Carl Zimmer

Actually, that's just really kind of the starting point for understanding what heredity is and why it means so much to us.

You know, I think we have developed an idea that if we want to understand our own identity and who we are, we have to look to the past, that somehow we can zero in on some ancestor to figure out how our lives ended up the way they are.

And, you know, so this is what drives the huge genealogy business today and the direct-to-consumer genetics testing.

I mean, we want to

We want to find out, are we 27% Irish?

And can we identify our great-great-great-great-great-grandmother?

And maybe there's something like us in that person.

But I would just broadly say that heredity is what the past gave the present and what the present is going to leave for the future.

I think a lot of things that we single out are just quirk.

There are things that lots of people have, and it just so happens that one of your many, many relatives has it in common with you.

It's a bit like astrology that way.

Yeah, you can find some coincidences that seem compelling, but I think we need to sort of look deeper.

And it is possible that you are similar to your parents, not necessarily because you share genes with them, but also because they raised you.

and you are paying very close attention to them, like it or not, and you are getting to be like them.

That's not to say that genetics don't play a role.

I mean, you know, tall people tend to have tall children and short people tend to have short children.

I mean, that's a fact.

But it's not simple, you know, and it's perfectly normal to have people who are very short have kids who are very tall and vice versa.

That happens.

So to really understand who you are,