Joe Rogan - The Problem with 23andMe

You and I we share African ancestry. Yeah. Yeah. I was shocked. Yeah, I'm 1.6%. Oh really? Yeah. See I have more I have more credential than you in that department. You're 2%, right? Yeah, I know. And it's it's funny because you know you sort of have your the story in your family kind of like where you came from and everything mates and I always knew I was 25% you know Italian and I knew that my family came from Sicily. In fact, the the the Ronellas that came from Sicily all seem to become kind of established in the produce world. My dad was brought up in the south side of Chicago. I'm 44 years old. Okay, so think about that for a minute. My dad was brought in the south side of Chicago and he was raised by his grandfather who was Sicilian and come from Sicily. His grandfather delivered produce with a horse and cart. Whoa. In Chicago. So to have lived through that like to be brought up in a house where a guy like leaves in the morning and a horse and cart to deliver produce and then to be alive like to fight in World War II to be through the atomic era the advent of the internet right but I was new that we had Sicilians when I did the genetic test what some of those at some point in time one of those Sicilians must have shot southward and crossed the Mediterranean and like had a hookup down there or something. Well that was the history of Sicily in the first place. Yeah. Sicily just being Sicilian in the first place there were so many people that were impregnated by the Moors and by various people of West Africa and North Africa. Yeah. Yeah. I should have probably like always assumed but it just I hadn't thought about it. Another thing I was reading about this stuff and you might know more about it than I do is that when you do those tests there's missing parts. You know it does it like it captures what's there but there's could be a lot there that's not captured just in the way that chromosomes are you know inherited and passed down like it's not it's an incomplete picture. Right. There could be influences there could there could be in your in it doesn't create a full picture of your lineage there could be lineages that are there that aren't represented in your particular makeup. How so? Like what do you mean? You know I hate to right off the bat get into something that I can't speak about any level of expertise. I was just reading a piece and the piece I was reading had to do it was kind of a dissection of like what happened with Elizabeth Warren what she claimed. We've been going off about that on the podcast and I'm like a hundred times more African than she is Native American. Yeah well that's what I found I'm ten times more or whatever but there was a piece about it was it was a piece in the times explaining like how to make sense of now that everyone's doing these tests like how to think about make sense these tests but but my understanding of it is that you could have a lot of ancestry that just isn't captured in your genetic code in the way that would be detected through the testing. Meaning there could be ancestors that for what because you're inheriting half you know you're inheriting chromosomes from each parent and somehow you could have it could be an incomplete picture. You could have ancestors that had come from other you know whatever these these tests break out the world into a hundred or some odd regions or zones that there could be people from those zones who are in your lineage that are not captured in your personal that are not captured in your genetic code. That's so bizarre you think it all be in there is that just an incomplete measuring tool is that what it is or is it just actually not in there? I don't know you're gonna have to have a dude on yeah I'll listen you need to have a dude on that understands it and as I say I feel like I'm off on a bad start here man. How much Neanderthal did it say yeah? Less than normal. Really? Less than average. What was the the number like it said it gives you you did 23 and me right? Yeah I can't remember. Oh okay. I can't remember I just remember it was less than average and you know and those things like are refined by how many people do them you know but it was less than average which bummed me out but I'm like as hairy as like a 13 year old like Norwegian girl you know I mean so it's that didn't surprise you. Not shocking. Didn't surprise me too much.