shift in reacting on it on like every other movement in this country. of the-- of new to gingrich who is a perfectly nice man are over. he told sarah palin in order to be relevant she better move to new york really fast. no. karl rove and john mccain and new gingrich, if they thought about the nation and what was best it is time to hand the torch over to the new beast to the tea party patriots. we don't have to have it handed over it would be nice for them to participate. we will take debts but the matter is the old conservative guard and dick armey knows this of all people. >> host: tammy bruce we have about two minutes left. what are you reading? >> guest: a few things. it just suggested to me

lawrence of arabia by chris buckley interestingly enough and i want to read more fiction. , a claremont university reading a lot of things of the presidency and clues in the presidential command but more fiction should be on my list for pleasure so lawrence of arabia will be there. >> host: tammy bruce has been our guest from the "l.a. times" book festival her three books very quickly "the new american revolution." "the new thought police." "the death of right and wrong." tammy bruce.com

>> and is currently a political analyst for fox newschannel. for more information, visit latimes.com/festivalofbooks.

>> david shenk, correspondent for the atlantic.com says our genes play a smaller role than believed in shaping how smart we are. the opportunities we have or don't have play a more significant role. the new york public library hosts this hour, fifteen minute event. >> i'm here with a pretty modest goal -- i'm here simply to change the way you think about how you became you. it's no big deal. i'm sure we can accomplish that in 20 or 30 minutes but first -- before we get into the serious business of how humans become who they are, let's go with something a lot simpler. you've all seen this before.

light stick, glow stick, whatever up the to call it. an ordinary piece of plastic but when you crack it and shake it around, you get this apparently magical glow. so the question is what causes this glow? what is our explanation for this extraordinary light coming from the plastic? humans need explanations for things. we can't live without explanations. if we don't have the correct explanation, we need to have some understanding to tell ourselves before we move on. what would the explanation have been of this glow a couple centuries ago. most likely people would have said god or the devil was causing this glow. you fast forward a few centuries and today we know what causes this glow. the pages are stuck. and i had to look believe up, of

course, i'm not a glow stick expert. but there are five chemicals neatly separated into two compartments. there's a dye and several chemicals flowing separately in the smaller glass capsule is a 35% concentration of hydrogen peroxide. so you crack it, you're breaking the smaller tube inside. the chemicals mix together, prompting the release of the acid which decomposes into carbon dioxide and in the process gives off enough energy to excite electrons in the dye which releases photons of light i know you didn't come to learn about glow sticks. the point is this. to question the question what's causing the glow. which of those five compels is causing this glow? and obviously the answer -- it's

a trick question. none of the five chemicals are causing the glow. the answer is the glow is being caused by the interaction of the compels. -- chemicals. and to try to separate out as one or more chemicals as being the actual cause. contributing to the glow on its own. that would be foolish. it's the interaction itself. let's transition now to human ability and i want to start with another prop. i'm going to play you just 30 seconds or so of this man playing his violin rather well. ♪

♪ >> okay. you've all heard great violinists before but i thought it would be fun to hear that again. where's that -- where's that amazing ability coming from? we need an explanation. we all need an explanation. we need some sort of understanding of where it's coming from. whether we actually know where the ability is coming from or not, we need to tell ourselves something. so again going back in time, 300 years ago, most people probably would have said that that

amazing ability was coming from god. 100 years ago probably most educated people would have said that ability is coming from genes. we've discovered these things called genes and they determine our traits. and so obviously it's coming from genes. now if you ask someone in the general public, they'd say well, it's nature and nurture. it's obviously partly genetic. you couldn't have it without some special genes but you have to polish it off with some pretty special nurturing and that's the common consensus these days. but listen to a couple of quotes from how scientists now talk about genes and let's see if we can advance that public understanding a little bit today. and try to improve on the language rather than just saying it's nature plus nurture. this is mcgill university michael meany. quote, there are no genetic

factors that can be studied independently of the environment and there are no environment factors that function independently of the genome. a trait emerges only from the interaction of the gene and the environment. and here's another quote from cambridge university biologist patrick baitson whom i rely quite extensively in my book. the individual starts its life with the capacity to develop in a number of distinctly different ways. like a juke box the individual has the potential to play a number of different developmental tunes. but during the course of its life, it plays only one tune. the particular developmental tune it does play is selected by the environment in which the individual is growing up. and then he adds even in the case of eye color, the notion that the relevant gene is the only cause is misconceived because of all the other genetic and environmental ingredients.

and i'm going to now move to my third prop which is i'm going to show you a couple of pictures not of eye color but a nice little demonstration of how genes don't determine things quite the way we think of it in the general public. this is a picture of a cat named rainbow. probably there are a few people in the audience who recognize that name. i think we've got a highly educated audience. let's take a look at the second picture. and this give it away to some people. this is a cat named cici. do you know why this cat is named cc. it's two c's. >> carbon copy. >> is that she is a clone of rainbow. so if you have thought that

cloning would give you this replica because of the genes, you're looking at some nice evidence that that doesn't happen. those are the same two cats that are side-by-side pictures. so what is enabling this amazing violin playing, what's enabling playing great basketball, making people smart or not so smart. what makes my son's eyes greenish brown. ? is it the genes plus environment? is it nature plus nurture. no. it's the interaction between genes and the environment. and here's the great news. here's why we're talking about all this as a prelude to us talking about ability, human potential and ability.

we can have an impact on that interaction. not to say we can control it. completely or that we'll ever learn enough to completely control it. but in the way we lead our lives and the way we learn, work, practice, talk, read, study, teach, exercise, strive, we can impact that interaction a great deal. and the more we learn about the interactions, the more we can impact them. genes do have an influence in everything that we do and everything that we are. and we all have genetic differences. that much is obvious. but my contention with this book is that we've been badly misled about how that influence works and how interactive it can be. and that we're using the wrong words to talk about it. and that we need to start searching for a whole new language to come closer to a better understanding. and a much more empowering understanding.

intelligence, i would submit, is not innate. talent is not a matter of genetic giftedness. and nature versus nurture or nature plus nurture doesn't do it either. it has to be this understanding of nature constantly interacting with nurture. so we need to look for a new way to talk about these things. and i'm here to offer this book as merely a first step down this road. it certainly doesn't pretend to answer all the questions that it raises. what i'd like to do now before we start to open it up to questions and comments is to read the short introduction from my book which comes at some of the same questions from a slightly different way. and sets up what i do in the rest of the book. so this is the introduction. it's called the kid. baseball legend ted williams was one in a million.

widely considered the most gifted hitter of his time. i remember watching one of his home runs from the bleachers of the park john updike wrote in 1960. it went over the first baseman's head and rose meticulously along a straight line and was still riseing when it cleared the fence. it seemed different from anything else -- anything anyone else might hit. in the public imagination, williams was almost a god among men. a superhuman. with a collection of innate physical gifts including spectacular eye/hand coordination, grace and uncanny instincts. ted just had that natural ability said hall of fame second baseman. he was so far ahead in that era. among other traits williams was said to have had laser like eyesight which enabled him to read the spin of a ball as it left the pitcher's fingers and to gauge exactly where it would pass over the plate. ted williams sees more of the

ball than any man alive ty cobb once remarked. if you want -- if you have to pick someone to praise you, ty cobb is not a bad one there. but all that innate miracle man stuff it was all a lot of bull said williams. he insisted his great achievements were simply the sum of what he had put into the game. nothing except practice, practice, practice will bring out that ability he explained. the reason i saw things was that i was so intense. it was super discipline, not super eyesight. is that possible? could a perfectly ordinary man actually train himself to be a dazzling phenomenon? we all recognize the virtues of practice and hard work but truly could any amount of effort transform the clunky motions of a whiffer or a chucker into the majestic swing of tiger woods or the gravity-defying leap of michael jordan. could an ordinary brain get the visions of einstein or matisse.

is true greatness attainable from evidence means. conventional wisdom says no. some people are born with certain gifts while others are not. the talent and high intelligence are somewhat scarce gems scattered throughout the human gene pool. that the best we can do is locate and polish these gems and accept the limitations built into the rest of us. but someone forgot to tell ted williams that talent will out. as a boy he wasn't interested in watching his natural abilities un-fuller passively like a flower in the sun. he simply wanted or needed to be the best hitter baseball had ever seen. and he pursued that goal with appropriate ferocity. his whole life was hitting the ball recalled a boyhood friend. he always had that bat in his hand and when he made up his mind to do something, he was going to do it or know the reason why. and i love that phrase because or know the reason why ends up coming back in the book several timing.

and to connect with a lot of science. about how people practice and push their open abilities. at san diego's old north park field two blocks from his modest childhood home, friends recall williams hitting baseballs every waking hour of every day year after year after year. they describe him slugging balls until their outer shells wore off. swinging even splintered bats for hours upon hours with blisters on his finger and blood dripping down his wrists. this sounds kind of like a fairy-tale description but them you hear the same details from different people and it turns out to be accurate. and you'll hear some stuff in a second that really backs up this kind of crazy-sounding description. a working class kid with no extra pocket change he used his own lunch money to hire schoolmates so shag balls so that he could keep swinging. he would swing the bat all day and night, swing until the city turned off the lights then he'd

walk home and swing a roll of newspaper in front of a mirror until he fell asleep. the next day he would do it all day. friends say he attended school to swing. when other boys started dating girls williams just kept hitting balls in north park field. in order to strengthen his sight he would walk down the street with one eye covered and then the other. he even avoided movie theaters because he heard it was bad for the eyes. i wasn't going to let anything stop me from being the hitter i hope to be williams later recalled. looking back it was devotion. in other words he worked for it, fiercely, single-mindedly far beyond the norm. he had one thought in mind and he always followed it. says his high school coach. greatness was not a thing to ted williams. it was a process. the student stopped after he got drafted into professional baseball in williams first

season with the minor league san diego padres. the coach noticed his new recruit was the first to show up for practice in the morning and the last to leave at night. and something more curious. after each game williams would ask the coach for the used game balls. what do you do with all these baseballs he finally asked williams one day. sell them to kids in the neighborhood? no, sir, replied williams i use them for a little extra hitting practice after supper. knowing the rigors of a full practice day, the coach found the answer hard to swallow. out of a mix of suspicion and curiosity he later recalled i piled into my car after supper one night and rode around to williams' neighborhood. there was a playground near his home and sure enough i saw the kid driving those battered baseballs all over the field. ted was standing close to a rock which served as home plate. one kid was pitching to him and half dozen was shagging his drives and the stitching had

come off his ball that i had just give him. and it was often uncomfortable to watch. he discussed hitting with players and opposing players. he sought out the great hitters of the game, hornsby, cobb and others and grilled them about his techniques. he studied pitchers with the same rigor. after a while pitchers figure out batters weaknesss in. williams wasn't like that instead of them figuring out ted out he figured them out. the first time tony -- ted saw tony pitch we were sitting side-by-side on the bench and ted said this guy won't give me a fast ball i can hit and he'll try to hit me get the curve and he'll get behind the curve and that's exactly what happened. process. after a decade of effort and four impressive years in the miners williams came into the majors as an explosive hitter

and just kept getting better. his third season with the boston red sox and he became the only player in it is era and last in the 20th century to bat over 400. the next year 1942 ted williams eplisted in the navy in aviator. tests revealed his eyesight to be excellent but within normal range. something crazy happened to the world's violinists in the 20th century. they got better, faster than their peers had in previous centuries. we know this because we have lasting benchmarks like the violin concerto number one which we just heard and the concluding movement of bach number 2 in d minor. 14 minutes of impossible violin work. both pieces were considered nearly unplayable in the 18th century but are now played routinely and well by a large number of violin students. how did this happen?

and how have runners and swimmers gotten so much faster? and chess and tennis players got so much skillful. if humans were fruitfulized with a new generation appearing every 11 days we might chalk it up to generation and evolution but evolution and genes don't work like that. there is an explanation, a simple and a good one but it's implications is radical for family life and for society. it is this. some people are training harder and smarter than before. we're better at stuff because we figured out how to become better. talent is not a thing. it's a process. this is not at all how we're used to thinking about talent. with phrases like he must be gifted, good genes, innatebility, shooter, talker, painter our talent is a thing that one or does not possess.

i.q. and other ability tests codify this view and skills build curricula around it. journalists and many scientists consistently validate it. this gene gift paradigm has become a central part of our understanding of human nature. it fits with what we have been taught about dna and evolution. our genes are blueprints with -- that make us who we are. different genes make us into different people with different abilities. how else could the world end up with such varied individuals as michael jordan, bill clinton, ozzy osborn and you? but the whole concept of genetic giftedness turns out to be wildly off the mark. tragically kept afloat for decades by a cascade of misunderstandings and misleading metaphors. in recent years, a mountain of scientific evidence has merged that overwhelmingly suggests a completely different paradigm. not talent scarcity but latent talent abundance. in this conception human talent and intelligence are not permanently in short supply like

fossil fuel but potentially plentiful like wind power. the problem isn't our inadequate genetic resources, assets, but our inability so far to tap into what we already have. this is not to say that we don't have important genetic differences among us. yielding advantages and disadvantages. of course, we do. and those differences have profound consequences. but the new science suggest that few of us actually know our true limits. that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping into what scientists call our unactualized potential. it also suggests the profound optimism for the human race. we have no way of knowing how much unactualized genetic potential exists writes cornell university developmental psychologist steven saysy. therefore it becomes logically impossible to insist as some have on the existence of a genetic underclass. most underachievers are not prisoners of their own dna but

rather have so far been unable to tap into their true potential. this new paradigm does not herald a simple shift from nature to nurture as i was saying earlier. it reveals how bankrupt the phrase nature versus nurture really is and demands a whole new consideration of how each of us becomes us. this book begins, therefore, with a surprising new explanation of how genes work followed by a detailed look at the newly visible building blocks of talent and intelligence. taken together a new picture emerges of a fascinating developmental process that we can influence, though, never fully control. as individuals, as families, and as a talent promoting society. while essentially hopeful the new paradigm also raises new moral questions with which we will all have to craple. -- grapple. it would be folly to suggest anyone can literally do or be anything and such is not this book's intent. but the new science tell us it's

foolish that averageness is built into all of us and any of us can know our true limits before we applied enormous resources and invested vast amounts of time. our abilities are not set in genetic stone. they are soft and sculptable far into adulthood. with humility, with hope, and with extraordinary determination, greatness is something to which any kid of any age can aspire. so that's the introduction to the book. as i said, just now, i then go on and i try to tackle these pieces one by one and if there's -- if there are -- i think there are maybe two contributions of the book. the first is to bring different arenas of science together. science is doing some wonderful stuff but it's so complex and so balkanized, so specialized, that a lot of scientists are doing great stuff over here. it's relevant to the stuff over here but they don't very often talk to one another about that -- about those connections

and i'm trying to make some of those connections. and the other thing as i suggested also is that i think we need a whole new language to talk about what the implications of this gene environment interaction are. and also to understand now how we think about talent. so the first chapter is literally explaining what genes do in the most elemental way that i possibly can. taking cues from quite a number of scientists. i'm not a scientist but i read a lot of scientist. i talked to a lot of scientists. i vetted with a lot of scientists to make sure i was getting that part right. the second chapter is all about intelligence and understanding intelligence as an accumulation of skills not a thing that you're born with that's just kind of a fixed -- a fixed amount of stuff. the third chapter is telling people about a whole new arena of science which is called expertise studies, in which psychologists have spent the

last, say, 20 years examining very, very closely how people practice. and learning -- and other ways of how people develop. and gathering small insights and then building them into bigger insights of how we get good at stuff. so i think i'll stop there. and start to take questions. and we'll make this more of a conversation. yes, sir. >> is there anything like genetic -- excuse me, is there anything like genetic auto matcity? where, excuse me, some people automatically tap into their intelligence and their talent as opposed to having to manually tap in? >> that's not the way -- that doesn't resonate with me, no. i mean, in a sense we all live

our lives -- there's -- we go about our lives unconsciously. if you're trying to distinguish between conscious pursuit of ability and intelligence versus unconscious, i certainly wouldn't argue that a lot of the pursuits happen unconsciously or without a sense of what one's doing. but automatically tapping into it without any effort or do you want to clarify that? >> automatic in the sense that the genes themselves actually contribute to that ability, if you will, or that talent or that intelligence automatically? there's no requirement for anything else? and that that can be measured and distinguished -- >> no >> among those who have that and those who don't? i'm asking the question. >> no. i appreciate that question. that's not my reading of the science. it doesn't work that way.

do you want to choose or shall i -- >> oh, no. >> what concerns me about your platform -- there was an essay put forth by steven gould who warned us against dichotomies and how they can be used in ways to disadvantage politically in society. but he wrote an essay of 300 essays. one of them was called mozart and module-arity and it was to underscore -- well, it presented his argument -- mozart was the genius, the precocious genus. and actually in another contribution regarding mozart

daniel dennet has cite's mozart -- mozart himself saying i have no idea how i can do what i do. >> uh-huh. >> and so regarding that, i'm particularly underimpressed by the anecdote that you give post-hoc anecdote by ted williams since one can easily give anecdotes from geniuses who just say they have no idea. and the principle idea in the essay mozart in modularity. there has to be some modular structure of the brain. there simply has to be. one can envision the way the brain is put together there's a kind of scaffolding, an axial scaffolding radial scaffolding

and we could see different modules gcn÷evolved. so i'm not sure we're that far away from a mechanismic understanding on this. the emphasis of your talk that there has to be -- a holistic structure. and it's sort of like the type of view which is almost the view that the antievolutionists took. that you can't change this entity, this holistic entity because it has to function as one intergral and it concerns me because are you saying that there's no merit to a modular design?

and that the brain doesn't have compartmentalized components and that nature across this compass? because this would be the argument for talent. >> no. i'm not saying that. i don't think you heard me say that. what i'm saying is that abilities come -- or developmental process and that genes have influence over them but there aren't genes for particular abilities. i'm sorry you were underimpressed by the ted williams anecdote. the book is filled with anecdotes which -- anecdotes don't prove anything but when you look at a series of anecdotes of talking to people and examining people -- because talking to them about -- talking to people about how they become great can be a pretty unsatisfying thing as you yourself acknowledged. a lot of people are going to say i don't know how he got that way. particularly kids who were doing extraordinary things early on. you brought up mozart.

mozart is quite widely misunderstood. he's become quite the myth in popular culture. not that he isn't -- they didn't do extraordinary things, which he did. he obviously did extraordinary things. but what we think of as mozart in popular culture is that he -- is that he played extraordinary music very early on, before there was time to actually learn to become a great musician. and that he was composing so early. and that he was such an extraordinary composer. and that happened before he would have had time to learn in any kind of logical or rational way to become a great composer. if you look at the actual life of mozart, and all the details of it, it's actually extraordinarily rational and logical. and it's actually -- there are a number of parallels to it throughout history. i mean, we could go into the details of mozart if you'd like.

i spend a lot of time on it in the book. one of the things i'm doing in the book is i'm trying to pop the myths of people that we have out there of people thinking well, there's no way that there was time for that person to have actually become great. but actually there was time. and there were all the elements in place to develop. and, in fact, in the case of mozart just one detail -- when he started composing very early on it wasn't composing. it was copy other people's works. not to say that was a pretty neat thing for a very young child. but you can look at many people have done at the quality of his compositions and there is a very, very steady increase in the quality. and it took him many, many years to get to the great level of what we now consider to be mozart's extraordinary achievements. thanks for your comment.

>> i have a couple of questions concerning whether you came across any of the negative side effects of putting a lot of effort into achieving talent. two examples that come to mind is the first would be essentially going down the wrong path or being exposed -- putting a lot of time and effort to things that ultimately will ossify you. so, for instance, there was an anecdote concerning the dalai lama where somebody was bringing up how buddhism changed on history and depending on culture. and the person pointed to a statute behind him and said, look, that statue look tibetan. he turns around and said no he spent indian to me. tibetans debate in all this kind of thing and they spent a lot of time but ultimately they kind of go down the wrong path in that they believe in creator gods and stuff will protect them if that didn't work out for them in 1959. i'm curious if there's a downside for this ossifycation

and if somebody can become great that's not useful. you take a look at a lot of talent that we appreciate nowadays but how many people spent a lot of time and effort going down into an ultimate obscurity? >> well, it's hard to dispute -- i mean, your points. people can become great at stuff that's not particularly useful to themselves or to society. of course, it's very subjective, highly subjective. even your characterization of whether or not the tibetan -- you know, the consequences of their work is useful or even correct is highly subjective one which i don't need to get into the book or here. [inaudible] >> box packagers that you mention in the book, their talent -- would you mind sharing that anecdote. >> yes. let me first make a point about

prodigies because even though you weren't going down this road, the idea of ossifycation. kids showing take a break skill in an area which there is a logical explanation not to say genes aren't connected to it but there's more of a rational developmental explanation chicago into in the book. one interesting point to make is that if you take the group of people who are prodigies who are extraordinary what they do early very on and extraordinary adult achievers there are some overlaps in those two groups but not a lot. there are a lot of kids who do very well? in something very well and

get -- ossified is one word that you could use who actually get stuck in their own abilities in a couple different ways. first of all, they're not emotionally ready to deal with the kind of success, the glare of success that can see with it. -- that comes with it. and secondly, more interestingly, they get this idea -- and this is a really important idea that really comes -- that's bigger than the subject of prodigies, they get this idea that they are great at what they are because they have something inside them, not because it was this process. 'cause they weren't able to be really conscious of the process that happened so early on. and so they get actually very, very confused by that. and afraid to reach out and take risks because they don't understand that risk-taking and learning from failure is actually how you get better at stuff. how you build your thing. they want to just kind of protect what they've got. and as a result they kind of get

stuck in their own level of ability. so that's kind of what resonated early with me when you say ossify cation. let's hold that anecdote until we get to a more relevant question. >> i would ask twins separated at birth -- now, i don't know of any scientific studies that were done, it's mostly stories. twins separated at birth who seemingly have similar careers, similar interests, similar abilities. most of that -- yes, they may have been raised in similar environments even if they were separated. the same thing about the idiot savant. without seemingly -- they may have been paying attention for a long time but all of a sudden show an extraordinary ability at piano, math or whatever it happens to be. seemingly without outside effort that you could see. they may have a very big inside effort -- >> can we take these one at a time?

>> the last one is, there's no doubt i would think that genes play a major role. yes, you have a huge -- can you realize one genetic material with the appropriate environment interest, effort and edison set and the last thing i'm going to say genius is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration going along with what you said. i think genes have play a major role or not the only role by certain examples that i gave. >> i don't know the last part is contradicting -- >> i know. okay. let's talk about twins. twins are really interesting. there are actually -- there's actually quite a science -- a body of science now built on twin studies that we can talk about.

and that i think i'm going to read -- a section about because it gets quite complicated and it's been used, i think, to very badly continue this misunderstanding of how dermisic genes are. it found its way in the bell curve and became the basis for a lot of the misleading arguments in the bell curve. first, let me just say the anecdote about twins coming on oprah and never having met each other -- you're suggesting that twins are separated at birth and they come together and that they're remarkably alike. yeah, there are a number of wonderful anecdotes. there's also lots of anecdotes that do not make the major media that you bring twins together and they're completely different. there's a wonderful quote in my book from -- i think it's natalie from the "new york times" who is aware of tv documentaries that they tried to put together on twins to show how amazing they amazingly similar they are at birth but

when they start -- they start enlarging the population the anecdotes start contradicting each other. however, there is a body of science on twins where they compare the -- they try to compare the level of similarity indifference in se personality and intelligence of fraternal level of similarity and differences in identical twins. and the idea there is to come up with some statistical reading of genetic influence as we've all heard and as is mostly true. identical twins share -- it's not actually 100% of their genes but it's very, very close to 100%, okay? we can allegedly make -- we can make fairly good statistical observation comparing the differences -- the level of difference between identical twins who have 100% of their

genes and fraternal twins who are going to have an average of -- share an average of 50% of their genes which is the same as any sibling would share from any other sibling. from this we've got these extraordinary claims that intelligence is 40 or 50 or 60% inheritable. this is the word that the people -- the scientists who initiated these inheritability studies have decided to use among themselves and have rather carelessly, recklessly i'll say arguably fraudulently allowed that word to be used in the general public. because it sounds like inherited. unless there's a scientist in here who knows the difference, it's an extraordinary

difference. i'm going to read if you don't mind about a page or a page and a half from my book about inheritability because it's quite complicated and i'm not going to get into too much of the complexity in this -- in this portion. but it actually took me months and months in reading a lot of science and talking to a lot of scientists to figure out how to translate the problems with inheritability which i don't have scientists have and how the term has been used and how twin studies have been misread. and to put that into language that the general public can understand. so if we are to take the word inherit beibility at face value genetic is a force which leaves individuals very little wiggle room. twin studies reveal that tance is 60% inheritable. which implies 60% of each

person's intelligence comes preset from genes while the remaining 40% gets shaped by the environment. this appears to prove -- and this is what they did in the bell curve and this is the argument of charles murray that, well, if you're getting 60% of your intelligence from genes, that means if you don't have very good genes for intelligence, you can do a lot with that 40%. you can try to expand as much as you want but you're still not going to be very smart. there's this very kind of low ceiling if you don't have the good intelligence gene he is. so instead, in fact, this is not what the studies are saying at all. instead, twin studies report on average a statistically detectable genetic influence of 60%. some studies report more. some a lot less. in 2003, examining only poor families university of virginia psychologist eric turk heimer found intelligence was not 60% inheritable or 40% inheritable but close to 0%.

demonstrating once and for all that there is no set portion of genetic influence on intelligence. these findings suggest that a model of genes plus environment is too simple for the dynamic interaction of genes and real world environments during development. how could the number vary so much from group to group. this is how statistics work. every group is different. every inheritablibility is a snapshot from a specific time and place and reflects only a limited data being measured and how it's measured. more important though is that all of these numbers pertain only to groups. not to individuals. inheritability explains, quote, is a population average meaningless for any individual person. you cannot say that hermia has more intelligence than herdia

that height is 90% he does not mean that 90% of my inches come from my genes and 10% comes from my food. variation in a particular sample is attributable to 90% genes of 10% environment. there is no inheritability in height for the individual. the distinction between group and individual is night and day. no marathon runner would calculate her own race time by averaging the race times of 10,000 other runners. knowing the average life span doesn't tell -- knowing the life span doesn't tell me how long my life will be. no one can know how many kids you will have based on the national average. averages are averages. they're very useful in some ways and utterly useless in others. it's useful to know that genes matter and that's what twin studies have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. genes do have influence in just

about everything you have personality, intelligence, ability certainly what we look like et cetera, et cetera. but it's just as important to realize that twin studies tell us nothing about you and your individual potential. no group average will ever offer any guidance about individual capability. in other words, there's nothing wrong with the twin studies themselves. what's wrong is associating them with the word inheritability which as patrick baitson conveys, quote, the extraordinary assumption that genetic and environmental influences are independent of one another and do not interact. that assumption is clearly wrong. in the end, by parroting a strict nature versus nurture they are phantoms. they detect something in populations that simply does not exist in actual individual biology. it's as if someone tried to determine what percentage of the brilliance of king lear comes from adjectives. just because there are fancy methods available for inferring

distinct numbers doesn't mean those numbers have the meaning that some would wish for. sort of let's move. -- let's move on. thank you for your question. >> i need you to explain something more. because some of the things you're saying resonate in a way that works for me. like ted williams was the best because he worked harder than anybody else. it's a virtuous cycle. i look at my friends who have a son who seems really talented, 7 years old, soccer player, we're all talking oh, he seems to talented. so they send him to the competitive soccer club and then they put him on the traveling club and he gets good coaches and good experiences and so he works harder and it becomes who he is and it makes sense to me that he's just naturally developing. but that's -- that's not new. and i think you're saying something new that i don't understand. i think most people say yeah, if

you work really hard you can become a mozart, practice, practice, practice. that seems like commonsense. what i don't understand and i'd like for you to explain is how the cat looks different from the other cat? [laughter] >> i feel like there's a missing piece here, which is -- you're saying guess what? genes are important, environment is important. but environment affects genes. that is news to me. i don't get -- and if the answer is, well, cats that are raised above 14,000 feet in elevation and that delays the blah, blah and that's kind of a example. i don't want to make one up. i want you to tell me with a simple example how the hell does that happen? how does the one cat come out different when it has the exact same genes? >> that's a great question. i first want to take issue with

something you said in the middle of your characterization of what most people think. and i don't think it's true that most people think that virtually anyone out there could become mozart. that if you get the right resources, that virtually anyone out there could become great. is the mic still working? okay. and i actually am not saying in the literally and extreme sense that anyone can do anything. there are -- we all have genetic differences and those genetic differences are going to play a role in what we -- what we do and what we can't do. what i'm saying is we don't know what our individual abilities are. another thing i say in the book and talk about this a lot. you don't really necessarily have much of a sign of what your potential is in any given arena based on how well you're doing at age 4 or 7 or 10. it's not -- it may be a sign of how well you've done to that point.

but i think there's an awful lot of parents out there my kid just doesn't have the talent in soccer. doesn't have that innate talent so why pursue it. they just don't have what it takes. no matter what resources we bring to bear. and what -- the science suggests is that it's not anyone can become a pele or whoever the best soccer player is these days. but individuals are unable to know their true potential until they -- until they pour extraordinary amount of resources into it, which takes enormous sacrifices that we may not want to make and that's another kind of question that i raise in the book. so i think that's a slightly different characterization of how you put it. now to go back to the cats. the reason i show the pictures of the cats is that i'm trying to help people understand and maybe haven't done it very well today -- spend a lot of time

doing it in the book -- it's a big idea. and it's really hard for nonscientists to understand. but genes -- genes code for proteins. genes give instructions out that then are going to turn into certain proteins. but genes don't have information inside them that specify what traits are supposed to be like or look like. so there is no gene inside rainbow the cat, the first cat. we can go back. there's no gene that says, okay, well, this part of your fur is going to be orange and this part is going to be black. there are genes that are going to interact with the environment from the very first moment of conception. and by the time the cat is born, there's going to be the interaction between the genes and the environment is going to have come up with a unique set

of colors, a unique pattern. and by showing these two pictures, what we're demonstrating is that even though these cats had the same genes, they obviously had different -- very different environments from the moment of conception. and that the interaction -- it's not to say that it was an environmental difference that determined that cc would look different, it's the interaction. it's that -- it's that singular interaction that only exists in cc that is going to determine what her coat looks like. the genes play an influence, but they're not a cause.r they're an actor in the play, speaking to another actor. and those two -- it's not just two, obviously, 'cause there's lots of environmental -- there's lots of genes and there's lots of environmental inputs that are -- that are kind of talking back and forth, if you will.

but it's that interaction, it's that concert, it's that suite of activity that's going on in real time that is driving the development which then leads to traits. and that -- that understanding of genes is actually very well known among scientists. among this is like boring and second nature to scientists now. but the general public still thinks by and large that genes are blueprints that code for certain traits. or at least part of certain traits and then somehow the environment comes in along with it. let me give a different -- a slightly -- well, let me go back to you and see have i started to answer that? >> yes. it sounds to me like what you're saying is that the model is like

orchestraal where x proud this result in every case regardless and it's very inspiring and empowering actually. >> i think so, too. let me use another metaphor which i use a lot in the book. as i acknowledged early on, i think we need a new language for this stuff. i'm searching for it. i think i've got a couple of nice suggestions in the book. i don't think i've -- i don't feel like i've nailed it. this is going to take a while. and we're talking 100 years a culture will have been charged to think this way. but a metaphor i use which i think works pretty nicely is that genes -- instead of being blueprints is think of -- think of your genome as a giant control board with all these knobs and switches you might see in a recording studio. genes actually get turned on and off all the time by environmental signals. they're dynamic. it's a dynamic interaction.

they don't -- they don't do the same gene will do different things in a different environment. i'm repeating myself. but i think that metaphor is useful. now, let me show one more image which i think might be useful for this conversation. some of you will recognize -- this is the highly articulate linguist steven pinker at harvard. he hasn't weighed in on my book -- steven, come at me. let's hear what you think. and i'm very curious because, you know, he's one of the most articulate scientist and prominent scientist when it comes to helping people understand how genes work. and yet i think -- i'm not sure if we're seeing exactly the same thing. if we have like substantial differences or if we have semantic differences because he actually talks about genes in a

way that i think sometimes is very, very helpful. and sometimes is really confusing. now, the rope i'm showing this picture is that we see steven pinker has a beautiful head of hair. i would love to have that head of hair. he mentioned in this article in the "new york times" i think it was last year that his genome had been decoded. and they discovered that he had a gene that predisposed him to baldness. obviously, it didn't go that way. now, he still uses the word predisposition. i don't think the word predisposition is a very helpful word if some people have -- it makes it sound like the genes are dice. and if you roll them in this case 4 out of 5 times, you're going to get a bald person. and if you roll it one other -- you know, one other time, you're going to end up with someone with this kind of hair. and that's not the way it works.