Q&A with Robert L. Klitzman

Robert L. Klitzman is the author of the new book Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Way We Create Children. A medical doctor, he is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. His other books include Am I My Genes? and When Doctors Become Patients, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including JAMA and The New York Times.

Q: Why did you decide to focus on reproductive technology in your new book?

A: I wrote a previous book, Am I My Genes?, seven years ago. I interviewed people about why they were getting genetic testing—people who were at risk of different diseases, including Huntington’s disease. If you have the gene, you will die of it. There’s a 50 percent chance that each of your children will have it.

People said, Should I have kids? Should I abort the fetus? If I screen my genes, what will that mean about my own life—I would have been screened out as an embryo.

And also, a friend asked me to be a sperm donor, that I wouldn’t have to be involved in raising the kid. I thought, That’s interesting. There are friends undergoing IVF, gay couples having kids. Ten percent of all people in the world are infertile, and people are using IVF, and there are a lot of questions.

The U.S. is one of three countries where you can buy or sell human eggs. It’s the only country where you can rent a womb. It’s become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and with the technology, you can change the genes of your descendants.

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that particularly surprised you?

A: I started to interview doctors, patients, people at IVF clinics. I thought I’d focus on screening, but I realized there was a whole range of issues: how much it costs, how much is a child worth, how people struggle with that.

I was struck with the fact that in this country, most egg or sperm donors are anonymous. In many countries, that’s illegal. A man’s sperm can produce 130 kids. In Europe, there are no anonymous donors. In Ireland, you get a birth certificate that says, created by donor sperm.

Only three countries buy or sell human eggs. I was surprised. This is eugenics—the price of eggs go up with SAT scores. You want your son to look like Brad Pitt, they will give you a donor. We’ve turned reproduction into a multi-billion-dollar business, and it is unregulated in the U.S.

And also what struck me is for a woman who want a kid and is infertile, how hard that is. There are lot of emotional issues.

Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to the future of reproductive technology and the ethical issues associated with it?

A: I think one big issue is going to be gene editing. We have a technology, CRISPR, that’s like genetic scissors. It’s been done in China. Increasingly, this will be done—put in genes related to socially desirable traits. You can make children taller. There are genes associated with IQ. There may be risks involved. These are one set of concerns I have.

The other is that IVF clinics report data to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] but it’s voluntary. We need more understanding of what’s going on. Seven percent of all births in Denmark use IVF. The prediction is that there will be 10 percent in the U.S. born this way, and with the ability to select genes.

This will enable us to get rid of certain genes, but it will be expensive. Breast cancer will be a disease of poor people, as the wealthy will be able to screen for it. Will there be a need for more insurance coverage? 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: The term is sometimes used in the narrow sense, to alter the genes of a child, but I use it metaphorically, for a range of issues. What egg and sperm donor we choose, the embryos we reject—we are now in the business of designing babies. We are affecting, and have altered, reproduction. Making it technological gives us a wide range of choices.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on a different project. The working title is, Doctor, Will You Pray for Me?. It’s about what patients can teach us about religion and spirituality today. Religion and spirituality issues come up, but we don’t teach doctors to deal with it.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I wrote the book with several audiences in mind. One is a general educated audience. Everyone has someone they know, even if they’re not aware of it, who have used artificial reproductive technology. But there’s a taboo about it. It’s a huge multi-billion-dollar business—you can get rid of diseases, but there are ethical issues. For people trying to have a child, it’s important, but for a general audience, there are meaningful stories.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Nov. 22

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Nov. 22, 1819: George Eliot born.

Q&A with Maren Meinhardt

Maren Meinhardt is the author of the new biography Alexander von Humboldt: How the Most Famous Scientist of the Romantic Age Found the Soul of Nature. She is an editor at the Times Literary Supplement in London.

Q: Why did you decide to write this biography of the scientist Alexander von Humboldt?

A: Most people are aware of the German Romantics, but we tend to think of them mostly in terms of art and literature. Humboldt continued the Romantic project in the scientific realm. His insistence on seeing nature as inalienable from his own self is something that particularly resonates with us today.

Apart from that, Humboldt is an intriguing person to figure out. Who was that Prussian mining official who was ready to throw away his career, his reputation, possibly his life – just for the pursuit of a vaguely defined dream? How could I resist the call of such an alluring character?

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

A: I read his letters and diaries, and found myself marveling at how vulnerable and funny the person was who would become the most celebrated scientist of his day. What came as a particular revelation was how often his schedule of exploration was not guided by careful planning and scientific necessity, but instead by pure chance.

Later, I walked as much in Humboldt’s footsteps as I was able to, to help me get a feeling for what he saw and experienced. I visited the sites of Humboldt’s childhood and youth in Berlin, and I travelled to Castleton (in the Peak District, UK) to see the system of caves and caverns he had written about.

Most importantly, I travelled to Ecuador, following his route as closely as possible. Here are two links to this trip, one written by my friend, Jennie Erin Smith, who travelled with me, and the other one by me.

On this trip, I discovered quite how arduous Humboldt’s journey had been. This was brought home with particular vividness when we got stuck on a volcano in the Andes, the Cotopaxi, and had to be rescued.

Apart from my insight into Humboldt, I also had the chance to discover that, if your 8-year-old daughter spends the night in a car up a mountain, cold and suffering from altitude sickness, you don’t feel you’re making a particular success of combining writing with being a mother.

Q: You write, "Alexander von Humboldt was deeply committed to the Romantic project, both in his science and in the bold way that he chose to live his life." What are some of the most important ways that Romanticism affected von Humboldt?

A: The Romantics lived in a time of rapid societal change, and traditional values and forms of living were subject to challenge and change.

In his personal life, Humboldt rejected almost any established idea of how life should be lived by someone of his background: he never contemplated marriage, instead attempting to live in a ménage a trois with the man he loved and this man’s wife; he abandoned a safe and promising career; he put whatever money he had towards publishing his books; later in life, he lived in a household with his servant and his servant’s family, who became, to all intents and purposes, his own family.

But what is most important is Romanticism’s influence on his approach to science. Nature was more to Humboldt than merely an object to be studied by an objective observer: the scientist, too, was part of nature, and his own subjective responses were data that could not be separated from the study of nature.

Q: You begin the book by mentioning von Humboldt's journey to the Americas in the early years of the 19th century. What impact did that trip have on him and his work?

A: South America was, in a sense, where Humboldt truly found himself. Never having fitted into the narrow world of 18th-century Prussia, he discovered that there indeed existed a place that was congenial to him.

Not only did his health improve – the young man who had been prone to ill health all his life now boasted of having suffered not so much as even a bout of sea sickness. 

But more importantly, he found that the Americas had wrought a change in him: his experience had been widened, and the natural scientist had been transformed from an impartial observer into somebody who stood in a mutual relationship with nature.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I wish I could say! But there is some unsympathetic magic by which an idea, if talked about before it’s quite ready, tends to wither and die. But I think the German Romantics and I are not finished with each other quite yet.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: The Romantic search for transgressing boundaries of tradition, to find new and better forms of living, is something that speaks to all of us. This is even more true at this particular junction in our history, where reactionary forces, which not so long ago we thought we’d comfortably overcome, have found their way back into the mainstream.

Humboldt, who refused to be defined by his class, his nationality, and even his sexuality, shines brightly, even if it is from a great distance.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Nov. 21

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Nov. 21, 1694: Voltaire born.

Q&A with Shalini Shankar

Shalini Shankar is the author of the book Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z's New Path to Success. Her other books include Desi Land and Advertising Diversity. She is a professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at Northwestern University, and she lives in Evanston, Illinois, and Brooklyn, New York.

Q: Why did you decide to write about the National Spelling Bee and what it says about Generation Z?

A: As an anthropologist who studies youth culture and language, among other things, it seemed like a perfect melding of my interests.

Having enjoyed the 2002 documentary Spellbound, I was especially curious about why the contest itself and its young competitors today seem so different than the kids in the film. Specifically, they seemed much better prepared and more comfortable with the cameras and scale of it.

I also noticed that the words had gotten much more difficult, and came to learn that the whole event had become more competitive. I wanted to understand why that was and how this might align with broader changes in childhood.

Looking more broadly at Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012 (this end date has not been confirmed) allowed me to think about the changes in the Bee as part of broader shifts in the United States.

Q: You write, "About a decade ago, I noticed what others had also observed, that Indian American kids had started to win every year." Why do you think that is?

A: It is a very curious phenomenon, and attributable to a few factors. One is linked to the composition of Gen Z, which contains the most children of immigrants of any U.S. generation.

Among these immigrants, Indian Americans with children in the Bee are by and large first-generation immigrants who met the criteria for the 1990 Immigration Act passed by George H. W. Bush. This act solicited highly skilled STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professionals with advanced educational credentials.

They have, in turn, emphasized education and “brain sports” for their children. Their children participate in two “minor league” spelling circuits open to children of South Asian descent, as well as other cerebral contests. This gives them far more opportunities to study and compete in spelling bees especially, and many of them do so quite intently.

Q: What do you think of the result in the 2019 spelling bee, when there were eight co-champions?

A: It was spectacular! Since I first started this project in 2013, kids have been telling me something I had a hard time believing: “We don’t compete against each other. We compete against the dictionary.” I just couldn’t get my mind around how, even with co-champions in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

By 2018, when I finished research, I still didn’t understand the underlying logic of how that idea worked for them. In 2019, I finally did. Eight kids crushed the dictionary together, and they were magnificent.

I understand the viewpoint of people who think the Bee should only have one champion, but watching eight win was electrifying. Their prowess was formidable, especially when all eight of them withstood the three final rounds before being named champion. The expressions of surprise and delight on their faces were unlike anything I’ve seen at the Bee.

Q: What do you see looking ahead for the spelling bee?

A: Well, the only direction it can go is harder! They have to reconfigure the word list to address the elevated skill level of the 2019 spellers. Elite spellers will be expecting this. I wouldn’t be surprised if new measures are put into place as well, to avoid another eight-way tie.

Each year the Bee seems to get bigger and more intense, so I predict 2020 will be an especially extreme in that regard.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am working on a project about Generation Z, aiming to understand their broader character and diversity. I am inspired by their activism and impressed by their digital fluency.

As a mom of two Gen Z kids (ages 9 and 13), I also share their concern about how competitive everything has become and how uncertain their future feels.

I’m especially interested in capturing the racial and ethnic diversity of Gen Z more broadly than I did in Beeline, focusing on how children of immigrants and mixed-race kids, along with African Americans and Native Americans, are changing the meaning of youth and what is possible during childhood.

I’m in the early stages, but the research is fascinating and promising so far.  

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: If you’re on the fence about whether you want to pick up Beeline, here’s my pitch: If you’re someone who cares about sports, education, media, youth, language, diversity, immigration, or the United States, I promise there is something in there for you.

Hope you enjoy it and please review it online if you do!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Nov. 20

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Nov. 20, 1908: Alistair Cooke born.

Q&A with Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the author of the new book Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century. Her other books include Plumes and Extraterritorial Dreams. She is Professor of History, Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA. She lives in Santa Monica, California.

Q: You write that you first learned about the Levy family while working on a previous book project. Can you say more about how you decided to write their family history?

A: I first began working on the Levy family, the subjects of Family Papers, while researching another book: an English-language translation of the first Ladino memoir ever written (Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aron Rodrigue, A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica, with Isaac Jerusalmi as translator, 2012). 

The author of that memoir, Sa’adi Besaelel a-Levi (1820-1903), spent the last years of his life writing a Ladino-language memoir to air a lifetime’s worth of grievances. 

Extraordinarily, the sole copy of this document, written in soletreo (the unique handwritten cursive of Ladino), outlived wars; the collapse of the empire in which it was conceived; a major fire in Salonica; and the Holocaust, during which Jewish texts and libraries as well as Jewish bodies were targeted by the Nazis for annihilation.

The manuscript passed through four generations of Sa’adi’s family, traveling from Salonica to Paris, from there to Rio de Janeiro and, finally, to Jerusalem—somehow eluding destruction or disappearance despite the collapse of the Salonican Jewish community and the dispersal of the author’s descendants over multiple countries and continents. 

Having spent years considering Sa’adi’s account of 19th-century Salonica, I was left wondering how his handwritten memoir came to travel such a circuitous path, and what had become of Sa’adi’s descendants. 

These questions launched me on a decade-long quest to tell the collective story of Sa’adi’s branching family: a journey that took me to a dozen countries, dozens of archives, and into the homes of a Sephardic clan that constituted its own, remarkable global diaspora. 

Q: How did you conduct your research, and what did you learn that particularly surprised you?

A: Reconstructing the history of the globally-branching Levy family has taken me into the living rooms (and private collections) of family members from Rio de Janeiro to Kolkata, Thessaloniki to Manchester--people who today cannot read the various languages of the documents they hold, but who still have a palpable connection to their deep past. 

To supplement these family papers (which revealed but also kept secrets), I consulted 30 archives in Brazil, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and the United States.  Travel documents; naturalization papers; birth, death, and medical records; letters exchanged by relatives, lovers, and friends; business papers, even a baptismal certificate; all told, these scattered sources have allowed me to trace an intimate arc of the 20th century.

Q: The family includes a notorious World War II war criminal, as well as many relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. What is the legacy of the war for the Levy family today?

A: The Holocaust eviscerated the Levys, destroying entire branches of the family tree (in Greece and France, especially). The losses that so devastated those left behind disrupted intimacies and led to new relationships among survivors driven together by grief, seeking solace in one another and, in some cases, cooperating to file reparation claims from Germany. Slowly, agonizingly, they rebuilt.

As you’ve mentioned, the most devastating drama of Family Papers is the story of a great-grandchild of Sa’adi’s who abetted the Nazi annihilation of the Jews of Salonica. This man, head of occupied Salonica’s Jewish Police, is said to have been a viscous sadist. Recollections of his actions, which swirl through Greek-, Hebrew-, Ladino-, and English-language survivor testimony, are nightmarish. After the war, Sa’adi’s descendant proved the only Jew in all of Europe to be tried by a state (Greece) and executed for his complicity with the Nazis. 

Strikingly, the family never wrote of this terrible trauma, not in letters, memoirs, diaries, or testimonies. They even excised their disgraced relative from family trees. In time, the facts the family buried became unknown to their descendants: including the war criminal’s own daughter. Unknown, that is, until the publication of this book.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the family's story?

A: Family Papers is an Ottoman story, a Jewish story, a Mediterranean story, and a story of single, globally-branching family diaspora. 

But beyond what it tells us about Sephardic Jewry or the Levy family, it is also a meditation on how letters mattered to a family, holding them together after time, distance, and migration tore them apart. I hope the book invites readers to reflect on all that we have lost in the digital age, when so few of us send or receive letters, fret over their crafting, or stain them with our tears.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Just now I’m exploring the astonishing history of a Harlem-based, Sephardic-owned, 1940s botánica—a spiritual supply shop that sold occult, spiritual, and mystical wares (medicinal herbs, oils, amulets, statuary, candles, spells) to Caribbean, African American, and Latin American clients. 

It’s a wonderful story, but also opens up questions about Sephardic Jews’ place within the racial fabric of the Americas. It’s too early to say if I’m on the trail of a book or not, but I always enjoy the hunt!

--Interview with Deborah Kalb