The jerky motions of the ship give way to a steadier, more stately motion.

Okay, your tour guide says, go ahead and open your eyes.

When you do there before you, on the other side of the submarine's main viewing window,

is an enormous cell, or at least it appears enormous,

since you and the submarine have been shrunk down to a tiny fraction of the cell's size.

ID, the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Imagine for a moment with me that you've been invited to a futuristic discovery center,

a lavishly funded facility that has pioneered the ability to shrink people and objects many orders of magnitude.

Now imagine you could climb aboard an incredible shrinking submarine and travel into the heart of a living cell.

This would be a tour like no other. You'd get a glimpse of

DNA, molecular machines, cellular architecture, but you'd also bear witness to the workings

of a hidden world of information and epigenetic controls operating beyond the physical structures

of life. Welcome to ID the Future.

I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.

For decades, we focused on DNA as life's master blueprint.

But modern discoveries have revealed additional layers of information

that help direct, regulate, and coordinate cellular activity.

These systems, collectively known as the epigenome, have opened an exciting new frontier in biology.

In their new book, Epigenetics and the Architect, historian of science, Dr. Tom Woodward,

and his co-author, Dr. James Gills, explore this frontier in depth.

Now, today, Dr. Woodward reads to you from the new book,

and rather than beginning with definitions and diagrams,

...