Inheritance

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Science

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2012

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Once a kid is born, their genetic fate is pretty much sealed. Or is it? This hour, we put nature and nurture on a collision course and discover how outside forces can find a way inside us, shaping not just our hearts and minds, but the basic biological blueprint that we pass on to future generations.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.4	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N. Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:16.6	And NPR.
0:18.9	All right, Kay.
0:19.9	Yep.
0:20.2	I want to start with a parental daydream for a second. It's an idea that's been kicking around for me since my kids were born. Okay. Actually, the idea itself is pretty old. It goes back to the 1800s. Right around Napoleon's time. To a fellow by the name of Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine Monet Chevalier de LeMarc. Yep, LeMarc, Jean-Baptiste LeMarc. Who, according to writer Sam Keen, he was really one of the first grand theorists in biology. He actually coined the word biology, too. Really? Yep. His big idea, as you might know, is that what a person does in their lifetime could be directly passed to their kids.
0:55.7	Very easily.
0:57.0	His famous example was giraffes.
0:59.7	Lamarck said, you want to know how a giraffe got its long neck?
1:02.0	Mm-hmm.
1:02.7	One day this giraffe, mother giraffe, let's say, was looking up in a tree and saw some fruit and had to stretch her neck and stretch again. Whole lifetime of stretching. And then when
1:13.2	she had a baby, stretching got into the baby. And then that baby would stretch and stretch and stretch
1:17.5	and it would give a little more stretching to its baby. And eventually, over the millennia,
	...

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