#128 DTC Series: Adam Rutherford on How To Argue With A Racist
Dr. Adam Rutherford is our guest for this second installment of our Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing series. He is a geneticist, author, and broadcaster. Dr. Rutherford has a PhD in Genetics, a degree in evolutionary biology, and is an honorary Research Fellow at UCLA. He was an audio-visual content editor for the journal Nature for a decade, and is a frequent contributor to the newspaper The Guardian. On radio, he is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship science program, Inside Science, as well as many documentaries. On TV, he has presented multiple BBC series including The Beauty of Anatomy, The Gene Code, and award winners Playing God and The Cell. Dr. Rutherford has also been a scientific advisor to films including Biophilia Live, World War Z, The Secret Service and Ex Machina (2015). He has authored multiple books including, “A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived” and the book we will be discussing today, “How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference” which is being released this August! Enter our giveaway for a copy of his book on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
On This Episode We Discuss:
How genetics is woven into the history of race
Discrepancy of papertrails and ancestry reports from DTCs between European and non-European descent
What DTC companies can do to address this racial disparity
How genetics of ethnicity contradict Dawkins’ “tyranny of the discontinuous mind” concept
How is it possible to not be genetically related to an ancestor
What we can learn by comparing the genomes of African and African-American people
How consumer ancestry genetic testing affects how we think about our genetic differences
Olympics reveal of the limitation genetic predisposition
DTCs contribution to racial reification
Sponsoring this episode is Advanced Tele-Genetic Counseling (AT-GC) which provides virtual appointments to meet with a certified genetic counselor. These one-on-one conversations can help you understand how your own genetics may play a role in your health. Access to healthcare should not be dependent on where you live, which is why ATGC was founded! You can schedule your telehealth appointment directly on their website.
As mentioned in the episode, you can signup here for the next free Phenotips Speaker Series on August 12th at 12pmET. Our host Kira Dineen will be interviewing Ellen Matloff about “The Evolving Role of Genetic Counselors in Precision Medicine”.
Stay tuned for the next new episode of DNA Today on August 21st! New episodes are released on the first and third Friday of the month. In the meantime, you can binge 127 other episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, streaming on the website, or any other podcast player by searching, “DNA Today”.
See what else we are up to on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and our website, DNApodcast.com. And don’t forget to enter the giveaway! If you can’t wait to see if you've won, head over to Amazon to order your copy. Questions/inquiries can be sent to info@DNApodcast.com.
Transcript
Please note this transcript has been automatically generated and may not be completely accurate.
00:00:00
Unfortunately not everyone has access to see a genetic counselor in person. This has always been a barrier in our field. That's why Elizabeth Turner started advanced tele genetic counseling in 2016 to be able to provide a scalable telehealth platform for genetic counseling services where genetic counselors can help patients navigate through areas of genetics like genetic testing and ultimately understand their own genetics. Their multidisciplinary approach to genetic counseling makes ATGC a great fit for patients and their providers. So if you find yourself having questions about your own genetics or want to learn more about adding the expertise of ATGCs. Certified genetic counselors to help support your own practice, reach out to the team through their website AT hyphen G C dot com.
Hello, you're listening to DNA today, a genetics podcast and radio show. I'm your host here Kira Dineen. On this show. We explore genetics impact on our health through conversations with leaders in genetics. These are experts like genetic counselors, researchers, doctors and patient advocates.
00:01:18
This episode continues our direct consumer genetic testing series with our second installment. Our guest is Dr Adam Rutherford. He is a geneticist author and broadcaster. Dr Rutherford has a PhD in genetics a degree in evolutionary biology and is an honorary research fellow at U. C. L. A. He was an audiovisual content editor for the general nature for a decade and is a frequent contributor to the newspaper The Guardian. His voice may sound familiar because on radio. He is the presenter of BBC Radio's four's flagship science program Inside Science as well as many other documentaries on Tv. He has presented multiple BBC series including The Beautiful of Anatomy, the Gene code and award winners playing God and the Cell. Dr Rutherford has also been a scientific advisor to films including biophilia, live, World War Z, the Secret Service and ex machina. He's authored multiple books including a brief history of everyone who ever lived and the book we're gonna be discussing on today's episode. How to argue with a racist, what are genes do and don't say about human difference which is being released.
00:02:19
This august stick around until the end of the episode to find out how to enter our giveaway to win one of a few copies of his brand new book. Spoiler, Head over to our social media to find out. Welcome to the show. Dr Rutherford, it's very exciting and an honor to have you joining us for this episode. It's a pleasure to be talking to you Cara. So I thought we'd start out talking about that. It's very important to acknowledge how the field of genetics started and in your book which has just been released, How to argue with the racist. You write that genetics is woven into the history of race in every conceivable way. How do you explore this in your book? Right, so I just think it's so important that we know our own history. And while you know genetics, contemporary genetics is really the the main science, the main academic field, which has disproved of biological concept of of race. It's history is deeply problematic um in exactly the opposite way. So the the invention of race or at least the invention of race as we currently use it In a colloquial sense, really, really was in parallel and in some ways marshaled by the political ideologies of European expansionism.
00:03:32
So, so the the age of empires, the values of the enlightenment and this time period between the sort of 16th to 20th century when Europeans were colonizing the rest of the world. And this is not my theory, although I think it's not well known within genetics. This is a this is a fairly well established theory in in history and understanding the history of race, that the creation of these tax economies of humans, the way we classify humans as we met them, as we were expanding away from europe and into particularly africa and classifying the people of the world. These were these were the sort of birth of scientific ideas at the time, by people like linnaeus, whose work we still continue to use every single day in the biological sciences, but they were taking these scientific ideas of the time which are now considered to be pseudoscientific in order To not only classify people, but to classify people in a hierarchical structure.
00:04:35
So this is it's white supremacy, but not in the contemporary usage of the words white supremacy. It's white supremacy because all of these classifications done by many Europeans over this time period from the 17th century onwards, they are taxonomy, they are classifications of people using physical characteristics mostly erroneously, you know, mostly sort of nonsensically and non scientifically, but they're also hierarchical with always with white Europeans being at the top of that. So the argument presented in the book, which is often presented in history, but as I said, perhaps not well not as well known in our subject, is that um it is the marshaling of the birth of a new science, of studying human variation right at the root of this concept of the scientific revolution during the enlightenment, which forms the basis of the racism that we still have in our societies today. And you also mentioned that going along with this, that humans really like to categorize information.
00:05:38
That's often how uh in classes and education were presenting information, students are studying information. That's how our brain works. And Dawkins calls this, as you said in the book, the tyranny of the discontinuous mind. How are we now contradicting all those ideas with studying the genetics of ethnicity? Yeah, it's a good line that, isn't it? It is, I loved it. The tyranny of the discontinuous mind. It's such a it's such a cornerstone of the human condition that we desperately try to put things in neat, self contained boxes. And we say, you know, this is a this is what linnaeus was doing. As I just, you know, I mentioned earlier about when talking about classification of all living creatures, including humans, trying to describe things as they are. And it was Darwin's great genius in reference to living things life on earth to recognize that trying to classify things in a sort of perfect immutable a platonic form, you know, this is this duck, here is the duck against which all ducks are going to be compared.
00:06:44
The Darwin's great genius or one of his many great genius moments was to recognize that life is four dimensional and we we we travel through time. Biology changes through time as well as being um in the three dimensions of space. And so our attempts, it's very natural to categorize things and put things in very neat boxes. Well, evolution hasn't occurred with the intention of being understood or with organisms being classified. So I'm pretty opposed to species concepts um more broadly than just talking about human categorizations. But the question you're asking me is those classifications that Linares comes up with and others try and reinforce over the couple of 100 years from the 17th century onwards that none of them are utilizing because it doesn't exist. The fundamental pool from from which human variation is drawn, which is human genetics, which is our genomes, which is our DNA. And you know, because we didn't know about it until the 20th century. And we didn't know about it in this in any sort of sophisticated way until the 21st century.
00:07:49
So this idea that we can classify people by physical characteristics, the most obvious and most clumsy of which is is pigmentation and yet is the primary classifier from the birth of scientific racism actually bears very little or limited relationship to the variation that we see in our DNA. And so it was genetics. It was human genetics in the late 20th century and now in the 21st century. That said, our categorizations that we use socially are not right. They don't work from a biological point of view. And this is why we say that race is a social construct rather than a biological one. Race exists because we decide that it exists and because we behave like it it exists. Um but it's not, it doesn't correlate well or usefully with how we see human variation. When we when we actually look at the the ocean of human variation which is which is our genomes. So, you know, genetics was responsible. Well, the ancestor of genetics was responsible for the creation of this field of scientific racism.
00:08:56
But ironically a nice a beautiful irony is that it is also the the endpoint of exactly the same idea, which I think is a very it's elegant and it's so scientific that we have removed our prejudices um by by applying the scientific method, the more we learn, we're able to see that the original structures and categorizations that we created are just not right. It doesn't make any sense to really be doing it in that way, but we have to kind of rewire our brains to think, okay, this isn't really how we should be approaching this. And One line that you had in the book is we could eventually cluster all humans into seven billion individuals um because every human genome is unique. So it's like you can take this concept to a very extreme level or you know the other way and really be manipulating it. So it's really just a way of thinking of things. Um another concept that what's interesting to me in the book that I think a lot of people may not understand is that when you go back every generation, in terms of ancestry, when you go backwards in every generation, it doubles the number of ancestors someone has, but we can't continue with that trend because that doesn't make sense.
00:10:08
Um can you kind of explain this concept and for people that may not be familiar with like how that works and how that was figured out. Yeah. Yeah. This is I've been teaching this for years and I've written this in an earlier book, a brief history of everyone who ever lived. I talk about it and then I wrote about it again in a slot with with a sort of racial angle to it in this new book. And every time I say this, it's still absolutely fries my noodle. So it's just such a weird sort of non experiential concept that I have to keep reiterating it so that I can understand it. But yeah, like you said, like you set it up there, everyone has two parents and that is a biological reality. That is um, that has existed throughout time because we are sexual organisms. And so the number of ancestors, you have doubles every time you go back a generation uh, into the past. We also know that there are more humans alive today than at any point in history, Not cumulatively, which is a myth that goes around. People say that sometimes there are more dead people in there and there are more people alive today than there are dead people.
00:11:13
That's not correct, but there are more people alive today than at any other point in history. So you've got these two apparently conflicting numbers. If you go back through time, you have more ancestors, if you go forward in time, we have more people on earth. So how do you resolve that? Well, it's kind of obvious were incredibly inbred as a species. And so the scientific concept, the concept within population genetics is called pedigree collapse or coalescence theory where your family tree branches out from you as an individual and but after a few generations it begins to fold in on itself and eventually it collapses in on itself. So what that means practically is that you have double the number of ancestors positions on your family tree. Um So two to the power of em when n is the number of rounds, a number of generations you're talking about by the time you get 1000 years back it's like more than a trillion. Which is more people than have ever existed. So that can't be right. But it's the positions that are important because what we find out what we discovered from both genetics and looking at family trees.
00:12:19
Genealogy and genetic genealogy is that the same people begin to occupy multiple multiple positions on everyone's family trees. And after A few years, you know it's like 2030, 40 generations. Those numbers coalesce so much so that all branches of your family tree begin to flow through all individuals. And we call this this idea of the genetic ice a point. So for Europeans, if you go back 1000 years, what you find is that the population alive in europe 1000 years ago, if they have living descendants today, then they are the ancestors of all Europeans today. Wait. Yeah. And I just said it for the 1000th time. This is like like bog standard. And I said it and as soon as I said, I thought, Wait, is that right? And the truth is it is right. It's both mathematically correct. Which was worked out by Mathematicians in the late 20th, early 21st century, but also the genetics reinforces that we we are we are descended from much smaller pools than we like to think.
00:13:25
The reason this is important for when talking about race or ethnicity or family trees is the concept of racial purity, which is very important to white Supremacists is just a historical and non scientific. It is an absolute fiction based on fundamentally misunderstanding how family trees actually work compared to how we think they work, which is that we have this long pure lineage of one family that has descended from William the conqueror, wow! It turns out that uh everyone in europe is descended from William the conqueror or earlier. Look, I can see a picture of you on the screen as we're talking and I can see that you have european ancestry based on the color of your skin. You are descended from William the conqueror. So congratulations! Well done. It could be a fun fact to throw out and then understand that other people are also related. So it's it's an interesting concept of, you know, if you go back and a pedigree you're looking at more and more as you said. But those spots end up overlapping so that if you have this interesting concept which is the genetic is a point that you mentioned, which I just found so fascinating while reading the book.
00:14:29
And I think you also brought up an interesting concept that there is a huge discrepancy in the detail of direct consumer ancestry reports between people of european descent, like you said myself and people of non european descent for those that may not be aware why is there a discrepancy there? Yeah, that's exactly right. So the fundamental reason for this is that the director consumer genetic ancestry business. So these are companies like ancestry.com and 23 me and quite a few others for the most part, their databases from which they compare. Your genetic sample too are made up of other paying customers. So for a long time and it continues to be the case to this day, although I know that they are making efforts to rectify this. What that means is you see enormous detail of um for example, Europeans or european descended americans because this, this tends to be the socioeconomic demographic, there is most likely to buy these tests which are, you know, 100 bucks or or something similar.
00:15:36
Um and so what that means is that we have enormous resolution of the details of where in europe. Um uh people's ancestors are likely to have come from compared to the majority of the rest of the world who haven't bought these kinds of tests because they're they're not as socioeconomically privileged. There's a, I've got a personal example of this because I'm half english and half indian. Um and my when I did my 23 me, my english half from my dad's side uh is resolved down to the, you know, the sort of 230.8% Swedish and 0.1 point 2% Norwegian and northern german and you know, the whole shebang. And it's all it's mapped out on this beautiful map which shows all of these color schemes for northwest europe. My other half my maternal DNA comes from, well via Guiana, but is indian in in its uh in its ancestry. And that's just a block. That's just one block because not many people in India have taken these tests.
00:16:41
And so what does that say says that what 1.3 billion Indian people are basically genetically identical to each other? And yet we can determine the genetic difference between someone from Oslo or someone from a sala in Sweden? Well, it's a kind of a nonsense, it's just uh it has this effect of reinforcing what people's people's preconceptions and people's prejudices about their ancestry? Actually, I'm pretty cynical about the value of these tests. How does consumer ancestry genetic testing effect then, how we think about our genetic differences when people are receiving these reports, do you think that it more goes towards people reinforcing the ideas and the perspectives they had before the test? Or is it kind of an opposite effect where we see that people end up finding out there from more countries and regions and areas and they thought and end up having kind of more of a perspective on this. Well that's a great question. And I think this is a question that we're only going to be fully able to answer and when it gets studied properly and in the future, but I think the underlying answer to whether people end up thinking, you know, I'm I'm purely descended from the irish or or or another country or ethnicity or look, I'm descended from multitudes.
00:17:59
And therefore I've got a much broader perspective both of those answer. Both predicated on something which I think is not useful or necessarily scientifically verifiable or true. Which is just this notion that we are characters. Our personalities are essentially determined by not only our genes, but are the genes that which are descended from um from our ancestors wherever they regionally based. And so this is something that we didn't really anticipate within academic genetics 10 years ago when we were sort of trying really hard to move away from this, this kind of concept of genetic determinism, that what's in your biology, what's in your genomes is going to determine uh behave your medic medical status is your your your behavior. Um, and and those sorts of characteristics. And then along came direct to consumer testing. And I think that subtly and perhaps to a certain extent subliminally this had the effect of saying to people, oh yeah, you know what the answers to who you are buried in your in your DNA.
00:19:11
And not only that they're buried in your DNA. but that DNA is descended from from from ancestors. And they come from these countries. So it was, it's something that I find, you know, it's kind of the bane of my life because a lot of people write to me a lot because I'm a sort of public face of genetics and evolution. At least in the UK, people write to me all the time and they say, uh, they either say I've done my ancestry and I'm descended from Vikings or I'd like to do my ancestry in order to find out that I'm descended from Vikings because Vikings were really cool. But the thing is that the Vikings came before the ice a point. The thing we were talking about where everyone is descended from everyone in europe, they were there before the ice a point, which means that literally every european and quite possibly a significant proportion of people outside of europe are literally descended from Vikings as well. So people take take away from this, They say, hey, it turns out I'm descended from Vikings. I got blond hair or blue eyes. And look, I'm descended from Vikings Vikings, you know?
00:20:14
Yeah. Well a I could've told you that for free because I can look at you and be so what, you know, you're also descended from a bunch of people that the Vikings slaughtered. You're descended from amazing warriors, but also the guys who cleaned those amazing warriors warriors shoes. And you're descended from cowards and brave people and not Vikings and jews and um saxons and huns and basically everyone, because that's how genealogy actually works. So if you want to spend 100 bucks getting that from a company, you know, fill your boots, I offer this service for free. It's interesting that people will really latch onto, oh, I come from this specific, say it's a person or this specific um different group of people. Whereas as you said, you know that we were kind of using me as an example earlier, you can tell me certain things just by looking at my picture. I don't necessarily need to do a genetic ancestry test to learn certain Things. And so it's interesting that people really grasp onto certain aspects of it and forgetting all the rest of it.
00:21:20
I think that's that's an interesting concept that really gets brought to light when people are looking at ancestry and they're talking about their breakdown from 100% of what you're made of um using that kind of language. And earlier we were talking about looking at genetic diversity and and seeing that we're not just one thing as we've been talking about and Africa has the most genetic diversity on the planet. What can we learn by specifically comparing genomes of african people and people who are african americans specifically. Yeah. Well that's a great question. The answer is the first bit is everything because we haven't looked right. So the the history of looking at genomes is heavily focused on european and european descended americans for largely for historical reasons. These are a lot of the research is done in those locations and not around the rest of the world. Um, but also for reasons which I think are understandable by looking at structural racism um to a certain degree.
00:22:22
And I think that's that's an interesting line to pursue. But as you say, yes, we are an african species. Homo sapiens emerged within the last 0.5 million years. Um, Well, you now think not just in the east coast of Africa, but all around Africa. Uh, and then a small proportion of people, a very small population, maybe maybe less than 10,000 people migrated away from Africa within the last 100,000 years. And from those populations, the majority of the rest of the world are largely descended. There's a lot of sci fi caveats with him. What I just said. So what that means is that most of our most, most evolution for humans occurred within Africa. Now we see that when we look at the genomics of African people of which there are 1.2 billion, as you say, more genetic diversity within Africa and the rest of the world put together. Well, that means practically, is that to Africans from anywhere on the continent are more likely to be more different to each other than either one of them is to, you know, you or I, or pretty much anyone in the rest of the world who doesn't have recent african ancestry.
00:23:31
And yet from a social point of view, we say they're black people. It's a meaningless scientific, It has has no value in science to refer to Africans as, as black people. But you were asking about african americans and that that is a fascinating topic and a difficult topic because of the majority of african americans are descended from the enslaved from the period of of the transatlantic slavery. five or 6 countries from the west coast of uh of Africa. Um Maybe 12 million people taken from their from their homes in chains and sold into uh into slavery in the Americas, both north and south. Now that is a, from a purely not a social but a purely evolutionary point of view. Just looking at the genetics. That is a very weird thing to happen. And we can see that weirdness in, in the genomics of african americans because what we see is a number of things, you see a mixture of the different countries of origin because they weren't kept apart.
00:24:40
The enslaved weren't kept apart by um by country, they were put it, they were chained to ships and then sold um around the country. Um, and the caribbean and south America as well. So that's that's one thing. But the second thing is that we're the emerging picture is that almost all african americans have a significant proportion of european DNA in them. And a lot of uh european white descended americans have african american ancestry in them. Now. You know you don't have to be a priest or a genealogist to work out what's gone on there. But again it is a characteristic of this well so unnatural selection of the forcing of people from one country or one continent uh to another During the wickedness of the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent mixing and the behavior of people over the over the last 400 years.
00:25:43
Which has meant that African American is a cultural identity and not really a coherent biological one. And again that just reinforces that earlier notion that we're talking about that race is a Social construct, a biological one that you know to to self identify as an african american which is distinct from recent migrations from africa to to the Americas. Um particularly people of Nigerian descent who have a different historical and social experience to african americans who are the descendants of the enslaved. Um All of these secrets are kept within our D. N. A. And we only have had access to them for for the last you know, 55 years, 5, 10 years tops. And even though we've had access doesn't mean that we've done research. We've been able to do genetic research for some time now. But we haven't really tapped into being able to study people of african descent as much as we should be too as we said before of increasing databases so that it's not just people of european descent that are getting very specific areas um that they know that they're from this region or even this county of you know, that's just one aspect of genetic information and so much that we can learn from studying what really is the, as you said, the most diverse um genomes that we have.
00:27:04
And we're looking at people from Africa And one other concept I wanted to talk about before we end the show um is talking about athletic ability and how that can be possibly. And in some ways related to genetics, some people may be familiar with fast twitching muscles or slow twitching muscles for sprinting or long distance running but it's not as simple as just genetic predisposition. What are some of the other factors that may be playing a larger role in someone's running ability and maybe looking at the olympics and seeing um how that has played out over the decades. Right. So I confidently predicted in this book when we're in the version that you're holding. But I constantly predicted when I wrote it at the next winner of the the 20 2100 m sprint in Tokyo would be a a man of african american descent. I didn't anticipate covid happening. So that that has now been corrected whenever that race happens. I still think that will be the next. Yes. Right, right.
00:28:05
Thanks. So we look at the dominance of african american men and Canadian and specifically Jamaican Usain bolt and a couple of others 100 m sprint. And that seems like a, it seems like a database from which you could say, well, hold on, a man, there's something going on here. There hasn't been a white man in the olympic final of the 100 m since 1980. Allen Wells Scottish Man. You think, well, that doesn't that say something? Well, it does appear uh, at first glance to say something possibly biological, but upon scraping the the surface away, it just turns out that that is just such a small dataset and the biology, it doesn't add up in any particular way. Yes, you're right too point out that some people might have heard of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles and that's genetically encoded in a way that we don't really understand. It should be pointed out. You're a geneticist. So, you know, you know, the complexities of this, but in the press, it gets simplified so quickly and just says, you know, you've got fast twitch sells, you can sprint if you've got slow twitch sells, you can long distance run.
00:29:14
Um, it's not nearly as simple as that. So the extension to this as an argument is well, if it was the case that, that african american people have are genetically predisposed to be good at explosive energy sports. And that's because of fast twitch cells which is genetically encoded, then why is the reason for that? And it has been suggested including by, for example, Michael johnson, one of my favorite athletes of all time. This is a result of a couple of centuries of slave traders breeding humans of african descent specifically for strength and speed. And as a result of that, they're better at these particular sports. Well, it seems like a reasonable hypothesis. Trouble is you look at the data and it's just not true. And so these are exactly the types of stereotypes that people use and cling to and they're sometimes called positive attribute racism because you know, who doesn't want to be a good runner, who doesn't want to be fitter and and and faster. That's not racism.
00:30:17
You might hear people say that's you know, I want to be better at this. These people are better at this than than than us. Well, there's two things wrong with that one, it's not true, We don't see any evidence of any selection in the african american genome compared to the african genomes from, from which those african americans are descended. So there it's not even that we see positive selection for genes associated with sprinting or long distance running or anything. We don't see any selection uh in the african american genome compared to their african um cousins. So that's that's that's that's one aspect of the social reason why those stereotypes and myths are important to disabuse people of is because what they actually do is they, even though you think it's a positive attribute, what they are actually doing is reinforcing some of the ideas that were created in the 17th and 18th century by the people we started this conversation talking about. So that, you know, the people like linnaeus and Voltaire and Kant and and some of the great thinkers and proto scientists on which Western culture is heavily reliant who said things like white people are smarter and more hardworking and more industrious and more inventive and black people are physically stronger, but less intellectually capable.
00:31:40
And the language they use is much, much more offensive than that I'm, I'm conveying right now. But those things, those ideas are so baked into our culture and what we end up doing is saying, well, you know, something positive and joyous like sports, we see these racial disparities and we want to give them biological bases, uh, because that is baked into our culture when in actual fact all of those disparities are far far better and more conclusively explained by cultural factors by the behavior of people. The fact that that you have heroes within these sports or the fact that there are socio economic gains to be made from sporting prowess, which are easier to get oneself out of low socioeconomic status than the roots of privilege that are bestowed upon people descended from from Europeans and so on. And so this is why I think sport is important in this conversation. I love my sport and I recognize that not everyone does, but I think it's it's a sort of universal way in which we've seen the behaviors of people from around the world, um at extreme levels of skill and aptitude, the best of humanity.
00:32:55
And so it's often a gateway into saying what's the biological reason for this when actually the dominance of particular nations or ethnicities or parts of the world or particular physical characteristics are far far better explained by social means than by genetic. I think that was very well said, and we've been able to explore so many different concepts surrounding how genetics plays a role or doesn't play a role is I think what's come out of most of our conversation here in thinking about and analyzing and looking at the science side of ancestry, ethnicity, race. And so we've really been able to really dispel a lot of myths of what people may be thinking and thank you so much for helping people to really think about these concepts in a different way. And I think this is very important, especially right now in our history to be having these conversations. So I want to thank you so much dr rutherford for coming on the show and being able to explain this to people and they can learn much more and dive into what we've talked about today.
00:34:00
Everything came from the book how to argue with a racist, which just came out this month. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Most likely to talk to you. You know the idea is that people get equipped, get tooled up that the book is meant to be a weapon so that you can't use our tools which is science to justify bigotry and then you have the kit to hand when you're faced with those sorts of questions you can say, you know what, you can say that but saying it don't make it true, interested in reading the book. Now go to our social media to enter our giveaway to when your very own copy. Search DNA today on twitter instagram and facebook and then follow the prompts on our post. Thank you to the following listeners for nominating DNA today in the podcast. Words really appreciate it. That is Elizabeth Eden. The Columbia genetic counseling program. Rodrigo laura Justin. See an abalone Adriana Miranda carl, Ashlyn. Disa Robotti. Hirable lee Britney Catherine jewels frank carroll, thank you to everybody that nominated.
00:35:02
Those are the people that gave us a shout out on social media. Um we actually I think find out tomorrow august 8th who was nominated. So stay tuned as many of you know from last episode I'm the host of the fingertips speaker series, our second webinar will be august 12th at noon Eastern time. I'm gonna be interviewing Ellen matloff about the evolving role of genetic counselors in precision medicine. So link in the show notes and our website DNA podcast dot com. If you'd like to register for the free live webinar it was great to connect with listeners last time in the Q. And A. And the networking part that comes at the end of the webinar it's an hour. So looking forward to it next week and please rate and review on Apple if you haven't done this yet, it really helps people find the show and allows us to reach many many more people all over the globe. So definitely rate and review on Apple. If you have a moment any questions for us? Definitely email in info at DNA podcast dot com. We love hearing from you. As I mentioned in the first few no tip speaker series. I interviewed Elizabeth Turner who started advanced tele genetic counseling. A. T. G. C. Offers virtual appointments to meet with a genetic counselor one on one for conversations to help you understand how your own genetics may play a role in your health.
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Access to health care should not be dependent on where you live. Which is why A T. G. C. Offers telehealth appointments and this is even more important during this pandemic. No travel. No wait no hassle. Advanced tele genetic counseling provides a personalized approach to learning more about the story encoded within your genomic information with full service, comprehensive support for patients providers and practices genetic counselors at a. T. G. C. Help interpret the meaning of genomic data to explore genetic testing options, provide actual insights and help patients and providers understand how to manage unique genetic risk factors. To promote well being request genetic counseling for a patient, learn more and schedule your appointment with a certified genetic counselor at a t. Hyphen gcc dot com. Again, that's AT hyphen g c dot com. Thanks for listening and join us next time to discover new advances in the world of genetics.
