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Lab-Grown Babies, Luxury Coffee, and Brain-Reading Headphones

Half a face with headphones emits blue sound waves, merging with a beaker of liquid against a dark background. Text: "IVG".
Image Source: AI Generated via Canva

In this year-end review, Raakhee and Sue revisit past signals to see how the future is rapidly unfolding. They start with the future of Marriage and Family, noting the correlation between education and lower divorce rates and the potential disruption from tech love (AI companionship) and lab-grown babies (IVG/in vitro gametes). The ability to create sperm and eggs from stem cells, possibly within three to five years , introduces ethical dilemmas like solo-parenting and multiplex parenting.


The hosts also update the Future of Food, highlighting that popular commodities are quickly becoming luxury goods due to climate risk. The price of coffee contracts, for example, is up 54% in a year , driving the rise of alternatives like molecular and cellular coffee. The banana is saved by a CRISPR gene-edited banana that adds 10 days of freshness. Finally, they review the Future of Fitness, noting the commercialization of exoskeletons (like Nike's Amplify shoe) and the emergence of brain-monitoring devices, such as Neurable's neuro headphones. This wearable tech raises significant ethical concerns about data privacy and control over our most private, innermost information.




🔬 The End of Traditional Family and Food

Two major areas are undergoing irreversible, science-driven shifts: the structure of conception and the sustainability of our favorite daily commodities.


🍎 Food: Alternatives Become Reality

The food industry is aggressively using biotech to address supply chain risks and climate-related threats to key crops, signaling that staples may soon become luxury goods.

  • The Forever Banana: A UK company, Tropic Biosciences, has used CRISPR gene editing technology to create a banana that stays fresh for up to 10 days longer, even up to 12 hours after being peeled. This innovation is crucial, as over 60% of exported bananas go to waste before reaching the consumer, contributing significantly to emissions. The product has been approved for sale in the US and Canada.

  • The Cost of Coffee and Chocolate: The prices of coffee and chocolate continue to rise, pushing real cocoa and high-quality coffee toward becoming luxury goods.

    • Coffee contract prices rose by 54% this year, forcing companies like Starbucks to consider price increases and driving a market for alternatives.

    • The market is seeing the proliferation of molecular and cellular coffee (lab-grown coffee cells), as well as coffee-flavored teas and adaptogenic mushroom blends.

    • For chocolate, companies are either mixing in fillers or reducing the quantity in products, as analysts predict high cocoa prices will remain.


👨‍👩‍👧 Family: Lab-grown Babies and the Collapse of Traditional Conception

Technology is challenging the very foundation of marriage and family by making reproduction possible outside of traditional biological and relationship structures.

  • Lab-Grown Babies (IVG): In vitro gametes (IVGs)—lab-grown eggs and sperm created from genetically reprogrammed skin or stem cells—are on the brink of becoming scientifically possible in the next three to five years.

    • This technology eliminates age and other biological barriers to conception.

    • It opens the door for solo parenting (a child created from only one parent's cells) and multiplex parenting (children conceived with genetic material from two or more partners).

  • Ethical and Social Fallout: Though US startups like Conception and Gameto are pursuing the science, the technology is expected to face immediate ethical and legal backlash, with concepts like solo parenting likely to be banned.

  • The Marriage Correlation: This shift occurs alongside a major generational holding back on marriage, driven by economic factors (unemployed men are more likely to be divorced) and a changing education landscape (where more education correlates with less divorce, but formalized education is shifting).



🧠 Fitness: The Great Brain & Body Data Handover

The fitness and wellness industries are focusing on human augmentation—using technology to push performance—and the next level of data tracking: the brain.

🏃 Exoskeletons Enter the Mainstream

Augmenting the body is becoming a product reality, moving from sci-fi to consumer goods.

  • Nike’s Exoskeleton Sneaker: Nike released the Amplify shoe, a sneaker with an exoskeleton brace built into the top. This product provides extra power or "oomph" for walking and running, signaling the proliferation of exoskeletons into general fitness for performance enhancement.

🎧 The Brain Data Frontier

The biggest new trend is the race to sell consumers products that monitor mental fatigue and cognitive performance by tracking brainwaves.

  • Neuro Headphones: The company Neurable launched the MW75 neuro headphones, which include sensors to track brainwaves, acting as a mini-EEG.

    • The goal is to alert the user (e.g., while studying) when they are losing focus or need a break, translating mental state into actionable data.

  • Data Privacy Concerns: This trend raises extreme ethical and privacy alarms. Experts caution that the current technology is basic and limited outside of controlled clinical settings. The main concern is that handing over access to this "most private, innermost stuff" (brain data) makes users highly vulnerable to manipulation and control, as famously warned by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".





Selected Links:

Family and Relationships
Health Tech and Wearables
Food Innovation and Commodities


Episode Transcript:

Sue: (00:00)

Hello and welcome back to Signal Shift. It's Sue here and I'm here with Raakhee and we're spending time today taking stock as we typically do during the holidays. You know, we've been posting weekly episodes of Signal Shift for over a year now, you know, and occasionally, more than occasionally, we'd see something in the news and we'd share it with each other saying like, hey Raakhee, remember when we discussed this? Look what's happening now.


So actually on this episode, we are going to revisit some of the stories and signals we've talked about over the year to see what is happening right now. How is it unfolding? So, you know, it's part reflection, part futures, and it's just a reminder that changes are happening all the time if you take the time to spot them. So, yeah, I'm curious with that, Raakhee, what theme or signal did you choose and what is the update?


Raakhee: (00:53)

I was looking back at all of our past episodes and I was like, which ones are really interesting? for some reason, the weddings or the marriage ones stuck out to me. And it's shifting.


I guess even more dramatically than maybe I had imagined. when it came to weddings and marriage, just to recap of where we were last time, we spoke about things like changing the legal marriage age to becoming something older, right? New types of ceremony, bestimony, and recognizing different types of relationships and people together.


And then of course, pets as witnesses, that was your one, right? there were other things we spoke about in there, but one in three couples were getting a lab-grown stone, And then, what was really interesting in that episode when we had it was that Gen Z were actually very open to marriage. They actually,


I think it was 81 % were open to the possibility of getting married. The divorce rate was going down because people were waiting longer to get married.


So what has changed since? Well, one thing that got me thinking, and I'll share kind of my signal in a bit, but I was thinking about all the episodes we've done since and what we've learned and what we're realizing and a couple of things, right? We spoke about education and how that's shifting.


And this is really interesting, but there's a correlation between education and less divorce. So the more educated you are, the less likely you are to get divorced, according to data from Pew. And I got thinking about the fact that education is completely shifting now. People are not going to get these kind of formalized educations, which is also a space where people meet people that they're often going to marry.


All of that changes. think there is going to be an impact on people meeting people. And I guess maybe things like the divorce rate, Also, unemployed men are more likely to be divorced. With education changing and work changing, what happens to the family life and to marriage? And we know that's part of the reason that even for Gen Z and certain millennials, that they're holding back on marriage as well. But.


Equally, while some say they're holding back on marriage for that reason, others are saying, moving in sooner so we can actually afford to stay together, right? So there's definitely going to be some impacts, but I wonder what that's going to look like. But my signal, and it'll be one of the storylines maybe in our world, hopefully not the only storyline, but it was really around kind of the collapse of marriage, right? And pointing to the negative side of the story


We're now in a space where we have tech love and lab babies, right? Is that people can find companionship with virtual bots. They can find all the needs met there in these really one-sided relationships where somebody just reaffirms you don't have the conflict, you don't have the tension. And so some people really choosing kind of this tech love or AI love.


And who knows what that'll evolve into with robots and, you know, as insane and crazy as it all sounds, that's the realm that we're living in now. But on the other side, and this is my signal, was around really lab-grown babies. And right now, lab-grown sperm and eggs are literally on the brink of becoming real. This is something that's probably going to be possible in the next three to five years.


It's called in vitro gamates or gametes, however you pronounce that, IVG's. And it's eggs or sperm that's created in the lab from genetically reprogrammed skin or stem cells. And basically this changes age barriers, any other issues right around conception. And it's even a way for same sex couples to now have biological children together, because it doesn't have to come from your reproductive cells. It can come from other parts of your body, right? Wild, I know this, it's pretty, even I'm like, wow, is this really where we are going? it's gonna bring up new things such as this concept of solo parenting. So now this is even wild, right?


Not solo parenting in the sense of like single parenting where I'm just the mom and I'm left to raise the kid alone. Solo parenting is in, I'm alone, I'm gonna be alone and I want a baby and I make a baby that comes from only me. Now, this is likely to be banned, right? There's a whole lot of ethical stuff here. So there are companies that are working on this, right? so there are two companies, there are two US startups who are working on this. One is called Conception, one is called Gameto. And they were working towards this.


There are claims that in three to five years we're going to be here from a science perspective. But what is going to be an issue is all these ethical considerations. So solo parenting being a big one and say, is that normal? Is that human? Do we allow this to be banned? And all that so that we're likely to be banning this in society. And that shouldn't happen.


Then there'll be multiplex parenting. So you could have the opposite where it's maybe two couples who are with another couple decide that, we want our kids to have the best of all four of us. Insane, right? Or any kind of situation like that that you can think of. And this concept of multiplex parenting. So yeah, you could have this mix. I know. I know. I'm speaking about it, and I also cannot get my head around it. that was my signal for today is to say, yeah, what about this complete collapse of marriage. Because now even how and why we have kids is completely shifting. Everything is shifting.


Either way, this conversation is going to come up. It's big ethical things to talk about here.


Sue: (06:43)

Wow, that is definitely blowing my mind. Like as you were talking, my jaw was just dropping lower and lower and lower. That is so crazy. But it does tie to signals that we've talked about. And I love how you've brought in so many from past themes. a lot of countries have declining populations. How are they going to increase their overall population in the future? I mean, you've got a very sci-fi related topic here, but it's not crazy to see some of these steps going through.


One of the episodes we talked about like getting married in the metaverse as two people getting married in the metaverse, but you're talking about like bots and you know, who's going to marry who and like, where does this marriage actually exist? wow, lots of existential questions if you move away from your traditional idea of a marriage. idea of, I guess what it sounds like is cloning yourself that...


Sounds really scary. Just a lot of ethical questions coming up. But again, you're hearing bringing your pet to pets, like more and more people are cloning their pets. It's possible. So yeah, we got to catch up in terms of ethics and laws and regulations ASAP. Thanks for bringing up that signal though. That's just very, very interesting for the future.


My signal is... not as maybe controversial, but affects our daily lives. And I think for me thinking it's the holidays, I've been in the kitchen a lot. And so I was thinking about all the times that we've brought up the future of food. Where is it going? And specifically, it reminded me of three conversations we had. One is around bananas, which I think we brought up during the Olympics episode, the future of chocolate or cacao, and then coffee really, really critical commodities that we have.


The major risks due to climate change, mean, just increased pest pressure, drought, like all of those things. And how important they, these three things are specifically for a lot of people for their day, day-to-day living. So I just wanted to give a quick update on where we are on these three things. So I'll start with the lovely banana, you know, discussed during the Olympics episode, I think.


We had mentioned in Paris they had to somehow get three million bananas to the athletes. Not only that, have them fresh for consumption over two weeks. And we know even with the threats of major climate change, there's major production and growth risks in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also there's just a lot of climate emission issues with that as you transport all these bananas across the world. we know that.


They're so fragile in terms of how fresh they stay. I we bring them into our homes and most likely you're not eating all of them, right? So anyway, Rocky, just a few episodes ago, you mentioned with the Time 100 Inventions List, there is a new banana that continues to stay fresh 12 hours, even after it's peeled. And so it's really crazy. actually, there's a statistic I saw that said over 60 % of bananas exported go to waste before even reaching the consumer.


And we know food waste is a major cause of CO2 emissions. So having fresher bananas will actually go a long way in helping to reduce this waste. this invention apparently adds 10 days to the freshness for bananas. It was created by a company in the UK called Tropic Biosciences. And they used CRISPR gene editing technology to get it fresher. And at least according to them, you get this benefit without any sacrifice to taste or nutrition. So really, really interesting.


They've been approved for sale in the United States and Canada, so they should be hitting stores sometime now, actually. So really interesting news about bananas. We'll see where it goes. And I know GMO is kind of controversial, but we'll see. So that's bananas. Coffee is also under extreme pressure.


I did not know this. talked about how coffee prices were going to go up. know tariffs were also a big deal, but just the price of a coffee crop contract this year went up 54%. It's crazy. And so you've got the increased price on coffee contracts, not to mention tariffs on beans coming from certain countries, but also on parts and equipment to make coffee and all our fun coffee drinks. at least at home.


If you haven't already experienced coffee price increases, you will very, very soon. know Starbucks had mentioned they were going to keep prices steady for this year, but I think the CEO just mentioned last week or two weeks ago, they're open to price increases now. So what does that mean? Right. We're already starting to see the impact of this in the grocery store and at our favorite coffee cafes, but now you're going to see blends.


We're seeing coffee alternatives in the market. Now there's like coffee flavored teas, adaptogenic blends with mushrooms that kind of taste like coffee We're starting to see these more and more. And again, like bananas, there's the use of biotech to produce coffee flavored alternatives. They're using plant based alternatives taking essentially what they're calling molecular coffee, like adding very similar components together to form what seems like coffee. They're using cellular coffee, which basically grows coffee-based cells, like plant cells instead of entire beans in labs to put them together. So we're going to start to see a lot more of that. There are a couple of companies, again, in the UK, I think that have already started to introduce these coffee alternatives into different coffee shops.


They have to do it at scale, so we'll see to make it affordable, but we'll see where we get there. And the last one is chocolate, right? So biggest candy holiday was Halloween. And I saw all these articles and announcements that either you're getting a mix of chocolate blends like we had predicted with prices of chocolate going up. You're also seeing someone said they counted the number of bars in a bag for Halloween and it's less than what it was last year. So you're getting skimped flesh on this, or you're just seeing the rise of the price of a chocolate bar overall. And I've certainly seen that in my local like luxury grocery store, for example. But yeah, definitely the price of cocoa has gone down since we talked about it last year, but it's still on an absolute basis. still really high.


And so some of the financial analysts are saying it's gonna stay high, which means ultimately like real chocolate will continue to be a luxury good, right? So, you know, what does this all mean? Like our favorite daily things, whether you have a banana, you know, as a snack or part of your breakfast or whatnot for athletes who need it for fuel, we're gonna just start seeing it become more and more of, can't believe it, maybe a luxury good.


It's not an everyday thing that you'll be able to have in the future unless we get some of these more innovative products. Same thing with, you're just seeing a lot of the same trends, whether it's like mixing in more fillers for chocolate and coffee, or really seeing like these are gonna become luxury goods in the future. So really, really interesting just seeing what we thought were tiny signals at the time really just come into fruition so quickly, just in this past year.


Raakhee: (14:27)

There's this question that everyone has of like, how soon or how much do you think our food lives are going to change in the next decade? You know, and I don't know. I still stand by. think a lot more than the way it's been the last couple of years. Yeah, Sue. So I think that speaks exactly to it. I mean, it's scary. I'm glad they're solving for bananas. I will say the CRISPR gene editing to me feels like one of the best inventions ever now.


Knowing how much it's helping so many crops and what's coming with the changes in topsoil and climate change and you know we need adaptive crops to eat and survive i just i keep stocking up on cacao powder as much as i can you know so yeah there's that and


Yeah, coffee. my gosh. I think those are going to be luxury goods like you said. and changing world, a changing world, that's for sure.


Sue: (15:22)

Yeah, that's for sure. Are there any other signals or themes that you caught up on?


Raakhee: (15:27)

Yeah, yeah. The other one I had was a fitness. And that was an episode we did and you spoke about swing vision, Sue, and there was the digital tennis coaching. I spoke about ski resorts struggling and kind of what ski resorts we're going to transform into with less snow. All those still realities, all those things shifting, all that's still true. And I think it was Lana who had the wearable robots, the exoskeletons, that we actually saw them used at the Olympics


We spoke about temperature-controlled outfits, and Neuralink, I think, had just done their first sort of approved experiment or something. There was some Neuralink information and news when we did that episode. So was all really interesting to see that happening. And I think where we are now is all of that's still going forward and just going further as we predicted.


I will share an update is Nike now has a shoe. It's called the Amplify shoe. It's the sneaker, kind of with an exoskeleton brace, just the top part. It's really easy to put on. And it does what the exoskeleton kind of does, at least for walking and running, right? It's giving you that extra oomph push that your muscle just doesn't have, which is really cool. And to see something like Nike having a product like that, it's been in the works for a very long time.


And the debate has been again, well, we're just going to get lazy. We're not going to use those muscles. The point is that this device is meant to be put off or on. So you shouldn't have it on when you don't need it. And if you're getting chased by a mountain lion, well, don't run, actually. Don't do that if you see a mountain lion. But if you, for whatever reason, need to run, you need to run to the store to get the last banana, the last few bananas, then you know what? put it on, right? It's just going to amp you. But I see we see these exoskeletons and the proliferation of them into all parts of kind of fitness in our society. And I think that's going to become very, very much the norm in the next couple of years. I mean, makes sense, right? So we're all going to have that ability.


And the other interesting one, and this has been the 2025 wave is all about everything linked to neuroscience in the brain and brain waves and measuring that. So my signal was around, it's a company called, Neurable They launched their neuro headphones. It's called the MW75 neuro headphones. And what this does is it basically, it tracks what they claim is your mental fatigue, your cognitive performance, all of that by really measuring your brainwaves. And so they measure your brain. It's kind of like having a mini EEG machine for your brainwaves and these sensors that are plugged in there that measure your brain waves and collect all this data on your brain and say, OK, this is what's happening with your cognition and your focus and your fatigue and that sort of stuff.


So it tracks these electrical signals from your brain, it translates them and says, this is what's happening with your mental state. So yeah, when you're losing focus and you need a break, for example, you're studying and you're pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, it might alert you and say, Beep, beep, beep, beep. I know you want to go for another hour, but trust me, you're going to get nothing out of it. Like you at that point, know? Now your brain needs either that snack, you need to go have some of that chocolate, or you need to sleep. Your brain is going to need eight hours before it's going be able to do anything else. So it's being able to give people access to that kind of data and information.


From what I'm hearing online and researchers and experts and these things, kind of measurements the EEGs do that you get from these sorts of devices is so very basic. It's so very limited still. Even measuring that kind of data when they do it in a clinical setting, every other factor is controlled, right? So they have control over that. If you're wearing this and you pick up your cup and it doesn't make any sense, right? You're not measuring your brainwaves in isolation. So yeah, I don't think we're there yet with the technology. I think the trend was definitely there this year.


And then the other concern that has been brought up a lot of people is like, like we have spoken about in previous episodes, and I brought up this book a lot, but you know, Noah Harari's 21 Lessons, right? And his whole thing about once they control kind of our bio data, then you're really controlled. Because if somebody knows what mood you're going to be in before you know it, and your cycles and you know, and all of that, you've given up everything, right? And so that's the big concern with devices like this, and handing over that kind of data is this is technically our most private, innermost stuff, Aside from medical stuff, it's giving over your brain and what's happening with it.


So yeah, a lot of ethical concerns, a lot of data privacy concerns, is the data even protected? I mean, imagine the manipulation that can happen when somebody has access to data like that, right? It's a little scary to hand over this sort of information. I mean, it's scary enough to hand over your medical data. So this is just that next level of it that's even scarier. I think we're from this being the norm. But I mean, we've spoken about it across many episodes this year, right? Many types of different devices for your brain.


So I think that was like the hot thing, you know, those are the hot products that came out this year. I don't think that they're flying like the shelves and I don't think they will be for a couple of years. But, you know, obviously we're to see more and more companies try to get into the space and start to sell us things that work with our brains, that are going to improve our performance in some sense, improve our fitness, right, in many ways and all those things. And I think it's up to us to see whether we are comfy with that or not.


Sue: (21:17)

Raakhee always bringing provocative signals here. And at least for me, what a relief. What a relief it's not here yet. So yeah, I was just thinking about this could improve a lot of lives. There's always good intention around some of these things. But until we're really ready with the impact of the other side, what will that look like?


Hopefully as we age and these innovations become more secure, more rigid, right? Like we'll have a lot more solutions as we're living longer, healthier lives. Everything from the Nike shoe to even these kinds of ways to help you perform better, be healthier. Hopefully we'll get there to a good place.


Well, you know, as we close out this episode, for those of you who are watching or listening, you know, as you can tell, the future is already unfolding in our daily lives and our rituals just in the world around us. So, you know, as you're reflecting on this year, you're mapping out the new year, just notice what's a little bit different, what's changing and how might that help shape what you do next.


So, you know, our mission with Signal Shift was always to make sense of these signals with you, kind of help you chart a course through change. So thanks for being a part of our journey this year. And here's to the future and what will happen next. So thanks so much and we'll see you soon. Bye.

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