Jenny Kleeman on sex robots and vegan meat

Introducing Jenny Kleeman

This week, I'm talking with the wonderful Jenny Kleeman, broadcaster, journalist and author of the book Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the frontier of Birth, Sex and Death.

Jenny is an award winning narrator of true stories across print, audio and TV. She writes regularly in the Guardian, the Times, the New Statesman and Tortoise. She's reported for BBC One's Panorama, HBO's Vice News Tonight and Channel 4's Dispatches, as well as making films for Channel 4’s Unreported World. On radio, she launched Weekend Breakfast on Times Radio.

Jenny is not a behavioural scientist, but that doesn't matter at all, because she has some amazing insights and experiences to share on the human condition, how we relate to one another and what the frontier of technology means for our futures.

My converstaion with Jenny is hilarious, spooky, jaw-dropping and crazy in equal measure.

Show notes

• 4 new inventions that are about to challenge what it means to be human

  • Sex robots

  • Meat grown in labs

  • Artificial wombs

  • Death machines

• Relying on tech to solve fundamentally human problems

Sex

• Unintended consequences of sex robots – can they really solve happiness?

• Robots, lack of human contact, echo chambers and the future of human relationships

• BBC News website vs online porn consumption

• Sex dolls, male control and female disempowerment

Birth

• Manmade amniotic sacks – experiments in lamb foetuses

• Improving premature birth outcomes

• Growing a baby outside of the human body

• Fetishizing pregnancy vs reproductive equality

• Definitions of abortion – redefining the journey and viability of birth

• Who will natural pregnancy be for in future? A 2nd class endeavour

Meat

• How to grow real meat in a lab?

• Eating meat forever without caring about animal welfare: kosher bacon, ethical foie gras

• How does a manmade chicken nugget taste?

• Cowschwitz and the implications for the future of agriculture

Death

• Motivations of death capsule inventors

• Giving people the right to die, but shielding vulnerable people

• Control, dignity and insurance policies

• Baby Boomers who are used to getting what they want

• Masculine desire to dominate and control

• Women will feel the effects of these four technologies more than men

Next time with David Robson

David is an award winning science writer and author of The Expectation Effect. We talk about how our responses, in so many facets of our life from work, health, exercise and willpower, are a product of our expectations.

You'll change the way you think about and structure your daily life after listening to David.

Be well and till next time,

Daniel