The Genome Podcast

Luke Timmerman has covered biotech for a variety of publications, and his newsletter, The Timmerman Report, covers innovation, trends, market forces, and the people in biotechnology. In this episode, we talk about his background, his career trajectory, and his incisive biography of inventor and scientist Lee Hood, aka the Willy Wonka of biotechnology.

Julia Sweeney is an actress, comedian, writer and film director. She was a memorable cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1994. After SNL she became most well-known for her monologues. Her first one-person show, God Said, Ha!, dealt with her brother’s and later her own cancer diagnosis and treatment. It played on Broadway, became a film, and was nominated for a Grammy. Subsequent monologues chronicled Julia’s quest to become a mother and adoption of a child as a single person, and her loss of faith and embrace of science. Her memoir, If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother, was published in 2013. Her new show, Older and Wider, debuts at Second City in Chicago on Friday January 12. We talked a few months ago about astrology, genetics, cancer, family, and her life as a Neanderthal churchgoing atheist.

Michelle Meyer is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Research Ethics at Geisinger’s Center for Translational Bioethics and Health Care Policy in Danville PA. We spoke a few months ago about: her background; choosing to study both law and religious studies; having a doctorate in religious studies while being a nonbeliever; being a professional misfit; the weirdness of the institutional review board system; how we manage biospecimens and data; whether we should read social media terms of service agreements; why it’s not always a big deal when social media companies do research; what it’s like to live with an uncertain version of the gene responsible for Huntington’s disease; and what the public gets wrong about Huntington’s and other genetic diseases.

The first episode of the Genome Podcast features Misha Angrist's conversation with Jehannine Austin, genetic counseling trailblazer and troublemaker. Among other things, they discuss her arrival to the field, what she found when she got there, and her ongoing efforts to change things, especially in the realm of psychiatric genetics.