WEBVTT - The Story: Is Your Pregnancy App Actually Helping? 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.960 Welcome to tex Stuff. I'm as Volocian here with Cara Prices. 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.439 Has social media ever made you feel superstitious or paranoid? 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:21.840 Yeah? 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.160 I mean I've dipped my toe into the world of 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.760 social media Instagram. I'm getting push notifications about being bold 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.960 and about being depressed. I know I'm bold, am I 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.879 depressed too? That makes me feel a bit paranoid that 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.159 the algorithm may know more about me than I know 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:39.800 about myself. 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.839 I similarly get fed things that I've searched for that 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:47.520 I don't want to know about myself. Why do you ask, Well, 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.160 I feel like this is kind of a universal state. 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.200 This tech induce paranoia, like most people can relate to it. 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:55.840 Nobody would be like, yeah, you know, I just think 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.240 social media is just such a fun, clear place to 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.960 rest my head. And I actually spoke about this feeling 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.560 with Amanda Hess, who is a writer at large for 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.240 The New York Times covering technology and internet culture. 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.800 She actually she wrote a fascinating column in the last 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.800 couple of weeks actually about somebody who live streamed their 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.560 birth on Twitch. So I'm very interested in her in 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.680 her take in general. In the story, she finds. 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:22.480 She's super smart, and I would definitely check out her 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.680 book if you haven't checked it out. It's called Second Life, 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.199 Having a Child in the Digital Age. And she said 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:32.040 that even though she's normally really rational, getting pregnant changed 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.959 her relationship to technology and kind of fed into a 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.640 lot of superstitious feelings that I think most women feel 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:40.399 went pregnant. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:47.559 Pregnancy is such a time of imagination and conjecture, and 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.680 I had never been pregnant before. I didn't have many 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.360 close friends who had undergone pregnancy, and so I was 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.280 just turning to the Internet for everything, Like I ate 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:04.440 a piece of turkey that tasted bad, Like what's going 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:06.960 to happen? Like do I need to make myself throw up? 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:08.560 Do I need to go to the hospital? I was 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.720 like constantly googling stuff like that. 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.440 And Amanda's superstitions were complicated by the fact that her 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:16.440 pregnancy actually became complex. 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.160 When I was about seven months pregnant, I had a 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.840 routine ultrasound where my doctor, as he put it, saw 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:29.360 something he didn't like, and at first my doctors didn't 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.519 know what it was, but he suggested that he thought 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.400 it might be a genetic syndrome called beck with Weedaman syndrome, 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:41.320 which to me was like a jumble of nonsense sounds when. 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:46.680 He said that, well, that's the doctor meeting that nobody 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.720 wants to have. And also how brave of Amanda to 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:53.320 write about this and share it on the podcast. But 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:55.960 what is beck with Weedaman syndrome? 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.720 So Amanda said that b to BUS is a genetic 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.320 disorder where hearts of your body grow faster or bigger 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.640 than is typical. It's very rare, and it actually took 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.079 a month for her doctor to confirm that her son 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.680 did in fact have b TOWS and during that time, 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.959 like you can imagine all the googling she was doing. 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.480 And that's where I wanted to start my conversation with Amanda, 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:22.360 reflecting on that moment of uncertainty right after her son's diagnosis. 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.400 Even before my pregnancy was complex, it was like a 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:29.600 very trying experience for me. You have to like sacrifice 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:32.720 a lot and endure a lot during pregnancy, and I 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:34.200 found myself thinking. 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.840 About what my child was going to be like. And so. 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.680 When I got this possible diagnosis for my son, I 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.880 immediately googled it as well, and I found that like 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:51.600 the prospect of my son having a genetic condition potentially 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.760 having like a catastrophic complication where I needed to make 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.880 decisions about my pregnancy and I needed to start to 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:03.840 imagine him differently, imagine myself differently, imagine my role as 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:04.680 a parent differently. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:06.080 It so. 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:11.280 Limited my imagination around what my son was going to 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.360 be like and what our life was going to be like. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.000 And the first way I did that was just like 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:20.760 showing me pictures of kids who have BWS. When you 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.839 meet them in person, they're like human beings and their 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:24.320 kids and. 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:25.559 They're beautiful and really cute. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.599 And when you meet them online, it's like pictures that 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.880 have been taken from medical journals. So the kid is 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.880 sort of like in this like very medicalized environment, hooked 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.760 up to like wires and stuff. My son was born 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:42.520 with a very large tongue, so you would see kids 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:44.440 with their tongue just like stuck out as far as 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.320 they could make it stick out for the doctor to 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:48.000 take a photo, like their. 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:48.920 Eyes blacked out. 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:54.520 And then photos from tabloid reporting. I found a lot 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:57.359 of photos from the Daily Mail, and so I was 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.120 like absorbing all of this new like imagine nation fodder 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.359 from the Internet that was from the medical world. Or 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.520 it was from the tabloid world, or it was from Reddit, 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:14.400 where they were just like teenagers speculating about bws and 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:17.640 like seeing pictures of babies with bws and giving their 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.200 thoughts about whether they thought they should be born. And 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.800 it was only like after my son was born and 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.080 I met him as like a person, as opposed to 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.200 this idea that was inside of me, that I realized 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.440 I had just like bathed my brain and all of 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:38.240 these distortions and lies about what he would be like 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.200 and what our life would be like. And that was 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:44.880 really when I started to think about just how influential 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.960 and damaging that experience. 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:49.200 Had been for me. 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.400 You know, it's almost like the Internet immediately turns into 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.520 a Ripley's believe it or not when you go looking 0:05:55.520 --> 0:06:00.719 for something, and it's never the sort of tempered, middle 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:02.960 of the road version of the thing that you're looking for. 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:05.520 And I think, you know, like the first time I 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.599 googled bws and I found an article in the Daily Mail, 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.760 I was like, well, my child is going to have 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:17.760 something so rare and alarming to other people that you 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.800 could write a newspaper article about it, And that I 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.320 think really affected how I started to think about it. 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.479 But then I realized later as I was like fact 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.039 checking and researching the book, that they do like publish 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.040 this article like every year about a different kid who 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.160 has BWS. So once you see all of them, there's 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.320 like fifteen or twenty articles, and you're like, oh, well, 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.200 it's actually, in fact, there are so many children in 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:43.800 the world that it's not quite so odd. And once 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:46.680 I got an actual diagnosis for my son before he 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.839 was born, I was able to join like Facebook groups 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.600 for people who have BWS and their families, and there 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:57.719 are like thousands of people in these groups, and so 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.839 eventually I was able to navigate to a part of 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:07.159 the internet that was comforting and helpful and helped me 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:08.800 realize there are many children. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.920 Like my son. I was not alone. There's so much 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.160 support there, and. 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.400 There's such a diversity of people who are in these groups, 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.360 which made me feel like it alleviated some of the 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.400 guilt I had about feeling like I had done something 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:29.920 by not eating the right leafy green, or by drinking 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.120 a glass of wine, or by having a tablet of 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.760 an anti anxiety medication, that I had caused this somehow 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.600 by just the kind of person I am, but at 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.840 first it was a really horrifying experience to google it. 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.360 But it is interesting that the thing that could make 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.600 you so miserable is also the thing that provided you 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.119 a safe harbor. Social media has that sort of double 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:51.160 edged nature. 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.160 Yeah, I mean, I think if you're someone who's dealing 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.760 with something that is rare, or at least like feels 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.360 rare in your community, the internet can be such a lifeline. 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.320 But it's also most helpful as something that is like 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:10.240 a supplement to my real human life. And when I 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:14.720 was pregnant, my son didn't present as a human yet. 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.680 It was as if I was experiencing him only through 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.800 the Internet, which is a terrifying way to experience another person, 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.200 especially someone who's going to be like so important to 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.440 you and who you are, You're the most important person 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:30.520 to them when they're born. And so I ultimately felt 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:36.800 like sad that my first encounter or like perceived encounter 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:41.560 with him was this of like fear and judgment, and 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.679 so it took me a while to sort of like 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.800 untangle myself from those feelings. 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:49.320 What are some of the other ways that you felt 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.760 pregnancy technology was priming you to see surveillance as something normal, 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.480 and what do you think are the consequences of that? 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.040 Yeah, I mean I think The first real pregnancy tech 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.880 that I was spending time with was Flow, my period tracker, 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:11.319 which when I was using it as a. 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.400 Period tracker, I loved it. 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.920 It was such a great app I'm just such a 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.200 forgetful person that, like I would just have no idea 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.840 when my period was coming, and so having this alert 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:25.760 in my phone that was like just so you know, 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.480 if you feel uncomfortable and sad and angry in the 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.440 next day, maybe it's because of this. But then as 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.320 I started to think about getting pregnant, I realized that 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.440 it was also telling me when it thought that I 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.240 was at my most fertile, and so it became this 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:48.000 kind of like biological clock very quickly for me, something 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.760 that I have always thought of as like this sexist 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.400 and corny idea that there's like this ticking clock in 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.760 the back of women's minds, but it really it made 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.200 it real for me. It's like here, it is in 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.000 your hand. And then I used it to get pregnant, 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:07.199 and I was like very lucky and that I got 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:10.439 pregnant immediately, So I was like, wow, I think really works. 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:12.880 You know, I've been avoiding pregnancy all my life, and 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.600 I tried a couple of times and the app told 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:16.240 me like just what. 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:17.200 To do and it was right. 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.200 So I think at that point I had conferred this 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.840 power onto the app that maybe I wasn't realizing. And 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.360 then when I was pregnant, I realized that this app 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.440 that I had been using once a month, I was 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:34.439 now opening ten times a day. And it wasn't because 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:39.560 there was any new information in there necessarily, it was 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.680 because my mind had started to associate it with my 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.600 future baby, and so I was like thinking about that 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.920 all the time. I wasn't telling all of my family 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:54.120 members or friends or colleagues about it yet because it 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.000 was so early, And so it became this like outlet 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:02.880 for me to have this perosocial relationship with a fetus. 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:08.280 And it showed me this like floating peachy cgi representation 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:13.160 of what the baby looked like at that particular time. 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.680 And it was also like anthropomorphizing the embryo and the 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.960 fetus in this way that's like, this is how many 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:26.560 brain neurons or whatever your baby is accumulating by the hour, 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.679 Like it's getting so smart. Your baby's getting so smart 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.120 and it was like nine weeks gestation or whatever. 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:38.000 Did you feel as though you were interfacing with a 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.640 medical product when you were using Flow or were you 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.800 aware of the fact that it was basically a way 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:46.760 to capture your data and keep you on an app. 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.120 I mean, I don't think I thought of it as 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.800 either of those. I think if you had asked me, 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.800 journalist me, what are you doing, I would have said, Oh, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.200 I'm interfacing with this app that is taking all of 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.800 this personal data from me and is kat asking me 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.160 to like upgrade the service or whatever like every day. 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:09.560 But if you ask the me that exists beneath. 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.920 Rational me, the feeling me, it would have been like, oh, 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.120 this is the time that I'm spending with my baby. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.880 I'm like opening it, seeing what it looks like, looking 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.240 as it transforms. But I think what I didn't realize 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:28.960 at first was I was absorbing what the app thought 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:35.160 was normal, what a normal mother does, what a normal 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:39.040 baby looks like. And at a certain point, once the 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:43.800 fetus gets aged enough, it has a face and it's 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.000 always kind of like peacefully smiling in there. And it 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:51.160 wasn't until I had this abnormal ultrasound that was the 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:53.920 first time really that I realized on an emotional level 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:56.880 that the picture in flow was not a picture of 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.800 my baby, and it was not actually a representation of 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:01.320 what my baby's face looked like. 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.280 And that made me feel betrayed. 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:09.160 Which sounds nuts, But I had spent the first part 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:12.160 of my pregnancy relating to this thing, and now I 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.400 realized that it's not really showing me anything, So I 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:16.199 don't know anything. 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:18.760 Part of what I think you're talking about is this 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:22.880 instinct that we have to like offload our meaning making 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.520 onto apps, right that, like, I'm going to make meaning 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.840 of my life by creating data of myself. 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.200 Yeah, I mean I think for me, I don't know 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:34.920 that the app was helping me, but it got me 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:40.439 used to this idea of like tracking myself and my baby, 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:43.720 even though there was no like achievement that I really 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:46.640 needed to make. But there a bunch of pregnancy apps 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.680 like create things that they hope that you achieve, like 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.640 that you'll be doing pelvic floor exercises every day, or 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.240 that you'll get your like thirty minutes of exercise, and 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:58.559 like yoga doesn't count. 0:13:58.720 --> 0:13:59.000 For me. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.079 It was more just like this drum beat of getting 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:06.600 the information and giving the information back. That felt like 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.280 something I was compelled to do. You know, women are 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.040 used to that, just the sense of being surveilled by 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.040 who knows what and participating in it. But I think 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:23.800 this specifically trains parents to start being the surveilling force 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:29.560 of their kid, and once their baby is born, to 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.360 consider all of these products that tell you if your 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.240 baby is sleeping normally, if your baby is developing normally, 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.200 if they're growing normally, or whatever, when it's just not 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.640 necessary in most cases. And also this idea of normalcy, 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:50.960 it's not a real thing. There's no real normal, average person. 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.920 That's like an idea that we have. But for me, 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.920 as the parent of a kid who ended up having 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:02.320 a disability, I think it can be destructive because there's 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.280 a suggestion beneath all of it that what we really 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.720 all want is like a normal kid. And I found later, 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:10.880 like after my kid was born, that wasn't really what 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.480 I wanted, but it's what I felt that I wanted. 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.080 A long time ago, I reported on a story about 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:21.520 this woman called Gillian Bruckell who was served adoption ads 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.920 after her still birth, and one of the kind of 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.880 conclusions that she came to was the idea that, like Facebook, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:36.560 ads were not programmed to understand any alternative for a childbirth. 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.760 You know, there are no variables that are engineered into 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:43.920 the way we are marketed to as expected mothers. 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.680 I'm always, I feel like in my work, like struggling 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.280 to understand whether technology if it knows so much about us, 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.160 or if it really knows nothing. It's just so easy 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:58.000 to like project ourselves onto this stuff. But I yeah, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:00.480 I found with Flow it made a lot of ass 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:05.680 about how a person felt about their pregnancy, whether it 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.480 was something that they wanted to continue or not. There 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:10.880 was a point in my pregnancy where I got an 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:16.520 ultrasound from a doctor who is an expert in fetal brains, 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.360 and she told me that she saw something. 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:23.160 Unusual in my fetus's brain, but that I would. 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.600 Need to get an MRI in order to confirm the results. 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.640 And I needed to wait a week to get that MRI. 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.080 And once I got THERI, the MRI doctor said the 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.960 brain was perfectly normal looking. But for that week, I 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.400 was like, this was a wanted pregnancy, But now I 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:46.120 have to prepare for the possibility that I am carrying 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.880 a baby who's not going to survive or who I 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.920 would need to consider the possibility of having an abortion. 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.680 And meanwhile I was opening Flow and it was like, 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:01.960 your baby's almost here, Like your baby is almost gonna 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:04.200 be bought, Like your baby is crying in the womb, 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.200 just like it's gonna cry on the outside. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:07.680 And I was so. 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:13.440 Shaken and offended that this the app was like assuming 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.160 all of these things that I felt like, at least 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.000 for that week, we're no longer things that I could assume. 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.880 But yeah, it really it knew my do date and 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:24.359 that was it. 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.560 After the break, the blurry line between pregnancy tech and 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:57.160 eugenics stayed with us. One of the most surprising things 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.000 about the book to me was the kind of rabbit 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.040 hole you go down, connecting eugenics in Silicon Valley to 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.840 genetic screening startups and then how it all shockingly ties 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.119 into feminist theory. So how did you end up making 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.000 these connections and what were some of your big takeaways 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:14.120 from this section. 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:14.359 Of the book. 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.000 I mean, I think at first I was using Flow 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:21.960 and I was just trying to understand, like who started 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:27.800 tracking periods, Like how were people tracking periods before apps? 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.800 Before feminist books in the nineteen seventies, and there's a 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.120 bunch of different theories about what the origins are. 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:36.919 Like there are people who believe that they are. 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.679 Like notches on an ancient whalebone that represent like a 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:44.280 women's cycle. But like what I came to understand was, 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.800 for most of human history, like women's cycles were so 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.480 irregular that it wouldn't have made sense to track a 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:55.679 period just because the level of nutrition or whatever, like 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:59.800 food security of human beings was not what it is today. 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:04.040 But then I found this woman, Marie Stops, who was 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.960 like an early proponent of tracking women's cycles, and she 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:13.399 was doing it in this proto feminist way in the 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.480 early nineteen hundreds. There was a lot of like fascination 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.480 at this time about menstrual cycles, whether they meant that 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:21.760 like women shouldn't be able to work because they were 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.719 like laid out for like several days a month or whatever. 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:29.480 And she started tracking her cycle on paper and then 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:34.920 tracking basically like how horny she was at various parts 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:38.119 in the cycle to prove that like this horniness that 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:43.360 she was experiencing was natural, it was normal, and that 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:45.960 it didn't have anything to do with her husband. And 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.159 it really reminded me of flow because there were so 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:50.320 many things that she was charting that I could chart 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:54.560 in my flow app And then I found out that 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.360 she was like a huge proponent of eugenics, which at 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.399 the time was very popular as it is now again today, 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:04.840 I think, but there was a way in which her 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:09.200 eugenics intersected with this data tracking that she was doing, 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.879 where she was establishing what was normal in a reproductive sense, 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.840 and she was also arguing that people who fall outside 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:23.280 of the bounds of normal, which for her was Northern European, white, 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:25.560 heterosexual whatever. 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.560 Should not be allowed to reproduce. 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:34.520 And so I became interested in like where eugenics was 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:39.080 like sort of coursing through our modern technologies too. And 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.360 I do think there's this drumbeat of normal that they 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:47.199 try to establish often that carries on some of the 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:51.919 ideologies of that movement. But as I went on writing 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:56.199 the book, I found many more Silicon Valley startups that 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.439 are just self consciously eugenic, Like they wouldn't say that 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:05.720 their eugenics, but they are trying to improve the stock 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:06.800 of human babies. 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:09.080 I have a kid who has an. 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:13.240 Overgrowth disorder, which means that he is a higher risk 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:18.960 of having pediatric cancer than most kids. And so when 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:24.919 I read a lot of the advertisements for these testing companies, 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.919 these embryo testing companies, I find that, like the first 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:33.280 thing they often say is pediatric cancer. They're basically like 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:37.320 claiming they can like cure cancer by weeding it out genetically. 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:40.600 And then after that they're introducing other stuff like maybe 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:43.960 someday we could have like an IQ score, or you 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:48.800 could optimize for a baby who was tall and who 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:51.239 had great coordination and maybe they'd be like very good 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:53.600 at playing sports or whatever. But I always found that 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.840 it was sort of like taken as non controversial that 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:02.080 you would want to like eradicates associated with pediatric cancer, 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.400 which I find interesting because like, that's that's my son, right, 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:09.920 and I certainly don't want to eliminate him, and I 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:11.560 think he has a life worth living. 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:13.960 And all of these things, I think, you know, have been. 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:19.160 Coming out and are endorsed by tech political leaders who 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:23.080 are at the same time slashing research for pediatric cancer 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:24.680 or like getting rid of welfare. 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:26.240 And I see all. 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:30.680 The time like comments under these companies ads that are 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:33.159 like this is really going to reduce the amount of 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.240 money that we have to pay for healthcare. And so 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:39.240 when I was first starting to look at this stuff, 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:41.520 I was like, oh, like deep within this stuff, there's 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.359 sort of like hints of eugenics. And then at the 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:45.919 end of writing the book, you know, now that it's 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:49.360 twenty twenty five, it's it's not a hint anymore. 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:55.399 Do you have advice for parents or people who are 0:22:55.400 --> 0:22:59.040 planning on becoming parents and are overwhelmed with figuring out 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:03.040 what role technology should play in parenting? Do you have 0:23:03.119 --> 0:23:05.040 any sensible takeaways? 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:10.080 Yeah, I mean I think the most sensible advice that 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:13.520 I give people is like, try not to buy anything 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:15.040 before your kid is born. 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:17.000 Which defies conventional wisdom. 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:20.160 I know, once the algorithms like figure out you're pregnant, 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:21.960 they're going to be trying to sell you all of 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:22.520 this stuff. 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:24.000 And it's like a. 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:29.240 Five hundred dollars video monitor that like uploads a three 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:32.119 D representation of your child to the cloud that's like 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:35.159