Interview with Jenny Kleeman, author of Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death


Jenny Kleeman, author of Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death, recommends a great selection of books with us this week! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Jenny's book:

Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death

Jenny Kleeman

Review from Book Depository: What if we could have babies without having to bear children, eat meat without killing animals, have the perfect sexual relationship without compromise or choose the time of our painless death?

To find out, Jenny Kleeman has interviewed a sex robot, eaten a priceless lab-grown chicken nugget, watched foetuses growing in plastic bags and attended members-only meetings where people learn how to kill themselves.

Many of the people Kleeman has met say they are finding solutions to problems that have always defined and constricted humankind. But what truly motivates them? What kind of person devotes their life to building a death machine? What kind of customer is desperate to buy an artificially intelligent sex doll - and why? Who is campaigning against these advances, and how are they trying to stop them? And what about the many unintended consequences such inventions will inevitably unleash?

Sex Robots & Vegan Meat is not science fiction. It's not about what might happen one day - it's about what is happening right now, and who is making it happen. In the end, it asks a simple question: are we about to change what it means to be human . . . for ever?

Buy On:

Book Depository €12.70 Waterstones £14.99 Wordery $15.37

(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)

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Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?

I really love Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed. It was published in 2015 but it's even more relevant today, I think. It was the first book to really explore the causes and effects of online shaming, and the relish with which virtual mobs descend on people who've made perceived transgressions. Some of the interviews with ordinary people whose lives have been ruined by one bad joke still haunt me, five years after reading it.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Jon Ronson

Review From Book Depository For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job.

A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.

Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws - and the very scary part we all play in it.

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Book Depository €8.81 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $9.87

(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)

Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?

I read Atul Gawande's Being Mortal as part of my research for the future of death section of my book. It was warm, accessible and surprisingly hopeful. Gawande is able to seamlessly combine his personal and professional experience with a wealth of research that exposes how far removed we are from death, and the dangers of prolonging life at the expense of a 'good' death.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande

Review From Book Depository For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do.

Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.

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Book Depository €8.51 Waterstones £9.99 Wordery $11.28

(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)

Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?

There are so many, and part of the joy of being a parent is getting to discover them all again with my own kids.

I loved How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban, fabulously illustrated by Quentin Blake. It's just so weird and zany, and ultimately it's a story about how we can all triumph if we are content to be ourselves.

I also adored The Amazing Adventures of Chilly Billy by Peter Mayle. The story of a tiny man who lives in your fridge and turns the light on when you open the fridge door - what's not to like? There are so many incredible adventures in the book - like the fridge Olympics, or the caterpillar who gets accidentally stuck in the fridge when he falls asleep in a cabbage. I never looked at my fridge in quite the same way again after reading it.

How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen

Russell Hoban

Review From Book Depository: Tom loves to fool around. He fools around with dropping things from bridges into rivers and he fools around with barrels in alleys. He fools around so much that his maiden aunt, Miss Fidget Wonkham-Strong (who wears an iron hat and takes no nonsense from anyone), sends for Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen to teach Tom a lesson. "Captain Najork," says Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, "is seven feet tall, with eyes like fire and a voice like thunder. He teaches fooling-around boys the lesson they so badly need, and it is not one that they soon forget." Captain Najork lays down a challenge: they will play womble, muck and speedball - in that order. And it turns out not to be Tom who gets taught a lesson after all!

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Abe Books £2.59

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The Amazing Adventures of Chilly Billy

Peter Mayle

Review From Book Depository: Bestselling author Peter Mayle and acclaimed children's book illustrator Arthur Robins combine their talents in this delightful children's storybook. Once you've met Chilly Billy and heard of his adventures inside the refrigerator, you'll never open the fridge door in quite the same way again! Chilly Billy is a fun and lovable character you won't forget. Reissued exclusively through Escargot Books. Illustrated in black and white.

Buy On:

Book Depository €5.81

(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)

Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?

I definitely prefer reading on paper, but I have more time to myself when I'm walking or driving around, so audiobooks have helped me keep up.

Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?

I love my local, the Owl Bookshop, mainly because the children's section is so inviting. That's where I spend a lot of my time - both my kids are avid readers.

Foyles on the Southbank is also wonderful - their non-fiction section is really expansive and the staff are very tolerant of my marauding kids while I browse it. Plus, there's the second hand book market underneath Waterloo Bridge to enjoy just a few minutes away.

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Huge thanks to Jenny for answering my questions and for her great recommendations! Please don't forget to check out her book Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death.
Daryl


Image Copyrights: Pan Macmillan (Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex & Death, So You've Been Publicly Shamed), Profile Books Ltd (Being Mortal), Walker Books Ltd (How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen), Escargot Books Online Limited (The Amazing Adventures of Chilly Billy)


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