Stuff You Should Know - Should we be designing our children?

Episode Date: November 21, 2012

In 2009, a fertility clinic controversially offered parents the ability to customize their children. How will society take the idea of designing children? Do we have a moral obligation to design better people? Join Josh and Chuck for this heavy episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Tucker Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. This will be done all in sing song. You don't want to hear me sing songs because... I've heard you sing songs. Your heart will melt, glasses will break. My heart will go on. Birds with truth. And grown men will kiss each other

on the mouth. Right. It's so inspiring. That'd be pretty cool if you could do that just by singing. Yeah. Like, you kiss him now, glass you break. What you're talking about is Chevy Chase and Modern Problems. I never saw that one. He didn't have to sing, but he gained telekinetic abilities. He could make things happen just by thinking them. I shouldn't even say I never saw that one. That's not that much of a surprise. Everyone knows how my dad raised me. But I'd never even heard of that one until just now. 80s movie Modern Problems. It was very dumb, but it was one of those early HBO movies for me.

So I just sat around and watched it like constantly. And I had a couple of dirty jokes. So I was like, oh my god. I gotcha. Yeah. How did we get on that? It was me. So, Chuck. Yes, Josh. We are now friends, I guess you could say. After four years, we finally crossed that cusp. No, I'm not talking about us. Oh, we're not friends still. You and I are friends. Yes, we are. We are friends with Science Channel. Oh, yeah. And as such, we are pretty excited that they have something going on pretty soon. Yeah. And this relates to our podcast topic, which is the reason we're mentioning it. It's the very reason we chose this podcast topic.

Science Channel is bringing fringe, the cult classic television show Fringe, to its airwaves starting November 20th. Yep, they're going to show all five seasons. And we were even lucky enough to meet the guy. The guy. At Comic-Con. Yeah, not Joshua Jackson. Dr. Fringe. Yeah. That's not his name. Timmy Fringe. Mr. Noble. And he was very nice. Yeah, because he's not just on Fringe. He's on Dark Matters too. He's the host of Dark Matters on Science Channel. That's true. But I personally watched Fringe. I watched all the first season. Me and Emily did. Emily and I, excuse me. And I really enjoyed it and just, it was one of those things that I didn't watch season two beyond and beyond because it just, you know, life got in the

way or something, but it wasn't because it didn't like it. It was really good. It sort of had an ex-files vibe. Oh yeah. And the twists that they've managed to work in there. Yeah. But the science was more predominant. Right. So I liked it. And I'm totally going to watch seasons. Well, I'll probably start with season one again. Well, then you should tune in November 20th. Yeah. And I'm going to watch seasons two through five now on Science Channel. I'm pretty stoked about that. Right. Yep. And well, yeah, in honor of Fringe, we chose kind of a Fringe sciencey topic you did. That's right. I think it's a good one, Chuck. Yeah. Designing women. I mean, designing children. Remember that show? Oh yeah. Man. What was the one that followed it

with Bert Reynolds' Evening Shade? That seemed, was that tied? Was that a spinoff? No, but I think they were packaged together. It's like a Tuesday night redneck hour. Sugar bakers. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I watched Designing Women. I didn't watch Evening Shade though, which surprises me because I love Bert Reynolds. I, yeah, I didn't see it either. But yeah, Designing Women. It was a good show that we're talking about designing children and not just designing children, designer children. That's right. The idea that one day in the very, very, very near future, like now, we'll be able to make kids ready to order, made to order. Yeah. In certain ways. Like, I think right now you, we have the ability to select eye and hair color, but they're just not

doing it yet because they try that in Los Angeles and people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you remember that? Yeah. We don't like this. We shouldn't be doing this. And I think that's really significant that that happened. Like the first real commercial attempt for basically just saying, hey, you want a blonde kid? We can give you a blonde kid. Received public outcry, international outcry. Yeah. So much of the people are like, okay, sorry, we opened our mouths. Everybody just forget we said anything. Here's your brunette. You know, yeah, exactly. Roll the dice jerks. We don't care. Right. But I find that significant, you know, because I wonder, you know, how it's going to go, how when it does become really commercially viable to really make your kid

a different person than they would have been naturally, like how people will accept that. Yeah. I mean, this is the stuff of science fiction that is really happening now. The movie Gadica is referenced in this article. I never saw it. Really good movie. Is it really good? Yeah, man. It's good. It's like a thinking man's science. I don't know if you call it a thriller. Maybe a thriller. Intrigue, at the very least. Okay. But yeah, it's good. And basically the synopsis there is without spoiling anything is that the not every time you say that you spoil it, the not too distant future, we are able to in Gadica to build designer children that will grow into designer adults that are like disease free and highly athletic and very intelligent.

Yeah. And then the rest of the shlubs of the world are, you know, sorry, TS for them basically. Yeah. Go eat your potato chips. Yeah. So see Gadica is a good one. Okay. I like it. Yeah, every time you say like, this isn't going to spoil things. I tried really hard not to spoil there. I was watching an episode of Breaking Bad the other day, human hour. And I was like, how do I know what's about to happen? And I was like, did I spoil something there? Yeah, in the meth episode. Oh, I thought you meant the one in Breaking Bad that was about meth. I was like, they're all about meth. I didn't spoil that. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. All right. So sorry, that was not a spoiler for Gadica though. So Chuck. Yes. Let's talk about all this. You're

saying 2009 they came out against that fertility clinic in Los Angeles. Yes. That's a good example of a commercial business saying, Hey, we can do this now. A good example of a government saying, Hey, you can do this now. We need to do something about it was the UK proposing a bill and we couldn't find out whether it passed or not. It's frustrating how hard it is to find out things like this sometimes. Yeah. If you write an article about something that is big enough for somebody else to use in an article, you better follow up. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's your duty journalist. So what we know is it was protested at least. So I'm not sure if it went through. Well, and the reason it was protested was protested largely by the deaf and hard of hearing

community over there, because this bill would have or did prohibit selecting kids for disease or disability, right? So if you it allowed you to select against that. So if you if you have a kid that has a disability, you can be like, I don't want that kid. But it prohibited selecting for them. And the deaf community said, Hey, if hearing parents can select hearing kids, deaf parents should be able to select deaf kids. So if you're going to call deafness a disability, you need to change this this bill. Yeah, which is a pretty cool thing to protest if you ask me. I don't know how I felt about it. I thought I still don't know. Wow, this can be a good one. I was utterly confused. I was like, why would you want your child to be

deaf and be at a disadvantage straight out of the gate in life? But then I thought, well, is it a disadvantage? Exactly. That is a great, great question. So I don't know. That's where I ended up was. Did you know that 93% that's the highest most recent figure I've seen 93% of all Down syndrome fetuses are aborted 93%. I believe that right. And that's the same question. It's like some people are like, well, why would you want your kid to be disadvantaged? Well, are aborted or not not selected through IVF board? Okay. And so some people would say, why would you want your kid to have, you know, your kids going to have a disadvantage and other people say like, Have you ever met a person with Down syndrome? Like they're pretty awesome people.

Yeah, you know, exactly. And I think that that is that's just one argument throughout this idea of designing children, save your siblings was also included in that bill in England, let parents select embryos that would make suitable, save your siblings. Yeah. Very controversial. I read a couple of articles on this savers have saved your siblings are basically kids that you conceive initially with the purpose of being able to act as donors for their older brother or sister. Like you're you're the kid that you love is born with like bad kidneys. Yeah. Have another kid that's going to be a suitable tissue donor because you know ahead of time before the kids even born that it will be. Yeah. So that they can give them

one of their kidneys. Yeah, that was a article that I read where these parents had had a quote, unquote, savior child and used, you know, they said what we ended up using was a teaspoon of umbilical blood that would have been thrown in the trash. And that's what saved our other kid's life. And this is not a designer child. It's not some freak of science. This is the reason we have this child but doesn't make it any less valid. So I think ultimately it's how you treat the child after they're born. Well, you treat them as like your regular child. You would put them in a closet and wait for the kidney. Sure, you'd hope but at the same time, I mean, like you can go down the road and say, well, having a savior sibling is also having a kid to strip for parts.

Yeah, you know, there's there's another interpretation of the whole thing. So I mean, like if if you are going to have your kid like that, is it valid for society to be like, well, well, well, you can't do that. How are you going to treat your kid afterward? Like, is that one of the worries? How would they would treat the kid? I've never heard that as an argument. Yeah, really? Yeah, because it's not like you can have a kid use all of their harvest, all of their organs and kill them. Of course not. So I think it's it's like the effect, the impact it's going to have on that child and their own identity is like a human being and a unique individual human being rather than a walking organ bank for their brother.

I would I would think I would appreciate that growing up knowing that I was born with a higher purpose of potentially saving my older brother if he ever needed it. Sure, you know, sure, depending on how you're raised. Yeah, you know, are you like Danny DeVito in twins? Right. Or are you like the the savior sibling? It's a great way to put it. Like, you're the savior of this other sibling. Yeah, it just all depends to me on how the parents raised those those children in that abnormal dynamic that's fostered through our technology. Yeah, I can't imagine, though, that a parent who would care enough about their one child to have another to save them would mistreat or shun the other child in any way. That just doesn't make

sense to me. I just opened my hands in a gesture. I don't know. All right. So let's talk about this Chuck. Let's talk genetics for a little bit. I had to go back and do some genetics 101 priming. And I did that as I did it. I realized that I wasn't going back and remembering it. I was teaching myself for the first time in a lot of ways. Yeah, sure. I've never really gotten genetics, even though it's so straightforward and cut and dried. Yeah, there's always like, even if you read this designer children article, like, these are two of our best writers. And like, it just doesn't come across quite right. Maybe it's just me. Maybe so, like me and numbers. So so back in 2003. Yes. The human genome project announced that it had fulfilled its destiny

and successfully mapped the human genome and the human genome is the sum total of the information contained in the human DNA. That's right. Right. Are you going to say the word? What DNA stands for? Oh, dioxyribonucleic acid. I would say deoxy. Yeah, I've always heard dioxy. And then I was looking at that. Yeah, either way. Well done, though. DNA. And DNA is simply a couple of strands of sugar that form a helix, a double helix. And they're joined by what looks like wrongs on a ladder. Sugar and phosphate. Yeah. Okay. And these wrongs are made up of nucleotides, one coming off of each of these strands. Yeah, the little twisty ladder that we all love now. Exactly. So the wrongs of the ladder are made of these nucleotides. And

when they come together, one on each side, they form this full wrong. And those are called base pairs. And there's four types of nucleotides, right? That's right. There is adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine. And you put them together. And what you come up with, ultimately, is a four letter language for the blueprint of an organism. Pretty cool. Not just making an organism, but maintaining it as well. And if you look along this strand of DNA, you're going to find little segments where this combination, if read by a ribosome, can be used to explain how a cell can make a certain kind of protein, usually about three proteins on average. Right. And proteins are what are used as the building blocks of cellular life and its functions, like everything from

our behavior to like the structure of your eye, right, is based on proteins, right? And your your genes, these little segments that are encoded along the DNA that express these proteins are blueprints for how to express the proteins. That's how they're made. That's what they do. That's right. Right. That's right. We have between 26,000 and 40,000 genes. Right. As a human. Everybody's so happy you just did that. As a human. Human. Human. And just mess it up. How about that? Had you been designed properly? That wouldn't have happened. So what I thought was interesting, that out of the three billion base bears, it's about half and half of useful DNA and the rest are junk DNA. Yeah, junk DNA. Okay. And

they don't think that it's like junk DNA. Like it's totally useless. They think that possibly we haven't found the use yet. Right. Or they think that possibly one of the uses is that it says it tells like stop. Like here's where this gene stops. Yeah. Or this is how much of this protein you should express in this adjacent gene that this junk DNA is next to. Or it just provides like structure, like actual structure to the double helix. Right. It's also possible that this is just DNA leftover that was deposited by viruses eons ago that that don't that don't express themselves any longer. Right. Because that's what viruses to they insert their own DNA and ours. That's right. Isn't that crazy? 30 buggers. Yeah. So you've got this DNA is making up chromosomes. You've got 23

in your body and as complex and as massive as the sounds Chuck 23 pairs 23 pairs. Thank you. You as massive and complex as this whole thing sounds every cell except for a mature red blood cell has a full human genome and many chromosomes in it. Yes. Every cell and that's just in the nucleus. That's crazy. It is crazy. So you've got all this. We've got a pretty good handle on this. The human genome. We've mapped it. Now we go back and figure out where the genes are. Uh-huh. And they used to think that it was like 90 96 percent of DNA was junk. And then they found out that like if you look at the human genome, some areas are gene rich. There's a lot of genes. Other years are gene deserts where there's very few. Right. We have to go back and look at this map

and basically crack this code of this four letter language and figure out what genes are what, what they do and then ultimately how to manipulate them. And once we do that, we effectively have taken humanity out of evolution. That's right. Scary. Is it? I think so. Our friend David Pierce would beg to differ. Who? The guy from the happiness audio book. Oh, right. We should ratchet up human happiness because we can. Yeah. Boy, that's, it's an interesting argument. That's all I'm going to say. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy

to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Marcel Swiley, that dude and host of more to it. A new iHeart original podcast that takes a deep dive into the biggest topics in sports, entertainment and culture. The journey begins with headline news, which leads to deeper discussions about life lessons that are presented in every story. Each week we tackle subjects and issues beyond the public's perception and narrative to learn more about the stories and about ourselves. Hosted by someone who defied the odds to go from Compton to the Ivy League and then played 10 years as an all pro defense event. This is not your typical sports show with topics ranging from the social ills that surround us all to the character growth

that occurs from overcoming adversity. You'll get inspired hearing stories that highlight the growing pains that fuels anyone on a successful journey. You'll leave every episode with a greater understanding that no matter the story, the person or outcome, there is always more to it. Found on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. So we're already kind of at a very primitive form of this, aren't we? Well, yeah, like I said, we feasibly could choose eye color and hair color if we wanted to. And then one thing we can definitely do is, well, I guess we should explain about IVF for those of you who don't know. In 1978, we first performed in vitro fertilization, which basically means when you're a couple, when you're having

trouble having a kid, there are a bunch of different steps you can take, a bunch of different routes you can take. And one of them is IVF, which means you take the sperm from the man, egg from the lady, and you get them together outside of the human body to form a zygote. And then you put it back in the woman. And then she takes it from there. And it can be expensive. It can be very hard on the woman, on her body and emotionally. I think it's probably hard on the couple emotionally. Sure. But dudes aren't pumped full of hormones. So that is what IVF is. And that is one way that you can have a baby if you're having trouble having babies. With IVF came something called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, PGD, which basically means, hey, we can look at your stuff here. And if you are

predisposed in your family to certain things, like hemophilia A, Down syndrome, Tasek syndrome, we can stop this process now and try again. Right. We can scream for it. Yeah. And some of it's intuitive. Like with hemophilia A, if you and your husband both have that, that usually tends to strike boys more than girls. Yeah. So they'd probably not use embryos that were male, likely male. They would use female embryos instead. Which brings up the sticky point of choosing your gender. Right. Yeah. Some others we can, you can find that evidence of that disease that say, I guess, malfunctioning gene that creates that disease, because that's what disease is. Yeah. And not use those embryos either. So we are kind of at this primitive state,

but it's selective. It is. And these are tough decisions that couples face in life. A lot of thought should go into this if you're out there going through this process. Sure. It's, it ain't easy. And don't let anyone else tell you what you should or shouldn't do. You know, this is a personal thing. Oh yeah, for sure. So that's what's, that's what's going on on the IVF tip. So yeah, the point is, is from that came PGD, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, which is kind of right now the most widely available type of genetic engineering for couples looking to have a baby, right? Right. And like we said, the sticky point of potentially being able to choose your gender if you really want a boy, you've got three girls and

you, man, I really wanted a boy. And then in countries like China where they definitely want boys, it's like this could be the future that might upset the balance of, of nature and how many boys and girls are born. Yeah. And what does that mean for the future? So I heard to, to have a soft landing from their one child policy, which they're now starting to like relax. They should have stopped it about 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Does that mean they're in trouble? Yeah. Does that mean we need to follow up like we recommended writers do on our podcast? Oh yeah, you want to? Sure. Well, I guess you just did. Oh, okay. There it was. I heard. So Chuck, we've got this, we've got this genetic screening. That's one way to do it. There's also another way that is a little further out as far

as humans go. And that is a transgenic therapy, which is where you take the gene of something else that desirous trait and insert it into some, into the human, right? Right. So this isn't just subtracting, it's actually adding a gene. Right. What we've been talking about to this point is unnatural selection. Yeah. But it's been selection. It's like, this is, this is, it appeared naturally, but we're going to take away all of the other, we're going to reduce the chances that it won't happen or we're going to increase the chances that that will happen. Right. This is straight up copying and pasting or cutting and pasting genes to create something desirable or new. That's right. And they already do this in animals. So, you know, if you can do it in animals, it's

not going to be long before you can do it with humans. Sure. And long term, maybe that means we can eliminate certain diseases by correcting this stuff along the way. Right. Like before it happens. So that could be good. So, so when you take a gene from one animal and implant it into another, it's, that's become a transgenic animal or a chimera, which is based on the goat serpent lion fire breathing animal of legend from Greece. Yeah. They call it a chimera, which is kind of hurtful, I think, especially if you're a human and know what a chimera is. Sure. And you're a chimera. I'm sure you probably hurt your feelings, but thus far there aren't any human chimeras as far as I know. It's mostly the big one that we've actually talked about unknowingly before

is a bio steel, the goat with the spider. Remember, we're trying to figure out how they got spider silk from a goat in the body vest one. It turns out that spiders and goats share enough traits to where this ultra strong spider silk can be produced in the goat's milk. Yeah. They have similar proteins and they said, I don't know how they came across that. I'm sure they had some hint. I don't know why they would start with a goat's milk. Yeah, I don't know either. But the protein you know what would happen if we put the spider silk in this goat's milk. What rhymes with spider silk? Goats milk. Let's try that. Start there. Yeah, it worked. But they figured out that like this spider, the protein in spider silk is similar to a protein in goats milk. Identical. And well,

once you inject the goat's genes with that spider gene, it just meshes like a glove. It starts producing a ton of that protein in its milk and you harvest that protein and then start weaving spider silk and make the stuff called bio steel, which is really, really good body armor. Yeah. And that's where we talked about it. Right. Yeah. Body armor podcast that you can find on our RSS feed. Yeah. And which also happened to be our first ever listener request. Oh, really? Yeah. Someone requested that and we acquiesced. Yeah. And we started getting all those emails. So the point of that is, is they're doing this in animals. There are scenarios where we could potentially do this with humans. But another follow up article we read turns out

that enhancing ourselves genetically could eventually lead to unknowing consequences down the road. Sure. Specifically in this case, we have learned that our human brain is evolving. It's getting larger. It's gaining more cognitive abilities as we evolve. And if you start tampering with natural selection via genetic modification, these things might not show up right away. It might show up generations later. So you might be doing something you think will help when in fact, years from now, it might keep your brain from growing like everyone else's. Right. And this is just one example of something that could go wrong. Organisms evolve, right? Through mutations. Yeah. Well, we lack the foresight to know what mutation will be beneficial and what will be harmful

years down the line. Yeah. So even something that may be harmful immediately or somewhat harmful could be extremely beneficial decades, hundreds, thousands, millions of years from now. Yeah. And we would never know. Nope. And then it's too late once you've done it. Yeah. You're done. Now, I kind of had the impression that like once you start tampering, you could conceivably you know, keep improving, but it would have to be constant. Well, and what this article points out, which is a good point, is natural selection is at its best when you've got a large gene pool. And if you're narrowing that gene pool for a reason you think is great, you're still narrowing the gene pool. Right. You know. And I think proponents of genetic engineering would say,

well, that's fine. We're narrowing the gene pool. Who cares? We're taking full control of evolution so evolution can kiss off. Yeah. But this raises all sorts of questions like some of which we've already touched upon, but like who decides what's ideal? Right. Who decides what traits are good and what are bad? What happens when this becomes, you know, commercially viable, but it's still extremely expensive than just the wealthy have designer children. Well, I mean, what kind of designer children do we make? I read this one ethicist who said that we have a moral obligation to genetically engineer and modify our kids so that they're not a harm to themselves or other people. I read that one, which makes a lot of sense. Like I can see how that is a moral obligation.

Like if you have the technology to improve people and improve society like that, you have to do it. Yeah. You know, but then of course there's like the other side. It's like, I don't know. Yeah. We don't really know what we're doing here. Playing God. Yeah. Cause I mean, what happens if you make a kid that's awful little bit and like they're like just totally messed up. Yeah. But they wouldn't have been if you hadn't tampered with them. Yeah. Who's responsible for that? And in what ways are you responsible for it? Well, and more, well, not more importantly, but additionally where the lines drawn, you know, is it okay to say like, uh, that kind of like my baby to have blue eyes. Right. No big deal. Right. Yeah. But was that

the line or is the line like, um, maybe it'd be cool if they were athletic and super smart and had blue eyes and blonde hair and then boom, boys from Brazil. But what's the, again, what's, what are the problems with those things? Well, yeah, you know, it's going to be athletic and smart. Right. Or happy is another one that David pointed out that I find tough to, to, to disagree with. Like if you have the technology to make your kids happier, like ratchet up their baseline happiness is how we put it. Why wouldn't you do that? If you can make society a better place because everybody's happier. Why wouldn't you do it? Well, it just, this is just the blood item me saying, you know, there's always far reaching consequences. There's

always ripples to every stone you throw in a lake. Yeah. You know, like what, what else is going to happen if everybody's happy? Yeah. Are there downfalls or their setbacks or their, what's going on? I know it is a tricky, tricky subject. Anytime we bring up genes, it becomes a tricky subject. It does. Which is why they're fascinating. That's right. And why people really get up on their soapbox when they, you know, this is, this means a lot to a lot of people, religious circles, scientific circles, a lot of folks are weighing in from different, you know, square circles. Do you know what that means? It's, it was just stupid. Okay. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy,

number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcel Swiley, that dude and host of more to it, a new iHeart original podcast that takes a deep dive into the biggest topics in sports, entertainment and culture. The journey begins with headline news, which leads to deeper discussions about life lessons that are presented in every story. Each week we tackle subjects and issues beyond the public's perception and narrative to learn more about the stories and about ourselves. Hosted by someone who defied the odds to go from Compton to the Ivy League and then played 10 years as an all pro defense event. This is not

your typical sports show with topics ranging from the social ills that surround us all to the character growth that occurs from overcoming adversity. You'll get inspired hearing stories that highlight the growing pains that fuels anyone on a successful journey. You'll leave every episode with a greater understanding that no matter the story, the person or outcome, there is always more to it. Found on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. If you want to learn more about genetics, how stuff works is loaded with them articles on them on it. Yeah, you can type in genetics, genes, designer babies, whatever you want in the handy search bar and it's going to bring up some pretty cool articles when you recommend

and you waste a year or two reading them. And I said handy search bar, I think, so that means it's time for Listener Mail. That's right, Josh. I am going to call this plug for our friends at QSAC. Remember meeting Sandra at Tribunite in New York. She gave us the hats. The baseball caps. Yeah, what what is the QSAC is the quality services for the autism community. Okay. All right. So this from Sandra. She's super sweet. Very nice. And she says this, guys, thanks so much for humoring my over-enthusiasm for my cause and my over-enthusiasm for meeting you guys at Tribunite who I look up to. It was an amazing night of randomness. All the other people on our second place team met in line. Total strangers after my initial star struckness died down, which never

happens to me because I work with famous people all the time and couldn't care less. I just felt like it just felt like a night where I was hanging out with a few buddies I've known for a while. She said I felt that way about my whole table of strangers actually. So anyway, she told us that night about QSAC organization she's with and she says I'm very passionate about QSAC because they changed my life literally. I did a 5k to support them because it was local and my nephew was autistic and I wanted to see if I could actually walk that far. She had broken both her ankles the previous year. I thought that was funny too. Man, I wonder if she was, was it called cobbled? Cobbled? Was that in misery? Oh yeah, that's what I was thinking. Is it cobbling?

There's a name for that? Are hobbling. She hobbled? Hobbled. Cobbled would be if you just broke the foot rather than the ankle. I might be called hobbling. Yeah, you're hobbled. But that's like a state. No, but the process by which Kathy Bates like broke the ankles. I don't want to talk about it. It was called something like you're hobbling somebody. Maybe. I'll look that up. That was so nasty. Anyway, I don't think Sandra was cobbled or hobbled. So at the time I had no clue who they were. QSAC made friends with everyone there and many people who worked there and then three months later I actually started work there as an employee. I was in corporate television as a video editor for 10 years and it beat down my soul. I was always

volunteering and donating what I could and I felt like maybe non-profit is what I should be doing. The opportunity arose and I took it and it has been life changing dudes. Since you guys are so excellent at being philanthropic, I decided to see if you'd be interested in knowing more. So Josh mentioned you guys were considering doing a podcast on autism. I'm sure we'll get around to that at some point, right? If you do, I have plenty of people that could answer a lot of questions and gladly pass along addresses and phone numbers. QSAC has been around for over 30 years, truly amazing in helping the New York City and Long Island areas. So if you guys want to help support this great cause for autism, you can go to qsac.com or she has a bowling page

and I think you do like, it's like a fundraiser is going through bowling at www.firstgiving.com slash fundraiser slash Sandra Soroka slash bowl and that is Sandra Soroka and she was she was super nice and she's working for autism now. Very cool man. Can I give one more shout out? We heard from another listener. Of course. A listener named Emily Eisenman is running for Lifestraw. Did you see this email? I did. Now it's going to read that later. Let's go ahead and do it now. Okay. Yeah. All right. So Emily is running for Lifestraw. She heard our podcast from 2010 on Lifestraw and she's decided to raise a thousand dollars to buy Lifestraws by running a thousand miles. Yeah. And she is going to cross a thousand mile mark for the year

this week, which you may have already done it. And she's proving to be a better funder or better runner than a fundraiser. She says, so if everybody who listens to stuff you should know would go help help her fundraise, it would be fantastic. You can go to www.fundleyfumdy.com slash run for Lifestraw. And you guys can go check that out and help Emily raise some money for Lifestraw. And if you are unfamiliar with Lifestraw, go listen to our podcast on that subject, which you can probably are going to have to find on our RSS feed as well. Yeah. That is just, you know what you do? You Google or you get your favorite search bar. You type in stuff you should know RSS feed and it's like a boom right there. All of our shows ever. Yep. Stuff you

should know RSS. Every single one is good stuff. All right. Well, I guess that's it. Right. That is it, sir. All right. If you want to contact us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. Join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit house stuffworks.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.