Short Wave - Genetic Fact Vs. Fiction And Everything In Between With Janina Jeff

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Geneticist Janina Jeff is back on the show to talk with host Emily Kwong about season 2 of her podcast In Those Genes. They talk about rhythm, aging and navigating what can be ascribed to our genes and what is determined by society.Check out more of Janina's work on In Those Genes: inthosegenes.comEpisodes referenced in today's Short Wave include:- R&B: Rhythm & Blackness- Black Don't CrackAnd listen to our last episode with Janina: n.pr/35TPyWJEmail the show at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. White people can't dance. And y'all be trying. Y'all be drilling. Do you all listen to the words or the beat? This is Eddie Murphy in his 1997 standout raw, making comedy out of a trope that's been kicking around for a long time, that certain people are better at catching the beat and better at rhythm.

It's a mainstream idea, but is it true? where does the social construct of race and the genetics of us humans meet? Crossroads like these are exactly where the podcast in those genes sits in its new season out now. The show is hosted by geneticist Janina Jeff. Self-proclaimed audiophile, wife of Andre 3000, manager of the Jake Dilla Donuts, glorified hip-hop head. Yep, that's yours truly. Yep, Janina came on our show last year to talk about DNA tests and genetic ancestry. We'll drop a link to that episode in our notes.

Science is Janina's passion and music is too. I've always thought of music and dance as something that's being ingrained in my DNA, you know, and being the lightest one in the family, like everyone was looking at me like, ooh, you hope she could dance, you know, like I hope she got rhythm. You know, and I'll confess and say I'm not the person. Like, I'm not dancing like my aunts, but I am not dancing offbeat. Okay. Okay.

But what does it mean to be off beat? Well, Janina has a clapping experiment for you. You start the episode with this kind of brilliant audio experiment. I want to add some short waivers to your data set. So, yeah, set it up. What were you trying to do here? So here we opened the episode with describing. describing what rhythm is.

And we define rhythm as being able to clap along to a beat. So the idea is you hear a beat, and then after a few seconds, you can now clap along in the same cadence of that beat. And so we give two different cadences, one that is on the twos and the fours and one that is on the ones and the threes. Okay, wait, I'm ready. I'm ready. We're going to play a song and ask you to clap a while. along to the beat. Three, two, one. Begin your claps.

I heard you clapping. Do you know which one you clapped on? I got so nervous that I just started clapping when it felt right. I heard a lot of claps. I was like, I think she's just clapping. I don't know if she could hear. Okay. So if I clapped on the twos and the fours, that would mean I'm on beat, right?

So this is by cultural standards. So cultural standards is saying you're being able to clap along to the beat. And we're saying, if you can cap along to the beat, by cultural standards, that means you have rhythm. But when we really think about rhythm, it is about having any type of cadence at all. And genetically speaking, like, what is your final statement on this stereotype that certain people have better rhythm than others? You're probably not going to like this answer, but the answer is that it's very complicated and we don't know. On the contrary, we on shortwave level, we don't know. We find it humble and real. We don't know. I think that we have insights. So, you know, I learned a lot about how we receive music and how our bodies respond to music and rhythm and learning kind of the different integral parts that play into this entire process. And I think it's safe to say that scientists really don't know the answer to the question, but I feel like a lot of the evidence and research point strongly to there's likely not a huge population different.

that could be explained by genetics. So that is Janina's genetic finding when it comes to rhythm. But what about aging? And how does a geneticist like her navigate what can be traced to our genes and what is determined by society? You're about to find out because today on the show, we welcome back our science podcast cousin, Janina Jeff. Okay, before we get into this conversation with Janina,

we had a few technical issues recording her, so you may notice a little difference in the audience. audio, such as the life of a pandemic podcast maker, I'm all right? All right. Enjoy. We're going to link all of Season 2 of In Those Genes in our episode notes. Like, you can't fully understand this show until you just listen to it, including this episode we just talked about, which is R&B, Rhythm and Blackness. Now I want to talk about this incredible piece you did about age and perception of age. It was called Black Don't Crack. Tell me about that phrase. And what you were trying to figure out with it about aging. Yeah. So black.

don't crack comes from this idea that black people age slower compared to other populations. And it's something that has become so mainstream that I don't even think it's just something that black people say. And I wanted to talk about it because a lot of people who talk about this say it's genetic. But we first wanted to kind of talk about what are the things that people think about when they say black don't crack? And what is aging really? And so, similar to the rhythm episode, there's somewhat kind of two different definitions for that. You know, when we say black don't crack, we're talking about wrinkles in your skin. We're talking about how fast you go gray. We're talking about your ability to memorize things

in your memory. And ultimately, we leave the listeners down a very, very fun adventure, very magic school bus-esque adventure, where our sales kind of have a personality of of their own, and we talk really deep about the cellular biology of aging. Hey, we need some more keratinocytes. Commence cellular division. Typo alert. Typo alert. That is the sound of a body getting tired.

Scientifically, what's going on there? Yeah, so we're talking about the process. of cellular division, right? And what happens when certain things happen in the body, right? So I think the big takeaway that we want listeners to get from the entire episode is that aging is very complex, but it's mostly cellular. You know, even when we talk about wrinkles, when we talk to Tina, who also has been on a shortwave in this episode, we talk about hair and we talk about melanin, right, and your melanocytes. And so all of these are tied to our cellular health. And so we just try to emphasize to everyone that cellular health is a major part, if not the biggest part of aging,

right? It's kind of where the process of aging starts and ends, you know? I mean, taken all together, what would you say is true and not true about the idea of blackstone crack? What did you end up finding? Well, we did find, and this is one of the rare episodes where we see some really strong genetic correlations with genes that are involved in melanin production. There are certain parts of aging that we can ascribe to having more melanin, thus, you know, being darker. I'm talking particularly, you know, in our skin and the melanin in our hair. Aging is super complex. And we don't have enough to give out a prescription of this is what you should do and this is what you should not do. But I think this is a start to understanding aging. And I think it's going to start to understanding how complex some of the

things we casually say and culturally say are not as easy as we say them, right? As the episode goes on and you're pulling back the layers of aging and health, you start to talk really candidly about disproportionate impacts for African-descended people when it comes to certain diseases. And lack of access to health care and lack of access to social support. And I'm wondering, you know, when you were reporting this out, how did you separate in your mind all these things, like what was genetically determined by what was socially and environmentally made to be? Yeah. So, you know, the hardest thing is going through the literature and trying to distinguish the racial and bias implications and medical research from the action.

thing we're talking about. African descent people are not living longer compared to their other counterparts. And that's because when we think about some of the major causes of death, heart disease, and cancer, a lot of them are dependent on having access to health care. A lot of them are dependent on having access to medication and clean water. And it was really disheartening, actually, to think about, we can't even really answer the question if black people live longer because there's so much systemic racism and capitalism that is embedded in the health care network.

We can't actually control all those factors and then ask the question, is it purely genetic or not? And that's the thing I'm the most passionate about. Yeah, at one point you say in this kind of frustrated way, you're like, is genetics the thing we should be chasing? And I'm wondering how working on this season, how you feel about some of the things you've discovered

and how it makes you look at your own profession now. One thing that this podcast, even in season one, has like definitely taught me, is to be critical of the science and the scientists, right? Because I think if you're not in the field, it's very easy to take with someone who has a PhD or a, MD what they say and say, oh, that must be true. But a lot of the things that I've realized is that there's so much bias in the research itself. In some ways, it has been somewhat traumatic, right?

To be trained in a field, and even myself, the way I think about a lot of the questions are all kind of centered in some of the bias that already exists in academia. And how do I disentangle that? I will say I have noticed that there has been shift. And I think that shift has come from a lot of the younger generation scientists really being at the forefront and understanding how important social constructs are. Yeah. I think what you're pointing to reminds me of something that our producer Eva Tesfai said when we all listen to the season is you are so embracing of the fact that there's

multiple ways of knowing, some of which are outside the realm of science. And one of the most beautiful things you do in this episode is you are weaving in and out of this conversation with Ms. Irma Shaw, this 94-year-old who grew up in Guyana. And you're talking to her about aging. And she kind of levels up the conversation at the end. She goes beyond science and said, you know, Janina, like the spirit never ages. The spirit doesn't die. The spirit is on. And you have all this audio.

of the Black Lives Matter protests and resistance. I'm wondering, how did it feel when she said that to you about, like, this other idea of aging having to do with spirit as a geneticist? Yeah. I, as I have gotten older, have become more appreciative of ancestral religion and practice. And in ancestral, you know, for all in purpose sakes, a lot of indigenous religious practices on the continent of Africa, they have always believed that the spirit, lives on. The spirit lives in you. The spirit is in your DNA. And that, you know, from a genetic standpoint, I think about, yeah, I am, my ancestors are embedded in my DNA, you know, and their spirit does live within me and their spirit does continue on. And if you were privileged enough to have

spent time with your ancestors while they were here before they transitioned, that spirit lives on through you, right? And so that oral history and telling that story is so, important in a part of how we age, right? Because it doesn't even have to be things like our ancestors to say, drink more water, you know, but just being in the very presence of them and looking at the things they've done and the things that they practice, naturally you're going to gravitate to those things and learn those things as well. So I wholeheartedly believe that all of this plays a part in a role in how we age and how we commune. And I think when she said that, it just It spoke volumes to, you know, to me specifically.

And I hope it spoke volumes to others. Yeah. Or you're giving me chills. Thank you so much. It's been so awesome to have you back on the show. Oh, thank you guys so much. The new season of In Those Jeans is out now. Check out our episode notes to learn more about this podcast,

which is independent and run by Black women. Today's episode was produced by Eva Tessfi. edited by Giselle Grayson, who is our senior supervising editor, and fact-checked by Catherine Seifer. The audio engineers for this episode were Natasha Branch and Josh Newell. Neil Carruth is our senior director of on-demand news programming, and Anya Grunman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Emily Kwong, and thank you for listening to Shortwave, Daily Science Podcast from NPR.