How Much of “You” is Heredity? & Martin Cooper: The Father of the Cellphone - SYSK Choice

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Much of 'You' is Heredity? & Martin Cooper: The Father of the Cellphone"

Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Guests: Carl Zimmer (science writer, author of She Has Her Mother's Laugh), Martin Cooper (cell phone pioneer, author of Cutting the Cord)
Release Date: December 27, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores two distinct yet fascinating topics:

1. The complex relationship between heredity, genetics, and identity with renowned science writer Carl Zimmer.
2. The origin, evolution, and world-changing impact of the cell phone, as recounted by its inventor, Martin Cooper.

Listeners can expect a deep dive into how much of "you" is inherited versus shaped by other forces, plus an insider’s view of the technological leap that put a phone (and now a computer) in nearly every hand on earth.

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Segment 1: The Truth About Heredity (w/ Carl Zimmer)

What is Heredity?

• Defining Heredity:
  • Heredity isn’t just about genes, but what the past gives the present and what the present leaves for the future (05:32).
  • “We have developed an idea that if we want to understand our own identity and who we are, we have to look to the past.” — Carl Zimmer [06:35]
• Cultural & Biological Inheritance:
  • Heredity was originally about inheritance of property; the meaning expanded in the 1800s as people noticed traits and diseases "run in families."
  • Genetics is just the starting point.

Key Discussion Points

• Nature vs. Nurture:

  • Traits like height have strong genetic components, but many characteristics—like personality—are influenced by both genes and environment (16:31).
  • “You are similar to your parents not necessarily because you share genes with them, but also because they raised you and you were paying very close attention to them.” — Carl Zimmer [07:45]

• Coincidence vs. Inheritance:

  • Many shared family quirks are likely coincidences; distinguishing the source is rarely straightforward (07:45–08:51).
  • Science isn’t ready to say if you literally “have your mother’s laugh” (09:05).

• Culture as “Hereditary” (09:54):

  • Humans uniquely pass on knowledge, customs, and skills through teaching.
  • “We can give information, knowledge, customs to our children...through language...,” which Zimmer says is a secret to our species’ success.

• Dangerous Misunderstandings:

  • Misconceptions about heredity have led to damaging ideologies and policies—including forced sterilization and, later, Nazi eugenics (11:18).

Measuring Hereditary Influence

• Heritability:

  • For height, about 80% of variation in a population is genetic (16:31).
  • Other traits (e.g., neuroticism) are less heritable and more influenced by environment.
  • Even with clear traits, it’s rarely deterministic; many genes with small effects combine, sometimes tugging in opposite directions (22:34).

• Examples and Anecdotes:

  • Host’s personal family baldness story illustrates how complex inheritance can look “random” and unpredictable (22:05–22:34).
  • Notable Quote:
    • “You inherit 50% of your genes from one parent, 50% from the other... So genetically speaking, you’re just a perfect 50/50 split between your parents.” — Carl Zimmer [21:41]

• Genetic Testing:

  • DNA tests can accurately identify certain traits (e.g., colorblindness), but for disease risk, they only provide limited insights (20:03–21:28).
  • Do not take negative results as assurances—risk is complex.

Looking Forward

• Technological & Medical Revolution:
  • Genome sequencing has become far cheaper, leading to an explosion in data (24:31).
  • Zimmer sees medicine dramatically changing in the next 10–20 years thanks to better understanding of heredity and genomics, but expects incremental breakthroughs rather than a single “eureka” moment.

Memorable Moments & Quotes:

• “There’s some very dangerous aspects to our obsession with heredity.” — Carl Zimmer [11:18]
• "It is possible now for each of us to get all of our DNA sequenced, our whole genome for $1,000, maybe even a few hundred dollars.” — Carl Zimmer [24:31]
• “To really understand who you are and how you tie to the past is no simple job at all.” [08:51]

Key Timestamps:

• 05:19 — Start of Carl Zimmer interview
• 07:21 — Coincidence vs. actual inheritance
• 09:54 — Role of culture in heredity
• 11:18 — History and dangers of heredity misconceptions
• 16:31 — Heritability and what it means
• 21:41 — 50/50 gene split with parents
• 24:31 — Genomics revolution

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Segment 2: The Story of the Cell Phone (w/ Martin Cooper)

How Did the Cell Phone Begin?

• From Car Phones to Handhelds:

  • The Bell System (AT&T) saw mobile phones as car-bound; Martin Cooper envisioned freedom—anyone, anywhere, handheld (29:46).
  • First Handheld Call: April 3, 1973, using Motorola’s prototype (29:46).

• Early “Mobile” Phones (Car Phones):

  • Limited to ~30 simultaneous users in a major city; push-to-talk technology; extremely limited access (31:18).
  • “The whole concept of cellular was to make enough channels available so you could actually make a phone call when you wanted to.” — Martin Cooper [31:18]

Evolution and Breakthroughs

• Mass Adoption:

  • True growth waited on technological advances: miniaturization, better batteries, affordable costs, and the proliferation of cell towers (32:49).
  • “Cell phones didn’t really take off until almost 2000...that’s when we got to the point where almost everybody was aware of cell phones.” — Martin Cooper [32:49]
  • More cell phones today than toilets worldwide [33:58].

• Smartphones & Interface Innovations:

  • Steve Jobs and the iPhone were a game changer for user interface and usability (34:09, 45:47).
  • “Steve Jobs figured out how to provide a user interface that made sense, which was only a dozen years ago.” — Martin Cooper [34:09]

Technical Challenges & Cellular Limits

• Coverage and Limitations:
  • Continuous improvements in capacity and coverage.
  • Calls still drop; carriers prioritize data speeds for industrial clients over basic voice quality (36:15–37:41).
  • “My service in my own living room is marginal.” — Martin Cooper [36:56]

Impact on Society

• Transformative Role:
  • In many parts of the world, the cell phone is the first and only phone people have (41:26).
  • In Africa, mobile-based banking helps lift people from poverty (42:06).
  • In Mexico, rural healthcare is delivered via cell phone diagnostic attachments.
  • “The UN did a study that showed that 1.2 billion people in Africa moved out of severe poverty, mostly because of their cell phone.” — Martin Cooper [42:06]

The Future

• Short-term (10 years):
  • Better coverage, call quality like face-to-face interaction, advanced audio processing (43:33).
• Long-term (30–40 years):
  • Immersive, holographic or AR/VR-style presence during calls.
  • Moore’s Law (processing power) and Cooper’s Law (spectrum capacity) mean exponential improvement in performance (43:33–45:34).

Motorola’s Rise and Fall

• Failure to Adapt:
  • Motorola, the original leader, fell behind by resisting digital technology, allowing competitors like Samsung and Apple to take the lead (38:18).
  • “If you don’t stay on your toes and compete, you get beat by other people.” — Martin Cooper [39:43]

Personal Reflections and Contributions

• Inventor’s Humility:
  • Cooper resists the “father of the cellphone” title, noting tens of thousands contributed.
  • “When I joined Motorola in 1954, I had to sign a piece of paper. They gave me $1 and all of my intellectual property...Best deal I ever did.” — Martin Cooper [47:39]

Memorable Quotes:

• “It is ludicrous to call this thing a phone, isn’t it?” — Martin Cooper [43:19]
• “We just barely tapped the power of being connected.” [41:26]
• “Someday when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number, and if you didn’t answer the phone, you had died.” — Martin Cooper (recounting a joke) [40:03]
• “The amount of radio channels...has doubled every 30 months. They call that Cooper’s Law...Since Marconi...we have a trillion times the capacity today as back in 1900.” [44:36]

Key Timestamps:

• 28:28 — Introduction to Martin Cooper
• 29:46 — The first cell phone and its context
• 32:49 — When cell phones took off
• 34:09 — Importance of the smartphone & user interface
• 36:56 — Ongoing issues with coverage and dropped calls
• 38:18 — Why Motorola lost its lead
• 41:26 — Societal impact, especially in developing nations
• 43:33 — The next 10–40 years in phone technology
• 45:47 — Breakthroughs: user interface, batteries, chips
• 47:19 — On being the “father” of the cellphone

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Quick Facts & Trivia

• Sneakers:
  • Sneakers evolved from 18th-century plimsoles to modern global brands, with milestones including Converse All Stars (1917) and Adidas (1924), popularized culturally by figures like James Dean. [49:08]

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Notable Quotes (w/ Timestamps and Speakers)

• “We want to find out, are we 27% Irish?...But I would just broadly say that heredity is what the past gave the present and what the present is going to leave for the future.” — Carl Zimmer [06:35]
• “You are similar to your parents not necessarily because you share genes with them, but also because they raised you...” — Carl Zimmer [07:45]
• “To really understand who you are and how you tie to the past is no simple job at all.” — Carl Zimmer [08:51]
• “We have a completely different channel of heredity that other species don’t have—culture.” — Carl Zimmer [09:54]
• “We have to really understand what do we really know about heredity so far, and how much of this is just almost like illusions that we’re giving ourselves about it.” — Carl Zimmer [12:40]
• “Even the battery [on early cell phones] was three or four times bigger than a modern telephone.” — Martin Cooper [32:49]
• “Someday when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number, and if you didn’t answer the phone, you had died.” — Martin Cooper [40:03]
• “The UN did a study that showed that 1.2 billion people in Africa moved out of severe poverty, mostly because of their cell phone.” — Martin Cooper [42:06]
• “The amount of radio channels...has doubled every 30 months. They call that Cooper’s Law.” — Martin Cooper [44:36]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rich, multi-layered look at the past, present, and future—both in how we understand ourselves (the story of heredity and identity), and how a single invention—the cell phone—has transformed modern life. Through insightful interviews and illuminating history, listeners come away with practical knowledge, cultural context, and reasons to look toward the future with curiosity and hope.

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For More:

• Carl Zimmer’s She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
• Martin Cooper’s Cutting the Cord: The Cell Phone Has Transformed Humanity
• Full episode available on “Something You Should Know” (OmniCast Media)

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Sprite Obey your thirst today on something you should know. What word in the English language has the most meanings and it's only three letters long? Then what is heredity? And how much are you really like your parents?

[Carl Zimmer]

It's not like just because you look like one of your parents, you are more like them in some sort of deep way. You inherit 50% of your genes from one parent, 50% from the other. So genetically speaking, you know, you're just a perfect, you know, 50, 50 split between your parents.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, where did sneakers or tennis shoes come from? And you'll meet the father of the modern cell phone. He actually made the very first public cell phone call and he has high hopes for the future.

[Martin Cooper]

Think of what the potential of a cell phone. The UN did a study that showed that 1.2 billion people in Africa moved out of severe poverty, mostly because of their cell phone.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should know. It's a busy time. Cold weather, holiday plans. It's the time of year when I just want my wardrobe to work without any effort. Which is why I've been all about quints. They make it easy to look sharp, feel good and find gifts that actually last. Everything they sell is made from premium materials, built to hold up and priced without the luxury markup Quince makes the essentials everyone needs. Their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, of which I have more than one, are just 50 bucks and honestly, they feel like something triple the price. Their Italian wool coats look and feel designer and their outerwear lineup is really solid. Down jackets, wool topcoats, and even leather styles that are made to last season after season. Everything at Quint's is made from premium materials in ethical, highly trusted factories. And because Quince cuts out the middlemen, you get the same quality as luxury brands at a fraction of the cost. Seems like everyone I know is now shopping at Quint's. You should probably too get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait. Go to Quince.comSYSK for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.comSYSK free shipping and 365 day returns Quince.comSYSK something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. Welcome to Something you should know. We start today with an interesting question. Which word in the English language has the most different meanings? Unless you know it, you probably won't believe it. It's only three letters, but it has 645 meanings according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And the word is run. Think about it. You can run to the store, you can have a run in your stockings, you can run over on your budget, Your car can run over a nail, and if it punctures the tire, then your car won't run. Right. You can run in a race, you can run up a tab. And if you're the boss, then you run the show. And the list goes on. One small word, lots and lots of meanings, 645 of them. And now I must run on to the next segment. And that is something you should know. When you hear the word hereditary, you probably think about things like eye color or hair color or height, things like that, things you inherit from your parents or that are passed down through generations of families. But it turns out there's a lot of misunderstanding about what is and isn't hereditary and how much of who you are is determined by heredity versus your environment versus your personal choice. And science is learning so much about this with so much more to discover in the future. It's a fascinating subject, and no one has tackled it better than Carl Zimmer. Carl writes for the New York Times. He teaches science writing at Yale University, and he's author of a really interesting and really big book called she has Her Mother's Laugh. The powers, perversions, and potential of heredity. Hi, Carl. Welcome to something you should know.

[Carl Zimmer]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what is heredity? How do you define it? Most of us know what we mean by, you know, passing down from your parents your eye color or your hair color. But dive in a little deeper here.

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, heredity is a word that's been around for a long time. I mean, the ancient Romans would talk about heredity, and their word was hereditas, and it referred to the rules by which people inherited stuff from each other. And, you know, we still talk about inheriting money or houses or what have you. But by the 1800s, people were thinking about other things that people inherited. You know, why was it that diseases seemed to run into families, for example, so people started to look for explanations for why each generation resemble the previous generation in different ways. And that's what led to the discovery of genetics. But that doesn't necessarily mean that just saying, like, oh, it's just genes is really the full answer to heredity. Actually, that's just really kind of the starting point for understanding what heredity is and why it means so much to us.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, those are good questions. What is it and why does it mean so much to us?

[Carl Zimmer]

You know, I think we have developed an idea that if we want to understand our own identity and who we are, we have to look to the past. That somehow we can zero in on some ancestor to figure out how our lives ended up the way they are. And, you know, so this is what drives the, you know, the huge genealogy business today and the director of consumer genetics testing. I mean, we want to wear, we want to find out, are we 27% Irish? And can we identify our great great, great, great great grandmother? And maybe there's something like us in that person. But I would just broadly say that heredity is what the past gave the present and what the present is going to leave for the future.

[Mike Carruthers]

How do you know, or can you know, or is it even important to know that if some relative or ancestor had some trait or some quirk or some behavior that you have, whether that's inherited or there are just so many traits and quirks and things that people have that you compare yourself to enough people, you're going to have some things in common.

[Carl Zimmer]

I think a lot of things that we single out are just coincidences. They're things that lots of people have. And it just so happens that one of your many, many relatives has it in common with you. It's a bit like astrology that way, you know. Yeah, you can find some coincidences that seem compelling, but, you know, I think we need to sort of look deeper. And it is possible, you know, that you are similar to your parents not necessarily because you share genes with them, but also because they raised you and you were paying very close attention to them. You like it or not, and you are getting to be like them. That's not to say that genetics don't play a role. I mean, you know, tall people tend to have tall children and short people tend to have short children. I mean, that's a fact. But it's not simple, you know, and it's perfectly normal to have people who are very short have kids who are very tall and vice versa. That happens. So to really understand who you are and how you tie to the past is no simple job at all.

[Mike Carruthers]

But since it's the title of your book, is it true that people have their mothers laugh, or is it just that they lived in the house with their mother who laughed, and so they laugh like her because they heard it so much?

[Carl Zimmer]

I don't think science can really, you know, deliver us the definitive answer for those sorts of questions. But you hear people say that. I mean, you know, I've said that about my daughter, and, you know, I'll hear other people talking about some trait, and we're very convinced that that's where it came from. And to me, this underlying science is so fascinating and complex. There's genes, there are other kinds of molecules, there's culture. There are all sorts of things that go into making this connection between the past and the present. But if you want to really prove that you have your mother's laugh, science isn't quite ready to help you out just yet.

[Mike Carruthers]

How does culture enter into this discussion?

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, culture is really kind of like a separate channel of heredity that we humans have. I mean, we humans are really extraordinary that we really have a completely different channel of heredity that other species don't have. So we can give information, knowledge, customs to our children, to future generations, through language and through learning and so on. I mean, we're the only species where there's really good evidence of teaching. That's really remarkable because what that means is that it's not like every generation has to just relearn how to crack open a nut with a rock. You can teach children how to do it, and then when they grow up, they could get better at it, and they can teach their kids that as well. And so you have this heredity of culture that's traveling down. It's been traveling down our species probably for hundreds of thousands of years. And it's a real secret to our success as a species.

[Mike Carruthers]

So if you can't really say that you have your mother's laugh because you inherited it in the sense that it was a direct connection and it passed down, well, then what good is this discussion if sometimes it's true and maybe it's not, and maybe science can help and maybe it can't. Well, if it were in such the early stages, how come your book is so thick?

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, one reason the book is so thick is because heredity has this long, deep, powerful history. Heredity means a lot to us. And so part of what I'm doing in the book is trying to explore why it means so much to us and also, like, what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into by searching for that value. You know, there's some very dangerous aspects to our obsession with heredity. You can look to the early 1900s in the United States when genetics emerged. There were a number of very powerful voices who said, aha, we understand heredity completely. We understand why some people are, you know, score higher on intelligence tests than others. Not only that, but we think that people who, you know, score low on these tests should be sterilized. There were thousands upon thousands of people who were sterilized in the United States based on a very wrong notion about heredity. And Nazi Germany borrowed a lot of these ideas from the United States and took them to even more horrific extremes. So whether we really understand heredity yet or not, it still matters enormously to us. And so we have to really understand what do we really know about heredity so far, and how much of this is just almost like illusions that we're giving ourselves about it.

[Mike Carruthers]

My guest is Carl Zimmer. He writes for the New York Times, and he's author of a new book called she Has Her Mother's the Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. You know, I've been using AG1 for several weeks now. And what I really like is how simple it makes things. I mean, I'm not good at complicated morning routines. And AG1, it's just simple and consistent. AG1 is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamin, pre and probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants all in one scoop. And I love that because I don't want a handful of pills in the morning. Nope, one scoop. Shake it up. Done. My routine is simple. I take it first thing in the morning, usually while I'm making coffee. And I can feel good knowing I'm giving my body real support. And I do notice steady, consistent energy throughout the day. And my digestion feels great. And I really appreciate knowing that it's helping fill in those nutrient gaps that tend to happen when life gets busy. Now, I've been trying the different flavors. Original and citrus are my favorite so far. And it's actually something I look forward to in the morning and this time of year when routines tend to fall apart. And AG1 is the thing that keeps me consistent. AG1 has their best offer ever. If you head to drinkag1.com something you'll get the welcome kit, a morning person hat, a bottle of vitamin D3 and K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and you'll get to try their new sleep supplement, agz for Free, which has been a game changer for my nightly routine. That's drinkag1.com something for $126 in free gift subscribers. Ever notice how half your day isn't spent doing the work, it's organizing the work. Notes, links, ideas scattered everywhere. You start with good intentions, but by midday, you're buried under the admin side of creativity. That's why I've been using Notion Agent. It's like having a digital version of me that actually gets things done. Notion becomes your AI teammate and brings all your notes and docs and projects into one connected space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and it's actually fun to use. With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work. And now with Notion Agent, your AI doesn't just help with work, it, it finishes it. I've used it to organize podcast prep. It finds notes and tags guests and even drafts summaries of old episodes so I can focus on what really matters, the conversation. Notion Agent can do anything you can do in Notion. It taps into your workspace, the web, even tools like Slack and Google Drive to complete actions end to end. When my Notion Agent is running, my brain feels lighter. It's like finally having space to think again. Try Notion now with notion [e-mail] something that's all lowercase letters, notion.com something to try your new AI teammate, notion agent today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show, notion.com something. So, Carl, as you said earlier, tall people sometimes have tall children, but sometimes they don't. And some people with blue eyes have kids with blue eyes, but sometimes they don't. So what are you supposed to take from that?

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, it's not random, and you can actually put a number on that. Sometimes scientists will call that heritability. And so you can say, well, for height, how much of the variation in a population is due to the variation in their genes? And the answer to that is about maybe 80%. So really, like, genes play a huge role in whether people are tall or short. And, you know, so you get a lot from your parents in that regard. There are other traits that are much less heritable, but there's still some heritability in them. You know, like, you know how your personality, like, are you kind of a neurotic person? For example, that's. You get some of that from genetically from your parents, but there's a lot of it is just environmental variation. And so it's not that heredity is meaningless. It's just that it's really complicated. And it's really interesting too, especially because now we can look at individual genes. So for height, I can give you a list of genes and say, I know that each of these genes plays a role in how tall you are. Now, each one might only make you maybe an eighth of an inch taller on average. So they're all tiny, but together they are influencing your height in really profound ways. And we're going to find other lists of genes for all sorts of things, for risks of diseases and so on and so forth. So we're just at the beginning of really drilling into this side of heredity. So it's an exciting time to be writing about this.

[Mike Carruthers]

But let's say that you grow up in a house with parents who are anxious and depressed. And so when you get older you have anxiety and depression. And is it worth discussing whether or not it's heredity or environment or. It doesn't really matter. It's a moot point. It doesn't really get to the problem. It's just an interesting discussion.

[Carl Zimmer]

I think for individual cases at this point, it probably usually doesn't matter. But it may be that in the future there may be ways of learning how to better deal with those disorders by understanding those genes that put us at risk.

[Mike Carruthers]

But very casually, people will say, well, you know, Fred's mother drank a lot, so that's why he drinks a lot. Or Fred's mother was sickly and was sick all the time and that's why he's sick all the time. And can you claim that or not?

[Carl Zimmer]

No, I don't. In a sort of casual individual basis. No, I don't think that anybody can really know that. There are definitely some clear cut cases, like let's say Huntington's disease. Okay. Like we know that's caused by one mutation at one gene. And if you're mother or father had Hunting's disease, you have a 50% chance of inheriting that one mutation. If you did, you're going to get Hunting's disease. And so if you go on and develop Hunting's disease, people can say like, well, it's a shame that he got it from his mother. And we know that that's clear cut, but those diseases are rare. So just say like, oh, he drinks because his father drank. Yeah, I think that's too glib.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what do you think of all these genetic tests that people can have, you know, spit in a tube and learn all about your past and what you may or may not be liable to get. What's your thought on that?

[Carl Zimmer]

You know, I am, as you can tell by writing a book about this sort of stuff, I am intensely fascinated by how our genes influence us. But when people get these results from these companies, I think they're looking for quick and simple answers. Tell me what my DNA says about me. That's a complicated thing to tell. For the most part, it's pretty easy to say, hey, you have this mutation that if you're a man, means you're colorblind. That's pretty clear. But when you start to get into issues about, say, risks of diseases, then you really need to read that fine print. 23andMe is now starting to provide results for your risks of diseases like breast cancer and other diseases. And in some cases, they're only looking at certain mutations in these genes, like the BRCA gene. And if you don't happen to have those mutations, they'll say, okay, you don't have a risk of breast cancer from these mutations. But we know that people have other mutations on these genes, and they could have risks as well. So you can't take these things as some sort of, like, you know, you can't take a test result that says you don't have these mutations as meaning you will never get cancer. It's more complicated than that.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is there any science behind the idea, let's say you look more like your mother than your father, that you're more likely to have other things from your mother than your father?

[Carl Zimmer]

No, there's no connection between that and the genes that, you know that influence development of your liver or your brain or so on. It's not like, you know, just because you look like one of your parents, you are more like them in some sort of deep way. You inherit 50% of your genes from one parent, 50% from the other. So genetically speaking, you're just a perfect 50, 50 split between your parents.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it is. I mean, it is so interesting, and it is so unpredictable. I mean, for example, I have three brothers, and they all lost their hair, most of their hair, pretty early. I did not. I still have my hair. And my father had his hair until he died, but his father was bald. So you wonder, well, where's the pattern? There. There's no. So if there is no pattern, maybe there is no pattern and there's nothing to discuss.

[Carl Zimmer]

It's possible that a couple generations back, you know, your father inherited some genes that raise your risk of baldness, but then also inherited other genes that lowered the risk and maybe sort of dominated over the other genes. And then it was just sort of a, you know, which copies of those genes that he then passed down to you and your siblings just roll the dice. And so for these complicated traits, you know, you may have genes that are sort of tugging that in different directions. You know, I've had my genome sequenced and I can see that I have certain genes that raise my risk of cancer, certain genes that lower my risk of the same cancers, you know. And do they even out? Well, that's kind of a hard thing to know right now because we still don't know that much about these genes. So to end up with this pattern in your family, most of your siblings, you know, being bald and you not like that's what you expect from heredity.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about dominant handedness? Whether you're left or right handed, Is that heredity or is that something else.

[Carl Zimmer]

That does seem to be quite heritable. The sort of genetic basis of that is really still quite mysterious. And it's an odd thing because it's only, I guess around 15% or so of, of people are left handed. I'm left handed.

[Mike Carruthers]

I am too. And there's nobody else in my family that's left handed for generations.

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, I mean, how many generations back have you interrogated people though? That would be an interesting thing to find out.

[Mike Carruthers]

And also in earlier generations, left handed people were forced to become right handed. So you may never know.

[Carl Zimmer]

Absolutely right.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is there a potential breakthrough around the corner that's going to put all this stuff in focus or is this going to be little incremental? Things will get a little bit better and you can hardly notice, but over time things will get better.

[Carl Zimmer]

Well, I think we are in the middle of a real revolution in bringing an understanding of heredity to our health. Because it is possible now for each of us to get all of our DNA sequenced, our whole genome for $1,000, maybe even a few hundred dollars. I mean, you have to remember the first human genome project cost about $3 billion. And so it's a kind of revolution, like what we see in computers and phones in terms of DNA sequencing and also DNA analysis. And we have so much data now and use computers to develop really complex models that can take on all this complexity. So I really do think that like in 10 or 20 years, medicine is going to be remarkably different. It won't be any one single eureka moment. It's going to be the collective work of many, many scientists who are doing that work right now. It's a really exciting time.

[Mike Carruthers]

It really is remarkable when you put it that way, when the first human genome cost billions of dollars and now for a couple hundred dollars you can spit in a tube and send it away and get back a lot of that you could never get before. It's a fascinating topic. Carl Zimmer's been my guest. His book is called she Has Her Mother's the Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity and there is a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks Carl. Appreciate you being here.

[Carl Zimmer]

No, my pleasure, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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[Mike Carruthers]

Gather round your digital audio podcast listening device for a good old fashioned story. It's the story of the cell phone. Imagine life without your cell phone. Some people might look back with fondness on the days before cell phones, while others might be unable to imagine how you could actually survive without a cell phone. So where did this all begin? And what might be the future of the cell phone? Well, there's probably no better person to discuss this with than Martin Cooper. He is considered the father of the cell phone. Martin led the creation of the world's first cell phone at Motorola. And Martin, this guy you're about to meet, actually made the first public cell phone call. Martin won a Marconi Prize for being a wireless visionary who reshaped the concept of mob. He was inducted into the Consumer Electronics hall of Fame and has won an incredible number of honors and awards over the years. He is author of a book called Cutting the the Cell Phone has Transformed Humanity. Hi, Martin. Welcome.

[Martin Cooper]

Great to be here, Michael.

[Mike Carruthers]

So describe, tell the story of the first real cell phone.

[Martin Cooper]

Well, it depends what you call a real cell phone. When we created the first cell phone, somebody else said, namely the Bell system. You remember, you're maybe too young to remember the Bell system. They were the monopoly that ran all of our telephones before 1983. And they invented this idea called cellular. And their idea of what a cell phone was, was a car phone. Just think about that. That we had been trapped in our homes, in our offices by that copper wire for 100 years. And now the Bell system is coming and telling us that we had the freedom of cell phones, but we're now trapped in our cars. So we at Motorola just didn't believe that I proposed that we have the freedom that comes from being anywhere, which is a handheld telephone, a personal portable telephone. And that's when we actually built one, April 3, 1973. We actually demonstrated working handheld portable telephone, 1973.

[Mike Carruthers]

Even before then, though, even before modern cell phones, there was something like a car phone because you can watch old movies or like, you know, old TV shows like the Beverly Hillbillies. And I think Mr. Drysdale had a car phone and people had phones and they looked like household handheld phone receivers.

[Martin Cooper]

Right? Car phones been around, as you say, since the 1950s. But those car phones used a radio channel where there was just one conversation per radio channel in the city. You could only have maybe 30 people in the city of Los Angeles talking on a car phone. These were pressed to talk. Namely, you had to Push a button when you wanted to talk and let go of the button when you wanted to hear somebody else. So it was a really basic service. And because the people that provided that service put too many people on their channels, the ability to even use a phone was minimal. During the busy hour, the chances of getting a channel were almost zero. So the whole concept of cellular was to make enough channels available so that you could actually make a phone call when you wanted to.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so really, those first car phones that you see in old, like James Bond movies or movies with real rich people in a limousine on the phone, it was really a walkie talkie. But your first cell phone cellular phone came out in 1973, and it took a while for it to catch on. But I remember those early Motorola phones, and I've seen a lot of pictures of them as well, and they were huge.

[Martin Cooper]

Yeah, they were. Even the battery, the battery was three or four times bigger than a modern telephone. The battery alone, they used nickel cadmium batteries. You know that today we use lithium ion batteries. You just don't realize what primitive times there were when in 1973, there were no personal computers, there were no large scale integrated circuits, no digital cameras. So if we were working with minimal tools, took a long time before we had the technology where we could make the phone small enough, where there were enough cell sites so that when you wanted to talk, you were close enough to a cell site to make it work. Cell phones didn't really take off until almost 2000, 20 years ago. And that's when we got to the point where almost everybody was at least aware of cell phones. As you know, today there are more cell phones in the world, more cell phones in the United States than there are people. Most of the people in the world have cell phones. There are more cell phones in the world today than there are toilets.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wow. So at what point did people sit down and say, okay, look, we're really all in on this. We're gonna really spend some money and build all these cell towers. And like, how did that happen?

[Martin Cooper]

1983 is when the first systems went on. The very first systems had a large city like LA or Chicago, maybe a couple of dozen cell sites, which could serve hundreds of people instead of tens. But it took until the late 1990s before people could afford these phones. The first cell phones costs were 50 cents a minute for talking. So they were really just much too expensive. When the smartphone came on the server into being, and I'm talking about real smartphones. When Steve Jobs figured out how to Provide a user interface that made sense, which was only a dozen years ago. The cell phone, really ludicrous to call it a phone, because it now became a computer that had access to the Internet and access to lots of applications. And that's only been around for 12 years or so. It's quite amazing.

[Mike Carruthers]

Even after cell phones got fairly common, there still was this idea of a car phone. Like you had a car phone and then you might also have a cell phone, that it was still rooted in the car in a lot of ways.

[Martin Cooper]

Well, the only reason for that was that for years the cell phones, the handheld cell phones, just didn't work very well. Think about it. When you're in a car, you're using the car battery, which is huge, has great capacity. So it's not unreasonable for a car phone to have 20 watts of output. A cell phone has a fraction of a watt. So you have to be pretty close to a cell site. And it really took until the around 2000 for there to be enough cell sites so the handheld phones were as reliable or more so than car phones. Only in the last 20 years has that been possible.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, it's certainly more reliable, but my experience is it's not that reliable in the sense that, you know, calls drop all the time. They just, you know, calls fail. People's voice just drops out for five seconds and you don't know what they said. Or you get that deep digital echoey noise and you can't figure out what they said. And you can't get a signal sometimes and the audio quality is just not that good. I mean, we do interviews with people for this podcast and one of our rules is no cell phones. You can't be on a cell phone because it's hard to listen to. The audio quality isn't very good.

[Martin Cooper]

Well, I think you're right. I experienced that myself. As a matter of fact, my service in my own living room is marginal, and I do get dropped calls. The emphasis that the carriers have put on 5G is an example of how they're less interested in their customers who are talking and listening than they are in data getting super high speeds and things of that nature. And in doing so, and emphasizing what they call latency and high speeds, they're looking for industrial customers and they're not taking care of us consumers as they ought to.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, I've always thought that's one of the reasons texting caught on. I mean, I know there are other reasons as well, but people would just get tired of. Hello, can you hear me? Hello? Oh, man, and then you gotta call back. And it seems like, gosh, by now they should have nailed that.

[Martin Cooper]

Yeah. Even though we use have this cellular approach where lots of cell sites all over the city, if there's too much traffic, you get dropped calls. And that's the basic reason that you're getting poor service. There are too many people trying to get on too few channels and you get dropped calls as a result.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what happened to Motorola? Because I remember a time when, you know, cell phone meant a Motorola phone in the early days. And obviously now they're not even in the game. So what happened?

[Martin Cooper]

Well, it was a heartbreak to me because Motorola were the leaders and the people that took over that business after I left. Motorola had the hubris to think they could control the world. And when the carriers, the people that provide the service, decided that things were to go digital, Motorola resisted that. They said, we don't need digital. We can provide you better service with analog. Well, it turns out at that time, they were right. But the carriers decided that they were going to go digital, and other people responded to them with digital technology. And Motorola had trouble catching up. And by the time they did catch up, other people, specifically Samsung and Apple, had taken over the market. Motorola ended up being bought by Google, of all things. That lasted for about a year. And today Motorola is part of a Chinese company. It's a heartbreak to me, but it's an example of if you don't stay on your toes and compete, you get beat by other people.

[Mike Carruthers]

What do you think about when you think Back to like 1973 and you said, hey, look, we've got this phone. We just created this cellular phone. Well, maybe I would imagine that. You couldn't even possibly imagine that we would be where we are today with cellular technology, or could you?

[Martin Cooper]

First of all, you know, I did tell you what primitive times there were. The idea that you would have a computer, that you would have access to all the knowledge in the world that you could text, that you could do video conversations, none of those things. We knew that was going to happen someday, but not, certainly not in our lifetimes. It was clear to us, however, that someday everybody would have a cell phone. We just knew that that was the case. In contrast with the Bell system, who thought that cell phones. They had a study done, and the study concluded that there would be a maximum of a million cell phones in the world ever. Well, it turns out they were right because the maximum number of car phones ever were, were about a million. But the story that we told at that time Is that someday when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number, and if you didn't answer the phone, you had died. We knew that this was going to.

[Mike Carruthers]

Be a big deal, and it turned out to be quite a big deal. And what's your sense now of is Pandora out of the box? Any regrets? Was this better than you'd imagined? Worse than you'd imagined? What?

[Martin Cooper]

Oh, I think we got a long way to go. I think we just barely tapped the power of being connected, because at least in this country, most of the things people do on cell phones are games. Social media is really not fundamental. But just think of what the potential of a cell phone. You have to go to Africa and India and Mexico to find out what the real future of the cell phone, because there people are using the cell phone. First of all, it's their first phone and their only phone in Africa. The cell phone is the whole basis of the money system. The way people transfer money, save money in Africa is by using cell phones. And the UN did a study that showed that 1.2 billion people in Africa moved out of severe poverty, mostly because of their cell phone in Mexico. Poor villages in Mexico that never had a doctor can now get health care by a doctor in Mexico City by virtue of a cell phone and gadgets like a device, a $5 device that clips on a cell phone that will allow a doctor in Mexico City to look at their eyes. They can actually do an ultrasound sound of a pregnant woman using a cell phone. So we're just barely starting to understand the power of the cell phone. One way or another, we are just at the beginning of what the power of the cell phone will do for human beings.

[Mike Carruthers]

And it's interesting that all of that has nothing to do with a phone call.

[Martin Cooper]

It is ludicrous to call the stigaphone, isn't it?

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, well, it really is. So in the next 10 years, what do you see coming in cell phone technology?

[Martin Cooper]

Within the next 10 years, I think you're going to see a much better coverage. They are going to advance the ability to process audio so that a cell phone call will have the equivalent quality of people talking face to face. Well, you know, I'm a futurist. I think that 30 or 40 years from now when you do a call, that the person you're talking to will be right in front of you, virtually as real as if they were physically there. There's no reason why we can't do that. There's enough capacity in the radio spectrum. We know that the amount of Processing power is doubling every 18 months. Moore's Law, the amount of radio channels that we have is doubling every 30 months. They call that Cooper's Law. So the technology is coming, is becoming real, and at some point those problems are going to get solved.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is Cooper's Law named after you?

[Martin Cooper]

No, I didn't name it Cooper's Law. I called it the law of spectrum capacity. The amount of bits of data that you can put at a given amount of radio spectrum. People were nice enough to call that Cooper's Law, but it's not a law, it's an observation that that's been happening since radio was invented, since Marconi did the first commercialization of radio. Around 1900, the capacity of the spectrum, the number of conversations that you could hold in all of the radio spectrum has doubled every 30 months. And if you work the arithmetic, we have a trillion times the capacity today than Marconi had back in 1900. And that capacity is going to keep increasing along the way.

[Mike Carruthers]

In the development of the cell phone, were there any game changing moments because of some new technology, you know, the transistor, or you know, some big thing that like just changed the game?

[Martin Cooper]

Well, it's kind of interesting, but much as I was not crazy about Steve Jobs as a person, Steve Jobs figured out the issue of the interface. How do you connect advanced technology to a human being? And he did work out this thing about the interface that we experience today with cell phones. Using icons, using things that are intuitive. And that was a game changer. People had had cell phones before that that did have screens on them. They never got it right. I think that was a breakthrough. The other breakthrough was in batteries. As I mentioned before, the first batteries we had were huge. The result was the first cell phones weighed two and a half pounds. When you talk about a modern cell phone at 8 to 10 ounces. So batteries were important. Large scale, integrated integrated circuits. The chip that drives the power of a modern cell phone has over 2 billion transistors on it. That first cell phone that we built measured the cell phone, the number of transistors in the thousands.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I have to ask you, since you are the father of the cell phone, do you like that title? Do you like being called the father of the cell phone?

[Martin Cooper]

Not really.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, like it or not, that's the title you're stuck with. And so can we assume that because you are the father of the modern day cell phone, that on every bill there's one penny that people are charged and it goes to you, and by now you're a Quintillionaire.

[Martin Cooper]

First of all, Michael, I'm not complaining at all. I got lots of recognition and I'm very proud of the small contribution I made. But it took tens of thousands of people to create the technology that what we call a cell phone today. When I joined Motorola in 1954, I had to sign a piece of paper. They gave me $1 and all of my intellectual property. Any ideas that I came up, any inventions I came up that were Motorola's property. It was the best deal I ever did, Michael, because for 30 years Motorola tolerated me, tried to make an executive out of me and failed miserably. But they let me generate ideas, build new products and have a lot of fun. And I'm very grateful to Motorola. So I'm totally satisfied.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it is really great to hear the story from the person who lived the story and I appreciate you coming on. Martin Cooper has been my guest, the father of the cell phone, whether he likes it or not. And he is author of the book Cutting the the Cell Phone Has Transformed Humanity. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate you being here.

[Martin Cooper]

Thank you. I really appreciate it, Michael. I'm sincere. You really did a nice job and you were a smart guy.

[Mike Carruthers]

Sneakers or tennis shoes or whatever you want to call them, have a fascinating past. The sneaker goes back to the late 18th century when rubber soled shoes called plimsoles were first introduced. And they were pretty crude. In fact, there was no right or left foot. It didn't matter. Around 1892, the US Rubber Company came up with a rubber sole canvas top shoe called Keds. By 1917, they were mass produced. That same year, Marquis Converse produced the first shoe that was made just for basketball called Converse all stars. Then in 1923, an Indiana basketball star named Chuck Taylor endorsed those shoes and they became known as Chuck Taylor All Stars. And they are the best selling basketball shoe of all time. Sneakers went International in 1924. That's when a German man named Adi Dassler created a sneaker that he named after himself, Adidas. Adi's brother Rudy started up another famous sports shoe company, Puma. It wasn't until the 1950s that kids began wearing sneakers for everyday footwear. And when James Dean wore them in the film Rebel Without a Cause, the that's when sales really took off. And that is something you should know being the curious type that you are. I'm sure you have friends who are also curious and who would also enjoy this podcast. So please tell them about it. Send them a link and let them know about this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Limu Emu and Doug. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people custom their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Carl Zimmer]

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[Mike Carruthers]

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[Mike Carruthers]

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