Podcast: What We Know—And Don’t Know—About Human Heredity

In this scientific tour de force, we find out about heredity and genetics. Show host Ira Flatow and his guest Carl Zimmer, science columnist for The New York Times and author of "She Has Her Mother's Smile", explore issues like where the idea of race comes from, how CRISPR works, and when and how eugenics started. They take a close look at epigenetics, the study of how our environment changes our genes. Plus, they read tweets from listeners, who contribute both personal and general questions to the discussion. 

Carl Zimmer says that he became interested in heredity because we use it so much when it comes to defining who we are. We look back at ancestors trying to find what we got from them, or to our children to see what we're passing on. 

Talking about ancestors, it turns out that we all have celebrities among ours. And I mean big celebrities, like Cleopatra or the Emperor Charlemagne. The downside, if I may put it this way, is that there's no big deal about it. Everybody has them! 

So you know, what I think is interesting about all that is that it shows that we shouldn’t try to make ourselves feel very special by finding a famous ancestor, because we have a lot of company.