Are Human Genetics An Unfair Lottery? - Paige Harden - #387

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's happening, people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Paige Harden. She's a psychologist and behavioral geneticist, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and an author. The goal of social equality is to give everyone a fair opportunity to achieve in life. But even if advantages and disadvantages in the environment are equalized, all of us are starting at different positions genetically because we get far more than just environment from our parents. Paige is trying to work out how DNA can be integrated into social equality. Expect to learn why people are so uncomfortable talking about behavioural genetics, why your failures might be less of your fault than you think, why hitting puberty early makes girls bad at maths, whether genetic markers for working hard should be accounted for when evening out the playing field and much more. This conversation is so fraught and interesting and conflicting. We like to believe that we are the masters of our own success, but genetics have played a huge part, in fact, probably a bigger part than any other influence on what you've achieved in life, and telling you that that's not your success, that's actually because of the genes that you've got. It doesn't make people feel very good, and yet the social equality implications are really interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed this little dance with Paige today. Very, very cool. Before we get on to other news, don't forget the Modern Wisdom Locals Community is now available right this very second. Go to modernwisdom.locals.com, or there's a link in the show notes below. We'll have a discussion thread today. We can talk about what we think about behavioral genetics and its influence on social equality, or you can go and check out the exclusive episode with Jonny and Yusef, which I recorded last week and is amazing. And the only way you can get that is by joining Locals. Go to modernwisdom.locals.com and connect with everybody else that listens to the show. You can post your own stuff. You can make friends, you can tell me things that I've got right or got wrong, can send in suggestions for other stories and threads and creators that I should react to, or feature in upcoming episodes. We'll have regular life hacks threads as well. So every couple of weeks, I'll get you to submit suggestions, and I might try and test them out on myself, Jonny and Yousef, modernwisdom.locals.com. In these other news, this episode is brought to you by MyProtein. You need a protein powder in your life. You're probably not getting enough protein in your diet. So you need a protein powder, but most of them make you feel bloated and uncomfortable, or they taste like a milkshake, and you can't have them when it's hot or when you're training hard. The solution has been fixed. 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