Is Everything Gene-Environment Interaction? Pietro Biroli

Genes matter. Environments matter. But what if neither really makes sense without the other? What if everything is ultimately gene-environment interaction?

Economist Pietro Biroli joins us to unpack how genes and environments work together to shape our lives. We discuss why gene-environment interactions are surprisingly difficult to detect, what polygenic indices can and can't tell us about them, and why finding an interaction is not the same thing as showing that it's causal. Along the way: genes as constraints, natural experiments, Mendelian lotteries, sign-flipping genetic effects, and why economists are so obsessed with causality.

By the end, you'll know what we mean when we say genes and environments "interact", and why demonstrating how they do so is much harder than it sounds. Plus: what do eight dislocated shoulders and the Big Mac index have in common?