
hair color, or the tone of your skin from your parents,
from your grandparents, so on and so forth. But you
(02:16):
wouldn't necessarily have thought that the things that your mother
and father did as ten year olds would matter to you.
But in fact it does, and we'll discuss that. Yeah,
and then there's a certain amount of magical thinking, uh
in all of this as well. There's always you know,
these old ideas that die really hard, that the apple
never falls far from the tree kind of a thing.
You know, if the if the father was a criminal,
(02:38):
then the son is destined to be a criminal, you
know that kind of thing. If the and if the
mother was was a genius and just in a multitasker
or whatever you know, accolades you want to throw at her,
then surely the offspring will have that as well. And uh,
it's not as simple as that, right. There's a psychological
component to this that we will talk about. But right
(02:58):
now we're going to talk more about the physiological component.
In in order to do we're just gonna do a
quick overview of epigenetics. Um. Epigenetics is the study of
gene expression and how it can vary from what generation.
Epigenetics means in addition to the genes. In addition to genetics,
Eppie above the genome. Right, so you've got the genome
(03:19):
with all the d n A, the sequence that is
that does not change, and then you have the material
as you had pointed out before that's between the genome
and the epigenome. And these are the proteins. These are
the flip switching areas of gene expression that can be
passed down to another generation. I'm going to use a
different metaphor this time. It just occurs to me. Um, Okay,
(03:42):
think of say three Rock the TV show, right, lovely
just ended, just ended, very sad. Alright, So imagine this.
Lislemon comes up with a script for that night's show,
and you can think of that script as the is
the genome, all right, it's the genetic code. It says
what is going to happen. Right, Let's say that that
script and passes over Jack Donneghe's desk, her boss's desk,
(04:04):
and he says, well, given the current political or business environment,
I'm gonna make this change and this change and this
change and this change and this change. And now this
is the script that you're going to actually film. And
then the version of the show that you see, the
version that is filmed, that is the that is the
finished organism. So he's the He's the methyl group that
attaches to the protein that turns on or off different
(04:27):
aspects of the script. Right, So we talked about DNA
methylation in the last episode, but we won't talk about
it too much here. Yeah, it's basically the epigenome involves
and I'm gonna personify things a little bit here, but
it's meddling. It's meddling based on environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli
that may include, uh, that may be nutritional, it may
have to do with angry, dangerous predators in the environment,
(04:49):
stress in the environment, or or various chemicals that are
interacting with the with the organism's body. Yeah, and this
is why one member of a pair of identical twins
can develop a bipolar disorder or asthma, even though the
other is fine. Right, This is epigenetics really helps to
explain why this happens because some of these uh, these
the epigenetic changes are taking place in the womb and
(05:13):
they're more or less set for that that organisms life,
but other switches are coming on can come on and
off throughout that that organisms life. So even though Jack
donaghy made this the script changes this week. The environment
might change, you get a new president in office, or
they're different business concerns, and then he might not make
the same changes the following week. All right, So when
(05:33):
we talk about epigenetic changes and we talk about them
and humans. One of the best ways to really look
at this in detail is to look at the Dutch famine,
which happened during full World War two. We're talking about
between nineteen forty four and nine. And the reason why
researchers wanted to look at the Dutch famine and the
(05:54):
families that were involved is because what do we have here.
We have an environmental condition and such as famine that
could greatly impact not just that generation, but the next
generation and how it's phenotypes, its attributes, those genes are expressed. Yeah,
because the situation is here that researchers were seeing persistent
(06:15):
health problems six decades following UH, this UH Dutch hunger
winter as it's called. The research has found that children
exposed to famine during the first ten weeks following conception
had less DNA methylation of the imprinted i g F
two gene than the children of the same sex, siblings
of the same sex they were unexposed to these conditions,
(06:39):
that's right. So in other words, that DNA methylation was
the process that that sort of attached to the proteins
to turn on or off that gene and so in
this instance they had less of it. In other words,
this DNA methylation wasn't able to UM to actually sort
of protect them, and so that this i g F
(07:00):
huge gene was able to express itself a lot more
in those children who experienced malnutrition. Now, likewise, children they
were exposed to these famine conditions at the end of pregnancy,
they showed no difference in the methylation compared to siblings
that were unexposed. So it's interesting to see, like see
what stage and development those those triggers are flipped. Now,
(07:21):
UM this was in the Netherlands, and again this is
wor World two. This was a great experiment for the
researchers at Columbia University UM Public School of Health to
to really and the Legan University excuse me, Medical Center
in Netherlands to really look at this data because they
could see which families UM had the most food in
the least food during that embargo UH in the Netherlands.
(07:44):
That is one example of what happens when you have
UM a dearth of food. Right. But what what one
researcher did, Dr Lars all of Vigrant is he looked
at these overclax youth in Rboten, which is a Swedish providence,
and he wanted to see how much food was available
(08:05):
to these kids. Now, Bigrant is a preventive health specialist,
and what he did is he drew a random sample
of nine individuals born in this Overcallips parish in their
boating in nineteen o five, and he used historical records
to trace their parents and grandparents back to birth. So
these are meticulous agricultural records. And what they found is
(08:26):
that some of these kids had a lot of food
available to them during winters. Some kids did not. They
begin they had sort of a stasis of um impoverished
food resources available to them. So what you see is
is one line of kids who who can be sort
of gluttonous and eat a large amount at certain times,
(08:47):
and another line just that continue on right. So you
would think that the kids who weren't getting a lot
of nutrition for for the entire period, that they might
be the ones that were affected here adversely affected. But
actually actually the kids who over eight who we see
in successive generations having the problems with their genes switching on.
(09:09):
And when I talk about this, uh, these genes switching
on and off. I'm talking about diabetes. I'm talking about
shorter lifespans. In fact, Bagrant found that kids who went
from normal eating to gluttonous eating had produced grandsons who
died in average of six years earlier than the grandsons
of those who who had endured a poor harvest. And
then by Grant and his team controlled for certain socio
(09:30):
economic variations, and when they did that, the difference in
longevity actually jumped to an astonishing thirty two years. Okay,
So again, what we're seeing here is significant drops in lifespans.
And they also found evidence of it occurring on the
female line as well. So that means that the daughters
and the granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal
(09:53):
to gluttonous diets also live shorter lives. And of course
the study is important is we look at our own
dietary changes here to over the past and well in
the past decade, like here in the United States, as
we're looking at at at the generational changes in the
approach to food and approach the diet and uh, and
you kind of I mean in the sort of do
(10:13):
it yourself, fix it up, and improve your life kind
of attitude. You want to think, well, all right, I
used to eat this way, I'm now I'm gonna now
I'm eating better, I'm eating smarter, or I I don't
have the diet that my parents had or the diet
that my grandparents had, But you're still, to a certain
extent kind of shackled to their diet, which is which
is potentially scary. Yeah. Well, and I think that's why
(10:36):
we have seen such a spike and OBEs and diabetes
in any very young children, you know, as young as
five years old, six years old. Um, so some of
them are saddled with these genes that are flipped on
and off because of parents and previous generations eating habits
or ability to to get nutrition. So this guy b Igrant,
he he did these studies and then he hooked up
(10:56):
with Dr Marcus Pembrey, and he's a geneticist at the
universe A College in London, and he dared to ask, well,
what if the environmental pressures and social changes of the
industrial age had become so powerful the evolution had begun
to demand that our genes respond faster. So they hooked
up and they found out a punch of really very
interesting things. Yeah, this one about smoking, particularly interesting. And
(11:16):
this one was two thousand six published in the European
Journal of Human Genetics. And uh, I mean, it's it's
one thing to realize that, yes, smoking, which of course
is a a major thing for your body to have
to deal with. It's easy to imagine our especially best
one what we've talked about here, to imagine smoking triggering
certain epigenetic changes in the body and then those, uh,
(11:40):
those those changes being transgenerational, passing on to the next
generation or potentially to generations beyond that. But what was
really crazy about this particular study is that they were
looked at like over fourteen thousand fathers in the study,
and a hundred and sixty six of them had started
smoking before the age of a and that's so that's
(12:00):
before their bodies were actually preparing to enter puberty. And
uh and and already these changes were taking taking place. Yeah,
because it turns out that that um, if they are
affecting their body in an adverse way i e. Smoking
at this age and they began to form sperm, they
began to make it. That is when that sperm, that
(12:23):
genetic material is going to be informed by that outside
environmental condition of smoking, and that it's crazy to think
about a ten year old who is smoking. I mean,
I'm assuming pretty regularly here, because you know, it would
have to be in order to have such a marked
imprint on the genetic material. But that's crazy to think
(12:45):
that a ten year could be affecting his future offspring
at that moment. Yeah, And it also it really throws
this another, this other idea on its head, this sort
of idea like when you're a kid that you know
a lot of a lot of stuff that happened when
you're young is gonna is gonna affect who you are
as an adult, obviously, but you you kind of sort
(13:07):
of writing a certain amount of room for mistakes, like, oh,
I can I can start smoking when i'm young and
quit later, and if I can quit, then great, then
I'm done with that. Or you know, you can you
can do maybe kind of stupid things when you're ten
years old and it's not going to really have as
as much impact on your later life, but already it's
having an effect on your children when you're tent And
(13:28):
that's a that's really eye opening to think about. Yeah,
I mean, because those kids who took up smoking that early,
they had, um, they had kids who had a much
higher risk for ab city, and they had other health
problems well into adulthood and shorter lifespans. So what's amazing
about the study is that they had fourteen thousand individuals
and that's a very large sample, and year after year
(13:51):
they were able to look at the offspring and the
parents here and look at them in terms of like
their bone density, how much they weighed, with their bits were,
and they were able to track them over a number
of years, and so they got an amazing amount of
data that can show them very clearly that um, you know,
some of the genes were flipped on or off in
these instances. I also ran across the study talking about
(14:13):
cocaine use UM and in this way that this experiment
they were using mice, So these were cocaine using mice,
and they found that in these mice, the mice would
develop memory problems, they would pass on three generations um
due to these epigenetic changes. So there's another another example
of something where you know, one might think, oh, well,
the the sins of one's youth, uh, you know, they'll
(14:35):
they'll they'll be ramifications for that, but you tend not
to think of three generations worth the ramifications for you know,
your your drug hat. You know, I can't figure out
whether or not this is comforting or just really problematic.
Well to understand it at this level, you know, I
think it's I think it's a little column calum b.
I mean, it's you know, and we'll we'll get into
(14:57):
this a little more before we close out the podcast.
But um, but even as we continue to map out
um so many of these these things that make us
who we are, all these different environmental changes and all
and the things written in our genes, they contribute to us. There,
I mean, ultimately, you're gonna have to roll with what
you get. So, I mean there, at the end of
(15:17):
the day, you you can worry about it a lot.
You can worry about, Okay, well what what what my
child genetics? What were they? And then then how am
I nurturing this child? And and it becoming this battle
of of of nurture and nature, and then you can
you can kind of over analyze everything. Uh, but at
the end of the day, you're you're gonna have to
roll with it. Yeah, I know. And I realized this
because my daughter has been asking about death a lot
(15:39):
lately and so you know, the question do sure this
morning was you know, what are the various ways that
you know people die? Or how do people die? In
So it's trying to tell her with you know, with
her four year old mind, and I was trying to
explain to her disease, which was very hard for her
to get her mind real She wanted to know if
insects gave her diseases, and of course yes, I know,
(16:04):
I thought, well technically in some cases, but I said no,
because of course I don't want her to be friend
of every ladybug and mosquito that she says she's she's
lying around. So anyway, I need to know basis at
four years old. But I began to think about this.
I began to think, well, you know, as she gets older,
she can have a more nuanced understanding of epi genetics,
and certainly, you know, when she reaches age twenty, there
(16:26):
should be a lot that can be uncovered about not
just my epi genetics, but hers and and perhaps you know,
various other offspring and trying to figure out, um, sort
of what the sins of the mother and father were. Yeah,
and it can I mean, it's can certainly be uh,
perplexing to think about two. I mean, for instance, uh,
(16:48):
my wife and I are in the process of adopting
a child and uh, and so in that situation, the nurturing,
of course is going to be almost you know, entirely
on us. There's there's a certain amount of time there
that we're not in the picture obviously. But but then
of course the genetics, the nature aspect of it is
almost entirely out of our hands. So it can lead
(17:11):
to a certain amount of worry and perplection over over
the nature versus nurture, over the epigenetic changes that that
that we can contribute to and and those that have
already uh you know, left the train station. But again,
at the end of the day, you gotta roll with it.
So that's true, that's true. You can't over worry about it. Um.
(17:31):
But of course, you know, you gotta roll with what
you get genetically. But you also have to roll with
which you get in terms of emotional baggage when it
comes to our parents, our ancestors. And this is where
we of course discussed the ancestor syndrome. But before we
talk about this, we should probably take a quick break
and uh, we'll be right back. All right, we're back,
(17:56):
and we're going to talk now about a little something
called ancestor syndrome and about some of the more almost
philosophical aspects of genetic memory um and uh, or even
you know, racial memory if you want. And in this
we can't help but think about Carl Young, whom he had,
of course, his theory of the collective unconscious, and that
(18:19):
this idea that there's this level of unconscious beyond a
personal unconscious, beyond our own subconscious, that is shared by
a society. That's uh, that's ship, that's written in our ancestry,
and it's uh, it's the reservoir of experiences and beliefs, um,
you know, what have you. That we're ruled over by
all these various universal archetypes that while the particulars of
(18:41):
them may change, the the idea of the archetype is
is just embedded in our in our history. And and
so Young talked a good bit about racial unconscious, racial
memory and uh. And there's a certain amount of this
to be interpreted when we start looking at epigenetics. It
should be because you know, we don't have scientific evidence
(19:02):
to say that our ancestors actual emotional experiences were passed
down to us. We can say that the environmental conditions
could flip the switch, because I mean, that's a scary
thought right there, because everyone has their emotional things in
any lineage that are going to be problematic. Be it
you know, your uncle, you know, your your great great
grandfather was a king who had his head cut off,
(19:23):
or your great great grandfather was, you know, a poor
miner in West Virginia just struggling to make ends me,
you know. Yeah. And it's those kind of like forbearers
autobiographies that help put together this idea that, um, we
do have these experiences passed down to us via stories
(19:44):
and that makes an impact on our psyches. UM and
aunt Selin Schutzenburger, she is a professor emeritus at the
University of Nice and France. She's actually ninety years old now,
but she coined the term psycho genealogy. And this is
this idea that there are these subtle ways in which
we impact generations of offspring, and the idea that all
(20:06):
family groups share an inherent tendency to transmit those elements
necessary for the continued survival of the group. So you know,
the group, the tribe, the family has ideas, traditions, certain
things that it does over and over again to ensure
the survival of this identity and through stories, wills, even
(20:30):
a will is a story, right, Um. Again, traditions, that's
a really big part of it. So Schutzenberg describes the
theory of invisible loyalty as being something that is owed
to previous generations and that this is a catalyst for
unwittingly re enacting the life events of our ancestors. This
is the idea that you have this invisible loyalty to
(20:52):
a great your grandmother Josephine, who this is the first
circus acrobat, I don't know, um, And you begin to
think you can begin to take on these characteristics for yourself.
So I think it's interesting because, um, you know, a
child is born, it doesn't necessarily have any sort of identity.
It's got its genetic identity. It's god, it's phenotypes that
(21:14):
are expressed turn on and off. But then we begin
to sort of do these are a layer, these memories
on top of this child to make the identity. And
that's all good and fine if the child is good
with this identity, but it if if it is not,
then of course, this is where we see conflict. Yeah,
and uh, I mean I can't help but think too
(21:35):
about various materials I've read about the the so called
quote unquote scar of adoption that that did anyone. And
this is this scenaria where people argue both sides. But
there's this argument that that any adopted child who comes
to know about their adoption, that there is a certain
emotional scar there that's just unavoidable because I mean, it
(21:57):
is a it becomes that person's personal history and they
have to fit themselves into this grander story of their lineage.
So well, and what's interesting about this is, uh, there's
a psychotherapist, Moliki Coleman, and she says that a child
is doated on with an emotional and psychological DNA CHAN
from its parents and family, which enables the child to
(22:18):
function successfully in that particular family context. So if you
have a child who is adopted, then the then already
the child is forming this store that they didn't fit
into the family context or can a child can? I
should should say that doesn't always happen. So that's the
struggle there, I think for trying to figure out where
a child fits in. Now you know, a child who
(22:41):
is not adopted I think still feels this way. Yeah. Yeah,
that's one thing to always keep in mind, is that
is that any child is going to struggle with who
they are and what they are and the possibility that
their mom is actually a princess and not the mother
that they have in their life. UM. You see, you
see that kind of situate because of my my younger
sister who is who's not adopted. UM. But she would
(23:05):
form these stories in her head about how she was
actually the secret built more child. I think this was
after my my family, like we went and saw the
Built More emation and Nashville, and so she had this
story that she began to form that she was secretly
wanted to build more children that was her real family. UM.
So you see that kind of personal myth making, um,
you know, in various levels, be it being an adopted
(23:27):
situation or birth parents situation. So now, my my brother
told me when I was six years old that I
was adopted and I had blonde hair at that time
and my family dark hair, blue eyes in um. And
then he went through this whole sham thing and pretended
he couldn't find my birth certificate and produced his I mean, wow,
(23:48):
that was elaborate. It was yeah, that that's the kind
of kid he is. But um, but yeah, I mean
every I think at some point every child and adult
feels like a black sheep with their family. And so
that you do get this emotional baggage, and you do
get these stories that are passed down that are like
this sort of genetic memory. And I put that air
quotes right, because this is sort of like this layering
(24:10):
of information over you. And this leads us to magical
thinking of course. Oh yeah, we get into, of course,
the idea of law contage. And we discussed this to
a certain extent in the past two about the eye.
It gets into the whole area of like the powder
of sympathy and the idea that that you could you
could treat a wound by treating the weapon that caused
the wound, or that by coming into contact with with
(24:32):
with somebody you can can you can contract um they're
sort of spiritual or mental funk. Yeah. And so if
you have something that is uh, your ancestors, if you
have artwork or some sort of piece of thing that's
there's it feels like it has this magical quality to
it as it brings with it all of this psychic
uh sort of baggage um that your family is carrying
(24:56):
around with them all the time. Yeah. I mean that's
the thing about stuff and things. We we attached so
much importance to them, and then uh and and and
and that has a definite impact on on how we
think about that. I mean, case in point, uh, my
father's wristwatch um that he he was wearing when he died,
(25:17):
and and I have been wearing it for the past
a couple of years, and then the other day it
stopped ticking, like the battery went dead in it, which
is something I knew had happened eventually. I knew it
didn't have like a you know, an atomic um battery
in there or anything. But when it stopped working, it's
like I became real emotional, like in spite of myself
(25:37):
knowing that this was going to happen, but it u
But there was this this aspect that this was an
artifact that was somehow embodied with a sense of him,
and that it had kept ticking, and that therefore part
of him was still ticking in it, even though on
you know, half of me just dismisses that as who
he even as I say it, there's a part of
me that still really buys into that well. And I
think that's what that that's the point here is like
(26:00):
that we should underscore is that our our families, family
autobiography is very powerful stuff. And so we talk about
things at the genetic level, and we talked about environmental
aspects of it. And certainly we can see the phenotype
expressed under pressure, but there is the psychological pressure too.
(26:20):
And as you had noted at the top of the podcast,
you know, if we tell our stories the same, if
we tell ourselves the same stories all the time, like
my family is this and we do this, Um, you know,
we're geniuses, then you begin to perform that part or
we're bank robbers. I'm gonna go rob the bank. Yeah,
I mean, I don't know if anybody actually thinks that,
but but yes, to a certain extent it. I think
(26:41):
there comes apart in anyone's life where you have to
stop believing the story about yourself that people were telling
you and start writing your own story, or at least
editing that story, applying in a way at the genetic
changes to the story you're given become the Jack Donaghye
of your own script exactly. He has become the Jack
Donna gave your own scrip script and say you know what,
Uh yeah, I mean I feel like there was a
(27:02):
part in my life where I was where I had
to say, you know what, I'm I'm I'm a really
good writer, and that's gonna be my thing, and that's
my story, and and it becomes your story, you know,
within a liminated you know stint, I couldn't say now
I'm going to be the president the United States that
maybe maybe not. You gotta you gotta level your your
dreams with your abilities. But but there does come a
(27:23):
point where you have to you have to, I think,
rewrite that story otherwise you're just gonna be shackled to
this old story. And that's where that's where actually some
of Schultzenberger's work comes into play, where she was examining
things like quote unquote family curses. I'm probably doing too
many air quotes in this podcast, I apologize, but you know,
looking into ideas of family curses and and things of
(27:45):
this nature and looking at that that it really having
to do with buying into a story, into into a
into a lineage, and letting that influence who you think
you are. That's interesting. That's like the Kennedy curse, right
if you look at that. Yes, a bunch of things
happened in their family, but they have a very large
family living in a very different way. Um. Well, and
of course slavery in America is a big thing too,
(28:06):
because you have something, I mean, among racial divides. You
have individuals who go back in time and you find
slavery or you find slavers, and it continues and will
continue to be a problematic aspect of kind of our psychohistory.
This is true. All right. Well, there you go. Two
episodes that we've done now about epigenetics UM. And I
(28:28):
think you know this supplies a good starting point for
everyone to really think about genetic changes, epigenetic changes um
nature versus nurture in sort of a larger uh theme.
So if you if you want to learn a little
bit more, you want to rehash some of the details,
do check out the article UM, how epigenetics works. I
(28:49):
did write that. I wrote it a couple of years ago,
so uh, it may need an update, but still most
all the core information and that is still good. It's
a very fine article, and it does point out some
of the technical applications here too. Um that I just
wanted to mention that drug therapies are beginning to be
developed and have been developed to help flip those switches
when it comes to disease, like the drug as a
(29:12):
as a Pedidon and that helps suppress leukemia. So keep
that in mind too. It's not all just who we
we need to look at the ghosts in the machine there.
There are definite things that are coming out of this
to help us along as we get a better understanding
of epic genetics. And I'll close out here with a
quote from Peter Brooks um play his adaptation of the
(29:34):
Hindu epic the Mahabarata, where one character is speaking about
the character Karna, who himself was an orphan who grew
up to be a mighty warrior. And the quote is
that birth is obscure and men are like rivers whose
origins are often unknown. So there you go, um, what's
called the robot over here, and do just one quick
listener mail before we leave, all right, This one comes
(29:58):
to us from Dominique. Dom Anique writes in this as
higher Julian Robert, just listen to your cool Science of podcast.
Really great. I'm surprised you didn't reference the phoenix when
speaking about the immortal jellyfish um and immortal in quotes there,
because we discussed it's not really immortal, but for headline purposes,
it's immortal. It was the first thing that came to
(30:18):
my mind that this is the aquatic equivalent of the
legendary bird that would go up in flames at the
end of its life to leave an egg in its place,
which would from which it would then be reborn, which
is a very good point. I don't know why I
didn't think about the phoenix, because it's it's really more
of an example of of the mythical phoenix as more
so than it is an example of immortality. Domini continues.
(30:40):
Quantum teleportation also had me smiling as I first started
to equate the entangled entangled pair of subparticles to those
mythical twins who where one supposedly feels the pain of
the other even across large distances. Of course, in this case,
the twins would be killed off every time they cut,
would be made on their arm to transmit a bit
of the info. I'm now imagining a sci fi story
(31:03):
where shiploads of twins would be brought to the distant
planet by supply ship been sacrificed by the thousands every
time a message had to be sent. Wow. Yeah, it's
really Hunger Games scenario. Yeah, and and and Dominique right
to us from France by the way, So there you go.
But yes, that the the twin example was a great
one that I would have wish I would have thought
about UM. A few years back in New York, there
(31:25):
was this guy who was offering it's kind of like
an art installation kind of peace, uh, the idea of
quantum marriage, where you would supposedly become quantum entangled to
your partner UM. So that gets into a little bit
of that. Well, thanks Dominic for reading in. So if
you would like to share anything with us UM's particularly
if you'd like to share your thoughts on the genetic
and epigenetics about the stories that we uh we we
(31:48):
bring into our lives, that the stories that we end
up creating and tweaking um to uh to really become
who we are, then let us know about it. We
would love to hear your insight and or thoughts. You
can find us on Facebook and Tumbler, where your stuff
to blow your Mind on both of those, and you
can also find us on Twitter, where our handle is
blow the Mind, and you can always write us a
letter at blew the Mind at Discovery dot com. For
(32:17):
more on this and thousands of other topics, Is It
How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and this is our second
episode that deals with epigenetics. It deals with the ghost
in our genes, the basically getting down to the sort
(00:25):
of nature and nurture aspects of who we are. Uh
and uh. In the last episode, we we really went
down and discussed us some of what's actually happening at
that the genetic level, uh, what is happening at the
epigenetic level, and then and then how all of that
expresses itself in the phenome, which is who and what
we are? What? How an organism exists, it's phenotype. So
(00:48):
in this episode we're going to talk about studies that
have involved humans that's and uh and exactly how we
see epigenetic changes carried on from one generation to the next.
And it really gets down to discussions about how much
choice do I have? Mean any discussion of epigenetics and
nature and nurture, there's this undercurrent of free will to
(01:12):
what extent in my shackle do my genes? To what
extent is everything about me? Just laid out in the
original code work that was that came together in the womb,
and then how much of it is, and then how
much of it is also out of my hands because
of the environment that I am in, in the environment
that I'm raised in, the environment that I grow up in,
or as we're going to discuss more the environment that
(01:34):
my mother grew up in, or the or that that
her mother grew up in, right, like, how much of
it is? Uh, it's just sort of set in stone
to a certain extent before we even have a SASA. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought up the free will angle about
this too, because when we look at epigenetics UM, it
does sort of bring into question to what degree UM
(01:55):
are we just sort of dealing with on off switches
of our genes and how they're expressed, and how much
of this um is a genetically clean slate. Because it
used to be that we would assume that, of course
you would you would get your eye color, or your
hair color, or the tone of your skin from your parents,
from your grandparents, so on and so forth. But you
(02:16):
wouldn't necessarily have thought that the things that your mother
and father did as ten year olds would matter to you.
But in fact it does, and we'll discuss that. Yeah,
and then there's a certain amount of magical thinking, uh
in all of this as well. There's always you know,
these old ideas that die really hard, that the apple
never falls far from the tree kind of a thing.
You know, if the if the father was a criminal,
(02:38):
then the son is destined to be a criminal, you
know that kind of thing. If the and if the
mother was was a genius and just in a multitasker
or whatever you know, accolades you want to throw at her,
then surely the offspring will have that as well. And uh,
it's not as simple as that, right. There's a psychological
component to this that we will talk about. But right
(02:58):
now we're going to talk more about the physiological component.
In in order to do we're just gonna do a
quick overview of epigenetics. Um. Epigenetics is the study of
gene expression and how it can vary from what generation.
Epigenetics means in addition to the genes. In addition to genetics,
Eppie above the genome. Right, so you've got the genome
(03:19):
with all the d n A, the sequence that is
that does not change, and then you have the material
as you had pointed out before that's between the genome
and the epigenome. And these are the proteins. These are
the flip switching areas of gene expression that can be
passed down to another generation. I'm going to use a
different metaphor this time. It just occurs to me. Um, Okay,
(03:42):
think of say three Rock the TV show, right, lovely
just ended, just ended, very sad. Alright, So imagine this.
Lislemon comes up with a script for that night's show,
and you can think of that script as the is
the genome, all right, it's the genetic code. It says
what is going to happen. Right, Let's say that that
script and passes over Jack Donneghe's desk, her boss's desk,
(04:04):
and he says, well, given the current political or business environment,
I'm gonna make this change and this change and this
change and this change and this change. And now this
is the script that you're going to actually film. And
then the version of the show that you see, the
version that is filmed, that is the that is the
finished organism. So he's the He's the methyl group that
attaches to the protein that turns on or off different
(04:27):
aspects of the script. Right, So we talked about DNA
methylation in the last episode, but we won't talk about
it too much here. Yeah, it's basically the epigenome involves
and I'm gonna personify things a little bit here, but
it's meddling. It's meddling based on environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli
that may include, uh, that may be nutritional, it may
have to do with angry, dangerous predators in the environment,
(04:49):
stress in the environment, or or various chemicals that are
interacting with the with the organism's body. Yeah, and this
is why one member of a pair of identical twins
can develop a bipolar disorder or asthma, even though the
other is fine. Right, This is epigenetics really helps to
explain why this happens because some of these uh, these
the epigenetic changes are taking place in the womb and
(05:13):
they're more or less set for that that organisms life,
but other switches are coming on can come on and
off throughout that that organisms life. So even though Jack
donaghy made this the script changes this week. The environment
might change, you get a new president in office, or
they're different business concerns, and then he might not make
the same changes the following week. All right, So when
(05:33):
we talk about epigenetic changes and we talk about them
and humans. One of the best ways to really look
at this in detail is to look at the Dutch famine,
which happened during full World War two. We're talking about
between nineteen forty four and nine. And the reason why
researchers wanted to look at the Dutch famine and the
(05:54):
families that were involved is because what do we have here.
We have an environmental condition and such as famine that
could greatly impact not just that generation, but the next
generation and how it's phenotypes, its attributes, those genes are expressed. Yeah,
because the situation is here that researchers were seeing persistent
(06:15):
health problems six decades following UH, this UH Dutch hunger
winter as it's called. The research has found that children
exposed to famine during the first ten weeks following conception
had less DNA methylation of the imprinted i g F
two gene than the children of the same sex, siblings
of the same sex they were unexposed to these conditions,
(06:39):
that's right. So in other words, that DNA methylation was
the process that that sort of attached to the proteins
to turn on or off that gene and so in
this instance they had less of it. In other words,
this DNA methylation wasn't able to UM to actually sort
of protect them, and so that this i g F
(07:00):
huge gene was able to express itself a lot more
in those children who experienced malnutrition. Now, likewise, children they
were exposed to these famine conditions at the end of pregnancy,
they showed no difference in the methylation compared to siblings
that were unexposed. So it's interesting to see, like see
what stage and development those those triggers are flipped. Now,
(07:21):
UM this was in the Netherlands, and again this is
wor World two. This was a great experiment for the
researchers at Columbia University UM Public School of Health to
to really and the Legan University excuse me, Medical Center
in Netherlands to really look at this data because they
could see which families UM had the most food in
the least food during that embargo UH in the Netherlands.
(07:44):
That is one example of what happens when you have
UM a dearth of food. Right. But what what one
researcher did, Dr Lars all of Vigrant is he looked
at these overclax youth in Rboten, which is a Swedish providence,
and he wanted to see how much food was available
(08:05):
to these kids. Now, Bigrant is a preventive health specialist,
and what he did is he drew a random sample
of nine individuals born in this Overcallips parish in their
boating in nineteen o five, and he used historical records
to trace their parents and grandparents back to birth. So
these are meticulous agricultural records. And what they found is
(08:26):
that some of these kids had a lot of food
available to them during winters. Some kids did not. They
begin they had sort of a stasis of um impoverished
food resources available to them. So what you see is
is one line of kids who who can be sort
of gluttonous and eat a large amount at certain times,
(08:47):
and another line just that continue on right. So you
would think that the kids who weren't getting a lot
of nutrition for for the entire period, that they might
be the ones that were affected here adversely affected. But
actually actually the kids who over eight who we see
in successive generations having the problems with their genes switching on.
(09:09):
And when I talk about this, uh, these genes switching
on and off. I'm talking about diabetes. I'm talking about
shorter lifespans. In fact, Bagrant found that kids who went
from normal eating to gluttonous eating had produced grandsons who
died in average of six years earlier than the grandsons
of those who who had endured a poor harvest. And
then by Grant and his team controlled for certain socio
(09:30):
economic variations, and when they did that, the difference in
longevity actually jumped to an astonishing thirty two years. Okay,
So again, what we're seeing here is significant drops in lifespans.
And they also found evidence of it occurring on the
female line as well. So that means that the daughters
and the granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal
(09:53):
to gluttonous diets also live shorter lives. And of course
the study is important is we look at our own
dietary changes here to over the past and well in
the past decade, like here in the United States, as
we're looking at at at the generational changes in the
approach to food and approach the diet and uh, and
you kind of I mean in the sort of do
(10:13):
it yourself, fix it up, and improve your life kind
of attitude. You want to think, well, all right, I
used to eat this way, I'm now I'm gonna now
I'm eating better, I'm eating smarter, or I I don't
have the diet that my parents had or the diet
that my grandparents had, But you're still, to a certain
extent kind of shackled to their diet, which is which
is potentially scary. Yeah. Well, and I think that's why
(10:36):
we have seen such a spike and OBEs and diabetes
in any very young children, you know, as young as
five years old, six years old. Um, so some of
them are saddled with these genes that are flipped on
and off because of parents and previous generations eating habits
or ability to to get nutrition. So this guy b Igrant,
he he did these studies and then he hooked up
(10:56):
with Dr Marcus Pembrey, and he's a geneticist at the
universe A College in London, and he dared to ask, well,
what if the environmental pressures and social changes of the
industrial age had become so powerful the evolution had begun
to demand that our genes respond faster. So they hooked
up and they found out a punch of really very
interesting things. Yeah, this one about smoking, particularly interesting. And
(11:16):
this one was two thousand six published in the European
Journal of Human Genetics. And uh, I mean, it's it's
one thing to realize that, yes, smoking, which of course
is a a major thing for your body to have
to deal with. It's easy to imagine our especially best
one what we've talked about here, to imagine smoking triggering
certain epigenetic changes in the body and then those, uh,
(11:40):
those those changes being transgenerational, passing on to the next
generation or potentially to generations beyond that. But what was
really crazy about this particular study is that they were
looked at like over fourteen thousand fathers in the study,
and a hundred and sixty six of them had started
smoking before the age of a and that's so that's
(12:00):
before their bodies were actually preparing to enter puberty. And
uh and and already these changes were taking taking place. Yeah,
because it turns out that that um, if they are
affecting their body in an adverse way i e. Smoking
at this age and they began to form sperm, they
began to make it. That is when that sperm, that
(12:23):
genetic material is going to be informed by that outside
environmental condition of smoking, and that it's crazy to think
about a ten year old who is smoking. I mean,
I'm assuming pretty regularly here, because you know, it would
have to be in order to have such a marked
imprint on the genetic material. But that's crazy to think
(12:45):
that a ten year could be affecting his future offspring
at that moment. Yeah, And it also it really throws
this another, this other idea on its head, this sort
of idea like when you're a kid that you know
a lot of a lot of stuff that happened when
you're young is gonna is gonna affect who you are
as an adult, obviously, but you you kind of sort
(13:07):
of writing a certain amount of room for mistakes, like, oh,
I can I can start smoking when i'm young and
quit later, and if I can quit, then great, then
I'm done with that. Or you know, you can you
can do maybe kind of stupid things when you're ten
years old and it's not going to really have as
as much impact on your later life, but already it's
having an effect on your children when you're tent And
(13:28):
that's a that's really eye opening to think about. Yeah,
I mean, because those kids who took up smoking that early,
they had, um, they had kids who had a much
higher risk for ab city, and they had other health
problems well into adulthood and shorter lifespans. So what's amazing
about the study is that they had fourteen thousand individuals
and that's a very large sample, and year after year
(13:51):
they were able to look at the offspring and the
parents here and look at them in terms of like
their bone density, how much they weighed, with their bits were,
and they were able to track them over a number
of years, and so they got an amazing amount of
data that can show them very clearly that um, you know,
some of the genes were flipped on or off in
these instances. I also ran across the study talking about
(14:13):
cocaine use UM and in this way that this experiment
they were using mice, So these were cocaine using mice,
and they found that in these mice, the mice would
develop memory problems, they would pass on three generations um
due to these epigenetic changes. So there's another another example
of something where you know, one might think, oh, well,
the the sins of one's youth, uh, you know, they'll
(14:35):
they'll they'll be ramifications for that, but you tend not
to think of three generations worth the ramifications for you know,
your your drug hat. You know, I can't figure out
whether or not this is comforting or just really problematic.
Well to understand it at this level, you know, I
think it's I think it's a little column calum b.
I mean, it's you know, and we'll we'll get into
(14:57):
this a little more before we close out the podcast.
But um, but even as we continue to map out
um so many of these these things that make us
who we are, all these different environmental changes and all
and the things written in our genes, they contribute to us. There,
I mean, ultimately, you're gonna have to roll with what
you get. So, I mean there, at the end of
(15:17):
the day, you you can worry about it a lot.
You can worry about, Okay, well what what what my
child genetics? What were they? And then then how am
I nurturing this child? And and it becoming this battle
of of of nurture and nature, and then you can
you can kind of over analyze everything. Uh, but at
the end of the day, you're you're gonna have to
roll with it. Yeah, I know. And I realized this
because my daughter has been asking about death a lot
(15:39):
lately and so you know, the question do sure this
morning was you know, what are the various ways that
you know people die? Or how do people die? In
So it's trying to tell her with you know, with
her four year old mind, and I was trying to
explain to her disease, which was very hard for her
to get her mind real She wanted to know if
insects gave her diseases, and of course yes, I know,
(16:04):
I thought, well technically in some cases, but I said no,
because of course I don't want her to be friend
of every ladybug and mosquito that she says she's she's
lying around. So anyway, I need to know basis at
four years old. But I began to think about this.
I began to think, well, you know, as she gets older,
she can have a more nuanced understanding of epi genetics,
and certainly, you know, when she reaches age twenty, there
(16:26):
should be a lot that can be uncovered about not
just my epi genetics, but hers and and perhaps you know,
various other offspring and trying to figure out, um, sort
of what the sins of the mother and father were. Yeah,
and it can I mean, it's can certainly be uh,
perplexing to think about two. I mean, for instance, uh,
(16:48):
my wife and I are in the process of adopting
a child and uh, and so in that situation, the nurturing,
of course is going to be almost you know, entirely
on us. There's there's a certain amount of time there
that we're not in the picture obviously. But but then
of course the genetics, the nature aspect of it is
almost entirely out of our hands. So it can lead
(17:11):
to a certain amount of worry and perplection over over
the nature versus nurture, over the epigenetic changes that that
that we can contribute to and and those that have
already uh you know, left the train station. But again,
at the end of the day, you gotta roll with it.
So that's true, that's true. You can't over worry about it. Um.
(17:31):
But of course, you know, you gotta roll with what
you get genetically. But you also have to roll with
which you get in terms of emotional baggage when it
comes to our parents, our ancestors. And this is where
we of course discussed the ancestor syndrome. But before we
talk about this, we should probably take a quick break
and uh, we'll be right back. All right, we're back,
(17:56):
and we're going to talk now about a little something
called ancestor syndrome and about some of the more almost
philosophical aspects of genetic memory um and uh, or even
you know, racial memory if you want. And in this
we can't help but think about Carl Young, whom he had,
of course, his theory of the collective unconscious, and that
(18:19):
this idea that there's this level of unconscious beyond a
personal unconscious, beyond our own subconscious, that is shared by
a society. That's uh, that's ship, that's written in our ancestry,
and it's uh, it's the reservoir of experiences and beliefs, um,
you know, what have you. That we're ruled over by
all these various universal archetypes that while the particulars of
(18:41):
them may change, the the idea of the archetype is
is just embedded in our in our history. And and
so Young talked a good bit about racial unconscious, racial
memory and uh. And there's a certain amount of this
to be interpreted when we start looking at epigenetics. It
should be because you know, we don't have scientific evidence
(19:02):
to say that our ancestors actual emotional experiences were passed
down to us. We can say that the environmental conditions
could flip the switch, because I mean, that's a scary
thought right there, because everyone has their emotional things in
any lineage that are going to be problematic. Be it
you know, your uncle, you know, your your great great
grandfather was a king who had his head cut off,
(19:23):
or your great great grandfather was, you know, a poor
miner in West Virginia just struggling to make ends me,
you know. Yeah. And it's those kind of like forbearers
autobiographies that help put together this idea that, um, we
do have these experiences passed down to us via stories
(19:44):
and that makes an impact on our psyches. UM and
aunt Selin Schutzenburger, she is a professor emeritus at the
University of Nice and France. She's actually ninety years old now,
but she coined the term psycho genealogy. And this is
this idea that there are these subtle ways in which
we impact generations of offspring, and the idea that all
(20:06):
family groups share an inherent tendency to transmit those elements
necessary for the continued survival of the group. So you know,
the group, the tribe, the family has ideas, traditions, certain
things that it does over and over again to ensure
the survival of this identity and through stories, wills, even
(20:30):
a will is a story, right, Um. Again, traditions, that's
a really big part of it. So Schutzenberg describes the
theory of invisible loyalty as being something that is owed
to previous generations and that this is a catalyst for
unwittingly re enacting the life events of our ancestors. This
is the idea that you have this invisible loyalty to
(20:52):
a great your grandmother Josephine, who this is the first
circus acrobat, I don't know, um, And you begin to
think you can begin to take on these characteristics for yourself.
So I think it's interesting because, um, you know, a
child is born, it doesn't necessarily have any sort of identity.
It's got its genetic identity. It's god, it's phenotypes that
(21:14):
are expressed turn on and off. But then we begin
to sort of do these are a layer, these memories
on top of this child to make the identity. And
that's all good and fine if the child is good
with this identity, but it if if it is not,
then of course, this is where we see conflict. Yeah,
and uh, I mean I can't help but think too
(21:35):
about various materials I've read about the the so called
quote unquote scar of adoption that that did anyone. And
this is this scenaria where people argue both sides. But
there's this argument that that any adopted child who comes
to know about their adoption, that there is a certain
emotional scar there that's just unavoidable because I mean, it
(21:57):
is a it becomes that person's personal history and they
have to fit themselves into this grander story of their lineage.
So well, and what's interesting about this is, uh, there's
a psychotherapist, Moliki Coleman, and she says that a child
is doated on with an emotional and psychological DNA CHAN
from its parents and family, which enables the child to
(22:18):
function successfully in that particular family context. So if you
have a child who is adopted, then the then already
the child is forming this store that they didn't fit
into the family context or can a child can? I
should should say that doesn't always happen. So that's the
struggle there, I think for trying to figure out where
a child fits in. Now you know, a child who
(22:41):
is not adopted I think still feels this way. Yeah. Yeah,
that's one thing to always keep in mind, is that
is that any child is going to struggle with who
they are and what they are and the possibility that
their mom is actually a princess and not the mother
that they have in their life. UM. You see, you
see that kind of situate because of my my younger
sister who is who's not adopted. UM. But she would
(23:05):
form these stories in her head about how she was
actually the secret built more child. I think this was
after my my family, like we went and saw the
Built More emation and Nashville, and so she had this
story that she began to form that she was secretly
wanted to build more children that was her real family. UM.
So you see that kind of personal myth making, um,
you know, in various levels, be it being an adopted
(23:27):
situation or birth parents situation. So now, my my brother
told me when I was six years old that I
was adopted and I had blonde hair at that time
and my family dark hair, blue eyes in um. And
then he went through this whole sham thing and pretended
he couldn't find my birth certificate and produced his I mean, wow,
(23:48):
that was elaborate. It was yeah, that that's the kind
of kid he is. But um, but yeah, I mean
every I think at some point every child and adult
feels like a black sheep with their family. And so
that you do get this emotional baggage, and you do
get these stories that are passed down that are like
this sort of genetic memory. And I put that air
quotes right, because this is sort of like this layering
(24:10):
of information over you. And this leads us to magical
thinking of course. Oh yeah, we get into, of course,
the idea of law contage. And we discussed this to
a certain extent in the past two about the eye.
It gets into the whole area of like the powder
of sympathy and the idea that that you could you
could treat a wound by treating the weapon that caused
the wound, or that by coming into contact with with
(24:32):
with somebody you can can you can contract um they're
sort of spiritual or mental funk. Yeah. And so if
you have something that is uh, your ancestors, if you
have artwork or some sort of piece of thing that's
there's it feels like it has this magical quality to
it as it brings with it all of this psychic
uh sort of baggage um that your family is carrying
(24:56):
around with them all the time. Yeah. I mean that's
the thing about stuff and things. We we attached so
much importance to them, and then uh and and and
and that has a definite impact on on how we
think about that. I mean, case in point, uh, my
father's wristwatch um that he he was wearing when he died,
(25:17):
and and I have been wearing it for the past
a couple of years, and then the other day it
stopped ticking, like the battery went dead in it, which
is something I knew had happened eventually. I knew it
didn't have like a you know, an atomic um battery
in there or anything. But when it stopped working, it's
like I became real emotional, like in spite of myself
(25:37):
knowing that this was going to happen, but it u
But there was this this aspect that this was an
artifact that was somehow embodied with a sense of him,
and that it had kept ticking, and that therefore part
of him was still ticking in it, even though on
you know, half of me just dismisses that as who
he even as I say it, there's a part of
me that still really buys into that well. And I
think that's what that that's the point here is like
(26:00):
that we should underscore is that our our families, family
autobiography is very powerful stuff. And so we talk about
things at the genetic level, and we talked about environmental
aspects of it. And certainly we can see the phenotype
expressed under pressure, but there is the psychological pressure too.
(26:20):
And as you had noted at the top of the podcast,
you know, if we tell our stories the same, if
we tell ourselves the same stories all the time, like
my family is this and we do this, Um, you know,
we're geniuses, then you begin to perform that part or
we're bank robbers. I'm gonna go rob the bank. Yeah,
I mean, I don't know if anybody actually thinks that,
but but yes, to a certain extent it. I think
(26:41):
there comes apart in anyone's life where you have to
stop believing the story about yourself that people were telling
you and start writing your own story, or at least
editing that story, applying in a way at the genetic
changes to the story you're given become the Jack Donaghye
of your own script exactly. He has become the Jack
Donna gave your own scrip script and say you know what,
Uh yeah, I mean I feel like there was a
(27:02):
part in my life where I was where I had
to say, you know what, I'm I'm I'm a really
good writer, and that's gonna be my thing, and that's
my story, and and it becomes your story, you know,
within a liminated you know stint, I couldn't say now
I'm going to be the president the United States that
maybe maybe not. You gotta you gotta level your your
dreams with your abilities. But but there does come a
(27:23):
point where you have to you have to, I think,
rewrite that story otherwise you're just gonna be shackled to
this old story. And that's where that's where actually some
of Schultzenberger's work comes into play, where she was examining
things like quote unquote family curses. I'm probably doing too
many air quotes in this podcast, I apologize, but you know,
looking into ideas of family curses and and things of
(27:45):
this nature and looking at that that it really having
to do with buying into a story, into into a
into a lineage, and letting that influence who you think
you are. That's interesting. That's like the Kennedy curse, right
if you look at that. Yes, a bunch of things
happened in their family, but they have a very large
family living in a very different way. Um. Well, and
of course slavery in America is a big thing too,
(28:06):
because you have something, I mean, among racial divides. You
have individuals who go back in time and you find
slavery or you find slavers, and it continues and will
continue to be a problematic aspect of kind of our psychohistory.
This is true. All right. Well, there you go. Two
episodes that we've done now about epigenetics UM. And I
(28:28):
think you know this supplies a good starting point for
everyone to really think about genetic changes, epigenetic changes um
nature versus nurture in sort of a larger uh theme.
So if you if you want to learn a little
bit more, you want to rehash some of the details,
do check out the article UM, how epigenetics works. I
(28:49):
did write that. I wrote it a couple of years ago,
so uh, it may need an update, but still most
all the core information and that is still good. It's
a very fine article, and it does point out some
of the technical applications here too. Um that I just
wanted to mention that drug therapies are beginning to be
developed and have been developed to help flip those switches
when it comes to disease, like the drug as a
(29:12):
as a Pedidon and that helps suppress leukemia. So keep
that in mind too. It's not all just who we
we need to look at the ghosts in the machine there.
There are definite things that are coming out of this
to help us along as we get a better understanding
of epic genetics. And I'll close out here with a
quote from Peter Brooks um play his adaptation of the
(29:34):
Hindu epic the Mahabarata, where one character is speaking about
the character Karna, who himself was an orphan who grew
up to be a mighty warrior. And the quote is
that birth is obscure and men are like rivers whose
origins are often unknown. So there you go, um, what's
called the robot over here, and do just one quick
listener mail before we leave, all right, This one comes
(29:58):
to us from Dominique. Dom Anique writes in this as
higher Julian Robert, just listen to your cool Science of podcast.
Really great. I'm surprised you didn't reference the phoenix when
speaking about the immortal jellyfish um and immortal in quotes there,
because we discussed it's not really immortal, but for headline purposes,
it's immortal. It was the first thing that came to
(30:18):
my mind that this is the aquatic equivalent of the
legendary bird that would go up in flames at the
end of its life to leave an egg in its place,
which would from which it would then be reborn, which
is a very good point. I don't know why I
didn't think about the phoenix, because it's it's really more
of an example of of the mythical phoenix as more
so than it is an example of immortality. Domini continues.
(30:40):
Quantum teleportation also had me smiling as I first started
to equate the entangled entangled pair of subparticles to those
mythical twins who where one supposedly feels the pain of
the other even across large distances. Of course, in this case,
the twins would be killed off every time they cut,
would be made on their arm to transmit a bit
of the info. I'm now imagining a sci fi story
(31:03):
where shiploads of twins would be brought to the distant
planet by supply ship been sacrificed by the thousands every
time a message had to be sent. Wow. Yeah, it's
really Hunger Games scenario. Yeah, and and and Dominique right
to us from France by the way, So there you go.
But yes, that the the twin example was a great
one that I would have wish I would have thought
about UM. A few years back in New York, there
(31:25):
was this guy who was offering it's kind of like
an art installation kind of peace, uh, the idea of
quantum marriage, where you would supposedly become quantum entangled to
your partner UM. So that gets into a little bit
of that. Well, thanks Dominic for reading in. So if
you would like to share anything with us UM's particularly
if you'd like to share your thoughts on the genetic
and epigenetics about the stories that we uh we we
(31:48):
bring into our lives, that the stories that we end
up creating and tweaking um to uh to really become
who we are, then let us know about it. We
would love to hear your insight and or thoughts. You
can find us on Facebook and Tumbler, where your stuff
to blow your Mind on both of those, and you
can also find us on Twitter, where our handle is
blow the Mind, and you can always write us a
letter at blew the Mind at Discovery dot com. For
(32:17):
more on this and thousands of other topics, Is It
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