There is a reward that we can see in the

brains of people when they see someone

suffer if that person is first portrayed

as a wrongdoer.

>> So ordinarily if you see someone be

shocked you have interior insula. It's

like you're being shocked too. Unless

that person is first portrayed as

violating some moral or social norm, in

which case dopamine, you get a reward

out of seeing that person punished. I

think that it is a lust just as much as

lust for substances or lust for sexual

partners. It is a desire people want to

see people punished.

>> Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast,

where we discuss science [music] and

science-based tools for everyday life.

>> [music]

>> I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and opthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. My guest

today is Dr. Katherine Paige Harden. She

is a psychologist and geneticist and a

professor at the University of Texas

Austin. Dr. Harden is an expert in how

our genes shape our life trajectory,

especially how they interact with life

events during our adolescence and how

they impact our long-term mental and

physical health. Today we discuss the

interplay of nature and nurture in

addiction, criminality, susceptibility

to trauma, and the larger themes of sin,

sociopathy, empathy, and forgiveness. As

you'll soon see, Dr. Harden is unique in

her ability to define how biology,

psychology, and the sometimes randomness

of life interact to drive people's

choices. Today we talk about known

differences between males and females,

the role of hormones and hormone

independent influences on male female

differences and how people assume

different roles in life depending on the

power structures they find themselves

in. I want to be very clear that this is

not a tap dance around the big issues

episode. Today you are going to hear a

very direct conversation about what the

best science says about the role of

genes and environment on human choice

and how the biology meaning genes and

everything downstream of them

neurotransmitters hormones etc drive

what choices are available to people and

which ones they tend to make. I've long

been a fan of Dr. Katherine Paige

Harden's work because I know of no one

else researching these topics with the

level of rigor that she is. And as

you'll soon hear, she is an exceptional

educator. She's clear. She's direct to

the question and her compassion and

belief in people's ability to better

themselves no matter what their genes

are and to better the world is woven

into everything she says and it's all

backed by data. I should also mention

that I learned during today's episode

that Dr. Katherine Paige Harden has a

new book coming out soon. It is entitled

Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice,

the Problems with Blame and the Future

of Forgiveness. And you can find that

anywhere books are sold. It's now

available for pre-sale. Before we begin,

I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

is separate from my teaching and

research roles at Stanford. It is

however part of my desire and effort to

bring zerocost to consumer information

about science and science related tools

to the general public. In keeping with

that theme, today's episode does include

sponsors. And now for my discussion with

Dr. Katherine Paige Harden. Dr.

Katherine Paige Harden, welcome.

>> Hi, thank you for having me. Few things

are as interesting to people as the

relationship between genes and behavior

or what we call genotype and phenotype,

the expression of all the stuff

downstream of genes. And few things are

as interesting as adolescence and

puberty and the home we grew up in and

how our genes interact with our choices

etc. You work at the intersection of all

of those which is a very brave thing to

do. Could you just frame for us why you

selected to study the relationship

between genes and outcomes using

adolescence as uh the time point in

which you jump off from those questions?

Because it could have been, you know,

from infancy or in in an old age. Why

adolescence?

>> Yeah. So, I did my PhD at the University

of Virginia and I was trained as a

clinical psychologist. And if you're

looking at when does mental illness

emerge, when does this risk for mental

illness really start to increase, it's

in adolescence. So most cases of

substance use disorders or addiction

begin in adolescence. That's when

people's risk for depression goes up. If

you're going to have a for psychotic

episode, that's going to be in late

adolescence, early adulthood. So from a

clinical perspective, adolescence is

really interesting. And then I'm also

was trained as a lifespan developmental

psychologist. So thinking about how does

what's happening early in the life

reverberate really through the rest of

your lifespan. And if you think about

when in life do individual differences

between people emerge, canalize, get

deeper. When are people's life

trajectories really starting to be

apparent? It's in adolescence. So I came

into this field really interested in

teenagers, late childhood in the teenage

years. So thinking about puberty, sexual

behavior, but then from there what's

happening in adolescence, it's also

rulebreaking or aggression or again risk

for alcohol and drug use. So my research

program was really based on okay well

what's happening in this period of life

where the genes we're born with and the

family environments we were raised with

how do they combine to shape people's

lives by the time people finish their

teenage years they begin adulthood

they're beginning adulthood on such

different life trajectories

>> what ages uh constitute uh adolescence

[laughter]

>> I mean that's changing I think right

Yeah. Um, we typically think of

adolescence as beginning with the

physical changes of puberty, right?

Adolescence is this period of transition

to reproductive and social maturity. So,

we're thinking of adolescence as

beginning between 10 and 13 when people

are going through puberty. I think more

controversial is when does adolescence

end? because historically we've defined

that as you're an adult when you take on

the social roles of adulthood and that

keeps being you know for various reasons

economic social reasons pushed back

later and later so I've typically

studied people between 10 and 25 so that

kind of 15-year period a 10-year-old is

clearly a child a 25-year-old is about

to be kicked off their parents insurance

they can finally run a car they can

technically take on the social roles of

adulthood And that's a long period of

time where a lot of things are happening

in the body, in the brain.

>> This may be outside the scope of of what

you work on, but I've always been struck

by the fact that while kids, including

myself, um, generally hit puberty

somewhere, as you said, between 10 and

13 or maybe 14.

Some seem to go through puberty for a

much longer period of time. And I think

of puberty as perhaps one of the biggest

developmental milestones because the

brain changes, hormones change of

course, but perceptually and how people

perceive you changes completely. And the

acquisition of what we know as secondary

sex characteristics um seems to occur at

such different rates. So I mean I can be

open about this. I I know I hit puberty

by I know at uh at uh 14.

>> Uhhuh. But then I didn't, you know, I

didn't really shave until I was almost

graduating college. Yeah.

>> But I had grown, right? Whereas there

were other kids that we went home for

the summer

>> and they came back

>> and they came back like not a grown man

but looking like this guy's

>> looking like a grown man.

>> Yeah. And kicking our butts in soccer

and he's just, you know, just in terms

of

>> everything, right? But then, and I I

don't want to out this person, but then

when I look at us now, it seems that the

people that went through puberty more

quickly may have aged more quickly in

general. Is there a any notion of a

clock and the rate of that clock turning

can be sort of visualized in puberty and

predict longevity? Is there any

relationship there?

>> We are working on this right now. So, we

can think about individual differences

in puberty in three ways. We can think

about pubertal timing. So when does it

start?

>> Um for girls, pubertal timing seems to

be early pubertal timing seems to be the

best predictor of risk for mental health

problems, physical health problems,

earlier menopause, shorter lifespan,

>> early onset of puberty.

>> Early onset of

>> it's not looking at the sort of rate of

characteristics.

>> Yeah. For boys,

you it seems that the difference in

pubertal pace or pubertal some people

call it pubertal tempo. So, not just how

early does it start, but how long does

it take

>> for all of those changes to unfold? Um,

we did a study many years ago where we

found that boys were less affected by

when it started but more affected at

least for their emotional development by

how quickly it happened with boys where

they changed overnight having the

hardest time sort of assimilating all

these changes that are happening because

your cognition is not necessarily

maturing as quickly as your height or

your musculature or your hormones. And

so it seemed that boys seem to be

particularly sensitive to going through

puberty very very quickly. What we've

been looking at recently is how the

epiggenome changes during this period of

time. So the genome is your DNA. It's

the DNA sequence in your cells and that

doesn't change with development. But the

epiggenome is everything on top of the

genome that affects how DNA is used by

the body, used by the cells. And there's

one epigenetic mechanism known as DNA

methylation, which is, you know, a

methyl group is is basically like this

chemical tag and it can get kind of

tagged onto the genome. So there's great

work in aging that shows that the

epigenetic clock measured by DNA

methylation starts ticking

in infancy and faster biological aging

as measured by the epiggenome predicts

shorter lifespan, worse health, earlier

mortality. What we looked at is well

instead of training an an epigenetic

clock on age, can we train it on

pubertal development? So, how physically

mature you are? And what we found is you

can. So, there's these these the clock

is ticking

as you get older, but the clock is

there's another clock that's also

ticking as you become more physically

mature. And those two things are

correlated. So the epigenetic changes

that we see as you go through puberty

faster

um do seem to be related to aging more

rapidly even in older life. So our

reproductive development is I think very

tied at a cellular molecular level with

our lifespan development. And we see

this across species. If you genetically

engineer mice to go through puberty

earlier they die earlier. So, we have

this trade-off between reproductive

maturity and lifespan across species

within species. And I think now we're

beginning to see that at the molecular

level, too.

>> Fascinating. I also like the way that

answer lands because I had a very

protracted puberty.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh and I feel grateful for that.

>> Yeah.

>> In retrospect, because, you know, in

terms of um athletic ability and things

like that, I was I wasn't really

delayed, but I sort of couldn't get past

the sort of middle of the distribution.

But then over time it's like this is

kind of wild. I feel like I'm I look

very different. I looked very different

at 30 than I did at 20. Like marketkedly

different without doing anything except

>> existing. Some people seem kind of

frozen in their adult look

>> at this earlier age.

>> Earlier age

>> and in from the animal literature and

I'm thinking the studies um from my

colleague Eric Nudson in particular

where he was looking at plasticity and

barn owls but it's been looked at

elsewhere. There's this really striking

correlation between the onset of puberty

and the end of the so-called critical

period for neuroplasticity. Of course,

plasticity can go on throughout the

lifespan, but the plasticity that occurs

>> until and around puberty

>> is, you know, an order of magnitude

greater than the plasticity that's

available as say a 30-year-old or

40-year-old. Mhm.

>> So they've done the experiments of uh

like overreacttoizing

um animals or taking the testicles out

of animals and preventing somewhat

preventing puberty and it doesn't seem

to extend that window. So in humans is

there any relationship between

cognition, brain flexibility and the

onset of puberty, the timing of the

onset of puberty?

>> That's a really interesting question and

it's complicated.

um in part because it's like well what

part of plasticity are you looking at?

What part of brain development are you

looking at? And also with humans we

can't unlike animals manipulate the

onset of puberty in quite the same way.

So, it does seem like there are some

cognitive functions like if you're

thinking about executive function

ability, your ability to shift attention

or update, um the things that are tested

by a standard IQ test, those seem to be

much more age related, whereas um your

ability to learn from peers versus your

parents, your sensitivity to risk and

certain types of emotions, that seems to

be more tied pubertal development than

with age. But they're so confounded

within

observational studies in humans that

it's a continuing challenge to try to

pull these apart.

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I recall some mouse data showing that if

you um expose young uh pre uh pubescent

mice to older males, they enter puberty

earlier. Does that exist in humans as

well?

>> So, this is a controversial area of

research. It is true that um girls,

human girls who are raised with a

nonbiological father do on average tend

to go through puberty earlier. And some

have hypothesized that it's a similar

sort of cue from the environment about

the stability and availability of

resources. If dad is gone, maybe the

provisioning of the environment is going

to be less stable. Maybe evolution would

favor a reproductive strategy where you

go through puberty earlier rather than

this continued, you know, childhood is

so costly, right? Like a human childhood

is long. It takes a lot. I have three

kids. It takes a lot to feed them, to

grow an adult. And so it might make

sense to say, okay, well, if resources

are going to be scarce, or if resources

are going to be unpredictable, it might

be better for me to have this strategy

where I go through puberty earlier.

What's difficult about that is that

people don't end up in family structures

at random. And moms who go through

puberty are more likely to have sex at

younger ages, more likely to end up in

non-marital childbearing family

structures, and are likely to have

daughters who are being raised without a

biological father. So, is it the

biological father absence that's causing

the earlier puberty, or is it that mom

has genes that predispose her towards

early puberty that changes her

reproductive life and then she's more

likely to be in this certain family

structure and pass on those genes to her

daughters? It seems to be a little bit

of both, which is kind of the standard

answer to all of our questions about

nature and nurture. That um gene there's

a very strong genetic effect on the

timing of puberty for both boys and

girls, but that also the environment is

pushing it in different directions. And

that's part of why we're seeing that the

age of puberty keeps going down with

every successive cohort. I mean, it's

been falling for the last basically as

long as we've been keeping data. people

have been going through puberty earlier.

>> I'm realizing that you have a very very

difficult job because the languaging is

so delicate. Yeah.

>> So, I'm just going to jump on the bed of

nails for you.

>> Okay.

>> I've also heard that if the biological

father is present, it provides a quote

unquote protective effect against this

earlier onset of puberty in the presence

of the non-biological father.

But just that language protective effect

implies that a one-year shift or

two-year shift earlier puberty is

somehow bad. Like immediate I think the

human brain just works this way, right?

For understandable reasons think, oh,

you know, these these young girls that

were supposed to go into puberty at 14,

they're now going to puberty at, you

know, 10 because the the dad was absent.

They we the humanize it.

>> They pathize it and they write a script.

And then, as you point out, you know,

there's things related to the the

situation as it relates to the the

mother and her choices and her genes,

and

>> it's a it's a real barwire mess for the

>> typical person um to try and pull apart.

You're pulling these things apart

beautifully, but it's also um fodder for

anyone that wants to drive a narrative.

That's tough. How how do you navigate

that? because I'm going to ask you about

adolescence and genes and and um uh

sexual promiscuity, right? We're talking

about today we're going to talk about

sin, you know, and so how do you

>> how do you look at these things? I know

you look at them objectively, but then

how does one choose to communicate about

these things in a way that doesn't arm

people to kind of run their own agendas

whether they realize it or not?

>> Yeah, I'm not sure I'm the best person

to give advice about that. I, you know,

I'm a scientist. I'm a mother. I'm a

college professor. I teach intro psych

at UT. And so I'm always thinking about

what does the science say? How would I

explain this to my 13-year-old? How

would I explain this to my undergrads?

And with a sense of awe and respect for

how amazing a human body and brain is,

right? Like to think about we as women

as as at one time girls are equipped

with a brain that's

you know looking out into the

environment and integrating all of these

signals about internal and external

about you know resources and stress and

body weight and light and integrating

that to say okay now's the best time for

us in our situation to go. Now is the

time for our our bodies to change in

these amazing ways. That is that is

puberty. I feel like I keep coming back

to if we have respect for the

amazingness of the human body and the

brain and I'm trying to communicate it

with clarity and empathy in the way that

my 13-year-old son would understand it.

I don't always succeed at that goal, but

that's really my I feel like that as an

educator, that's how I'm approaching

these topics.

>> Well, I I appreciate you saying that.

I'm I didn't ask that to kind of

inoculate against anything. Um but now

we can really get [laughter] in get into

the get into the tangle.

>> Yeah. I have long thought that um the

hypothalamus, right, these this various

clusters of neurons uh above the roof of

our mouth that drive hunger and sex

behavior and thirst and aggression and

um and a bunch of other interesting

things. Um

>> is sort of the seat of the seven deadly

sins.

>> I've heard you say this before.

>> Um and of course all those brain

circuits uh and structures interact with

other brain circuits and structures.

That's uh there's no one location in the

brain um that governs a behavior

entirely with some rare exceptions. How

do you think about the genetic

programming of the hypothalamus in terms

of people's proclivity for

addiction, promiscuity, aggression,

>> being overly passive in a way that might

harm them or other people as well.

>> I don't really think that much about the

hypothalamus per se actually in relation

to those behaviors. So just stepping

back one step when you you made this

reference to the seven deadly sins,

right? So if I kind of kind of remember

all of them, there's wrath, there's

envy, there's lust, there's greed,

there's sloth, and what do the seven

deadly sins have in common? How can we

operationalize that more scientifically?

You know, what those behaviors all have

in common is, I mean, I mean, accept

envy for a second. is doing something

that might be pleasurable in the short

term

um to the extent that there's negative

consequences negative consequences to

yourself or negative consequences to

other people. I think envy is

interesting because you're seeing other

people enjoying pleasures and you're

like I want that one right so it's kind

of looking at other pe other people's

pursuit of of things. I think of envy as

a severe opportunity cost because as

long as you're envying some what someone

else has or is doing, then you're then

you're missing all the stuff that's

happening now that you could build your

life on.

>> I think of envy as like a clue to what

do you desire that you haven't admitted

to yourself.

>> One question I ask graduate students

when I'm recruiting them is whose career

do you want? Whose career do you envy?

because that tells me more about where

they really want to go with their lives

than

>> you know their kind of prepared speech

that they have for me. Good question.

Yeah. You know, let's take wrath or

let's take lust. You know, anger is an

emotion that's useful. Sexual desire is

an emotion that's useful. When do they

become sins? They become sins in our

minds when people are are engaging that

behavior

um in situations where we think it's

going to be harmful not just to

themselves but to other people. From a

clinical psychology perspective, we

would never say we're going to study the

seven deadly sins, but we do have um

clinical language or diagnosis where the

predominant symptoms that you see are

people engaging in behaviors that are

impulsive, that are um maybe immediately

pleasurable, but in the long term

harmful to themselves or other people.

So the obvious constellation of this is

substance use disorders, right? So it's

I'm I'm ingesting a substance. It feels

good and I'm doing that at significant

cost to myself and other people. We can

also think about in childhood what would

be called conduct disorder which are

people who are children who are engaging

in wrath. They're engaging in aggression

towards other people that hurts other

people, their parents, their teachers,

their schools. The law is mad at them

and they're doing it anyways. So, what

we're interested in scientifically is um

are there genes that affect the

likelihood of developing these

disorders? Yes. Um are there genetic

overlaps between these different things?

So, do the genes that um are the genes

that make it more likely for you to

become addicted to substances

also make you more likely to have many

sexual partners also make you more

likely to engage in impulsive

aggression?

That also appears to be the question?

Yes. And then if we're looking at genes

that have these associations not just

with substances or not just with sexual

behavior or not just with aggression but

have crosscutting effects on all of

them. What are they like? What are those

genes? Where are they where are they

active in the brain? When are they

expressed in development? So that's work

that that our group has been doing for

eight years now to try to discover what

these genes we have a good idea from

twin and adoption studies that there are

genetic influences on these things and

now we want to figure out what are they

and where are they active in the brain

and it turns out that it's not just

hypothalamus it's really broadly

distributed you know throughout your

brain

>> I'll update my messaging [laughter]

and I did couch it as a hypothesis I I

never said that there were you know that

you could leion one of the the sins.

There are genes that vary between

individuals.

>> That predict

addiction, predict impulsivity,

>> and other things.

>> Um, you're exploring how the genes that

predict addiction might predict

impulsivity for other types of

behaviors.

>> Yes.

>> I think I heard that the answer is yes.

Indeed, there's overlap.

>> So, I'd be very curious to know what

those genes encode for. But what are the

protein systems and neural circuit

systems, hormone systems downstream of

those genes?

>> Yeah, if we go back one step, just why

did we think that there were going to be

genes that overlap between this? The

biggest

um set of results that supported this

hypothesis were adoption and pedigree

studies. So these big data registries,

you get them in Sweden, you get them in

the Scandinavian countries that keep

track of every single one of their

citizens. And what you see is that the

seven deadly sins run in families. So if

you have an adoptive parent who's

addicted to alcohol, you are more likely

to have many sexual partners. And you're

also more likely to be diagnosed with

conduct disorder or um be arrested for a

violent crime even if you were never

raised by that parent. And it's not just

substance use to substance use or

violence to violence or you know risky

sexual behavior to risky sexual

behavior. It seems that having a family

history of any of these things increases

your likelihood of manifesting any one

of them. So that's why we thought that

there was this genetic commonality

across them. Um so what we found is that

there's many many many genes that affect

all of these behaviors. It's massively

what we call polygenic. So it's not just

one thing in one part of your genome.

It's distributed throughout your genome.

And that those genes are most expressed

in neurode development in uterero in

second and third trimester. So if you if

you look at genes that are associated

with all of these things and you see

okay when in the human lifespan are they

most active? They're active during

cortical development in the second and

third trimester. So there's something

very like early neurodedevelopmental

that's going on there and it seems to be

affecting the brain's balance of

inhibition and excitation. So

[clears throat]

as your brain is developing while you're

in uterro the GABA system which is

inhibitory and the glutamate system

which is excitatory sort of being tuned

like and the balance between those two

things is um is being worked out. If

children are born pre-term, part of the

reason that that affects their

psychological development negatively is

because it affects this balance between

inhibition and excitation. So I think

we're still very at the beginning of

this understanding the bioanitation of

it, the biological mechanisms of it. Um,

but what it suggests to us is that, you

know, sometimes you hear like ADHD is a

neurodedevelopmental disorder. I think

that substance use disorders are every

bit as a neurodedevelopmental disorder

as ADHD. I think conduct disorder, which

is characterized by impulsive

aggression, is every bit a

neurodedevelopmental disorder as ADHD.

Because if you look at the genes that

are causing them, they seem to be

affecting this pattern of brain

development very very early in life and

this balance between the brain's

inhibition and excitation.

>> Fascinating. I mean, I have to be

careful not to go down this rabbit hole,

but I started off as a developmental

neurobiologist. So, um, you know, fetal

brain wiring is, uh,

>> yeah, we've never really talked about it

on this podcast, but it's we've talked

about the effect of of fetal exposure to

hormones. Yeah.

>> Uh, in in the brain in particular, um,

in terms of sexual differentiation, but

>> yeah, there's a ton going on in there

um, at these stages. And when I hear you

talk broadly about um you know the

balance between excitation and

inhibition

and some disruption in that or some

alteration in that setting up a a a

probability of the expression of some

behavioral disorder or choice

>> set of choices. It makes me wonder, you

know, about brain function more more

broadly is, you know, does that somehow

make these choices to use a given

substance or to do a impulsive behavior?

Is it we have to be careful not to

project, but is it an attempt to restore

some sort of um order to that balance or

is it an expression of of an imbalance

system? It's just a seessaw that never

that doesn't tilt all the way uh to one

side or the other. I think that's a

really good question and I don't know

the answer to that. When you talk to

people who are, you know, experiencing a

substance use disorder, sometimes you

hear narratives that are very much in

this um kind of self-medication frame,

right? Like I took this substance and it

made me feel normal and I didn't feel

normal before I had that. But that's not

everyone. I mean, addiction is a very

heterogeneous disorder. And so I think

people's um perceptions of their

motivations to engage in substance use

that's harmful for them. And then how

does that um relate to the brain

mechanism and then how does that relate

to early neurod development? I don't

think we know you know the specifics of

those links to the extent they exist.

Yeah.

>> My colleague Anna Lumpky who wrote to

Nation

>> Yeah. She once said that um many

addicts, behavioral addictions, uh I

guess they call them process addictions

or chemical addictions, that they have

this feeling that unless they're

experiencing something really intense

>> like life isn't really happening. Like

they crave this intensity of experience.

They want peak experience.

>> Yeah.

>> Either to numb themselves. I mean it

could be a trough experience in the case

of sedatives but um that stuck with me

implied in that is that not everyone is

seeking these um kind of extreme states

and so layered on what you just

described in terms of excitation

inhibition balance I kind of wonder if

um if people who struggle with addiction

are um they're craving getting out of

too much inhibition or too much

excitation in but this is probably an

overly simplistic hypothesis

>> so just thinking about the that

sensation seeking anything that driving

for intensity. Usually when we when we

think of people who um are chronically

engaging in some behavior despite it

having negative consequences for

themselves and other people. So this

could be drug use, this could be

aggression, this could be risky sexual

behavior. Um we can typically think of

three dimensions of sort of personality

and temperament um that are often at

play. And one of them is this sensation

seeking drive for intensity. So I want

it, I want it and I want a lot of it,

right? And then one is this

disinhibition

um failure of self-control. Um I can't

stop myself. And then another which I

think is less wellstudied is what people

call antagonism or callousness which is

um I know this has uh negative

consequences for other people but I

don't really care like that doesn't

bother me. And I think what you see is

that the the combination of factors that

goes into any one person's behavior can

really vary. So for some people it's

like this feels great, this feels good.

I want the high. I want it to be

intense. I'm not disinhibited. I'm

deliberately seeking out this behavior.

You know, I plan the drugs that I'm

going to use for the club the whole week

and I plan my week afterwards. It's not

it's not disinhibited at all. It's very

purposeful. And then there are people

that are like, I wasn't planning, but

now I'm at the club and someone offered

this to me and I can't stop myself. And

then other people are like, I'm not I

like it. Okay. and I could stop myself,

but these negative con consequences that

people keep harping on, you know, the

fact that my partner doesn't like this

or the police don't like this,

like, oh, you know, I'm indifferent,

right? And so, um, all of that to say, I

think I think we need to be aware of the

complexity and the heterogeneity of of

different people's motivations when

they're doing these behaviors.

>> Yeah. And these days we hear a lot about

um the role of trauma in addiction. I

mean I can't do a single post or podcast

about addiction

>> and the biology and um and not hear well

it's trauma related. But of course genes

come from our parents. We'll talk about

that irritability. Um and so

generational trauma or or just childhood

trauma doesn't even have to be

transgenerational.

It can get layered in there in a

complicated way. Yes. And I'm not trying

to say that trauma doesn't play a role.

Clearly, it does. But it seems that

genes could be primary. Trauma in the

parents, trauma in the children,

traumatizing, you know, hurt people hurt

people kind of, you know, it's the the

one cliche that seems to, you know,

stand the test of time.

>> Yeah. I think it's very hard to say that

something is primary or secondary

because everything's interacting with

everything else. One of the scientific

challenges and then also one of the very

human tragedies that we often see is

that the parents who have genetic risks

who are passing those on to their kids

are also the caregivers for those kids.

And so the kids who would most benefit

from

firm, warm, stable, nurturing parenting

are also the least likely to get it

because the parents themselves are also

dealing with their own stuff and they're

also leading their own complicated

lives. And so it's a tapestry like

there's a warp and a weft to a piece of

cloth. There's the threads that go this

way and this way. And um I think that's

how I think about the relationship

between genes and trauma early

experience is that really they both are

woven together to build

the brain and the body and the

personality that then struggles with

these behaviors later on in their life.

So if we were to have access to our

genomes heading into uh adolescence or

to our kids

>> uh genomes um and we know based on your

work and the work of others presumably

that some of the genes that predispose

to impulsive behavior, addictive

behavior, promiscuity etc. Um that would

be useful information I would think.

Right? Then one could think carefully

about friend choices, situational

choices, install buffers. You know, it

sounds sounds so mechanical, but you

know, have people around who can help

buffer against this these genetic

predispositions which no doubt, as you

just said, weave into um situational

predispositions.

>> Why don't people want that information?

Or do they want that information?

Because I remember in the 80s hearing,

oh, you know, soon we're gonna have

genomes and you can know if you're going

to get Huntington's.

>> Yeah. this, you know, very destructive

degenerative disorder. And and then

people said, well, I wouldn't want to

know. I I mean, I think many people

would also want to know and especially

parents, you know, if they can just get

past their guilt that it has something

to do with them, I think they'd want to

help their kids uh avoid these

predispositions given that most of what

we're talking about are maladaptive

predispositions. So this is a

complicated and really rapidly growing

area of research which is what happens

if you return people's genetic

information back to them. So if you have

ever done 23 and me or some sort of

direct to consumer genetics company you

might have gotten like this is your

genetic risk for Crohn's disease or this

is your genetic risk for Parkinson's or

Alzheimer's. Um and now there are more

companies that are expanding into that

genetic information around

um many gene indices. We call them

polygenic indices or polygenic scores

that are correlated with someone's risk

for developing an alcohol use disorder.

Say I think there's a couple things to

keep in mind here. One is that the our

genetic information is rapidly

improving.

it's still not very good at the level of

predicting an outcome for an individual.

So, um, as an example, you can think

cities that are at higher altitude tend

to be colder. Like that's a correlation.

That's a correlation of around 04.5.

You can know that if you're trying to

think about, okay, well, which cities

are colder on average than others.

That's not going to tell you do you need

to pack a sweater if you're going to

Montreal next Tuesday, right? Like

that's a specific weather incident.

Polygenic scores right now are like I

can tell you that you know on in general

like these people have a higher risk

than these people, but they're not

they're not a pregnancy test or even a

Huntington's disease test. They're not

prognosticators of like an individual

person's risk for an alcohol use

disorder. there's some uncertainty

there. [snorts] The other question is

what are the ethics of telling someone

that they have a low genetic risk,

especially if we're uncertain about

that. Like you've talked a lot about

how, you know, no alcohol on average is

better for you than some alcohol.

We think about the risks of telling

someone that they're genetically

predisposed towards a negative life

outcome. But there's also risk to

telling someone that they're not

genetically proposed because is that

going to are they going to interpret

that as license to drink more? I don't

need to worry about that. I need I don't

need to worry about my consumption

because this company told me that I'm at

low risk. And then the other thing

you're picking up on is that there are

individual differences in desire for

kind of deliberate ignorance. So there

was a great study after the wall came

down in Berlin that was um conducted on

whether or not people want to know the

contents of their files, like who was

reporting on them. And some people were

like, "Of course I want to know. Of

course I want to know who was saying

what about me." And other people were

saying, "No, I don't. Deliberate

ignorance. Ignorance is bliss.

Deliberate ignorance is what I want.

>> This is what other people were saying

about them."

>> Yes. Yes.

>> Don't read the comments. Yeah,

deliberate ignorance. No, read the

comments. It's also a form of deliberate

ignorance.

>> This is like an avid debate between

podcasters. You know, Rogan is the Mr.

Don't Don't read the comments. Lex

Freriedman and I go back and forth on

this

>> on guarding the comments.

>> I [clears throat] mean, yeah, it can be

useful.

>> So, all of that to say, I think we're in

a situation which the science is rapidly

developing. It's not nearly at a point

where it's going to be a a high

confidence predictor. There's also risks

to being told that you have a low, you

know, a low genetic risk because it

might act as a permission structure for

behavior that might ultimately prove to

be risky. And also, people's

psychologies are complicated and not

everyone responds to more information as

a good thing. Not everyone wants to read

the comments of their DNA. This isn't a

push back, but I feel like most people,

even if they don't understand genes

inheritability,

understand that they got their genes

from their parents.

>> Yeah.

>> So, there is an argument to be made

perhaps that people are already doing

this. Like someone whose father was an

alcoholic, whose grandfather was an

alcoholic,

>> could say, "Well,

>> yeah, I got to be really careful because

obviously this runs in my family,

right?" And then someone say, "Well,

your mom doesn't have an issue with

alcohol. She could have a couple drinks,

no big deal. So, you're protected and we

don't know how gene dosing protects us

or makes us vulnerable. No one knows,

but we all

>> we all do this. Yes.

>> Yes, I think we do.

>> I mean, we'll get into discussions about

genes inheritability, but you know that

that like the topic of of eugenics and

genetic selection with even within

embryos is super dicey nowadays.

Everyone's, you know, like you know,

it's so scary to even have the

discussion. But then I've always said, I

mean,

>> people do a kind of genetic selection.

They pick sperm donors and they pick

partners.

>> Yes.

>> Often times based on a combination of

traits which are clearly involve genes,

you know, so people are doing a genetic

selection in partner choice

>> anyway. And so to me, maybe it's just

the scientist in me, the conversation

feels unnecessarily scary. But when it

comes to things like substance use

disorder, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.

I think it makes sense to look at your

parents and say, "Listen, if one of them

has a an an issue with alcohol or both

of them have an issue with alcohol, I

have to be very careful with alcohol."

>> And with your children too, right? I

think as parents, at least as a mother,

I look at my kids and I think they don't

have the same temperament. They don't

have the same personality. Um, I think

the risks of cannabis use is different

for my son and for my daughter. And so I

think an attuned parent is going to be

thinking about what do I know about my

kid as they go into adolescence? How

does that inform how I'm helping shape

their environment?

>> I think what you're picking up here is

that oftentimes people treat genetic

information as if it exists in a vacuum

and it's the only thing we know about a

person. And that's obviously not true.

There are phenotypes that we see in our

family members, in our perspective

mates, in our children. And most of the

research can also act as if you would be

returning genetic information um about a

child or about a person to that person

and it's the only thing that they know

and that's not true. Um, so I think that

we really are at a place where we need

more meta-cience, science about the

science in what is the most responsible

way to give people access to their

genetic information in a way that

permits them to make the best choices.

But we're not going to be able to do

that if we're continuing to pretend that

genetic information exists somehow

siloed from all the other things that

people are paying attention to when

they're observing themselves and their

family members.

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more information we have about our

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>> and their positive traits and their,

let's just call them maladaptive,

destructive traits to themselves or to

others, the more informed our choices

can be. But I do understand that it can

start to set up some constraints in our

mind of what we are capable of or not

capable of.

>> Yeah.

>> But I also feel like especially in the

United States, there's this notion that

we can become anything.

>> It wasn't until I was in a relationship

with somebody from Southern Europe that

I realized that that notion growing up

with that

>> is kind of outrageous to some people in

the world because in a lot of areas of

the world, as you know, people get

siloed really early on. Um, and they not

everyone grows up thinking they could be

an amazing athlete if they chose that

path.

>> Yeah.

>> They could be a billionaire if they

chose that path. You know, they could,

but in the United States, we love this

notion of anyone can get to any position

if they just work hard enough and

believe in themselves and align with the

right people.

>> So, I think that you think of it

probably as, you know, another source of

data. And isn't more data better? Like,

isn't we we improve our decision-m when

we have more variables at hand?

um that's a very scientific way to think

about genetic information.

Whereas I think for many people in the

broader public there can be a temptation

to see genes as a very special sort of

information. There's a genetic has

a myth around it that maybe this is my

data on my heart rate variability

doesn't have about it. I I often I think

that people can fall into these really

essentialist stories about genetics that

it's telling them something about their

like their deepest or truest selves.

Um and that's when the delivery of

genetic information without correcting

their perception of what genes are

really telling us can start to be

dangerous. I mean I think about 23 and

me their tagline for many years was

welcome to you spit in this tube.

welcome to you, right? That we are going

to give we are not just going to give

you another piece of information about

yourself to add to all the things that

you could be using. We are going to tell

you who you really are. And it's when

the genetic information lapses into

these more essentialist stories that I

think things get to be, in your words, a

little bit thornier, a little bit

riskier.

>> I never did 23 and me, but um they were

just right up the road, but somehow

never did it. But I did hear that one of

the surprising uh results of 23 andme

and companies like it was that um a not

insignificant number of uh people

discovered they have relatives that they

didn't know they had.

>> Yes. Or that their father isn't the

father that they thought they had,

>> which is a pretty major psychological

frame shift.

>> Yeah. I gave a talk at a college, a

small college. Um, and it was a writing

class and they had to write about a book

and they chose my book to write about,

which is great. It's like, you know,

freshman and they all have to actually

write something and they chose a book

that was deliberately, you know, a

little bit controversial to give them

something to push off on. And I asked

him, I said, "Why? How, you know, you're

writing professor, how did you find my

book?" And he said, "Well, I did 23 and

me." And I realized that my the man who

raised me is not my biological father.

My parents didn't know this. It was our

fertility doctor who was my biological

father. And I have something like 26

half siblings cuz this guy had been

doing it in his practice for years. He's

now the doctor is now deceased. And I

just was like that's so much more

interesting than I'm going to talk about

like anything I'm going to talk about

with these freshmen. story and that um

and I think that speaks to he had a

whole narrative about his life and his

family and then he got this piece of

genetic information and it blew that

story out of the water because it there

was something about the genetic lineage

that is really important to our sense of

of who we are and he really had to

reconstruct you know his family story

and his identity in the light of that

information.

It's so interesting because I've heard

of people learning something

unfortunate, bad about their grandparent

or parent that they weren't aware of and

then internalizing that somehow they are

bad.

>> Mhm.

>> Especially young kids can internalize

that message.

>> Yeah.

>> This is a a message to all people who

may end up divorced. Don't badmouth the

the other parent because you're

essentially telling your kids that they

come from bad they there's badness in

them.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, and and we all think that this

is about people's behavior, but but my

understanding of spend a little bit of

time with this literature just how

people interpret information and how

kids interpret information is that they

like oh like I come from something bad

and there's actually I mean there's all

these movies about this. Star Wars has

this and you know and and other other

movies you know like our genetic origins

and how those played out in previous

generations um can frighten people about

themselves.

>> Yes. So to go back to your earlier

question about how do we talk about gen

genetics in relation to these phenotypes

that are really part of our identities.

Another thing is that I don't think

anyone's bad. I don't think anyone's all

good either. I think that humans are

complicated and our behaviors are

complicated and none of us can be

reduced to one thing we've done or one

gene we have or one aspect of our

phenotype. But that is a really common

perception that genetics is telling some

genetics is some telling us something

essential about ourselves and that it

might turn out that that essential thing

is a bad thing. Um, I write in my new

book about this letter that I got from

um, a man who is in prison. He's been in

prison since he was 16 for

a horrific crime that he committed. It's

a, you know, a sexually violent crime

um, that he committed when he was 15

years old. So, still an adolescent,

still a growing brain, still not an

adult. in Texas, you can be tried an

adult as as 15 and he's been in prison

ever since then. And he read about my

lab, my, you know, our behavior genetics

lab at Texas and an issue of Texas

monthly magazine, which I guess the

prison subscribes to. And he wrote me a

letter and it showed up in my university

mailbox and it was him saying, "I've

done this thing like, let me tell you

about myself. I've been in prison my

whole adult life, even before then." Um,

what do you think makes a child go bad?

Nature or nurture? And that question

haunted me

because I could give him a technical

answer which is I could say it's we know

that nature matters. We know that

nurture matters. We know that all of our

behaviors are influenced by both nature

or nurture. Um, but I think when he's

writing me, he's not just asking for a

science lesson, right? He's someone

who's done something horrible and he's

saying, "I feel like I'm inherently a

horrible person." And that's might be

because of my genetics and my do my

genetics make me bad. And I think that's

a story about genetics which has no

scientific basis but really

um pops up in a lot of places in our

culture and it makes it very difficult

to talk about because you know you're

here saying these genetic variants are

expressed at this point in prenatal

development and that increases your

probability of these having having these

behaviors. But if someone hears that as

I could be born bad or I could be born

broken, that's absolutely not what we're

saying. But that story about genetics is

really, you know, woven through our

culture.

>> The bad seed,

>> the bad seed, bad to the bone, natural

born killer. We have I think the fact

that we can come up with English idioms

and phrases for this so easily tells us

something about the way that we think

about

behavior, morality, a self and biology.

>> I have so many questions but I think the

first one I want to ask is a

developmental one.

>> Yeah. Um, I think most of us

presumably carry this idea that it's

during puberty and the activation of

hormones, in particular testosterone,

that takes a sweet kid and makes them a

bad kid.

>> I think that's not true. I I I don't

believe that's true. But are there

examples of um in the literature of

kids prior to puberty being destructive

in in a sociopathic way?

>> Yes. And that's one of the biggest

predictors of um what people have called

a life course persistent pattern of

antisocial offending which is onset

before the age of 10. um antisocial

behavior that's not just destruction of

property but also aggression against

other children. And when we're thinking

about aggression, oftentimes we

discriminate between aggression when

provoked versus proactive kind of cold

aggression. So the worst prognosis we

would we would anticipate would be a

male child who begins to aggress against

other children or against animals before

the age of 10 and doesn't feel guilt or

remorse around that that has kind of

this cold callousness about it. That's a

poor prognosticator of having well-

reggulated behavior into adulthood. So

of those kids who have conduct disorder

be before especially before the age of

10 with these callous emotional features

we would expect that 50 to 75% of them

will have a substance use disorder in

adulthood. Um a non-trivial percentage

will have meet criteria for antisocial

personality or another personality

disorder in adulthood. Um and so again I

think we're we're looking at a subset of

children where there's clearly a heavy

genetic component. There's clearly a

heavy nurture component. It's very

neurodedevelopmental in terms of its

origins and early brain development and

currently we have vanishingly few

effective treatments. And again, I think

that's because people have maybe

implicitly or unconsciously

interpreted the genetic research or the

biological research as these kids were

born bad. Not these kids were born with

a set of neurodedevelopmental

liabilities and we really need to figure

out how to help them. You know, what are

the treatments we can offer them and

when people see something as a moral

failing, they're less likely to see it

as a biomedical problem that we can, you

know, throw the weight of science

behind.

>> What percentage of these kids younger

than 10 that show this antisocial

behavior are male versus female?

>> The sex ratio varies, but sometimes it's

2 to1, sometimes it's as high as four.

four to one. So,

>> and that can't be explained by post

uterero testosterone because they

haven't hit puberty yet.

>> Yeah.

>> So, it either is an or early organizing

effect in uterero or there's something

on the Y chromosome that creates a

susceptibility

>> and we really don't know actually one of

my former postocs is working on this now

the analysis of the X chromosome um

because most genetic studies just work

just focus on the autotosome. So, just

focus on the you know the nonsex

chromosomes. Um the other thing is we

also see this in animals that male

guinea pigs are much more vulnerable to

the effects of preterm birth than female

guinea pigs. Again, preterm birth

disrupts that same kind of GABA to

glutamate excitatory inhibitory balance

that um we're also seeing popping up in

the genetic research. Also, I've just

I've I have have two three kids. I have

two girls and one boy. And even with

humans, the labor and delivery nurse

will be like, "Okay, well, we got to

keep him in longer because those early

early boys, they struggle. They know

that the male fetus seems to be more

vulnerable to these insults than the

than the female fetus.

>> Are the guinea pigs sociopathic?"

>> Guinea pigs. I mean, all of these things

you can you used to work with nonhuman

animal models.

>> I for better or worse, I've worked with

so many different species. I have to say

I do not miss working with animals for

[clears throat] a variety of reasons.

>> That's how I ended up in a clinical

psych program is

>> humans humans can consent to be in an

experiment. I as an animal lover it

eventually wore on my soul too much and

I understand the ne where it's

necessary. I also think there's an

excess in particular and I'll lose some

friends with this but in particular um

with some of the larger primate work I

one really needs to justify and there

are instances where there's good

justification but um yeah I've worked

with a lot of different animals but I

was about to say um I know we both uh

dog lovers um there's this saying um

they're no bad dogs just bad owners but

we don't say that about humans we don't

say oh you know there no bad people

everyone is a good person. They're just

bad parents. At some point, usually 18,

we say you're responsible for your

actions regardless of what happened to

you, regardless of the genes you came

into this world with. And

things uh shift where people

understandably are responsible for their

behavior in a different way. Sounds like

in Texas it can come in earlier

depending on the crime.

>> Yeah. But I assume all dogs are good

dogs, that they're trustworthy, that

they would never harm you or another

dog, maybe an animal, cuz I've I've seen

what happens when certain dogs get a

hold of certain animals, but I don't

think we make the same assumption about

people.

>> I don't think we do either. I I titled

my new book Original Sin

to to really spotlight this exact thing.

I you know before I was a scientist um

the first 20 years of my life I was an

evangelical Christian. So I was raised

in a very um fundamentalist household

southern praised God and pass the

ammunition in lots of ways. And um and

in my in my brand of Christianity that I

was raised in, which was um Protestant,

reformed

Calvinist,

I really was raised with this idea of

original sin, which is that humans are

born bad, that they're born depraved,

that they're born broken. And I don't

believe that's true, but that's the

explicit teaching of some religious

traditions. And that's a religious

tradition that was really foundational

to our culture and our institutions. So,

I don't think it's a coincidence that um

we talk about how there's no bad dogs,

but we assume people can be inherently

bad because I think many of us were

taught that, you know, from a young age

that that all of us or some of us, you

know, if if you're thinking about

Calvinist theology of some people are

the elect and some people are that that

some of us are inherently bad. Um, so

you can be raised with a a religious

tradition that that really is talking

about inherent depravity and then you

have a scientific tradition that's

studying well how does genes how do

genes affect bad things that people do

and and then we have debates about how

science should be used and that's where

I think things get really thorny and

really tricky which is how do we apply

the science without lapsing into this

really ancient way of thinking um which

is interpreting the science as proof

that we're broken that that people are

broken at the same time. I mean, going

back to this letter that I received,

people do horrible Like, people do

horrible things to each other. And I

think about that man who wrote me a

letter and I can say I think he did a

horrible thing. And I think he probably,

everything I know scientifically, I

think he probably had horrible luck in

terms of his parents and his genes and

his birth experiences and his childhood

experiences.

And so, how do we put those together?

What does it mean to hold someone

responsible for how they behave? I do

think that we're responsible for

ourselves and responsible to each other

while also keeping in mind the fact that

no one created themselves from scratch.

By the by the time he was an adult, he

was already in prison for the things

that had happened to him while he was

still technically a child. I wrote this

book, my new book, because I was really

attempting to to wrestle through that

question.

>> I think I'm getting this story right.

It's a true story that was uh told by

our former director of neurosciences at

Stanford, Bill Nuome.

>> Um

about the guy who went up in the tower

at UT Austin and shot a bunch of people,

killed them. The tower shooter, I think

he was eventually taken out by a

security guard.

The

remarkable thing about the story is, at

least the way I remember it, is that

this guy knew something was wrong with

him. Thought that the sight of the

problem was in his brain,

was asking people to look at his brain

and help him. I think I'm getting this

right. We'll double check.

um and then said at the point where he

realized he was going to go through with

this thing with this act that he wanted

them to look at his brain and it turned

out he had a tumor in a I think it was

some temporal lobe region that

>> it was amigdula

>> oh it was actually in the in the amydala

so you know the story clearly uh and

it's where you work um fortunately

occurred long before you work I mean

terrible that it happened at all but in

this age of school shooters and public

massacres, right? People just, you know,

going up into Vegas hotel window and,

you know, hosing people with bullets. Th

this case is a unique one because the

guy knew there was something wrong with

him. Want in some sense wanted help, but

you can kind of create this picture of,

you know, um, angel devil conversations

in his head between neural circuitry

that's saying, "Don't do this. Don't do

this. Ask for help and do this, do

this."

I mean, it's like the cartoon or movie

with the angel and the devil on the on

the shoulder or in each ear.

>> What are we to make of that?

>> Yeah. Gosh, the women case is so it's so

interesting because he did um say that

he there was something wrong with him.

He did ask for help. um when after he

died the state of Texas ordered a

autopsy and um they found that they had

this tumor and the whole thing was

basically labeled like um almost like a

natural disaster had hurt had occurred.

So the the report talks about like the

catastrophe or the you know the this

incident that happened. Um, so the they

ultimately when when trying to make

sense of Whitman's shooting people from

the tower uh at Texas

took what was some philosophers have

called this objective view. So basically

like he they weren't viewing him as an

agent who's choosing who's doing

something in the realm of good or bad a

moral failing. They were viewing him as

kind of a machine that's gone haywire,

right? He got a tumor in his amydala and

he wouldn't have done it if he hadn't

had this tumor. How would they have made

sense of his behavior if he hadn't asked

for a brain autopsy? if they didn't know

about this tumor, how many other people

have something going on with them in a

specific location that um if we knew

about it might help us understand how

this behavior came across. I uh I write

in my book this story of this Dutch

family where

basically all the women in the family

were functioning okay but half the men

in the family were

one raped his sister, one stabbed his

boss with a pitchfork, one multiple one

committed arson, multiple of the men

were in prison. And at some point, I

guess one of the women was like, "Y'all,

you have to figure out what's going on

with the men in our family. Like, this

is too much to be a coincidence." And

what they found is that on the X

chromosome,

they had inherited a rare mutation in

the MAOA gene. So, MAOA is an enzyme

that degrades monoamines that, you know,

regulate how your neurons are talking to

one another. And women have two X

chromosomes. So if they inherit a bad

version, they're still the other

version. Whereas men only have one X.

And so from their mom, they got a 50/50

shot. Am I going to get the the mutated

version or the nonmutated version? I

mean, I find this study fascinating on

so many levels, right? That the single

letter change in your DNA could have

this massive effect on your behavior.

but also that all of these men were in

the criminal justice system and had not

been obviously flagged as something

organic or biological or mental illness

going on with them. And later they there

was another group that um found this

this you know a sensibly rare mutation

in several other impulsively aggressive

boys that had been referred to their

hospital. And they they ended their

scientific paper on what I find one of

the most haunting notes in the

scientific literature, which is, is this

actually rare? Or is it that when we're

faced with people doing horrible things,

we never even stop to look for what

might be causing it from our genetic or

neurobiological from organic way, which

I I think that's a really really

chilling thought. Um so

how do we you know in the absence I

think the question that you're asking is

an important one which is in the absence

of some smoking gun you know the mutated

gene the amygdala tumor how do we put

together

our knowledge as scientists as people

who read the science that yes it's genes

yes it's environment yes it goes into

the behavior and also we're humans we

have this this outrage rage and this

naturally this blame towards people that

harm each other. How do we as humans

hold both of those truths at the same

time? I think that's the real challenge.

>> I think once somebody is harmed, our

empathy shifts to the victim.

>> Yes.

>> Or victims.

>> Yes. in a way that oludes our maybe even

at times depending how close we are to

the victims or how much we identify with

it that oludes our um even care that

like like okay this guy this guy went up

on this I'm describing it historically

this guy went up on this tower killed

these people that security guard

eventually got him but the

>> you know

>> the parent of that kid that was just

walking to class

>> or you know the young woman who is, you

know, freshman year or whatever, you

know, she's dead now. Yeah.

>> She's gone. And so I think that in a in

a kind of healthy way, not kind of, in a

healthy way, we just we think the hell

with that guy.

>> One less glad they killed him. People

will say that, right? People say that

I'm I'm not necessarily Yeah. I guess in

some sense if I just stand back and my

reflexive response, it's like this guy

killed a lot of people. I understand he

was driven to it. He was stricken with

something. And I that the um but it's

hard for me to get to okay well there's

a genetic thing that set him up from a

gloma in the amydala of all places like

he he bad luck but because we assume

that people can intervene in their own

behavior. This gets down to kind of free

will type yes stuff that my colleague

Robert

>> Seapolski

>> you know he'll argue to the end of time

that there's no free will which is a

frustrating one for for many of us but

>> you know he's a hell of a smart guy. You

know, I think that the the issue

for many people is that genes are fairly

far upstream from behavior. You know, if

I said, "Okay, there's this guy down in

uh you know, Los Angeles, and you know,

he

>> I don't know, he he he got rabies from a

dog he was trying to save from the LA

River. And then 3 days later, you know,

he randomly committed this crime. He

killed somebody." You say, "Well, he had

rabies. He was raid." like we can make

the connection very easily, but that's a

you know a neural virus that hits the

amydala among other things and causes

people to get very aggressive. We'd go

okay you know

>> well you can imagine him without the

rabies. So there's there's you you can

you there's some distance between the

self that is the object of moral

judgment

>> and the cause that you're locating as

the salient cause for this behavior. And

if there's daylight between those, then

you can say, "Okay, well, I can imagine

what he was like before the rabies."

>> Genes make it harder to do that

>> because when we think of them as so

essential to the making of the self that

is the object of moral judgment,

>> who is the person that has different

genetics, right? We can't imagine

what Witwin would have been like if he

didn't have the tumor. We could imagine

what the guy would be like if he didn't

get with rabies. But who is the person

who has a different genotype? It's very

difficult to cast a different self. And

so it's very difficult to rescue that

self from our condemnation.

>> I'll say some uh something controversial

on the on the back of what you just

said, which is there may even be I'm

speculating here. You're the geneticist.

Uh I'm there may even be some

deeply hardwired unconscious notion

around genes that we know that genes can

be inherited that if somebody has a gene

which makes them a quote quote unquote

bad seed or predisposes them to a really

bad behavior and then they engage in it

and then they're in jail for the rest of

their life or they get shot by the

security guard. We hear the words good

riddance. M

>> good riddance implies good those genes

were now stopped

>> hope you know we don't know if they

reproduced before that so there's

something which makes the example you

gave before especially um eerie of the

uh IVF doc that was literally seeding

these these eggs with his own genes and

then somebody it's like

>> I mean that the implication is not that

that person was killing themselves but

whoever that physician was I mean not

somebody a it's terribly unethical

you know, at every level,

>> he's replicating

>> he's replicating his bad genes, right?

Whereas if somebody who is has a genetic

predisposition to be sociopathic or or

really destructive is um eliminated for

lack of a better word or taken out of

society. I mean sure I can you know

orient to the empathy around this person

who feels stricken but I think we are I

believe we are more hardwired to um to

think about

>> you know inheritance and propagation of

genes than maybe we are consciously

aware of. Yeah.

>> I mean, I growing up, I mean, my dad's

uh he's I wouldn't say he's like super

old school, but I remember growing up

like one of the messages I got was, you

know, if you're going to date someone,

meet the parents.

>> Like, you can learn a lot by meeting the

parents, which on the one hand is really

cool. It's like, oh, see how their

family is and how they interact. But it

has a genetic uh, you know, inheritance

implication like if they're kind people,

if you know, what are you look are you

look looking for pathology? No, you're

you might be, but you're mainly looking