Can a Laugh Be Inherited? How Genes Define Who We Are

Genetically speaking, we get what we get. But someday we might be able to program our genetic futures, and then it's a whole new ballgame.

Why are people today often taller than their ancestors? If you have blue eyes or red hair, does that mean your children will too? Is there an intelligence gene, or a gene that produces mass murderers? Or is it the family environment one grows up in? These are some of the questions Carl Zimmer explores in his new book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh.

When National Geographic caught up with Zimmer at Yale University, he explained why it’s impossible to predict what skin or hair color Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's children will have, how a book by an American geneticist underpinned Hitler’s mass extermination programs, and why your Neanderthal DNA may

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