Host: Chris Mooney

Human cloning. Synthetic biology. Mood (and mind) altering drugs. Personalized medicine.

Such topics are rarely at the top of the political agenda. Yet the changes they're causing, often below the radar, are monumental. Issues of personhood, identity, ethics, are at play. The human future may be very different from the human past as these changes are negotiated and assimilated.

And so may human politics.

To help us prepare for this radical future is Jonathan Moreno, author of the new book The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, which underscores the strange bedfellow allegiances that may occur in what has been called our "biological century."

Jonathan Moreno is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is one of 13 Penn Integrates Knowledge university professors.

He is a historian, medical ethicist, and philosopher, and was part of Barack Obama's transition team.