Kathryn Paige Harden (behavioral geneticist)

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.6 • 69.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 132 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kathryn Paige Harden (Original Sin On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness) is a psychologist, professor, and behavioral geneticist. Kathryn joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why psychology is not a solved problem, studying the essential question of why we do things we don’t want to do, and how her religious upbringing was fundamentally at odds with her desire to study psychology. Kathryn and Dax talk about what living in a culture that embraces the concept of original sin means for our morality, genetic predictors of misdemeanor versus felony behavior, and our active human inclination to break stuff. Kathryn explains her belief that holding each other accountable is not a supernatural condition but a social one, why we can aim to be better in our institutions than in our worst moments, and the scientific fact that there’s no evolution without diversity.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.
0:05.9	Hi.
0:06.4	Today we have Catherine Page Hardin. She is a professor of psychology at where we should have gone University of Texas, Austin, where she directs the developmental behavior genetics lab.
0:18.2	Her previous books include The Genetic Lottery, Why DNA Matters for Social
0:23.3	Equality, and her new book, which is so tasty, is called Original Sin on the Genetics of Vice,
0:31.2	The Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness. Delicious. It's a good one. Please enjoy Catherine Page Hardin.
0:38.7	This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple TV, the new U.S. home of Formula One.
0:45.8	Starting March 7th, you can watch complete all-access live coverage of every Grand Prix,
0:50.7	including practice, qualifying, and sprints all in one place.
0:54.6	Watch every race live only on Apple TV.
0:58.2	We are supported by HubSpot.
1:01.0	Did you know that most businesses, Monica, only use 20% of their data?
1:05.6	That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out.
1:08.4	Yeah, or paying for a coffee that's one-fifth full.
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1:18.0	you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs and transcripts,
1:23.6	all that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
1:29.7	And when you get a full cup of coffee, you can do more too.
1:33.0	But I digress.
1:34.2	Visit HubSpot.com today.
1:37.3	He's an object expert.
	...

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