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