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Martine Rothblatt: The Tranhumanist, Transgender CEO

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Martine Rothblatt is the highest paid female executive in America. Founder of Sirius Radio. She was once a man.  Now she’s pushing digital mind clones for us all.

Martine Rothblatt
Martine Rothblatt

Martine Rothblatt may be the most interesting woman on the planet.  Futurist, Sirius Radio founder, pharmaceutical tycoon, philosopher.  The highest-paid female executive in America.  And born a man.  Now Rothblatt wants to knock down the wall between biological and digital.  Between life and death.  What’s coming, she says, are digital clones.  Mindclones.  We will all have them.  Stuffed with our images, memories, attitudes, voices.  Living by us and beyond us.  Doing chores.  Demanding rights.  This hour, On Point:  the world’s most interesting woman, on digital clones.
- Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Martine Rothblatt, lawyer, futurist, entrepreneur, and highest paid female executive in America, earning $38 million last year. Her new book is, “Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality.” Companies she founded include United Therapeutics, Sirius Radio, and Geostar. She was born Martin Rothblatt, and had sex reassignment surgery in 1994 at age 40.

From Tom's Reading List

New York Magazine: The Trans-Everything CEO - "These days Martine sees herself less as transgender and more as what is known as transhumanist, a particular kind of futurist who believes that technology can liberate humans from the limits of their biology—including infertility, disease, and decay, but also, incredibly, death."

Slate: Human Rights for Cyberconscious Beings - "When the body of a mindclone dies, the mindclone will not feel that they have personally died, although the body will be missed in the same ways amputees miss their limbs but acclimate when given an artificial replacement. The comparison suggests an apt metaphor: The mindclone is to the consciousness and spirit as the prosthetic is to an arm that has lost its hand."
Washington Post: What happens when your grandparents can talk to your grandchildren - "But what if a 3D-printed version of your grandmother could live forever, offering wisdom to a grandchild considering marriage or whether to attend grad school? Things could get weird when mindclones starting marrying one another, pursuing voting rights and trying to have children, all of which Rothblatt anticipates."

Excerpt: 'Virtually Human' by Martine Rothblatt


This program aired on September 11, 2014.

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