The event that really sets this story in motion, the set of events, happened a few months after Barbara had brought Destiny home. What happens, it'll get stuck to one little part of the DNA and now that little bit of DNA And these things are called, apparently, methyl groups. PAT: Could you just tell us what you are doing now? That you can, somehow, by just being nice to them, reading them stories, or whatever, that you can somehow break them free of all that. She asked my opinion and that's what I'm giving. DESTINY HARRIS: Honestly, I think it never seemed like she was anything but my real mom, if that makes sense. But at that point just two of the six boys were living at home, Brian and Rodney. And what about the four kids that weren't raised with Barbara? PAT: Barbara has this drawer in her desk. And The other day someone was whistling and I was like, "Stop it", and it just hit me, I was like, "Oh God, I was him", it's never appeared until now. If they see methyl groups sitting on that bit of DNA, they are pissed. And very often, one of them will just go crashing into the DNA and it'll stick there like a barnacle or a glob of peanut butter. Life is hard.". CHARLOTTE ZIMMER: Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and CHARLOTTE and VERONICA ZIMMER: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Olov told us, take heart disease. Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. And if you were eating a whole lot between 9 and 12, one-quarter. And to believe anything else, that's naive. JAD: Look, in the end, what do I know? His famous example was giraffes. MICHAEL MEANEY: That's it. They lived longer lives, something like 30 years on average. Barbara Harris says she's convinced more than a dozen women], Have accepted her offer to be sterilized in return for money.]. PAT: And all over the political spectrum, from Hollywood lefties to social conservatives. A really good radiolab about this called Inheritance. We inherited this beloved show that we first fell in love with as listeners. That's interesting. CARL ZIMMER: She carries your kids for nine months and you're like, "That poor male toad.". CARL ZIMMER: He was revealing it with experiments. Inheritance, what you can move on to the next generation and what you can't. ROBERT: Are you near the Arctic Circle or OLOV BYGREN: My home village was 10 miles North of polar circle. So then the one that's in trouble, so thats one of, So I guess you could say to yourself, "Seven out of eight of these kids did all right?". LATIF: Oh you said it so much more diplomatically. PAT: I asked Barbara about some of the things that she'd said because, to be totally honest, they kind of turn my stomach. We travel to Ukraine to follow a shipment of abortion pills, and discover a complicated conversation about pregnancy and choice in wartime. ROBERT: Kammerer, for one, was sent off to work as a sensor for the Austrian military. CARL ZIMMER: Kammerer puts on a suit and he walks off into the mountains SAM KEAN: Outside Vienna on a Rocky mountain trail. LULU: Did you know there is a part of this show is gonna be like crazy breaking news, like happened yesterday and we already have a deep take on it? LULU: Yeah, thats it. a rat mother licking her baby can have such a profound effect, basically change the expression of the genes in the baby, well that's hopeful. I'm going to graduate with honors and one day I'm going to be able to tell her, "Look, I did this. Okay, I'm here. And when I found out the bill didn't pass, I just thought, "I have to come up with something else. Isaiah's in college and Taylor and Brandon, I met them at Barbara's house and they seemed to be fine. So its like grandpa's struggle is jumping forward and giving me a leg up? Visited Kammerer's lab when Kammerer wasn't there. KARIN BORGKVIST LJUNG: She was born 1904 and this is OLOV BYGREN: Everything happening in the family KARIN BORGKVIST LJUNG: Nelson, he was an idiot. CARL ZIMMER: It all came down to this jar with his toad in it. But I'm going to give them a basin of water. PAT: And by this point, she's 37 years old. Well, so here's the thing. Have you ever had someone call or write you and say that they regret their decision? Through all the training that we had to do and first aid, fingerprinted and had a background check done. ROBERT: Because it's got the thing stuck to it? She should be with me. Because we had already had to upgrade from a car to a van, from a condo to a home. They suddenly had to get by on a tiny fraction of the food that they were used to. Who, together, pledged more than $150,000 to her program.]. Kammerer, for one, was sent off to work as a sensor for the Austrian military. This, of course, is Destiny. FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: He had no idea about DNA. DESTINY HARRIS: Oh my goodness. DESTINY HARRIS: Are you going to kick it? ], [ARCHIVAL Clip, News: This could mean sterilization, it could mean getting an IUD.]. PAT: She actually emailed me afterwards and adjusted that number down a couple hundred. You just have to weigh it, is it worth it? It's just a mind crushing tedium. Truth is, we dont know precisely how this happens but somehow the experience of starvation marks the DNA. Well, her explanation is that these women are having, in her terms, litters of damaged babies and society forever will be responsible for them. Is that too old?" Can you say oh my goodness? ROBERT: I think what's weird here is that is that we started trying to make a difference in our children and now we're surprise attacked by our grandparents. JAD: But according to Kammerer, here's what happened when he heated up the toads little cage. And when she had a baby. Yes, but creating an assumption that there is a class of people who don't deserve to procreate, who aren't worthy of procreating the human race, leads you down a path that we should have great concern about. PAT: I like you, I get the sense that there's a lot of warmth in you. That was the implication, except Kammerer tried to defend himself by saying "Do you think I'm a Dummkopf, or an idiot, because that's what I would have to be if I left a forgery with ink standing around openly in the laboratory where so many of my enemies would have entry?". Heart disease. All these women who have so many babies and never try to seek drug treatment. I'm the founder and director of Project Prevention. Inheritance Radiolab Podcast Genetics Homework Assignment Homework assignment on the Radiolab podcast 'Inheritance', developed for a college-level cell biology class. They won't grow much on the outside, but on the inside That is the time where the sperms are developing. JAD: So I guess you could say to yourself, "Seven out of eight of these kids did all right?". It would be wrong to think that they represent all women who use drugs while they're pregnant. There were four girls and Barbara and Destiny told me that a few years ago they found three of them and they all either were in college or had finished college. Now, according to Carl, your genes are still fixed. PAT: That's really impressive. MICHAEL MEANEY: That activates maternal behavior. How do those cycles perpetuate? Yeah, there you go. And so, they just had to hold on for the entire winter. What can't you? DESTINY HARRIS: Kick it to him. All of our writers are dedicated to their job and do their best to produce all types of academic papers of superior quality. 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._Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today. And he was going through withdrawal. ROBERT: Which, when you think about it, it has a very Lamarckian flavor. So. And Destiny was in the other room, sleeping or something, I'm not sure. And I told Destiny I was thinking about this and asked her about it. KARIN BORGKVIST LJUNG: Jans Olaf, Hanna Kaiser, Heinrik Venvei. More brain cells? PAT: Nobody's arguing that women should do drugs when they're pregnant. Just sing. All jokes aside. Destiny has, what, three brothers and sisters that also were raised with her? Here, Kammerer's was saying, "You can do this even on a physical level.". You know? You know, they say it only takes one time. As to diabetes, it was a four-fold risk. ROBERT: Do you know anything about the other four? Kammerer thought, "Wow.". ROBERT: And that advantage, whatever it was, because it starts with one individual, and then it gets passed onto the kids, and then onto their kids, it would take a long, long, long time to spread through the whole population because, generally, that's how evolution works. His famous example was giraffes. Listen Feb 10, 2023 Bliss When did you last shout from happiness? A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. You know, the fact is that taking care of animals, trying to keep them alive in a building is not an easy thing, especially if it's 1903. Well, I just want to eliminate drug-addicted babies from being born. And those lucky ones, according to Darwin's theory, they would have had to have been born with some random mutation in their genes That gave them an advantage in this situation. JAD: Many years later, he and this woman. PAT: That's a lot of people. No, not brain cells. BARBARA HARRIS: Yeah, the social worker called and told me the mother had given birth. This was a really radical place at the time because you have to remember that people studying animals up till now, they were basically studying preserved specimens, and so on. They didn't have grains. It's off-limits. CARL ZIMMER: Well, there was an expert on reptiles named G. Kingsley Noble. PAT: This great. CARL ZIMMER: At this really marvelous place called the Vivarium. Then choose either Section II OR Section III and answer all questions in that . JAD: No, not brain cells. He said, "If you were a boy, and you starve between the ages of 9 and 12, and then you went on to become a father, then a grandfather, your grandkids". I know I've been joking a lot in this interview, but I mean it with all that I am. I mean that's a different kind of odds, but its Our staff includes Alan Horn, Soren Wheeler, Pat Walters With help from Matt Kielty, Chris [unintelligible 01:04:17], Special thanks to Martin [unintelligible 01:04:21], Copyright 2022 New York Public Radio. According to Frances, it's not just sitting up there perfectly preserved, it's in the middle of the cell, it's crowded. I think what's weird here is that is that we started trying to make a difference in our children and now we're surprise attacked by our grandparents. And if you were eating a whole lot between 9 and 12, one-quarter. The critical part of this JAD: Is that all these changes wake up this little gang of proteins. Okay. Not only that. ROBERT: One-fourth? Hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser, Radiolab is a podcast known for using innovative sound design to ask deep questions and investigative journalism to get the answers. There's going to be this massacre of toads and only a few lucky ones are going to survive. JAD: Don't you see, somehow the mother's tongue is getting all the way down in there and going [mumbles] and messing with the baby's DNA. ], [ARCHIVAL Clip, Panel: What's the worst thing you have been called by one of your critics? And the incredible thing is, those marks stick around. I'm going to graduate with honors and one day I'm going to be able to tell her, "Look, I did this. She was thinking BARBARA HARRIS: "Everybody's motivated by money., BARBARA HARRIS: Can I offer these women money to use birth control? It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. And in 1989, when the story we're telling now started, she was living in California, in Orange County. Like, I mean, as far as positives can go, I think I hit the jackpot. And he said, "Barbara, I'm not buying a school bus." JAD: Well, its offensive. Then she goes, "Oh wait, I didn't give birth to you. My mom needed a girl and, boop! FRANCES CHAMPAGNE: So, we have our rats in the lab and JAD: They thought, "Let's just see if we can figure out how it is the rat mothers pass down their parenting skills?". In this episode, originally aired in 2012, we put nature and nurture on a co Saying the mother had given birth to a baby girl, did we want her? On the one hand, she says, immediately, cheques started arriving. ROBERT: And those lucky ones, according to Darwin's theory, they would have had to have been born with some random mutation in their genes SAM KEAN: That gave them an advantage in this situation. SAM KEAN: Because it would reflect badly on the Soviet state. Not been born at all. Instead of dying at 40, I'd live to 70? JAD: Its an idea thats been kicking around for me since my kids were born. JAD: I find myself thinking like, Okay, I know these kids have their genes half from me, half from my wife. Welcome to the Grammys of government-funded research. [WILL: Hi, this is Will, calling from Northumberland, England. Around 1908, he started publishing all of these results. One time, and I'm on flighter. But this stuff you're telling me about Sweden feels very grim in a certain way. PAT WALTERS: Mamaw was the one I'd come to see. PAT: And Barbara found herself returning to a thought she'd kind of always had. I wonder. You're finishing college, right? BARBARA HARRIS: Aw, you blew him a kiss? JAD: In just two generations, these toads seem to have done something that should have taken, I don't know, 50, 100 generations? Nice, cool water. I wouldn't want to put it up to chance, because what kind of life is that? He thought that because theyre swinging hammers all day, they got big bulky muscles, and then theyd pass the muscles to their children. SAM KEAN: And these effects, in fact, were so strong that you could trace it to the grandfather. JAD: I tell you what I'm going to do though. So. _. Radiolab is on YouTube! PAT: And she says, one day, this idea just came to her. [chuckles]. Because here's the thing, the churches up in verkalix kept incredibly detailed records. JAD: Who now works at Columbia University. ROBERT: Frankly, this makes being 9, 10, 11, 12 like a rather crucial. Then, Carl told us about this research that showed JAD: Well, he couldn't quite remember the details. ROBERT: He was a born nurturer and he adored animals. JAD: So now, the genes can make the proteins that make the rats a good mom? JAD: Thanks to Olov Bygren, reporter Pejk Malinovski and KARIN BORGKVIST LJUNG: Karin Borgkvist Ljung, and I'm a senior archivist at the National Archive in Marieberg in Stockholm. Move on to the next cage, yes, no? I wont say too much more except it includes one of my favorite kind of scientific parables that like Ive ever heard. ROBERT: They won't grow much on the outside, but on the inside OLOV BYGREN: That is the time where the sperms are developing. Oh, that's a lot of potatoes. 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