Identically Different

Why You Can Change Your Genes

Preview

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

£0.00 for first 30 days

LIMITED TIME OFFER

Get 3 months for £0.99/mo

Get this deal

Try Premium Plus free

Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.

Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.

1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.

Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.

Access exclusive sales and deals.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Identically Different

By: Tim Spector

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Get this deal

Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

*A brand new and updated edition for 2024, including the latest insights on diet and weight management drugs, gene editing, cancer testing, anti-ageing, ultra-processed foods and much more*

Professor Tim Spector, number one bestselling author of SPOON FED and FOOD FOR LIFE, reveals the astonishing new science that is changing everything we thought we knew about genes and identity.

Since the discovery of DNA, scientists have believed that genes are fixed entities that cannot be changed by environment. Spector's pioneering epigenetics studies, and the latest genetic research, show that our genes are more like plastic, able to change shape and evolve, and these changes can be passed on to future generations.

This dazzling guide to the hidden world of our genes will make you rethink everything from sexuality to religion, cancer to autism, politics to pubic hair, clones to bacteria, and what it is that makes us all so unique and quintessentially human.

Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. It is a great read! Michael Mosley

Biological Sciences

Biology

Evolution & Genetics

Genetics

Physical Illness & Disease

Science

Genetic Disease

Mental Health

Health

Listeners also enjoyed...

Dr. Amen's Change Your Brain Workshop cover art

Epigenetics: How Environment Changes Your Biology cover art

Critic reviews

Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. it is a great read! (Michael Mosley)

It is a complex concept, but Spector drifts easily through difficult scientific explanations, offering lucid, easy-to-follow prose... a provocative read.

This science book guides us, via artful storytelling and ground breaking research using identical twins, to reconsider the flexibility and power of our genes. (Ijeoma Onweluzo)

It is provocative stuff, but all couched in the fresh and fast-paced style of popular science.

Spector will get you through many dinner parties. But, much more importantly, he will show how a certain kind of scientific fundamentalism collapsed under the burden of its inability to explain the world as it is - complex, flowing, changing - rather than as they would like it to be - simple and clear. Read him.

A fascinating and provocative book...Spector is a talented story-teller, weaving real-life accounts of identical twins into each chapter...This is an informative and thought-provoking tour of some of the most exciting areas in biology right now. Spector concludes by inviting us to imagine a future in which we see our genes as malleable, rather than as masters of our biological destiny - just one part of the endlessly complex and fascinating story of what makes each of us unique.

Identically Different is a fresh and though-provoking book on how the environment affects epigenetics.

In Identically Different, Tim Spector, a world-renowned authority on twins, introduces us in an entertaining, eloquent and expert way to the new (yet old) science of epigenetics: the study of how the environment can influence our genes and how those influences can be passed on to future generations.

This book is a fascinating exploration of our current understanding of what makes us what we are: health, behaviour, and personality.

Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. it is a great read! (Michael Mosley)

It is a complex concept, but Spector drifts easily through difficult scientific explanations, offering lucid, easy-to-follow prose... a provocative read.

It is provocative stuff, but all couched in the fresh and fast-paced style of popular science.

Most relevant

I was interested in diet and epigenetics and found most of this very good but parts felt overly influenced by the ZOE study without sufficient proof or had little evidence or I felt more could have been debated. I look forward to more as time goes on.