Bio Alchemy: The Daily Biohacking Podcast

Dr Kári Stefánsson is one of the world's most famous and outspoken geneticists. A native of Iceland — a country I call home most of the year — Dr Stefánsson is the founder and CEO of Iceland's deCODE Genetics (https://www.decode.com/), a company that's conducted some of the world's most groundbreaking research into the topic of human genetics, and what makes us tick on the DNA level. Although you may not have heard of him, Dr Stefánsson is something of a celebrity in Iceland, due to the extensive research he's done on studying the genetics of the Icelandic population, as well as recording and collating genealogical data of Icelandic people and their descendents. It's not well known, but Iceland has some of the best recorded written ancestry data in the world, with many Icelandic citizens able to trace their ancestors all the way back to the settling of the island in the 9th century — over 1,000 years ago.   In this episode, we talk about the field of genetics, how genetic mutations impact our species as a who