Our Obsession with Our Roots, A Breakthrough in Gene Therapy

Americans love mail-in test kits that promise to track down relatives and pin our family origins around the globe. But, what about data privacy and dark generational secrets?

Listen 50:42

The FDA recently approved the first CRISPR gene editing treatment for people with sickle cell disease. We’ll get the latest on this medical breakthrough and what it could mean for patients from Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a cardiologist and geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.


During the gift-giving season, we’ve been bombarded with ads from 23andMe, AncestryDNA and other companies offering to tell us more about ourselves through gene testing. Platforms like these have gained immense popularity over the last decade. We’ll look at America’s fascination with heritage with Libby Copeland, author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are. Plus, Avi connects with his own long-lost family history in South Dakota.

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