Inheritance | Radiolab Podcast

From the Radiolab podcast: How your grandfather’s diet can affect your lifespan, heart health - and even your diabetes risk.
Once a kid is born, their genetic fate is pretty much sealed. Or is it? In this episode, originally aired in 2012, we put nature and nurture on a collision course and discover how outside forces can find a way inside us, and change not just our hearts and minds, but the basic biological blueprint that we pass on to future generations.
Episode Segments:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Leaving Your Lamarck
27:38 You Are What Your Grandpa Eats
40:29 What If There Was No Destiny?
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This episode includes: discoveries by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Paul Kammerer; science writers Carl Zimmer and Sam Kean; Michael Meaney, a professor in the faculty of medicine at McGill University in Montreal; Frances Champagne from Columbia University; Lars Olov Bygren, a professor at Umeå University in Sweden; radio producer Pejk Malinovski; Karin Borgkvist Ljung, a senior archivist at the National Archive in Marieberg in Stockholm; Barbara Harris, founder and director of Project Prevention; and Lynn Paltrow, executive director and founder of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
Video by Kim Nowacki and Andrea Latimer.

[@aida6925]

Dear Radiolab team, I would love to extend my gratitude to you for the perfect podcasts that I have ever listened to. They are amazing and I discovered your podcast at the beginning of 2022 when I started to study for IELTS. I got 8 from listening thanks to your podcasts. They are super engaging and helped me a lot.

[@brittanyengels913]

I'm with Barbara. They have the option of birth control versus being "fixed." She is doing a good thing. Thank you Barbara ❤

[@TheCaliKing100]

So one thing I wished they covered on the Swedish part is the overall mortality during the starving times in both 9-12 y/o as well as infant mortality. I’d also want to see how many infants who survived famine also experienced famine between 9-12. Not to say I don’t think it’s possible that epi genetics played a roll but famine is also a selection event, and I’d want to rule out the fact that maybe the reason isn’t that the famine did something to you but that you were already born with genes that gave you certain benefits that allowed you to survive a famine and those benefits included a reduced risk of heart disease and that would mean most people who survived with you and who you would more then likely have kids with woulf also have those genes

[@danielludlow8960]

The story of Barbara and Destiny...is heartbreaking...but rises into a beautiful experience...I was torn because the ugliness of drug addiction and its irresponsibility...it's hard to see past a baby born addicted....but Destiny's story and her 3 other siblings is a testament of a love of a mother....though some of Barbaras actions were cringy...She did what she believed to be right....Personally. if I had a child going through withdrawals of heroin that I saw everyday for months...my motivation wouldn't really be love....but we are allowed to make mistakes and grow and also find out that...we never really know the future....Radiolab...I know you have went through changes...but you're still radiolab....I haven't been a supporter lately...not because I don't like change....It's hard to support when supporting myself had became a challenge...but that has changed...my next payday....I'm going to sign back up in support of y'all

[@pa6xylly]

We need a word to describe the effect demonstrated in the Swedish study. It's not enough to call it epigenetics, as that's usually gene-environment interactions that occur in a single person. These are epigenetic effects that occur in the grandchildren of the person they originate in. I vote to call it primordial epigenetics. Sort of in the same vein as the primordial germline life cycle, elsewhere featured on Radiolab.

[@MegaHoChiMin]

Really great interview with the Swedish Scientists who discovered that data pointing to epigenetic influences on the grandchildren. Not sure why they had to have the whole ethical argument at the end. Had nothing to do with the science.

[@eugenechang8052]

Does anybody know the song at 5:26

[@squirlmy]

If I remember right, taking a sociobiology class in the early 90s, that the biggest fault of "Lamarckianism" was that it could work at the group level. That mutation could work on an entire group. That was the thing that made it untenable. Darwinism was limited to individuals, and later the specific DNA of the individual. But then you have to understand that traits of uncles and aunts, for example can be "transmitted". Nephews and nieces have roughly 25% DNA, after all. and this is hypothesized as to how homosexuality is inherited. In animals and ancient human history, an individual with a gay uncle or lesbian aunt has more likelihood to survive. and while that gene might not be expressed in the next generation, it's still favored as an unexpressed gene.

[@danielpemberton3348]

Can someone PLEASE tell me that vocal sample at the end of the Sweden story, its on the tip of my tounge!!!

[@skyreach669]

lol

[@sawyerwhitney9446]

primo -masakatsu takagi

[@danielpemberton3348]

@@sawyerwhitney9446 you are a god

[@YouYou-ff8nb]

Epigenetics as shown not to be that iportant for 99.9999% of things

[@TheCaliKing100]

So one thing I wished they covered on the Swedish part is the overall mortality during the starving times in both 9-12 y/o as well as infant mortality. I’d also want to see how many infants who survived famine also experienced famine between 9-12. Not to say I don’t think it’s possible that epi genetics played a roll but famine is also a selection event, and I’d want to rule out the fact that maybe the reason isn’t that the famine did something to you but that you were already born with genes that gave you certain benefits that allowed you to survive a famine and those benefits included a reduced risk of heart disease and that would mean most people who survived with you and who you would more then likely have kids with would also have those genes