Jay talks with Joan Slonczewski, Professor of Microbiology at Kenyon College and auther of The Highest Frontier, a hard science science fiction story involving genetic experimentation in a space habitat.  Joan and Jay discuss a future characterized by do-it-yourself (DIY) genetic engineering, a future described by Freeman Dyson in his NY Review of Books essay "Our BioTechFuture."

Those joining us in Second Life can observe an ultraphyte first hand.