Yo, Is This Racist?

Thank you!!! This show is helping me and gadzillions of others more than you’ll ever know. I’ve been following Andrew for ages, but dang it, the conversations with Tawny take the analysis to a whole new level. Keep up the awesome work, and f the trolls cause they’re just jealous.

Agree or don’t agree, they are very witty and great entertainers. The 3rd guy that jumps in also does a great job. Sorry dude. Don’t know your name. Kevin maybe.

Ok. I really enjoyed this show a lot, but as someone who did a PhD and postdoc in biology, I’m just throwing my hands up at this point — I finally turned it off mid-episode today because Andrew will NOT stop saying that people can easily sequence their DNA at home. The most recent episode even included equally uninformed thoughts on the subject from a listener. When Andrew brought it up in a previous episode, I brushed it off as just a joke, but it’s veering into misinformation at this point, at a time when science is under attack. PCR ≠ sequencing Places like 23 and me (and I agree it was never a good idea to send your DNA to them) used PCR to amplify different fragments of DNA, and then used microarrays (chips with bits of DNA that the amplified DNA might bind to) for genotyping — this tells you what gene variants you may have and is not DNA sequencing. I think they later also offered exome sequencing, which IS actual DNA sequencing, but just the bits that code for proteins (~1% of the genome). This process is not the same as PCR. Whole genome sequencing is done by some companies but is a lot more expensive because it’s a lot more involved, usually requiring extensive computation in order to piece all the sequenced bits back together. All of this would be very difficult and expensive to do at home! Covid PCR tests are only amplifying one little piece of viral RNA and are not comparable to sequencing your genome

One of my favorites!