November 20, 2012 • 34 mins
In 2009, a fertility clinic controversially offered parents the ability to customize their children. How will society take the idea of designing children? Do we have a moral obligation to design better people? Join Josh and Chuck for this heavy episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Tucky Bryant. This is stuff
you should know the podcast. This will be done all
in sing song. You don't want to hear me sing songs,
(00:24):
because I've heard he sings songs. Your heart will melt,
glasses will break, my heart will go on, birds with sure,
and uh, grown men will kiss each other on the mouth.
So inspiring. That'd be pretty cool if you could do
that just by singing, Yeah, like you kiss him now,
(00:48):
glass you break. What you're talking about is Chevy Chase
in Modern Problems. I never saw that one. He didn't
have to sing, but he gained telekinetic abilities. You can
make things happen just by thinking them. I shouldn't even
say I never saw that one. That's not that much
of a surprise. Everyone knows how my dad raised me,
but I've never even heard of that one since now
(01:09):
eighties movie Modern Problems it was. It was very dumb,
but it was one of those early HBO movies for me.
So I just sat around watched it like constantly, and
I had a couple of dirty jokes. Oh I got you? Yeah, Um, yeah,
how do we get on that? It was me so chuck. Yes, Josh,
(01:30):
we are now UM friends. I guess you could say
after four years, we finally crossed that cusp. No, I'm
not talking about us. We're not for INDs. Still, you
and I are friends, Yes, we are. We're friends with
Science Channel and UM. As such, we are pretty excited
that they have something going on pretty soon. Yeah, and
(01:51):
this relates to our podcast topic, which is the reason,
very reason we chose this podcast topic. UM. Science Channel
is UM bringing Fringe, the cult classic television show Fringe
UM to its airwaves starting November twenty ye. They're gonna
show all five seasons. And uh, we were even lucky
(02:11):
enough to meet meet the guy, the guy at at
Comic Con. Yeah not Joshua Jackson, Dr Fringe. Yeah, that's
not his name, Mr Noble, and he was very nice
and uh, because he's not just on Fringe, he's on
Dark Matters too, he's the host of Dark Matters on
Science Channel. But I personally watched Fringe. I watched all
(02:32):
the first season, me and Emily did. Emily and I
excuse me, and um, I really enjoyed it and just
it was one of those things that I didn't watch
season two Beyond and Beyond because it just, you know,
life got in the way or something. But it wasn't
because it didn't like it was really good. I sort
of had a X Files vibe. Oh yeah, and the
twist that they've managed to work in there. Yeah, but
(02:54):
the science was more predominant. So I liked it. And
I'm totally gonna watch seasons. We'll probably start with sas
and one again. Well, then you should tune in November
and I'm gonna watch seasons two through five now and
Science Channel. I'm pretty stoked about that, right, Um? And
uh well yeah, in honor of fringe, we chose kind
of a fringe science topic. You did, That's right. I
(03:14):
think it's a good one. Chuck Yeah. Um. Designing Women,
I mean Designing Children? Where did that show? Oh? Yeah? Man?
What was the one that followed it with Burt Reynolds
Evening Shade? Was that tiede? Was that a spinoff? No?
But I think they were packaged together. It's like Tuesday
Night Redneck Hour, Sugar Bakers. Yeah right, Yeah, I watched
(03:37):
Designing Women. I didn't watch evening shade though, which surprises
me because I love Burt Reynolds. I yeah, I didn't
see it either, but yeah, designing Women, it was a
good show. Um that we're talking about designing children and
not just designing children, designer children. That's right. Uh, the
idea that one day in the very very very near
(03:57):
future now UM will be able to make kids ready
to order, made to order. Yeah, in certain ways, like
I think right now you we have the ability to
select eye and hair color. But they're just not doing
it yet because they try that in Los Angeles and
people are like, who woa, whoaa do you remember that? Yeah,
(04:20):
we don't like this. We shouldn't be doing this. And
I think that's really significant that that happened. Like the
first real commercial attempt for basically just saying hey you
want a blonde kid, we can give you a blond kid.
UM received public outcry, international outcry, so much of it.
The people are like, okay, sorry, we opened our mouths
and just forget we said anything. Here's your brunette, you know, yeah, exactly,
(04:44):
roll the dice, jerks. We don't care. UM. But I
find that significant, you know, because I wonder, um, you
know how it's gonna go. How when it does become
really commercially viable to really make your kid a different
person than they would have been natural? Really like, how
people will accept that? Yeah? I mean this is the
stuff of science fiction that is really happening now. Um,
(05:07):
the movie Gatica, this reference in this article really good
movie is really good. Yeah, man, it's good. It's like
a thinking man's science Uh. I don't know if you
call it a thriller. Maybe a thriller intrigue at the
very least, But yeah, it's good. And basically the synopsis
there is without spoiling anything. Is that not the not
(05:31):
too distant future we are able to in Gatica two
build designer children that will grow into designer adults that
are like, disease free and highly athletic and very intelligent.
And then the rest of the shlobs of the world
are you know, sorry t s for them? Basically go
(05:51):
with your potato chips. So see, Gatica's a good one.
Like it? Yeah, every time you say like this isn't
gonna spoil things, I tried really hard to spoiler. I
was watching an episode of Breaking Bad the other day
human and I were and Um, I was like, how
do I know what's about to happen that? I was like, Chuck, yeah.
And the Math episode, Oh I thought you. I thought
(06:15):
you meant the one in Breaking Bad that was about meth.
I was like, they're all about man, right right, I
didn't spoil that, Yeah, I got you. Yeah, all right,
So sorry that was not a spoiler for Gatica though.
UM so, chuck, yes, let's talk about all this you're say.
In two thousand nine, they came out against that fertility
(06:36):
clinic in Los Angeles. That's a good example of a
commercial business saying hey, we can do this now. A
good example of a government saying, hey, you can do
this now, we need to do something about it. Was
the UK proposing a bill and we couldn't find out
whether it passed or not. So frustrating how hard it
is to find out things like this sometimes. Um, if
(06:59):
if you write an article about something that is big
enough for somebody else to use in an article, you
better follow up. Yeah, that's what I'm duty journalist. So
what we know is it was protested at least, so
I'm not sure if I went through well, and the
reason it was protested was protested um largely by the
deaf and heart of hearing community over there, because this
(07:20):
bill would have or did prohibit um selecting kids for
disease or disability, right, So if you it allowed you
to select against that. So if you if you have
a kid that has a disability, you can be like,
I don't want that kid. But it prohibited selecting forum
(07:41):
and the deaf community said, hey, um, if hearing parents
can select hearing kids, deaf parents should be able to
select deaf kids. So if you're gonna call deafness a disability,
you need to change this this bill, which is a
pretty cool thing to protest, if you ask me. I
don't know how it felt about it. I thought it's
still the no, Wow, this is gonna be a good
(08:02):
one that I was utterly confused. That was like, why
would you want your child to be deaf and be
at a disadvantage straight out of the gate in life?
But then I thought, well, is it a disadvantage exactly?
That is a great, great question. So I don't know.
That's where I ended up was did you know that
percent that's the highest most recent figure I've seen of
(08:25):
all down syndrome fetuses are aborted. I believe that right,
And that's the same question. It's like some people are like, well,
why would you want your kid to be disadvantaged? And
we are or not not selected through IBF a boarded um,
(08:46):
and so some people would say, why would you want
your kid to have you know, your kids going to
have a disadvantage And other people say, like, have you
ever met a person with down syndrome? Like they're pretty
awesome people, you know, And I think that that is
That's just one argument throughout this idea of designing children
savior siblings was also included in the bill in England
(09:09):
let parents select embryos that would make suitable savior siblings.
Very controversial. I read a couple of articles on this.
Saviors Savior siblings are basically kids that you conceive initially
with the purpose of being able to act as donors
for their older brother or sister. Like you're you're the
kid that you love is born with like bad kidneys.
(09:31):
Have another kid that's gonna be a suitable tissue doner
because you know ahead of time, before the kids even born,
that it will be, yeah, so that they can give
them one of their kidneys. Yeah, there was a article
that I read where these parents had had had a
quote unquote savior child and used you know, they said,
what we ended up using was a teaspoon of umbilical
(09:54):
blood that would have been thrown in the trash and
that's what saved our other kids life. And this is
not the designer child, it's not some freak of science.
This is the reason we have this child. But doesn't
make it any less valid. So I think ultimately it's
how you treat the child after they're born. Well, you
treat them as like your regular child. You put them
(10:15):
in a closet and wait for the kidney. Sure, you'd hope.
But at the same time, I mean like you can
go down the road and say, well, having a savior
sibling is also having a kid to strip for parts. Yeah,
you know, there's there's another interpretation of the whole thing.
So I mean, like, if if you are going to
have your kid like that, is it valid for society
(10:35):
to be like, well, well you can't do that. How
are you going to treat your kid afterwards? Like? Is
that one of the worries? How would they would treat
the kid? I've never heard that as an argument. Yeah,
because it's not like you can have a kid use
all of their harvest all of their organs and kill them.
Of course not so. I think it's it's like the
effect that the impact it's going to have on that
child and their own identity is like a human being
(10:59):
and and unique individual human being, rather than a walking
organ bank for their brother. I would I would think
I would appreciate that growing up knowing that I was
born with a higher purpose of potentially saving my older
brother if he ever needed it. You know, sure, depending
on how you're raised, you know, are you like Danny
DeVito and twins right, or are you like the savior sibling.
(11:23):
It's a great way to put it, like you're the
savior of this other sibling. It just all depends to
me on how the parents raised those those children in
that abnormal dynamic that's fostered through our technology. Yeah. I
can't imagine though, that a parent who would care enough
about their one child to have another to save them
(11:43):
would mistreat or shun the other child in any way.
That just didn't make sense to me. I just opened
my hands in a gesture of I don't know everybody,
all right, um, so let let's talk about this, Chuck,
let's talk genetics for a little bit. I had to
go back and do some um genetics one oh one
priming UM, and I did that. As I did, I
(12:06):
realized that I wasn't going back and remembering it. I
was teaching myself for the first time. In a lot
of ways, I've never really gotten genetics. Even though it's
so straightforward and cut and dried, there's always like, even
if you read this Designer Children article, like these are
two of our best writers, and like, it just doesn't
come across quite right. Maybe it's just me so like
(12:31):
me in numbers. So back in two thousand three, UM,
the Human Genome Project announced that it had fulfilled its
destiny and successfully mapped the human genome. And the human
genome is the sum total of the information contained in
the human DNA. That's right, right, Um, you're gonna say
(12:55):
the word what DNA stands for, Oh, dioxy ribot clayic acid.
I would say the oxy. Yeah, I've always heard dioxy,
and then I was looking at that E. So either way,
well done. Though. D N A and d N A
is simply a couple of strands of sugar that form
(13:15):
a helix of double helix, and they're joined by what
looks like wrongs on the ladder sugar and phosphate. Yeah,
okay um. And these wrongs are made up of nucleotides,
one coming off of each of these strands, the little
twisty ladder that we all love now. Um. So the
wrongs of the ladder are made of these nucleotides, and
when they come together, one on each side, they form
(13:36):
this full wrong and those are called base pairs. And
there's four types of nucleotides, right, that's right. There is
uh at a nine sita scene, thymine, and guanine, and
you put them together and what you come up with,
ultimately is a four letter language for the blueprint of
(13:59):
an organism. Pretty cool, not just making an organism, but
maintaining it as well. And if you look along the
strand of DNA, you're going to find little segments where
this combination, if read by a ribosome uh can be
used to explain how a cell can make a certain
kind of protein, usually about three proteins on average, and
(14:21):
proteins are what are used as the building blocks of
cellular life and its functions, like everything from our behavior
to like the structure of your eye is based on proteins, right,
and your your genes. These little segments that are encoded
along the d NA um that express these proteins are
(14:42):
are blueprints for how to express the proteins. That's how
they're made. That's what they do. That's right, right, that's right.
We have betweens as a human. Everybody's so happy. You
just do that. Human that just mess it up? Hmm,
how about that? Had you've been designed properly, it wouldn't
(15:05):
have happened. So what I thought was interesting that out
of the three billion BASS bearers, it's about half and
half of useful DNA and the rest are junk DNA.
Yea junk DNA. And they don't think that it's like
junk DNA, like it's it's totally useless. They think that
possibly we haven't found the use yet, or they think
that possibly one of the uses is that it says
(15:27):
it tells um like stop like here's where, here's where
this gene stops, or um, this is how much of
this protein you should express, and this this adjacent gene
that this junk DNA is next to, or it just
provides like structure, like actual structure to the to the
double helix. It's also possible that this is just um
(15:48):
DNA left over that was deposited by viruses eons ago
that that don't that don't express themselves any longer enough,
because that's what viruses too. They insert their own d N,
A and rs. It's right, they um. So you've got
this DNA, it's making up chromosomes. You've got twenty three
in your body. And as complex and as massive as
(16:10):
the sounds, chuck, twenty pairs pairs, thank you, um, as
as massive and complex as this whole thing sounds. Every
cell except for a mature red blood cell, has a
full human genome and many chromosomes in it, every cell.
And that's just in the nucleus. That's crazy. It is crazy.
So you've got all this. We've got a pretty good
(16:31):
handle on this. The human genome. We've we've mapped it.
Now we go back and figure out where the genes are.
And they used to think that it was like nineties
six percent of DNA was junk, and then they found
out that, like if you look at the human genome,
some areas are gene rich, there's a lot of genes.
Other areas of gene deserts where there's very few. Right,
(16:52):
we have to go back and look at this map
and basically crack this code of this four letter line
Widge and figure out what genes are, what what they do,
and then ultimately how to manipulate them. And once we
do that, we effectively have taken humanity out of evolution.
That's right, scary, is it? I think? So our friend
(17:16):
David Pierce would beg to different who the guy from
the Happiness audiobook? We should ratchet up human happiness because
we can. Boy, that's it's a interesting argument, That's all
I'm gonna say. So, Um, we're already kind of at
a very primitive form of this, aren't we. Uh Well, yeah,
(17:40):
like I said, we we feasibly could choose eye color
and hair color if we wanted to. Um, And then
one thing we can definitely do is well, I guess
we should explain about ib F for those of you
who don't know. UM. In we first perform in vitro fertilization,
which basically means when you're a couple and you're having
(18:01):
trouble having a kid. They're a bunch of different steps.
You can take a bunch of different routes you can take,
and one of them is IVF, which means you take
the sperm from the man, egg from the lady and
you get them together outside of the human body to
form a z eyegoat and then you put it back
in the woman, uh and then she takes it from there.
(18:24):
And it is can be expensive. It can be very
hard on the woman, um on her body and and
emotionally emotionally. I think it's probably hard on the couple emotionally,
But dudes aren't pump full of hormones, you know. Um.
So that that is what IVF is, and that is
one way that you can have a baby if you're
(18:45):
having trouble having babies. UH. With IVF came something called
preimplantation genetic diagnosis p g D, which basically means, hey,
we can look at at your stuff here, and if
you are predisposed in your fanly to certain things like
hemophilia A down syndrome tas sac syndrome, we can we
(19:06):
can stop this process now and try again, right we
can scream for it. Yeah, fine, And some of its intuitive,
like with hemophilia A UH, if you and your husband
both have that, that usually tends to strike boys more
than girls, so they probably not use embryos that were male,
likely male. They would use female embryos instead, which brings
(19:28):
up the sticky point of choosing your gender. Yeah, um,
some others we can you can find that evidence of
that disease that say, um, I guess malfunctioning gene that
creates that disease, because that's what disease is, UM and
not use those embryos either. So we are we are
kind of at this primitive state. But it's selective, it is,
(19:50):
and these are tough decisions that couple's face in life. Uh,
A lot of thought should go into this if you're
out there going through this process, it's um, it ain't easy.
And don't let anyone else tell you what you should
or shouldn't do. You know there's a personal thing. Oh
yeah sure, Um, so that's what's that's what's going on
on the ib F tip. So yeah, the point is
(20:14):
from that came um PG dye pre implantation genetic diagnosis,
which is UM kind of right now the most widely
available type of genetic engineering for couples looking to have
a baby, right right, And like we said, the sticky
point of potentially being able to choose your gender if
you really want a boy, you've got three girls, and
(20:34):
man I really wanted a boy. Um. And then in
countries like China where they definitely want boys, it's like
this could be the future that might upset the balance
of of nature and how many boys and girls are
born and what does that mean for the future. So
I heard to UM to have a soft landing from
their one child policy, which they're now starting to like
(20:56):
relax they should have stopped at about twenty years ago. Yeah. Yeah,
Does that mean they're in trouble? Does that mean we
need to follow up like we recommended writers do on
our podcast. Sure, I guess you just did. Oh okay,
there was heard, UM, So chuck, we've got this. We've
got this genetic screening. That's one way to do it.
(21:19):
There's also another way, um that is a little further
out as far as humans go, UM, and that is
transgenderic therapy, which is where you take the gene of
something else that desirous trait and inserted into some into
the human right. So, what is actually adding a gene
(21:41):
right where What we've been talking about to this point
is unnatural selection. But it's been selection. It's like this
is this is it appeared naturally, but we're gonna take
away all of the other We're gonna reduce the chances
that it won't happen, or we're gonna increase the chances
that that will happen. This is straight up copying and
(22:02):
pasting or cutting and pasting genes to create something desirable
or new. That's right, And they already do this in animals, UM.
So you know, if you can do it in animals,
it's not gonna be long before you can do it
with humans. And uh long term, maybe that means we
can eliminate certain diseases by correcting this stuff along the way,
(22:26):
right like before it happens. So that could be good.
So so when you take a gene from one animal
and UM and planted into another, that's um that's become
a transgenic animal or a chimera, which is based on
the goat, serpent, lion, fire breathing animal of legend from Greece. Um.
(22:49):
They call it a chimera, which is kind of hurtful,
I think, especially if you're a human and know what
a chimera is, and you're a chimera, I'm sure you
probably hurt your feelings. But um, thus far there aren't
any human caimeras as far as I know. It's mostly
the big one that we've actually talked about unknowingly before
is a bio steel. The goat with the spider. Remember
(23:10):
we were trying to figure out how they got spider
silk from a goat and the one turns out. It
turns out that spiders and goats share enough traits to
where this ultra strong spider silk can be produced in
the goat's milk. They have similar proteins. And they said,
I don't know how they came across that. I'm sure
(23:30):
they had some hint. I don't know why they would
start with a goat's milk. Yeah, I don't know either,
but the protein, you know, what would happen if we
put the spider silk in this goat's milk? What rhymes
with spider silk goat's milk. Let's try to start there. Um, yeah,
it worked, but they figured out that like the spider,
the protein and spider silk is similar to a protein
and goats milk identical. And well, once you inject the
(23:51):
goats jeans with that spider me like a glove. It
starts producing a ton of that protein UM and its milk,
and you harvest that protein and then start weaving spider
silk and make the stuff called bio steel, which is
really really good body armor. Yeah, and that's where we
talked about it, right, Yeah, Body Armor podcast that you
(24:12):
can find on our RSS feed. Yeah, which also happened
to be our first ever UM listener request. Oh really Yeah,
someone requested that and we acquiesced and we started getting
all these emails. UM. So the point of that is
is they're doing this in animals. There are scenarios where
(24:33):
we could potentially do this with humans, but UM and
another follow up article we read turns out that enhancing
ourselves genetically could eventually lead to UM unknown consequences down
the road. Uh. Specifically, in this case, we have learned
that our human brain is evolving, it's getting larger, it's
(24:54):
gaining more cognitive abilities as we evolve, and if you
start to bring with natural selection via genetic modification, these
things might not show up right away. It might show
up generations later. So you might be doing something you
think will help when and in fact, years from now,
it might keep your brain from growing. Like everyone else's
(25:18):
and this is just one example of something that could
go wrong. Organisms evolve right through mutations. Well, we lack
the foresight to know what mutation will be beneficial in
what will be harmful years down the line. So even
something that may be harmful immediately or somewhat harmful could
be extremely beneficial decades, hundreds, thousands, millions of years from now.
(25:39):
We would never know. That's too late. Once you've done it,
Yeah you're done. No. I kind of had the impression that, like,
once you start tampering, you could conceivably, you know, keep improving,
but it would have to be constant. Well, and what
this article points out, which is a good point, is
natural selection is at its best when you've got a
(25:59):
large gene pool. And if you're narrowing that gene pool
for a reason you think is great, you're still narrowing
the gene pool. And I think proponents of genetic engineering
would say, well, that's fine, we're narrowing the gene pool.
Who cares. We're taking full control of evolution, so evolution
can kiss off. But this raises all sorts of questions,
(26:20):
like some of which we've already touched upon, but like
who decides what's ideal? Who decides what traits are good
and what are bad? What happens when this becomes you know,
commercially viable, but it's still extremely expensive than just the
wealthy have designer children? Well, I mean, what kind of
designer children do do we make that? I read this
(26:41):
one ethicist who said that we have a moral obligation
two genetically engineer and modify our kids so that they're
not a harm to themselves or other people, which makes
a lot of sense. Like I can see how that
is a moral obligation. Like, if you have the technology
to improve people and improve society like that, you have
to do it, you know. But then of course there's
(27:03):
like the other side, it's like God, I don't know,
we don't really know what we're doing here playing god? Yeah,
because I mean, what happens if you make a kid
that's awful little bit and like they're like just totally
messed up, But they wouldn't have been if you hadn't
tampered with them. Who's responsible for that? And in what
ways are you responsible for it? Well? And more well,
(27:24):
not more importantly, but additionally, where the line is drawn?
You know, is it okay to say like, that's kind
of like my baby had blue eyes? Right, No big deal? Right? Yeah?
Was that the line? Or is the line? Like, um,
maybe it'd be cool if they were athletic, right and
super smart and had blue eyes and blond hair and
(27:45):
then boom boys from Brazil? But what's the again, what's
what are the problems with those things? Well? Yeah, you
know it's gonna be athletic and smart, right. Or Happy
is another one that David pointed out that I find
tough to to to disagree with, Like, if you have
the technology to make your kids happier, like ratchet up
their baseline happiness is how we put it, Why wouldn't
(28:06):
you do that? If you can make society a better
place because everybody's happier, why wouldn't you do it? Well,
just this is just a lot ee to me saying,
you know, there's always far reaching consequences. There's always ripples,
every stone you're throwing a lake, you know, like, what
what else is going to happen? If everybody's happy? Are
(28:28):
there downfalls or their setbacks? And there what's going on?
I know it is a tricky, tricky subject. Anytime we
bring up jeans, it becomes a tricky subject. It does,
which is why they're fascinating, that's right, and why people
really get up on their soapbox when they you know,
this means a lot to a lot of people. Religious circles,
(28:50):
scientific circles. A lot of folks are weighing in from
different you know, circles. But you know what that means.
It's it was just stupid. Okay. If you want to
learn more about genetics, how stuff works is loaded with
them articles on them on it. Yeah. Um, you can
(29:10):
type in genetics, gens, designer babies, whatever you want in
the handy search bar and it's gonna bring up some
pretty cool articles. Do you recommend you wasted a year
or two meeting them? Um? And I said handy search bar.
I think so that means its time for listener mail.
It's right, Josh, I am going to call this plug
(29:30):
for our friends at q s a C. Remember meeting
uh Sandra at trivia night in New York. She give
us the hats the baseball Caps. Yeah, what what is
the qu s a C Is the Quality Services for
the Autism Compati. So this from uh Sandra. She's super sweet,
very nice, and she says this, guys, thanks so much
(29:52):
for humoring my over enthusiasm for my cause. Uh and
my over enthusiasm for meeting you guys at trivia night
who I look up to. It was an amazing night
of randomness. All the other people on our second place
team met in line total strangers. After my initial star
struck nous died down, which never happens to me because
I worked with famous people all the time and couldn't
care less. I just felt like, Uh, it just felt
(30:15):
like a night where I was hanging out with a
few buddies I've known for a while. Um. She still
about us start We're very partritable. It was just silly,
Um she said, I felt that way about my whole
table of strangers. Actually. Uh So, anyway, she told us
that night about U S a c M organizaization she's with,
and she says, I'm very passionate about QU S a
C because they changed my life. Literally. I did a
(30:36):
five k to support them because it was local and
my nephew was autistic and I wanted to see if
I could actually walk that far. She had broken both
her ankles the previous year. Okay, I thought that was
funny too. Um Man, I wonder if she was. Was
it called cobbled? Cobbled? Was that in misery? Oh yeah,
(30:56):
that's there's a name for the cobble. She hobbled. Hobbled
cobbled would be if you just than I might even
called hobbling. How yeah, you're hobbled, but that's like a
a state. No, but the process by which Kathy Bates
like broke the ankles, I don't want to talk about it.
(31:16):
She it was called something like you're it was hobbling somebody.
Maybe I'll look that up. That was so nasty. Anyway,
I don't think Sandra was cobbled or hobbled. Uh So
at the time, I had no clue who they were.
Cusack made friends with everyone there and many people who
worked there, and then three months later I actually started
work there as an employee. I was in corporate television
(31:38):
as a video editor for ten years and it beat
down my soul. I was always volunteering and donating what
I could, and I felt like, maybe nonprofit is what
I should be doing. The opportunity arose and I took
it and it has been life changing. Dudes, Since you
guys are so excellent being philanthropic, I decided to see
if he would be interested in knowing more. So, Josh
mentioned you guys were considering doing a podcast on autism.
(32:00):
I'm sure we'll get around of that at some point, right, Um,
if you do, I have plenty of people that could
answer a lot of questions and gladly pass along addresses
and phone numbers. Q Sack has been around for over
thirty years, truly amazing in helping the New York City
and Long Island areas. So do you guys want to
help support this great uh cause for autism? You can
(32:21):
go to q s a c dot com or she
has a bowling page and I think you do. Like
she gets like a fundraisers going through bowling at www
dot first giving dot com slash fundraiser slash Sandra sroka
slash bowl and that is Sandra s O r O
(32:42):
k A s um Sandra. And yeah she was. She
was super nice and she's working for autism now. Very cool? Man? UM,
can I give one more side out? We heard from
another listener of course, Um, a listener named Emily Eisenman
is run for LifeStraw. Did you see this to you?
I did, and now I was gonna read that later
(33:03):
let's let's go ahead do it now? Okay, yeah, alright, So, um,
Emily is running for Life strow. She heard our podcast
from two thousand ten on LifeStraw and she decided to
raise a thousand dollars to buy lifestraws by running a
thousand miles. Yeah. Um, and she is going to cross
a thousand mile mark for the year this week. She
(33:23):
may have already done it. Um. And she's proving to
be a better funder than a better runner than a fundraiser,
she says. So if everybody who listens to Stuff you
Should Know would go help help her fundraise, it would
be fantastic. You can go to www dot fundly f
u n d l y dot com slash run for
(33:44):
Life straw um, and you guys can go check that
out and help Emily raise some money for LifeStraw. And
if you are unfamiliar with LifeStraw, go listen to our
podcast on that subject, which you can probably are going
to have to find on our RSS feed as well. Yeah.
Is um just you know what you do? You you
Google or you get your favorite search bar and you
(34:05):
type and stuff you should know rss feed and it's
like boom right there, all of our shows ever, Yep,
Stuff you Should Know RSS every single one. It's good stuff. Um,
all right, well I guess that's it, right, That is it? Sir?
All right? Uh. If you want to contact us, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast,
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff we Should Know,
(34:25):
and you can send us a good old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Tucky Bryant. This is stuff
you should know the podcast. This will be done all
in sing song. You don't want to hear me sing songs,
(00:24):
because I've heard he sings songs. Your heart will melt,
glasses will break, my heart will go on, birds with sure,
and uh, grown men will kiss each other on the mouth.
So inspiring. That'd be pretty cool if you could do
that just by singing, Yeah, like you kiss him now,
(00:48):
glass you break. What you're talking about is Chevy Chase
in Modern Problems. I never saw that one. He didn't
have to sing, but he gained telekinetic abilities. You can
make things happen just by thinking them. I shouldn't even
say I never saw that one. That's not that much
of a surprise. Everyone knows how my dad raised me,
but I've never even heard of that one since now
(01:09):
eighties movie Modern Problems it was. It was very dumb,
but it was one of those early HBO movies for me.
So I just sat around watched it like constantly, and
I had a couple of dirty jokes. Oh I got you? Yeah, Um, yeah,
how do we get on that? It was me so chuck. Yes, Josh,
(01:30):
we are now UM friends. I guess you could say
after four years, we finally crossed that cusp. No, I'm
not talking about us. We're not for INDs. Still, you
and I are friends, Yes, we are. We're friends with
Science Channel and UM. As such, we are pretty excited
that they have something going on pretty soon. Yeah, and
(01:51):
this relates to our podcast topic, which is the reason,
very reason we chose this podcast topic. UM. Science Channel
is UM bringing Fringe, the cult classic television show Fringe
UM to its airwaves starting November twenty ye. They're gonna
show all five seasons. And uh, we were even lucky
(02:11):
enough to meet meet the guy, the guy at at
Comic Con. Yeah not Joshua Jackson, Dr Fringe. Yeah, that's
not his name, Mr Noble, and he was very nice
and uh, because he's not just on Fringe, he's on
Dark Matters too, he's the host of Dark Matters on
Science Channel. But I personally watched Fringe. I watched all
(02:32):
the first season, me and Emily did. Emily and I
excuse me, and um, I really enjoyed it and just
it was one of those things that I didn't watch
season two Beyond and Beyond because it just, you know,
life got in the way or something. But it wasn't
because it didn't like it was really good. I sort
of had a X Files vibe. Oh yeah, and the
twist that they've managed to work in there. Yeah, but
(02:54):
the science was more predominant. So I liked it. And
I'm totally gonna watch seasons. We'll probably start with sas
and one again. Well, then you should tune in November
and I'm gonna watch seasons two through five now and
Science Channel. I'm pretty stoked about that, right, Um? And
uh well yeah, in honor of fringe, we chose kind
of a fringe science topic. You did, That's right. I
(03:14):
think it's a good one. Chuck Yeah. Um. Designing Women,
I mean Designing Children? Where did that show? Oh? Yeah? Man?
What was the one that followed it with Burt Reynolds
Evening Shade? Was that tiede? Was that a spinoff? No?
But I think they were packaged together. It's like Tuesday
Night Redneck Hour, Sugar Bakers. Yeah right, Yeah, I watched
(03:37):
Designing Women. I didn't watch evening shade though, which surprises
me because I love Burt Reynolds. I yeah, I didn't
see it either, but yeah, designing Women, it was a
good show. Um that we're talking about designing children and
not just designing children, designer children. That's right. Uh, the
idea that one day in the very very very near
(03:57):
future now UM will be able to make kids ready
to order, made to order. Yeah, in certain ways, like
I think right now you we have the ability to
select eye and hair color. But they're just not doing
it yet because they try that in Los Angeles and
people are like, who woa, whoaa do you remember that? Yeah,
(04:20):
we don't like this. We shouldn't be doing this. And
I think that's really significant that that happened. Like the
first real commercial attempt for basically just saying hey you
want a blonde kid, we can give you a blond kid.
UM received public outcry, international outcry, so much of it.
The people are like, okay, sorry, we opened our mouths
and just forget we said anything. Here's your brunette, you know, yeah, exactly,
(04:44):
roll the dice, jerks. We don't care. UM. But I
find that significant, you know, because I wonder, um, you
know how it's gonna go. How when it does become
really commercially viable to really make your kid a different
person than they would have been natural? Really like, how
people will accept that? Yeah? I mean this is the
stuff of science fiction that is really happening now. Um,
(05:07):
the movie Gatica, this reference in this article really good
movie is really good. Yeah, man, it's good. It's like
a thinking man's science Uh. I don't know if you
call it a thriller. Maybe a thriller intrigue at the
very least, But yeah, it's good. And basically the synopsis
there is without spoiling anything. Is that not the not
(05:31):
too distant future we are able to in Gatica two
build designer children that will grow into designer adults that
are like, disease free and highly athletic and very intelligent.
And then the rest of the shlobs of the world
are you know, sorry t s for them? Basically go
(05:51):
with your potato chips. So see, Gatica's a good one.
Like it? Yeah, every time you say like this isn't
gonna spoil things, I tried really hard to spoiler. I
was watching an episode of Breaking Bad the other day
human and I were and Um, I was like, how
do I know what's about to happen that? I was like, Chuck, yeah.
And the Math episode, Oh I thought you. I thought
(06:15):
you meant the one in Breaking Bad that was about meth.
I was like, they're all about man, right right, I
didn't spoil that, Yeah, I got you. Yeah, all right,
So sorry that was not a spoiler for Gatica though.
UM so, chuck, yes, let's talk about all this you're say.
In two thousand nine, they came out against that fertility
(06:36):
clinic in Los Angeles. That's a good example of a
commercial business saying hey, we can do this now. A
good example of a government saying, hey, you can do
this now, we need to do something about it. Was
the UK proposing a bill and we couldn't find out
whether it passed or not. So frustrating how hard it
is to find out things like this sometimes. Um, if
(06:59):
if you write an article about something that is big
enough for somebody else to use in an article, you
better follow up. Yeah, that's what I'm duty journalist. So
what we know is it was protested at least, so
I'm not sure if I went through well, and the
reason it was protested was protested um largely by the
deaf and heart of hearing community over there, because this
(07:20):
bill would have or did prohibit um selecting kids for
disease or disability, right, So if you it allowed you
to select against that. So if you if you have
a kid that has a disability, you can be like,
I don't want that kid. But it prohibited selecting forum
(07:41):
and the deaf community said, hey, um, if hearing parents
can select hearing kids, deaf parents should be able to
select deaf kids. So if you're gonna call deafness a disability,
you need to change this this bill, which is a
pretty cool thing to protest, if you ask me. I
don't know how it felt about it. I thought it's
still the no, Wow, this is gonna be a good
(08:02):
one that I was utterly confused. That was like, why
would you want your child to be deaf and be
at a disadvantage straight out of the gate in life?
But then I thought, well, is it a disadvantage exactly?
That is a great, great question. So I don't know.
That's where I ended up was did you know that
percent that's the highest most recent figure I've seen of
(08:25):
all down syndrome fetuses are aborted. I believe that right,
And that's the same question. It's like some people are like, well,
why would you want your kid to be disadvantaged? And
we are or not not selected through IBF a boarded um,
(08:46):
and so some people would say, why would you want
your kid to have you know, your kids going to
have a disadvantage And other people say, like, have you
ever met a person with down syndrome? Like they're pretty
awesome people, you know, And I think that that is
That's just one argument throughout this idea of designing children
savior siblings was also included in the bill in England
(09:09):
let parents select embryos that would make suitable savior siblings.
Very controversial. I read a couple of articles on this.
Saviors Savior siblings are basically kids that you conceive initially
with the purpose of being able to act as donors
for their older brother or sister. Like you're you're the
kid that you love is born with like bad kidneys.
(09:31):
Have another kid that's gonna be a suitable tissue doner
because you know ahead of time, before the kids even born,
that it will be, yeah, so that they can give
them one of their kidneys. Yeah, there was a article
that I read where these parents had had had a
quote unquote savior child and used you know, they said,
what we ended up using was a teaspoon of umbilical
(09:54):
blood that would have been thrown in the trash and
that's what saved our other kids life. And this is
not the designer child, it's not some freak of science.
This is the reason we have this child. But doesn't
make it any less valid. So I think ultimately it's
how you treat the child after they're born. Well, you
treat them as like your regular child. You put them
(10:15):
in a closet and wait for the kidney. Sure, you'd hope.
But at the same time, I mean like you can
go down the road and say, well, having a savior
sibling is also having a kid to strip for parts. Yeah,
you know, there's there's another interpretation of the whole thing.
So I mean, like, if if you are going to
have your kid like that, is it valid for society
(10:35):
to be like, well, well you can't do that. How
are you going to treat your kid afterwards? Like? Is
that one of the worries? How would they would treat
the kid? I've never heard that as an argument. Yeah,
because it's not like you can have a kid use
all of their harvest all of their organs and kill them.
Of course not so. I think it's it's like the
effect that the impact it's going to have on that
child and their own identity is like a human being
(10:59):
and and unique individual human being, rather than a walking
organ bank for their brother. I would I would think
I would appreciate that growing up knowing that I was
born with a higher purpose of potentially saving my older
brother if he ever needed it. You know, sure, depending
on how you're raised, you know, are you like Danny
DeVito and twins right, or are you like the savior sibling.
(11:23):
It's a great way to put it, like you're the
savior of this other sibling. It just all depends to
me on how the parents raised those those children in
that abnormal dynamic that's fostered through our technology. Yeah. I
can't imagine though, that a parent who would care enough
about their one child to have another to save them
(11:43):
would mistreat or shun the other child in any way.
That just didn't make sense to me. I just opened
my hands in a gesture of I don't know everybody,
all right, um, so let let's talk about this, Chuck,
let's talk genetics for a little bit. I had to
go back and do some um genetics one oh one
priming UM, and I did that. As I did, I
(12:06):
realized that I wasn't going back and remembering it. I
was teaching myself for the first time. In a lot
of ways, I've never really gotten genetics. Even though it's
so straightforward and cut and dried, there's always like, even
if you read this Designer Children article, like these are
two of our best writers, and like, it just doesn't
come across quite right. Maybe it's just me so like
(12:31):
me in numbers. So back in two thousand three, UM,
the Human Genome Project announced that it had fulfilled its
destiny and successfully mapped the human genome. And the human
genome is the sum total of the information contained in
the human DNA. That's right, right, Um, you're gonna say
(12:55):
the word what DNA stands for, Oh, dioxy ribot clayic acid.
I would say the oxy. Yeah, I've always heard dioxy,
and then I was looking at that E. So either way,
well done. Though. D N A and d N A
is simply a couple of strands of sugar that form
(13:15):
a helix of double helix, and they're joined by what
looks like wrongs on the ladder sugar and phosphate. Yeah,
okay um. And these wrongs are made up of nucleotides,
one coming off of each of these strands, the little
twisty ladder that we all love now. Um. So the
wrongs of the ladder are made of these nucleotides, and
when they come together, one on each side, they form
(13:36):
this full wrong and those are called base pairs. And
there's four types of nucleotides, right, that's right. There is
uh at a nine sita scene, thymine, and guanine, and
you put them together and what you come up with,
ultimately is a four letter language for the blueprint of
(13:59):
an organism. Pretty cool, not just making an organism, but
maintaining it as well. And if you look along the
strand of DNA, you're going to find little segments where
this combination, if read by a ribosome uh can be
used to explain how a cell can make a certain
kind of protein, usually about three proteins on average, and
(14:21):
proteins are what are used as the building blocks of
cellular life and its functions, like everything from our behavior
to like the structure of your eye is based on proteins, right,
and your your genes. These little segments that are encoded
along the d NA um that express these proteins are
(14:42):
are blueprints for how to express the proteins. That's how
they're made. That's what they do. That's right, right, that's right.
We have betweens as a human. Everybody's so happy. You
just do that. Human that just mess it up? Hmm,
how about that? Had you've been designed properly, it wouldn't
(15:05):
have happened. So what I thought was interesting that out
of the three billion BASS bearers, it's about half and
half of useful DNA and the rest are junk DNA.
Yea junk DNA. And they don't think that it's like
junk DNA, like it's it's totally useless. They think that
possibly we haven't found the use yet, or they think
that possibly one of the uses is that it says
(15:27):
it tells um like stop like here's where, here's where
this gene stops, or um, this is how much of
this protein you should express, and this this adjacent gene
that this junk DNA is next to, or it just
provides like structure, like actual structure to the to the
double helix. It's also possible that this is just um
(15:48):
DNA left over that was deposited by viruses eons ago
that that don't that don't express themselves any longer enough,
because that's what viruses too. They insert their own d N,
A and rs. It's right, they um. So you've got
this DNA, it's making up chromosomes. You've got twenty three
in your body. And as complex and as massive as
(16:10):
the sounds, chuck, twenty pairs pairs, thank you, um, as
as massive and complex as this whole thing sounds. Every
cell except for a mature red blood cell, has a
full human genome and many chromosomes in it, every cell.
And that's just in the nucleus. That's crazy. It is crazy.
So you've got all this. We've got a pretty good
(16:31):
handle on this. The human genome. We've we've mapped it.
Now we go back and figure out where the genes are.
And they used to think that it was like nineties
six percent of DNA was junk, and then they found
out that, like if you look at the human genome,
some areas are gene rich, there's a lot of genes.
Other areas of gene deserts where there's very few. Right,
(16:52):
we have to go back and look at this map
and basically crack this code of this four letter line
Widge and figure out what genes are, what what they do,
and then ultimately how to manipulate them. And once we
do that, we effectively have taken humanity out of evolution.
That's right, scary, is it? I think? So our friend
(17:16):
David Pierce would beg to different who the guy from
the Happiness audiobook? We should ratchet up human happiness because
we can. Boy, that's it's a interesting argument, That's all
I'm gonna say. So, Um, we're already kind of at
a very primitive form of this, aren't we. Uh Well, yeah,
(17:40):
like I said, we we feasibly could choose eye color
and hair color if we wanted to. Um, And then
one thing we can definitely do is well, I guess
we should explain about ib F for those of you
who don't know. UM. In we first perform in vitro fertilization,
which basically means when you're a couple and you're having
(18:01):
trouble having a kid. They're a bunch of different steps.
You can take a bunch of different routes you can take,
and one of them is IVF, which means you take
the sperm from the man, egg from the lady and
you get them together outside of the human body to
form a z eyegoat and then you put it back
in the woman, uh and then she takes it from there.
(18:24):
And it is can be expensive. It can be very
hard on the woman, um on her body and and
emotionally emotionally. I think it's probably hard on the couple emotionally,
But dudes aren't pump full of hormones, you know. Um.
So that that is what IVF is, and that is
one way that you can have a baby if you're
(18:45):
having trouble having babies. UH. With IVF came something called
preimplantation genetic diagnosis p g D, which basically means, hey,
we can look at at your stuff here, and if
you are predisposed in your fanly to certain things like
hemophilia A down syndrome tas sac syndrome, we can we
(19:06):
can stop this process now and try again, right we
can scream for it. Yeah, fine, And some of its intuitive,
like with hemophilia A UH, if you and your husband
both have that, that usually tends to strike boys more
than girls, so they probably not use embryos that were male,
likely male. They would use female embryos instead, which brings
(19:28):
up the sticky point of choosing your gender. Yeah, um,
some others we can you can find that evidence of
that disease that say, um, I guess malfunctioning gene that
creates that disease, because that's what disease is, UM and
not use those embryos either. So we are we are
kind of at this primitive state. But it's selective, it is,
(19:50):
and these are tough decisions that couple's face in life. Uh,
A lot of thought should go into this if you're
out there going through this process, it's um, it ain't easy.
And don't let anyone else tell you what you should
or shouldn't do. You know there's a personal thing. Oh
yeah sure, Um, so that's what's that's what's going on
on the ib F tip. So yeah, the point is
(20:14):
from that came um PG dye pre implantation genetic diagnosis,
which is UM kind of right now the most widely
available type of genetic engineering for couples looking to have
a baby, right right, And like we said, the sticky
point of potentially being able to choose your gender if
you really want a boy, you've got three girls, and
(20:34):
man I really wanted a boy. Um. And then in
countries like China where they definitely want boys, it's like
this could be the future that might upset the balance
of of nature and how many boys and girls are
born and what does that mean for the future. So
I heard to UM to have a soft landing from
their one child policy, which they're now starting to like
(20:56):
relax they should have stopped at about twenty years ago. Yeah. Yeah,
Does that mean they're in trouble? Does that mean we
need to follow up like we recommended writers do on
our podcast. Sure, I guess you just did. Oh okay,
there was heard, UM, So chuck, we've got this. We've
got this genetic screening. That's one way to do it.
(21:19):
There's also another way, um that is a little further
out as far as humans go, UM, and that is
transgenderic therapy, which is where you take the gene of
something else that desirous trait and inserted into some into
the human right. So, what is actually adding a gene
(21:41):
right where What we've been talking about to this point
is unnatural selection. But it's been selection. It's like this
is this is it appeared naturally, but we're gonna take
away all of the other We're gonna reduce the chances
that it won't happen, or we're gonna increase the chances
that that will happen. This is straight up copying and
(22:02):
pasting or cutting and pasting genes to create something desirable
or new. That's right, And they already do this in animals, UM.
So you know, if you can do it in animals,
it's not gonna be long before you can do it
with humans. And uh long term, maybe that means we
can eliminate certain diseases by correcting this stuff along the way,
(22:26):
right like before it happens. So that could be good.
So so when you take a gene from one animal
and UM and planted into another, that's um that's become
a transgenic animal or a chimera, which is based on
the goat, serpent, lion, fire breathing animal of legend from Greece. Um.
(22:49):
They call it a chimera, which is kind of hurtful,
I think, especially if you're a human and know what
a chimera is, and you're a chimera, I'm sure you
probably hurt your feelings. But um, thus far there aren't
any human caimeras as far as I know. It's mostly
the big one that we've actually talked about unknowingly before
is a bio steel. The goat with the spider. Remember
(23:10):
we were trying to figure out how they got spider
silk from a goat and the one turns out. It
turns out that spiders and goats share enough traits to
where this ultra strong spider silk can be produced in
the goat's milk. They have similar proteins. And they said,
I don't know how they came across that. I'm sure
(23:30):
they had some hint. I don't know why they would
start with a goat's milk. Yeah, I don't know either,
but the protein, you know, what would happen if we
put the spider silk in this goat's milk? What rhymes
with spider silk goat's milk. Let's try to start there. Um, yeah,
it worked, but they figured out that like the spider,
the protein and spider silk is similar to a protein
and goats milk identical. And well, once you inject the
(23:51):
goats jeans with that spider me like a glove. It
starts producing a ton of that protein UM and its milk,
and you harvest that protein and then start weaving spider
silk and make the stuff called bio steel, which is
really really good body armor. Yeah, and that's where we
talked about it, right, Yeah, Body Armor podcast that you
(24:12):
can find on our RSS feed. Yeah, which also happened
to be our first ever UM listener request. Oh really Yeah,
someone requested that and we acquiesced and we started getting
all these emails. UM. So the point of that is
is they're doing this in animals. There are scenarios where
(24:33):
we could potentially do this with humans, but UM and
another follow up article we read turns out that enhancing
ourselves genetically could eventually lead to UM unknown consequences down
the road. Uh. Specifically, in this case, we have learned
that our human brain is evolving, it's getting larger, it's
(24:54):
gaining more cognitive abilities as we evolve, and if you
start to bring with natural selection via genetic modification, these
things might not show up right away. It might show
up generations later. So you might be doing something you
think will help when and in fact, years from now,
it might keep your brain from growing. Like everyone else's
(25:18):
and this is just one example of something that could
go wrong. Organisms evolve right through mutations. Well, we lack
the foresight to know what mutation will be beneficial in
what will be harmful years down the line. So even
something that may be harmful immediately or somewhat harmful could
be extremely beneficial decades, hundreds, thousands, millions of years from now.
(25:39):
We would never know. That's too late. Once you've done it,
Yeah you're done. No. I kind of had the impression that, like,
once you start tampering, you could conceivably, you know, keep improving,
but it would have to be constant. Well, and what
this article points out, which is a good point, is
natural selection is at its best when you've got a
(25:59):
large gene pool. And if you're narrowing that gene pool
for a reason you think is great, you're still narrowing
the gene pool. And I think proponents of genetic engineering
would say, well, that's fine, we're narrowing the gene pool.
Who cares. We're taking full control of evolution, so evolution
can kiss off. But this raises all sorts of questions,
(26:20):
like some of which we've already touched upon, but like
who decides what's ideal? Who decides what traits are good
and what are bad? What happens when this becomes you know,
commercially viable, but it's still extremely expensive than just the
wealthy have designer children? Well, I mean, what kind of
designer children do do we make that? I read this
(26:41):
one ethicist who said that we have a moral obligation
two genetically engineer and modify our kids so that they're
not a harm to themselves or other people, which makes
a lot of sense. Like I can see how that
is a moral obligation. Like, if you have the technology
to improve people and improve society like that, you have
to do it, you know. But then of course there's
(27:03):
like the other side, it's like God, I don't know,
we don't really know what we're doing here playing god? Yeah,
because I mean, what happens if you make a kid
that's awful little bit and like they're like just totally
messed up, But they wouldn't have been if you hadn't
tampered with them. Who's responsible for that? And in what
ways are you responsible for it? Well? And more well,
(27:24):
not more importantly, but additionally, where the line is drawn?
You know, is it okay to say like, that's kind
of like my baby had blue eyes? Right, No big deal? Right? Yeah?
Was that the line? Or is the line? Like, um,
maybe it'd be cool if they were athletic, right and
super smart and had blue eyes and blond hair and
(27:45):
then boom boys from Brazil? But what's the again, what's
what are the problems with those things? Well? Yeah, you
know it's gonna be athletic and smart, right. Or Happy
is another one that David pointed out that I find
tough to to to disagree with, Like, if you have
the technology to make your kids happier, like ratchet up
their baseline happiness is how we put it, Why wouldn't
(28:06):
you do that? If you can make society a better
place because everybody's happier, why wouldn't you do it? Well,
just this is just a lot ee to me saying,
you know, there's always far reaching consequences. There's always ripples,
every stone you're throwing a lake, you know, like, what
what else is going to happen? If everybody's happy? Are
(28:28):
there downfalls or their setbacks? And there what's going on?
I know it is a tricky, tricky subject. Anytime we
bring up jeans, it becomes a tricky subject. It does,
which is why they're fascinating, that's right, and why people
really get up on their soapbox when they you know,
this means a lot to a lot of people. Religious circles,
(28:50):
scientific circles. A lot of folks are weighing in from
different you know, circles. But you know what that means.
It's it was just stupid. Okay. If you want to
learn more about genetics, how stuff works is loaded with
them articles on them on it. Yeah. Um, you can
(29:10):
type in genetics, gens, designer babies, whatever you want in
the handy search bar and it's gonna bring up some
pretty cool articles. Do you recommend you wasted a year
or two meeting them? Um? And I said handy search bar.
I think so that means its time for listener mail.
It's right, Josh, I am going to call this plug
(29:30):
for our friends at q s a C. Remember meeting
uh Sandra at trivia night in New York. She give
us the hats the baseball Caps. Yeah, what what is
the qu s a C Is the Quality Services for
the Autism Compati. So this from uh Sandra. She's super sweet,
very nice, and she says this, guys, thanks so much
(29:52):
for humoring my over enthusiasm for my cause. Uh and
my over enthusiasm for meeting you guys at trivia night
who I look up to. It was an amazing night
of randomness. All the other people on our second place
team met in line total strangers. After my initial star
struck nous died down, which never happens to me because
I worked with famous people all the time and couldn't
care less. I just felt like, Uh, it just felt
(30:15):
like a night where I was hanging out with a
few buddies I've known for a while. Um. She still
about us start We're very partritable. It was just silly,
Um she said, I felt that way about my whole
table of strangers. Actually. Uh So, anyway, she told us
that night about U S a c M organizaization she's with,
and she says, I'm very passionate about QU S a
C because they changed my life. Literally. I did a
(30:36):
five k to support them because it was local and
my nephew was autistic and I wanted to see if
I could actually walk that far. She had broken both
her ankles the previous year. Okay, I thought that was
funny too. Um Man, I wonder if she was. Was
it called cobbled? Cobbled? Was that in misery? Oh yeah,
(30:56):
that's there's a name for the cobble. She hobbled. Hobbled
cobbled would be if you just than I might even
called hobbling. How yeah, you're hobbled, but that's like a
a state. No, but the process by which Kathy Bates
like broke the ankles, I don't want to talk about it.
(31:16):
She it was called something like you're it was hobbling somebody.
Maybe I'll look that up. That was so nasty. Anyway,
I don't think Sandra was cobbled or hobbled. Uh So
at the time, I had no clue who they were.
Cusack made friends with everyone there and many people who
worked there, and then three months later I actually started
work there as an employee. I was in corporate television
(31:38):
as a video editor for ten years and it beat
down my soul. I was always volunteering and donating what
I could, and I felt like, maybe nonprofit is what
I should be doing. The opportunity arose and I took
it and it has been life changing. Dudes, Since you
guys are so excellent being philanthropic, I decided to see
if he would be interested in knowing more. So, Josh
mentioned you guys were considering doing a podcast on autism.
(32:00):
I'm sure we'll get around of that at some point, right, Um,
if you do, I have plenty of people that could
answer a lot of questions and gladly pass along addresses
and phone numbers. Q Sack has been around for over
thirty years, truly amazing in helping the New York City
and Long Island areas. So do you guys want to
help support this great uh cause for autism? You can
(32:21):
go to q s a c dot com or she
has a bowling page and I think you do. Like
she gets like a fundraisers going through bowling at www
dot first giving dot com slash fundraiser slash Sandra sroka
slash bowl and that is Sandra s O r O
(32:42):
k A s um Sandra. And yeah she was. She
was super nice and she's working for autism now. Very cool? Man? UM,
can I give one more side out? We heard from
another listener of course, Um, a listener named Emily Eisenman
is run for LifeStraw. Did you see this to you?
I did, and now I was gonna read that later
(33:03):
let's let's go ahead do it now? Okay, yeah, alright, So, um,
Emily is running for Life strow. She heard our podcast
from two thousand ten on LifeStraw and she decided to
raise a thousand dollars to buy lifestraws by running a
thousand miles. Yeah. Um, and she is going to cross
a thousand mile mark for the year this week. She
(33:23):
may have already done it. Um. And she's proving to
be a better funder than a better runner than a fundraiser,
she says. So if everybody who listens to Stuff you
Should Know would go help help her fundraise, it would
be fantastic. You can go to www dot fundly f
u n d l y dot com slash run for
(33:44):
Life straw um, and you guys can go check that
out and help Emily raise some money for LifeStraw. And
if you are unfamiliar with LifeStraw, go listen to our
podcast on that subject, which you can probably are going
to have to find on our RSS feed as well. Yeah.
Is um just you know what you do? You you
Google or you get your favorite search bar and you
(34:05):
type and stuff you should know rss feed and it's
like boom right there, all of our shows ever, Yep,
Stuff you Should Know RSS every single one. It's good stuff. Um,
all right, well I guess that's it, right, That is it? Sir?
All right? Uh. If you want to contact us, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast,
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff we Should Know,
(34:25):
and you can send us a good old fashioned email
to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
Works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.