Dune: Can We Master Our Genes Like the Bene Gesserit? | S01E03

I talked to a geneticist about the plausibility of the genetic manipulation used by the Bene Gesserit order in the world of Dune.

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#dune #benegesserit #geneticsexplained

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So basically, the Sisterhood is askingJessica to only produce a female er.
But what do we know about sex? It's inherently on the sperm to impart
that information, right, So,how is Jessica supposed to control whether or
not she's going to have a femaleor male offspring? How are you supposed

(00:21):
to control what sperm are approaching yourocite and then get accepted. So I
went down this rabbit hole reading aboutit, and I read an article in
the Scientific American, but it broughtup this really interesting phenomenon of cryptid female
choice. Oh thanks, preparing forhypodrihydes activate pactivate sixty percent, hyper speed

(00:44):
Laza like speet a like speed.It's too slow? All right, reality
too the signs All right, everybody, welcome back to another incredible episode of
reality Check. Today we have withus doctor Sophia, and Doctor Sophia is

(01:07):
a geneticist, and this is soperfect because today we are talking about done
and specifically we're talking about the BennyJessert Order and some of the incredible things
that they can do. The BenyJest Order are one of the most powerful
beings in the Dune universe, andsome of the things that they are doing

(01:29):
really are tied in with genetics.Sophia, tell us a little bit more
about your background in genetics and justgive us a little rundown of who you
are and what you do. Surehappy to I am Sophia Proguste. I
went to the University of Colorado Boulderfor undergrad and then I went on to
the University of Utah and got myPhD. Out of the lab of Carl

(01:53):
Thummel. I worked in the inheritanceof metabolic disorders and we specifically were investigating
drosophila, which share a lot ofthe same genetic building blocks and metabolic building
blocks as human beings do. Andit's a much simpler system in which you
can study obesity diabetes. And sothat's where I got my start. And

(02:15):
now I'm actually a post doctoral researcherat Regeneron and I've transitioned. I'm still
studying human genetics and how variants impactiron homeostasis and metabolism, but I've expanded
into mice and human genetic and genomicanalyzes. Wow, that sounds like very

(02:37):
very heavy heavy content there. That'sso exciting. So tell me a little
bit if you were just your initialthoughts with Dune and the Benny Jessert.
Okay, I'm glad you're giving mesome free rein here. I've only watched
the movie. I really appreciated thefilm. I thought it was beautifully done.
One element that I really liked aboutit was the sound of all of

(03:00):
their helicoptery type flying apparitie. Andthat's actually because they used real recordings from
insects. They used insect wing soundson all spay. I did not know
that We're just a few minutes inand I'm already my mind is being blown
already, I know. So that'sone of the first things that I noticed
about it. I really appreciated thecinematography, the sound, I like the

(03:23):
storyline a lot. But one thingthat never really made sense to me was
actually Sisterhood and the Order. Ididn't really understand their role or why they
were so angry about Paul and whythey were like, Jessica, you worked
all how to have a sudden AndI was like, what is this?
And it was a short little dropinto the film, and you're like,

(03:44):
Okay, weird, Witch Order ismad? Moving on fine. But then
when I started reading into it more, I was like, this is so
cool. They really could have expandedon this and made it better in the
film. Disappointed now, but yeah. The Ben and Jezerit sisterhood came to
be after the fall of the Machinesten thousand years prior to the setting of

(04:09):
the film done, and they startedemphasizing human potential through selective breeding and then
environmental conditioning and training, and basically, once technology had failed the society,
they decided that they were going tohone human ability and breed people to have

(04:30):
what would appear to be superhuman skills. And this explains why Jessica Paul's mom
is able to do all these wildand crazy things. And they're supposed to
be able to control themselves physiologically andmolecularly to a level where they would be
able to perform superhuman feats like beable to tell if somebody's lying to you,

(04:55):
be able to move very rapidly,and have what would appear to be
like magical characteristics. But there whichis so interesting. It's just that's just
so much to unpack already. AndChio Cacau, who is a theoretical physicist,
I think you might be getting thatbook at the mail soon. He
wrote a book called the Future ofHumanity, and one of the most interesting

(05:18):
things he says in his book ishe highlights the fact that if you go
back far enough in human history andif you were to introduce any of the
technologies that we have now, thatthey would seem like magic to ancient people.
And he says, it's the technologiesthat will be available far in our
future will seem like magic to modernday people now. But it's just science,

(05:41):
and I'm really excited to unpack howmuch of some of these deny Jeserate
powers are theoretically possible through genetic manipulationand what is stuff that we just have
no idea right now. But Ialso laugh at just because it's like one
thing when you're talking about genetics isyou have to look at it on such
a large scale that it's on AndI laugh when you think about where Dune

(06:04):
takes place as ten thousand years inthe future after the Fall machine, the
fall of the machines. So ifwe're looking at society right now, it's
you are here. We're more likeI robot. Give it another ten years
and we'll be at terminator. Giveit another ten thousand years and we'll be
at Doune. So if you lookat sort of chronologically science fiction, Dune
takes place, I think the farthestin the future of all of the sci

(06:29):
fi concepts that are rooted in sortof our own human reality. So when
we think about genetics, it's like, we can't be thinking about it on
the scale of, oh, thesetechnologies are being developed ten year or fifty
year span. We're talking about thousandsof years. And that's the really fun
thing about science fiction, and that'spart of the reason why some of these
great science fiction. Science fiction writerslike Frank Herbert predict where things are going

(06:56):
to go or what could be feasiblein the future. Jurassic Park was incredibly
accurate considering where science was at thetime of its writing. And I know
this episode is not about that,but it's incredible to read it now as
a modern day geneticist and talk aboutcloning of dinosaurs and be like, wow,
he was really pretty spot on.Some things are wrong, but the

(07:19):
fact that he made all of thisup and as a writer was able to
extrapolate that far intil the scientific fieldis so crazy to me. And Michael
Creyton was just a genius in myopinion he and he was also he went
to med school, so he wasn'tcompletely inact with science. He was well

(07:40):
versed in the sciences. But I'mgoing to take a moment of shameless self
promotion. We are doing an episodeon Jurassic Park and we are interviewing another
geneticist, and that is actually goingto be episode one of Reality Check.
So if you haven't listened to thatone, you can go back and check
that out if you're interested in hearingmore about what Sophia just mentioned in the
Plausibility of Dinosaurs. So ended,I am not that episode. Oh but

(08:05):
dude, so it's probably good.I'm really excited. No, I am
excited, Thank you so much.So, yeah, like, you can't
mention science fiction and feasibility at thefuture without mentioning Michael Crichton, because that
is such a good example that mighthave seemed really wild and crazy at the
time and now it's just like,yeah, we cloned sheep. That's eighties

(08:26):
work. Moving on and now onething, correct me if I'm wrong,
But I read this who knows onBuzzFeed or something. But scientists were inspired
by his work, and scientists areoften inspired by the work of science fiction.
I hear this all the time.I follow a lot of things that
NASA puts out, and you heara lot of these engineers who are designing

(08:48):
system AI systems and they're like,yeah, I really liked the concept of
how in Space Odyssey, and Ijust wondered if we could build a machine
like that. So when I wasa little kid, I was inspired by
that. And now I'm a brilliantscientist who has created this technology, I
can't really speak to that, Isee. I completely see your point.
I think the important thing about beinga scientist is always recognizing where you can

(09:13):
push the boundaries. And for example, I had these meetings with the scientific
developer who's trying to develop these newmetabolic tools for me, and they basically
asked me to describe what would bemost useful, and I just went way
off the wall and described, thisis what I would want in a perfect
world. Because that is not attainable, and I understand that, but that's
what I want. So if that'swhat you're shooting for, that's where we

(09:37):
need to go because that's what Iwant. So I can totally see how
science fiction would provide that layer ofimagination. And next level thinking, but
that is definitely a rooted part ofbeing a scientific thinkers. It's not about
where we are now, it's aboutwhere we want to be next, which

(09:58):
is interesting to think about because Dunedoes take place very far in the future,
after the fall of machines, afterwe've tried AI and that to pan
out. Instead of building these machinesthat will do the work for us,
let's enhance ourselves. So let's jumpin a little bit to some of the
genetics. And I'm really curious aboutif the Benny jess are it. Their

(10:22):
whole thing is genetic manipulation through thetimeline, through this specific breeding program,
and at the end they're trying toproduce this superhuman who has these powers and
capacities, who's going to be theirleader and savior. In a lot of
ways, where are we at rightnow with that? Because I know that

(10:43):
we have dogs that are not wolves, so some level we have done that.
We do have natural preferences with breeding, But where does that line sort
of get drawn with breeding specifically forgenetic outcomes. That's an interesting question,

(11:03):
and that does touch on the topicof eugenics and generating a master race.
This has not this is not anovel concept. This is something and I
think this is part of the reasonwhy Dune and the benejezer Its sisterhood would
be a bit triggering for listeners becausewe've all heard this concept of creating like

(11:26):
a perfect superhuman and it's not anovel concept to breed animals to make them
the best performing race horses or workingdogs or something like that that they can
be. Now, as far aseugenics go, it's it's important to realize
that eugenics is based in very nota very professional science realm. It's a

(11:48):
lot of racially antiquicated facts that cameinto play. And one important point that
I do want to touch on isactually the T four euthanasia program Germany.
So the Nazis are a famous exampleof individuals that tried to achieve a master
race and thought that this was afeasibility, And the T four euthanasia program

(12:11):
was actually started in nineteen thirty nineby Hitler. This is pre the Jewish
genocide. The Nazis actually targeted individualswith disabilities, either physical or mental disabilities,
and they targeted these individuals and consideredthem useless to society and actually implemented

(12:33):
a euth in Asia program and endedup killing over two hundred and fifty thousand
individuals in this program. Now that'sincredibly dark, and it's important to note
because this euthanasia program actually gave riseto the gas chambers and everything that they
used in World War two in theHolocaust, So this was the stepping start

(12:54):
of the Holocaust. Now, reallyquick, what is the technical definition of
eugenics? Because I understand what itis conceptually, but I don't know what
its exact definition is. And what'sthe difference between eugenics and something that's not
eugenics but is similar. That's areally good point, and I literally just
googled it because I was like,I'm not sure. Okay, it's a

(13:18):
hard question. So eugenics is veryhuman focus, so we're talking about breeding
the human population. So eugenics couldnever be used in the term of animals.
I don't believe so. And itwas developed eons that grow. It's
an increasingly discredited and unscientific theory thatwe can breed desirable, heritable traits in

(13:43):
human populations. And I think that'sthe most important point, and that's any
geneticist like worse nightmares when you starthaving to have the eugenics conversation, and
it's like the ability to breed desirabletraits. I think it's a really hot
topic right now to talk about designerbabies and the option to use IVF to
select embryos with specific traits. I'mnot saying that it's not scientific, feasible,

(14:11):
feasibly possible for you to do soand select an embryo that might have
certain traits that you would want.I want my child to be athletic.
I want them to be taller thanaverage, I want them to have a
certain hair color, eye color.I do think that this is something that
could become feasible within our future,but it starts getting into the moral aspect

(14:33):
of what is truly right and wrongand morally apprehensible within the world. And
then also, and you do seepeople doing that already, like without the
IVF being involved. Is I evenremember in high school, I remember talking
to a really short girl and shewas like, I will only date tall

(14:54):
guys because I need to give mychildren a chance at being tall. But
people do, all right, naturallyselect for I hate to use the term
breeding because it's so sterile, butit People do choose mates based on traits
that they find more desirable for theirfuture offspring, not purely on how good
of a partner is this person goingto be. They do choose people based

(15:16):
on is this person going to producedesirable offspring with me? Oh yeah?
And attractiveness is something that's very personalbut also inherently biological on some levels.
Where there was a really interesting study. I'll see if I can find it
after we finished this episode, butthere was a study about the punish ability

(15:39):
of somebody's face basically, and itwas like it was a real study,
and that wasn't the main takeaway,but the takeaway was like, there are
people who have less strong bone structurein their faces, so let's say,
weaker jaws, less prominent cheek bones, and they just look like a less
intense human being. You are biologicallypredisposed to trust that person less and to

(16:04):
automatically dislike them because they look likea weaker human being. And you're like,
if you're a person were to getpunched in the face, I wouldn't
expect them to. This is allsubconscious, right, If this person were
to get punched in the face,they're not going to be as intense as
an adversary, and so they're notsomebody that I might necessarily gravitate towards.

(16:26):
Wow clan, No, it's crazywhen you start getting into a little that
was a lot in an impact.So yeah, and that could be a
whole episode in and of itself.We could go into the towilet Zone episode
where everybody looks the same and theyall turn sixteen and take a potion to
look like one of four designer people, lip injections and whatnot. But you
were talking about this in the senseof eugenics, and we in its.

(16:51):
We tend to pick people who havetraits that we might we may find desirable.
But it becomes a problem when we'retrying to eliminate entire groups of people
that have traits that we and Isay we loosely as a population or a
person or a scientist. In thiscase Hitler, he found certain traits undesirable

(17:11):
and he tried to eliminate them ratherthan just choosing someone based on his personal
preferences. So I would argue eugenicshas always a bad idea because there's a
phrase in genetics I think I believethis is from the comedian Eddie Izzard.
But it's always better to spread thegenes apart. You want more diversity in

(17:32):
your pool, you want more diversebackgrounds, you want a lot of different
types of variants, at least,I would think in a healthy population,
so that you're better able to respondto all kinds of diverse situations and environments,
because you can't predict what's going tohappen. For example, in a

(17:52):
clonal population aspen, where you haveone organism that's just sending up multiple trees
but it's all interconnected, or thereare certain lizards that reproduce asexually. Let's
say the genetics are all consistent betweenthese aspen trees and then these lizards.
If there's a disease that comes throughor some sort of challenge that these lizards

(18:15):
or trees are not adapted for,then you lose the entire population. But
if you have genetic variation within thepopulation that protects against this, you'll have
survivor populations, and these can giverise to new populations with new genetic diversity.
So it's always good to have alot of intermixing and genetic influence in

(18:36):
my opinion, in populations. Andso that's the weakness of eugenics I feel,
is that you're selecting for traits thatyou believe to be beneficial. But
let's say in the Beniceesert model,they're selecting for individuals who are going to
be able to control themselves on amolecular basis and on a physiological level.

(18:59):
But there's got to be characteristics thatthey're overlooking within this population. You can't
control for every single genetic inevitability,and there's going to be environmental chinks in
that armor that could potentially be thedownfall of your selective breeding campaign over centuries.

(19:22):
And yeah, so it's like theywould choose, we want a trait
where someone has exercises greater control overthis, but maybe those genes are also
associated with they have a higher riskof this exactly cancer, because I think
I yeah, I think I evensaw this in a dog dog breeding program.
It was a documentary I saw along time ago. It wasn't dogs,

(19:45):
it was actually foxes. They werebreeding foxes to train create a more
docile, domesticated box. So theywere selectively breeding for the more passive foxes,
and after several generations they started tosee foxes that were more hop like,
so they had floppier ears, biggereyes, and they generally were displaying

(20:06):
more juvenile tendencies, where they alsohad a other group that they were doing
the opposite. They were selecting foxesthat had more assertive traits. So they
were picking them based off of thebehavioral traits, but they also got physical
characteristics that came along with it.The calm fox looked juvenile like babies,
and the more aggressive foxes had sharperfeatures. Point to your ears, and

(20:29):
so I think that's to your point, is that there are certain genetics that
come with associations that may or maynot be desirable. Yes, one hundred
percent. And I will definitely sayif I'm buying a if I'm buying a
puppy, I don't necessarily want apure bread dog. I would much rather
have a mut because the likelihood ofyour mut having hip dysplasia or all kinds

(20:53):
of other inherent diseases is going tobe a lot lower. It's not going
to be impossible. There's going tobe some traits. Dogs in general will
have higher rates of cancer than otherspecies. It's just it's a good safety
to get a lot more genetic influenceand variation in there. And I think
a lot of people think of geneticvariation as being a negative thing, but

(21:15):
there are genetic variants that are protectiveagainst certain things or add some layer of
complexity of the situation that might endup improving fitness later. Would it look
like per se because worst example isinbreeding, which is the worst example of
genetic variation. But if you're tryingto create a more diversely genetic baby that

(21:40):
may stand better chances of genetic resiliency, you would want to find someone who
a partner who has a very differentgenetic makeup vin you. I don't know,
in my mind was just a roadI would never go down, like
how to create the perfect genetic baby, or like how to make the most
diverse baby, And that wouldn't evencome into consideration for me my child planning.

(22:04):
But it sounds like eugenics can goboth ways, for trying to create
one specific type of baby that's toogenetically not varied, and then also trying
to create a genetically diverse baby.It's the genetic manipulation can be bad both
ways. I agree with that onehundred percent, and I think that obviously

(22:27):
that's why eugenics is such a controversialtopic and it's such a negative morally apprehensible
activity. We can't be playing god. We don't know what is best.
That Bennett jeserit Sisterhood doesn't know whatis best. They went through a selective
breeding campaign to breed all of mostprominent families in this science fiction world to

(22:53):
create that messiah that you were mentioning. But I'm just trying to put holes
in that argument and be like,no, just because you think you've accounted
for every single inevitability genetically, theenvironment is always going to change. The
one thing that you can count onis change, and you're not going to
be able to respond on a genetictimetable rapidly enough to in my mind,

(23:19):
make a like a superhuman like that. But getting back to the movie,
one of the biological plots that Ithought was most interesting was the fact that
the Sisterhood asked Jessica Paul's mother,the main character's mother, not to produce
a son. They specifically asked herto produce a female. And their whole

(23:44):
line with their Sisterhood is that thewomen in this Sisterhood or this order are
able to unlock more genetical advantages thanthe men, and they're able to take
a true sayer drug or poison andthrough through this poisoning experience, during which
the priestess will control her molecular architectureto the point where she can survive the

(24:07):
poisoning. Through this traumatic experience,she can unlock the maternal side. But
they need a man. I don'treally understand this plothole, but they need
a male heir to unlock both thematernal and the paternal side and get these
maternal and paternal memories that have beenimplanted through several generations. So basically,

(24:27):
the female processes are able to unlockmaternal memories through several generations, whereas a
male messiah would be able to unlockmaternal and paternal memories, and then also
the future memories, which is crazyor just yeah and nuts where Paul falls
into play and it's sid that's yeah. He wasn't supposed to exist. He

(24:51):
was supposed to be a girl,and he was supposed to inevitably fall in
love and marry another character, whichwe're not going to get into because that
is going to be covered in Dunenumber two, which is coming out really
soon. And I don't know ifthey're going to stay true to the books
or if they're going to change itup a little bit, but that ends
up. I guess this is alittle bit. I don't know it's in

(25:12):
the books, but it's like thatperson who was supposed to be Paul's male
partner in counterpart romantically as he hadbeen born a girl becomes his greatest adversary
as a male because the prophecy.And it's just so dramatic. But let's
talk a little bit about again.I wanted to talk about I wanted to
talk about cryptid female choice and allof this because okay, I was on

(25:33):
a there was a plan here.So basically, the Sisterhood is asking Jessica
to only produce a female air Butwhat do we know about sex and the
biological process of generating either male orfemale or intersex offspring. It's inherently on
the sperm to impart that information,right, it's coming from dad. So

(25:59):
how is Jessica supposed to control whetheror not she's going to have a female
or male offspring. We're not alligators. Alligators can control whether or not they're
having female or male offspring based ontemperature, but we're not like that.
How are you supposed to control whatsperm are approaching your ocite and then get
accepted. That just seems insane tome. So I went down this rabbit

(26:21):
hole reading about it, and Iread an article in the Scientific American and
I can send you a link toit so you can share it in the
show notes. But it brought upthis really interesting phenomenon of cryptid female choice.
And I really liked the overarching themein this because it is a really
interesting kind of social perspective where thissisterhood in Dune is, even though they're

(26:45):
very powerful witches, they're in thebackground in this very patriarchal society, and
they're running the show from the shadows. They're not in the forefront. They're
not putting this whole idea tenerary outthere for everyone to see. They're casually
bringing in their people, infiltrating thesebloodlines, merging into these houses, and

(27:10):
then manipulating the genetics and creating selectivebreeding patterns through centuries to get to the
end point of the final cross,which should be a female poll to a
male, which is you just mentioneddue in Part two, his greatest adversary,
and then that offspring from that crossis supposed to be the Quisette,

(27:33):
the Messiah. What I think issuper interesting here is there any evidence of
cryptoid cryptid female choice in human beings. There is a really interesting phenomenon in
comb jellyfish where the female egg nucleusdoes screen seviral sperm it appears and may
select a sperm that it prefers.So that's an interesting phenomenon in jellyfish.

(28:00):
But we are not jellyfish. Weare not jellyfish. But I'm just saying
it's an interesting phenomenon where there issome sort of oocite screening event happening,
And just because it's happening in simplerorganisms doesn't mean it couldn't possibly be happening
in humans. There has been onepaper that's shown that human may allow sperm

(28:22):
from certain individuals preferentially over other individuals. So there may be some sort of
chemical component here that would allow thisBenjeserit priestess to control on a molecular level,
maybe through chemical outputs which sperm theoocite is accepting. And I really
liked that idea of cryptid female choiceand these women taking back their power in

(28:48):
this patriarchal, male dominated social structureand being able to generate this messiah that
they are then going to use tocontrol the future and the human empire.
So that was one biological aspect Iwanted to touch on a lot. Yeah,
No, I have heard that womenfor family planning. Now don't quote

(29:10):
me on this, because I justheard this from friends that are trying to
have certain sects of babies. Butmale sperm swim a little bit faster,
so they get to the egg quicker, whereas female sperm are a little bit
smarter and they'll hang back. Sodepending on the time of the egg being
dropped during ovulation, if the boysperm get there too soon, they would

(29:33):
die off before they have the opportunityto what do you call it, implanting
the egg? Seeding the egg,that's correct. But the female sperm they
hang back. And wait, I'mgonna be totally honest with you, I
have no idea about female versus malesperm spee. It looks based off of

(29:57):
a quick google you are totally right. So wow, maybe this isn't as
crazy as it feels like it shouldbe. Well, it's know in the
comments what you guys think. Yeah, I think that's super interesting. I
think the possibility of there being somesort of component that you would be able
to on a molecular cellular level,if you were like advanced enough to detect

(30:19):
that, you would be able tocontrol the sex of your child. Pretty
And that goes back to my pointwith Mitya at Cacaw's book, is that
a lot of the technologies ten thousandyears in the future will seem like magic
to us now, but it's justa new scientific discovery for them that it's
commonplace, and that as really interesting. I'm glad you brought that up.

(30:41):
That was totally new information for me. I just thought it was so cool.
I liked this female empowerment moment whereit's cryptid female choice. What is
this? I thought that was sointeresting. That is really insane. The
other interesting thing is how the BennyJester are a able to access genetic memory

(31:03):
of mothers and grandmothers, and inthe movie Dune, it's only these genetic
memories can only be accessed through thefemale bloodline, so the male memories are
lost. But in humans, isthere such a thing as genetic memory?
Because I do hear in more ofthe spiritual world where we can have trapped

(31:23):
emotions of our ancestors and we canfeel feelings from our ancestors that are we
can have emotional reactions to things we'venever experienced. Can you talk to me
a little bit about genetic memory.I can try. So I'm going to
start this from the genetics perspective,because I am not a neuroscientist, and

(31:44):
I'm not an expert on memory formation, retention, or degradation or anything like
that that's very focused on neuroscience,so it would be like a separate expert.
But what I will tell you isthat there are definitely studies that I
have indicated that there are changes withina human being outside of just changes to

(32:07):
your DNA sequence that can impact yourmetabolic state. They can impact your mental
state, for example, anxiety,and these are called epigenetic regulations. One
famous example of this is DNA methylation, and it's not just limited to DNA
methylation. There's other kinds of factorsthat can epigenetically regulate your genetics. But

(32:32):
these are changes that can be inheritedthrough multiple generations outside of just your basic
DNA genetics. And there's some famousexamples of these stories and human beings related
to metabolisms, such as the DunkDutch hunger winter famine, during which I

(32:53):
have even heard of that one.Oh man, it gets dark pretty quick,
and I'm sorry. There are alot of dark stories in genetics.
But basically, during the Dutch hungerwinter, there were individuals who were kept
within prison camps under Nazi rule,and there were pregnant women within these camps,

(33:15):
and unfortunately, the Nazis kept verymeticulous records of the exact rations individuals
were receiving, so we have informationabout calorically what these mothers were taking in,
and we know that these individuals wereunder coloric restriction, so they were
in starvation rations. They were takingin less than eight hundred calories a day,

(33:37):
and then when you look at theiroffspring, those offspring tend to be
predisposed to developing type two diabetes andobesity. And the general hypothesis is that
epigenetic changes that took place within themother informed the embryo that there was this

(33:58):
famine environment and that you needed tobe able to respond to that environment,
so that when the embryo came outand it's a little child and it's developing,
it would expect to be in anenvironment where it was going to need
to be able to store as manynutrients as quickly and reliably and as energy
efficiently as it could, hence thedevelopment of type two diabetes and obesity.

(34:21):
Wow, So does this the geneticsonly? Does it only happen when there's
a fetus in neutro or can ithappen through generations? No, it can
happen through generations. There's another reallyinteresting Swedish study where they looked at the
risk of cardiovascular defects and metabolic andmetabolism intake and nutrient intake and grand for

(34:46):
that grandfathers, and this kind ofgets into an interesting line of motive inheritance
where they did see effects all theway into the F two generations. So
you have the parental generation that hasthe exposure, you have the next generation,
which is the F one, andthen you have the second generation,
which is the F two, sograndpa parents and then children, and they

(35:12):
did see deferential effects in I believeit was in the grand paternal maternal fashion.
So it's following a complex mode ofinheritance which actually going grand paternal to
maternal and that's the mode of epigeneticinheritance that's occurring in those studies. So
I did want to bring that up, and I'm glad you asked about it,
because it's not cut and dry likethey present in done. You're not

(35:35):
necessarily just going to be able tounlock your maternal memories because you're a woman.
I would expect it to follow amore complex mode of inheritance just based
of biology. And I will saythat transgenerational inheritances flat in flies is something
that I did study and we wereable to see metabolic impacts from the parental
generation into the F two generation,but again following that grand maternal fashion.

(36:00):
So a complex motive here is interestingbecause I don't think about a lot of
variation between flies. To me,they're all so similar that's no interesting that
you can even really go, oh, yes, this fly is so much
different than this fly. Oh yeah, there's a lot of different things you
can do. Flies become obese.It was always my goal to generate a
walk a fly that was too fatto fly. Never achieved that. I

(36:24):
wanted to be able to achieve afly that was so fat that it would
not be able to lift off.But the problem applies is that they are
they are constrained by their exoskeleton,right, they have that hard cuticle layer,
unlike us where fleshy removable. We'reexpandable in flies. As you put

(36:45):
on adipose tissue, it just squishesall the organs up into different cavities within
the fly and you reach a maximumgrowth outwards. But yeah, so there's
definitely examples of is that that goso multiple generations past the exposure, be
that dietary or even genetic exposures.Joe Nadeau who actually just recently attended a

(37:08):
conference with in Greece. He's amajor player in this field, and I
was really inspired by his work andit was actually what we based our flywork
off of. But they've been ableto show a similar pattern in mice where
they had a genetic variation in thefirst generation and then so they had a

(37:30):
homozygous in a mouse in the firstgeneration that had two copies of this genetic
variant, right, and then thesecond generation they have one copy and you
see you still see the phenotype.But in the third generation they don't have
any of the variants. They're geneticallyidentical to a normal mouse, and they

(37:50):
still have metabolic predispositions towards the diseasestate like their grandparents did. So even
though they don't they haven't inherited thegraenetic change, there's still this predisposition towards
your grand paternal state. Yeah,that's so Really, I feel like that
just exposes a lot of generational problemsbecause when you look at something, it's

(38:14):
that's not just your generation's issue,it's these consequences. It sounds like these
consequences bleed into our children and ourchildren's children, and if America had issues
with obesity fifty years ago, they'regoing to be compounding issues each generation.
I would agree with that, butthere's also this weird phenomenon that I observed

(38:37):
where it seems like if you areoptimized to be on a high fat,
high fructose diet, let's say that'swhat your family has been eating for generations,
like the German diet for example.Okay, they're eating a lot of
carbohydrates, they're eating a lot offat, there's a lot of beer,
there's a lot of poor, heavyWestern diet. You are going to be

(39:00):
metabolically predisposed to be on that diet, and you that might honestly be where
you perform optimally. So I doput a lot of stock. I do
put a lot of stock on like, oh, you should look at your
macronutrients. You should look at yourmicronutrients. You should be being aware of
where your food is coming from,not eating heavily processed food or food with

(39:22):
a lot of preservatives in it.But you should also be taking into consideration
what is my ancestry. I tryand eat a Mediterranean diet. My family's
Mediterranean. I just there's some foodsI know I'm not going to do very
well with. Just I believe,and it's a hypothesis based on genetic exposure.

(39:43):
Yeah, and that's so interesting.I'm Sicilian and my family I grew
up eating spaghetti multiple nights a week, and I don't. I'm blessed.
I don't have an issue with carbs. But if I eat a low carb
diet, I start getting shaky,I start feeling dizzy, I start feeling
sick, And so I know Ido not do well on loo carb diets.
Because I am Italian. We needto eat a lot of bread and

(40:04):
a lot of spaghetti to just keepour systems going. And that could definitely
be environmental. And some of thatcould be environmental. That's how you've been
raised at so have you been conditioned? That's how your body has just gotten
used to navigating the world, andthat's how your body has gotten used to
navigating its own glycemic levels throughout theday. But also there is definitely a
genetic contribution here where you're coming fromthis long Italian background and you are predisposed

(40:30):
to be optimized to eat this food. So anyway, I went on a
long tangent there about how epigenetics canregulate metabolic state because that's what I am
familiar with. But and there isevidence that your epigenome can affect your aging
memory. And so this is theconcept that epigenetics can contribute to h related

(40:57):
memory decline. And so while epigeneticfactors can be inherited through multiple generations,
your epigenetics are not in a fixedstate and they can actually fluctuate and change
throughout your life. And there hasbeen evidence that epigenetic changes can affect memory
retention. And real quick, that'severy variable, right, I can change

(41:22):
my epigenetics through everything environmental, mydiet, my music that I listen to,
anything that you expose yourself to canchange your epigenetics. Is that correct?
Oh, that's a bold statement tomake. I don't know if that's
been scientists, And this was alwayskind of something that I feel like we
butt heads with personally throughout our friendshipis scientists don't like to make We don't

(41:45):
like to be like. You canaffect your epigenetics with anything. Can you
affect epigenetics with your diet? Yes? Can you affect it with music,
Probably because you're gonna affect your anxietylevels, which could affect all kinds of
other hormones that are secreted for yourbrain and regulate all kinds of factors.
It seems like a pretty safe statementto say that many factors can influence your

(42:07):
epigenetics, and that these changing environmentalfactors can alter your epigenetic state. And
that's part of the reason why twinsend up looking different later in life.
It's different exposures that can lead todifferent epigenetic regulations. And there's been really
interesting studies that have shown that changesin your epigenetics can affect your memory retention

(42:35):
as you age, and also likehow well you actually recall things or how
memories are formed. There's several differentsteps in forming a memory. There's actually
making the memory, recalling the memory, retaining the memory, and all of
these can be affected by different epigeneticfactors. At the end of the day.

(42:58):
Though. The what I feel likeis really important is the memory has
to be formed. You have tohave experienced the memory in order to have
these epigenetic or epigenomic regulatory events impactingyour recollection of the memory. So that
was my issue with the movie Doo. And I was like, Okay,
what is your idea then? Whatis Frank Herbert's idea for the epigenetic regulation

(43:28):
or potential transgenerational regulation of memory withinhumans? But right before I hopped on
this call, I was having aconversation with Greg and he brought up a
really interesting perspective that I hadn't couldtell our listeners. Who's Greg? Sorry,
Greg's my fiance Fio my fiance.Yes. So Greg and I were

(43:51):
in the kitchen and we're making ourselvesa snack, and I brought up this
exact debate, and I was like, I just don't see how if you
didn't have I really like the ideaconcept, actually, but I don't see
how if you don't, if youhaven't experienced the memory, how you're supposed
to remember that? And he broughtup a really excellent point which was about
birds. You've heard that birds knowmigratory patterns without ever experiencing them, or

(44:16):
there are some other natural phenomenon inthe animal kingdom whereline animal doesn't need to
be shown how to do something,it just knows. And on some level,
I do believe that's probably true.And I do believe we as human
beings, what we like to seeourselves as this really advanced species, we're

(44:37):
not. We're just little ape bipediless running around. We're and lightly more
advanced than our other Earth counterpart,creep chops. So yeah, exactly,
I'm sure there's all kinds of memoriesthat are locked down in there that we
might just not understand how to access. I don't actually think that it's that

(44:58):
extreme of an idea to think thatmaybe there could be a way to unlock
ancestral memories. And I've always reallyenjoyed the conspiracy theory. This is my
personal conspiracy theory that KBGB moments aresome of those ancestral memories that are so
locked down, they're so primal,but it's just an automatic nope from your

(45:21):
body, your nervous system. Nope. Yes, it's not a good situation
to be in. I don't knowwhat kind of Q comes in, but
there's something have you heard. Haveyou ever heard of the uncanny Valley?
Yes, so there's one theory.I'm not going to say it's a theory
because it's not a real theory.It's not a scientific theory. It's a
reddit theory, I'll be honest,but it's a It still gets to be

(45:42):
excited because I think we don't likeit when we see something that's uncanny.
It's it gives us that reaction ofthat yuck reaction because it could potentially be
a reminder of a pass where therewas something that's human but not quite human,
either Neanderthals or other human like species. There are people talking about it

(46:06):
could be aliens that look like us, but they're not quite us. And
that's why the uncanny Valley is somethingthat's used so much in horror movies.
If someone's smiling when they shouldn't be, it's that uncanny feeling of it's just
not quite right, it's just notquite human. And it could just be
that residual memory that hey, there'sother things out there that aren't human that

(46:28):
look human, but it's a threat. So we feel that yup when we
see something a face that's the uncannyValley. I agree, and maybe that
Uncanny Valley is more of that primitivesubconscious brain coming out. Just like you
said. One kind of major plothole that I wanted to bring up with
this whole Benajeserit mission is you're tryingto control so many different aspects to create

(46:58):
this messiah and perfect individual that's goingto be able to see both the past
and the future, but you cannotcontrol how flawed human beings are. Hence
why we end up with Jessica havinga son Paul when she should have had
a woman or a daughter. Sheshould have known that this mission is way

(47:19):
beyond her or her line or anythingthat her husband might want, and that
the greater mission, which has beenin place for centuries for them is to
get to this final cross where onegeneration away. And yet she messes this
whole story line up to a degree. But they'll in love with the duke
whatever. See that's exactly it.Though humans are flawed, So that's the

(47:42):
first law, Like, can weactually could a theoretical super race exist?
Probably not, because humans are.And secondly, I really liked the this
is from crap what's his name?What's what's the name of his videos?
Quinn's idea is yeah, Quinn's ideas. Okay, that's another YouTube channel that's

(48:04):
really yummy if you want to hearmore about Dune or really any other nerd
stuff. He did a phenomenal jobbreaking down Dune. But one of the
conspiracy theories that he brought up thatI really liked, or kind of plot
holes and all of this is we'remaking a superhuman that's going to be able
to remember all of the past,both maternal and paternal, and also the

(48:29):
future, and then we're going totry and control that individual that is a
I just wanted to bring up thatultimate plot hole. And yeah, eugenics
is a very icky topic. It'snot a good road to go down.
And I don't think as human beingswe are capable of understanding the environmental and

(48:49):
genetic impacts that are constantly changing andevolving in order to ever manipulate them in
a way that would be better thannature. It's definitely an interesting phenomenon,
and I think Frank Kerbert was aheadof his time, and I really liked
his idea of cryptid female choice andpotentially epigenomic click ancestral memory formation. So

(49:17):
in general, very interesting. It'sso interesting, And I think that's one
of my fascinations with the Beny JesterOrder as truly one of the most powerful
beings in this universe, is thatthey're they're controlling something so much deeper.
It's they're not like some of thehouses that are just controlling the world's through

(49:39):
raw power and force. They're reallysneaky. And thinking about eugenics, it's,
yeah, you brought up so manypoints that it's like it every other
time it's ever been tried, itgoes bad really fast. But I just
feel as a human race, theidea is still so attractive to us that

(50:00):
we can It's because we want toplay god. But at the end of
the day, the question is alwaysshould we? It's not could we?
Should we? With great power comesgreat responsibility, Uncle Ben, It's true.
And so I think there's a lotof really interesting talking points with Dune,

(50:20):
but I think it's also a cautionarytale. And I do want to
point out that this is a littlebit of a bummer, but Dune was
published during a time when birth controland sterilization were heavily promoted in non white
American populations, so Frank Herbert wasahead of his time as a scientific science

(50:42):
fiction writer. But also it isthis whole concept of eugenics and creative,
this ultimate human being and superpower ofwall fantastically interesting, is socially insensitive?
Yeah, And that's just I thinkthat's it's just an interesting thing to always
be reminded of because someone like me, my whole mission is human performance is

(51:08):
how can we make the human better? And it's just such a grave reminder
that don't play god. But whereis that line? What is it look
like for me to try and bethe best athlete I can be? You
can talk about it from really anything, that survival of the fittest, because

(51:28):
the fittest wasn't meant like physical fitness. It meant ability to survive and procreate.
So sometimes that meant physical beauty becausethe most beautiful were the ones breeding.
And sometimes it was physical fitness soyou could hunt and gather and live.
Yeah, And just like you said, so long as you're reproducing,
that's fine. It's like a butterfly, right. A butterfly lives for one

(51:51):
day, but so long as itcan make during that one day, that's
fine, best day of its life. I think about where does that line
and fall between playing god and justtrying to experiment with advancing and enhancing ourselves.
Because in another episode the season,we talked about augmenting soldiers, and

(52:12):
we're talking about things like prosthetics andthings like implants where we can enhance our
vision, and there's so many thingsthat humans are always trying to do to
enhance ourselves. Where do you feellike that line is between exactly human augmentation
and enhancement and eugenics that could potentiallydevastate a population. I really can't speak
to that. I am very passionateabout drug development, and there are a

(52:37):
lot of really fabulous gene therapies thatare on the market or evolving right now
in which we're able to edit somebody'sgene to improve a disease state. That's
very important research that I'm super passionateabout. That line does get very complex

(52:57):
very fast. To me, it'sif you're improving somebody's life and moving them
away from a disease state, Ithink that's wonderful. If we're talking about
selecting characteristics based off of population preference, cultural preference, or the time period's
preference, then I think that's incrediblyproblematic. If it's for a asthetic courage

(53:22):
and reason. But I just wantedto make the argument that you might think
that you're picking the traits that willincrease fitness or make this ultimate human,
but you can't foresee every inevitability andso as a result, you will mess
it up. It's crap. What'sthat Michael Creton character, who he's always

(53:42):
got the chaos theory. It's thechaos theory. Yeah, oh my goodness,
Eric, Yes, thank you,it's the chaos theory. So yeah,
because you think about that. Ithink he just brought up such a
great point there about what's going tobe the preferred traits. We can't predict
that because currently, based on society, these certain traits might be more desirable,
but that's actually going to be betterfor humanity. If I lived in
China, my feet would have beenway too big, and they did things

(54:06):
to try and change their feet.Certain incas in my hands would flatten their
foreheads because that was the more desirabletrait. And if we're trying to,
like you said, play god,and we're trying to force certain traits out
of a population, those traits mightfall out of favor one hundred years from
now exactly, or even on ashorter time timetable. We have no idea

(54:27):
what pandemics are around the corner next, or what kind of major climate change
events could happen that might favor individuals. Let's say it's even something as basical
as brown or blonde hair, likethere could be a genetic predisposition in individuals
brown hair to handle heat better,let's say, and then global temperatures start

(54:49):
rising and all of a sudden,you've been selecting for blonde babies in your
designer baby experiment and you don't haveas many brown, red haired children or
whatever. That's a silly example,but that really gets me thinking because you
think about where some of these thingshave naturally shown up through just nature.
My understanding is that cystic fiberosis camefrom the bubonic plague because during the time

(55:15):
of the plague, which lasted waylonger than anybody realizes. I think it
was like two hundred years, right, I have no idea, but I
know it was really way longer.It was long longer than you think,
and so cistic fiberosis is something thatkind of came from plague times because people
who had thicker mucus to begin withwere surviving the plague, because it wasn't

(55:37):
necessarily the plague that killed you,it was dehydration, and so people who
were predisposed to thicker mucus survived.And that's why people of European descent are
more predisposed to cystic vibrosis, becausetheir likelihood of having thicker mucus is so
much higher. And I don't quiteunderstand how genetic works, but that's something
I've heard. And you have asimilar example with sickle cell disease and malaria

(56:02):
exactly, and that's more prone inpeople who have a African descent because those
were regions where they developed a resistanceto malaria naturally, and now it's becoming
a problem with sickle cell yep.That's an excellent example. Or I study
hemochromatosis, which is an iron overloaddisease, and there's a hypothesis that human

(56:25):
chromatosis is so prevalent. One inten Northern Europeans is a carrier for human
chromatosis variant because having higher iron allowsyou to survive blood loss better. And
what was the number one mortality eventin the past, childbirth, So females

(56:49):
with higher iron might be able tosurvive child but birth better. So it
just goes to show high iron canlead to the development of type two diabetes,
liver cirrhosis in older age, probablypassed thirty years of age in males,
and then after menopause for females.So that's an example of a trait
that might not impact your sexual fitnessnecessarily, but having it could be beneficial

(57:16):
to you surviving some of these events, but also negative in that you could
develop type two diabetes or liver cirrhosisand damage. So it's just really interesting
to see those trade offs. Soyou might think, oh, it would
be beneficial if we got rid ofHFE variants, but then you don't know
if having these iron bear are goingto carry some sort of benefit or even

(57:38):
a benefit in individuals who just carryone copy of the variant. Wow.
So that truly blows my mind.And I've always understood that that eugenics was
bad, but I'd never feel likeI've had anyone explain it to me so
thoroughly, because I knew the eugenicswas bad, I knew that genetic variation
was generally good, but to trulyhighlight, Hey, look, we don't

(58:00):
know what genes are going to showup to be beneficial or harmful down the
road. You don't want to playgods. You do want to let it
naturally play out. And that's sointeresting to me to think that what might
be deemed as a genetic disadvantage todaycould be a massive advantage hundreds of years
from now. And the important thingis it's always a changing landscape and we

(58:22):
can't predict how the environment will change. We can try, but the one
thing we can be certain of isthat it will change. Yeah, that's
a powerful epic to cover, butso fascinating and to really think about how
the Benny Jester were doing this andhey, look it didn't work out for
them. So we're going to haveour reality check moment here in just a
minute. So what do you thinkis add up our one to five scale,

(58:46):
one being pure fiction, five beingscience fact. What is the plausibility
of having the sort of directed evolutionthrough human genetic manipulation? Where are we
at on a one to five scale? So I think that's a difficult question.
If you're just talking about directed evolution, could we do selective breeding?

(59:09):
I think that's very plausible and thatwould be like a five. But if
we add in these layers of complexitylike the cryptid female choice and the epic
memory and ancestral memory element. ThenI feel like we go down to a
three point five at the highest,where there's some very fantastical ideas here,

(59:31):
but they're still rooted in this verybasic genetic concept. Breeding different animal populations
for a desirable trait is not novel, and farmers and breeders have gotten very
good at this. I'm sure wecould do it in humans if we wanted
to. That doesn't mean it's morallyacceptable to do or the right thing to

(59:52):
do, as we just talked through, but it is feasible. I think
it's more interesting to think about elementsof the ancestral memory recovery that make it
so fantastical, and so that's whyI would give it a three point five.
Yeah, no, and that's greatanswer. And I think something to

(01:00:14):
remember is farmers have something going forthem that human directed evolution doesn't. Is
they can control it. Can controlwhat their animals are doing far easier than
it is to control people. There'sa difference of free will. We have
so much more opinions than a dogdoes. My dog is happy as long
as he has food, water,and snuggles and humans have. Lady Jessica,

(01:00:38):
she fell in love, she wentagainst the orders, and that's something
it's like, it sounds like we'llnever really truly be able to control people
because people will always have opinions.It's true, and even more so than
falling in love. To me,I think part of it was ego.
There was definitely a love component therefrom the storyline, but I think there

(01:00:59):
was even more of an ego component. I could be the mother of this
messiah like figure. Who wouldn't wantthat? Of course you're going to try
and cut those corners. Yeah,I think at the end of the day,
that's the chaos theory, right.Humans are flawed people and we will
never overcome that. So in aperfect system, if there was like no

(01:01:22):
free will, could you do it? Yeah, biologically possible to do selective
breeding, but morally apprehensible. Andthen also when you incorporate free will impossible.
Yeah. Wow. Genetics is somethingthat is infinitely fascinating to me,
and it is really such an emergingfield. We didn't even get to touch

(01:01:43):
on things like Crisper today, andthat's something that I'm hoping to maybe get
to on some other episodes because it'sreally truly an emerging science that is going
to change. It's going to changethe base of our world. I think
that's just a fact. Would youtend to agree that our genetic und standing
now is going to change the world. I definitely agree with that. You're

(01:02:04):
like I would hope so, becausethat's why you got into it. And
hopefully again we choose to change thingsfor positive and we go the route of
Uncle Ben and Spider Man. Weuse our powers for good and not for
bad, and that the scientists andthe policy makers in the public interests where
the money's going is always going tobe choosing to put our efforts towards positively

(01:02:27):
advancing the human race and understanding thenegative consequences. So, with all that
being said, is there any finalthoughts before we sign off for the day.
I think we've really covered it today. Eugenics is evil, cryptid female
choices super interesting in a field thatcould have a lot more interesting developments in

(01:02:50):
our future. Epignomic memory is reallyinteresting. And also we might think we
know best, but we should playgod. Oh it so much? All
right, everybody, thank you somuch for listening to reality Check. Thank
you so much for joining Thank youso much for inviting me Heidi. It
was nice to see you