The nature-nurture debates inform almost every area of human life – from biology and botany to economics, literature, and history. To simplify, thinkers on the nature side have, in varying ways, argued that at least parts of your body and mind are behind an impenetrable skin, cannot be gotten to by upbringing, education, politics, or culture. Imagine a one-way street. For example, you have an innate eye color or a creativity that comes out of your DNA – nothing gets to it, its just in you. On the other hand we have empiricists. They believe in a two way street instead of a one way street. This video looks at some complicated sounding things: DNA, genetics, epigenetics, methylation, phenotypes, stress, twin studies, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, and early intervention programs. But I want to avoid being technical, as much as possible, because most fundamentally, most simply, this box is about a fundamentally philosophical idea: freedom. The idea that we have a nature has been approached in countless ways – philosophically, psychologically, theologically – but the most persuasive, through the 19th and 20th centuries, the best place to start, is biology: the study of DNA and our genes. Then & Now is FAN-FUNDED! Support me on Patreon and pledge as little as $1 per video: http://patreon.com/user?u=3517018