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Have you seen Gattaca? I love that movie. And I actually rewatched it when I was reporting this story. Amanda Garrett is the West Coast editor at Fortune. And she recently wrote an article about how Silicon Valley is investing in fertility technology to create the, quote, perfect baby. This is a concept that's been around in science fiction for decades. And a good example of that is in a movie from almost 30 years ago called Gattaca. I mean, in so many conversations with people who are outside this industry, a lot of them, you know, would sort of refer to Gattaca like a futuristic kind of we're going to change your genes and make you. superhuman, amazing looking, just like Jude Law or Uma Thurman. If you haven't seen Gattaca, I don't know, pause the podcast and go watch it. But also, it came out in 1997. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Honestly, I kind of feel like we may be at a stage where Gattaca is required reading or required watching just for understanding what's happening right now. Yeah. If you need to catch up without giving you too many spoilers here, Gattaca is a science fiction film that's set in a dystopian future in which there are two tiers of people. At the top, you have valid people. These are people who've been genetically selected to be the healthiest and most attractive possible. And at the bottom, people who were conceived naturally. And these people are called, literally, invalids. So, valids get access to certain high-class jobs, and invalids don't. The story follows Vincent Freeman, who is an invalid, played by Ethan Hawke, who kind of borrows the identity of a valid man played by Jude Law to try to achieve his dream of going to space. And that's the way it was. Each day I would dispose of as much loose skin, fingernails, and hair as possible to limit how much of my invalid self I would leave in the valid world. He exfoliates daily in a way that, like, he's a newborn baby every day scraping off his cell so that he doesn't leave a cell behind because there are all these sort of genetic identifiers everywhere you go. If you need to get into work, we'll just like bioscan you to like get in. And then, you know, even urine, he's got like Jude Law's urine that he's leaving behind because he can't even leave behind his own urine. At the same time, Eugene prepared samples of his own superior body matter so that I might pass for him. Customized urine pouches for the frequent substance tests, fingertip blood sachets for security checks, and vials filled with other traces. The idea is that he is trying as a normal person to be just as good as the people who are these sort of superhuman who started out as designer babies. And according to Amanda's reporting, there is a lot of money going toward making that sci-fi future of designer babies get here faster than you might have thought. People inside this industry, this fertility tech kind of startup space, they're very optimistic and very excited about what's possible. from kaleidoscope and iheart podcast i'm afraid this is kill switch i'm dexter thomas I'm sorry. Where are we right now with all this technology? This is sort of a burgeoning $25 billion industry, this fertility tech startup industry. 2024 was sort of one of the biggest years for investment. There was like a $2 billion jump over the year before. 2025, I think, you know, we don't have numbers yet, but I think we'll see that definitely be exceeded just based on some of the major tech money that is backing up a lot of these startups. Silicon Valley is heavily investing in the fertility tech industry. There's big names like Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and 23andMe co-founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki. If you live in New York, you might have seen the ads on the subway that read Have Your Best Baby, telling you to go to www.pickyourbaby.com to, I guess, have your best baby. Those ads are from Nucleus Genomics. And there's other companies like Orchid Health and Herocyte. And these companies are offering what's called polygenic screening. Traditional IVF testing looks at chromosomes and single gene diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs. And these new breed of companies are sort of claiming that they can predict more complex traits through the polygenic screening. So they'll take some cells and then they use AI to amplify it. And then you have a genome that you can study. And so they'll look at that genome and they can use it to predict complex traits like childhood cancers, autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, height, nose shape, hair texture, jawline. Nose shape. Nose shape. Face shape. And then on the margins, you have things that people are interested in that kind of science doesn't necessarily back up, like IQ, musical ability. Genetic testing of embryos itself isn't a new thing. Screening has been part of the IVF process since the 90s. But those tests could only show you so much. You could figure out the sex of the embryo or traits for certain genetic disorders. But now the introduction of AI is really pushing forward what's possible with polygenic screening. So human genome consists of 3 billion base pairs. You get one set from each parent. So there's a total of 6 billion base pairs in each cell. So that's a lot of data, right? So you're using AI to, when you get your 5 or 6 cells from your embryo, you're using AI to amplify that and see what it would look like in a human. and then you're checking against data to see what the potential person might be ultimately. And the backers in this space are a lot of, it's a lot of tech money. It's a lot of people who are interested in AI. AI is great at detecting patterns and this sort of fits the bill. The founders of these polygenic screening companies are betting on their technology to be able to accurately screen for things like height or complicated health disorders or even personality. The founders themselves, they're banking embryos and they're planning to screen for these traits in their future kid. Like the founder of Herosite, his name is Michael Christensen. He's 6'6". You know, and he's planning to screen his own embryos when he's ready for kids to make them a little bit shorter because he's like 6'6". It's kind of annoying. It's hard to travel. That's a little bit too tall. That is fascinating. That was the first thing that hit me of the opening line of your article is that he's 6'6". He wishes that he was shorter. He wants his kid to be shorter because it's inconvenient. Yeah. Another, one of the geneticists there, Tobias Wolfram, he hit the genetic lottery in terms of his health, but he's like, I have depression in my history and it's something that I don't want to pass on. He and his partner don't want to pass it on in their future children. So it's something that they're planning to screen for. So these are people who are really highly information-seeking. They want to be as controlled as possible. And so they're just extremely focused on optimizing the whole entire birth experience the same way they would optimize everything about their lives. And so just to clarify here, so basically you can essentially choose the embryo that has the traits that you want. And if it has traits that you're worried about or do not want, you can not use those for IVF. Exactly. Like if you you're screening your embryos and you see that your potential child could have a high likelihood of having a childhood cancer. The idea is that you wouldn't want to choose that embryo. You would want to choose a different embryo. OK, I know this is a lot already, but let's pause for a second. So right now we're talking about the ability to screen for cancer. So just imagine you're already going through IVF and you have the option, the opportunity to choose an embryo to avoid a high risk of a potentially fatal disease. Would you take that opportunity? So hold on to that answer in your mind, whatever it is right now. And let go a little further I spoke with a couple from the Bay Area Roshan George and Julie Kang Roshan firm he has a consulting firm called Technology Brother like Techbro They're highly information-seeking people. They just wanted to know everything they could possibly know about their embryos. And so they discovered, going through IVF testing, they shared a genetic mutation, which is basically like a typo in your DNA where there's a G, there should be an A, and on its own, there's no manifestation. But a couple together, the likelihood of them having a child that becomes profoundly deaf is a real thing. So they wound up screening their embryos using the polygenic screening at Orchid Health. And then it came down to like 90 seconds in the hospital. The audio tech comes in, sticks things in the baby's ears, and then they're like, hearing's normal. What's interesting too about Roshan George is he talks a lot about his experience doing this. And he talked with a father whose son has the condition that they were worried about their daughter having. And this other father said he wished he would have known about the genetic screening technology before his son was born. But that said, he also couldn't imagine substituting out his actual son with a son who could hear. And so for Roshan, his reflection about this was that no one's ever thinking you're substituting out the actual child who's there, but we're all trying to ensure that you have a child who is as healthy as possible. And you want your child to have the full range of human experiences without being limited. One of the sources I spoke with for the story is a Stanford expert named Barry and he's an advisor to Orchid Health and he's made huge strides in terms of IVF advancements. And his feeling was, there's nothing that you wouldn't do for your kid. Like, don't tell me that you wouldn't want to do this because you wouldn't want to meddle with how things are supposed to be. You know, his feeling was, if the science can show you how to have a better outcome for your child, most people are going to choose in their heart of hearts to go that route. And so people think about it really in those terms, despite sort of the cautionary Gattaca-like slippery slope that exists where you get into some of those issues like IQ or how athletic is your child going to be, etc., etc. But okay, we got to back up. This is all assuming that this stuff actually works. So really, how accurate is polygenic screening? where's the line between real science and science fiction? Also, how much does it cost? We'll get into both of those questions after the break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How common is embryo screening? Is this just a Silicon Valley thing, especially this more advanced stuff that we're talking about? The more advanced that you're paying for out of your pocket, and the price ranges for this. From Roche and George and Julie King, they spent about $12,500. That's on the low end, but it goes all the way up to $50,000. 50K. Right. So this is obviously going to be more affluent, wealthy parents who are looking into this. It's not covered by insurance. So this is sort of a small pocket, but it does continue to grow and grow and grow. But I wouldn't say, you know, there are not a thousand babies out there in Silicon Valley that have gone through polygenic screening at these startups. We're probably in hundreds. So, okay, these polygenic screening companies are promising that you can screen for a lot of different things. Nucleus Genomics, that's the company with those have your best baby ads. They have a long list of over 2000 diseases, traits, and other factors that they can test for. But how reliable and how accurate is this stuff? The experts who I spoke with basically said there is a lot of science backing up certain traits, like physical traits, sex, do you want a boy, do you want a girl, the single cell gene disorders that we talked about, Tay-Sachs, sickle cell, trisomy 21, which is the chromosomal disorder that leads to Down syndrome. All of these things will be there in your genome, but it's these things on the margin that people tend to be most excited and interested in and just intrigued by, which would be like height, IQ, musical ability. Will you be a good pitcher? Are you going to be Clayton Kershaw? The critics in this space really are very skeptical about how effective the polygenic screening is for these other things. One of the experts I spoke with from Illumina, and we do a lot with testing themselves and looking at genomes, they were saying that one of the reasons that we're not as close as we could be is that there just aren't enough people who have had their genome mapped. We're about at 1 million. We need to be at a billion. And then we need to go beyond that in order to have a really good set of data in order to be able to make these outcomes more meaningful and more accurate. And I did speak with this great sort of pioneer in this field. His name is Hank Greeley, and he's at Stanford. And he knows a lot of the players in the space because they were his students. So he was saying, this stuff is awesome, clickbait, dystopian fiction. But he was like, there's so much hype, like separating the actual science, what's possible now versus the hype. We're decades away from that. But this is also like the tech money, this being sort of a Bay Area kind of wealthy family conversation starter. Hype is part of it. Hype is sort of part of what makes Silicon Valley go round, right? But hype with babies is also a little bit like, this is different, right? We're talking about human beings and we don't want to think of them as products or projects. Regardless of what the science says now, these companies are promising these results for their clients, even if they do say that they have some internal guardrails for what they will and will not do. So Heresy, for instance, talks about IQ, height, BMI, etc. They feel confident that they can screen for this potential. Nothing is guaranteed. You know, there's no such thing as a designer baby is what they told me. And that they don't make designer babies. There are certain things they will not do, for instance. They won't allow you to choose a child that's a psychopath. They won't allow you to choose your child's skin color, for instance. There are just certain things that they wouldn't want to do. But they are really confident that we're very close to being able to do those things. And they're really optimistic about their abilities to help you screen for the potential there. So there are critics who would say that these new tech fertility companies are getting into what you could call techno eugenics. And you can also imagine that there might be a slippery slope that would lead to something like the valids and invalids of Gattaca. And yet there are companies and investors who are taking this stuff even further to gene editing and embryos. So gene editing involves editing the embryo before it's implanted. It is extremely controversial. And I want to say controversial in all caps Editing embryonic genes has been a taboo since precise gene editing became possible with something called CRISPR This has been used on adults and even children to treat genetic diseases, including a baby who was successfully treated with CRISPR therapy just last May. But editing the genes of an embryo is way more controversial and it's outright banned in most countries. But it has been done. In 2018, a Chinese researcher named He Jingkui reported that he had genetically altered twin girls to be resistant to HIV. Two beautiful little Chinese girls named Lulu and Nana came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago. This is He Jin Kuei in his video announcing the birth of those twin girls. When Mark saw her daughter for the first time, he said that he never thought he could be a father. now has found a reason to live, a reason to work, a purpose. You see, Mark has HIV. Gene surgery is and should remain a technology for healing, enhancing IQ or selecting hair or eye color that should be banned. I understand my work will be controversial, but I believe family need this technology, and I'm willing to take the criticism for them. He Jin Kuei wasn't just criticized. He was sentenced to three years in prison for illegally practicing embryonic gene editing, which you would think would scare people off from gene editing technology. But not everyone. Some people are investing in it. The Wall Street Journal reported late last year about investments from Sam Altman's husband and also from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and to a company called Preventive that wants to experiment with gene editing. They're just going to do it in places outside the U.S. like United Arab Emirates, where this stuff is allowed. I did speak with a woman named Kathy T, who's also a former Stanford, former Thiel fellow. She started a firm called Manhattan Genomics, and she is planning to test on non-human primates this year. She said there's a lot of support in the background for her because people do feel like, why not explore this area if we can? Why leave this untouched if it's something that we could potentially get right? One of the points that she made that I thought was really compelling was that older women struggle to get a lot of eggs in order to make embryos. And then sometimes they don't make enough eggs. And so you have to go back and stimulate your follicles to get more eggs. So that's like an arduous process. You're injecting yourself with hormones every day. It's painful. You can't turn and bend if you are injecting yourself with hormones. These are things that women know, but like people don't necessarily talk about them because women are just like, I'm going about my daily life, even though I am not able to bend over. I'm just going to get through this because I want to have a baby. So, you know, her point is sort of women are having children later in life. They just are like, that's what all of the data shows us. And it's more difficult. And gene editing potentially makes that easier, particularly for this group of women who are having children later in life, and that it gives you more of a shot at having your own biological child. Gene editing right now is not legal. You can't do that now. Not in the US. But you've got companies who are based in the US who are putting money into this. Are they proposing to change the laws to get around this somehow? I think they're hoping for, you know, with this administration, there being sort of less restriction around innovation and medical testing and those kinds of things. So I think that that's the hope. really that the laws will change to allow for whatever it is they want to do technologically with designer babies. Right. And that there'll be more research, more advancements, that there'll be more in the space. There's a regulatory vacuum right now. One of the lawyers who I spoke with said the law always struggles to keep up with technology. So there's a lot of advancement and experimentation that happens when there's a regulatory vacuum, when things aren't like banned outright. So I think that with the gene editing piece, there's a lot of optimism and hope there. But because it's so controversial, people don't really want to touch it. It's like a third rail almost in this space that it's just people are less conversant in it. They're more afraid of what will happen. And it does sound scary. We don't know what it means, you know, generations to come if you edit your genes for your baby. So if scientists don't think we're there yet to predict complex traits from genetic testing, then editing genes to get those traits seems even further away. But some very rich people are betting that those scientists and those lawyers are wrong. And if those bets pay off, they have a very specific vision of what the future could look like. That's after the break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A few years back, a South African lawyer wrote a brief article in an academic journal where she was partially talking about the legal and moral implications of gene editing. But she also makes a comparison between the film Gattaca to the real life era of South African apartheid that she experienced. And it makes sense because the plot of Gattaca centers on a kind of genetic apartheid, the divide between the valids and the invalids. And we, the viewers, were supposed to identify with the invalid character who's played by Ethan Hawke, because in this society, we would also be invalid. In the film, this is a future that we do not want. And yet, one of the investors in this industry, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, tweeted the other day, quote, the IVF clinic of the future will combine a handful of technologies, parentheses, the Gattaca stack. He goes on to describe this Gattaca stack as including technology that would allow for embryo editing, including for what he calls enhancement and also allow for creating artificial wounds. He also says that, quote, it would start to accelerate evolution. It seems like a meme at this point, but it's like some people watch these techno dystopian movies and say, that would be dope. We should do that. You know, it'd be really cool. We should have Skynet. Yeah. And have it go live. Yeah. You're supposed to watch Terminator and say, that would suck. I don't want that. You're supposed to watch Gattaca and say, that would suck. I don't want that. and somebody's watching it somebody with a lot of money is watching and say you know it'd be really cool if we did that thing that that guy told me not to do that we all as a society agree that that'd be a bad idea let's do that thing yeah these are these are all supposed to be cautionary tales yes 30 years ago these were cautionary tales today they're aspirational tales like let's do that but i mean if you think about it there is also like if i think of like biohackers. So people who are doing peptides, GLP-1s, NAD, talking about how they're going to live for a very long time The Gattaca stack feels like it ticks a lot of those same boxes like optimize your kid because you want your kid to be as healthy as possible the same way you becoming as healthy as possible by hacking your biological decline. So it feels very, and I hate to use this phrase, but on brand. But yeah, it is interesting how we've totally gone to be upside down. Whereas we used to be like, well, this would be terrible. We would all be invalid and not given chances to fulfill our hopes and desires and dreams in this world. And then now we're like, let's do it. Let's turbocharge our embryos and pump it up and have just the dopest, best baby we can possibly have. But when I rewatched Gattaca, I still was rooting for our invalid hero, our invalid avenging angel, Ethan Hawke. Same. I was like, he's the hero. And when they do, he and his superior and finger quotes brother go and they do that swimming contest very dangerous that they do where they go swim under the ocean in the store or whatever. The brother who's supposed to be superior to John is like, how did you always beat me? And he says, I never saved anything for the way back. Legend, right? Like I'm rooting for him as a hero. So even now, but I don't know, you know, I wasn't forged in the fires of crypto and all of these other things that I feel like, you know? You think different. I think differently, yeah. I'm rooting for Ethan Hawke Some people are clearly rooting for his superior brother. You know, you don't really have to watch Gattaca to imagine a two-tier society. You don't have to watch Gattaca to imagine second-class citizens. Functionally speaking, this is kind of what we're talking about here. I mean, you were saying, what is it, $12,000? Well, that's the low end. That would be the low end, yeah. On the low end, yeah. $12,000 on the low end, $50,000 on the high end. I could imagine it going upwards of that. a lot of people can barely afford to have a child, period. And so, I mean, are we now just in a situation where rich people with access to this kind of capital can have kids that will further have more advantages in their life and everybody else gets left behind? Huge, huge issue. Yes. Yes, exactly right. I mean, IVF itself is very, very expensive. So the barrier to entry to even having a child if you deal with fertility issues is already there. We're already there. This could definitely make it a lot worse. We hear the word designer baby thrown around a lot. It seems like we're getting a little bit closer to that as a reality. What does that word mean for you? designer baby means to me is a sort of fictitious concept that will, I don't think ever be a reality because I just don't think that at that base level, I think that what makes a human being is so much more to do with how you grow up and your experiences growing up. I just think it's a fictitious concept. I think people are interested in trying to make that concept as close to reality as possible, designer baby, but I don't think it gets you to that outcome because there's a lot more that after the embryo comes out of the lady, like, you know, one day it's in the womb, one day it's out. And once it's out, it's like, you still have to get that baby to sleep and eat and put them in preschool and do those, you know? So it's like, it's an uphill slog regardless. And Hank Greeley was saying, you know, don't forget there are other things that we know influence childhood outcomes like reading to your kids, taking them to the park, good nutrition, getting them vaccinated. Those are studied and have a much more meaningful and larger impact on how high you'll be able to vertically jump than the genetic material that you're starting with. Yeah, I mean, to take a couple steps back and think about the genetically superior child who may be born, not just of embryo selection, but we're talking about gene editing, right? Some kid is, they got their genes edited, I mean, to the nines. They're tall, they're handsome, they're muscular, they're whatever. And then they're not so good at the piano. Not as good as mom and dad hoped. does mom and dad go complain about a defective product and want a little bit of a refund? Like, how does that even work? I mean, I imagine that it turns into just torture for the kid. Like, we spent all this money to make you perfect and what's wrong, you know? And I did talk with ethicists who say that there's so much danger in thinking of your child as being the best from the get-go, telling them that they're superior at birth, that they're going to be able to do all these things? And then what if they don't? What if they're a little chubby or not really good at the violin or they don't really feel like playing music? Do you love them less? Luckily, this doesn't apply to me because I have children. I'm definitely not having any more. But it's like, would I do this? But then I think about what I would want. You want your kid to feel joy. You want your kid to be kind and curious, right? Yeah. I mean, it doesn't sound like anybody is really just aching to find the gene for kindness. I would love that. Listen, if you wrote an article and you told me, Dexter, listen, these people out here, they're trying to make sure that they have the kindest, most empathetic kids. I'd say, you know what? Let me step back. Maybe I'm being a hater here. But when I hear, you know, you want your kid's hair color to be such and such, you want to be such and such height, you're going to be good at such and such sport. I'm feeling like I'm back in Gattaca again. You know what? Matter of fact, let's go back to Gattaca again. So early in the movie, when the main character is born, the doctors scan him and tell the parents that, hey, your kid has a potential heart condition. And also he's going to be a little nearsighted. He'll probably need glasses. And so this child is now invalid. And then we see this montage of the kid being discriminated against, like the preschool won't even let him in the door. So the parents decide to have another kid, and they're going to make sure that this kid is going to be valid. So they meet with a doctor that talks them through what kind of child they're going to get. You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair, and fair skin. I have taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions, premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism, and Addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence, obesity, etc. We didn't want, I mean, diseases, yes, but... Right, we were just wondering if it's good to just leave a few things to chance. We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn't need any additional burdens. And keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply the best of you. Still you, simply the best of you. And of course, as the viewer, you're supposed to think this is terrible. And yet, here we are. You know, Barry Bear, who made a lot of advancements in IVF technology, he was like, it used to be horrible to show your collarbones and your knees, and now people are wearing thongs at the beach. you know and he was like that line moves with time and we eventually get more and more comfortable with it well may we all continue to be invalid invalid heroes unite we are legion at this point thank you so much for listening to kill switch if you want to talk you can email us at kill Killswitch at Kaleidoscope.nyc or on Instagram. We're at KillswitchPod. And if you dug the show and want to do a favor for some fellow random invalid stranger, get that phone back out your pocket and leave us a review. Seriously, it helps other people find the show and you can think of that as your good deed for the day. Also, did you know that Killswitch is on YouTube? Watching the show is a whole different experience. So if you're into that, the link for that and everything else is in the show notes. Killswitch is hosted by me, Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sheena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Julian Nutter. Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also makes the show. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Oswalashin, Mangesh Hatigudur, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki E. Tor. Catch y'all in the next one. Goodbye. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? 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Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Thank you.
