I really liked learning about personal genomics from watching this interview. I especially liked learning about the psychology behind the projects conducted. One example was learning about how many friends of Church, when pregnant, did not want to even know their future baby's gender. This was very surprising to me as I would assume that since your baby is such a large part of your life, most people would want to know the gender prior to prepare. I also was surprised by the fact that 80% of babies that receive a certain gender assignment in the US are female in contrast to in China. I did some research and found that indeed women have a preference for women while men do not have a significant preference, probably why in the US the female gender is more often chosen than the male gender. In contrast, in China and India, perhaps due to traditional gender roles and much more restricting societal structures males are preferred.
If I had conducted the interview I probably would ask about what the future of genomics is and what the dangers could be, especially in relation to science fiction, a genre I enjoy very much. One book I read recently was Brave New World, and it clearly demonstrates the damage that hypercontrolled genomics can cause to an entire society. Another is Oryx and Crake, where genetically engineered humans take over the world after a wipeout of others. I would like to ask what the ethical and moral repercussions of adjusting one's genome are.
https://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2004/041213.Goodwin.gender.html#:~:text=Their%20results%20show%20that%20women,showing%20a%20preference%20for%20men.
Similar to you, I found Church's discussion of how most parents in the U.S. choose to have girls particularly interesting and surprising. Your research sheds some light on why this may be the case; some of my female friends do express that they want at least one daughter. It may be that women are likely to take on most of the burden of raising the children and therefore have stronger preferences about their children's genders.
I agree that much of my prior conception of genomics has been shaped by science fiction. As this genre explores, genomics raises a host of potential ethical issues that would have been interesting to hear more about in the interview – I thought that the ethics section of the video was surprisingly short.