The Infinite Monkey Cage - What is Race?

Episode Date: January 18, 2016

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined on stage by comedian Shappi Khorsandi, science broadcaster Adam Rutherford and evolutionary geneticist Mark Thomas. They look at the thorny issue of race, and whether there is a scientific definition for the concept of race. Do our genes reveal racial differences, and if so do they tell us anything about our evolutionary history? They also look at the results of their own personal DNA tests...so which panellist is a little bit neanderthal and which one has a genetic history firmly rooted in the North!Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the

front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And welcome to the podcast version of the Infinite Monkey Cage, which contains extra material that wasn't considered good enough for the radio. Enjoy it. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince. And today we are talking about race. So Brian, what are you? Well, I did one of those DNA sequencing website things, What are you? Well, I did one of those DNA sequencing website things,

and it came out that I am 66.7% British and Irish and 21.6% broadly North Western European, which basically means none of my genes have ever left Oldham, and I'm very dull. And also, because you've been Northern for that long, that means that 7% of you is dripping. Is that racist? We're going to find out. I am actually genetically an Anglican vicar.

I come from 300 years of vicar stock, which means, and I'm sure Adam will back me up on this, I'll guess Adam Rutherford, I have the gene for riding a bicycle while waving gently, the ability genetically to dunk a biscuit while appearing concerned over a recent bereavement, and also the specific gene for being able to create an allegory from a mundane domestic incident.

As I pulled off my marigolds, I thought of Mary Magdalene, etc. Copyright Alan Bennett. What's vicar stock? Vicar stock? I feel like beef stock. Vicar stock is where all the great vicar bands come together.

It's like the General Synod's version of Glastonbury. It's pretty exciting. Today we're discussing the term race in a scientific sense that's applied to humans. How diverse is the human gene pool? And is it diverse enough to merit biological classification beyond simply human?

And if not, and as you'll probably gather, the scientific answer will be not. I can't be bothered, actually, with setting up these false conceits in radio programmes. Yeah, that's a very Scandinavian thing to do, isn't it? The... Two Norwegians walk into an elk. Come on!

Manning never really did that many Scandinavian jokes, did he? Anyway, this is like walking on eggshells, isn't it? Which is very Canadian, isn't it? Why are they always doing that? Do you know what? We were trying to find, because we wanted to write to me that wasn't racist but appeared racist, and the only groups we thought,

I reckon Canadians and Scandinavian we can get away with. Anyway. We've been joined by a panel, and we have asked them to classify themselves racially as well as explaining themselves, and they are... I'm Dr Adam Rutherford, and I am a recovering geneticist, but I'm also the presenter of Inside Science, also on Radio 4.

What time is it on Radio 4, Adam? It's 4.30 on Thursday, thanks for asking, Brian. Wonderful. And genetically, I am half British from the north-east of England. My father was raised in New Zealand. My mother is Indian, but she's never been to India. She was born in Guyana. And my stepmother, who raised me, she's from Essex,

but is second-generation Orthodox Jewish. So, I don't know, take your pick. Mongrel. I'm Mark Thomas. I'm Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at University College London, and I am a quarter Irish, a quarter English, a quarter Welsh, a quarter Roman-Egyptian, except I have ancestry from just about every inhabitable part of the planet,

just the same as everybody else in this room. Apart from me. Including you. Except from Oldham. That is racist. We're going to have to redefine Oldham, then. I'm Shappi Korsandi, and I am 90.7% Middle Eastern and North African, 5.2% European, mostly Italian.

I suspected that because of my sense of style. And I'm 0.6% East Asian and Native American, 0.2% Sub-Saharan African, 0.6% East Asian and Native American, 0.2% Sub-Saharan African, 0.1% South Asian, 3.3% unassigned. And this is our panel! The great thing about those introductions, it reveals that many jokes are entirely pointless.

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. Just one person. So, Adam, we're going to leave aside the idea of humanity and races and just in purely biological terms, the classification in biology, what does the term race mean? Not much, really. Pretty much nothing altogether, in fact, these days. And for most of the 20th century, the term race has almost no scientific meaning.

In the past it has. In the 19th century, we talked about races. But it wasn't specifically about humans. It was really just a way of describing variation within species. So, you know, sometimes when you write about Darwin, which I do quite a lot, people challenge you by pointing out that the subtitle of The Origin of Species mentions the word race. It's on the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. This is the type of phrase that sets a certain type of person slightly on edge and can make all sorts of bombastic challenges. Don't worry, they're listening. I know they are.

And I'll get those emails, none of you guys will. Actually, what Darwin was referring to is kind of what we mean by subspecies, which is a sort of peculiar, difficult term in biology. I don't really like any species definition, to be honest. But mostly in The Origin of Species, when he's talking about races, he's actually talking about variation in cabbages. Darwin, he was a massive vegetable racist. Perhaps we should also define, or try to define, what a species is.

Oh, please, do we have to? Yes. I mean, this is just a nightmare, a quagmire of biology. Well, I can define what a force is, what mass is. Yeah, but that's because physics is really easy. LAUGHTER And biology is really messy and really... So, you know, the standard, the best definition of a species is two organisms that are incapable of producing fertile young together.

Right? That's basically the one that we use. Except it only works about, I don't know, a third of the time. And in humans, we try to define ourselves as Homo sapiens, but we know that we've had sex with Neanderthals and produced fertile young. LAUGHTER sex with Neanderthals and produced fertile... LAUGHTER So you would say... We've got this system where we have a genus, which is for us, homo, which means man, sapiens, which is the species, which means wise,

and then there's this sort of subspecies category that some biologists use, and there aren't any subspecies of that some biologists use and there aren't any subspecies of of humans some argue that there have been historically but you know you get like gorillas the the genus is gorilla the species is gorilla and the lowland western gorilla the subspecies is gorilla so the technical name for a gorilla is gorilla gorilla gorilla and that's just i mean that's just stupid isn't it so so given that we all have a component of Neanderthal DNA, I think mine was 2.9% or something by this website thing,

so that means that humans and Neanderthals interbred. So that means that humans and Neanderthals are not different species, which you often hear. According to that classical definition, I think that is an acceptable answer i'm 2.7 percent they have been i mean the best way to describe it is they've been separated long enough that they really look quite different and we can recognize that both morphologically the shapes of their bodies but also genetically we can see how different their genomes are from ours but not

different enough that we couldn't produce fertile offspring. So, you know, I'm just going to get hassle from taxonomists and racists after this. Isn't that like zebras and ponies? Because they can breed, but they're different. So we're like... They can't produce fertile offspring, though. So you get Zedonks and, you know, Grollar bears, which are grizzly bears mixed with polar bears. I mean, that's just terrifying.

What are they called again? Grollar bears. Yeah. Zedonks. And Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla. And Gorilla, Gorilla, Gor bears. Yep. Zee donks. And gorilla, gorilla, gorilla. And gorilla, gorilla, gorilla. It's biology. Is it biology? So, Mark...

Don't try and pretend it's somehow going to become serious. It is. So, what about humans? So, is there any scientific basis for the concept of race in humans? Not really, but I mean, I guess it also depends on what you define it as. So if you wanted to define it by these old classic definitions of race

that you might read in some 19th century anthropology book, there's not really a lot of genetic support for those as clusters. So, in fact, we all overlap. The differences between each of us is greater than the average difference between Europeans and Africans or Europeans and East Asians and so on and so on. So the differences between these continents

is a very, very, very tiny component of how much variation there is and also we are all very very closely related you only have to go back a few thousand years till somebody was alive who's the common ancestor of everybody in the world today so the and also there's not really any sharp dividing line so if you look at the genetics of people moving say from one part of the world to the other, you don't really see really sharp jumps. You just see more continuous gradations of the frequencies of their different genes. Could you expand on that a little?

Because it's quite a surprising thing to say that you only have to go back a few thousand years, two or three thousand years, to get to a common ancestor. Because we tend to think of common ancestor as you know in biological terms things like the last universal common ancestor which we say everyone really there's an unbroken line in my genetic code stretching back four billion years to the origin of life on earth so what do you mean by just three thousand years to a common human ancestor well um so so if you think about it, you have two parents, four grandparents, eight, sixteen, and it

almost doubles as you go every generation back. It doesn't quite double because we're all inbred to some extent, depending on where you're from. I can say that because I'm from Swindon. But

you can easily see that even if it almost doubles but doesn't quite double, you're going to get a very, very large number of ancestors just by going back a few tens of generations. In fact, technically you would have more ancestors than there are people around, so that's where the inbreeding bit comes in. But everybody else is doing the same, so we're all going to be meeting up with that common ancestry as we look further back through time. And because everybody's kind of... If you think about it as spreading your ancestry net,

as you go further back in time, all over the world, and everybody else is doing that as well, pretty soon we all start meeting up, and there comes a point where you hit somebody who must be the common ancestor of everybody alive today. And we think that's somewhere around for 3,000, 4,000 years. If you go back a bit further than that, you hit something called the iso point, which is the point at which every person alive at that time is either the common ancestor of everybody alive today or the common ancestor

of nobody alive today. And it's purely the numbers. It's purely that you're almost doubling that number of ancestors as you go back through time. But if you do that in Europe, if you just do it for Europeans, it's much earlier than that. It's about the 10th century. So if you were alive in the 10th century

and you have offspring alive today, then you are the ancestor of every European. So about three quarters of Europeans in the 10th century left offspring alive today, then you are the ancestor of every European. So about three-quarters of Europeans in the 10th century left offspring alive today, and they're all our ancestors. So it doesn't matter if you're Charlemagne or some peasant, we are all descended from Charlemagne. So well done, everyone. It's so interesting, because you hear this often, don't you?

You hear this, as you said, yeah, Charlemagne or Julius Caesar, pick the person. Well, Peter, I mean, you can write off to these various companies and you can have a test done. And usually they will tell you you're a descendant of a Viking warlord or a Celtic princess or something sexy like that or Zulu chief or something. I mean, the reality is, yes, those are all true. But that's true of everybody. Because, you know, because those it's so long ago, even Vikings, it's so long ago, and that's only about 1,200, 1,300 years,

it's so long ago that you have so many ancestors at that point that you're bound to have many Viking ancestors, many Jewish ancestors, many African ancestors, many East Asian ancestors, and so on and so on. It's just inevitable. Shappi, when you had that test on the breakdown, it seems that for some people it's a fantastic adventure, even though pragmatically it probably doesn't mean nearly as much as we might imagine.

Thanks for all the fun. Well, that's what we're all about. This is a science show. The... Obviously, we're not. Can I disassociate myself from that? Yes, I would like to make it that we're about increasing the fun through rational ideas and reason. So, looking at your results, rationally and reasonably,

how did you feel? So, did you find what was for you the most exciting revelation? Well, I was quite excited by the fact that I'm... My 5% European bit is mostly Italian. And I always thought I had a lot of Indian in me, just because of the way I look but it was only 1.1 percent South Asian and I'm more African than I am Indian I found that really interesting and but I think like speaking with you guys and hearing what you have to say it does

feel like it's a sort of slightly higher brow version of your star sign when someone goes this is all about you and so you suddenly go oh aren't i fascinating and interesting for the radio audience everybody nodded then but it's i mean it's interesting you put you point that out so you're saying like star signs i mean i've actually called this sort of stuff genetic astrology and it works on the same effect this furor effect or the barnum effect which is that if you tell somebody something that seems like it's highly personalized but in fact um is very generic you can apply it to anybody then people are much much more likely to believe it and this is one of the explanations for why people believe in horoscopes and so on it's a very common psychological but i But I'd be so interested, looking at my own one, and then perhaps they're too young,

but testing my children, because they're both half English, and it would just be interesting to see, because I know that my son is Welsh and Irish heritage, and I'd just be curious to see how that comes up in his test. So if I did that with my boy, are you saying that it's all kind of not really as accurate or as exciting as I'd want it to be? Like, exciting? Oh, you're a bit Welsh.

But it is, to me, Welsh is exotic. Why do you think it is that people want to define themselves in that way? You hear it a lot in America, don't you, that everybody wants to be Scottish or Irish. As you said, you feel quite proud if your son was... I was upset that in my test I was zero percent Jewish. I always quite fancied being Jewish and I thought I would have some Jewish in me because I don't know if I made this up, but I'm pretty sure my grandmother told me that she had a Jewish grandfather. And

there was no Jewish at all, and it sort of shattered my illusions. But we heard now, there must be. Yeah, there definitely is. There must be. And Viking. Actually, Adam, whatever you pick. The question is, because you said, so what is the validity? What do these results mean? Like my result was it just said 99.5% Northern European. How does that...

Because there is some data there, isn't there? Yeah, the data is real. It's just what we think that it means is slightly different from what they're actually selling you. So it doesn't tell you where you're from because it doesn't address the question of where that what time period it's actually asking right and we don't there isn't really a way of doing that we dig up bodies that have been in the ground for hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of years and we can look at their

genomes but there aren't very many of them what it does is it tells you what your genome is most like on earth today right so if you if you're if you get you know i don't know how many how much scandinavian have you got seven percent or something like that something like that yeah what that means is that that bit of dna or the scattered through your genome the bit that looks scandinavian it's labeled as scandinavian that exists at a high frequency in scandinavia at this point in time so it doesn't imply that you necessarily that you have close scandinavian ancestors no it doesn't at all and what it could Scandinavian ancestors. No, it doesn't at all. And what it could mean is that the entire population of Scandinavia

moved to Scandinavia 14 years ago, and then they sampled them, and that's where the frequency is very high at this point in time. Now, there is... Can I just check? Is that current scientific thinking about Scandinavia? It was just after ABBA. I always like a show... We like it when our show has a revelation. That's true. Scandinavia was not populated until the mid-90s.

But it doesn't show that you're a Viking because the Vikings came from Scandinavia 1,000 years ago. We know that you're a Viking because everyone's a Viking. At that point in history, there is enough genetics, ancestry that we have derived genes from all of them. It just shows that bit of your genome is most like people in Scandinavia today. Also, that thing that the Viking, if someone goes,

I'm this Viking, they immediately see the Viking who's a berserker, don't they? Right, so... Not the Vikings who've got to wash the berserker's vest and stuff like that. So it's not every Viking who's like... Some of them are going, I can't get these out. Much less glamorous.

Cows' blood, egg yolk, this is impossible. When we look at the global human population, there are obviously recognisable differences that tend to be geographic. So skin colour, hair colour, et cetera. So there is obviously a genetic basis for those traits. That's right, yeah. So that's actually interesting because, as I said,

if you look at your average gene, most of the differences are just between individuals and the differences between these continental regions are really quite small. But interestingly, when you look at the ones that have large effects on how we appear, so, for example, pigmentation, genes, genes to do with hair morphology and so on, they show bigger differences.

Now, one of the reasons that they probably show bigger differences is because they're actually results of adaptations, different adaptations in different regions. So skin pigmentation is just obvious. I mean, you do not want light skin pigmentation if you're near the equator. But if you're up here or further up, well, you've got issues with making vitamin D.

So you need to lighten your skin in order to let more UV through so you can make more vitamin D. So there are many different adaptations. There are adaptations different between East and West Eurasia, for example. So people from East and Eurasia typically have very thick hair, and that's associated with one single mutation in one single gene. There's another one that's found in East Asia, which is very rare outside East Asia but very common in East Asia,

which is associated with not being smelly. So if you work up a sweat and don't wash after a couple of days, I mean, we would all stink, right? Of roses, in my case. Of course, yeah. But East Asians wouldn't smell anywhere near as bad as we would because they don't produce the same oils in the skin because of this mutation. It's also associated with dry earwax, for example.

So these things that... I've got wet earwax. It came back in my notes. Yeah, you would have. I would have. Yeah, but you're not from China. I'm not from China, no. Genetics are really interested in earwax. It's one of the few characteristics where you can... where basically you can predict what type of earwax your child will have based on the parents. And it's... You know, even, like, eye colour.

Eye colour is very difficult to predict in your children based on your parents' eye colours, because, you know, we're taught at school that brown is dominant over blue, which is based on one gene, but there's also a green gene, and it means there's a complete spectrum of eye colour from the very pale to the very dark. But earwax, actually, there's really only two types of earwax,

dry and wet. And it's distributed across the world in a fairly, you know, well-delineated, discreet way. You're not going to say in half the time geneticists get the prediction right, are you? Because... Three quarters. So, Shafi, why do, Shafi, this kind of conversation

where it seems to some extent basically poo-pooing a lot of the ideas of racial division, but for some people this is... It seems a very important issue for them. They want to belong to a certain racial group. Why do you think that is, that people have this... I'm sure there will be probably complaints from this show, people going, oh, well, this can't be true at all.

I don't want to be part of this particular group. I refuse this science. Yeah, people do get obsessed with what race they are and fly the flag or whatever it is of their race. I think perhaps... I'm trying to be kinder than to say because they're unwell. Unwise. Yeah, this inability to see past,

or want to see past the end of their own nose. But in some ways, it's undeniable, human beings, we're tribal. We want to belong, we want a gang, we want a group, and we want to protect that group, sometimes to the cost of our own life. You know, we have that... For me, it's more useful to exercise that tribal instinct through a hobby or allegiance to a band or a football team.

But the race thing is baffling to me because coming from the background that I come from, I know a lot of young Iranians who live in Britain who wear the Zoroastrian wings because they want to belong to something. And I kind of get that when you're young,

but I think it's something you ought to grow out of. I'm a bit upset about the Darwin broccoli thing. I don't know if anyone... I feel... Am I the only one feeling sad that all these neo-Nazis have been wasting their time? I feel they could have spent that time crocheting or doing decoupage. But if it's all such a mishmash...

The Second World War was the result of a misunderstanding of the title of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Don't go, oh no. I have seen so many documentaries in America and I've told you before there is one where, which actually the subtitle is No Darwin, No Hitler. And for us even to start

perpetrating. If I could be serious for a minute, there is an interesting thing about race like my my father for example please don't judge him if he meets an english person who which he frequently does living in london actually not that frequently but um if they are extra warm and hospitable and amazing my dad always goes, they must have Irish blood in them. And I was reading about this actually, about

the idea of certain races or having certain genes that make you more sociable, which I found quite interesting. And I wish I could remember the name of the hormone, but a hormone called oxytocin. Thank you. That one. What is it called again? Oxytocin. Oxytocin. Thank you. That one.

What is it called again? Oxytocin. Oxytocin. What a lovely word. And vasopressin is the one that goes with it. Thank you. Works more in boys. You've turned this into a QVC show.

It's like a home shopping channel. What does it call? Oxytocin. I've just got to get some of that. And you can use it at anything. You can use it at a party or even if you're just on your own. And what does it go well with? Well, I found this vasopressin is really, really useful.

You can wear it just with an evening gown or even just casually with a cardi, something like that. They use it during childbirth to make you more sociable. Which is a very crucial point when you're in that situation. I found that quite interesting because having two kids who are both half English half Iranian everyone says my son is more English in his character and everyone talks about my daughter being more Iranian and they go on and on about it and it frustrates me because

I think I'd like to move as far away as possible as attributing certain characteristics to a race that you belong to, because I just don't think it's useful. These things are almost universal in humans, and one of the characteristics that comes up more often than not is when we talk about sport. And so many people attribute various sporting successes to biological bases. Now, obviously, there is a biological basis to success in sport.

Tall people are better at basketball than short people, right? That's just a fact. in supporting successes to biological basis. Now, obviously, there is a biological basis to success in sport. Tall people are better at basketball than short people, right? That's just a fact. We are better sprinters, though. But, you know, over the years, there have been plenty of studies which have suggested, you know, for example, that black people have more fast twitch cells in their muscles,

which makes them better at sprinting, or that they have better adaptation to altitude, which makes them better at processing oxygen and things like that. Now, there's an element of truth to them, but the problem with this is the first word I said, black people. It's an almost meaningless definition. As we've already talked about, there's more genetic variation within Africa

than there is in the whole of the rest of the world. So you take someone from Ethiopia and someone from South Africa, they are more different to each other than me and Shappi or them and Shappi or anyone in this audience and Shappi. I don't know why I'm pointing to you. I have no idea why I'm singling you out on this. I'll have you know, I'm 0.2% sub-Saharan African, so I'm black.

And that's because the human species came out of Africa and, indeed, the Rift of Alley, and so that's why. Exactly. So a very small number of people left Africa something like 80,000 to 100,000 years ago, maybe as few as a few thousand or a couple of tens of thousands, and they are the ones that populated the rest of the world. Again, the language that we use is difficult to process. It doesn't really reflect what happened. When we talk about

leaving Africa, I think in our heads we're thinking about current migration where people pack their suitcases and head off to a brighter land just over there in Turkey. It's not really how it happens. We're talking about migrations that take tens of thousands of years and they don't go in one direction, they go in every direction. And so part of the reason we get very confused about the relationship between what science says, what the genetics says and how we talk about this stuff

is because we're almost speaking two different languages. So you're saying that essentially visual appearance is a poor predictor of genetic diversity? It has a disproportionately high visible effect. So you do see, I'm not denying the existence of physical differences between people. Only an idiot would do that. But there is more genetic diversity in things which are the rest of the genome you know

skin color is coded by what eight genes i mean it's it's it's a few more but it's not that many and as i was saying these these physical appearance genes tend to have show bigger differences than is the reality and so for example skin color which is probably the most common physical trait that people use to assign an origin of somebody to. It's the most awful proxy imaginable for relatedness. So, for example, two groups of people that have typically very dark skin pigmentation are from Melanesia and from Central Africa. Now, you couldn't find two more genetically different groups in the world and

yet they have virtually the same pigmentation levels so these so these things that it's almost like nature has played this sort of dirty trick on us of the ones things we can see are the worst proxies for how related um we really are the question must be then if if I said to you, as a geneticist, I would like to divide the whole human race up into, let's say, three. Three different, I don't know, three different tribes, whatever you'd like to call it, genetically speaking. Can it be done? I mean, yeah, of course.

But you have to question it. We call them clusters. But you have to question what they really mean. But you can actually name... You know, you can give a number. So if you want to divide the world into two... I mean, there was a famous scientific paper that was published back in 2002 which did this, and the results haven't really changed much since then. So if you divide the world into two,

there's one that includes Africans and Europeans and Southern Asians, then the other one is East Asians and Native Americans, Oceanans, and so on. If you divide into three, then Africans drop out as a separate group. If you divide into four, then Native Americans drop out as a separate group. If you divide into five, then Oceanans, so Melanesians and Australians, drop out as a separate group. If you divide into six, ocean and so melanesia and australians uh drop into drop out into a separate group if you divide into six according to this study then the kalash of northwest pakistan drop out as a separate group now how ridiculous is that well it makes complete genetic sense

um because this is a small group that lives in mountains connected by rope bridges they're they're they're they're surrounded but then they're not muslim and they're surrounded by muslims so they're clearly not exchanging or marrying much with local populations they're very isolated and that gives the appearance of a genetic cluster do you really believe they're the kind of sixth race no i mean that would be ridiculous so if you wanted to separate out humanity in that way you just you compare the genomes and you you say well yeah and you you can build a whole tree. Well it's not so much a tree it's not you can you can you can you can represent anything as a tree but it's not clear that a tree

is a good representation of that thing and in this case I don't think it is a good representation but you can certainly say you, we've got these clusters. I mean, these kind of, you know, you're this percentage, that percentage, are loosely based on those kind of clusters anyway. But that all depends on who you put in, in the first place, to build these clusters. So, you know, if you had mostly Europeans and then a few people from Africa, a few people from East Asia, then you would probably end up saying, oh, well, most of the main clusters are within Europe.

What is the... It's a statistical definition based on looking at the genome. So it's not... What do these numbers mean? If you say I'm 98.7% the same as you, let's say, what does that actually mean? You know, I don't know. I think they are... They're your brothers believe me you know you know i mean this is this is my field and and and

and i don't know but i'd be willing to say that nobody else knows either i mean they they are they are mathematical you know emergent properties really. So they don't really mean anything in terms of, or too much in terms of ancestry. Firstly, at what time point? You know, so where's my ancestry from, you know, 90,000 years ago? Well, the vast majority of it is from Africa. So we're all African 90,000 years ago. So, you know, it depends on where you draw the slice of time.

And we can't work that out, as Adam pointed out. We can't really work that out. So what these really are is just, oh, well, those bits are mostly found in here, those bits are mostly found over here. But you see this in between species, so you'll see numbers like we're 98% the same as chimpanzees or whatever the number is.

Does that have any meaning either, that kind of comparison? Sort of. Sort of. That didn't come up in mine, by the way. Did it not mention the banana as well? The 40% banana. Well, see, but this... All that really shows is that all living organisms are based on the same genetic code

and we all exist on the same evolutionary tree which dates back four billion years. They're slightly glib numbers. They do have a meaning, but some of these studies are looking at big chunks of DNA that are the same as each other. Humans have these weird bits of DNA that repeat themselves sometimes hundreds of times.

We don't really know why, but they're quite variable between people. Sometimes we're looking at how many repeats you have. Sometimes they're looking at individual changes between people. So when you say, yeah, overall, on average, we're 98-point-whatever percent the same as a chimpanzee, what that really means is that we're quite closely related to chimpanzees. Overall, we're about, on average,

about 40% the same as a banana or a cauliflower, if we're going to continue to be racist about those types of vegetables. But I suppose, I mean, there's only four bases, isn't it? So we have to be 25% the same, presumably, don't we, just statistically speaking? Although our genomes are, you know, they vary in size. So you'd worry if you were less than 25% the same, statistically, because there's only four. You could, if somebody was less than 25% the same as anybody else, or a banana indeed, then you could probably be racist to that person.

Scientific racism! Justified! I'd draw the line at 25% of the share of DNA. You'd have to be a Martian, essentially, wouldn't you? Yeah, probably, yeah. I can't remember which lecturer it was. He said when he first did lectures about evolution and genetics, someone went, you're saying we all come from monkeys?

He said, no, I'm saying we all come from yeast. And then they all went quiet. I mean, we still keep on using this term race, though. And, you know, I don't think there is really... Yeah, there's certainly no scientific evidence that races, per per se are real. But what is real is the fact that we racialise people, that we say, you know, you belong to this category or that category.

And I think that's... I mean, I don't need to tell anybody here that that has a particularly ugly history. But, you know, I think it's important that we get away from that. Now, having this kind of rich genetic data actually allows us now to pull away from these outdated and scientifically unsupported notions of, you know, where we're from or what we belong to. And I think that's really healthy. But at the moment, when I see tests like this, I don't see those tests pointing that out. I see those tests instead almost sort of rarefying this,

you know, racial ancestry components, rather than pointing out just how mixed we all are. And it's very difficult as well to get these thoughts out of our head. Adam was pointing this out earlier. I made the argument before that I think that humans are culturally programmed to fundamentally misunderstand genetics because we've been doing it for the whole of human history. The way we talk about inheritance and the way we talk about families

and the way we talk about our ancestors and our races isn't reflected in genetics. Do you think there's any way that we could isolate the gene that may well cause us to have an inability to understand genetics? Yes, it's all of them. Let's go back to something Mark said earlier, which I thought was quite a powerful observation, and linking to what Shafi said earlier about you looked at your genome,

it was sequenced, and you felt that you were disappointed in some sense. We all have this romantic idea of our ancestry. And then Mark said that actually what modern genetics teaches us is that there's a more wonderful story, which is actually you don't have to go back very far to find we're all related to each other in a very profound way. So why do you think it is that we cling on to this rather narrower ideal? You know, we would like to be, as you said, I want to be Jewish. Why am I not Jewish?

I would find it more wonderful and exciting if I were narrower in my genetic inheritance than I actually am. And this idea of this wide, vast net seems to be less exciting. They have cool festivals. Good food as well. Good food. Actually, coming from Iran, I'm all sorted with food. Yeah, I've got the... You see my racial pride there. It's like, don't mess with Persian food. It's a very well-kept secret. Yeah, I got the... You see my racial pride there.

It's like, don't mess with Persian food. It's a very well-kept secret. Why, yeah, that's interesting, because perhaps it might be as basic as knowing people who are of another culture and relating to them and wanting to feel linked to them in some way. Perhaps that's partly what it is. You know, we all know people who like to travel because they feel that they want to be part of the world in a much wider sense and they're really excitedly will tell you that oh my grandma's half

italian so i'm learning italian and we want to feel a connection perhaps that is that tribalism that tribal instinct that comes back that you want to feel like you belong to something other than the Depeche Mode fan club. I mean, I think that has to be true anyway. As a species, one of the defining features of our species is that we're a social species, we live in groups, and we are non-viable, at least in the ancestral setting, we would be non-viable outside a group. Like ants, it's us and ants.

Us, well, and mole rats as well. And mole rats, sorry. Sorry to any mole rats listening. I don't think they... I think they might be deaf. Oh, they're deaf, aren't they? LAUGHTER Or blind or something. That's the worst faux pas we've ever had on the show, Shepard. Or blind or something.

That's the worst faux pas we've ever had on the show, Shepard. I might as well have said to a load of bats, come and watch our show next week. So, you know, a need to be in a group is not just a sort of, you know, a fashion thing or just, you know, wouldn't it be nice? It's an absolute requirement for survival at least in the ancestral setting for the vast majority of the time that we've evolved and and so clearly we should have a desire to do that and also to form identities and we clearly do we have

massive desires to form identities this is what we spend most of the early years at school doing is defining ourselves and say you know i'm like this you know i would fit with this group or that group and so and so it's it's unsurprising now now when we're exposed to a much richer complex world with lots of rich cultures uh around we can kind of pick and choose i'd love to be you know i want to be jewish or i want to be this group i want to be that group and that's that's quite understandable um but if we But if we were back in the olden times, in our evolutionary times, in the Paleolithic, we would have to be, you know,

we would have to be I'm with this group to the exclusion of that group because otherwise we wouldn't survive. We wouldn't stand a chance. There are clear examples of where uh the the science the science of genetics tells us that that behavioral trait is a is an absurd it's an absurdity in in a genetic sense is that what you're saying is behaviorally in us it's that it seems to be the best example i can think of of something where the science can...

We would aspire to transcend that behavioural instinct to form small tribes and groups. And I don't think that's going to happen. I think we will always want to construct well-defined identities for ourselves. And I think that's fine. I don't think that's going to change. But, you know, do it in terms of...

Well, don't do it in terms of nationalism, except unless it's about football. You know, to me, nationalism only makes sense in the light of football, but it could be, you know, what your job is or what your hobbies are or what... Food, for me, it's about food. Yeah. Yeah, but don't do it about race because firstly

that's nonsense it doesn't exist you know and and i think the reason there was this sort of transient phase in our history where identity did line up with this perceived notion of race was because this was the time of um you know the time of of colonialism where people from all around the world were meeting each other and they looked different and they were defining themselves very strongly as, you know, I belong to this, I belong to the conquering power. That's right. And the whole eugenics movement emerged out of... We were struggling in the Boer War at the end of the 19th century

and so there was a national conversation about how we could improve the British stock, which was the phrase of the time. Now, because of the events in the 20th century, in the Second World War and the Holocaust, we now correctly regard eugenics as something absolutely hideous. But Francis Galton invented the study of humans in terms of measuring these sorts of differences.

Now, Galton was a massive racist, and I think, my opinion is, he was a pretty unpleasant character, unlike Darwin, who was an extraordinarily nice chap. But I think the beauty of genetics, of the science of genetics, is that the field that he invented ended up proving that his whole motivation for demonstrating the superiority of races was absolutely wrong. And that's what science does. It just, you know, it does its best to remove prejudices. It takes humans out of reality.

So that's interesting, because that's the one thing I wanted to finally ask you, which is to prefigure some of the comments that may well come after this show, which is people say, oh, this is very typical of the kind of politically correct liberal science. It's just data. It's just data. This is

what the data says. It's the same, isn't it? Reality has a liberal bias. So, well, that brings us to the end of the... Well done, by the way, I think we got through it. So now, though, will we get through this? Because it's the audience comments. So we asked the audience a question,

which figure from the past would you most like to discover on your family tree? And the first answer is Shergar. Don't know why. I'm just feeling a little unstable at the moment. Thank you for all that. This is a true Monkey Cage audience tonight. This is a great answer.

Albert Einstein, he'd make a great relative. Yes, Hans! Yes, Hans! Sherlock Holmes, because he is fictional, and that will confuse viewers. This is brilliant. Look at this. Powley. It helps me exclude some relations. Thank you. There's not as many quantum physicists as there are relativists.

Brian Cox's grandad, so we could spend Christmas together like I always dreamed. Right, um... Right, Rupert. Yeah. I'll avoid you on the way out, though. Alfred the Great, because he would be no good in the bake-off either.

John Lennon. So I can ask him why he thought... John Lennon or Lennon? John... Lennon. Well, the John bit, as far as I know, if I actually said John Lennon, that still wouldn't be Lenin. That would be one of his relations, possibly.

John Lennon. John Lennon. Lennon's long-lost brother. John Lennon. Stop arguing about Lennon. Paul McCartney. Look at the way he's dressed. John Lennon, so I can ask why he thought

fields of strawberries last forever when everyone knows they're destined to die immediately once plucked. Well done for listening and keeping up with that narrative. Can't think of anyone I'd like to discover, but there are a few in my family I'd like to disown. Not saying this side at Christmas. This is incorrect. I'm going to just pass the one over to Adam, because, of course, the strawberries aren't dead once plucked.

Are we still doing this? No. Deal with broccoli death. They're alive as long as the possibility is there for them to germinate when planted. That's correct, is it not? Surely. When is a strawberry dead, Adam?

When it exits the Krebs cycle. Not funny, but factually correct. Yet again, we make jam into a coffin. So, thank you very much to our guests today, who are Mark Thomas, Shabby Corsandi and Adam Rutherford. Thank you. Now, for all that is spoken about 19th century and 20th century predilection for race-based eugenics,

it's important to remember the final paragraph in Darwin's Descent of Man. You probably know this very well, Adam. Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you may not be right for some. A man is born, he's a man of means. Then along come two. They got nothing but their dreams

and some broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. But they've also got different strokes. Goodbye. Thank you. Till now, nice again. Infinite monkey cage. Turned out nice again. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet,

we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you