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A Book with Legs
Kathryn Paige Harden - Original Sin: On The Genetics of Vice, The Problem of Blame, And the Future of Forgiveness
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- [00:03]
Podcast Announcer
You're listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who play the long game. You can learn more@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
- [00:22]
Cole Smead
Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings the late, great Charlie Munger prescribed. Using multiple mental models and analysis, we analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. In this episode, we will discuss the depths of our humanness, our being, our physical makeup, our emotional makeup, and possibly what I might argue is our spiritual makeup. Joining me to discuss her recently published book, Original Sin on the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness is Katherine Page Hardin. I'll refer to her as Paige. Paige is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, hook em horns. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She has been honored by the American Psychological association for her distinguished scientific contributions in the fields of genetics and human individual differences. She has published one other book, I would note, the Genetic Lottery, which came out in 2021. More importantly, Ms. Hardin seems to be included in the deeply intellectual community that treasures the infamous Pinky and the Brain cartoons from my childhood. Paige, thanks for joining me today.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Oh, thanks for having. You were the first introducer to bring up Pinky and the Brain. That is a niche reference and I really appreciate it.
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Cole Smead
The opening of that cartoon is just so like every time I see it, it just takes me back. It's just, you know, what are we going to do, Brain? Same thing we do every day, Pinky. Try to take over the world.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
You know, sometimes I wonder was my watching Pinky in the brain part of why I ended up as a scientist? How I even thought it was a possibility was, you know, these animated lab mice.
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Cole Smead
Yeah. When also when you go through the mice in your book, I'm sure that you were thinking somewhat about Pinky and the Brain. So I, you know, I, as we were talking before we started today, I really liked your book. I think it is a deep, it's a soul bearing book for you in some respects. But I'd love to know, like what caused you to write this story where you're telling both your personal story at times and talking about a lot of the evidence And. And the work that undergirds, you know, where you've got to in your career.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. So I'm a clinical psychologist by training. I run a research lab here at the University of Texas. And so for the past 15 years, our lab has looked at genetic influences on human behavior. And that includes human behavior that is punished or moralized. So things like addiction or antisocial behavior, aggression. So I have always thought that that's an interesting topic, that maybe I might want to write a book about one day. And there are other books that deal with similar issues. If we understand humans from a scientific perspective, what implications does that have for how we understand them from a moral perspective or a legal perspective? We go through our lives feeling like agents who are making decisions and perceiving other people as agents who are making decisions. And that subjective sense of what it feels like to be human can feel intention with this more objective lens that you're bringing to bear as a scientist thinking about, well, what causes people to behave the way that they do. So there's many books that kind of get at that tension between the subjective view of ourselves as agents and this objective scientific view. But so few of those books actually bring that tension onto the page. What is it like to be a scientist? How have these issues played out in my personal life?
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So when I sat down to write the book, I wanted to. I didn't want to hide the subjective. I didn't want to just talk about what I know as a scientist. I also wanted to talk about my lived experience because again, it is that tension that is part of what makes the science so interesting and provocative. And also because I think these can sound like very abstract questions that I'm asking about fairness or blame or responsibility. And I wanted to make the case, using my own life as an example, that philosophy isn't abstract. We all live in these questions. We all have a conception of what are people to blame for when we have to figure out how to discipline my. Our children. We all have a conception of how much is inherited when we're trying to make sense of how much we're like our parents. So I wanted to make the philosophical and the abstract concrete. And I figured the best way I could do that was by borrowing my own lived experience and story to do that.
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Cole Smead
Yeah. Which I think, you know, like I was saying before, you're. Your readers are going to feel that they're going to understand it. They'll be able to empathize. And, you know, it might not be the exact same as theirs, but they'll ask, you know, similar questions and ask to where they got. So you start out your book by talking about your work that was rejected by Nature Neuroscience. Okay. Like that's your starting point is like, hey, we wrote this great piece and work and yet it was rejected. Explain, you know, why this work was rejected and why it was so controversial in this case.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So we did eventually get published in Nature Neuroscience. It was Nature Genetics that turned us down. But so what we do in my lab and all of this work is a collaboration between my lab and other labs around the world. Genetics is very much a team science is we are looking at the genomes of people. So the DNA sequence. Everyone has a DNA sequence that's made up of the same four DNA letters, gctna. And so we're looking at measuring the DNA sequence of large numbers of people and looking at spots in the genome where people differ. So you might have a G in a particular spot and I might have a T in that particular spot.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And then we are also measuring people's behavior. In this particular study, we were looking at ADHD symptoms in childhood, sexual behavior in adolescence and adulthood. So when did you lose your virginity and how many sexual partners have you had? Risk tolerance? Do you consider yourself a person who likes taking risks? Ever smoking pot, ever smoking cigarettes and problematic alcohol use, which is continuing to drink even when it's causing problems?
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So we're measuring people's DNA and we're measuring people's behavior. And we're looking for specific genetic variants that are more common in people who do not just one of these things, but all of these things. So what are genetic differences between people that are associated with being more likely to be inattentive and hyperactive and hypersexual and risk taking and substance using? So we did that in about a million and a half people. And we then use that information to construct what's called a polygenic score, which is basically like a single number. Sometimes people compare it to a credit score. There's one number that represents a lot of variables. So there's one number that represents a lot about your genetic information. We saw that that number, that polygenic index could project things like, have you ever been convicted of a felony? Have you ever been arrested? Have you ever pulled a knife or gun on someone? Not perfectly. These aren't deterministic. Well, I can't say with, you know, I don't have a crystal ball that says that this person is definitely going to commit a crime. But, you know, in some cases, a 1 1/2 or 2 times higher chance of, for instance, being arrested.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So when we first submitted the paper, the editor was like, you have all these different behaviors. You have ADHD and you have sexual behavior and you have substance use, and then you're using those genes to predict criminal legal system involvement. Why do all of these things go together? And that was really interesting for me because in my mind, it was totally obvious how they went together, which is that all of these things are behaviors that someone calls bad. A religious authority says it's bad. The legal system says it's bad. The teacher says it's bad. All behaviors that are punished are moralized. You know, by moralized, I mean someone thinks of them not just in healthy or sick terms, but as in, like, good or bad behavior terms.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
These are things that are punished and people are doing them anyways. And so in many ways they are. They are things that are, in a Christian tradition, considered sins. They're considered violations of, you know, we've got the seven deadly sins. There are things that are in Dante's Inferno.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And that was a. You know, it was one of those situations where. And I'm sure all of your audience has had this moment about something where something seems obvious to you, and then another person is like, wait, what? And you realize that what's obvious in your head is not obvious to other people. So that was. I will say that we just. I can't talk about the results because they're under review, but we just published an update to this paper or just submitted an update to this paper to a journal. We've expanded it to have 4 million people. It's very exciting. So this rejection was just a momentary speed bump in this line of research. We really have been able to keep on continuing the work.
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Cole Smead
Yeah. Because I was going to. My next question was going to be on this idea of, like, you know, sinful. I. Let me ask you kind of. It's a philosophical question, but, you know, and I just, like, again, we were talking about, like, you know, you come from a Christian background. Right. You grew up in, you know, what you explained in the book is a Christian home. I grew up in a. In a similar background. You know, my parents weren't necessarily fundamentalists like your parents were. But I thought as a child, and I think you'd agree with this, is like, oh, you can't do these things. Right. Like, it's a. You can't. What I've realized as an adult is like, when God said, here's the law. Right. Here's the ten Commandments. Let's just say, you know, why did he give us that? I thought I was like, oh, because he wants to stop us from having fun. And by the sum of your book, opens up with that idea of like, you know, fun. What is fun in some human's mind? Right. But what I've realized as I got older is that if I want to live what I'll call a blessed life, in other words, if I wanna have things go in a way that I'm not shooting myself in the foot, which some of these topics we talk about with some of the cases and examples you use, is where people are shooting themselves in the foot and then being like, but I didn't totally do this. You get what I mean? And so I just say that. Cause I think of these rules are set so that we don't create our own problems. In a way. Do you think that's a fair assessment of some rules out there? I mean, for example, why shouldn't you murder? Well, because it causes destruction in other people's lives. That's not a good thing. Why wouldn't I go out and have an affair on my wife? Well, because that would probably cause a lot of destruction in my own life and in my children's life. And back to this idea of kind of more of a corporate thing. Do you see rules the same way? Because that's what I had to change to personally as I grew up. Because ultimately it wasn't just about having fun or not, if that makes sense.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. So I think you're picking up on something interesting here. It's in. In the psychological jargon, a lot of what we say is core to these behaviors that we're studying are what psychologists call disinhibition and antagonism. And antagonism is doing things without regards to the fact that they're gonna hurt or have negative consequences for other people. So if I, you know, pull a knife or gun on you, that has negative consequences for you. I'm threatening to harm you, I'm gonna cause you distress.
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Cole Smead
Yep.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Whereas this inhibition is defined psychologically as doing things without regard to negative consequences to yourself. So you're doing something, and if you were inhibited, you were able to inhibit that behavior, you would have fewer downsides for yourself. And we can think of smoking cigarettes is disinhibited. Like, I know I shouldn't do it, but I have a really strong craving to smoke. And I also know that that's going to have negative consequences for me, and I'm going to do it for Myself, Sure. What we see in practice is that the line between negative consequences for yourself and negative consequences for other people is actually very, very fuzzy. Right. Smoking hurts you, but also, if you hurt you, that hurts other people. Because you have higher medical care costs, it puts strain on the system. Your family has to take care of you. If you hurt another person physically, that's antagonism. That also hurts you. Right. There's. I think, you know, in a spiritual terms, I think it's corrosive to your soul when you hurt another person. And also there's legal consequences. People don't want to be friends with you. You might be put into jail. So I think, you know, we can theoretically separate things that are rules because they. Following then tends to produce better outcomes for yourself, and things that are rules because following them tends to produce better outcomes for other people. But in practice, we're all in the same society together, and most of the things that hurt other people end up hurting yourself, and most of the things that hurt yourself end up as anyone who's ever loved an addict. They're not just hurting themselves. They are also behaving in ways that hurt people around them. So I agree with you. I mean, there's certainly cultural differences. I think. I think number of sexual partners is a great example there in which some people would say, well, I was gonna
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Cole Smead
say what the kids call body count nowadays.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. Which I hate as a phrase, you know, And I think some people would say, no, it's impossible to separate sexuality from at a core, how are you treating your own body, and how are you understanding and treating other people? And other people would say, it is possible to have sex with many people that's pleasurable and not harmful. So I think around that there are behaviors in which people, culturally and in their faith traditions disagree about whether or not that's really a moral issue. But then as we get closer to the center of the construct, the closer to the center of the thing that I'm studying, no matter what culture you're raised in, if you. If someone walks up and punches someone in the face, that's considered a bad behavior. Right. It's not. There isn't a whole lot of relativism about that kind of aggression.
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Cole Smead
Yeah.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And what we see is that people who engage in the most serious forms of what some cultures call sin, or we might call disinhibited, antagonistic behavior are also more likely to do what these. These kind of more misdemeanor things. You know, they are also more likely to have sex with many, many people. And not care about how the other person feels about that sexual relationship, for instance?
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Cole Smead
Sure. And I think. I think your example of smoking is. Is a great one, actually. Because, like, again, like, just say from a, you know, like a Judeo Christian perspective, like, does smoking show up in the. In the Bible at all? The answer is no, it doesn't show up. And it's like, if someone says, is that a sin? No. Like, there's nothing inhibits you from smoking. Now, to your point, does that mean it's the most fruitful and productive thing for your life? That's a whole nother subject. Right. And again, would I, would I attest as someone that once in a blue moon will have a cigarette just because, like, if I'm in Richmond, Virginia, it's the home of Philip Moore, so why don't I have one cigarette a year? I'm totally fine with that. But again, the idea of what's good for me could be totally different from the idea of quote, unquote, sin. So I agree with you there.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And that's a very Pauline perspective. Right. It's not. Not everything. Everything might be permissible, but not everything is beneficial.
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Cole Smead
I agree. And also, what might be okay for me might not be okay for the wider collective because other people deal with that problem and have very different outcomes. Like you talk about in the book, let's pivot to the classical thought. So you introduce Augustine and Pelagius. Okay. And I just want to, like, if our listeners have not read Confessions for whatever reason, because either they're not aware of it or they were never required to read that in school or whatever, can you kind of just bring us to the forefront of the debate of, you know, what Augustine talked about versus Pelagius and why it's so important to this work in this debate. And really this thing that we're not solving in society that we have to at some point or at least attempt
- [17:47]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
to, so we can think about, you know, the end of the 4th century, so around 400 AD, 400 years after the birth of Christ. And this is a really interesting time in the Roman Empire because it's after Rome has become officially Christian, Constantine has converted to Christianity. It's about 70 years before the fall of the Roman Empire. So we have this Christian, but also decadent kind of crumbling imperial power. I will let the readers draw the comparisons that they want from that comparison. And Augustine is this bishop, he's from North Africa, and he introduces something that I think many Christians, at least when I was growing up, thought had always been a doctrine in the Christian Church, but was actually an innovation in Christian doctrine. And this was this doctrine of original sin. And so the doctrine of original sin is basically Adam and Eve violated God's laws in the Garden of Eden, and they have. In so doing, they became. They didn't just commit sin, lowercase sin and act, they became sinful, they became, you know, fallen in another way that you might say it, and that that condition of fallenness, this predisposition to screw things up, is physically inherited from generation to generation. So this is why Augustine was anti marriage, anti sex, pro celibacy, because the sex act, even in marriage, even in having children, even it was procreative, was passing on this human physical fallibility that really, again, was inherited from generation to generation. And the problem that this doctrine solved is the problem that we still wrestle with, which is why do innocent people suffer? You know, why do babies come into this world and they die quickly or they have short, brutal lives? And Augustine's doctrine said it's because they're not innocent, that even babies are born with this kind of physical fallibility and damnability in them. So this eventually became the official doctrine of the Catholic Church, but it was not without debate. And his main intellectual rival in this time was Pelagius, who was a monk from the opposite end of the Roman Empire. So this is from Britain. And he was really committed opponent to the idea that sin could be inherited as a physical thing. And he wrote, and then his follower Julian wrote that in his view, sin had to be a matter of will. And if something was of nature, something was inherited, it couldn't be sin. So Pelagius really proposed that there was this binary between something is either sinful and wrong, or it's biological, it's part of nature, it's inherited, but it can't be both. Whereas Augustine was arguing that sinfulness was biologically inherited.
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Cole Smead
They're integrally tied.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
They're integrally tied. And the fact that it's inherited and the fact that you can't have done anything to prevent it does not make you less on the hook for it. So there was no kind of get out of hell free card because you inherited an original sin and you didn't have any choice about was part of God's divine plan and divine justice, that he did have this still this wrath against sinfulness. So two very different understandings of the relationship between what do we inherit, how does it affect how we behave, and then what does that mean for what we are to blame for?
- [21:54]
Cole Smead
Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management and host of this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out meedcap.com at our firm we are stock market investors. We advise investors who play the long game with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our funds@smeecap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead Funds Distributed by Smead Funds Distributors, llc.
- [22:35]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Not affiliated so I'm a scientist in, you know, the 21st century. Why am I writing about this theological debate from the ancient Christian church? Yeah, and it's because I think that our modern science is forcing us to grapple with this same set of questions as we're being debated in the 4th century. And the reason why is because we are discovering more and more about how the genome, what is physically inherited, was part of nature, shapes our behavior in ways that we typically think of in terms of right and wrong. And our culture is always debating how are we going to use the science, what does this mean for how we conceptualize other people's behavior? So as an example, I think we're living through this right now with Ozempic and our biological understanding of weight and appetite where if you look at people's attitudes, is being overweight a moral issue? Is it a matter of willpower? Do people deserve to be blamed for being overweight? The more that people believe that weight is biological due to inherited set point can be manipulated with a pharmaceutical drug, the less likely they are to have this kind of moral moral stigma or believe that weight is a matter of
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Cole Smead
willpower, we're kind of a buck in a way.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Or that people should be blamed for it. And that's a really strong intuition around weight. We see a similar thing around sexual orientation, where people are much less likely to see being gay or lesbian to be a moral issue if they believe that sexual orientation is inherited or biological or genetic in some way. And and that's true across political parties, both Republicans and Democrats. The more you believe that sexual behavior is shaped by your biology, the less likely you are to think that it's a moral issue at all.
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Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Except when it gets to so that intuition is strong and it's really in American culture. And it's a very Pelagian idea that what's biological can't be moral. Until we get to more Serious harms. And then when someone has committed an act of violence, if some. If other people believe that that violence was potentially inherited or they have, like, a biological liability to it, the Pelagian logic doesn't pass at all. They're not less punitive. In fact, they might be more punitive. And then we have words in our culture like the bad seed or bad to the bone or a natural born killer, Right? So we have both of these stories. The Augustan story of what is inherited can make you sinful, and that does not get you out of being blameworthy for it. And then we have the Pelagian story of what's biological can't be moral. It's one or the other. And both of these stories are still in circulation in our modern culture. And it's not like everyone's saying, oh, I'm a Pelagian. You know, they're not connecting it to this intellectual history, but this intellectual debate has really set the terms for the conversation that we're having in our culture now. Except that we're saying it. We're acting as if we're having a purely scientific debate rather than a debate that is really heavily influenced, I think, by several millennial. Millennia of Christian culture and theological debate.
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Cole Smead
Oh, I agree. And when you. When you brought that up later in the book about, you know, when genetics are brought in and in jury cases, like, they're more likely to throw the book at them more often, which it's like, okay, this is fairly illogical based on the other things you just mentioned, which goes to show you that there is not a certainty or there is not an appetite for having full logic in the decision making. To your point, you mentioned weight. So I always tell people this. And again, this is like my own BS theory. So take with it with a grain of salt. I tell people weight is 70% what you eat, 20% how you exercise, and 10% genetics. Okay? Because, like, you know, when in the Lord's Prayer, it's like, give us this bread, our daily bread. Okay? And most like, when that was spoken into existence, most people in the world didn't have enough food to eat. Okay. So, like, to get your daily bread was, like, a blessing in America. Let's just say your daily bread is like, that's already known. Our problem is we shouldn't eat more than our daily bread, if that makes sense. Okay.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah.
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Cole Smead
And yet we can see in the studies that we tend to have trouble just doing that.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
That.
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Cole Smead
And so I think, like, to your point, it's like, because we're so blessed. In some respects it almost, I, you know, I think I've almost seen where it's like, well, it's not my fault because we're so blessed that like, I, I couldn't have done this if that makes sense from a American identity or Western perspective.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. It's interesting because I tend to think of it so, so what you've just divided up as. It's this, these behaviors that you have control over. And then the remainder is genetics. That's very common that people tend to divvy things up as. There's, there's genetics, which are not my fault or the constraints, and then there's the part that I have control over in my behavior.
- [28:05]
Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Whereas I tend to think that, that I tend not to think in that binary because I know that the genetics are shaping the person doing the choosing and they're shaping the appetites that go into what you're eating and how you're exercising. And so genetics are suffused through both the behaviors that you feel like you have control over and the behavior and the, you know, reactions of your body to that food that you, you don't ordinarily think of yourself as having agency for. I, you know, we can, we're jumping around a bit and we can come back to this. But a lot of times in recovery communities when people are recovering from a substance use disorder, alcohol addiction, drug addiction, you'll hear the phrase, it wasn't my fault, but it's my responsibility.
- [28:58]
Cole Smead
Sure.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And I really love that phrase because it does remove the fault that you didn't have any. It's not your fault that you have these genesis and it's still your responsibility to decide how you're gonna behave today. And there is a parallel between give us a say, our daily bread and One day at a time, which is what you get in recovery communities. So this immediate focus of, and in some ways, I think taking away the fault and the blame and the shame actually allows people to take more responsibility because they're not being drugged down by that self recrimination which can be so. So, you know, such an obstacle to then taking responsibility.
- [29:46]
Cole Smead
And I love this point that you're making because I had this in my notes because it didn't come in your book. So. And again, like, if you're, if you're a young lady or a woman reading this book, you're going to eat this up because you speak such an awesome voice from a female perspective. I just got to give you a lot of credit.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Oh, thank you for saying that.
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Cole Smead
Cause you're talking about, like, Eve, like, what's it like for Eve to go through this, right? To go through the fall. Okay, now I'm sitting there like, okay, this is the fall. What the hell is Adam doing? It's like, it's. It's like. So I. And this is. This is like. It's a poor way of putting it, but I look at the fall as, again, like, let's just say of all mankind, right? Adam is, you know, you know, the original of mankind. Eve was created from him. I'm like, wait, wait, the king of humanity, quote unquote, with his queen. He's sitting there watching his queen have a relationship with a serpent. And he's like, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room just watching this all go down. So to your point, here's why I say that is you're talking about this idea of responsibility. Adam didn't take any responsibility. So are we surprised that in ourselves collectively, as humans, that there are times where we abdicate responsibility? No, we see that in that context right out of the gate. So I think that's a deeply important question. To your point.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. And I, in my book, I described this, the work of this guy, Alan Watts, who's a complicated figure. He was one of the first popularizers of Eastern thought in the UK and then US and he was briefly an Anglican minister. But, you know, the whole chastity, monogamy thing wasn't really his shining behavioral achievement. And so I think he was defrocked at some point in time.
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Cole Smead
Yeah.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Incredibly interesting thinker. And he. He gave a lecture once where he talked about the end of the. The. The garden story where God says, you know, what's happened here, guys? And. And Adam tries to pass the buck to Eve. It was like, well, she. The woman. The woman that you gave me took no responsibility. Took no responsibility. But then Eve says, well, I was tricked by the snake, and she passes the buck. And then. Then in Alan Watts's retelling, the snake winks and says, I'll be the one to. To take responsibility, Satan being an angel. And I just think that's such a fascinating meditation or story. Fable is a word that I use a lot in my book about there. You can. You can engender compassion for yourself and for other people by thinking about how their behavior has been caused by forces outside of their control. And I think that's really important. I don't want to lose sight of that.
- [32:40]
Cole Smead
Agree. I agree with you.
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Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And at the same time, responsibility requires. Then that not being the end of the story. And you see this kind of this. This fallibility in Adam and Eve where they're like, they did it, and they are incapable of just owning up to the fact that they did it. Right. And I think that's part of what pisses God off in that story, is that they don't immediately take responsibility for what they did.
- [33:07]
Cole Smead
Yeah. And also. And one thing I do want to, you know, I. You talk about this idea of consciousness after this. Right. So she has this consciousness. You're using a lot of your story as a mother and birthing in this that, you know, again, I just commend you for, you know, storytelling of yourself. You know, the only thing I was like, well, I know sex was there prior to the fall because, like, Adam pretty much goes out and does this, like, lovely poem, and he's like, flesh of my flesh. But, I mean, it's like two naked people, and the guy's just like, I can't think about anything else other than her. So, like, that I was like, okay. Like, that was all present before the fall. I think the other thing, too, you know, And I had my notes just like you were saying, like, no one really took responsibility. Right. There was no responsibility. And again, you talk about your children, and I thought a lot about this. I mean, and again, as you become a parent, you just think about things very differently because you go from being this, they wronged me, it's their fault, et cetera. Now you're in this responsible position, Right. You have the responsibility of this other human. And you have to decide at times, okay, when do I provide the idea of grace? When do I. Which you talk about. And if you want to go there, we could. But this idea of grace versus what is discipline and what's appropriate discipline, and trying to shape this person into, you know, what you call having a constitution, which. I loved that term. You know, you don't hear people say, like, well, I want you to have a constitution. In other words, like a basis and a fundamental being that allows you to go out and experience this world.
- [34:39]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that this. Speaking about and reflecting on how this has played out for me, these questions have played out for me as a mother. You know, that really emphasizes the point that I was trying to make at the beginning, which is that when you say justice or accountability or blame or punishment or fault or responsibility, those can feel like very abstract issues. But in fact, we do have to have some sort of working definition of them.
- [35:12]
Cole Smead
Yep.
- [35:12]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
In order to be a parent Everything we do as a parent is living out some implicit working definition of what is fairness and what is responsibility and what is fault and what is child development. And one of the two of the ideas I'm trying to pull apart in my book that often get smushed together is this idea of blame and accountability.
- [35:41]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [35:41]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So when I say that someone's to blame for something, I'm often saying that they could have not done it, they chose to do it and they did it anyways and they deserve to be punished for it. And if we think of blame as synonymous with accountability and then we're. When then we have a five year old child in front of us and we can see that they kind of have free will, but they, you know, they kind of.
- [36:14]
Cole Smead
And their brains are not fully formed.
- [36:15]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Their brains are not fully formed. It can feel to parents like I either have to blame and punish my kid for this thing or I have to have no accountability for this behavior at all. And that's a terrible choice. Right. And I mean, I think we see this a lot in the very confused parenting conversations in our culture between, you know, so called gentle parenting, which just like, can come across as no accountability versus like, like I'm an old fashioned disciplinarian. But there's a lot of blame and shame and harsh punishment there.
- [36:50]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [36:50]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And, but if we separate those and we think we can have accountability without blame, we can set up our structures and rules and routines on our house such that there are consequences that protect other people from this behavior. Like, one of the things I say in my household is all feelings are welcome, all behaviors are not welcome. But that doesn't mean that I'm imputing a bad will to the child that's doing it. And it doesn't mean that I need to add blame and shame and punitiveness on top of it. And again, those can sound like such abstract issues, but when you actually in the moment have to figure out how am I going to respond to my kid that's violated this rule? How am I going to hold them accountable for the order of our house without blaming them for things that they have imperfect control over? I think those, those abstract issues start to become, they start to become concrete problems really quickly.
- [37:56]
Cole Smead
So let me ask you, because a lot of the, you know, again, to your point on the genetic testing, you know, a lot of these issues are running into these common threads. So for example, like drugs and alcohol, it's a common thread in a lot of the research you've done, et cetera. So I'm gonna like throw out like an idea to you. So did I do drugs in college? 100% I did. Okay. Now the question is, was it good for me and was it good for the people around me? Is a whole separate question. Okay. And so when I say drugs, for the record, it was marijuana, which was, you know, fine for the time. I guess so. So here's my question is like we're in a society that has kind of gone from a 50 year ago view that like, hey, drugs are just not, they're not good for us, so we need to not have them. And at one point we had like a war on drugs, et cetera, to where now it's like very accepted, but yet if you look at, you look at the studies on mental health and things of that nature, things are not improving. And yet we're not stopping and saying like, hey, timeout for a second. We need to get at the core issue here. I look at drugs as they're not causing the problem inherently, but they're sure not helping it either, is that as you look at people that have genetic makeups that are predisposed for issues, parenting issues that have caused that to be further things of that nature, how do you look at drugs in those, you know, the kind of the discussion of those, those processes and occurrences.
- [39:23]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
I mean, I think that, I think the United States approach to drug use mirrors the dynamics that we've seen over time in parenting. It is the, the macro to the micro of what's happening in the environment. So just to back up, all humans use drugs. I'm drinking tea right now. And you know, where cultures differ is in terms of which drugs they think of as fine, tolerable, not that destructive to the fabric of human relationships and which are not. And I think our classifications of drugs don't really match scientifically their harm potential. Right? So, you know, psychedelic, like no one gets really addicted to LSD, but that's like a Schedule 1 drug. Whereas like nicotine is still legal and that's an incredibly harmful to your health. So just as a backdrop, like consuming substances that change how your neurons communicate with one another is something that essentially all humans have done throughout human history. That being said, there are forms of drug use that in terms of the drugs and how they're being obtained, how they're being manufactured, how the compulsiveness of their use is getting in the way of people's ability to fulfill their roles in life, to work and to be a parent, and to just function in terms of basic health. There clearly is problematic drug use. What we saw for a long time is that the state approached drug use the way a classic boomer parent approached parenting, which is a tendency to think that making consequences harsher and that punishing more was going to change the behavior. And in fact, support for corporal punishment in the home and support for harsher sentences for drug users, they're correlated within and across time. And it really is this attitude of if we want to maintain order and we want to have accountability, we have to make sure that there's really harsh sentences, harsh punishment for violating those rules. And that's why you saw mandatory minimums. We saw the war on drugs. The problem is that it doesn't work. Harsher sentences for drug crimes do not predict a decline in drug crimes. Spanking your children does not predict them behaving better. Whether we're talking about state punishment or in home punishment, simply making consequences harsher doesn't change behavior. And that isn't just humans. That's not human animals. We can see that in the lab. It's kind of gets into a really basic thing about how do humans learn and what do they learn from? Then you have this pendulum sling the opposite direction, where you have people saying the problem is that punishment doesn't work, and so therefore we should have no consequences and no attempt at control. And we also see that that doesn't work either, that people don't behave their best either in the home or in the state when they have, you know, when they have a completely permissive structure.
- [42:52]
Cole Smead
Sure. Well, to follow on that real quick, I agree with you because your parallels, it fits even city structures. I'm originally from Seattle, and when you go look at rampant drug use, it also, like private property rights and things of that nature, actually follow that pendulum where you have people living on property they shouldn't be on and using drugs that we might have once called illegal or still do. But yet the willingness to do anything, even down to even writing you up or any, it just kind of vamoses.
- [43:23]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, yeah. And then so there's a philosopher, Hannah Picard, whose work I really like, and she calls this the rescue blame trap. And it's basically you blame someone and then it activates all your retributive punishment instincts. And then the opposite side of that pendulum is here's all the ways that drug use is shaped by factors outside of people's control.
- [43:46]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [43:46]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
I, I the punish, the harshness isn't working, really. We need to treat them as victims and we need to rescue them.
- [43:56]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [43:57]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And it doesn't that doesn't work to change behavior either. My friend Jen Doliak is an economist and she has a book out, came out the week before mine. She'd make a great. You should interview her. It's called this, it's called the Science of Second Chances. And it's basically like, okay, well this sounds great in theory, but what do you actually need to do from a legal perspective to neither be trying to war on drugs your way out of drug crime, but also not complete, you know, anything goes your way out of drug crime either. Like what are the ways to incentivize sobriety, to meet people where they are and make positive steps forward? And it's an, it's a very forward looking approach. So it's not you've messed up, this is how much you deserve to be punished. It's given where you are now. What incentives do you need in place today to get you to a better place tomorrow? And I think that that's like, that is, you know, I think the journey,
- [45:03]
Cole Smead
it's a here forward.
- [45:04]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
It's a here forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, and again it's a, it's an emphasis on how do we hold people accountable without assuming that just making our punishments ever harsher is going to work for us.
- [45:18]
Cole Smead
We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at SMEAD Capital Management. At smead, we believe in disciplined investing which is why the SMEAD funds have a proven track record of long term outperformance. If you're an investor who plays the long game and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit smeedcap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. SMEAD funds distributed by SMEAD Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. I think this has come up and just so you know, full disclosure, I'm an ex degenerate, I, you know, use X regularly, etc. But one of the arguments been made out there in, I'll call it the stratosphere of the Internet, the idea of like the insane asylum, which you know, was very present and then has been something that is become less present, society as a percentage of population, things like that, is that something that is very needed that is missing because to your point, that really deals with the person individually, their needs, et cetera, where it's like saying there's a mental health issue and we need to get at that versus it being you've committed a crime. But, but the underlying, you know, the underlying reason isn't met. The crime will be continued based on your research.
- [46:47]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. And I mean I think people, so just to back up the individualize people's, people's reasonings for how they end up in a persistently, you know, problematic drug using life are very heterogeneous. Right. Like is this poverty, is this trauma, is this not just drug use but a persistent inability to learn from negative consequences. And it's very hard to come up with a one size fits all solution to something that's very individualized. I mean what you're picking up on is bigger than addiction which is that, you know, we, we used to have resources and institutions for the long term psychiatric care of people. And then in the 60s, 70s and 80s there was this massive move towards deinstitutionalization. And the idea was that rather than being in long term psychiatric hospital, the people with mental health issues, from addiction to schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to you know, any sort of PTSD significant mental health issue, would live in their local communities rather than being in a hospital like setting and would get their needs met from community care centers. Except those community care centers were never funded. They never materialized. A big part of why we now have the homeless population that we do, and then also as many people in prison that we do, is that they are the largest housers or unhousers of people with serious untreated mental health problems. Sure, this is a really tricky issue because people also have basic civil liberties and so how do you honor that? But also are they really at liberty if they have schizophrenia? You know, what does it mean to consent or not consent to treatment if someone has unmedicated psychotic disorders? And I think increasingly you're hearing people who are family members say I, I am desperate to get my relative into, you know, long term care.
- [48:59]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [49:00]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And I don't think the voluntariness means any. I don't think they're capable of, of really making a voluntary decision. But I mean, I think this rates relates to a much broader issue which is like there just isn't. There just isn't the infrastructure, there just aren't the beds, there just isn't the mental health treatment resources for this right now.
- [49:20]
Cole Smead
But it does get back to our question of what is good for the community might be good for the individual and the community might be in the position to determine what is at better. I mean it gets a very philosophical question that it's very. And again, so. Because the other place that this comes up, you talk about, like, Dylan, I think it's pronounced Claybold, the Columbine shooter. In 99, I went and saw Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, which came out when I was in college. And, you know, or I should say it came out in high school. I want to say you talk about this idea like, was he hardwired? Were his parents to blame for this? You know, the other thing, too, you talk about conduct disorder or what you refer to as cd, it's the proportion of men that are subject to this is much larger. If you look at our prison system, it's men. I mean, it's like a lot of these things are. It's a gender biased issue. I mean, men tend to dominate. I was even thinking higher level. Like in the history of the world of despots, what sex do they come from? Men. And so we're back to this, like, who's responsible? It's in an awkward way, showing up in men far more often. Women. I think we're kind of back at the Adam and Eve thing. It's a guy problem. He was at fault. Even if he wasn't at fault, he should have been held accountable and responsible because we continue to see this in these mental disorders and the damage that are caused, they flow a lot through men. And so you mentioned that we were involved with an organization that did a lot of work in homelessness. They probably have got more people clean in the history of Seattle, a group called Union Gospel Mission. And the biggest danger in those communities. For example, back to this idea of men being the problem is it's usually a husband or a boyfriend that drags a relationship and children into those communities. And the problem is, guess who is ultimately gonna get the most harm? It's not the guy. It's those children and that woman. And that, to your point, it's like it's elongating the stretch of problems that are inherited, created, allowed for. And really, still it's dominated by men in society.
- [51:35]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, I mean, this is a kind of a loose response to what you were just saying. But, you know, I think the thread that you're picking up on here is that the line between the individual and their community is much fuzzier than we'd like to imagine. None of us is an island. None of us is a fortress. And that means our individual choices reverberate and have implications for other people. And. And they're structured by other people's choices in this way where, you know, the ins. The inside of our body and the outside of our body is a lot less clearly demarked than we would imagine. I write about this when I talk about, you know, there's the so called nature nurture debate. And if you ask any scientists, I'll be like, the nature nurture debate is dead. Like it's always nature and nurture in combination. And that also, even the division between nature and nurture is really artificial because your nurture changes your body. It changes the expression of your genes. And your nature, by shaping your behavior, is then providing that nurture to other people. Right. And I think that example you just gave of if you have a man who is predisposed towards antisocial behavior because of his genesis, but then he's passing on both those genes and the environment that he is shaping to his children, is that it's nature, nurture. It's one combination, I think the other thing is, just as a geneticist, I see that all of us are just a few genetic mutations away from being profoundly different people with different capacities and different. It is, it is just by the luck or the grace of whatever that you didn't have that experience. And also that DNA strand that runs through them is 99%, 99 and a half percent the same as mine. And so I really think genetics has given me this profound appreciation for no one is a monster. People can behave monstrously, but they're doing that in part because of genes and environments of natures and nurtures that run through all of our experience. Like I have mostly the same DNA as someone who's, who has committed the most atrocious act that you can think of. And that goes a long way to undercut that. Both the separation between the individual and the community, but also the separation we might feel from someone who's behaving in this really abhorrent way. We are connected in the same tree of life to that person.
- [54:33]
Cole Smead
Sure, you talk about the MAOA gene and you talk about how when that is altered or changed in people, how you just get these vastly different people, vastly different situations. We get a lot of problems out of that, as you lay out in the book. And then you also talk about this idea, and I love this also you use the term thin places. I've only heard that in very rare times. It doesn't come from academics, just so you know. So I appreciate you using it. But I argue that this is, it's a thin place where bad luck and bad behavior Effectively collides. Okay. I found it interesting because when you go, like, if you go. Let's just say someone goes on right now and Google's like, thin places, they're actually gonna very commonly find, like, biblical references. Okay. But I think you're right in that when we see, like, let's use Columbine example. I remember when that happened. That was dark. It was very dark. Immediately you have this overwhelming sense of, like, this is not good. Something is wrong. And I think you touched on that idea of thin places. It feels deeply spiritual to anyone, regardless of your background, your upbringing, et cetera. It's just not a good place. And so I guess my question is, like, why did you use the word thin places? Because thin places is like where Moses runs into the burning bush. That was a thin place. That's weird.
- [56:01]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. So I think of thin places. So a big part of the book is each chapter is really written around a binary, an either or that people might take for granted.
- [56:19]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [56:19]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And then trying to complicate it or weird it or break it down a little bit. So nature versus nurture being caused versus being an agent. And when I think of thin places, I think of places that feel profound or that feel eerie or that feel spiritual. And what that feeling is is a sense that the boundary that we usually have erected or are contained by is again becoming thin, is being dissolved. So when Moses, you know, encounters God, it's when this boundary between the natural world and the spiritual world is coming down. And he's. He's encountering God in a tree. Right. In something that we think of as even less lower down in the order of angels than humans. And yet God is inhabiting it. Right. So we have these. These lines between the divine and the human or between the human and, like, the animal world and the plant world. And God being in. Indwelling in a burning bush is collapsing all of the boundaries that we have around, like how we. A hierarchy of higher order and lower order. And, you know, we see this in scripture, and we see this in, you know, spiritual stories, but we also see this in horror movies. You know, a trope of a horror movie is the evil child or the clown, the evil clown, or is it a machine or a human? Or is it a man or a machine, you know, or an animal? And we have these boundaries between innocent and guilty, between alive and thing, between man and animal. And most horror movies, what they do, the reason why, it's not just disgust, but horror. That. That kind of dread and eeriness, that uncanniness is because it's erasing or thinning this boundary. And I think that science can do that too. I think science. I mean, what is science doing? It's saying I can have you spit in a tube and then I can send your spit over to a lab and then it's going to read something about DNA that's in your cells and it's going to predict potentially whether or not you've ever stabbed your boss with a pitchfork. Like that is wild. That is back to Pinky in the Rain. That almost feel. That feels like science fiction or science horror because it is collapsing these boundaries that we usually have between men is spiritual. Humans as spiritual creatures as agents, and men as physical things.
- [59:21]
Cole Smead
Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on this show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 in investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock is market can be. If you are searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smead funds a look. Or better yet, reach out@smeecap.com and don't forget to mention you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider information carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. Let's go to your gene editing. You tell the situation of, like, this Chinese scientist who is trying to gene edit to get rid of HIV in effect in these offspring. Okay. Which is like, okay, we can all understand why you'd want to get rid of HIV that that may. But again, we're now in the realm of like, okay, where are we? Like, who is responsible? What is the accountability? Can you kind of just explain that a little bit?
- [60:39]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. So to back up a second, so there's a technology for editing genomes. It's called CRISPR Cas9 and it has, I think, really potentially amazing applications. So for instance, if you have Huntington's disease or you have sickle cell anemia, you know, there's a variety of diseases that are very difficult to treat that are caused by single gene mutations. And the idea that we could go in and edit, edit the human genome to cure that disease is a fantastic possibility.
- [61:17]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [61:20]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
You know, most of the applications that are being pursued for that are not editing embryos and also are, you know, editing. Editing genes that cause diseases that might be. That would ordinarily be life threatening. Right. So there's a clear risk benefit involved in them.
- [61:39]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [61:40]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And also, you know, we're talking about editing the human genome in ways that are potentially inheritable. The ethical guidelines around that are pretty strict.
- [61:52]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [61:54]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So there was this Chinese scientist who went rogue who basically just ignored all the ethical guidelines, legal guidelines in his country, international scientific norms. And he attempted to use CRISPR Cas9 to edit in embryo form two girls so that they would have a mutation that makes a person naturally resistant to acquiring an HIV infection. I think their dad was perhaps HIV positive and that was the use case in this family. And it didn't. It's unclear whether he was successful. And there might have also been what are called off target effects where other parts of the genome were also affected because this is not a perfected technology.
- [62:38]
Cole Smead
And also it might be like Newton's third law. For every action there's an equal and an opposite reaction to your point.
- [62:44]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah. So there's a lot of debate about gene editing. And will it potentially be more, you know, if we work out the technological kinks, could it go more mainstream? What are the acceptable use cases of it like, okay, you could CRISPR your child to not have sickle cell anemia. Could you CRISPR your child to have blue eyes? Is it just diseases or enhancements on the table? At the same time, there's, and this is not a future technology, is a technology that's available now is embryo selection. So you're creating embryos and you're not editing their genomes directly, but you are measuring their genomes and calculating their genetic risk to develop diseases or potential behaviors. There was an ad for one of the companies that offers this in the New York City subway last month and their tagline was have your best baby. So have your best baby, meaning do medically unnecessary elective IVF score. The embryos rank them in terms of their most likely to have optimal outcomes and then, you know, have the child that way. And I think that that brings up so many ethical and political and values issues around. You know, it's a different way of reproducing. It's a different relationship between a prospective parent and their child. If this is something that is designed and selected versus conceived with the role of chance, that usually is there. And I think these issues around both CRISPR Cas9 and polygenic selection are just going to continue to escalate as these Technologies become more advanced and also more available to consumers.
- [64:41]
Cole Smead
And I remember and I'll use my own personal experience, I'm sure you had this as well. So we go in, my wife's pregnant. Great. Awesome. This is fantastic. You do all your regular pregnancy check ins and everything like that. And during the process they ask you would you like to test for certain things. And obviously down syndrome is one of those. And you talk about this in your book. We never tested for that, just so you know, because we looked and said, you know what, regardless of the outcome of the child, we are terribly excited for this life and therefore we will just seek to meet the need. Then it's from here forward kind of that same idea. But you point out what that does. I mean, there's many people that as soon as they find that out, the life is aborted at that point. But you point out one of the real dangers and harms in this. And I really love this because you talk about your garden and you kind of use that as a story for understanding what's going on in your garden. And it's a great way of thinking about it. Like if you were the master of the universe or the master of your own family and you're building a garden, it's like you want diversity, you want differences. That's kind of the human beauty of it all. And what you really argued was that we eliminate that biodiversity. We're actually limiting the choice. And secondly, we're limiting things that might help us at a later date, if that makes sense.
- [66:02]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think the trade offs here and the tensions here are really real, especially as you move from, you know, down syndrome. You can also definitively test for, you know, you can say this, this child will definitely have down syndrome. They have three copies of chromosome 21. And I write in my book, you know, in some countries, screening and selective abortion for trisomy like downs is near universal. You know, I think it's something like 96% of women in Denmark are. Their pregnancies are screened for downs and nearly 100% of those pregnancies are terminated, such that there's almost no downs births anymore. And most of them are to women who did screen and got a false negative. It's like an error, you know, error in the test.
- [66:57]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [66:59]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And there's long been what in disability justice they call the expressive critique of that practice, which is what does it say to people who are living with Downs and their families about the value of their lives? If people are almost unanimously in some circumstances Terminating pregnancies because they would lead to downs.
- [67:23]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [67:25]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So far in our culture, that debate has been really limited to discrete disorders that we can definitively test for.
- [67:34]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [67:35]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
But what if we're now doing that around polygenic scores that predict likelihood of going to college or risk taking genotypes that are associated with higher rate of substance use or autism spectrum disorder genotypes. And also those are highly polygenic traits. They're traits that are influenced by many, many, many genes. And genes don't just do one. As another example, some of the genes that are associated with developing schizophrenia, So a serious psychotic disorder marked by seeing things that aren't there, believing things that aren't true, seriously impairing. If you have some of those genes, but not enough to make you schizophrenic, you are more likely to be an artist, you're more likely to be in a creative profession, you're more likely to be an engineer or a musician. So what does it do? Anything that attempts to optimize. I mean, we see this in plastic surgery too. Anything that attempts to optimize also risks homogenizing and standardizing and is at odds with, or at least is in tension with the value of genetic diversity as such. And also the like, I think of as the inherent value of every human life, regardless of, of their genotype and phenotype. So I think those, you know, those values are in conflict.
- [69:07]
Cole Smead
So two of my children have dyslexia. To your point, would I sit down and plan my life to say, you know what, I want all my children or one of my children or whatever in between that to have dyslexia? I would not. Yeah, yeah, I would not. Because the brain is wired to read. And for dyslexic folks, their brain is wired differently. It's just a, it's a different.
- [69:30]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And it's a lot of effort now that you, you know, reading is necessary to be included in society.
- [69:35]
Cole Smead
Yeah, correct. Now, to your point, what I've had a lot of conversations my oldest daughter over is what is your. Like, what, what are you going to do in the future and where are you going and what's the purpose of this? There's a purpose. The question is, we got to find that purpose. And to your point, we're limiting the purpose, if that makes sense, of what these people were created in, the way they were to do what they're gonna do with their constitution that ultimately often be a blessing to us all. I mean, no one would have sat down and ran into Elon Musk and Been like, this guy's gonna be wicked smart and do all these things and he's gonna have 200 wives. And you know, I mean, all this stuff, like, no one would have predicted that. But that's kind of the point is we're not good at predicting outcomes. We can just kind of study and look and say, here's what we know. Also, like, even, even after children are birthed, do. Would we sit there and score them and be like, okay, we're going to put these ones over here, we're going to put these ones over here? No, because we know that things are more random than we know.
- [70:30]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, yeah, there is this, and I think this is a really important part about the, for people to understand with genetics is, you know, there are, there are disorders where we can say pretty clearly like this, this outcome is going to happen. Like if you have a Huntington's disease gene, you are going to get Huntington's.
- [70:51]
Cole Smead
Yep.
- [70:51]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
None of the things that psychologists usually work out that way. There's. We can think in terms of trends and patterns, we can think in terms of risk. You know, it's probably a lot like investing where we can say like, things generally go up here and they generally go up, down here. That's a far cry from being able to say like at 7:00am on the, on a Tuesday, the price in Japan going to be X. You know, like there's a level of unpredictability to an individual human life from their genome that we should never make the mistake to think that we, we again, that we have a crystal ball. We don't. There's no, there's no foretelling people's fates here. There are risks though. I mean, so I think this is where I probably differ from you, which is that I tend to be pretty classically liberal when it comes to my stances on legalized abortion, at least early in pregnancy. And if I'm taking that position, it's very hard for me to say like a fiat that women should not do this. Right. Like, if you have schizophrenia in your family and what's going to make you feel safe to start a family is to minimize your child's risk of schizophrenia. I really understand that as a motivation. And also the wide scale adoption of this technology does change reproduction for everyone.
- [72:13]
Cole Smead
Sure. Well, I give you a lot of credit. I mean, to your point, what you just said about your own views on say, abortion and I think I mentioned this to you before, but you rarely ever hear someone say that and say, oh, by the way, Margaret Sanger, like hung out with eugenicist leaders.
- [72:30]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Totally.
- [72:31]
Cole Smead
People don't mention that in the same sense. So I feel like your book is so intellectually honest in that regard. Where it's like, hey, thank you. It's not, you know, it's. It's not well defined. Everyone's messy. This whole situation's messy. And I think the takeaway people should have. In your book, it's so messy, easily cut lines along rote rules. It's just such a false pretense to ourselves, our community, the folks around us. I wanna. So you have kids. So I gotta ask you this. So you've been married? I'm married. One of the things that I'm gonna throw out a idea that's not in your book, but it gets on your idea of grace that you touch on the book and we talked a little bit about earlier. I think our real superpower, regardless of what our talents are, personally and individually, I think our real superpower is faith. Now, what I mean by faith is like, okay, let's say you're not religious, you marry someone, you are exhibiting a huge amount of faith. A huge amount of faith.
- [73:30]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
I agree.
- [73:31]
Cole Smead
Maybe the most human faith you can undertake, the second to that would be the faith to have a child. Right? Because it's like. Because you're talking about these mothers who come from these bad family situations and they still, despite that, have the faith to go out and bring a life into this world. And it's like, wow, this is like, mind blowing. Okay. And so I think of our human power, it's our ultimate human power, is the ability to exhibit faith in others. That's I think, our real superpower and I think society is really built on that. Like, you do business with someone, you are showing faith in them, you're showing a level of trust that you're exhibiting. I think that's what our humanness does at its best, in a way. But I think of like, with that comes this idea of grace with your child. You gave really good examples where your son was hurt and wronged by a kid at school and he's spitting fire pretty much at this kid. He's like, oh, he's a serpent. And you're sitting back as a mother. It's like, well, he's just a kid.
- [74:31]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah, yeah.
- [74:32]
Cole Smead
And the people that you have faith in, you tend to give grace to, I guess, is my big idea.
- [74:37]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
I think I agree with you. I mean, I think there's nothing more optimistic than bringing a child into this world. I mean, even a marriage, you can get out of, but like bringing a kid into the world, you can't get out of that. You can't get out of that. Like, even if you don't have a relationship with them anymore, they're still your child and you still, you know, as long as both of you are on that planet, you're going to exist with the knowledge that this is, this is your child and I. There's faith and also faith. Faith that. So faith in other people and faith that today, tomorrow is not necessarily going to look like today. There's this line from the science fiction writer Ursula Luke Gwyn where she says if you run any scenario out to its logical end without any deviation or swerve or creativity, it always ends in dystopia. And so if you're imagining a future that's not a dystopia, it can't just be today on repeat for forever. We have some optimism that some things are going to change, which requires some people to change, I think to get out of bed in the morning. And so to bring that to your relation, you know, your most intimate relationships, you know, you have to have faith that my therapist is always telling me, stop just prognosticating into the future as if everything can only get worse. You know that children are different this year than they were three years ago. And you have to have faith in their continued development and their continued evolution. So that's just kind of a way of agreeing with you. I do think that there is. And also to treat people with grace, which is to treat people better than you think they deserve, which is the
- [76:34]
Cole Smead
ultimate sign of love. Because love is by definition giving something to someone that they don't deserve. That is like love by definition in my mind.
- [76:43]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And we all, I mean, gosh, if we were all treated the way we deserved, that seems like hell to me. It's, it's, it's treating people better than they do be deserved. It's treating people how they are entitled to be treated just by virtue of being human, I think. But it's a lot easier to do that when you can have some imagination that who they are as people is not reducible to the worst thing they've ever done. Who they are as people is not reducible to how they're acting in this moment. That there's a richness and variety to who they could be in the future. I think that makes it easier to then respond to them with less, less kind of mean spirited accounting about what they deserve.
- [77:28]
Cole Smead
Yeah, I want to, you know, again, I think this, I just. Your, your Discussion of, like, your children, everything like that. I just. I just like as a parent. And again, it's also back to the idea of faith. Like, we have this problem in Western society today. It's, we're not having children. Now, what is the core issue? We lack faith in some form or another. I know it sounds crazy. Cause it's also like, you go to these same people and say, hey, are you optimistic about the future? And they'll often say for people that aren't childbearing, they'll say, you know, I'm actually really worried about the future. In other words, it's like this idea of like, their faith informs their path in a way. Right. And so again, why is that there? There's various reasons, like, you've talked about. It's like it could be everything from their parenting to their experiences and many of these things. But it's like, still, the core issue is like, is there faith or not? You've exhibited some faith. Like you said, you've had children. That's faith that requires the immense faith. I totally agree with you.
- [78:24]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
It's also faith in a community in a way. Right. I mean, I. Especially after you've had one, to have another one, knowing what it demands of you is. There is an implicit faith that I know I can't do this on my own, but I know I'm not alone. And I do wonder how much the atomization of our culture, this sense that everyone you know, has, has to make their way on their own, corrodes the faith in each other necessary to. To create a new human life.
- [79:02]
Cole Smead
When also I think of other things, as you say that, like, kids used to be, like, let go. To be more free in society at one point. Right. So like, oh, hey, just go down to Johnny's house. Two miles away. I don't care. Go ahead. Like, we had faith in our society. Now what do we do?
- [79:16]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
And we had faith in our kids too.
- [79:18]
Cole Smead
We had helicopter. And it's like, well, we give them no rope. And so therefore, what are we doing? We're exhibiting a lack of faith not only in our children, but also in our society in a way. Right.
- [79:28]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
I think that's true.
- [79:29]
Cole Smead
Let me ask you this. And again, you just explained so much about your own life. You know, we were talking about a little bit about before. I have, like, simple question, but it gets back at a lot of things we've talked about. You know, you mentioned this story of your mother and looking at the fridge when your children were at her house.
- [79:46]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Yeah.
- [79:47]
Cole Smead
My only question I Had. And I won't, you know, I won't give too much of story away because I want our listeners to go read this book and go through your journey. But my only question is, when I read that I was thinking like back to the Adam and Eve situation. I was like, where's your dad? Where's your dad saying anything in this situation?
- [80:03]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Well, so my parents are divorced, so that's a big part of the story. So my parents, my parents separated. This is very surprising because you know, I grew up in this, you know, I grew up in an evangelical household of like youth group and small group and Sunday church. I didn't know parents who were divorced. And so my parents separated my freshman year of college. And so it was a really big disruption. I mean it was a big disruption to my parents social life. It was a big disruption to my conception of the family. And so, you know, my dad doesn't. Wasn't living in the house. I think a more general question, and I think this gets back to. Destructive relationships are almost never one individual person's contribution.
- [80:50]
Cole Smead
It's a two way street in a lot of cases.
- [80:52]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
You know, I think any, any you know, abuse or mistreatment or just destructive ways of relating to other people also requires other people to be bystanders in that, you know, you see that in school bullying. You see that in every relationship that often harm is, is accompanied by passivity or lack of responsibility. On the totally agree part of other people.
- [81:22]
Cole Smead
I totally agree.
- [81:23]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So I think that's part of the dynamic that you're getting that you're picking up there.
- [81:27]
Cole Smead
Yeah. And so one last question because again, you just, you turn me by the next time in Austin or you're here in Phoenix. I owe you dinner.
- [81:34]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Okay, great. No, this has been a lovely conversation.
- [81:37]
Cole Smead
So my only last question. So like. Cause it's not your book. But again, like I just find your whole story is so interesting to me. Like if I was gonna ask you, and I don't have this in my notes, but I just feel implored to say this. If I asked you like, who was Jesus? Was he real? Is he a story? How do you look at something like that?
- [81:53]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So interesting. You know, I feel like what I'm most comfortable saying is that I take Jesus very seriously. There's a book called Christ A Crisis in the Life of God. It's written by this guy Jack Miles, who used to be a Jesuit priest. I don't know the story behind how he stopped being a priest.
- [82:14]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [82:15]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
But he has this lovely analogy of the Bible as a rose window. As a stained glass window. So you can read the Bible and try to. Try to read it as a historical document.
- [82:26]
Cole Smead
Yep. Which people do.
- [82:27]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
What can I see? And then you can see it as, like, you know, as a divine document, divinely inspired, and many people do. But you can also see it as an incredibly powerful and enduring piece of art that still has something to teach us and to move us. And I'm much more confident in my. In being able to say that. I think of the Bible and I think of the Jesus as represented in the Bible as a rose window that I will never stop contemplating. I think it is an incredibly important story that has a lot to teach us, so I take it very seriously, even if not always literally.
- [83:10]
Cole Smead
Yeah, that makes sense. Let's see, where can people follow you going forward? Are you on social media? Do you regularly write outside of academic journals?
- [83:19]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
So I have a substack. It's called the ruminant kind. If you just Google my name and sustain a substack, you'll find it. I'm on Instagram, also on my name, Katherine Page Hardin. And then my book is called Original Sin. And there isn't another original sin book about President Biden. It's not that one. It's not. It's not the book about President Biden. When it came out. My book was, like, in manuscript form when that one came out, and I was so annoyed that it took my title. So if you Google Original Sin, Paige Harden, you should be able to find my book anywhere books are sold.
- [83:53]
Cole Smead
Awesome. And I told you I was gonna do this beforehand, and I'm gonna do it. I've never done this on the podcast, but I feel implored to pray because your book has brought up so many great questions for us, like, collectively as humans and people, whether we're Americans or we're in this world today that we should think about. So I'm gonna pray briefly.
- [84:10]
Katherine Page Hardin (Paige Harden)
Okay.
- [84:11]
Cole Smead
Dear Jesus, I just thank you for Paige's work. I just pray that with our own children, her and mine, that they contemplate these things. They think about these things. They think about how to apply grace, how to love others when they don't deserve it, which is the definition. And I just praise you for her writing this book and telling the story. Your name. Amen. Amen. Katherine, your book is deeply personal. I love the questions you ask. I love the problems you contemplate. I love your interest in, ultimately, like I just said a second ago, humanity. Our listeners should go out and buy a copy of Original sin wherever you buy your books you for our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to A Book With Legs, give us review, tell others about the books and great authors like Katherine Page Hardin that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through for our tribe. If you have a great book you'd like to recommend, email podcastmeedcap.com that's podcastmeedcap.com you can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is eedcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book with Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode.
- [85:20]
Podcast Announcer
Thank you for listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.