Whales thrill humans, and they always have.

The easy day-trip thrill of watching whales. The terrifying thrill of hunting whales. The ancient thrill of contemplating a creature of size beyond imagining. Even of being swallowed whole.

Philip Hoare caught whale fever in the pages of “Moby Dick,” the giant skeletons of museum display and the sight of giant humpbacks breaching.

He ended up mid-Atlantic, swimming face to face with a sperm whale, overwhelmed by all the leviathan has meant and means today.

This hour, On Point: A tale of whales.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Philip Hoare joins us from New York. He’s author of “The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea” and writer and presenter of the BBC documentary “The Hunt for Moby-Dick.” He’s also the author of five previous works of nonfiction, including “Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant,” “Noel Coward: A Biography,” and “England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia.”

You can read an excerpt from “The Whale” at HarperCollins.com.

Patient samples are loaded into a machine for testing at Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City. (AP)

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The human genetic code is a kind of miracle. It’s also a recipe for life.

It’s also widely seen as a giant business opportunity. Corporations, drug companies, are rapidly staking claims.

Twenty percent of the human genome has already been patented — sewn up for research and profit in the emerging field of genetic medicine. And it’s fiercely defended.

Gene patenting is controversial, but it’s the law of the land. A lawsuit headed to court right now would change that.

This hour, On Point: Playing God, pushing research, and patenting the human genome.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Salt Lake City is Tom Harvey, business reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, where he’s covering the Myriad Genetics case.

Joining us from New York is Chris Hansen, Senior National Staff Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is lead attorney in the gene patenting lawsuit that pits the ACLU against the Salt Lake City firm Myriad Genetics and the US Patent and Trademark Office. You can read the ACLU’s complaint here (pdf).

From Washington we’re joined by Hans Sauer, Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, known as BIO. Its membership includes more than 1,200 biotechnology companies and is aligned with Myriad Genetics in defense of gene patenting.

And from New York we’re joined by Wendy Chung, M.D., Ph.D., director of clinical genetics at Columbia University and a plaintiff in the ACLU v. Myriad Genetics case.

In this photo made available by Advanced Cell Technology, a single cell is removed from a human embryo to be used in generating embryonic stem cells for scientific research. A Massachusetts biotechnology company has developed a new way of creating stem cells without destroying human embryos. (AP)

On August 9, 2001, President George W. Bush hit the brakes on embryonic stem cell research. Not a complete halt, but a big slowdown on research into the wonder cells that can turn into any other kind of cell in the human body.

Potential cures for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, MS, Parkinson’s, and more, all seemed further away. But the work didn’t stop. Scientists in other countries jumped in, in a big way. American researchers found new ways forward.

Now Bush is gone, Obama’s in, and hopes and expectations are rising again. Stem cell research has come in from the cold, once more promising medical miracles. Last month, the FDA approved the first trials of embryonic stem cell therapy for human patients — paralyzed patients with spinal cord injuries.

All this as new methods of creating new cells from adult tissue may bypass debates over human embryos entirely.

This hour, On Point: The leading edge of stem cell research — now.

You can join the conversation. Are you hoping that stem cell therapies may one day save you or someone in your family? Are you ready to let the research roll?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

David Scadden, professor of medicine at Harvard University, where he’s co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Regenerative Medicine.

John Gearhart, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998, he led one of two teams — along with James Thomson’s at the University of Wisconsin — that first isolated and identified human embryonic stem cells.

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If there was ever a time we needed to think outside the box, this is it. On energy, the economy, war, security, America seems boxed.

Maybe your life does, too. So, how to fire up the engines of real out-of-the-box innovation?

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns says it starts with brain chemistry and habits that can break us free of mental ruts. He looks at the biology of how we feel, think, and behave — and points to the exits from tired old patterns, with examples of innovators and iconoclasts from Picasso to Warren Buffet to the Dixie Chicks.

This hour, On Point: Rewiring the brain for change.

You can join the conversation. What does it take to get you thinking outside the box? Do you believe you’re hardwired for it? Or against it? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Gregory Berns, professor in psychiatry, economics, and business, and director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University. His new book is “Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently.”

You can read an excerpt from “Iconoclast” at Amazon.com.

He’s been called “the Indiana Jones of conservation.” Alan Rabinowitz, a wildlife biologist and big-cat expert, has traveled the world from Belize to Borneo, Thailand to Laos, and risked his life to save jaguars, clouded leopards, and tigers.

Now, in Myanmar, he’s established the world’s largest tiger preserve, in an effort to save the world’s dwindling tiger population. But it was no walk in the park. He had to gain the trust of the military junta, negotiate with native tribes and an insurgent group.

This hour, On Point: Man and tiger in Myanmar’s Hukawng Valley.

-James Hattori

Guest:

Alan Rabinowitz, Executive Director of the Science and Exploration Division for the Wildlife Conservation Society and author of, “Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed.”

The first time Greta Binford really paid attention to spiders was in a Peruvian rainforest where hundreds of thousands of spiders worked together to weave webs as big as semi-trailer trucks. The young biologist — part Indiana Jones, part Spider Woman — never looked back.

She’s now tracked spiders all over the world. Beautiful spiders. Ugly spiders. Spiders that jump, spiders that sing, spiders that sound like Harley Davidsons. Spiders that hunt snakes and lizards. Spiders that kill. She tracks them down, brings them home, and milks their venom. She’s wild for spiders. Today we talk with intrepid spider hunter, arachnologist Greta Binford, on her marvelous obsession with spiders.

-Tom Ashbrook

Photo: Jumping spider Habronattus americanus, a common species in northwestern North America (Photo Copyright Wayne Maddison)

Guest:

Greta Binford, Assistant Professor of Biology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She’s the subject of the recent New Yorker article, “Spider Woman: Hunting venomous species in the basements of Los Angeles.”