00:01:14.580I'll try to give you the two-minute version of it.
00:01:17.460You know, I've been doing research in this area for 50 years.
00:01:19.840And when I started back in 1970, in psychology, you couldn't really talk about genetics, given Nazi Germany.
00:01:27.360And the fact that psychology was completely environmentalistic, the idea that everything we are is what we learned, what our mothers did to us in the first few years of life.
00:01:35.920And so, it's been very rewarding for me to see over the 40 years as data piled up and convinced most reasonable scientists and, I think, society as a whole that genetics is important.
00:01:48.960You know, I haven't been called a Nazi for 30 years, probably.
00:01:51.800But, you know, back when I started, it was really dangerous, professionally and politically, to even talk about genetics.
00:01:58.260So, that's been really rewarding to see.
00:02:00.400And that's why I wrote this book a few years ago, because after 50 years of research in this field, where I was kind of keeping my head down, I'm kind of embarrassed to say, because I wanted to do the research.
00:02:11.360So, I didn't respond to people who attacked me, you know, because I thought, in the end, if psychology is going to be a science, it'll be convinced by data.
00:02:18.740So, keep your nose down, collect the data.
00:02:20.380And that really did happen, you know, so much data piled up that any reasonable person looking at this amount of data from adoption studies, twin studies, now DNA studies, you just can't ignore the importance of genetic differences between people.
00:02:35.320So, that's what my book is called, Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.
00:02:40.060And there's a lot to say about that, you know.
00:02:42.660You sort of have to start in media res, you know, where there's so much background you have to try to fill in,
00:02:48.660because nature, nurture makes us who we are, not as humans.
00:02:53.160We're talking about why we differ between each other, and we've got 3 billion base pairs of DNA that we inherit from our parents.
00:03:01.200We're only talking about the 1% that differs between us, because that's what makes us different.
00:03:06.440So, there's so many things like that to talk about, and maybe we'll get into that as the conversation goes along.
00:03:15.720But actually, just very quickly, you mentioned, you know, not being called bad, terrible things for a while.
00:03:22.260What has, you know, you've been in that sphere for 50 years.
00:03:26.560How have you observed some of the sort of ebbs and flows of the ability to freedom of research and freedom of expression and that sort of thing in academia?
00:03:35.260Yeah, well, I'm puzzled by the current culture of academia.
00:03:42.040I don't know where that came from, because I was always interested in science, because you can explore anything, as long as it's empirical.
00:03:48.460And there's issues like religious issues that, you know, you really can't tackle empirically.
00:03:53.880But I want to study things that are tractable empirically, and then you have your view, I have mine.
00:03:59.400Let's do research and figure out who's right.
00:04:02.680You know, so that's the sort of stuff I like to do.
00:04:05.700And so it's been appalling for me to, well, when I was in the States, there was a rise in the religious right, and you couldn't talk about God issues.
00:04:15.980Not a big deal, but I felt it was less open.
00:04:20.220And that bothered me a lot, because, you know, if universities should be anything, they should be a place where you can talk about anything, you know, as adults, you know, which is what I like about this podcast so much.
00:04:30.260I'd like to see you two guys disagree with each other and show people, you know, you can disagree about some pretty profound things and, you know, still be friends and actually enjoy the discussion.
00:04:42.540So in the early 90s, I had an opportunity to come to the UK, and my wife at that time was British and tried living in the States and didn't like it.
00:04:52.420And I had this view from my time, we spent most of our summers in Britain, and I got to, you know, she was from Cambridge, and so I got to know quite a few people.
00:05:00.880And I had the feeling that things were more open in the UK, and I have now come to realize that's only because Americans are not subtle, you know, and that it's more Chinese whisper stuff, you know, whereas in America, it's right in your face, you know, people coming up and disagreeing with you.
00:05:21.020And so I don't think it's as open as I thought it was, but I'm at a place at the Institute of Psychiatry with some of the brightest people I know, and there you really can talk about anything.
00:05:33.020So from a genetics point of view, I went from not being able to talk about genetics to now being asked to give talks to public groups and lots of people about genetics.
00:05:45.680So everyone seems to be interested in genetics, and I don't know if I'm Pollyannish about it, but I think it's partly because the data has just built up.
00:05:53.220I could have wasted my time, I think, trying to argue with people, but as a scientist, I thought, no, it's better.
00:05:58.860Just take a long view of it and collect the data and hope that it stays in empirical science, where in the end, data rules, you know?
00:06:09.060And so I think that's kind of spread into society.
00:06:12.440The other thing that's come along that's been huge in the last 20 years is the DNA revolution, because you can argue about twin studies, adoption studies, you can't argue with DNA.
00:06:22.740When you show that this bit of inherited DNA relates to that trait, it's kind of, what can you say, really?
00:06:30.180So for all those reasons, I think science has certainly become not just accepting, but really enthusiastic about genetics.
00:06:39.740It's one of the hottest areas in the life sciences now.
00:06:43.500But I also think in society as a whole, you know, when my book came out, I was really worried about the reception.
00:06:49.880And when I gave these public lectures, you know, people were very keen on it.
00:06:56.260I didn't get any flack, you know, whereas people thought I was going to get clobbered when I went to these talks.
00:07:02.700Well, some of your friends said it's a suicide note.
00:07:06.100And I really didn't know how it was going to come out, you know, because I've spent, I've never been so open about it.
00:07:12.300You know, after 50 years, I decided, you know, at my age, what have I got to lose?
00:07:15.580I'm just going to tell it like it is, you know, tell it as I see it, which I think is the way it is.
00:07:21.380And so I was really pleased that the public reception was very good.
00:07:25.580The flack I got was more from academics.
00:07:28.460And my work is on cognitive development, so it touches on education.
00:07:32.840And education is still the backwater of really anti-genetics still.
00:07:40.060It's like psychology 30, 40 years ago, where there's just a knee-jerk reaction against genetics, somehow thinking that if genetics is important, then features are useless.
00:07:50.860You know, I mean, where if they knew anything about this, they'd realize that's not at all true.
00:07:57.120Clinicians used to think that in psychology, genetics is going to put them out of business, but it puts them in business in a way.
00:08:03.220I mean, if you can say, well, this disorder is different from that disorder, and maybe people who have a strong genetic propensity for vulnerability might respond to treatments differently, maybe drug treatments or cognitive behavioral therapy.
00:08:17.660So I think education will go that way eventually, but, boy, it's slow going.
00:08:23.420And that's where I got the hostility more than any other area.
00:09:15.840I think when you talk to teachers, not to higher-level people or academics in education, you can't teach 30 kids in a classroom and not notice that some kids learn.
00:09:27.060You've just got to stay out of their way, and they're going to learn lots of stuff.
00:09:30.180Whereas other kids need a lot more help to just get up to minimum levels of literacy and numeracy.
00:09:36.460And so I think we did a survey of teachers and how they feel about genetics.
00:09:42.580And although they get no genetics in their training, they don't even know about genetics other than a few very rare single-gene mutations, which they'll never see.
00:09:51.300They don't get anything about genetics, yet they accept the idea of genetic differences.
00:10:00.740I mean, they don't know much about it, but in general, they're willing to say, as you were suggesting, that kids do differ.
00:10:07.060And to assume that those differences are only due to the teachers, or if you can't blame the teachers, you blame the parents.
00:10:14.420If you can't blame the parents, you blame the kids.
00:10:27.000To the contrary, you know, it depends on your views, but it could mean you say, well, we need to put, this is called the Finnish model in education,
00:10:34.480put all the resources needed to get everybody up to some minimal levels of literacy and numeracy so that they can participate in society.
00:10:43.020And, you know, Galton, who founded, Francis Galton, who's also a bad name right now because of eugenics,
00:10:48.780but he started this field of genetics of human behavior and especially cognitive development.
00:10:54.160And he said, ability will out, meaning you don't have to do much.
00:10:58.680You kind of have to stay out of the way of, if you seem like musically gifted kids or mathematically gifted kids,
00:11:03.900they don't need the best teachers in the world.
00:11:06.220You know, they're just going to pick it up themselves.
00:11:08.720And with the Internet now, you know, there's no stopping these kids.
00:11:12.780So I think the teacher's perspective on this is really good because the problem with parents is they only see a couple kids.
00:11:34.300And, you know, kids are different from adults.
00:11:36.820And, you know, so if you ask them about their kid, they are very active.
00:11:40.340Well, actually, no, this kid's kind of a vegetable.
00:11:44.200Whereas if you're a teacher and you see all these kids and you say, this kid is really hyperactive, you can believe it.
00:11:50.560But the thing that I always found interesting looking with kids is that you'd get kids from the same family, yet they're completely different.
00:12:00.540And genetically, you go, well, they can't have the same father.
00:12:12.920So you see one kid who's super bright and then the other one who comes along and it isn't as bright.
00:12:17.700And in many ways, we do those kids a disservice because then we compare them to the brother and the sister and they go, why aren't you like them?
00:12:49.820You can say, oh, you didn't take him out enough when he was young or whatever.
00:12:53.260But then you have a second child and they're so different, as you're saying, Francis.
00:12:57.920But genetics predicts that kids are different because they're 50% similar genetically.
00:13:03.440But that means they're 50% different genetically.
00:13:05.680And so when you have more than one child, you really see it because shyness is one of the most heritable characteristics in infants' sake.
00:13:14.040And if given that, if you have one child who's very shy, chances are the other one will be less shy.
00:13:19.220And, you know, you see these differences in personality and you say, I didn't do that.
00:13:24.080And so that's why they say parents are environmentalists, generally, until they have more than one child.
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00:15:01.000So let's get into the core of your work, because it's absolutely fascinating, so interesting in terms of understanding how we differ and why we differ and who we are.
00:15:11.000You talked about how teachers may not be taught genetics.
00:15:16.380What should we all be taught about genetics at a base level as a society so that we understand ourselves and our friends and partners and other people, strangers better?
00:16:55.220You know, the parents, they might be treating the kids differently, but it's more likely it's idiosyncratic, you know, stochastic sorts of factors.
00:17:35.000But to the contrary, you know, it just means if you, if I'm sure you're not, you don't think this, but there's a lot of parents, especially, you know, yuppie parents who, you know, are waiting until they're in their 30s or whatever.
00:17:46.200And then they have their precious kid.
00:17:47.680And they're so concerned about making one false move that's going to screw the kid up for life.
00:17:53.700And the other thing I see is that a lot of people still, they know it's wrong, but deep down, they still think the kid's a blob of clay, that they're going to mold to be what they want it to be.
00:18:05.520And that doesn't work because you don't do that.
00:18:09.560Far better is to say, like with your spouse or your friends, you don't do nice things for them because you want to make them into something you want them to be.
00:19:32.380But what determines what people do in life is more a matter of, I don't know, I just do it because I like it, sort of.
00:19:39.120And that what you like to do, you do it more and you do it better and you get better at it.
00:19:44.000The aptitude almost follows from the appetite.
00:19:46.800I don't know about you guys, but when I ask friends, what is it?
00:19:48.960And why are you doing what you're doing?
00:19:51.780When you get done, people can tell you a story about it, but very often it's chance sort of stuff and sort of like, I don't know, I just kind of like doing it.
00:20:01.540Like, I can't imagine liking to do comedy.
00:20:03.940I mean, that would be my worst nightmare, having to go up on a stage and try and tell a joke.
00:20:29.380It's so interesting what we're talking about.
00:20:31.620And this is a question that I really wanted to ask you because the more I read about your work, the more I researched it, the more I thought, is free will an illusion?
00:20:41.700Are we just completely determined by our genetics?
00:20:45.800I like to think I've got free will, but you just go, a lot of the stuff I've done, is that just my genes?
00:20:53.100Well, listen, the free will issue is a very big issue philosophically.
00:20:59.700But say just, and, you know, like Sam Harris and people are saying no such thing as free will.
00:22:06.140People who have problems with their weight, you know, they just need to get a grip, pull up their socks, you know.
00:22:12.800But it turns out it's about 60% heritable, meaning the differences between people and their body weight are 60% of the differences are due to inherited DNA differences.
00:22:22.460So where this comes back to your question is, I have this high, like I'm at the 94th percentile of this genetic risk, but I'm at the only 70th percentile of actual body weight.
00:22:35.460You know, that still gives me a BMI near on the cusp of obesity, really.
00:22:41.900But you're doing quite well given your genetic inheritance.
00:22:45.020And instead of me giving up and saying, I'm destined to be a genetic fatty, I can't do anything about it, I find for that and for many other genetic risks, like heart disease or whatever, it actually motivates you to do better.
00:23:00.640So I know that my weight isn't a matter of, you know, every year.
00:23:06.740You know, I put a few pounds on every year, but the problem is they don't go away.
00:23:11.060And so by recognizing I'm in this kind of battle of the bulge, it's a lifelong battle.
00:23:18.060And so what I do is I arrange my environment.
00:23:19.860I just can't have junk food in the house, you know, with the best of intentions, you know, come home late one night and those crisps start talking to you, you know, just one crisp, you know, and then the whole bag's gone.
00:23:30.600And, you know, you could say, I could have the self-control, but, you know, life, you kind of live it on the fly and things happen and sometimes you lose it.
00:23:43.000And other people wouldn't have that sort of, those crisps, they could leave on the shelf, you know, I just can't have them in the house.
00:23:49.940So I've learned that I can't have biscuits in the house and stuff like that.
00:23:53.680And I still have to struggle with it, but it helps me to know I've got this genetic propensity for putting on weight.
00:24:02.260So I think weight is a good example of what you're talking about.
00:24:05.660Just because it's heritable doesn't mean there's nothing you can do about it.
00:25:15.460So the work on addiction suggests it's moderately heritable.
00:25:20.560You know, in general, about 40% heritable.
00:25:23.720And people are trying to get genetic DNA predictors.
00:25:27.660We call them polygenic scores because these aren't, these genetic influences aren't due to a handful.
00:25:33.740They're not due to one gene or a handful of genes.
00:25:36.200They're due to thousands of genes with very tiny effects.
00:25:41.420And you can put them together in what we call a poly, multiple genic score, to predict behavior like alcoholism.
00:25:49.500And so they're not as strong as the predictors we have for, say, cognitive ability or school performance.
00:25:58.520But they're getting better all the time.
00:26:00.720And they're getting better by having bigger and bigger studies.
00:26:03.620The first study that was done was called the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium Study in 2007.
00:26:08.600And they had 2,000 cases of seven disorders, you know, like the big ones, like hypercholesterolemia and, you know, six other disorders with 2,000 patients.
00:26:20.960And at the time, that was just thought, you know, mammoth samples.
00:26:25.500Well, now that wouldn't get published.
00:26:49.220And if you had a single gene disorder, you know, you only need one family to find it.
00:26:55.340So that's been what we've been up to in the last 10 years, getting bigger and bigger samples.
00:27:01.320We're collaborations among sometimes hundreds of studies, many hundreds of investigators.
00:27:08.820You know, we're page after page of authors on these papers.
00:27:12.440But it's kind of cool in a way that people realize their sample, which they've struggled to collect for decades, is worthless because it doesn't have the power to detect these effects.
00:27:23.100So all they can do is throw their lot in with everybody else.
00:27:27.520But it makes for much better science, really.
00:27:29.800So, Robert, we've talked about some of the more physical things like obesity and perhaps addiction, people would argue, has a strong physical component.
00:27:37.320I want to go to psychology in a second.
00:27:40.160But first of all, what about something as strongly related to identity as, say, sexuality, the narrative in society, which is frankly one that I'm sort of invested in, but one I go with, is that, you know, if you're gay or straight or bi or whatever it is, that's 100% genetic.
00:28:01.600Well, when this research, the first twin studies and then adoption studies were done on sexuality 30 years ago or so, that wasn't the prevailing view.
00:28:11.340I mean, it was more that it was a matter of lifestyle choices and how your mother treated you in the first few years of life.
00:28:19.580So the research coming out showing that there's genetic influence on it, not real high genetic influence, moderate genetic influence, that created quite a storm.
00:28:29.840And then when someone said they found a gene on the X chromosome that's related to that, which turns out not to be true, that really upped the ante a bit.
00:28:38.460So people were not, you know, they were quite hostile to the idea, but the gay community liked it because, you know, it wasn't just a lifestyle choice and they were making life difficult for their parents and other people or whatever.
00:28:52.820So it's interesting to hear you say that you think if we did a survey now, most people would think that it's very highly heritable.
00:28:59.080I have no doubt that most people would answer that way.
00:29:02.700I worked at an adolescent treatment center where we had several boys who were gay and they were almost in the treatment center because they were gay and they created such problems in their life.
00:29:14.060But their stories were, they just knew from early on, you know.
00:29:19.900And so I tend to agree with you, but it's a difficult thing to study because even now I think people aren't totally open about their sexuality, I think.
00:29:31.500But anyway, the data that exists not surprisingly suggests there's some genetic influence, but it's not at all 100% heritable.
00:29:39.080I mean, it's a long way from that, but there might be chance factors involved as well.
00:29:44.980And, you know, one way to get at this is with identical twins because that's what the twin study is about, comparing identical, called monozygotic twins.
00:29:53.780It's the same fertilized egg, so same sperm and egg combined to create this embryo, and it splits in the first few days of life.
00:30:01.700So these are genetically identical individuals.
00:30:04.020If you sequence them, they have the same DNA, both individuals.
00:30:40.540But then people say, you know, well, but maybe if you grow up with someone who's a, you know, people confuse you all the time if you're an identical twin.
00:30:49.580The easiest way to tell if a twin is identical or not is one question.
00:30:52.700When you were growing up, did people have trouble telling you apart?
00:31:24.280And so moving on to psychology now, which is obviously an area you focused on heavily in your work.
00:31:29.960How heritable are things like political beliefs, for example, cultural positions, you know, things of that nature?
00:31:38.560Views, world views, if we might describe it that way.
00:31:41.180Well, people are surprised if everything's heritable.
00:31:43.520And people were surprised, though, to find out that attitudes, you know, are also heritable.
00:31:49.340Now, unlike a lot of other traits in psychology, attitudes, especially political attitudes and religiosity, show some influence of the nurture of the family in which you're brought up.
00:32:02.780But they're also substantially heritable.
00:32:06.540And that still bothers people, I think.
00:32:10.780But, you know, there's so many studies now showing that it's incontrovertible.
00:32:15.280But it's common sense, isn't it, Robert?
00:32:19.100When we're talking, they'll say, oh, you just remind me just of your grandfather when you do that, or of your mum when you say it that, when you say that thing.
00:32:27.480You're just like your dad when you do this.
00:33:31.600But there was a case, there was an adoption agency in New York that in the 50s and going into the 60s thought it was difficult to adopt kids.
00:35:22.680And, you know, because they love that sort of thing.
00:35:24.500Staying up all night and having a lot of, you know, they lived together in a bachelor pad that was real wild with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
00:35:58.840And, Robert, for these twins, are the outcomes roughly the same, even though they got placed in a lower class home, middle class home, upper class?
00:36:06.780Did they all end up in the same place?
00:36:08.460Or the fact that one kid ended up getting the best possible education mean that and connections mean that they did slightly better?
00:36:25.340I mean, you know, he didn't want to go an academic route.
00:36:29.100So they ended up being amazingly similar in personality, in education and cognitive abilities, which is my interest in particular, but also psychopathology.
00:36:40.800One committed suicide while this film was being made, shortly, I guess, before the film was made.
00:36:47.880And, you know, you'd say, whoa, then the other two didn't.
00:36:51.940But then it turns out all three of them lived in different families, not knowing the existence of the others.
00:36:58.620All three of them had therapy for depression in adolescence, which in the 50s was extremely rare.
00:37:05.040So that's an example of how one committed suicide, but they were all depressive.
00:37:12.180And what we know about suicide is it's often a spontaneous act in a way, you know, like there's a BBC documentary on it that I think is very good about the epidemic of male depression.
00:39:22.580But the adoption method, which the first study was done in 49, and I did a very large study in the 70s in Colorado.
00:39:30.840You take, in those days, this was like in the early, well, you know, in the United States, I won't go into the whole story,
00:39:41.800but with the swinging 60s, there was a lot of illegitimate births because birth control wasn't really available then, and abortion wasn't really an option either.
00:39:50.400So there were a lot of kids being put up for adoption.
00:39:52.780And so we studied, I studied the birth mothers who, at that time, went away from their home because it was such a negative thing to have a baby out of wedlock.
00:40:01.880They'd go into these homes for unwed mothers for the last trimester when they were showing.
00:40:06.360And we tested them in these homes and then studied the kids and their adoptive parents as the kids grew up into their teenage years.
00:40:18.140So that you've taken parents who share genes and environment with their kids, and we know they're similar for everything.
00:40:26.940But you then almost experimentally divide the genetics and the environment.
00:40:32.240You've got nature parents, the biological parents, and their adopted away kids who in those days, you know, you have to say you'll never see the kid again.
00:40:40.420You know, it's not like today where birth parents are involved in the raising of their child.
00:40:46.020And then you've got the nurture parents, the adoptive parents who adopt these kids.
00:40:50.920And just to give you one concrete example, we were talking about weight.
00:40:54.580You know, the correlation between parents and offspring for weight is 0.4.
00:40:58.820So it's a correlation is a statistic that goes from 0 to 1.
00:41:34.540It's the correlation between these adoptive parents who raised the kids from the first few months of life and their adopted kid for weight is zero.
00:42:03.000But what about something like one of the things we've explored on this show, for example, we've talked to people like Warren Farrell, who's the author of The Boy Crisis.
00:42:10.620And one of the things he talks about is the impact of fatherlessness on boys in particular, but also on girls.
00:42:16.780What happens, statistically speaking, and someone who grows up without a father is far more likely to end up in prison, far more likely to misbehave in school.
00:42:26.940And a whole host of other negative outcomes.
00:42:35.940I'm trying to think of the shorter version of this, but you can't assume that environmental factors are all environment.
00:42:43.900Now, the fatherless home is a tougher issue, a tougher example for me to work with.
00:42:50.100But let me start with another example.
00:42:52.640One of the items that, in terms of cognitive development, one of the items that is best predictive of kids' cognitive development is number of books in the home.
00:43:01.740And that's always been assumed to be environmental.
00:43:44.520It's not as heritable as behavioral traits.
00:43:46.760But on average, the environmental measures we use in psychology are about 25% heritable.
00:43:52.320And life events, you know, the big items are things like financial disruption,
00:43:58.100getting in conflicts with people, losing your job.
00:44:03.200Well, that's not the environment out there independent of us.
00:44:06.600We have something to do with that environment.
00:44:08.360And so I think it's very important to recognize that just because we give something the name, a label of environment, doesn't make it environmental.
00:44:16.500In fact, you're safe for saying there's probably genetic influence.
00:44:19.460So, Robert, just so that we don't lose the audience and also don't lose me, because you're very clever and I'm not, I'm struggling to keep up.
00:44:26.320Are you sort of saying that the fatherlessness is a genetic issue?
00:44:44.960And we're not trying to judge anyone or whatever.
00:44:46.760People have their own individual circumstances.
00:44:48.680But correct me when I say, so what you're saying is a person who might end up being a single parent passes certain genes onto their child that a person who will less likely end up as a single parent passes onto their child.
00:45:04.120And therefore, the life outcomes are different.
00:45:43.400And when you ask, well, where does that come from?
00:45:46.400It's a better example because it may be positive.
00:45:49.620The sort of people like me, I can talk about this because I've been married three times.
00:45:54.300So, people who get divorced, this is on average, they tend to be kind of risk-taking, joie de vivre, things that probably make them attractive initially, but probably make them less safe bets for long-term relationships.
00:46:50.940This is the thing that is really great about having you on the show.
00:46:53.760It's like, I haven't thought about these things nearly carefully enough.
00:46:56.660And therefore, I'm going with a lot of, like, narratives that I haven't actually examined.
00:47:00.860So, it's fascinating to have the data.
00:47:02.180It would be really good to talk about it as a new parent.
00:47:03.900And I think I was going to write a follow-up book to Blueprint because the four pages in the book about parenting have gotten more attention than anything else.
00:47:14.740And I don't know if you've looked around at parenting books.
00:47:16.780But, you know, there are literally thousands of parenting books.
00:47:21.620Hardly any of them even mention genetics.
00:47:24.300Whereas, I think the most important thing for parents to know is that they have less control than they think they do because genetics is a very, you know, it's the most important systematic source of differences.
00:47:43.520So, I think it's really important for parents to understand that message.
00:47:47.780So, it'd be kind of fun to think about whether this has an impact on, you know, you.
00:47:54.740And have you thought about these issues at all?
00:47:57.200No, because the way I think about it, I suppose, is I've always seen it as my job as a parent.
00:48:03.960And maybe, look, I'm three weeks into it, so what the hell do I know?
00:48:06.840But the way I see it is about observing what my child's aptitudes and appetites are and facilitating them in that journey.
00:48:16.880So, I don't want my child to be a lawyer or a basketball player.
00:48:21.920Well, I do want them to be a basketball player, but like a thing that I've decided for them.
00:48:27.480But what I hope to be able to do is to pay attention enough that I can see this and give them opportunity enough that they can find what they're good at and what they're interested in and then facilitate that journey as best I can as a parent.
00:48:40.200And that's the way I've always looked at it.
00:48:41.800Well, and that was the message I had in those four pages in Blueprint.
00:48:45.620But a lot of parents don't want to hear.