Born and Raised

Why on earth would a political scientist do research in genetics? In this episode, our hosts met up with Sven Oskarsson in the supremely cozy Alinska Library at Uppsala university to let him spill the beans! Are political orientations, participation and behavior heritable, and why? How do genetic effects on political outcomes vary? And what are the practical implications of these types of results? Oh, and what's with all the ancient portraits?

Curious about epigenetics? Dive right in! In this episode, Laurel Raffington gets a visit from the Born and Raised crew in her beautiful office at the Max Planck institute in Berlin. We learn about all things epigenetics - clocks, scores, inheritance - and about their connections to things like socioeconomic deprivation. The ethics and history of doing sociogenomic research in a context like Germany is also discussed. And how does lifting weights fit into all of this? Stay tuned to find out!

In this episode, our hosts visit economist Sjoerd van Alten in his office at the Vrije Universiteit. Why would an economist be interested in genetics? How does one use molecular genetic data to study genetic effects on complex social and economic traits? What are genome-wide association studies, polygenic indexes, and how do we get from correlation to causation? These and many more questions are answered in this episode!

In this very first episode of Born and Raised, hosts Rafael and Aysu visit behavior geneticist Abdel Abdellaoui in his office at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. They talk about the nature of social science genetics as a field, about responsible research communication, and we also get to learn some shocking facts about Abdel's past!

Brought to you by the European Social Science Genetics Network: https://essgn.org/

What is happening at the intersection between genetics and the social sciences? In this upcoming podcast series, hosts Rafael and Aysu talk to leading researchers in the exciting new field of social science genetics about their life and work. Born and Raised is produced by the European Social Science Genetics Network.