Born and Raised

What makes someone good at learning? Intelligence certainly helps. But as we grow up, curiosity, motivation, confidence, and interest seem to matter more and more. So does curiosity eventually beat intelligence?
Developmental psychologist Margherita Malanchini joins us to talk about the so-called “non-cognitive” side of learning. We discuss how genes and environments shape curiosity and self-efficacy, why these traits become increasingly important across development, and why “non-cognitive” may be the wrong label altogether. Along the way: gene-environment correlation, the mysterious non-shared environment, and whether grit actually exists.
By the end, you'll know why intelligence is only part of the story of how we learn, and why understanding the other part might change what we choose to nurture in schools.

If someone tells you a trait is 40% heritable, what have you actually learned? And why do twin studies, SNP-based estimates, and family designs keep returning different numbers?
Michel Nivard joins us for a crash course in all things heritability: broad-sense heritability, narrow-sense heritability, SNP heritability - even phantoms make an appearance. What do different measures capture, and what is the missing heritability problem?
By the end you'll know what a given heritability estimate licenses you to say, what it doesn't, and why it isn't the fixed quantity you might think it is.

In this wrap up of season 1, Aysu and Rafael sit down to look back on the conversations so far: what were the highlights, what did we learn about talking science with other scientists, and what's the plan going forward?

Can society shape the human genome? What happens when people move to opportunity? Why do genes associated with educational attainment cluster geographically? And what happens to the gene pool when educated people increasingly partner with other educated people? In this episode of Born and Raised, behavior geneticist Abdel Abdellaoui returns to the podcast to walk us through his paper Socioeconomic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences. Plus, a Born and Raised exclusive: Abdel reveals some very exciting news about what he's working on next!
The paper in question can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02150-4

What is musicality? Why do some people seem to have more of it? Did Beethoven have the genes for it? And which musical genre is most associated with depression? These questions and many more are covered in this episode of Born and Raised, where our hosts Aysu and Rafael talk to behavior geneticist Laura Wesseldijk about all things genetics and musicality!

Personality psychologists were doing behavior genetics way before it was cool. In this episode, Rafael and Aysu sit down with Eivind Ystrøm, personality psychologist at the University of Oslo, to talk about what personality actually is, how heritable it turns out to be, and why the field was so far ahead of the rest of the social sciences in taking genetics seriously.
They also dig into one of the most provocative findings in the field: the so-called "gloomy prospect" — the idea that a large chunk of what makes you you may come down to essentially random, non-systematic events that even siblings growing up in the same household don't share. What does this mean for the search for specific environmental causes of personality? And more importantly — what is the mysterious mutation that Eivind thinks he may have?

What do we mean when we talk about "non-cognitive skills," and what does genetics tell us about them? In this episode, our hosts visited Perline Demange to talk about the genetic architecture of cognitive and non-cognitive skills — how they relate to educational attainment, where they overlap with personality and psychopathology, and what that could tell us about the genetics of doing well in school. And also - what on earth do Christmas Elves have to do with it?
Perline also mentions work by:Vaishnavi Madhavan https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaishnavi-madhavan-8ba3641ab/Sverre Ofstad https://www.linkedin.com/in/sverre-ofstad-a6207b279/Rosa Cheesman https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosa-cheesman-6586ba93/
 

Why did you pick your partner? Just right place at the right time, or deliberate process? Whatever the case, it turns out that your partner is likely to be more genetically similar to you than we would expect by random chance. Also turns out that this has a bunch of weird consequences for genetic research! In this episode, our hosts went to Oslo and had a chat with Hans Fredrik Sunde about all things assortative mating. What is it, why is it interesting, and how do we study it? And more importantly - what is the one weird item that Hans Fredrik has amassed a huge collection of?

Why on earth would a political scientist do research in genetics? In this episode, our hosts met up with Sven Oskarsson in the supremely cozy Alinska Library at Uppsala university to let him spill the beans! Are political orientations, participation and behavior heritable, and why? How do genetic effects on political outcomes vary? And what are the practical implications of these types of results? Oh, and what's with all the ancient portraits?

Curious about epigenetics? Dive right in! In this episode, Laurel Raffington gets a visit from the Born and Raised crew in her beautiful office at the Max Planck institute in Berlin. We learn about all things epigenetics - clocks, scores, inheritance - and about their connections to things like socioeconomic deprivation. The ethics and history of doing sociogenomic research in a context like Germany is also discussed. And how does lifting weights fit into all of this? Stay tuned to find out!