Episode description

Behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin’s book Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are has changed lives. Robert is arguably the leading figure in behavioural genetics, working across the field for many decades. In his book Blueprint, he shows us the extraordinary evidence for our genetic nature being the absolutely dominant force in predicting who we are and will become. In fact about 50% of everything we care about is predicted by our genes. Not just our weight and height, but schizophrenia, anxiety and depression, to personality traits like agreeableness, grit, and love of learning, through to general intelligence and even university success. 

Emile and Lloyd probe Robert for the implications his research has for how we approach parenting. Outside of loving and protecting our children, Robert says parents can let go a bit of that inner panic that tells them that their role is to mould their kids, that their actions are crucial determinants in their children growing up to be smart, resilient, growth mindset, kind, enthusiastic, healthy, non-anxious or depressed, adults.  Parents are just not that important, except in the genes they’ve passed on. Most radically of all, Plomin entreats us to focus on enjoying our time with our children, saying that parenting matters most just through the quality of our experiences together. 

Robert Plomin

Robert Plomin is Professor of Behavioural Genetics in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre at The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. His research brings together genetic and environmental strategies to investigate the developmental interplay between nature and nurture. In 1994 when he came to the UK from the US, he launched the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), which continues to thrive. He has published more than 900 papers and a dozen books, which have been cited more than 130,000 times. His latest book is Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (Penguin, 2019).

After 50 years of research, Robert  has come to the view that inherited DNA differences are the major systematic force that makes us who we are as individuals – our mental health and illness, our personality and our cognitive abilities and disabilities. The environment is important, but it works completely different from the way we thought it worked. The DNA revolution has made it possible to use DNA to predict our psychological problems and promise from birth. These advances in genetic research call for a radical rethink about what makes us who we are, with sweeping, and no doubt controversial, implications for the way we think about parenting, education and the events that shape our lives.

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Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Bronwen Reid

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com & @JonahPrimo on Instagram. 

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