Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# science
Police are starting to use newborns’ blood samples in criminal investigations involving their parents, alarming privacy advocates and legal scholars.
# science
The question of nature vs. nurture may never be settled when it comes to humans.
# science
Despite dire warnings, we may never be able to custom design humans. And if we ever learn how, we may accidentally drive ourselves into extinction if we try.
# evolution
Intelligent life on Earth may owe its existence to an ancient virus which inserted its genetic code and machinery into early tetrapods and now helps their neurons talk to each other.
# science
Before you get your DNA tested, remember that most of the baseline samples used to process your genome only come from three countries and your reports will feature a lot of asterisks.
# podcast
The CRISPR babies scandal has unlocked old fears about the power of gene editing in the wrong hands and created new concerns about rogue operators who refuse to play it safe, even when there are literally lives on the line.
# health
The easy way to make gene therapy more effective may be to resurrect a virus' evolutionary ancestors in a lab...
# health
A new study backs up the idea that autism is a genetic disorder by growing neurons in petri dishes.
# science
Geneticist Jerry Crabtree jumps on the natural-selection-for-humans-is-dead bandwagon with a study of human intelligence that doesn't say what he thinks it does.
# evolution
Believe it or not, DNA is not the only hereditary molecule out there. In fact, it's one of many molecules that could form the backbone of gene pools.