Parents everywhere have something to learn from co-authors of The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children. See below for some unanswered questions from the live show.

So what is more important? Nature or nurture?

For one of the most famous scientific studies on twins raised apart, see: Bernard Devlin, Michael Daniels, and Kathryn Roeder (1997). “The Heritability of IQ.” Nature 388:468–471. The authors conduct a metaanalysis of 212 previous twin studies and conclude that only about half of IQ is inherited, leaving the other half to be explained by parenting and other environmental conditions.

For a researcher who has studied twins and adoptees and concludes that adoptive parents contribute “a great deal” to how much education a child gets and how much income they earn, see: Bryce Sacerdote (2011). “Nature and Nurture Effects on Children’s Outcomes: What Have We Learned from Studies of Twins and Adoptees?” Handbook of Social Economics (1):1–30.

For a widely cited study on how parenting and environment affect the expression of genetic potential, see: Michael J. Meaney (2001). “Maternal Care, Gene Expression, and the Transmission of Individual Differences in Stress Reactivity across Generations.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 24:1161–1192.

Who are some of your favorite authors and have they influenced your writing?

RON: Reading helps to make us who we are. I can still recall vividly how a subscription to a weekly book club the summer after second grade is among the most lasting treasures my parents ever gave me. Every week, there was a new book about a phoenix or heroic wolf or something else that kept me spellbound. That summer, I learned that people I would never meet could be some of my most important teachers.

TATSHA: Thanks to audible, I read more than ever. However, I often buy the audible book and the hardcopy. Favorite fiction authors are Zora Neal Hurston; Ray Carver and J. California Cooper. Fiction books I love: The Girl with Dragon Tattoo trilogy, especially the first book. Love Elizabeth Kostova’s Historian and the Shadows in the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I can’t forget 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am now rereading Kindred by Octavia Butler and The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Non fiction: Malcolm’s Gladwell’s Outliers inspired The Formula. Another influential book was Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I also love his book Creativity even more than Flow. Lately I’ve been reading memoirs because I had to ghostwrite a memoir for someone famous. My favorite biographies and memoirs are Einstein by Jurgen Neffe; Personal History by Katherine Graham; Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (just buy the audio forget the hardcover) and A Beautiful Mind by Silvia Nasar.

To see the recorded LIVE! with an Author shows, please visit https://raisingareaderma.org/live.