September 4, 2025 • 45 mins
Nate is on vacation this week, so Maria is joined by journalist David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene and Range. They talk about a new company that offers comprehensive genetic sequencing on embryos during the IVF process—at a high price. What are the ethics of this kind of technology? And what are the risks (and rewards) of trying to optimize your child’s genes? Plus, they discuss a topic they’ve been texting about for years: Does your name determine who you become?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova, and today my co host
Nate Silver is gallivanting in Norway, I believe, and so
(00:38):
I have an amazing guest co host, an old, dear
friend of mine, brilliant writer, incredible thinker, David Epstein. David
is the author of two international bestsellers of the sports
Gene and Range Folks Are Incredible, highly recommend and a
book that will be out next year, Inside the Box.
And we'll have him back on when that comes out.
(01:01):
And I'm really glad to have him here today to
talk about a topic that he knows a lot of
about to day in the show, our first segment is
going to be about genetics and designer babies and the
ethics of it, the implications of it, what kind of
world we want to live in, and after that we'll
(01:23):
be talking about a different kind of determinism for what
ends up happening to you in your life, which is
does your name matter? Welcome to the show, David, Thank
you so much for being my co host today.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Nate's lost my gain. I'm glad to be here. Thanks
for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Of course, of course. All right, So first up, we're
going to talk a little bit about genetics. So there
is a new startup, Orchid, that's been in the news,
and the Orchid pitch is that we can help you
determine all sorts of genetic things about your embryos so
that you can choose one that avoids the risk of
(02:03):
certain diseases, et cetera, et cetera. They are doing different
sources of testing, different types of testing. They don't really
their client lists, but it has been said that a
lot of them are among the elites of Silicon Valley
tech entrepreneurs, people who are kind of the movers and
shakers of the modern world. So first, David, what do
(02:25):
you just think in general about the whole concept of
being able to determine You know, you have tons of embryos,
and yeah, we can pick the ones that we want
based on certain factors. And by the way, like little caveat,
people have been doing this in terms of disease for
multiple years now. Right, if we can test for a
(02:46):
disease risk, if I have a family risk, for instance,
of schizophrenia something like that, we can try to mitigate that.
Somehow schizophrenia was actually a really bad one to choose,
because that's a polygrotic, very difficult one. But that's the
general idea originally as we as we have just said,
this goes further. So what are your initial thoughts on
(03:06):
something like that?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, in a very broad way, by the way, I
think this get it's an issue where like everyone's talking
about how AI is going to change our lives, and
I've thought genetics and gene editing and genetic selection in
the long term have the potential to more fundamentally change
our lives than AI does. But I think the issue
I don't know a lot about Orchid. I mean I
looked at a very little bit about them specifically, so
(03:27):
I don't know all the services they do. But obviously
they're emphasizing the health stuff, which I think is a
matter of degree difference from what people are already doing. Right, Like,
people already screen for chromosomal abnormalities, you know, down syndrome
being a familiar one, and then they have the choice
of whether or not to do anything about that or not.
Nobody's compelled so to the extent that what they're doing
(03:50):
is it seems that they have a technology that allows
them to amplify DNA really well, so they really really
early after conception, they can get a few cells, you
get a reliable DNA signal from it, and screen for
a whole bunch of potential diseases. So that I think
is just a difference in degree of things that are
already going on. And as someone who you know, I
got off of training to be a scientist and got
(04:11):
into journalism because I was a competitive runner and had
a training partner who died at the end of a
race from a genetic condition. So the idea that we
could prevent stuff from that, you know, these genetic mutations
that we know of that that like rip through families
like a forest fire. I think I think that's a
good option for parents to have. But I think there
(04:31):
are a lot of more difficult questions, right, Like you
mentioned polygenic traits, so a lot of the monogenic stuff
is more is easier. In some cases, you see a
genetic variant, you know it causes some disease, you can select,
you can take it out right people, you know, if
someone there may be moral questions about dispensing with the embryos,
(04:52):
but that's the case for IVF in general anyway. So
I think the I think the reason that this is
pretty controversial probably two reasons. One is that it will
be much you know, it will be wealthy people that
adopt it, right, So then you have this question of
are we like bifurcating the world into people who can
prevent diseases in their children and people who can't because
(05:14):
they have money. So that's one question, and that just
feels icky, right when it comes to health, like, no
nobody feels you don't feel as ichy about wealthy people
having nicer cars as you do about being able to
be healthy. But then the kind of third rail, I
think is when you start selecting for things that are
more traits than diseases, right, like intelligence or athleticism or
(05:34):
whatever it is. And in those cases, I think up
to now it hasn't been that feasible because those things,
unlike some diseases, most things are not caused by one gene.
Most things are caused by all sorts of parts of
your genes are the parts that code for specific proteins.
And now we know like maybe every single gene and
(05:55):
a bunch of other parts of your DNA that aren't
even genes that interact to create like you know, even
how tall you are, maybe every single gene that has
some influence in that, each one in a little way.
And it hasn't been very feasible since we have no
idea what most genes do to actually select for that stuff.
But there's now some work where you do this thing
called polygenic like gene scores. We have a huge database
(06:15):
a huge number of people, and you've sequenced their genomes
and you have their health information and you can kind
of score give them a score based on a large
number of genes that you may not even know what
those genes do. But this configuration looks like it might
change someone's cognitibility a little or their height a little bit,
or some other trade about them. And that's where you
get into these things that are not preventing someone from
(06:38):
dropping dead, but things that would just be nice to
have or bigger advantages for your child. And so I
think that that's like the third rail, right. So I
think the reason that it's so controversial is that people
see it as like the first domino to fall on
route to that which is something that is now you know,
even though I think if you selected for a lot
of those polygenic traits you'd only make a tiny difference.
(07:00):
But if you do that generation after generation after generation,
like that's how breeding works.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, No, for sure, that that is exactly how breeding works.
And you know, I think you've raised a few really
interesting points. One that we still like, we really don't
know how this shit works a lot of the time, right,
And sometimes you think that you might be selecting for
something really really good, but you are also like it
(07:25):
comes with a trade off, right, that you just do
not know about, right. Sometimes that is that's even true
of diseases, right, there are some things that make you
susceptible to one disease but are protective against other things,
and we don't actually know all of those genetic interactions,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I mean a classic example, right, is that some of
the genes that cause sickle cell trade and sickle cell
anemia are protective against malaria, which is why people of
like recent West African descent have those that condition a lot,
even if they now live in the United States, for example.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yep, Yeah, that was that was the one that I
was thinking. That is a very classic one that we
know but now we know, right, but we but we
didn't know before, So that I think that that's part
of it, right, that we a lot of this stuff
is just incredibly complicated. But I do think that like
once some is promising, okay, you know what, like I'll
make your kid smarter and more likely to be a
(08:15):
star athlete and more likely to be Mozart or whatever
it is, that there are ethical things on a few levels. One,
there's like the ethical the ethics of the promise right
of taking money for something that was something like schizophrenia. Right,
This was the example I used at the beginning, and
I said, this is actually a very bad example, because
(08:36):
schizophrenia is something that is determined by so many different factors.
We don't know really what causes it, and it's not
going to manifest for you know, eighteen years, nineteen years,
twenty years. It usually happens in the late teens, early twenties.
And so in the meantime, this company can be making
claims that we're screening for these things, not actually be
(08:58):
doing it successfully, and we have no way of knowing.
So there's like the ethics of promising something that you're
not really sure about. But then also if we can
like let's assume we can do that. I do think
that there are concerns both with the haves and have nots,
but also with the like I'm selecting now for blue
eyes and blonde hair, and I want someone who's a
(09:19):
little bit taller. And it's so funny to me, you know,
there are people who are now quoting Gatika the movie
as this wonderful thing, like, oh, yeah, we're making Gatica babies.
So I was like, that movie was not was not positive. Yeah,
this kind of technology that was a dystopia, like that
is something that we absolutely don't want.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
That's like Selman Kahn's book Brave New Words, which is
obviously referencing Brave New World, which I didn't really think
of as kind of a good connotation for children in
their schooling necessarily.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, that's that's not a book that I have very
positive associations with in terms of the kind of future
we want to be living in.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Totally, And I think, you know to your point, like
I don't want to compare this company in particular to
twenty three and me, but like twenty three in me,
I was since I was writing a book about genetics,
I signed up for a bunch of direct consumer genetic
testing companies in the early days before the FDA was
really paying attention to them, so you could get all
kinds of information, and like I remember, there'd be say
(10:14):
it would say, you know, am I allergic to gluten
or something like that, and it would show some of
my gene variations compared to the population. It would say, oh, well,
people with your genotype, are you know your your ODDS
ratio is like one point oh two or something. You know,
you're like slightly more So one would be if you
have the same risk of getting this thing as the
(10:34):
as a typical person, so you're slightly slightly increased risk.
And then a month later they'd find some other associated
gene variant it'd be like, well, now you're actually a
slightly decreased risk. And then there'd be like three more
found and they'd be like, you're at elevator risk. He did, right,
So this is this question of you don't know what
a lot of stuff is doing. And so it was
like depended when I checked in if I were at
increased or decreased risk. And again that was some pretty
(10:56):
unsophisticated stuff. My like motto for genetics is genetics more
complicated than we thought, you know, because people used to
think we'd have like one hundred thousand genes, and then
it turned out we only have like twenty twenty three thousand,
you know, and onions have way more DNA than we do.
So it's kind of disappointing, like we're not that complications.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Onions are smarter than we are.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's no, I mean, who would argue with that. That's
why so many people don't like them. They're just jealous.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I'm allergic to them. What does that say about my.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
You're allergic to onions?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, I'm allergic to raw onions, all raw onions, onions, shallots, scallions, chibes.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And you shouldn't say stuff like that in public. Your
kryptonite is now like out on the internet, right, I know,
I know.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So this is this is genetic. This is actually something
that you can look at in your genes. And my
body doesn't have the enzyme that can break them down.
So soon as they're cooked, I can eat them, but
in any raw form I'll become incredibly incredibly sick. So
this is potentially actually, you know, bringing it back to
our topic at hand, this is something that Orchid or
(11:55):
what or whatever company could potentially test for and then
I might not exist because they'd be like, oh my god,
onion allergy. No, we can't have this, might not.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I mean, I think we can all agree that we
would get rid of that embryo f and the onion allergy,
for goodness sake, changes the whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
If it that it does, it does?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, but yeah, I mean so I don't want to
compare them because I think some of the disease stuff,
I think is just a more powerful version of things
that people already doing. And and by the way, I mean,
I guess that's true to some degree for genetic selection.
Like I wrote in article years ago about height in
sports for ESPN, and I was like, it turned out
that in most almost every uh, like sperm donation clinic,
(12:34):
like I couldn't donate because I'm not tall enough. Right,
I was a Division one athlete and all this stuff.
You know, it did well in school.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Wait are you serious?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah absolutely. But so it's like when
push comes to show if people do do this stuff, right, yeah,
that's crazy. And so I guess the question is, you know,
if it becomes widespread though, that's yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, you know, it's it's interesting that you say one
push comes to show because people do already like if
you know, so, I don't have kids, so I and
I've never gone through IVY fertility treatments, et cetera. But
if I were to do that and I was looking
for a sperm donor, I could go through binders, you know,
(13:11):
of backgrounds of people and choose who I would want, right,
and it would say things like you know, height and
eye color and all of these things where you went
to school, you know, So I'd be like, I want
someone smart, I want someone from the IVY League.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Did you look at the I'm sure in your college
newspaper there were advertisements for egg donors like crazy, right, absolutely,
and it would say like and they would advertise and
like the Harvard Crimson for a reason, right.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, Oh no, I was hit up for egg donations
so many times.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But they didn't know thri allerg to onions as they
did not they did not.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Know maybe the two about No, they don't balance out,
do they. The onionology is much worse, I understand, damn.
But yeah, that that is absolutely true, and you could
have you could make a lot of money right by
being an egg donor like that sperm donors don't make
that much. Egg donors make a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I imagine why, but fair unfair pay gap, this pay.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Gap be addressed, yes, underpay up gender pay up for sure.
So yeah, so these types of things have been available
in some way, shape or form for a long time.
But I do think that you know, the if this
becomes the norm, then it becomes problematic in many respects.
And one one other issue that we haven't talked about
(14:30):
that people have raised is if this becomes the norm, right,
and then people who don't actually have fertility issues, who
don't need IVF end up doing this so that they
are not kind of the same way that people opt
sometimes to have c sections when they don't need them
because they don't they don't want to give vaginal birth right.
(14:54):
If people then make that choice just simply because they
want that selection, that is also kind of an interesting
ethical area and has repercussions for a lot of society
in the sense that so ORCD and we're not picking
on organ it just happens to be one that is
like in the news topical for the issue exactly exactly so,
(15:15):
but or get specifically charges twenty five hundred dollars per embryo.
Now you would be you need to make multiple embryos,
and it can become much more expensive if you want
other testing, et cetera, et cetera. So there is kind
of another There are more issues that keep piling up here,
(15:39):
and we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I don't think that it is particularly difficult to envision
a scenario where IVF becomes like basically the norm, because
you want to be able to do embryo selection, right.
I'm not saying that I think there'd ever be an instance,
well at least in the foreseeable future, that where everybody
would make that choice, because there are a lot of different,
(16:13):
obviously ethical considerations. But I don't think it's that hard
to see that, And I think you could end up
in a kind of collective trap where because some people
are doing it, you know, and if it turns into
real advantage, maybe there's pressure for insurance companies to then
cover it or or or you know, just for moral
reasons like it shouldn't be limited access. So I actually
(16:36):
I don't know which way we're going to go, but
I don't think it's like sci fi to imagine that
IVF would become like the standard mode of procreation.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, and people say, you know, oh, but it's still
a personal choice. Well, what you said about pressure, kind
of pure pressure to do it, I think is actually huge.
So when I just graduated from college, moved to New York,
wanted to be a writer. It's really hard to make
a living as a writer. You don't make a lot
of money. So I tutored. I did a lot of
private tutoring for very wealthy families, and you know, people
(17:07):
that becomes something that like, if you don't do right,
you are disadvantaging your child and you're a bad parent.
At that point, everyone expects that, like, oh, well, you'll
get tutoring in all of these you'll get USA TEA prep,
you'll get this, you'll get that. And if you're one
of the people who don't get it, then you're like, oh,
my parents don't care enough right that they're not giving
me that extra step. Now, by the way, I never
(17:27):
got any sort of tutoring when I was a kid.
I didn't get SAT prep or anything like that. But
it was I was shocked at the fact that some
of the kids really did need it and others like
it was just something that I was being paid basically
to act as a tutor, and to kind of be
a tutor one technically, I was like, this is a
(17:48):
smart kid who could do this by themselves, but no,
because this is something you're required to do. And so
I think that people might feel pressure to select even
if we don't know if it works right, just on
the off chance that it might work, and that this
sort of stuff might be testable and that you might
be giving your kids minute advantages. Now, one of the
(18:10):
themes of risky business is that minute advantages matter, right,
small percentages matter. As a poker player, you know that
if you get an extra one percent edge, that's huge.
So even if we know that things like intelligence, you know,
things like height, that they're determined by so many different
variables that nothing is well with few exceptions. Nothing is
all genetics like one gene. And even if you can
(18:34):
eke out an extra percentage point, right, an extra tiny
bit for your kid, that could be huge. And are
you negligent if you don't make that choice? If you say,
you know what, I just want to have sex to
see what happens.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So quaint, yes, I think, and I think you know,
like parental neuroses is like a bottomless well of spending, right,
so there's a lot of business opportunities there. But I
do think there is now and I wouldn't have said
this not that long ago, that there's real reason to
believe that some of these traits could be select could
be accurately select for in a small way. Again, that
(19:12):
doesn't say anything about are you accidentally then getting something
you don't want? Right, There's a lot of unknowns. But
I think for the first time some of these other
non disease traits, we could load the dice a little
a little bit, a little bit, and then over multiple
generations that could become more and more and more. But again,
I think those are separate from the issue of making
(19:32):
the screening for disease better, much earlier, and more extensives.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, no, I think that just to put this out there,
I think that the screening for disease is great, you know,
I think that that is. I think that's a very
good thing.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I think that, you know, being I don't know that
everyone would agree with that, right because maybe you're still
like selecting for.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Oh for sure, I think that's less controversial. I think
I think that a lot of people won't agree with that, yeah,
because they don't think you should be able to select
for anything. But you know, I'm an Ashkanazi Jew. Ashkinazi
Jews have predilections you know, for a lot of different
genetic condition and you know, if we can reduce tays acts, right,
if we can reduce Huntington's, if we can reduce the
(20:16):
risk of some of these really devastating conditions, yeah, that
would be amazing, right, I think, I think personally, But
you know, related to this, we also do have emerging
technologies Crisper, you know, that can edit right, so that
(20:37):
it's slightly different, right, you're not choosing embryos. But we
have technology that is becoming better and better where we
can actually go into the genome and say, okay, snip, snip,
let's let's try to let's try to fix this, and
let's try to not literally, by the way, people, you
don't actually go in with scissors.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's not that different though. That's a that's a pretty
good analogy.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
But so we have technologies like that that don't require IBF.
You know, it's it's interesting, like it's very very complicated
because there are certain things about this that I think
are amazing. There are certain things that really give me pause,
and then there are things I actually am kind of
scared of the unknowns. And I know that, yes, we
(21:21):
shouldn't be afraid of a technology because we don't know
the side effect. But you know, there are certain things
like maybe when you are trying to kind of control
for the schizophrenia cluster genes, you're also getting rid of
artistic talent. Just because I say that as like a
cliche thing that often goes together, but like maybe we're
(21:43):
actually getting rid of some good things and some natural
variation mutations that we have no idea what they do,
and they might have existed in this embryo and we
just will never know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
That's an interesting point on two counts. One. I mean,
we know there are things like to give a sort
of extreme example, years ago, this was with earlier forms
of gene therapy, but there were some tests on boys
with what I think it's called X linked combined immuno
deficiency syndrome. People commonly know it as bubble boy syndrome
(22:16):
because the boy has so it's linked to an X chromosome,
and because boys only have one, there's not another copy
to correct it. So some X link diseases are in
boys and so bubble boy syndrome, meaning they basically have
no immune system, so they can't go anywhere. They have
to like live in a bubble. And the gene therapy
(22:37):
this was a more rudimentary form. It wasn't crisper like
gene editing, but using a gene created in the lab
and it gets like shuttled into the cells with a
deactivated virus. Basically it cured some of them, which is incredible, right,
but then like a number of them got leukemia. So
there was like this incredible cure but also this incredibly
devastating effect, and so you don't know, right, some of
(23:00):
the stuff that's going on. And to your point about
that example you mentioned, like schizophrenia and artistic talent, I
think there have been some studies showing that you don't
want mental illness to be creative, right, because that incapacitates
you in all these ways, But that that tends to
be more in the family of people who are extremely creative.
(23:21):
And it's like, if there's all these genes that have
a small effect, some people will have too many of
them and they'll have mental illness. And some people have
a bunch of them that make you kind of an
unusual thinker, but not so many that you're incapacitated. I
remember some years ago after I wrote about genetics, a
like a psychiatrist who served Harvard students coming to me
and saying, like, they definitely are overrepresented, and all these
(23:42):
conditions that are like borderline mental illness. You know, so
like you and your peers, you know, it's not just
your n allergies, like you're weird in other ways that
might also be useful.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
This also happens obviously with like new drugs, like for instance,
you were saying the bubble boy, they end up dying
of leukemia. We know that there were some drugs that
showed an amazing promise right and then ended up like
devastating your liver and kidneys and you die or something
like that, where like oops, we had no idea, or
(24:14):
you know, causes horrific birth defects or whatever it is.
Those types of horrible moments, unfortunately, are all too common
in medical history. But I think the difference there is
you were trying to cure a person who was incredibly sick,
and here you have someone who's healthy and potentially in
(24:35):
the future someone who is perfectly fertile, doesn't need IVF,
doesn't need any of this, and is choosing to do
something which might then introduce these sorts of yeah, downstream effects.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
That's a whole you know, like a saying among doctors.
It's like, it's very hard to make an asymptomatic patient better.
You know, there are cases where that's true, where you
catch stuff ahead of time, but as a general rule,
if someone doesn't need medical intervention, it's usually better to
avoid medical intervention. So I think you're hitting on an
important point. I mean, I wonder what do you think,
(25:09):
Let's say, because we've talked about how there may be
sort of off target effects that you don't want when
you try some of this stuff, Let's say we had
we get it all figured out. So I mean, I
don't think we're ever going to get it all figured out,
because this is this complex interplay between all these environmental
stimulus and genetics. So there's no like to the extent
that no two lives are the same. We're not going
to have it all figured out. But theoretically if we did,
(25:32):
and then it's just a matter of selecting for stuff
you want the way that you would with like a
dog breed what then Like then it's like just kind
of how do we want society to be a question? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And that's that's that is quite dystopian if we also
consider that it might be if we pair that with
what you said at the beginning, right, the divide between
the haves and have nots, where some people can afford
this state of the art technology and others can't, and
so we have a very specific type of person selecting
for what they want. And yeah, to me, like that
(26:03):
is dystopian, and that's kind of that's kind of frightening
because we know from psychology that people will, you know,
select people who are like them quite often, right, we
like people who look like us, and it becomes eugenics
is a bad word for a reason, but it becomes
(26:23):
very eugenics, like where you are saying, you know, these
traits are inherently superior. But even I'm actually curious from
your standpoint of someone who was a Division one athlete
who knows a lot about sports, Like even with you know,
sports genes and things that we know are really cool mutations,
(26:45):
they're sometimes like you will find an athlete who doesn't
look like other athletes who ends up being the best
or who ends up discovering kind of a new way
of doing something that absolutely changes a sport or or
a way of a way of competing. And are we also,
like when we select for kind of this one ideal
(27:08):
that whoever has in their mind, are we potentially homogenizing
society to the point where that's going Those types of
breakthroughs are actually going to become quite rare if they
happen at all.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I mean variation is necessary for both natural selection
to happen, but I think also artificial selection or whatever
you want to call it. And I mean maybe artificial
selection is not the right word, but for new stuff,
like new ideas and all those things. So I think
that's way way down the road because there's a ton
of variation. But if we really start going down this path,
(27:43):
then I think those are things to think about way
ahead of time. And you can imagine, you know, I
think it's already like troubling enough some of the ideals
of perfection that you have on Instagram or whatever. And
so if that's then being applied to like all the genomes,
I think you have started asking questions of like maybe
there are things where we could be better at certain
(28:06):
things we know about, but how do we want life
to be? You know, I think that's an important question
with technology that should be asked, Like I'm I'm I
like innovation. I think invention technology is like really cool.
You know. I started playing with AI immediately as soon
as I could. At the same time, I don't think,
you know, we should always just forge a head on
(28:26):
everything without asking like, how do we want life to be?
An unfold? Right?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, I think that's really important, And I will just
add one less thing to that, which is that we're
also ignoring a potentially huge mental health crisis if this
ends up happening. You know, how do we want life
to be? Well, what happens if you know, you like
you're a designer baby that your parents selected these certain
(28:53):
things for and you feel like you would have liked
to be something else, You feel like things were chosen
for you. I mean, I think that, you know, from
a psychology standpoint, there might be a lot of issues
with that, and we might have kind of a crisis
in the generations of children who are subjected to this. So, yeah,
a lot of things to think about. This is a
(29:14):
really really complicated thing. You know, it's a really morally, ethically, medically,
just every single level complicated topic, and I think something
that people should really give a lot of thought to
for the long term, because you know, as with much
so much technology, just because we can doesn't mean we
should know and.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Like people, I think it's been pretty good. The discussion
about AI has been vibrant, and the potential positives and
the potential negatives, the ethical concerns, et cetera, what we
want the future to look like. Again, I think genetic
technology in the long term has a potentially large, much
larger impact than AI does on fundamental aspects of our life.
And those conversations have been kind of one note. You know,
(29:53):
it's every once in a while something like orchid pops
up and there's a discussion, But I don't think it's
been diverse and constant to the extent that it has
with AI, even though I think it's at least equally
as important.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, I think that this is very important note of
caution and also call to action, that these conversations are
important and need to be had. Let's take a quick
break and then we'll talk about a pet psychtopic for
me and David nominative determinism.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
A much more deterministic aspect of your life than genetics.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
David, for a number of years you and I have
been exchanging text messages about names that we come up with,
that we see in the news, and that make us
both giggle because they are examples of nominative determinism, which
is a psychology concept which means that your name doesn't
(31:02):
just matter, but is in some ways deterministic. It determines
your career path or over jeans, move over jeans. It's
not the genes that matter, it's the name that matters.
And you know, the most simplistic example is something like
someone with the last name Baker is going to go
(31:22):
on to become a Baker. And this would be, you know,
a hilarious joke if it didn't happen so incredibly often.
And some people take it a little bit further, like
they'll say, oh, well, it's just the first letter that matters.
So like, if your name is lindsay, you are more
likely to become a lawyer. I'm like, yeah, no, I
don't think so. But so there are people who take
(31:45):
it to an extreme, but basically the idea is your
name matters more than you think.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yes, and so people have funny names that associate with
their jobs, and I think the idea well, before we
get to the idea of if there's any like real
psychology behind this, I have a quiz for you, if
you're willing to take it. All right, I went back
through some old of my favorites. I don't think I've
told you these ones. You may not because you're an enthusiast,
a collector, a connoisseer, a collector of names as I am. I.
(32:11):
So I'm gonna give you the name, and you're gonna
tell me their job. Okay, Okay, okay. Burt Beverage.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
He works in the beverage industry.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Created Tito's vodka. Oh god, yeah, big okay, Tito's.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Tito's creator's last name is Beverage.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Burt Beverage, I did not know. I tell you. Okay,
I've got some more for you. Okay, Keith Weed. This
one has a bonus.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Keith Weed does Keith Weed work in the pot business.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Head of the Royal Horticultural Society. Mother's maiden name Hedges.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Oh no, double layer, double So I went the wrong
kind of weed.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
But this one, you know you were in the in
the I was, yeah, Joshua, but.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is he is he? Is he a fitness trainer?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I love that you guessed that gastro enterologist? But finished
sue you lawyer, Yes, correct, probably Lieutenant Les McBurney. We
may have done this.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yes, Les McBurnie is a firefighter.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
That one you and I? Okay, okay, last one. This
one kind of up your alley. Walter Russell Brain otherwise
known as the Right Honorable Lord Brain. Is he a psychologist,
the world famous neurologist. Close enough score for that one.
Those are some good ones.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Those are some good ones. One of my favorites that
I actually, I mean, I think you said that it
was a hoax and I had to look up the
whole biography to make sure it wasn't. Nick Burns Cox
he is a urologist, and he invented something that is
(33:58):
called the pee in pot.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
That is, that's like a little too on point right.
We had a doctor doctor recently, We did have.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
A doctor doctor, and I thought that that was very funny.
But the question is, so, now that we've entertained you
with some of our famous, famously funny names, the question
is is there actually anything to this? And so the
science on it is all over the place, Like, this
is a hard thing to study because even though there
(34:31):
are these hilarious examples, like there are billions of people
in the.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
World, right, what's the chances there wouldn't be a doctor doctor?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
And what's the chance that there wouldn't be a urologist
whose last name was burns Cox?
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That I think the chances are very high that that
wouldn't happen. That's a I'm glad we live in this
one of the multiverse where we got doctor burns Cox.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
But yeah, and we also have base rate stuff, so
like if your last name is Baker, like and you're
happened to be in the baking industry, like, come on,
how many bakers are there? Like? So there are lots
of confounding factors, and it's not like people have looked
at lists of every single profession, every and name in
the world and tried to do any sort of comprehensive studies.
(35:14):
So all of the data I could find, some find
evidence of it, some don't. I think it's a wash, right, Like,
I don't think that there's hugely strong evidence for it.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
But on the other hand, it being that these people
are actually more likely to go into professions.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yea, yea, exactly exactly. But on the other hand, there
are some reasons to believe that this would be a thing. So,
for instance, if your last name is Baker, like, chances
are you are descended from a family of bakers, because
you know, there is and this is true not just
in English, so in the Russian language, this is true
(35:50):
of last names. And I know in a lot of
different cultures this is true. Names were given to families
based on the family's professionals directs exactly. So Carpenter, you know,
was a family of carpenters. And it's really interesting because
we were just you know, we're talking about genetics, and
(36:11):
so if you are in a family that wasn't a
certain kind of craft, so to speak, then you might
have a genetic predisposition for it, a talent for it,
et cetera, et cetera. So then exactly it's reverse causality
that you were named this. You still have a family
name because it's something that your family has been good
(36:32):
at for multiple generations.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
And what do you think about I don't know, you know,
I've never really done a deep dive in this literature
because I just desperately want it to be true, and.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, you know that's that's fair. I don't think you should.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But what do you think about the idea? I mean,
I seem to recall when I read a little bit
about it, that there was the theory was that people
are like one, just more aware of jobs that might
be related to their name or people tell them like,
oh you should be you know sue you oh you
should be a lawyer, or they're like more positively disposed
to those things because kind of people like things with
(37:07):
their names on them, right, Like that's why like puts
people's names on a body, Like I see my name,
I like it. And then maybe they have like a
little more positive association with some of those professions if
it feels like related to their name, like they find
it fun just like we do.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Oh, I think there's actually evidence for all of these things,
because that does happen all the time, right Like people
do say, oh you should do X or Y if
you have a funny name, if you have a memorable name.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah. So so, like as crazy as it sounds, there's
some actually like not very insane theories for like why
like maybe there's some realiti it's just like more salient
to you.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And as we've talked about with genetics, you know, what
kinds of traits are you more likely to select for?
You do tend to gravitate two things that are familiar, right,
and that are comfortable, that remind you of you, of
you know, your parents, of people you know. And these
sorts of biases manifest themselves incredibly early on right. We're
(38:01):
talking infants right that are ten months old already shows
some of these preferences for faces that are same skin
color as their parents. It's not something that happens at birth,
but it does actually start manifesting incredibly early, just because
you know it is familiar, right, it is what you know.
And so if you do have a name that is Coxburns,
(38:23):
then then maybe you know, you end up subconsciously consciously
on some level thinking more about those types of things.
Maybe if your last name is Judge, You're like, haha,
wouldn't it be funny if my name was Judge Judge,
or you know, if I'm doctor doctor or something like that.
(38:43):
So you know, on the one hand, this is just
hilarious and it seems like an artifact, and we collect
these funny names. On the other hand, there are both
psychological and historical reasons why this effect might actually be
an effect. And obviously it's weak, right, And like with anything,
(39:05):
things are multiply determined, and it's not like, you know,
you end up doing something just because of this one thing,
and you might have a last name that's incredibly salient
and yet do nothing.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah with that.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
My last name in Russian, by the way, is related
to horses, and I'm allergic to horses, so you know, definitely.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Definitely not going to be doing anything else with you
the horse line I was singing of Russian, there was
a Russian, a great Russian hurdler named Maria step on Nova,
which is sound sounds like step on over, you know,
like a hurdle, But I don't know what it means
in Russian, so that probably wouldn't be it means of
Stephen of Stephen. Okay, Yeah, I wonder if the fact
carries if you're sort of named for someone, too, right,
(39:55):
because then you'd have those associations like name for some
prominent person for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
For sure. And I'm thinking now back to kind of
early colonial days, right, think of the names, like, think
of your early US history where people were named virtues
or things that they were that you wanted them to exhibit,
you know, chastity, virtue, grace, like all of these absolutely yeah,
(40:21):
crazy names. Some of them are just absolutely temperance, these
names that just sound completely insane to us now, But
I think that was one of the reasons they thought
that maybe if that's your name and you're constantly temperance,
don't are you sure you want another drink? Temperance.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I feel like that could go either way. Like my
parents name me Temperance, So I'm going off the rails
like forget them.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, And as I kind of, as I casually mentioned
at the beginning, you know, base rates are also important here,
right if we if we're looking at this, you need
to look at it from a statistically savvy as opposed
to kind of this name just stands out more, right,
So I gravitate toward it, and I pick and choose
the ones that I say, see nominative determinism. Yeah, So
(41:06):
I think that that's that that's important, And that's an
analysis that's really hard to do because where are you
going to get those data sets?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah? Right, you can't really randomize people to life, you know,
and see give them different names and see how things turn.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Out, right, That would be funny.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, So basically the bottom line is I'm just going
to continue to believe that it's completely deterministic and text
you every hilarious name that I see in the news, and.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
I will laugh every time, and I will text you
back other hilarious names. So yeah, I think for now
we can just keep on thinking this is funny for
anyone listening and wanting tips on whether what they name
their kid matters, Yes, it does, but don't please don't
name your kid temperance. That will probably backfire. Yeah, that's
probably That's probably not not what we're going for.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Name the me YouTuber instead.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yes, exactly, exactly. Influencer, influencer, TikTok star. I'm actually officially
changing my name to TikTok star.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
I feel like I feel like there's a strong chance
this has already happened. Yeah, Like when I was I
have a son, and when we were naming, I like
downloaded a bunch of data from the Social Security Administration
on naming and it was I think it was like
they gave you every name that was used at least
I don't know, three times or five times whatever, it
(42:24):
was you didn't They didn't include in the data names
that were only used once, and so these the names
that were used the least but three or five times
were like literally someone hitting their head on a keyboard,
and those were used like three to five times in
a given year. So there's for sure somebody has been
named TikTok.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Well, apparently there is a baby that was born this
year who was named after chat GPT. So it's a
baby girl and her name is chat Yept. It's a
Colombian baby.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So seriously, we are yes. Is this like angling for
an endorsement or just in technological enthusiasm or like what
what's find what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
I'm not sure, but on August fifteenth, chat Ept Bastidas
Geta was registered at the local National Registry.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
How they used GPT five though, I don't really like
it that much. Maybe they should rename the baby cloud
or something or anthropic.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, you know, well for the company, you know, you
can perplexity, perplexity Gemini. Yeah yeah, but what if Gemini
isn't a Gemini. I mean that's going to be incredibly.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
There's a lot of considerations.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
This is serious, this is a serious business. So listeners
please consider choose wisely before choosing a name. But yeah,
this is this is you know, something that I will
continue looking at the literature and see if any interesting
studies come out, because I do. I can't help but
feel that there might be something to this, right, because
there are so many reasons why, and because there are
(43:54):
some data sets that show that, yes, there there is
kind of a some sort of an effect.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And it's interesting. You're something kind of ridiculous. It's probably
not true in psychology in this case. Behind this ridiculous thing,
there are actually some pretty sort of almost common sense
like ah, someone's just more aware of this profession, or
people say you should do this, you should look at that, right, Yeah, yep,
which is not that hard to understand.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
So there you have at people, whether it's genetics or names.
Today's episode is all about things that determine your future
and the future of the world. Thanks so much for
being such an amazing co host, David. I hope you
will come back both as a guest and as a
(44:37):
guest co host when Nate inevitably ends up in Norway
and can't host the show.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And I would love to.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm.
And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber,
we have some bonus content for you that's coming up
right after the credits. And if you're not subscribing yet,
I mean, what's up with that? Please consider signing up
next ninety nine a month you get access to all
that premium content and add free listening across Pushkin's entire
(45:15):
network of shows. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria
Kannakova and by my fabulous co host Nate Silver. The
show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Sonia Gerwit. Sally helm is our editor, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Buguer. If
(45:38):
you like the show, please rate and review us so
other people can find us too. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova, and today my co host
Nate Silver is gallivanting in Norway, I believe, and so
(00:38):
I have an amazing guest co host, an old, dear
friend of mine, brilliant writer, incredible thinker, David Epstein. David
is the author of two international bestsellers of the sports
Gene and Range Folks Are Incredible, highly recommend and a
book that will be out next year, Inside the Box.
And we'll have him back on when that comes out.
(01:01):
And I'm really glad to have him here today to
talk about a topic that he knows a lot of
about to day in the show, our first segment is
going to be about genetics and designer babies and the
ethics of it, the implications of it, what kind of
world we want to live in, and after that we'll
(01:23):
be talking about a different kind of determinism for what
ends up happening to you in your life, which is
does your name matter? Welcome to the show, David, Thank
you so much for being my co host today.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Nate's lost my gain. I'm glad to be here. Thanks
for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Of course, of course. All right, So first up, we're
going to talk a little bit about genetics. So there
is a new startup, Orchid, that's been in the news,
and the Orchid pitch is that we can help you
determine all sorts of genetic things about your embryos so
that you can choose one that avoids the risk of
(02:03):
certain diseases, et cetera, et cetera. They are doing different
sources of testing, different types of testing. They don't really
their client lists, but it has been said that a
lot of them are among the elites of Silicon Valley
tech entrepreneurs, people who are kind of the movers and
shakers of the modern world. So first, David, what do
(02:25):
you just think in general about the whole concept of
being able to determine You know, you have tons of embryos,
and yeah, we can pick the ones that we want
based on certain factors. And by the way, like little caveat,
people have been doing this in terms of disease for
multiple years now. Right, if we can test for a
(02:46):
disease risk, if I have a family risk, for instance,
of schizophrenia something like that, we can try to mitigate that.
Somehow schizophrenia was actually a really bad one to choose,
because that's a polygrotic, very difficult one. But that's the
general idea originally as we as we have just said,
this goes further. So what are your initial thoughts on
(03:06):
something like that?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, in a very broad way, by the way, I
think this get it's an issue where like everyone's talking
about how AI is going to change our lives, and
I've thought genetics and gene editing and genetic selection in
the long term have the potential to more fundamentally change
our lives than AI does. But I think the issue
I don't know a lot about Orchid. I mean I
looked at a very little bit about them specifically, so
(03:27):
I don't know all the services they do. But obviously
they're emphasizing the health stuff, which I think is a
matter of degree difference from what people are already doing. Right, Like,
people already screen for chromosomal abnormalities, you know, down syndrome
being a familiar one, and then they have the choice
of whether or not to do anything about that or not.
Nobody's compelled so to the extent that what they're doing
(03:50):
is it seems that they have a technology that allows
them to amplify DNA really well, so they really really
early after conception, they can get a few cells, you
get a reliable DNA signal from it, and screen for
a whole bunch of potential diseases. So that I think
is just a difference in degree of things that are
already going on. And as someone who you know, I
got off of training to be a scientist and got
(04:11):
into journalism because I was a competitive runner and had
a training partner who died at the end of a
race from a genetic condition. So the idea that we
could prevent stuff from that, you know, these genetic mutations
that we know of that that like rip through families
like a forest fire. I think I think that's a
good option for parents to have. But I think there
(04:31):
are a lot of more difficult questions, right, Like you
mentioned polygenic traits, so a lot of the monogenic stuff
is more is easier. In some cases, you see a
genetic variant, you know it causes some disease, you can select,
you can take it out right people, you know, if
someone there may be moral questions about dispensing with the embryos,
(04:52):
but that's the case for IVF in general anyway. So
I think the I think the reason that this is
pretty controversial probably two reasons. One is that it will
be much you know, it will be wealthy people that
adopt it, right, So then you have this question of
are we like bifurcating the world into people who can
prevent diseases in their children and people who can't because
(05:14):
they have money. So that's one question, and that just
feels icky, right when it comes to health, like, no
nobody feels you don't feel as ichy about wealthy people
having nicer cars as you do about being able to
be healthy. But then the kind of third rail, I
think is when you start selecting for things that are
more traits than diseases, right, like intelligence or athleticism or
(05:34):
whatever it is. And in those cases, I think up
to now it hasn't been that feasible because those things,
unlike some diseases, most things are not caused by one gene.
Most things are caused by all sorts of parts of
your genes are the parts that code for specific proteins.
And now we know like maybe every single gene and
(05:55):
a bunch of other parts of your DNA that aren't
even genes that interact to create like you know, even
how tall you are, maybe every single gene that has
some influence in that, each one in a little way.
And it hasn't been very feasible since we have no
idea what most genes do to actually select for that stuff.
But there's now some work where you do this thing
called polygenic like gene scores. We have a huge database
(06:15):
a huge number of people, and you've sequenced their genomes
and you have their health information and you can kind
of score give them a score based on a large
number of genes that you may not even know what
those genes do. But this configuration looks like it might
change someone's cognitibility a little or their height a little bit,
or some other trade about them. And that's where you
get into these things that are not preventing someone from
(06:38):
dropping dead, but things that would just be nice to
have or bigger advantages for your child. And so I
think that that's like the third rail, right. So I
think the reason that it's so controversial is that people
see it as like the first domino to fall on
route to that which is something that is now you know,
even though I think if you selected for a lot
of those polygenic traits you'd only make a tiny difference.
(07:00):
But if you do that generation after generation after generation,
like that's how breeding works.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, No, for sure, that that is exactly how breeding works.
And you know, I think you've raised a few really
interesting points. One that we still like, we really don't
know how this shit works a lot of the time, right,
And sometimes you think that you might be selecting for
something really really good, but you are also like it
(07:25):
comes with a trade off, right, that you just do
not know about, right. Sometimes that is that's even true
of diseases, right, there are some things that make you
susceptible to one disease but are protective against other things,
and we don't actually know all of those genetic interactions,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I mean a classic example, right, is that some of
the genes that cause sickle cell trade and sickle cell
anemia are protective against malaria, which is why people of
like recent West African descent have those that condition a lot,
even if they now live in the United States, for example.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yep, Yeah, that was that was the one that I
was thinking. That is a very classic one that we
know but now we know, right, but we but we
didn't know before, So that I think that that's part
of it, right, that we a lot of this stuff
is just incredibly complicated. But I do think that like
once some is promising, okay, you know what, like I'll
make your kid smarter and more likely to be a
(08:15):
star athlete and more likely to be Mozart or whatever
it is, that there are ethical things on a few levels. One,
there's like the ethical the ethics of the promise right
of taking money for something that was something like schizophrenia. Right,
This was the example I used at the beginning, and
I said, this is actually a very bad example, because
(08:36):
schizophrenia is something that is determined by so many different factors.
We don't know really what causes it, and it's not
going to manifest for you know, eighteen years, nineteen years,
twenty years. It usually happens in the late teens, early twenties.
And so in the meantime, this company can be making
claims that we're screening for these things, not actually be
(08:58):
doing it successfully, and we have no way of knowing.
So there's like the ethics of promising something that you're
not really sure about. But then also if we can
like let's assume we can do that. I do think
that there are concerns both with the haves and have nots,
but also with the like I'm selecting now for blue
eyes and blonde hair, and I want someone who's a
(09:19):
little bit taller. And it's so funny to me, you know,
there are people who are now quoting Gatika the movie
as this wonderful thing, like, oh, yeah, we're making Gatica babies.
So I was like, that movie was not was not positive. Yeah,
this kind of technology that was a dystopia, like that
is something that we absolutely don't want.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
That's like Selman Kahn's book Brave New Words, which is
obviously referencing Brave New World, which I didn't really think
of as kind of a good connotation for children in
their schooling necessarily.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, that's that's not a book that I have very
positive associations with in terms of the kind of future
we want to be living in.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Totally, And I think, you know to your point, like
I don't want to compare this company in particular to
twenty three and me, but like twenty three in me,
I was since I was writing a book about genetics,
I signed up for a bunch of direct consumer genetic
testing companies in the early days before the FDA was
really paying attention to them, so you could get all
kinds of information, and like I remember, there'd be say
(10:14):
it would say, you know, am I allergic to gluten
or something like that, and it would show some of
my gene variations compared to the population. It would say, oh, well,
people with your genotype, are you know your your ODDS
ratio is like one point oh two or something. You know,
you're like slightly more So one would be if you
have the same risk of getting this thing as the
(10:34):
as a typical person, so you're slightly slightly increased risk.
And then a month later they'd find some other associated
gene variant it'd be like, well, now you're actually a
slightly decreased risk. And then there'd be like three more
found and they'd be like, you're at elevator risk. He did, right,
So this is this question of you don't know what
a lot of stuff is doing. And so it was
like depended when I checked in if I were at
increased or decreased risk. And again that was some pretty
(10:56):
unsophisticated stuff. My like motto for genetics is genetics more
complicated than we thought, you know, because people used to
think we'd have like one hundred thousand genes, and then
it turned out we only have like twenty twenty three thousand,
you know, and onions have way more DNA than we do.
So it's kind of disappointing, like we're not that complications.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Onions are smarter than we are.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's no, I mean, who would argue with that. That's
why so many people don't like them. They're just jealous.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I'm allergic to them. What does that say about my.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
You're allergic to onions?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, I'm allergic to raw onions, all raw onions, onions, shallots, scallions, chibes.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And you shouldn't say stuff like that in public. Your
kryptonite is now like out on the internet, right, I know,
I know.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So this is this is genetic. This is actually something
that you can look at in your genes. And my
body doesn't have the enzyme that can break them down.
So soon as they're cooked, I can eat them, but
in any raw form I'll become incredibly incredibly sick. So
this is potentially actually, you know, bringing it back to
our topic at hand, this is something that Orchid or
(11:55):
what or whatever company could potentially test for and then
I might not exist because they'd be like, oh my god,
onion allergy. No, we can't have this, might not.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I mean, I think we can all agree that we
would get rid of that embryo f and the onion allergy,
for goodness sake, changes the whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
If it that it does, it does?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, but yeah, I mean so I don't want to
compare them because I think some of the disease stuff,
I think is just a more powerful version of things
that people already doing. And and by the way, I mean,
I guess that's true to some degree for genetic selection.
Like I wrote in article years ago about height in
sports for ESPN, and I was like, it turned out
that in most almost every uh, like sperm donation clinic,
(12:34):
like I couldn't donate because I'm not tall enough. Right,
I was a Division one athlete and all this stuff.
You know, it did well in school.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Wait are you serious?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah absolutely. But so it's like when
push comes to show if people do do this stuff, right, yeah,
that's crazy. And so I guess the question is, you know,
if it becomes widespread though, that's yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, you know, it's it's interesting that you say one
push comes to show because people do already like if
you know, so, I don't have kids, so I and
I've never gone through IVY fertility treatments, et cetera. But
if I were to do that and I was looking
for a sperm donor, I could go through binders, you know,
(13:11):
of backgrounds of people and choose who I would want, right,
and it would say things like you know, height and
eye color and all of these things where you went
to school, you know, So I'd be like, I want
someone smart, I want someone from the IVY League.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Did you look at the I'm sure in your college
newspaper there were advertisements for egg donors like crazy, right, absolutely,
and it would say like and they would advertise and
like the Harvard Crimson for a reason, right.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, Oh no, I was hit up for egg donations
so many times.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But they didn't know thri allerg to onions as they
did not they did not.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Know maybe the two about No, they don't balance out,
do they. The onionology is much worse, I understand, damn.
But yeah, that that is absolutely true, and you could
have you could make a lot of money right by
being an egg donor like that sperm donors don't make
that much. Egg donors make a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I imagine why, but fair unfair pay gap, this pay.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Gap be addressed, yes, underpay up gender pay up for sure.
So yeah, so these types of things have been available
in some way, shape or form for a long time.
But I do think that you know, the if this
becomes the norm, then it becomes problematic in many respects.
And one one other issue that we haven't talked about
(14:30):
that people have raised is if this becomes the norm, right,
and then people who don't actually have fertility issues, who
don't need IVF end up doing this so that they
are not kind of the same way that people opt
sometimes to have c sections when they don't need them
because they don't they don't want to give vaginal birth right.
(14:54):
If people then make that choice just simply because they
want that selection, that is also kind of an interesting
ethical area and has repercussions for a lot of society
in the sense that so ORCD and we're not picking
on organ it just happens to be one that is
like in the news topical for the issue exactly exactly so,
(15:15):
but or get specifically charges twenty five hundred dollars per embryo.
Now you would be you need to make multiple embryos,
and it can become much more expensive if you want
other testing, et cetera, et cetera. So there is kind
of another There are more issues that keep piling up here,
(15:39):
and we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I don't think that it is particularly difficult to envision
a scenario where IVF becomes like basically the norm, because
you want to be able to do embryo selection, right.
I'm not saying that I think there'd ever be an instance,
well at least in the foreseeable future, that where everybody
would make that choice, because there are a lot of different,
(16:13):
obviously ethical considerations. But I don't think it's that hard
to see that, And I think you could end up
in a kind of collective trap where because some people
are doing it, you know, and if it turns into
real advantage, maybe there's pressure for insurance companies to then
cover it or or or you know, just for moral
reasons like it shouldn't be limited access. So I actually
(16:36):
I don't know which way we're going to go, but
I don't think it's like sci fi to imagine that
IVF would become like the standard mode of procreation.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, and people say, you know, oh, but it's still
a personal choice. Well, what you said about pressure, kind
of pure pressure to do it, I think is actually huge.
So when I just graduated from college, moved to New York,
wanted to be a writer. It's really hard to make
a living as a writer. You don't make a lot
of money. So I tutored. I did a lot of
private tutoring for very wealthy families, and you know, people
(17:07):
that becomes something that like, if you don't do right,
you are disadvantaging your child and you're a bad parent.
At that point, everyone expects that, like, oh, well, you'll
get tutoring in all of these you'll get USA TEA prep,
you'll get this, you'll get that. And if you're one
of the people who don't get it, then you're like, oh,
my parents don't care enough right that they're not giving
me that extra step. Now, by the way, I never
(17:27):
got any sort of tutoring when I was a kid.
I didn't get SAT prep or anything like that. But
it was I was shocked at the fact that some
of the kids really did need it and others like
it was just something that I was being paid basically
to act as a tutor, and to kind of be
a tutor one technically, I was like, this is a
(17:48):
smart kid who could do this by themselves, but no,
because this is something you're required to do. And so
I think that people might feel pressure to select even
if we don't know if it works right, just on
the off chance that it might work, and that this
sort of stuff might be testable and that you might
be giving your kids minute advantages. Now, one of the
(18:10):
themes of risky business is that minute advantages matter, right,
small percentages matter. As a poker player, you know that
if you get an extra one percent edge, that's huge.
So even if we know that things like intelligence, you know,
things like height, that they're determined by so many different
variables that nothing is well with few exceptions. Nothing is
all genetics like one gene. And even if you can
(18:34):
eke out an extra percentage point, right, an extra tiny
bit for your kid, that could be huge. And are
you negligent if you don't make that choice? If you say,
you know what, I just want to have sex to
see what happens.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So quaint, yes, I think, and I think you know,
like parental neuroses is like a bottomless well of spending, right,
so there's a lot of business opportunities there. But I
do think there is now and I wouldn't have said
this not that long ago, that there's real reason to
believe that some of these traits could be select could
be accurately select for in a small way. Again, that
(19:12):
doesn't say anything about are you accidentally then getting something
you don't want? Right, There's a lot of unknowns. But
I think for the first time some of these other
non disease traits, we could load the dice a little
a little bit, a little bit, and then over multiple
generations that could become more and more and more. But again,
I think those are separate from the issue of making
(19:32):
the screening for disease better, much earlier, and more extensives.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, no, I think that just to put this out there,
I think that the screening for disease is great, you know,
I think that that is. I think that's a very
good thing.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I think that, you know, being I don't know that
everyone would agree with that, right because maybe you're still
like selecting for.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Oh for sure, I think that's less controversial. I think
I think that a lot of people won't agree with that, yeah,
because they don't think you should be able to select
for anything. But you know, I'm an Ashkanazi Jew. Ashkinazi
Jews have predilections you know, for a lot of different
genetic condition and you know, if we can reduce tays acts, right,
if we can reduce Huntington's, if we can reduce the
(20:16):
risk of some of these really devastating conditions, yeah, that
would be amazing, right, I think, I think personally, But
you know, related to this, we also do have emerging
technologies Crisper, you know, that can edit right, so that
(20:37):
it's slightly different, right, you're not choosing embryos. But we
have technology that is becoming better and better where we
can actually go into the genome and say, okay, snip, snip,
let's let's try to let's try to fix this, and
let's try to not literally, by the way, people, you
don't actually go in with scissors.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's not that different though. That's a that's a pretty
good analogy.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
But so we have technologies like that that don't require IBF.
You know, it's it's interesting, like it's very very complicated
because there are certain things about this that I think
are amazing. There are certain things that really give me pause,
and then there are things I actually am kind of
scared of the unknowns. And I know that, yes, we
(21:21):
shouldn't be afraid of a technology because we don't know
the side effect. But you know, there are certain things
like maybe when you are trying to kind of control
for the schizophrenia cluster genes, you're also getting rid of
artistic talent. Just because I say that as like a
cliche thing that often goes together, but like maybe we're
(21:43):
actually getting rid of some good things and some natural
variation mutations that we have no idea what they do,
and they might have existed in this embryo and we
just will never know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
That's an interesting point on two counts. One. I mean,
we know there are things like to give a sort
of extreme example, years ago, this was with earlier forms
of gene therapy, but there were some tests on boys
with what I think it's called X linked combined immuno
deficiency syndrome. People commonly know it as bubble boy syndrome
(22:16):
because the boy has so it's linked to an X chromosome,
and because boys only have one, there's not another copy
to correct it. So some X link diseases are in
boys and so bubble boy syndrome, meaning they basically have
no immune system, so they can't go anywhere. They have
to like live in a bubble. And the gene therapy
(22:37):
this was a more rudimentary form. It wasn't crisper like
gene editing, but using a gene created in the lab
and it gets like shuttled into the cells with a
deactivated virus. Basically it cured some of them, which is incredible, right,
but then like a number of them got leukemia. So
there was like this incredible cure but also this incredibly
devastating effect, and so you don't know, right, some of
(23:00):
the stuff that's going on. And to your point about
that example you mentioned, like schizophrenia and artistic talent, I
think there have been some studies showing that you don't
want mental illness to be creative, right, because that incapacitates
you in all these ways, But that that tends to
be more in the family of people who are extremely creative.
(23:21):
And it's like, if there's all these genes that have
a small effect, some people will have too many of
them and they'll have mental illness. And some people have
a bunch of them that make you kind of an
unusual thinker, but not so many that you're incapacitated. I
remember some years ago after I wrote about genetics, a
like a psychiatrist who served Harvard students coming to me
and saying, like, they definitely are overrepresented, and all these
(23:42):
conditions that are like borderline mental illness. You know, so
like you and your peers, you know, it's not just
your n allergies, like you're weird in other ways that
might also be useful.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
This also happens obviously with like new drugs, like for instance,
you were saying the bubble boy, they end up dying
of leukemia. We know that there were some drugs that
showed an amazing promise right and then ended up like
devastating your liver and kidneys and you die or something
like that, where like oops, we had no idea, or
(24:14):
you know, causes horrific birth defects or whatever it is.
Those types of horrible moments, unfortunately, are all too common
in medical history. But I think the difference there is
you were trying to cure a person who was incredibly sick,
and here you have someone who's healthy and potentially in
(24:35):
the future someone who is perfectly fertile, doesn't need IVF,
doesn't need any of this, and is choosing to do
something which might then introduce these sorts of yeah, downstream effects.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
That's a whole you know, like a saying among doctors.
It's like, it's very hard to make an asymptomatic patient better.
You know, there are cases where that's true, where you
catch stuff ahead of time, but as a general rule,
if someone doesn't need medical intervention, it's usually better to
avoid medical intervention. So I think you're hitting on an
important point. I mean, I wonder what do you think,
(25:09):
Let's say, because we've talked about how there may be
sort of off target effects that you don't want when
you try some of this stuff, Let's say we had
we get it all figured out. So I mean, I
don't think we're ever going to get it all figured out,
because this is this complex interplay between all these environmental
stimulus and genetics. So there's no like to the extent
that no two lives are the same. We're not going
to have it all figured out. But theoretically if we did,
(25:32):
and then it's just a matter of selecting for stuff
you want the way that you would with like a
dog breed what then Like then it's like just kind
of how do we want society to be a question? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And that's that's that is quite dystopian if we also
consider that it might be if we pair that with
what you said at the beginning, right, the divide between
the haves and have nots, where some people can afford
this state of the art technology and others can't, and
so we have a very specific type of person selecting
for what they want. And yeah, to me, like that
(26:03):
is dystopian, and that's kind of that's kind of frightening
because we know from psychology that people will, you know,
select people who are like them quite often, right, we
like people who look like us, and it becomes eugenics
is a bad word for a reason, but it becomes
(26:23):
very eugenics, like where you are saying, you know, these
traits are inherently superior. But even I'm actually curious from
your standpoint of someone who was a Division one athlete
who knows a lot about sports, Like even with you know,
sports genes and things that we know are really cool mutations,
(26:45):
they're sometimes like you will find an athlete who doesn't
look like other athletes who ends up being the best
or who ends up discovering kind of a new way
of doing something that absolutely changes a sport or or
a way of a way of competing. And are we also,
like when we select for kind of this one ideal
(27:08):
that whoever has in their mind, are we potentially homogenizing
society to the point where that's going Those types of
breakthroughs are actually going to become quite rare if they
happen at all.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I mean variation is necessary for both natural selection
to happen, but I think also artificial selection or whatever
you want to call it. And I mean maybe artificial
selection is not the right word, but for new stuff,
like new ideas and all those things. So I think
that's way way down the road because there's a ton
of variation. But if we really start going down this path,
(27:43):
then I think those are things to think about way
ahead of time. And you can imagine, you know, I
think it's already like troubling enough some of the ideals
of perfection that you have on Instagram or whatever. And
so if that's then being applied to like all the genomes,
I think you have started asking questions of like maybe
there are things where we could be better at certain
(28:06):
things we know about, but how do we want life
to be? You know, I think that's an important question
with technology that should be asked, Like I'm I'm I
like innovation. I think invention technology is like really cool.
You know. I started playing with AI immediately as soon
as I could. At the same time, I don't think,
you know, we should always just forge a head on
(28:26):
everything without asking like, how do we want life to be?
An unfold? Right?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, I think that's really important, And I will just
add one less thing to that, which is that we're
also ignoring a potentially huge mental health crisis if this
ends up happening. You know, how do we want life
to be? Well, what happens if you know, you like
you're a designer baby that your parents selected these certain
(28:53):
things for and you feel like you would have liked
to be something else, You feel like things were chosen
for you. I mean, I think that, you know, from
a psychology standpoint, there might be a lot of issues
with that, and we might have kind of a crisis
in the generations of children who are subjected to this. So, yeah,
a lot of things to think about. This is a
(29:14):
really really complicated thing. You know, it's a really morally, ethically, medically,
just every single level complicated topic, and I think something
that people should really give a lot of thought to
for the long term, because you know, as with much
so much technology, just because we can doesn't mean we
should know and.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Like people, I think it's been pretty good. The discussion
about AI has been vibrant, and the potential positives and
the potential negatives, the ethical concerns, et cetera, what we
want the future to look like. Again, I think genetic
technology in the long term has a potentially large, much
larger impact than AI does on fundamental aspects of our life.
And those conversations have been kind of one note. You know,
(29:53):
it's every once in a while something like orchid pops
up and there's a discussion, But I don't think it's
been diverse and constant to the extent that it has
with AI, even though I think it's at least equally
as important.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, I think that this is very important note of
caution and also call to action, that these conversations are
important and need to be had. Let's take a quick
break and then we'll talk about a pet psychtopic for
me and David nominative determinism.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
A much more deterministic aspect of your life than genetics.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
David, for a number of years you and I have
been exchanging text messages about names that we come up with,
that we see in the news, and that make us
both giggle because they are examples of nominative determinism, which
is a psychology concept which means that your name doesn't
(31:02):
just matter, but is in some ways deterministic. It determines
your career path or over jeans, move over jeans. It's
not the genes that matter, it's the name that matters.
And you know, the most simplistic example is something like
someone with the last name Baker is going to go
(31:22):
on to become a Baker. And this would be, you know,
a hilarious joke if it didn't happen so incredibly often.
And some people take it a little bit further, like
they'll say, oh, well, it's just the first letter that matters.
So like, if your name is lindsay, you are more
likely to become a lawyer. I'm like, yeah, no, I
don't think so. But so there are people who take
(31:45):
it to an extreme, but basically the idea is your
name matters more than you think.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yes, and so people have funny names that associate with
their jobs, and I think the idea well, before we
get to the idea of if there's any like real
psychology behind this, I have a quiz for you, if
you're willing to take it. All right, I went back
through some old of my favorites. I don't think I've
told you these ones. You may not because you're an enthusiast,
a collector, a connoisseer, a collector of names as I am. I.
(32:11):
So I'm gonna give you the name, and you're gonna
tell me their job. Okay, Okay, okay. Burt Beverage.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
He works in the beverage industry.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Created Tito's vodka. Oh god, yeah, big okay, Tito's.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Tito's creator's last name is Beverage.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Burt Beverage, I did not know. I tell you. Okay,
I've got some more for you. Okay, Keith Weed. This
one has a bonus.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Keith Weed does Keith Weed work in the pot business.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Head of the Royal Horticultural Society. Mother's maiden name Hedges.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Oh no, double layer, double So I went the wrong
kind of weed.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
But this one, you know you were in the in
the I was, yeah, Joshua, but.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is he is he? Is he a fitness trainer?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I love that you guessed that gastro enterologist? But finished
sue you lawyer, Yes, correct, probably Lieutenant Les McBurney. We
may have done this.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yes, Les McBurnie is a firefighter.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
That one you and I? Okay, okay, last one. This
one kind of up your alley. Walter Russell Brain otherwise
known as the Right Honorable Lord Brain. Is he a psychologist,
the world famous neurologist. Close enough score for that one.
Those are some good ones.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Those are some good ones. One of my favorites that
I actually, I mean, I think you said that it
was a hoax and I had to look up the
whole biography to make sure it wasn't. Nick Burns Cox
he is a urologist, and he invented something that is
(33:58):
called the pee in pot.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
That is, that's like a little too on point right.
We had a doctor doctor recently, We did have.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
A doctor doctor, and I thought that that was very funny.
But the question is, so, now that we've entertained you
with some of our famous, famously funny names, the question
is is there actually anything to this? And so the
science on it is all over the place, Like, this
is a hard thing to study because even though there
(34:31):
are these hilarious examples, like there are billions of people
in the.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
World, right, what's the chances there wouldn't be a doctor doctor?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
And what's the chance that there wouldn't be a urologist
whose last name was burns Cox?
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That I think the chances are very high that that
wouldn't happen. That's a I'm glad we live in this
one of the multiverse where we got doctor burns Cox.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
But yeah, and we also have base rate stuff, so
like if your last name is Baker, like and you're
happened to be in the baking industry, like, come on,
how many bakers are there? Like? So there are lots
of confounding factors, and it's not like people have looked
at lists of every single profession, every and name in
the world and tried to do any sort of comprehensive studies.
(35:14):
So all of the data I could find, some find
evidence of it, some don't. I think it's a wash, right, Like,
I don't think that there's hugely strong evidence for it.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
But on the other hand, it being that these people
are actually more likely to go into professions.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yea, yea, exactly exactly. But on the other hand, there
are some reasons to believe that this would be a thing. So,
for instance, if your last name is Baker, like, chances
are you are descended from a family of bakers, because
you know, there is and this is true not just
in English, so in the Russian language, this is true
(35:50):
of last names. And I know in a lot of
different cultures this is true. Names were given to families
based on the family's professionals directs exactly. So Carpenter, you know,
was a family of carpenters. And it's really interesting because
we were just you know, we're talking about genetics, and
(36:11):
so if you are in a family that wasn't a
certain kind of craft, so to speak, then you might
have a genetic predisposition for it, a talent for it,
et cetera, et cetera. So then exactly it's reverse causality
that you were named this. You still have a family
name because it's something that your family has been good
(36:32):
at for multiple generations.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
And what do you think about I don't know, you know,
I've never really done a deep dive in this literature
because I just desperately want it to be true, and.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, you know that's that's fair. I don't think you should.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But what do you think about the idea? I mean,
I seem to recall when I read a little bit
about it, that there was the theory was that people
are like one, just more aware of jobs that might
be related to their name or people tell them like,
oh you should be you know sue you oh you
should be a lawyer, or they're like more positively disposed
to those things because kind of people like things with
(37:07):
their names on them, right, Like that's why like puts
people's names on a body, Like I see my name,
I like it. And then maybe they have like a
little more positive association with some of those professions if
it feels like related to their name, like they find
it fun just like we do.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Oh, I think there's actually evidence for all of these things,
because that does happen all the time, right Like people
do say, oh you should do X or Y if
you have a funny name, if you have a memorable name.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yeah. So so, like as crazy as it sounds, there's
some actually like not very insane theories for like why
like maybe there's some realiti it's just like more salient
to you.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And as we've talked about with genetics, you know, what
kinds of traits are you more likely to select for?
You do tend to gravitate two things that are familiar, right,
and that are comfortable, that remind you of you, of
you know, your parents, of people you know. And these
sorts of biases manifest themselves incredibly early on right. We're
(38:01):
talking infants right that are ten months old already shows
some of these preferences for faces that are same skin
color as their parents. It's not something that happens at birth,
but it does actually start manifesting incredibly early, just because
you know it is familiar, right, it is what you know.
And so if you do have a name that is Coxburns,
(38:23):
then then maybe you know, you end up subconsciously consciously
on some level thinking more about those types of things.
Maybe if your last name is Judge, You're like, haha,
wouldn't it be funny if my name was Judge Judge,
or you know, if I'm doctor doctor or something like that.
(38:43):
So you know, on the one hand, this is just
hilarious and it seems like an artifact, and we collect
these funny names. On the other hand, there are both
psychological and historical reasons why this effect might actually be
an effect. And obviously it's weak, right, And like with anything,
(39:05):
things are multiply determined, and it's not like, you know,
you end up doing something just because of this one thing,
and you might have a last name that's incredibly salient
and yet do nothing.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah with that.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
My last name in Russian, by the way, is related
to horses, and I'm allergic to horses, so you know, definitely.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Definitely not going to be doing anything else with you
the horse line I was singing of Russian, there was
a Russian, a great Russian hurdler named Maria step on Nova,
which is sound sounds like step on over, you know,
like a hurdle, But I don't know what it means
in Russian, so that probably wouldn't be it means of
Stephen of Stephen. Okay, Yeah, I wonder if the fact
carries if you're sort of named for someone, too, right,
(39:55):
because then you'd have those associations like name for some
prominent person for sure.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
For sure. And I'm thinking now back to kind of
early colonial days, right, think of the names, like, think
of your early US history where people were named virtues
or things that they were that you wanted them to exhibit,
you know, chastity, virtue, grace, like all of these absolutely yeah,
(40:21):
crazy names. Some of them are just absolutely temperance, these
names that just sound completely insane to us now, But
I think that was one of the reasons they thought
that maybe if that's your name and you're constantly temperance,
don't are you sure you want another drink? Temperance.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I feel like that could go either way. Like my
parents name me Temperance, So I'm going off the rails
like forget them.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, And as I kind of, as I casually mentioned
at the beginning, you know, base rates are also important here,
right if we if we're looking at this, you need
to look at it from a statistically savvy as opposed
to kind of this name just stands out more, right,
So I gravitate toward it, and I pick and choose
the ones that I say, see nominative determinism. Yeah, So
(41:06):
I think that that's that that's important, And that's an
analysis that's really hard to do because where are you
going to get those data sets?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah? Right, you can't really randomize people to life, you know,
and see give them different names and see how things turn.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Out, right, That would be funny.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, So basically the bottom line is I'm just going
to continue to believe that it's completely deterministic and text
you every hilarious name that I see in the news, and.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
I will laugh every time, and I will text you
back other hilarious names. So yeah, I think for now
we can just keep on thinking this is funny for
anyone listening and wanting tips on whether what they name
their kid matters, Yes, it does, but don't please don't
name your kid temperance. That will probably backfire. Yeah, that's
probably That's probably not not what we're going for.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Name the me YouTuber instead.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yes, exactly, exactly. Influencer, influencer, TikTok star. I'm actually officially
changing my name to TikTok star.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
I feel like I feel like there's a strong chance
this has already happened. Yeah, Like when I was I
have a son, and when we were naming, I like
downloaded a bunch of data from the Social Security Administration
on naming and it was I think it was like
they gave you every name that was used at least
I don't know, three times or five times whatever, it
(42:24):
was you didn't They didn't include in the data names
that were only used once, and so these the names
that were used the least but three or five times
were like literally someone hitting their head on a keyboard,
and those were used like three to five times in
a given year. So there's for sure somebody has been
named TikTok.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Well, apparently there is a baby that was born this
year who was named after chat GPT. So it's a
baby girl and her name is chat Yept. It's a
Colombian baby.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So seriously, we are yes. Is this like angling for
an endorsement or just in technological enthusiasm or like what
what's find what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
I'm not sure, but on August fifteenth, chat Ept Bastidas
Geta was registered at the local National Registry.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
How they used GPT five though, I don't really like
it that much. Maybe they should rename the baby cloud
or something or anthropic.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, you know, well for the company, you know, you
can perplexity, perplexity Gemini. Yeah yeah, but what if Gemini
isn't a Gemini. I mean that's going to be incredibly.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
There's a lot of considerations.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
This is serious, this is a serious business. So listeners
please consider choose wisely before choosing a name. But yeah,
this is this is you know, something that I will
continue looking at the literature and see if any interesting
studies come out, because I do. I can't help but
feel that there might be something to this, right, because
there are so many reasons why, and because there are
(43:54):
some data sets that show that, yes, there there is
kind of a some sort of an effect.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And it's interesting. You're something kind of ridiculous. It's probably
not true in psychology in this case. Behind this ridiculous thing,
there are actually some pretty sort of almost common sense
like ah, someone's just more aware of this profession, or
people say you should do this, you should look at that, right, Yeah, yep,
which is not that hard to understand.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
So there you have at people, whether it's genetics or names.
Today's episode is all about things that determine your future
and the future of the world. Thanks so much for
being such an amazing co host, David. I hope you
will come back both as a guest and as a
(44:37):
guest co host when Nate inevitably ends up in Norway
and can't host the show.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And I would love to.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm.
And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber,
we have some bonus content for you that's coming up
right after the credits. And if you're not subscribing yet,
I mean, what's up with that? Please consider signing up
next ninety nine a month you get access to all
that premium content and add free listening across Pushkin's entire
(45:15):
network of shows. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria
Kannakova and by my fabulous co host Nate Silver. The
show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Sonia Gerwit. Sally helm is our editor, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Buguer. If
(45:38):
you like the show, please rate and review us so
other people can find us too. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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