As scientists learn more about how genes affect everything from hair color to sexual orientation and mental health, were faced with moral and political questions about how we allow science to intervene in the genetic code. In this episode, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the author of the book The Gene: An Intimate History , talks with David Remnick about the intimate and global implications of modern genetic science, and speaks frankly about his own family history of mental illness. Plus, we visit the studio of a leading sound-effects artist, and a virtual-reality team struggles to make a V.R. experience that lives up to the hype. This episode originally aired on May 13, 2016.

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The physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author examines the intimate and global implications of genetic science.

Virtual reality used to be the technology of the future. Now its here. How will artists use the young medium to tell stories?

Three weird things you need to check out: a random-film-clip generator, an Internet graveyard, and the Turkish Star Wars.

The sound of a guy getting beaten with a bat in Goodfellas was engineered by an ex-magician with a hideout in Jersey.

Two mothers meet on the playground, and things get weird.

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Episode 87: Virtual Reality, and the Politics of Genetics - The New Yorker