Hello and welcome to contemplations and today we're going to be talking about genes,

mutants and modern politics which is quite an eclectic mix but it all ties together quite nicely

basically what I'm going to be talking about in some is genetic

influences on politics and this is something that up until sort of the early 2000s

much of human political behavior was explained and conceptualized as entirely

environmental people didn't really believe that there was a biological influence

upon it they believed it was a uniquely human thing as is consciousness and therefore perhaps

a social... That's not entirely the case but I'll let you continue because I at least in the realm of of psychological research and

particularly when it comes to published research as well I don't doubt that people would have been looking at it from that lens.

It's not necessarily to left a field to assume so, but the actual research itself didn't really kick off properly. I don't doubt that there's

probably some early movers but I'm going to be talking about the ones actually got

the ball rolling and have started people looking at this properly and this is normally about in 2005

with this paper here are political orientations genetically transmitted

and basically the methodology is one that has become idiosyncratic with

looking at the influence of genes on human behavior. They looked at monozygotic and dizygotic twins. Are you familiar with those terms before?

No I'm not. Okay, so a zygote is a fertilized egg. I feel like I'm your dad explaining how the birds and the bees work.

Treat me like a retarded child you've been introduced to that you need to explain the world.

There you go. You always do anyway. You're welcome. Yes, a zygote is a fertilised egg. So as soon as the sperm has entered the egg, it becomes a zygote and a mono zygote.

If you're referring to twins,

twins that shared the same egg that split

and therefore they're identical twins.

Whereas dizygotic means that there were two eggs, each were fertilised, but they had a different mix of their parents genes and therefore they're slightly different.

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