April 7, 2022 • 35 mins
Every human being shares a 99.9% identical DNA code. It's that .1% that makes us unique. We could see the influence of genetics before we unlocked it, but now that we've learned how to measure those differences, the knowledge could be dangerous.
This is Part 3 of a re-release of the first 3 Prodigy episodes. They are meant to be listened to together as they cover the argument of nature vs nurture as related to performance.
Created, produced and hosted by Lowell Brillante
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. If you
were raised by a different family, how different do you
think you'd be, Would your personality be the same, would
you have a different religion? Exactly how much does your
DNA determine who you are? It's impossible to know, right
(00:29):
or is it? My name is Lowell Berlante and this
is Prodigy. One and seventy years ago, Gregor Mendel ran
an experiment cross breeding pea plants for desirable traits and
(00:50):
founded what would become the science of modern genetics. Mendel
had discovered genes, the unit of inheritance passed down from
parent to child. A hundred years after that, before we
had the technology and knowledge that we have today, people
wanted to know the answer to a basic but complicated question.
(01:12):
Is our life and behavior dictated by genetics or environment?
Nature versus nurture? It had to be some combination of both.
But how could we untangle them in order to measure
their effects. We needed to hold one constant so we
can measure the other. If we could quantify one, we
(01:32):
could deduce that effects unaccounted for were caused by the other.
It's difficult and morally unethical to control a human being's
genetics or environment. So how was it done the combination
of ways. One was by studying adopted children. They grew
up in completely different environments from their birth parents. Similarities
(01:54):
to their birth parents were assumed to be inherited, while
similarities to their adopted parrants were assumed to be environmental.
The results of these adoption studies are then combined with
twin studies. There's two types of twins, fraternal and identical.
When to sperm fertilize two eggs, you get fraternal twins.
(02:16):
They share fifty DNA and are equivalent to siblings. When
one sperm fertilizes one egg and then splits, you get
identical twins with identical DNA. Dr Robert Plowman is a
geneticist and psychologist. He's been studying twins for over forty
years and is one of the most sided psychologists of
(02:37):
this century. Twin and adoption studies are the two main
ways we used to use for a century to ask
to what extent are the differences between people due to
inherited DNA differences, nature or nurture. Doctor Nancy Siegel is
an award winning geneticist and psychologist. I think we're interested
in sending twins for two reasons. First is that there
(03:00):
are beautiful natural experiment, very simple, very elegant that allows
us to look at the genetic environmental influences on behavior
simply by comparing identical twin similarities to fraternal twins similarities.
I think the other reason why we're so taken with
twins is linked to the fact that we all grow
up expecting and learning about individual differences in behavior and
(03:24):
in form and so when we encounter to people who
look so much alike and act so much alike, it
challenges our belief in the way the world works. Since
fraternal and identical twin pairs are usually raised by the
same parents in the same environment, we could compare how
similar the pairs were to estimate if a trait was
environmental or genetic. Since fraternal twins share DNA well identical
(03:48):
twins share a DNA. If a trait was more often
shared by identical twins, it was assumed to be genetic.
Identical twins have matching DNA, so they're also a perfect
phenomenon to measure the influence of the environment. Identical twins
usually share an environment, so similarities could be environmental as well.
(04:09):
But if the identical twins have completely different environments, then
we could assume that similarities between the twins are genetic
and differences are environmental. This is what's known as identical
twins reared apart. The year was nineteen eighty and nineteen
(04:31):
year old Bobby Shaffern had just arrived for his first
day at Sullivan Community College in upstate New York. As
he headed to his dorm room, he realized that students
there were really nice to strangers. They greeted him as
if he were an old friend. The weird thing was
they kept calling him Eddie. My name is Bobby, he
told them, but they just laughed. They thought he was joking,
(04:52):
and he thought they were. Bobby found his room and
was met by his new roommate, Michael Domets. Michael was
confused and started asking Bobby questions, were you adopted? What's
your birth date? Bobby looked very similar to his last roommate, Eddie,
too similar, and Michael knew that Eddie wasn't returning to
college that year. The two boys ran to the nearest
(05:15):
pay phone and called Eddie, and when Michael put the
phone to Bobby's ear, he heard his own voice. Bobby
and Eddie were identical twins, separated at birth. They were
strikingly similar and in many more ways than simply physical appearance.
They were both wrestlers, They spoke the same, had the
(05:35):
same birth mark, and even shared the same i Q score.
Everyone was shocked, and the news quickly made its way
to the local paper. The next day, they got a
phone call from a young man named David. Turns out
they actually weren't twins, they were triplets. This was the
beginning of a media sensation that swept the nation. Triplets
(05:55):
separated at birth and raised in different families with different
socio economics data is The story is told in the
documentary Three Identical Strangers. Another famous story is of the
Gym Twins. They were adopted to different families in nineteen
Both families named them James, but called them Jim. They
(06:16):
both like carpentry, but dislike spelling. They both married a
woman named Linda, then divorced and married a woman named Betty.
They even both gave their son the same name, James Allen.
They were both nail biters, got tension, headaches, and vacationed
at the same beach in Florida. There's other interesting stories
(06:38):
of identical twins reared apart, and they're all very similar.
In nineteen seventy nine, a study began which analyzed one
and thirty seven pairs of twins reared apart to determine
the range of genetic effects. Doctor Nancy Siegel was a
researcher in this study for nine years and was surprised
by some of the behaviors that showed genetic influence, such
(07:00):
as religion. We studied psychological measures, physiological, medical, I mean,
just about everything that you could think of was in there.
I think shoe side was the only thing we forgot about.
After measuring nearly every possible metric, they concluded that identical
twins raised apart are more similar to each other than
fraternal twins raised together. Here's Dr Plowman, and the amazing
(07:24):
thing is all psychological traits, including personality, are heritable, including
once you might not expect to be like femininity, even
attitudinal things. The first law behable genetics is everything is heritable.
So twin of adoption studies are away for researchers to
study nature and nurture. In n the largest ever collaborative
(07:50):
biological project began. It costs two point seven billion dollars
and took thirteen years, but in two thousand three it
was completed successfully. We map the human genome and gained
access to the source code of our own species. We
discovered that each person consists of a ninety nine percent
(08:12):
identical six billion letter genetic code, so the DNA difference
between you, me, and Brad Pitt is point zero one.
That slight difference in our code is called genetic variance,
and it's part of what makes us unique. Each person
has around five million of them. The variances exist when
(08:33):
an individual has a different nucleotide in a DNA fragment,
which is called a single nucleotide polymorphism. We abbreviate them
as s n p S or snips. Polygenic means multiple genes,
and apologenic score is a number that estimates the effect
of multiple genetic variances on an individual's characteristics like weight
(08:57):
or height or personality. We used to be that a
single gene control these traits. Here's dr Pluman. We've learned
that it's not one, or ten or a hundred DNA
differences that make a difference for complex traits. What we're
talking about is thousands of tiny DNA differences, and that's
a real drag if you're a molecular biologist and you
(09:19):
want to study pathways from genes to brain to behavior,
Because if there's thousands of these DNA differences, they all
have very small effects, so it's really difficult to trace
any of those pathways. What you can do is put
these together in a score. You can aggregate all these
tiny DNA differences. That's what we call a polygenic score,
(09:43):
and that can be useful for prediction. And that's the
main thing I'm interested in, is making predictions about people's personality,
cognitive abilities, and psychopathology. So instead of looking for a
single gene responsible for something like i Q, we look
at the smaller effects of a lot of them. This
is what is known as a genome wide polygenic score.
(10:04):
But sequencing a person's genome by itself doesn't give us
much applicable information because we need something to compare it to.
The larger our data set, the more relevant the information becomes.
Observing the genetic variants in many individuals is known as
a genome wide association study. They call it GAS. By
(10:24):
analyzing the variances in a person's DNA and comparing it
to many other people's DNA, we can learn what these
variances do. One of my highest pologenetic scores is for
body mass index weight. You know, it predicts about ten
of the differences between people in weight. People say, well,
if you knew you were at a genetic risk for
(10:45):
being OBEs, you just give up and say, oh, well,
I'm a genetic fatty. But it's not like that. You know,
by knowing I have this genetic propensity, I know that
I'm in a lifelong battle. I've sort of known that
all before, but I'm always thinking, oh, it's these six
pounds put on it Christmas. It's not you know, I
put on weight more easily. It's harder for me to
(11:05):
get rid of it. And I know all your skinny
listeners are saying, just get a grip. If you don't
eat so much, you won't get fat. Dr Robert Plowman
has been researching behavioral genetics using twin and adoption studies
for over forty years and has published over eight papers.
His most recent book is titled Blueprint, How DNA Makes
(11:27):
Us who we Are. It discusses the conclusions he's drawn
from as many years of research. It took a long
time to convince psychologists that genetics is important, about thirty
years or so. But in the last ten years or so,
the DNA revolution has come along, and a lot of
psychologists still don't know about it because mostly it's happening
in the medical area. But it's just as relevant to
(11:47):
all psychological traits. I'd say in the next five years,
psychologists an't going to know what hit them because you
won't be able to do a study if you don't
collect DNA. The book is considered somewhat controversial for it's
forceful for trail of genetics as the dominant force in
human behavior. For example, here's a quote. Parents matter, but
(12:08):
they don't make a difference. Parents obviously matter tremendously in
their children's lives. They provide the essential physical and psychological
ingredients for children's development. But if genetics provides most of
the systematic variants and environmental effects are unsystematic and unstable.
This applies that parents don't make much of a difference
in their children's outcomes beyond the genes they provide a
(12:30):
conception end quote. So Dr Pluman's book received a reasonable
amount of criticism, particularly for the idea that parents don't
make a difference. We'll get into that after a quick break.
Welcome back to Prodigy. So Blueprint has received some pretty
strong criticism for the way it's message could be interpreted.
(12:51):
In the later publication of the book, Dr Plullman included
an afterward which said the most quoted phrase from Blueprint
is parents matter, but they don't make a difference. The
phrase don't make a difference is often misconstrued to mean
can't make a difference. Don't make a difference means that
differences in parenting as they exist in the populations we
(13:13):
study do not make much of a difference in children's
psychological outcomes. There was a view in Nature of my book.
Nature is one of the big science journals, and it
was a historian of science. He didn't speak to the data.
He just basically said he didn't like the result. He's
saying this is a return to determinism. And in my
(13:33):
book I emphasized it's not fatalistic. It doesn't mean you
can't do anything about it. Dr Plowman was talking about
Nathaniel Comfort, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. So I
got Professor Comfort on the phone to ask him about
his position. Particularly, I'm interested in the social implications of
(13:55):
thinking about genes too much, about an over emphasis on
in A and genes and the kind of social impacts
that it has, So I'm in no way anti genetics.
I consider myself a friendly critic. Professor Comfort is a
historian of biomedicine. He looks at messages like this in
a historical context. To start by saying, Dr Plullman is
(14:17):
a venerable, respected psychologist who has been working on these
problems for many years, So I'm not really going to
comment on his actual science. I'm more interested in the
way that he's presenting his science to the public, which
I think is honestly reckless and dangerous. I think it's
(14:39):
also important to note here that although Dr Plullman had
a large data set of ten thousand sets of twins,
all of them were born in the UK over the
course of twelve months and had parents who agreed to
take part in the research, So all of the subjects
are from a similar geographic and socio economic background. Study.
You're talking about users from UK Biobank, which is in
(15:02):
fact overwhelmingly white, middle class Britains, So the results from
a study don't necessarily apply to African Americans, for example,
or Hispanics or Asians. Dr Plullman wrote to me in
an email that this study is applicable to the UK only,
it can't be generalized beyond there. However, he seems not
(15:26):
to include this important qualifier when making some pretty broad
interpretations of his findings. Here's part of the review that
Professor Comfort wrote about Dr Pluman's book in the Nature
article quote. Although Plullman frequently uses more civil, progressive language
than did his predecessors, the book's message is vintage genetic determinism.
(15:49):
Plullman likes to say that various components of nurture matter,
but they don't make a difference. But the benefits of
good teaching, of school lunches and breakfasts, of having textbook
and air conditioning and heating and plumbing have been established irrefutably,
and they actually our causal. We know why stable blood
sugar improves mental concentration. Yet Pluman dismisses such effects as
(16:12):
unsystematic and unstable, so there's not much we can do
about them. Ultimately, if unintentionally blueprint is a roadmap for
regressive social policy. Nothing here seems overtly hostile to school
children or anyone else, but Pluman's argument provides live ammunition
for those who would abandon proven methods of improving academic
(16:34):
achievement among socio economically deprived children. His utopia is a
forensic world dictated by polygenic algorithms and the whims of
those who know how to use them. People would be
defined at birth by their DNA, expectations would be set,
and opportunities, resources, and experiences would be doled out and
(16:55):
withheld before anyone has had a chance to show their metal.
To paraphrase Lewington in his nineteen seventy critique of Jensen's argument,
Pluman has made it pretty clear what kind of world
he wants. I oppose him, so that was a bit
from the article. At first, I didn't understand Professor Comfort's
(17:17):
critique and why Dr Pluman's work could possibly be interpreted
as genetic determinism if you're not familiar with that term.
It's the belief that our genetics are the dominant factor
for our behavior. It's the extreme nature side of the
debate and the cornerstone of the incredibly problematic theory of eugenics.
Professor Comfort makes this point at the end of the
(17:39):
article when he reverences Lewington's critique of Jensen. Arthur Jensen
was a very controversial psychologist at Berkeley who argued that
i Q is largely determined by jenes, so lower i
Q scores from a particular group means inferior genetics, amongst
other issues. This argument hinges on the idea that i
(18:00):
Q tests are an accurate and universal measure of intelligence
across populations. This kind of determinism tends to amount to
a form of social Darwinism. Basically, Arrant's teachers, you don't matter,
you know, when you turn everything into biology, or you
make all your predictions based on biology or genetics, there's
(18:23):
a risk of increasing stratification in society, of creating kind
of biological casts. It'll continue the erosion of things like
public education and public services that we've been seeing in
recent decades. This just plays into the hands of people
(18:44):
who are really trying to dissolve the social contract. But
Dr Pluman rejects the idea that his book has a
message of genetic determinism. He sees environmental effects as important
but quote mostly random, unsystematic, and unstable, which means that
we cannot do much about them. So I gave Dr
(19:05):
Ploman the opportunity to respond to Professor Comfort in an email,
and this is what he wrote. Quote. I find it
hard to believe that a scientist is not aware of
the twin and adoption data showing that inherited DNA differences
are the major systematic source making us who we are
as individuals. Why are identical twins reared apart almost as
(19:29):
similar as identical twins reared together. Why to adopted children
resemble their birth parents but not their adoptive parents for
twins reared together? Why are identical twins twice as similar
as non identical twins? Here's a quote from Blueprints afterward
responding to Dr Comfort's article, The reviewer did not address
(19:51):
the science of the book, He just didn't like what
he misinterpreted as its message. I plead not guilty to
this charge of genetic determinant them. Genetics is the main
systematic force in shaping who we are as individuals, but
genes are not destiny. In Blueprint, Dr Plowman says genetics
is about the extent to which inherited DNA differences account
(20:15):
for differences between people in other words, we can turn
the television on or off as we please, but turning
it off or leaving it on pleases individuals differently, in
part due to genetic factors. Genetics is not a puppeteer
pulling our strings. Genetic influences are probabilistic propensities, not predetermined programming.
(20:36):
End quote. So I searched blueprint and found at least
nine other occurrences where Pluman repeats that message. However, he
also makes bold statements that seem to imply the opposite.
For instance, the very first paragraph of the book states, quote,
what would you think if you heard about a new
(20:57):
fortune telling device that is touted to predict psychological traits
like depression, schizophrenia, and school achievement. What's more, I can
tell your fortune from the moment of your birth. It
is completely reliable and unbiased, and it costs only one pounds.
This might sound like yet another pop psychology claim about
(21:17):
gimmicks that will change your life, but this one is
in fact based on the best science of our times.
The fortune teller is d n A. It's absolutely true
that jenes matter just like environment matters. The way in
which jans an environment interact differs from person to person,
(21:38):
and we have no idea how that works. Dr Plowman
also wrote, quote polygenic scores based on DNA rather than
crystal balls, are fortune tellers. As we shall see. Prediction
is crucial because it is the key to the prevention
of psychological problems and the promotion of promise. End quote.
(22:00):
I also gave Professor Comfort the opportunity to respond via email.
He said quote, the vast majority of unshared environments have
what Pluman calls random, unsystematic causes. That doesn't make unshared
environments unimportant. It just means they're hard to study. Statistically,
in human social behavior, few if any, direct lines can
(22:21):
be drawn from cause to effect. We are shaped by
subtle relationships, interacting variables, and big, unforeseeable events. The meaningful
differences are individualized. Complex social behaviors are complex. Professor Plowman
once called this a gloomy prospect, But it's only gloomy
if you're a social psychologist, because it implies that your
(22:42):
research is never going to explain very much. The prospect
is not gloomy at all. Of your historian contingency, complexity
and context or ur jam I can explain more about
social behavior with a timeline than he can with an algorithm.
There is no blueprint, Dr Pluman. There is no crystal ball.
There's no ghost in the human machine. Of course, it
(23:03):
just has so many parts, and those parts interact with
such spectacularly idiosyncratic, adaptive, buffering, nonlinear variety that no statistical
tool even begins to describe it. The blueprint is not
just bad biology, it's socially dangerous. Historically, hackneyed metaphors for
genetic determinism have misleadingly lent the authority of science to
(23:26):
regressive social policies, from disadvantaging black and poor students to
immigration restriction to coerced sterilization. Pologenic scores do not solve
that problem. That's the end of the email. I want
to wrap this debate by saying that I believe Dr
Pluman has purely altruistic intentions. He's a brilliant and deservedly
(23:49):
respected researcher. The problem is it's an extremely difficult subject
to navigate, so it deserves a high level of critique.
All right, we'll get into pologenic testing, epigenetics, and crisper
right after this quick break. Here is Dr Zebo Wonderlick
She studies gene expression at u C Irvine. She'd like
(24:09):
to raise awareness about food and security on college campuses.
You can find more info and donate at Basic Needs
dot u C I dot E. DU doctor wanted to
like raise some really interesting things we need to consider
when studying genetics. The question is like, in terms of
why we might want to figure out this genetics, I
think a good question that human geneticists often brings up
(24:31):
when they think about their work is to what end
are we doing this work right? So if we figure
it out, what does that imply for public policy or
how people perceive their genetics? And so I guess the
question is also like, even if we had some genetic
component too, whether we would be good at chess or
something like that, what would we use it for right,
(24:52):
Because like I would assume that we could still you know,
we want to live in a place where even if
you're not genetically predisposed to be the best at something,
that you could still do it right and that you
would still have choice over because maybe you're really genetically
pretty disposed to be excellent at something, but you don't
like it. And so I think that that's you know,
a question that People who work on human genetics often
(25:15):
struggle with or wrestle with before designing their experiments, which
is like, if I were to find a genetic component
to XT, like, what would that imply for the human population.
Another major concern is the privacy of your genetic information,
because if you do genetic testing, UM, there's a high
expectation that that information should be yours UM and to
(25:38):
choose with whom you share it with. Right, So should
your employer have access to that information? Like what if
it influences their decision because your health care is going
to be expensive or something like that. Because even though
in an ideal world it's yours and it would be private,
the reality is that it may not be all of
the time. And then what does that imply for what
could happen down the road if someone had access to
(25:59):
that information. One of the best examples of this was
the use of genetic genealogy to identify a man known
as the Golden State Killer. He was responsible for at
least thirteen murders and fifty rapes and had evaded capture
for forty five years. While everyone is glad that the
(26:19):
killer was caught, the way that he was is potentially alarming.
One of his relatives had uploaded their genetic information to
an open source database called g E D Match, which
enabled investigators to identify a common ancestor. So not only
does your genetic information become public if he used the database,
people who never consented to it become public as well.
(26:41):
Another interesting subject to consider is instead of dividing traits
into two distinct categories of nature or nurture, maybe the
environment influences how our genes are expressed. This is what's
known as epigenetics. One way this works is by DNA methylation,
which alter the expression of a DNA segment. A study
(27:03):
was done by Michael Meaney and colleagues on the interaction
between mother rats and their babies. Some mother rats groom
their babies more often than others. These well groomed babies
grow up to groom their babies more. The significant discovery
was in the results of cross fostering. So when babies
from low grooming mothers were given to the high grooming ones,
(27:26):
they grew up to groom their babies more, and the
opposite was also true. The effect took place in the
expression of an estrogen receptor okay Let's shift focus to
another emerging field of genetics. If you had the power
to change anything about yourself, would you do it? And
(27:48):
what would happen if everyone did? Because that's the question
humanity is about to face. In Scientists first noticed an
unusual repetitive DNAs equence when studying bacteria. However, there wasn't
sufficient data at the time to predict what the function was.
CRISPER stands for clustered regularly inner spaced short palindromic repeats.
(28:13):
It uses a protein to edit DNA. Sixty years ago,
computers were the size of an entire room. Now everyone
has one, an order of magnitude more capable, and it
fits in your pocket. We're still in the relatively early
stages of gene editing, but make no mistake, this technology
will change the world. We'll be able to do everything
(28:34):
from cure diseases to create genetically superior embryos in vitro.
Fertilization was criticized for creating life in a Patriot dish,
but now it's commonplace, and we even genetically screen embryos
for abnormalities. One step further would be to fix them.
And while we're doing that, why not give them better
eyesight and make them taller. Is there a line with
(28:57):
shout and cross and if so, where is it? I
spoke with Dr Dihan A. Taco. She's a postdoctoral scientist
at London University Department of Experimental Medical Sciences. She uses
Crisper to do research in neuroscience and stem cells. She's
actually trying to figure out what makes us human. Human
(29:19):
genome and the chimpanzee genome are almost identical, and when
you look at the protein quoting genes, they're like of
them are basically the same. So then the question is
how come you know we and the chimpanzees are so different.
You know, we're building countries and states and nations, but
(29:41):
the chimpanzees are still using rudimentary tools in their daily life.
Dr Ataco believes that the difference is in non coding RNA.
She uses Crisper to stop their expression and then studies
the effects. Crisper is really cool, but I was actually
kind of concerned about some of the potential negative possibilities,
(30:01):
specifically terrorists using it to create viruses. Yeah, I mean
potentially they can crisper viruses. You can chrisper anything. It
is quite expensive to do these experiments. I can't believe
I'm going into this, but like it would have to
be government run facilities that would have to be that
can sponsor this. It's not just any you know group somewhere,
(30:24):
So Crisper is not currently as accessible as I thought.
It made life much easier for scientists, and it makes
the work of scientists like her much quicker and cheaper
to the taxpayer. But I was also concerned about it
being a slippery slope eventually leading to designer babies, modifying embryos.
It's considered a hard line because these changes are passed
(30:46):
down to future generations. Changing in embryo is like changing
the human race ethics aciety. It's incredibly risky because errors
could result in new diseases. It's illegal in many countries,
but no international standard for regulation currently exists. In fact,
in two thousand eighteen, a Chinese scientist performed genets on
(31:09):
embryos using Crisper in an attempt to improve HIV resistance.
After the Chinese scandal, like a lot of politicians and
policymakers as well as ethical boards of university, is kind
of like woke up and we're like, okay, we need
to regulate this better because no scientists, no matter how
crazy we can be, wants to be associated with doing
(31:33):
something that's unethical and mad. So, together with policy makers
and ethics committees, you know, philosophers, etcetera, a lot of
universities and loll countries are working together to make a
comprehensive assessment of like, oh, where should we put the limit?
What can we do? What can we not do? Crisper
(31:55):
is a very exciting advancement that I feel very optimistic about. However,
like the case with nuclear reactions, it also has the
potential to do great harm and therefore needs to be
carefully regulated by an international body. I want to wrap
these first three episodes up with some sage advice on
raising children. Instead of praising, like the achievement of being
(32:17):
good at something, I praised the effort right for, like
you work really hard to get to that point where
you're good at this thing. Read to them, you know,
take them outside, let them experience the world and let
them make mistakes, encourage their abilities. Gently, read your kid well,
(32:39):
listen to your kid. Your kid will probably tell you
what he or she wants to do. There's only so
many ten thou hours in a childhood, you know, so
are you going to focus all of that and focus
your relationship with your kid on that one thing? Whereas
you know, I don't think that's a strategy as a parent,
(33:02):
and nichoal listened to be the best that everything is it.
The goal is to find out things you like to do.
I'll finish with this quote from Dr Pluman's book Blueprint.
Parenting is not a means to an end. It is
a relationship, one of the longest lasting relationships in our lives.
Just as with our partner and our friends, our relationship
(33:22):
with our children should be based on loving them, not
changing them. All right, So next week we'll be Christmas
Eve when we have a very special bonus episode for
you on the psychology of gift giving with Professor Jeff Gallack.
I have so many questions to answer and a ton
(33:43):
of really interesting topics to cover, So please subscribe to
the show because I'll be back next week with another
episode of Prodigy. Prodigy was created and produced by me
loeweberl Ante. The apologetic score for Tyler Klang showed traits
of an excellent eecutive producer. Music by Sebastian Phillips, covered
by pam Peacock. Dr Robert Plowman is a respected and
(34:07):
celebrated research professor at King's College in London. Definitely pick
up a copy of his book Blueprint, How DNA Makes
Us who we Are. Nathaniel Comfort is a professor at
Johns Hopkins University and a talented writer. He's currently working
on a biography of James Watson, who co discovered the
double helix. Keep an eye out for it. Dr Nancy
(34:27):
Siegel is an outstanding professor and the author of six
books on twins. You can find more info at doctor
Nancy Siegel Twins dot org. Dr Zebo wonder Like is
a very kind professor at u C Irvine, where she
studies gene expression. She wants to raise awareness about food
and security on college campuses. You can find more info
(34:48):
and donate at Basic Needs dot U C I dot
e d U. Dr Dihan Ataco is a brilliant post
doctoral researcher at Lone University doing very interesting research on
what makes us human very special. Thanks to Dr Brian
Collin and Camille des On. For more podcasts from My
(35:17):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. If you
were raised by a different family, how different do you
think you'd be, Would your personality be the same, would
you have a different religion? Exactly how much does your
DNA determine who you are? It's impossible to know, right
(00:29):
or is it? My name is Lowell Berlante and this
is Prodigy. One and seventy years ago, Gregor Mendel ran
an experiment cross breeding pea plants for desirable traits and
(00:50):
founded what would become the science of modern genetics. Mendel
had discovered genes, the unit of inheritance passed down from
parent to child. A hundred years after that, before we
had the technology and knowledge that we have today, people
wanted to know the answer to a basic but complicated question.
(01:12):
Is our life and behavior dictated by genetics or environment?
Nature versus nurture? It had to be some combination of both.
But how could we untangle them in order to measure
their effects. We needed to hold one constant so we
can measure the other. If we could quantify one, we
(01:32):
could deduce that effects unaccounted for were caused by the other.
It's difficult and morally unethical to control a human being's
genetics or environment. So how was it done the combination
of ways. One was by studying adopted children. They grew
up in completely different environments from their birth parents. Similarities
(01:54):
to their birth parents were assumed to be inherited, while
similarities to their adopted parrants were assumed to be environmental.
The results of these adoption studies are then combined with
twin studies. There's two types of twins, fraternal and identical.
When to sperm fertilize two eggs, you get fraternal twins.
(02:16):
They share fifty DNA and are equivalent to siblings. When
one sperm fertilizes one egg and then splits, you get
identical twins with identical DNA. Dr Robert Plowman is a
geneticist and psychologist. He's been studying twins for over forty
years and is one of the most sided psychologists of
(02:37):
this century. Twin and adoption studies are the two main
ways we used to use for a century to ask
to what extent are the differences between people due to
inherited DNA differences, nature or nurture. Doctor Nancy Siegel is
an award winning geneticist and psychologist. I think we're interested
in sending twins for two reasons. First is that there
(03:00):
are beautiful natural experiment, very simple, very elegant that allows
us to look at the genetic environmental influences on behavior
simply by comparing identical twin similarities to fraternal twins similarities.
I think the other reason why we're so taken with
twins is linked to the fact that we all grow
up expecting and learning about individual differences in behavior and
(03:24):
in form and so when we encounter to people who
look so much alike and act so much alike, it
challenges our belief in the way the world works. Since
fraternal and identical twin pairs are usually raised by the
same parents in the same environment, we could compare how
similar the pairs were to estimate if a trait was
environmental or genetic. Since fraternal twins share DNA well identical
(03:48):
twins share a DNA. If a trait was more often
shared by identical twins, it was assumed to be genetic.
Identical twins have matching DNA, so they're also a perfect
phenomenon to measure the influence of the environment. Identical twins
usually share an environment, so similarities could be environmental as well.
(04:09):
But if the identical twins have completely different environments, then
we could assume that similarities between the twins are genetic
and differences are environmental. This is what's known as identical
twins reared apart. The year was nineteen eighty and nineteen
(04:31):
year old Bobby Shaffern had just arrived for his first
day at Sullivan Community College in upstate New York. As
he headed to his dorm room, he realized that students
there were really nice to strangers. They greeted him as
if he were an old friend. The weird thing was
they kept calling him Eddie. My name is Bobby, he
told them, but they just laughed. They thought he was joking,
(04:52):
and he thought they were. Bobby found his room and
was met by his new roommate, Michael Domets. Michael was
confused and started asking Bobby questions, were you adopted? What's
your birth date? Bobby looked very similar to his last roommate, Eddie,
too similar, and Michael knew that Eddie wasn't returning to
college that year. The two boys ran to the nearest
(05:15):
pay phone and called Eddie, and when Michael put the
phone to Bobby's ear, he heard his own voice. Bobby
and Eddie were identical twins, separated at birth. They were
strikingly similar and in many more ways than simply physical appearance.
They were both wrestlers, They spoke the same, had the
(05:35):
same birth mark, and even shared the same i Q score.
Everyone was shocked, and the news quickly made its way
to the local paper. The next day, they got a
phone call from a young man named David. Turns out
they actually weren't twins, they were triplets. This was the
beginning of a media sensation that swept the nation. Triplets
(05:55):
separated at birth and raised in different families with different
socio economics data is The story is told in the
documentary Three Identical Strangers. Another famous story is of the
Gym Twins. They were adopted to different families in nineteen
Both families named them James, but called them Jim. They
(06:16):
both like carpentry, but dislike spelling. They both married a
woman named Linda, then divorced and married a woman named Betty.
They even both gave their son the same name, James Allen.
They were both nail biters, got tension, headaches, and vacationed
at the same beach in Florida. There's other interesting stories
(06:38):
of identical twins reared apart, and they're all very similar.
In nineteen seventy nine, a study began which analyzed one
and thirty seven pairs of twins reared apart to determine
the range of genetic effects. Doctor Nancy Siegel was a
researcher in this study for nine years and was surprised
by some of the behaviors that showed genetic influence, such
(07:00):
as religion. We studied psychological measures, physiological, medical, I mean,
just about everything that you could think of was in there.
I think shoe side was the only thing we forgot about.
After measuring nearly every possible metric, they concluded that identical
twins raised apart are more similar to each other than
fraternal twins raised together. Here's Dr Plowman, and the amazing
(07:24):
thing is all psychological traits, including personality, are heritable, including
once you might not expect to be like femininity, even
attitudinal things. The first law behable genetics is everything is heritable.
So twin of adoption studies are away for researchers to
study nature and nurture. In n the largest ever collaborative
(07:50):
biological project began. It costs two point seven billion dollars
and took thirteen years, but in two thousand three it
was completed successfully. We map the human genome and gained
access to the source code of our own species. We
discovered that each person consists of a ninety nine percent
(08:12):
identical six billion letter genetic code, so the DNA difference
between you, me, and Brad Pitt is point zero one.
That slight difference in our code is called genetic variance,
and it's part of what makes us unique. Each person
has around five million of them. The variances exist when
(08:33):
an individual has a different nucleotide in a DNA fragment,
which is called a single nucleotide polymorphism. We abbreviate them
as s n p S or snips. Polygenic means multiple genes,
and apologenic score is a number that estimates the effect
of multiple genetic variances on an individual's characteristics like weight
(08:57):
or height or personality. We used to be that a
single gene control these traits. Here's dr Pluman. We've learned
that it's not one, or ten or a hundred DNA
differences that make a difference for complex traits. What we're
talking about is thousands of tiny DNA differences, and that's
a real drag if you're a molecular biologist and you
(09:19):
want to study pathways from genes to brain to behavior,
Because if there's thousands of these DNA differences, they all
have very small effects, so it's really difficult to trace
any of those pathways. What you can do is put
these together in a score. You can aggregate all these
tiny DNA differences. That's what we call a polygenic score,
(09:43):
and that can be useful for prediction. And that's the
main thing I'm interested in, is making predictions about people's personality,
cognitive abilities, and psychopathology. So instead of looking for a
single gene responsible for something like i Q, we look
at the smaller effects of a lot of them. This
is what is known as a genome wide polygenic score.
(10:04):
But sequencing a person's genome by itself doesn't give us
much applicable information because we need something to compare it to.
The larger our data set, the more relevant the information becomes.
Observing the genetic variants in many individuals is known as
a genome wide association study. They call it GAS. By
(10:24):
analyzing the variances in a person's DNA and comparing it
to many other people's DNA, we can learn what these
variances do. One of my highest pologenetic scores is for
body mass index weight. You know, it predicts about ten
of the differences between people in weight. People say, well,
if you knew you were at a genetic risk for
(10:45):
being OBEs, you just give up and say, oh, well,
I'm a genetic fatty. But it's not like that. You know,
by knowing I have this genetic propensity, I know that
I'm in a lifelong battle. I've sort of known that
all before, but I'm always thinking, oh, it's these six
pounds put on it Christmas. It's not you know, I
put on weight more easily. It's harder for me to
(11:05):
get rid of it. And I know all your skinny
listeners are saying, just get a grip. If you don't
eat so much, you won't get fat. Dr Robert Plowman
has been researching behavioral genetics using twin and adoption studies
for over forty years and has published over eight papers.
His most recent book is titled Blueprint, How DNA Makes
(11:27):
Us who we Are. It discusses the conclusions he's drawn
from as many years of research. It took a long
time to convince psychologists that genetics is important, about thirty
years or so. But in the last ten years or so,
the DNA revolution has come along, and a lot of
psychologists still don't know about it because mostly it's happening
in the medical area. But it's just as relevant to
(11:47):
all psychological traits. I'd say in the next five years,
psychologists an't going to know what hit them because you
won't be able to do a study if you don't
collect DNA. The book is considered somewhat controversial for it's
forceful for trail of genetics as the dominant force in
human behavior. For example, here's a quote. Parents matter, but
(12:08):
they don't make a difference. Parents obviously matter tremendously in
their children's lives. They provide the essential physical and psychological
ingredients for children's development. But if genetics provides most of
the systematic variants and environmental effects are unsystematic and unstable.
This applies that parents don't make much of a difference
in their children's outcomes beyond the genes they provide a
(12:30):
conception end quote. So Dr Pluman's book received a reasonable
amount of criticism, particularly for the idea that parents don't
make a difference. We'll get into that after a quick break.
Welcome back to Prodigy. So Blueprint has received some pretty
strong criticism for the way it's message could be interpreted.
(12:51):
In the later publication of the book, Dr Plullman included
an afterward which said the most quoted phrase from Blueprint
is parents matter, but they don't make a difference. The
phrase don't make a difference is often misconstrued to mean
can't make a difference. Don't make a difference means that
differences in parenting as they exist in the populations we
(13:13):
study do not make much of a difference in children's
psychological outcomes. There was a view in Nature of my book.
Nature is one of the big science journals, and it
was a historian of science. He didn't speak to the data.
He just basically said he didn't like the result. He's
saying this is a return to determinism. And in my
(13:33):
book I emphasized it's not fatalistic. It doesn't mean you
can't do anything about it. Dr Plowman was talking about
Nathaniel Comfort, a professor at Johns Hopkins University. So I
got Professor Comfort on the phone to ask him about
his position. Particularly, I'm interested in the social implications of
(13:55):
thinking about genes too much, about an over emphasis on
in A and genes and the kind of social impacts
that it has, So I'm in no way anti genetics.
I consider myself a friendly critic. Professor Comfort is a
historian of biomedicine. He looks at messages like this in
a historical context. To start by saying, Dr Plullman is
(14:17):
a venerable, respected psychologist who has been working on these
problems for many years, So I'm not really going to
comment on his actual science. I'm more interested in the
way that he's presenting his science to the public, which
I think is honestly reckless and dangerous. I think it's
(14:39):
also important to note here that although Dr Plullman had
a large data set of ten thousand sets of twins,
all of them were born in the UK over the
course of twelve months and had parents who agreed to
take part in the research, So all of the subjects
are from a similar geographic and socio economic background. Study.
You're talking about users from UK Biobank, which is in
(15:02):
fact overwhelmingly white, middle class Britains, So the results from
a study don't necessarily apply to African Americans, for example,
or Hispanics or Asians. Dr Plullman wrote to me in
an email that this study is applicable to the UK only,
it can't be generalized beyond there. However, he seems not
(15:26):
to include this important qualifier when making some pretty broad
interpretations of his findings. Here's part of the review that
Professor Comfort wrote about Dr Pluman's book in the Nature
article quote. Although Plullman frequently uses more civil, progressive language
than did his predecessors, the book's message is vintage genetic determinism.
(15:49):
Plullman likes to say that various components of nurture matter,
but they don't make a difference. But the benefits of
good teaching, of school lunches and breakfasts, of having textbook
and air conditioning and heating and plumbing have been established irrefutably,
and they actually our causal. We know why stable blood
sugar improves mental concentration. Yet Pluman dismisses such effects as
(16:12):
unsystematic and unstable, so there's not much we can do
about them. Ultimately, if unintentionally blueprint is a roadmap for
regressive social policy. Nothing here seems overtly hostile to school
children or anyone else, but Pluman's argument provides live ammunition
for those who would abandon proven methods of improving academic
(16:34):
achievement among socio economically deprived children. His utopia is a
forensic world dictated by polygenic algorithms and the whims of
those who know how to use them. People would be
defined at birth by their DNA, expectations would be set,
and opportunities, resources, and experiences would be doled out and
(16:55):
withheld before anyone has had a chance to show their metal.
To paraphrase Lewington in his nineteen seventy critique of Jensen's argument,
Pluman has made it pretty clear what kind of world
he wants. I oppose him, so that was a bit
from the article. At first, I didn't understand Professor Comfort's
(17:17):
critique and why Dr Pluman's work could possibly be interpreted
as genetic determinism if you're not familiar with that term.
It's the belief that our genetics are the dominant factor
for our behavior. It's the extreme nature side of the
debate and the cornerstone of the incredibly problematic theory of eugenics.
Professor Comfort makes this point at the end of the
(17:39):
article when he reverences Lewington's critique of Jensen. Arthur Jensen
was a very controversial psychologist at Berkeley who argued that
i Q is largely determined by jenes, so lower i
Q scores from a particular group means inferior genetics, amongst
other issues. This argument hinges on the idea that i
(18:00):
Q tests are an accurate and universal measure of intelligence
across populations. This kind of determinism tends to amount to
a form of social Darwinism. Basically, Arrant's teachers, you don't matter,
you know, when you turn everything into biology, or you
make all your predictions based on biology or genetics, there's
(18:23):
a risk of increasing stratification in society, of creating kind
of biological casts. It'll continue the erosion of things like
public education and public services that we've been seeing in
recent decades. This just plays into the hands of people
(18:44):
who are really trying to dissolve the social contract. But
Dr Pluman rejects the idea that his book has a
message of genetic determinism. He sees environmental effects as important
but quote mostly random, unsystematic, and unstable, which means that
we cannot do much about them. So I gave Dr
(19:05):
Ploman the opportunity to respond to Professor Comfort in an email,
and this is what he wrote. Quote. I find it
hard to believe that a scientist is not aware of
the twin and adoption data showing that inherited DNA differences
are the major systematic source making us who we are
as individuals. Why are identical twins reared apart almost as
(19:29):
similar as identical twins reared together. Why to adopted children
resemble their birth parents but not their adoptive parents for
twins reared together? Why are identical twins twice as similar
as non identical twins? Here's a quote from Blueprints afterward
responding to Dr Comfort's article, The reviewer did not address
(19:51):
the science of the book, He just didn't like what
he misinterpreted as its message. I plead not guilty to
this charge of genetic determinant them. Genetics is the main
systematic force in shaping who we are as individuals, but
genes are not destiny. In Blueprint, Dr Plowman says genetics
is about the extent to which inherited DNA differences account
(20:15):
for differences between people in other words, we can turn
the television on or off as we please, but turning
it off or leaving it on pleases individuals differently, in
part due to genetic factors. Genetics is not a puppeteer
pulling our strings. Genetic influences are probabilistic propensities, not predetermined programming.
(20:36):
End quote. So I searched blueprint and found at least
nine other occurrences where Pluman repeats that message. However, he
also makes bold statements that seem to imply the opposite.
For instance, the very first paragraph of the book states, quote,
what would you think if you heard about a new
(20:57):
fortune telling device that is touted to predict psychological traits
like depression, schizophrenia, and school achievement. What's more, I can
tell your fortune from the moment of your birth. It
is completely reliable and unbiased, and it costs only one pounds.
This might sound like yet another pop psychology claim about
(21:17):
gimmicks that will change your life, but this one is
in fact based on the best science of our times.
The fortune teller is d n A. It's absolutely true
that jenes matter just like environment matters. The way in
which jans an environment interact differs from person to person,
(21:38):
and we have no idea how that works. Dr Plowman
also wrote, quote polygenic scores based on DNA rather than
crystal balls, are fortune tellers. As we shall see. Prediction
is crucial because it is the key to the prevention
of psychological problems and the promotion of promise. End quote.
(22:00):
I also gave Professor Comfort the opportunity to respond via email.
He said quote, the vast majority of unshared environments have
what Pluman calls random, unsystematic causes. That doesn't make unshared
environments unimportant. It just means they're hard to study. Statistically,
in human social behavior, few if any, direct lines can
(22:21):
be drawn from cause to effect. We are shaped by
subtle relationships, interacting variables, and big, unforeseeable events. The meaningful
differences are individualized. Complex social behaviors are complex. Professor Plowman
once called this a gloomy prospect, But it's only gloomy
if you're a social psychologist, because it implies that your
(22:42):
research is never going to explain very much. The prospect
is not gloomy at all. Of your historian contingency, complexity
and context or ur jam I can explain more about
social behavior with a timeline than he can with an algorithm.
There is no blueprint, Dr Pluman. There is no crystal ball.
There's no ghost in the human machine. Of course, it
(23:03):
just has so many parts, and those parts interact with
such spectacularly idiosyncratic, adaptive, buffering, nonlinear variety that no statistical
tool even begins to describe it. The blueprint is not
just bad biology, it's socially dangerous. Historically, hackneyed metaphors for
genetic determinism have misleadingly lent the authority of science to
(23:26):
regressive social policies, from disadvantaging black and poor students to
immigration restriction to coerced sterilization. Pologenic scores do not solve
that problem. That's the end of the email. I want
to wrap this debate by saying that I believe Dr
Pluman has purely altruistic intentions. He's a brilliant and deservedly
(23:49):
respected researcher. The problem is it's an extremely difficult subject
to navigate, so it deserves a high level of critique.
All right, we'll get into pologenic testing, epigenetics, and crisper
right after this quick break. Here is Dr Zebo Wonderlick
She studies gene expression at u C Irvine. She'd like
(24:09):
to raise awareness about food and security on college campuses.
You can find more info and donate at Basic Needs
dot u C I dot E. DU doctor wanted to
like raise some really interesting things we need to consider
when studying genetics. The question is like, in terms of
why we might want to figure out this genetics, I
think a good question that human geneticists often brings up
(24:31):
when they think about their work is to what end
are we doing this work right? So if we figure
it out, what does that imply for public policy or
how people perceive their genetics? And so I guess the
question is also like, even if we had some genetic
component too, whether we would be good at chess or
something like that, what would we use it for right,
(24:52):
Because like I would assume that we could still you know,
we want to live in a place where even if
you're not genetically predisposed to be the best at something,
that you could still do it right and that you
would still have choice over because maybe you're really genetically
pretty disposed to be excellent at something, but you don't
like it. And so I think that that's you know,
a question that People who work on human genetics often
(25:15):
struggle with or wrestle with before designing their experiments, which
is like, if I were to find a genetic component
to XT, like, what would that imply for the human population.
Another major concern is the privacy of your genetic information,
because if you do genetic testing, UM, there's a high
expectation that that information should be yours UM and to
(25:38):
choose with whom you share it with. Right, So should
your employer have access to that information? Like what if
it influences their decision because your health care is going
to be expensive or something like that. Because even though
in an ideal world it's yours and it would be private,
the reality is that it may not be all of
the time. And then what does that imply for what
could happen down the road if someone had access to
(25:59):
that information. One of the best examples of this was
the use of genetic genealogy to identify a man known
as the Golden State Killer. He was responsible for at
least thirteen murders and fifty rapes and had evaded capture
for forty five years. While everyone is glad that the
(26:19):
killer was caught, the way that he was is potentially alarming.
One of his relatives had uploaded their genetic information to
an open source database called g E D Match, which
enabled investigators to identify a common ancestor. So not only
does your genetic information become public if he used the database,
people who never consented to it become public as well.
(26:41):
Another interesting subject to consider is instead of dividing traits
into two distinct categories of nature or nurture, maybe the
environment influences how our genes are expressed. This is what's
known as epigenetics. One way this works is by DNA methylation,
which alter the expression of a DNA segment. A study
(27:03):
was done by Michael Meaney and colleagues on the interaction
between mother rats and their babies. Some mother rats groom
their babies more often than others. These well groomed babies
grow up to groom their babies more. The significant discovery
was in the results of cross fostering. So when babies
from low grooming mothers were given to the high grooming ones,
(27:26):
they grew up to groom their babies more, and the
opposite was also true. The effect took place in the
expression of an estrogen receptor okay Let's shift focus to
another emerging field of genetics. If you had the power
to change anything about yourself, would you do it? And
(27:48):
what would happen if everyone did? Because that's the question
humanity is about to face. In Scientists first noticed an
unusual repetitive DNAs equence when studying bacteria. However, there wasn't
sufficient data at the time to predict what the function was.
CRISPER stands for clustered regularly inner spaced short palindromic repeats.
(28:13):
It uses a protein to edit DNA. Sixty years ago,
computers were the size of an entire room. Now everyone
has one, an order of magnitude more capable, and it
fits in your pocket. We're still in the relatively early
stages of gene editing, but make no mistake, this technology
will change the world. We'll be able to do everything
(28:34):
from cure diseases to create genetically superior embryos in vitro.
Fertilization was criticized for creating life in a Patriot dish,
but now it's commonplace, and we even genetically screen embryos
for abnormalities. One step further would be to fix them.
And while we're doing that, why not give them better
eyesight and make them taller. Is there a line with
(28:57):
shout and cross and if so, where is it? I
spoke with Dr Dihan A. Taco. She's a postdoctoral scientist
at London University Department of Experimental Medical Sciences. She uses
Crisper to do research in neuroscience and stem cells. She's
actually trying to figure out what makes us human. Human
(29:19):
genome and the chimpanzee genome are almost identical, and when
you look at the protein quoting genes, they're like of
them are basically the same. So then the question is
how come you know we and the chimpanzees are so different.
You know, we're building countries and states and nations, but
(29:41):
the chimpanzees are still using rudimentary tools in their daily life.
Dr Ataco believes that the difference is in non coding RNA.
She uses Crisper to stop their expression and then studies
the effects. Crisper is really cool, but I was actually
kind of concerned about some of the potential negative possibilities,
(30:01):
specifically terrorists using it to create viruses. Yeah, I mean
potentially they can crisper viruses. You can chrisper anything. It
is quite expensive to do these experiments. I can't believe
I'm going into this, but like it would have to
be government run facilities that would have to be that
can sponsor this. It's not just any you know group somewhere,
(30:24):
So Crisper is not currently as accessible as I thought.
It made life much easier for scientists, and it makes
the work of scientists like her much quicker and cheaper
to the taxpayer. But I was also concerned about it
being a slippery slope eventually leading to designer babies, modifying embryos.
It's considered a hard line because these changes are passed
(30:46):
down to future generations. Changing in embryo is like changing
the human race ethics aciety. It's incredibly risky because errors
could result in new diseases. It's illegal in many countries,
but no international standard for regulation currently exists. In fact,
in two thousand eighteen, a Chinese scientist performed genets on
(31:09):
embryos using Crisper in an attempt to improve HIV resistance.
After the Chinese scandal, like a lot of politicians and
policymakers as well as ethical boards of university, is kind
of like woke up and we're like, okay, we need
to regulate this better because no scientists, no matter how
crazy we can be, wants to be associated with doing
(31:33):
something that's unethical and mad. So, together with policy makers
and ethics committees, you know, philosophers, etcetera, a lot of
universities and loll countries are working together to make a
comprehensive assessment of like, oh, where should we put the limit?
What can we do? What can we not do? Crisper
(31:55):
is a very exciting advancement that I feel very optimistic about. However,
like the case with nuclear reactions, it also has the
potential to do great harm and therefore needs to be
carefully regulated by an international body. I want to wrap
these first three episodes up with some sage advice on
raising children. Instead of praising, like the achievement of being
(32:17):
good at something, I praised the effort right for, like
you work really hard to get to that point where
you're good at this thing. Read to them, you know,
take them outside, let them experience the world and let
them make mistakes, encourage their abilities. Gently, read your kid well,
(32:39):
listen to your kid. Your kid will probably tell you
what he or she wants to do. There's only so
many ten thou hours in a childhood, you know, so
are you going to focus all of that and focus
your relationship with your kid on that one thing? Whereas
you know, I don't think that's a strategy as a parent,
(33:02):
and nichoal listened to be the best that everything is it.
The goal is to find out things you like to do.
I'll finish with this quote from Dr Pluman's book Blueprint.
Parenting is not a means to an end. It is
a relationship, one of the longest lasting relationships in our lives.
Just as with our partner and our friends, our relationship
(33:22):
with our children should be based on loving them, not
changing them. All right, So next week we'll be Christmas
Eve when we have a very special bonus episode for
you on the psychology of gift giving with Professor Jeff Gallack.
I have so many questions to answer and a ton
(33:43):
of really interesting topics to cover, So please subscribe to
the show because I'll be back next week with another
episode of Prodigy. Prodigy was created and produced by me
loeweberl Ante. The apologetic score for Tyler Klang showed traits
of an excellent eecutive producer. Music by Sebastian Phillips, covered
by pam Peacock. Dr Robert Plowman is a respected and
(34:07):
celebrated research professor at King's College in London. Definitely pick
up a copy of his book Blueprint, How DNA Makes
Us who we Are. Nathaniel Comfort is a professor at
Johns Hopkins University and a talented writer. He's currently working
on a biography of James Watson, who co discovered the
double helix. Keep an eye out for it. Dr Nancy
(34:27):
Siegel is an outstanding professor and the author of six
books on twins. You can find more info at doctor
Nancy Siegel Twins dot org. Dr Zebo wonder Like is
a very kind professor at u C Irvine, where she
studies gene expression. She wants to raise awareness about food
and security on college campuses. You can find more info
(34:48):
and donate at Basic Needs dot U C I dot
e d U. Dr Dihan Ataco is a brilliant post
doctoral researcher at Lone University doing very interesting research on
what makes us human very special. Thanks to Dr Brian
Collin and Camille des On. For more podcasts from My
(35:17):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com