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UnDisciplined: Consumer Genomics And Getting 'Good To Go'

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the intersection of science and personal decision-making — and, of course, we're looking at it from two very different perspectives. 

First, we talked to a former geneticist who has tried out almost every consumer DNA test. 

Tina Hesman Saey has studied everything from tobacco to yeast in her days as a researcher, and today helps people better connect to science as the lead writer for Science News. We also chatted with a former lab researcher who has taken a deep dive into the science of exercise recovery. 

Christie Aschwanden is a former researcher, the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and the author of a new book, "Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery."

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling Lifespan with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning Longevity Plan with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, Superlative, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.