How Much of “You” is Heredity? & Martin Cooper: The Father of the Cellphone - SYSK Choice
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What word in the English language has the most meanings?
Today on Something You Should Know, what word in the English language has the most meanings, and it's only three letters long? Then, what is heredity, and how much are you really like your parents?
It's not like just because you look like one of your parents, you are more like them in some sort of deep way. You inherit 50% of your genes from one parent, 50% from the other. So genetically speaking, you're just a perfect 50-50 split between your parents.
Also, where did sneakers or tennis shoes come from? And you'll meet the father of the modern cell phone. He actually made the very first public cell phone call, and he has high hopes for the future.
Think about the potential of a cell phone. The UN did a study that showed that 1.2 billion people in Africa moved out of severe poverty, mostly because of their cell phones.
How does heredity influence who we are?
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Hi.
What misconceptions exist about heredity?
Welcome to Something You Should Know. We start today with an interesting question. Which word in the English language has the most different meanings? Unless you know it, you probably won't believe it. It's only three letters, but it has 645 meanings, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And the word is... Think about it. You can run to the store. You can have a run in your stockings. You can run over on your budget. Your car can run over a nail, and if it punctures the tire, then your car won't run right. You can run in a race. You can run up a tab. And if you're the boss, then you run the show.
How did Martin Cooper create the first cell phone?
And the list goes on. One small word, lots and lots of meanings. 645 of them. And now I must run on to the next segment. And that is something you should know. When you hear the word hereditary, you probably think about things like eye color or hair color or height, things like that, things you inherit from your parents or that are passed down through generations of families. But it turns out there's a lot of misunderstanding about what is and isn't hereditary and how much of who you are is determined by heredity versus your environment versus your personal choice. And science is learning so much about this, with so much more to discover in the future. It's a fascinating subject, and no one has tackled it better than Carl Zimmer.
Carl writes for the New York Times, he teaches science writing at Yale University, and he's author of a really interesting and really big book called She Has Her Mother's Laugh, The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. Hi Carl, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me.
What impact did the first cellphone call have on communication?
So what is heredity? How do you define it? Most of us know what we mean by, you know, passing down from your parents your eye color or your hair color, but dive in a little deeper here.
Well, heredity is a word that's been around for a long time. I mean, the ancient Romans would talk about heredity, and their word was hereditas, and it referred to the rule's by which people inherited stuff from each other. And we still talk about inheriting money or houses or what have you. But by the 1800s, people were thinking about other things that people inherited. Why was it that diseases seemed to run in families, for example? So people started to look for explanations for why each generation inherited resemble the previous generation in different ways. And that's what led to the discovery of genetics.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What word in the English language has the most meanings?
0:01–0:55
2
How does heredity influence who we are?
0:55–1:46
3
What misconceptions exist about heredity?
1:46–2:32
4
How did Martin Cooper create the first cell phone?
2:32–3:49
5
What impact did the first cellphone call have on communication?
3:49–7:54
6
How did sneakers evolve from athletic shoes to everyday wear?
7:54–9:03
7
What role did cultural changes play in the popularity of sneakers?
9:03–13:09
8
How has mobile technology transformed lives globally?
13:09–46:20
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Something You Should Know
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