8 | Carl Zimmer on Heredity, DNA, and Editing Genes

8 | Carl Zimmer on Heredity, DNA, and Editing Genes

Our understanding of heredity and genetics is improving at blinding speed. It was only in the year 2000 that scientists obtained the first rough map of the human genome: 3 billion base pairs of DNA with about 20,000 functional genes. Today, you can send a bit of your DNA to companies such as 23andMe and get a report on your personal genome (ancestry, health risks) for about $200. Technologies like CRISPR are allowing scientists to edit genes, not just map them. Science writer Carl Zimmer has been following these advances for years, and has recently written a comprehensive book about heredity: She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. We talk about how our understanding of heredity has changed over the years, how there is much more to inheritance than simply listing all the information we pass down in our DNA, and what the future might hold in a world where genetic manipulation becomes widespread. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/carl-zimmer.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Carl Zimmer is a leading science writer whose work regularly appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. He is the author of thirteen books, including a university-level textbook on evolutionary biology. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. He teaches as an adjunct professor at Yale University. Home page Matter column in The New York Times Yale home page Wikipedia page Amazon author page Talk on Science, Journalism, and Democracy Twitter Download Episode

Jaksot(415)

333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

Why are people wrong all the time, anyway? Is it because we human beings are too good at being irrational, using our biases and motivated reasoning to convince ourselves of something that isn't quite ...

27 Loka 20251h 10min

332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

Music is math that you can dance to. The fact that certain notes sound good when played together, or in succession, is related to the mathematical properties of the frequencies to which they correspon...

20 Loka 20251h 21min

AMA | October 2025

AMA | October 2025

Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pat...

13 Loka 20253h 37min

331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs boson, as well as features of the initial conditi...

6 Loka 20251h 54min

330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information

330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information

A characteristic of complex systems is that individual components combine to exhibit large-scale emergent behavior even when the components were not specifically designed for any particular purpose wi...

29 Syys 20251h 12min

329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge

329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge

Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, a...

22 Syys 20251h 16min

328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies

328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies

Like any machine, bodies occasionally break down, and it's natural to go in search of a replacement part. Ancient societies featured simple prosthetics for teeth, noses, and limbs, while modern medici...

15 Syys 20251h 7min

AMA | September 2025

AMA | September 2025

Welcome to the September 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by P...

8 Syys 20253h 30min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

tiedekulma-podcast
rss-poliisin-mieli
rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
docemilia
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-luontopodi-samuel-glassar-tutkii-luonnon-ihmeita
utelias-mieli
radio-antro
rss-astetta-parempi-elama-podcast
rss-lapsuuden-rakentajat-podcast
rss-lihavuudesta-podcast
rss-sosiopodi