BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Forest 4-0, Forest 4-0.

I'm Palmacky and I play Pan in Forest 404.

But this week's pod talk bounces off the character of Thea.

At 300 years old, Thia is an augmented human, in her own words, as much plastic as flesh.

So, humans evolving technologically, humans becoming cyborgs, what do we think? Good thing, bad thing?

In our fifth pod talk, we meet Professor Andy Meyer, a bioethicist whose research focuses on

wide-ranging questions about modified humanity, from AI to outer space.

Here's Andy.

What fascinates me about the character theory is the fact that she lives till 300 years.

And my entry into human enhancement was about living longer.

And it seems to me that the entire project of Western medicine

has been about trying to create longer, healthier lives.

And so immortality, or the prospect of living much longer,

is the kind of ideal way of enhancing humanity.

And to do that, we'd have to do lots of things along the way.

So what really distinguishes our present times and the possibility of becoming a

cyborg is a growing erosion of chance within our lives. These technologies are allowing us to make

many more choices about our destination, about where we're going. And for many people, that's a huge

burden. Many people would love to just let people come into existence and see what happens.

But actually genetic modification, life extension, all these technologies allow us to take ownership

and responsibility for those choices.

...