23andMe Bankruptcy | A Coating That Can Slow A Golf Ball’s Roll

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.5 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating could make golf balls roll more reliably on greens with different conditions.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:11.2	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato.
0:14.1	And I'm Flora Lichten.
0:15.7	If you are one of the 15 million people who sent a sample of your DNA to the company 23 and Me to learn about your
0:22.7	genes or your family history. You might want to wrestle up that login information.
0:28.5	23 and me declared bankruptcy this week. And now consumer advocates are urging people who've shared
0:34.8	their genetic information with a company to delete their data.
0:39.0	Here to fill us in on this and other science stories from the week is Kathleen Davis,
0:43.5	producer at Science Friday based in New York. Kathleen, welcome. Hey, Flora. What's up with 23 and me?
0:50.7	Yeah, so I mean, a lot of people are probably familiar with 23 and me. As you said,
0:55.2	about 15 million people have used it. So this is a company where you spit in a tube and you send a
1:02.2	saliva sample in the mail to the company and then they analyze it. So I think commonly a lot of
1:08.5	people use this to find out about their ancestry, which is cool, right?
1:12.6	I mean, you can unlock part of your family tree.
1:14.9	Yeah, of course.
1:15.4	This also provided customers with information about diseases that they might be predisposed to.
1:20.6	If you're a carrier for any of these diseases, potentially, there's just a whole suite of things that you could actually unlock with this sample.
1:29.3	Last Sunday, 23 and me filed for bankruptcy, and they're looking for a new buyer.
1:33.6	So consumer rights advocates, including the Attorney General of California,
1:37.6	are now warning people that their medical information and data that they've shared with the company
1:42.9	might be at risk in a possible buyout.
1:46.3	What's the risk?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Science Friday and WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Science Friday and WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.