#2338 - Beth Shapiro

24:57Caravu are that you can herd. Yeah. And people ride them and milk them. Yeah. Yeah. And then occasionally and whack one. Yeah. I mean, they're great. Right. This is animals are always been a really great storage mechanism. That's one of the hypotheses about animal domestication. Why did this take place if we had plants, but they're going to be years where there's plenty to eat and years where there's not enough to eat. But if you in those years where there's plenty, if you store some of that nutrition in animals, then in the years where there's less, you can eat those animals. So it's a very safe way of storing what you can grow.

25:30That's a fascinating way to look at storing. I just want to know how they ever figured out how to herd those reindeer. Like what did you do? Like how did who was the first person to figure out how to get them all to stay together? Right. I think that about a lot of domestic animals. Who was the first I also think that about milk like who was the first person who decided. I can have a go at that. You know, they're probably starving. They probably mean they must have tried everything. I mean, that's how we found out what mushrooms are edible, right? Because the large percentage of them will just kill you immediately.

26:00But people are so desperate for anything. Yeah. Some of them are trying to tell you though by being like break red or purple saying right, right, right. But we're dumb. So we're like, bright red. I'll lick that. Yeah. It might be an apple. That's confusing. Some bright red things are delicious. It's really good for you. Wow. So these people that live up there, what was their history? Like had they been living up there their whole life? Those particular individuals have. Yeah, but I think they're they have a long history. The culture has a long history there. And I mean, we're still I think we're still learning about how humans have dispersed around the world and how they got to be the places where they are today.

26:38But I really think it's impressive that there are people who are hanging on to that culture. Absolutely. And really able to, you know, they're they're trying now to relearn their native languages because during the communist era, they were all forced to learn Russian and speak Russian in the same ways everyone else, but even up there, even up there. Wow. They sent an emissary to say, guys, it's time to speak the mother phone. Maybe they had to go to the squares. Like you see in Yakutsk and all these other places where they have the big squares with the speakers on the top where they would go for the daily admonishings or whatever from the communist party.

27:13Wow. What a weird way to live. It's just it's so fascinating that there's pockets of these humans that live like this all over the world. Obviously the people in the Amazon, the Uncontact tribes of the world. It's just so interesting. And we have so much to learn from them. Mm -hmm. I think any it would be maybe obviously that such a cool job of how getting to go and actually try to communicate with people who haven't been taught before. But you kind of don't want to because you don't want to ruin that. Right. Isn't that an interesting perspective because I don't want to live like that. Like I don't want to live in the Amazon.

27:46I want to leave over my private party. But we assume they do. Not even for a week, like. Nope, don't want to do it. There's so many things out there that'll eat you. There's so many bugs that can kill you and snakes that can kill you. It's like, uh -uh. I'd rather watch a video. Right. David Attenborough documentary. I don't want to go there. I have a good friend who lives there. Paul Rosalie. He goes there all the time. He's been on the podcast a few times. And he lives in the Amazon. And his whole thing is he's there protecting the rainforest. And what they do is they take these people. They're just poor people that have no options.

28:22And they're loggers. And so he pays them more money to protect the rainforest. So they get to quit the logging job and then protect the rainforest. And then through funding, they buy up parcels, lands, and protect and save it. But he's had some gnarly encounters with uncontacted people. At one point in time, they realized they were actually being hunted. And they barely escape with their life. Holy shit. And he started hearing weird noises in the bushes. And then he realized, oh boy, these are people. We're being stalked right now. By the most sophisticated hunting animal out there. But not only that, I would imagine at the stage that these people are at.

29:02They've been living there for thousands and thousands of years. They probably have incredible perception, incredible senses. Because they have to. Right. They probably knew these people were coming a long time ago. They probably heard the boat coming down the river. They prepared. They got ready. They know where all the paths are. They know which way the people would go. Like you're utterly helpless. How did he get out of this? They got out just in time. Just in time. They just escaped. Yeah. But one of his friends, one of the people that he was working with, did not. They would have these gifts.

29:37Like so they would take these rafts and try to make contact with these people. They would float these rafts towards them, fill with food. And they were doing this as like a peace gesture. And this guy had done this several times. And then one time he didn't come back and they found them fill of arrows. Wow. Yeah, they just killed them. They just decided, you know, maybe they had a bad experience with some other person. Yeah. From some other Westerner. And they decided, you know, we're done. But they're rightly terrified of humans. Because when these people that come in that want to extract resources, whether it's the loggers or whatever it is, if there's some minerals or anything else they find there, they just kill everybody.

30:20There's horrific human rights violations that occur there. Where they just hire the worst people in the world to go in and wipe out these tribes, because these tribes are resisting them taking over this land. We have a history of this. Yeah. We do. We have a deep history, which is really fascinating about the Amazon in particular. Because, you know, we've had a bunch of conversations on one of them recently with Luke Caverns, where we went over the lidar discoveries of these sophisticated grids and all the stuff that's in the Amazon, where they really thought that this was just rainforest forever.

30:55And then slowly over time, they really didn't know. There was like a huge civilization here of millions of people. So these people that are the uncontacted people, I mean, I wonder how many of them were like the preppers of the Amazon world from, you know, 4 ,000 years ago or whatever it was. It wasn't even that long ago. The Percy Fossett, Percy Fossett, right? That's the name? The guy who one of the guys who, he's the main character in that book, The Lost City of Z. He's one of the people that went there. When the first settlers went there, when the first explorers went there, they talked about these incredible, like sophisticated civilizations.

31:34And then people went back 100 years, and there was none of that. So they thought that they had just made it up. It turns out the first people probably gave these folks horrible diseases. And it wiped out millions of people. And then the jungle just consumed whatever structures and houses and stuff that they had. And all that's left is these grids that you can see when you fly over in lidar. Yeah, that's so cool. You can see those when you're flying over any part of the world, really. I noticed it recently, I was flying over Europe, and you can see the old trellises from old, you know, I don't know how old, but it's just so cool.

32:08How we can see remnants of civilizations and just makes you think, what happened? This is some of the coolest mysteries. That's what's so cool about working in ancient DNA too, is we can just go to places, get DNA from stuff, and learn something that we never knew before. It's fun. So you get interested in DNA, you go to Siberia, all that jazz. How do you get started working with a company like Colossal? How does that take place? All of us working in ancient DNA. We are constantly answering the same question from the media, which is, when are we going to bring dinosaurs back to them? Because Jurassic Park?

32:47Yeah. Great. We're so simple. One great movie, everybody's like, what's that going to happen? People say, people actually say that my field was spawned by Jurassic Park, the whole idea that we could get DNA stuff. That's not true. It was actually the other way around. And Michael Critein, when he wrote the book that became the movie, he credited a lab at Berkeley, Alan Wilson's group, the Extinct Species Study Group, which was the first group to show that you could get DNA in something after it died. That was actually from a Kwaga, which is a type of zebra. But a cool name. Yeah, right. Well, in Dutch and South Africa, they actually say the Kwacha.

33:29Ooh, even better. Yeah, it's better that way. But it's kind of bad for the microphone, probably. Gross. Kwacha. Yeah. I think it's the sound they're supposed to make, right? So they sound like the, I don't know, who knows. Anyway, they showed that you could get DNA from this skin. And everybody was like, that is the coolest thing that I've heard in a long time. That must mean we can bring dinosaurs back to life. And everybody started racing to get the oldest and coolest DNA. And so there were papers in the best journals of science that never published anything that's wrong ever, ever that said, look, here's dinosaur DNA.

34:05And look, here's DNA from a mysene -aged leaf. And look, here's this. And all of it is crap. We now know. In fact, the first dinosaur DNA sequences that were published, if you took them at the time, and you typed them into the internet, and you compared them to the earliest of what is today this big repository of all DNA sequences of everything that's ever been sequenced. What came back was a close match to a bird. We now know, because there's more DNA sequences there, that it was a chicken, an exact match to a chicken, and some investigative work found that the excavation team had been working on those bones had fried chicken for lunch every day.

34:46So it's chicken contamination. Yeah, it's like greasy fingers on your dinosaur fossils. Oh my god. Now we have ancient DNA. That is hilarious. That's how little they knew about DNA. What year was this round? That would be the early 90s. The early 90s. And when was DNA first discovered? Well, the idea of DNA is much older than that. But it was really what really helped this field along was the invention of PCR. It's an acronym for polymerase chain reaction. It's a way of Kerry Mollis, who discovered the idea of PCR while he was high on a road trip. On LSD. Yeah. We should all do LSD, I think, because clearly you have your best ideas when you're high.

35:28Some people have great ideas. Some people go kooky. Some people lose their marbles and never come back. I think I probably would not have good ideas on LSD, but I'm willing to give it a shot. I like your scientific exploration mind. A good scientist always wants to know. You never know. Maybe there's a breakthrough waiting behind that little piece of paper. Probably not. Probably not. You never know. Anyway, he discovered a way to photocopy DNA, to make lots of copies of the same thing, which then made it possible to learn the sequence using the technologies of the day. And that was what made it possible, really, for ancient DNA to take off, was this ability to phot...

36:04Because there's one in animal dies, or plant dies, the DNA in the cell starts to get chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces, by things like UV, right? We go out in the sun, we put sunscreen on, and that stops the UV from breaking our DNA. But it's not terrible to get some sunlight. As you probably just saw, there was an article out saying, hey, dummies, you know, we need some sunlight in order to make vitamin D. But we have a repair mechanism, so that when your DNA breaks, it doesn't stay that way. We evolved this mechanism. But once you're dead, you no longer have the energy for that to work.

36:36And so these damaged parts of DNA accumulate. And also things like bacteria and microbes get in there and chew up the DNA to recycle the animal to the next generation or plant or whatever. And so the DNA that we get in an old thing, like a mammoth bone, is really short fragments, like maybe 30 or 40 or 50 letters of DNA long. In comparison, if I were to take a swab from my cheek and sequence that, I could get strings that are hundreds of millions of letters long. This is living DNA. So ancient DNA is in really crap condition. And it's also mixed with stuff. So if I extract DNA from a mammoth, I'll get some mammoth DNA.

37:16But I'll get a lot of those microbes that are in there chewing up DNA. I'll probably get some of my DNA because I touched that mammoth bone, get DNA from whoever else touched that thing. This has been a real problem in archaeology because we're trying to get DNA from humans before you're humans. And so we touch these things and then, I don't know if it's my DNA or if that thing DNA. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. If you're anything like me, you love your dog. You want what's best for your furry pal. But figuring out what that is can be a real headache. There's a lot of misinformation out there, especially around dog food.

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39:18Plus, you get free shipping. Just go to the farmer's dog dot com slash rogan. Tap the banner or visit this episodes page to learn more. Offer applicable for new customers only, even just breathing on it, right? Yeah, or dropping an eyelash went in my lab at Santa Cruz and in ancient DNA labs around the world. We have these really, it's like working in a virus lab where you're scared of everything. But we turn, turn it around. So rather than having the air being sucked in, we're kind of trying to push the air out. We don't want any air coming in. We're not, we wear these suits where it looks like we're terrified, you know, with a face mask and hair net.

39:57And we're totally covered and we bleach everything. It's not because we're afraid of those bones. We're afraid that we're going to get our DNA in that bone. And then we're not going to be able to do a work. Of course. Yeah. So it took that and the ability to amplify those tiny little pieces of DNA for us to really figure out that we could get DNA out of things. For a long time, people thought we were never going to get DNA out of Neanderthal bones because of this problem. You know, we touch a bone. We're just going to get human DNA and we're never going to be able to know the difference. But then with PCR and with the ability to work in these clean labs and distinguish, we eventually got whole Neanderthal genomes, which I think is probably one of the crowning achievements of my field, ancient DNA Spontepoppo, won the Nobel Prize a few years ago for this.

40:39What are they extracted from? Bones, different bones. The very first Neanderthal genome sequence was actually a mixture of several bones because, you know, there wasn't very much DNA in any of them. And they were able to pull it to get to actually my husband, who was on part of that team, who put together the first Neanderthal genome sequence. Yeah. It's cool. That's really cool. But then they, the Denisovans, the Denisova people, that was just a tiny little piece of a finger bone, that they had no idea was going to belong to a totally new species of human. And they were able to get a really high coverage whole genome out of this tiny little finger bone that totally rewrote what we thought we knew about evolutionary history.

41:20And that's pretty recently, right? Yeah. Yeah. Within the last decade. Jamie and I were, we did a podcast recently where we were talking about the big head people. What are they called again? Juliani or something? Julien's. I've seen this. This is really recent. Yeah, it's super recent. It was like December of 2024. They released his paper. Yeah, super cool. And it just highlights how much we don't know, right? How every, especially in paleoanthropology. And this is a field where, you know, people will take like, yeah. Juleran. That's it. Lost species of humans within abnormally large skull, which lived alongside homo sapiens.

41:58So they died off somewhere. They lived in China between 300 and that thousand and 50 ,000 years ago. Yeah. And so if they were able to breed with humans, they probably did. And they probably bred with Neanderthals. And they probably bred with Denisovans because, you know, that's what we do. Why don't stuff? Yeah. Yeah. And then of course the Hobbit people, the island of Flores people. Yeah. Flores. Little tiny. No one has still been able to get DNA from those samples now. But I mean, some days, some day it'll happen. We've tried. Spontys team has tried a lot of people have attempted. It's just they're too degraded.

42:34They're from a hot place. All of those things that degrade DNA. They happen faster. That makes sense. Yeah. There's probably a lot more to be discovered too. So much. They only really found it at a one location, right? Yes. Yeah. And one thing that people have tested, actually this again, was work that my husband did was whether the people who live there today, the Rampasasa people, are related to them and they're not. No, it seems like because they're small as well. And the question is, is there something weird about them? This is actually really cool. It was a really cool result. There are, it's hard to know exactly what bits of changes in your DNA code for making you big or small.

43:13But clearly it's not just one thing because there's not just people my size and people normal size. I'm only five feet tall, right? We have a big spectrum of help. So there's lots of different genes that are involved with this. But we kind of have an idea of where those genes are in a genome and what they might be. And with these people who are all small, the idea, the hypothesis was that there was some new thing in their DNA that led to them being small. But it wasn't. They just are at the extreme of all the things we already know. Is it just island dwarfism? It's just a, you know, small population on an island.

43:47Different alleles go to fixation. And yes, I mean weird things happen on islands. Like elephants even. Elephants dwarf. Yeah, but dodo's. Dodo's got bigger. And so do lizards. They do or for they get bigger. Get bigger. Yeah, like the commoto. Oh, yeah. That's one of the scariest animals. Creepy as animals. I can't, I'm so embarrassed to tell you how many times I've watched videos of them eating large animals' whole. Like cattle. Yeah, they eat sheep and monkeys. It's horrific. Why do we watch that? I don't know. You're like, is this going to happen? You know, you open a Instagram like, oh, no.

44:19You see this porco and you see this slippery lizard. I can't help you like, I'm like, I'm going to watch. They're so gross. Their mouth is filled with botulism. And is that what kills them? The botulism. I think there's a venom as well. They think there's a lot of toxins in their mouth. And I think there's also a venom. I think they used to think it was just poison, just just botulism and just various bacteria. But now I believe they think it's a venom. I watched another horrible video where they would bite this buffalo. They just bite its hindquarters and then follow it. While the venom is slowly like taking its, running its toll through the body.

44:59And then eventually the poor buffalo gets to the point where it can't move and they start eating it alive. I think I've seen that one. Oh, nature is so rough. Would you go brutal? To Commodo Island? No chance. Really? I remember Sharon Stone's husband. I believe he was either a journalist or someone who owned a newspaper or something like that. And they went to see the Commodo dragons at the zoo. I think it was in San Francisco. And they took their shoes off when they enter into this Commodo dragon area to like not contaminate. And apparently he had white socks on. And they decided that his foot looked delicious.

45:38And they bit him. Yeah, yeah, it bit him. I don't know what happened with that. This was an ex -husband of hers back in the Dizzae. Maybe that's what she planned to the ex. I don't think she did. I think it was just one of those things that this guy just did no one he was getting into and should have had white socks on. Or it's just doing what a Commodo dragon does and biting whatever it can. I wouldn't have thought white socks. Here it is. Bronstine underwent surgery to reattach several thousand. Severed tendonsan. Severed tendonsan. To rebuild his big toe that was crushed by the dragons jaws.

46:14Oh. Yeah, it's just missing. Oh, oh, tenons and okay. So he was done was able to pry open the reptiles mouth and escape through a small feeding door in the cage while the zookeeper distracted the dragon. Oh my god. Wait, he was in the feeding cage? Yeah, whoopsies. Oh, they must've took his white tennis shoes. That's what it was. It wasn't socks. So this story's old. This story is from... They had him take it off. Oh, they had him remove his whites. Oh, it's a shoeless foot. Oh, so they thought that his tennis shoes would look like the rats. So they took them to take your shoes off so they don't look like the rats.

46:54And it looks like flesh. Oh my god. This sounds like someone did a dumb thing. Like this is... Absolutely. A lot of dumb things. What year was this, Jamie? 2001. Yeah. Woof. Well, bad decisions. Bad outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not going to Commodo Island. Or in the feeding cage at a zoo. No, no, I'm not going to any of those places. No. No, no, no, no, no. I get it. I like, I know what they are. I can watch them through the cage. I'm good. I don't need the additional thrill. Right. But there are places where there are big things like dodo's that are amazing and probably not going to kill you.

47:35Sure. There's some stuff that won't kill you. Like giraffes. Giraffes. I've been told that a giraffe is the dumbest animal. That's... Haley? Yeah, I didn't know this. And I wouldn't have suspected it because they're so gorgeous. And you wouldn't think that something that gorgeous would be so dumb. But I have friends who are... Matt James, who's the chief animal officer at Colossal. He's worked with at lots of different zoos throughout his career. And he's told me that there are multiple occasions where he has had to save a giraffe from accidentally killing itself because it's so dumb. Wow. Well, they're so kind that they let babies feed them.

48:06Oh, yeah. You know? There's nothing going on in there. When my kids were little, you could go to the San Diego Zoo and you would give them lettuce. And little babies are allowed to hold up, like a two -year -old, can hold up their arm and this enormous tongue comes wrapping around that piece of lettuce and they get gold. But they trust them so much that they let little kids feed them. Like, they set it up so people can feed these... And they seem so calm. They're like... Dullsile. Yeah, like, they're just happy they're not getting eaten by lions. Sounds a little dangerous to me though. If they are genuinely stupid, will they accidentally at some point take that baby's hand and then they have huge strong neck.

48:42They're like, oh yeah, they fight each other with their neck. It says they're kind of smart. Oh, really? But this is... I don't know. The ability to make inferences based on statistical information has so far been tested only on animals having large brains in relation to their body size, like primates and parrots. They tested giraffes despite having a smaller relative brain size can rely on relative frequencies to predict sampling outcomes. They presented them with two transparent containers filled with different quantities of highly liked food and less preferred food. The experimenter covertly drew one piece of food from each container and let the giraffes choose between the two options.

49:19In the first task, we varied the quantity and relative frequency of the highly liked and less preferred food pieces. In the second task, we inserted a physical barrier in both containers with giraffes only had to take into account the upper part of the container when predicting the outcome. In both tasks, giraff successfully selected the container more likely to provide highly liked food, integrating physical information to correctly predict samples. And then we added a simple information. I mean, cool. But I also trust a person who has tried to keep giraffes from killing themselves, by doing dumb things to tell me that a giraff isn't always making the best decisions.

49:55Perhaps they're intelligent for the environment they belong in. I'm sure that's true. That's how evolution works. Yeah, but when you put them in the zoo, they're like, look, where have all our food? There's a wire I can get my next duck in. Like a kid that never leaves his parents' basement and plays Call of Duty till he's 35, probably doesn't have the best social intelligence. Probably going to be pretty awkward when you get them out in the wild. Probably. Yeah. It's probably the same thing with your house. Did you hear that, James? Talking to my 15 -year -old. Oh, it's a play a lot of video games.

50:28They're very addictive. It's a real problem. And they're going to get worse. They're going to get way better. As science makes things more and more addictive, one of the things they're really good at, these designers. And algorithms. Oh, yeah. But they're just so good at making games that are just incredibly compelling. And fun. Oh, so fun. Way more fun than going outside and getting bullied. Yeah. That's the problem. You know, you could be a badass at Call of Duty. All you do to sit in there. Or War Thunder. That's the game that my son is into. War Thunder. I don't know about that one. What's that one?

51:01It's about like planes and things that he build and then fight. I don't know what to say. Yeah, pretty crazy stuff. Yeah, just imagine if you could take one of those Denisovans and show them that. That is an interesting question. What would we do? If we could bring a Neanderthal or a Denisovan back, dextinct one of them. We are not doing that at Colossal. They're humans. We cannot ask them for consent to do this. We're not working on them. You won't. But. China's like, tell me more.

51:32Maybe. I think it's a bad idea. But if they do, I would like to know. What's a lot of people that think bringing dire wolves back is a bad idea. Well, I mean, what did you think of the dire wolves? This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog. It doesn't matter how old your dog is. It's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness. And thankfully, the Farmer's Dog makes it easier than ever to feed your dog a healthy diet of real meat and veggies. Dogs prefer their food, even picky dogs, and owners prefer their service. If you have a question about your dog, your plan, your delivery, or anything else, they have 24 -7 customer service that connects you to real humans who are genuinely interested in providing the best experience possible for you and your dog.

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52:56We're American companies making American products with American workers in America's hometowns. We're local bottlers and manufacturers operating in all 50 states, employing more than 275 ,000 Americans in good paying jobs, delivering for the nation. Because we believe in the promise of America and the people who make it great. Learn more at WeDeliverForAmerica .org. Pay for by the American Beverage Association. Well, fortunately after the last podcast I did with Ben, I did actually get to go visit them. And I was blown away. It's extraordinary. It's so wild. I mean, it's one thing to see them in photographs, but it's another thing to be close to them.

53:37Where you're outside. There's no fence between you and them. And you look in their eyes and like that is a different animal. That is a totally different, I've seen wolves before. That is a totally different animal than I've never seen a wolf in the wild though. I saw one, but it was like running across the road at a distance and it was dusk. That was in Alberta. There's a lot of wolves up there. But that I've never seen, I've never looked in one's eyes. And it's like these aren't even that old. They were more than six months old, but they were almost a hundred pounds already. And they have this look in their eye.

54:13And you can see they're bigger, they're more muscular. And you see that coat, the dire wolf coat. It's extraordinary. The mane that they have. It's really incredible. And then there's a little female, Kaleesi. She's adorable. And she is like a puppy right now. You were able to hold her. She's adorable. Yes. She nibbles on your finger. She's a little thing. But she's, you know, one day going to be 140 pounds. You can't get anywhere near her. Right. Which is really crazy. Yeah. I'm glad you got to see the boys before. They were probably already a little bit standoffish. Yeah. Especially compared to Kaleesi.

54:47Yeah. They're standoffish. They get fairly close though within like 20 feet of you, checking you out. They pee all over the place. You know? Mark in their territory. It's just so strange to see an animal in the flesh that didn't exist. You know, for 10 ,000 years. It's amazing. Yeah. I was there for Kaleesi's birth. And I, people were asking me afterward how did that feel. And I just, you can't even describe it. You know, this moment when she was born and then she screamed. She had this, this cry, this scream. I have it on my phone, actually. I can play it for you. But it was just such a, I don't know.

55:27It's, it's this all. This, I think this is one of the best things about the de -extinction work and the species preservation work that Kaleesi was doing is that we live in such a crazy time. People don't often have an opportunity to feel genuine awe about something. And this is one of the things that people get about going out, going hunting, go get out and, you know, going and spending time in the woods or going and experiencing something that they wouldn't normally experience. Is this, is this way to feel genuine wonder? And excitement and enthusiasm and Kaleesi's birth. I wasn't there for the birth of the boys.

56:04I was in the UK at a conference. It was very sad. And I had COVID and I was asleep and trying to recover. And the next morning I woke up and there were like 150 text messages on my phone from Ben going, what the fuck are you doing? Where are you? Why are you not responding? Oh, wow. Like, oh my god, I've missed this moment. So I made sure that I was there present for Kaleesi. And I'm glad I was. Because what a, what an amazing, I'm glad you got to see them. I'm glad I got to see them too. It's, it's really a crazy experience. I felt very fortunate just to be in their presence and, and also very conflicted by it all.

56:38Like, this is so odd. Like, is this the beginning? Like, are we going to bring back everything? Like, is that a good thing? Are things supposed to go extinct? Are we supposed to just bring back everything that's ever lived? At what point do we draw the line? You know, all these thoughts in my head, like, why are human beings? The deciders of what lives and dies? Like, are we, do we have an arrogance? Because of our relative intellect that we think that we should be able to make these kind of decisions? And not understand the comprehensive effect that it has on the entire ecosystem? And we know what happens with invasive species.

57:11When invasive species come into new territories, they destroy everything. It's like, Florida is an amazing example of that. Right. Florida is so crazy. It is, I mean, it is Florida. You know, I mean, like, when you think of Florida, you think like Florida man. So the only state that you can say, like, the name of the state and then a man and everybody's like, what did he do? But that's Florida, ecologically. Like, the entire center of it, the Everglades, is infested with Burmese pythons. Yeah. Did you see that there's a competition every year to go out and kill as many as they can? And there's a monetary reward for people who kill.

57:47I think it's the most or maybe the biggest or something like this. Even that's not going to put it down. No, it doesn't at all. People killed, and during this competition, they kill hundreds, maybe thousands of these snakes, and it doesn't even touch them. There's an estimate of a half a million. They think there might be a half a million there. And there's a guy that's been on this podcast for calls himself Python cowboy. He's quite a character. And didn't he give us a head? We got a head later on here, right? You got it over there? That Python head? But that dude, he has been catching them. He uses dogs.

58:19The dogs find where the nests are. And the video of these things, you know, you're pulling out this 15, 16, 17. I think he's got as big as like an 18 foot long snake. Wow. There are hundreds of pounds. They're enormous. They swallow the deer. They eat. Alligators. They're eating alligators. Thank goodness, because alligators are doing great. Like, that's one thing I don't mind them doing. We need something that's hot in alligators. That's another problem in Florida. It's a festive with the alga. And they used to be on the endangered species. When I lived there, they were on the endangered species list.

58:49One of the class of 1967, right? The first species to be officially listed. Why did they list them? Because they were almost gone at that point. How did they do that? Like, I can't imagine that you could do that now. That you could get them to the point of extinction now. Because they're so hard to find. And they're everywhere. Maybe it was just just... I don't want to say they're so hard to find. But I mean, when they get in the water, you know, like... You're not going to get all of them. Like, how you kill them? I was... You know, there's a show, I don't know where it's on, but it's a show that's called Florida Man.

59:18I was watching it on the flight today. And seriously, and it goes through interactions with that Florida Man having. One of them was about a dude who was kind of lost in his life. And he climbed over a fence that he shouldn't have climbed over and went first to win in a lake. And then he had an alligator bid off his arm. And that is the... That's that particular... Oh, I saw that guy in the news. That's the guy that, like, he had to walk, like, for a whole day with, like, one arm. I don't know. I remember there was the guy who... What I... I mean, I don't know. There's probably hundreds of stories like this.

59:51Oh, yeah. But in this video, and I was trying to sleep, so I'm probably wrong. In this video, he laid on the side of the lake, like, probably bleeding to death. When an alligator that was in the shape of his mom, I think, came up to him and told him he had to get his ass up and move, or he was going to die. And he was like, okay, mom, I'll do that. It was... Oh, boy. Who's probably not sober. I imagine it. It was blood loss at that point. Sure. And then also whatever contributed to making him climb that fence in the first place. I won't play the video, but there you go. Is that the dude? I mean, this is...

1:00:21This is not... The show she's watching is on Netflix, I think. Is it? This is a similar thing that did happen a month ago. Here's the video of it. Oh, the one that was the show that was about... I don't want this to lose his arm. The show was about some that happened years ago. A few years ago, for them to be able to make it. But, yeah, I mean, how many people in Florida? I have lots of time. Yeah, right? I mean, it's Florida. They're huge. Yeah. Now they're in Georgia, too, right? Well, they're in Texas. They're here. Yeah. They find them. And the golf courses in Florida are like, good luck playing golf out there.

1:00:52Are you crazy? You're playing golf in Jurassic Park. I'm sure you've seen the videos. There's one amazing video of this huge alligator. It's like a 14 -footer. And it's walking across this golf course. And it looks like a dinosaur. Because it's not walking like with it's dragging its belly on the ground. Like they sometimes do. It's kind of puffed up there. It is. Look at that. Holy... Oh my God, that's wild. That is so big. Look at the size of that thing. You're out there playing golf. You're like, you see that guy? And you know that they can run fast. Yeah, they run like 30 miles an hour. Yeah, and they run fast.

1:01:28Look at this door. This door can't run 10 miles an hour. It's Lorda Man. Yeah, that's totally in Florida. Man, let me give me a selfie for the Facebook. Look, you're gonna get right up on that thing. And you know, there's a lot of them there too. I mean, they say that it pretty much any undisturbed body of water likely has an alligator in it now. So what ate them? That's a good question. Back in the day, they probably just ate each other. You know, they cannibalize each other. Maybe they're gonna do that too. I mean... Sure, they probably did. They probably have to. At a certain point in time, what are the snakes gonna eat?

1:01:58Snakes have wiped out 90 % of the mammals in the ever grades. And they're terrible for birds too. Oh yeah, for everything. Ground nesting birds, anything. Anything they get a hold of. I mean, if there's a half a million of them, that is a killing population of extraordinary proportions. I mean, half a million things they could eat a deer. You know, there's no skunks left. There's everything raccoons. They're all gone. Yeah. Everything's missing. But this is exactly why we need these technologies that we're trying to develop a colossal. We're not just bringing species back to life, right? We're...

1:02:30This sounds like a sales pitch. A species preservation company. It is a sales pitch. But birds, when I ever think about birds, I think of this, right? We know that there are things that we can do to help mammals to adapt to rapid changes in their habitat. We can do things like... Like the Florida Panthers. You know, one of the things that we did to save Florida Panthers from becoming extinct was we introduced Panthers from Texas. Which are the closest genetically and geographically to Florida Panthers. They were probably connected at some point until humans created stuff that meant that they couldn't go back and forth.

1:03:07And when Texas Panthers were introduced in the mid -1990s, that population recovered. They stopped... They had a disorder called cryptorchidism where their testicles wouldn't descend or only one would descend. They had all sorts of heart problems. That's true because there's a small breeding population. Because there were very few of them. No genetic diversity. The choice was to mate with your family. That's it. Right? And things want to survive. So you get these highly in -bred populations and people fix it by moving an animal from one population to another. Introducing new genetic diversity.

1:03:42It's called genetic rescue. And that's a great way of bringing diversity back into a population. It's what we're trying to do with our Red Wolf project. Red wolves are one of the most endangered wolf species in the world. They're the only endemic American wolf. And they are nearly extinct. There's a successful captive breeding program. And a few years ago, some of the people that we work with at Colossal, a woman called Bridget von Holt, who's at Princeton, who's a friend of mine, she was working and discovered because people were sending her photos. See, this is why you have to pay attention to people who you think might be crazy when they send you pictures of things.

1:04:17Look at this cool, crazy thing that I think I found. You shouldn't just discount it. I mean, I'm the person who has tested insulation that somebody told me Bigfoot Pete on and participated in it. Because if it's real, I want to do the person who finds it. Yeah. So Bridget says this guy who lives down in the coastal Louisiana, sent her a picture of an animal that she's like, that is not a wolf and it is not a coyote. And I don't know what it is and it's crazy. And she looked at it and she goes, yeah, it's not. It's something else. It's something in between those. And so she tested it and found that it has a ton of DNA ancestry from red wolves.

1:04:57And they're hybridized a little bit with coyotes, but all red wolves are hybridized a little bit with coyotes. Canids are always hybridizing with each other. We know that because there are wolves that are black, because black gene for wolves got into the wolf population because a domestic dog had his way with a wolf in heat. That's how that allele got into that population. So we know canids do this all the time. And she was like, this is so cool because this captive breeding population was established with just a few founder individuals. And the team working with them are doing a great job trying to maximize genetic diversity by picking who's going to pair with who to keep all that diversity there.

1:05:36But it's still just a few individuals. So they are going to lose genetic diversity. It's just how it works. But if we can bring other individuals in from this population, that's a way of concentrating more diversity. Better able to pick which parts are red wolf, either by breeding individuals or by editing their DNA, which is technology that we developed on the path to the dire wolf. And we can actually help this population to survive. So there are ways that we can do this for mammals that are going to have really amazing consequences for the way we can protect biodiversity. Well, that's fascinating for things like red wolves and things like that.

1:06:14But what do you, like, when you think of like the Python problem in Florida, I heard the worst idea. The worst idea they were talking about introducing honey badgers. Honey badgers. Because they eat snakes. I mean, I don't know if this was a serious idea. Because we have never, as a species, humans introduced a thing to try to control a thing. And that thing that we introduced just went horribly wrong. We've never done that before. Right, Australia? Right. Australia is a wreck. They have a terrible, feral cat problem. Yeah. And in Hawaii, they have these giant African land snails. Oh, yeah, I heard of those.

1:06:52Yeah. That they introduced this thing called a rosy wolf snail. That they were going to get to eat the giant African land snails. But instead, the rosy wolf snail prefers the taste of native endemic Hawaiian snails. And so the rosy wolf snail is leaving the giant snails alone. And they're big. Have you seen one of those? I don't think I have. The giant African land snail. It's worth looking at it. Did they come over on cargo ships or something? I think we, I think people introduced them for some reason that I can't. Oh, great. Yeah, so we have a good history of doing this kind of thing. Is it for giant escargot?

1:07:25Whoa! Right. Whoa. Can they eat those? Those delicious. I think people can eat them probably, but they eat everything from all of the vegetation to the other snails. I see. To plaster. You know, they'll eat their way through infrastructure that people have built. Oh, great. Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah. So we introduced these little things rosy wolf snails to try to control them. But instead, they're killing all the endemic snails. So we never learned. Yeah, I hope they don't bring honey badgers to Florida. But I, you know, I don't even know if this article's reading was a serious article. But it was just like, that sounds like something that someone would, because, you know, they have, they're really good at killing snakes.

1:08:04Like, that's what they like to do. They kill cobras. And they have an unbelievably resilient body. Yeah. Like, they can tolerate, get bit by lions. I mean, they're freaks. They're really weird animals, like honey badgers. And they just really do. They're cute, right? I remember when my kids were little watching the wild crats. There was a wild grass episode about honey badgers. Yeah. How they were all cute when they were babies, because they were hiding in camouflage. Yeah. Maybe when their babies are cute. They're pretty ferocious. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of Wolverine. Yeah. Yeah. Very similar to Wolverine.

1:08:37Yeah. I think they're all in the same family, right? Yeah, there is. Look at that face. I think they look very cute. Look at that face. They just big old deadly snake, and that's his lunch. And they get bit all the time. And they just like, they get sick, pass out for a couple of minutes, and then recover and kill a snake. That's amazing. Yeah, they're ferocious little animals. So have people been able to understand better antivenom properties from studying them? That's a really good, look at that face. Yeah. Oh my. Good looks vicious. That is such a crazy animal. That pattern on the coat is really beautiful.

1:09:09Oh, they're wild looking. They're wild looking. I just hope they don't bring them into Florida, because it sounds like someone's going to do it. You know, like, it sounds like a Florida idea. We have do hard about the hippo solution than the early 20 essentials. No. No. So this is a great sort of American history story, because you know, our country is replete with people with brilliant ideas, right? And in the early 20th century, when the land in the west was not doing so well, it'd been overgrazed. There were too many cattle, and there was this thing called the meat question. It was the thing of the day, the meat question.

1:09:41People were talking about, how are we going to survive? There's not enough cattle. Maybe we're going to have to eat our dogs. And at the same time, there was a problem in the Mississippi and other places where the, I think it was the World Fair. People had the brought New Orleans, who was the host city of the, I think in Japan. They brought New Orleans this water hyacinth, this water, little tiny, beautiful flower, to, as a gift, and they loved it, and so they planted it everywhere. And it just grew like absolute crazy, and it was choking up the river. Like ships couldn't get through because of this like matted, where people were, like putting oil on it to get it to sing and trying to light it on fire, and nothing would happen.

1:10:19And this team of people that included a congressman from Louisiana came up with a solution for both problems at once, and that was that they were going to import hippos from Africa. In Ciluizia, to live on the bayous, they would eat the plant, the water hyacinth thing, and then we could eat them. And that was going to be the perfect solution to both of these problems. How did that get stopped? It was an accident. So it was, it's actually a fun story. You should, you should look it up and read the whole story because it involved these two guys. One, one of them was the guy who was the inspiration for the Boy Scouts of America.

1:10:58And another guy was like a con man who had worked as a pimping, a journalist, and all these other things. And they had actually been employed during the Bohr Wars to kill each other. But they came together on part of this congressman's team. The scout thought it was a great idea. He wanted people to bring in all sorts of animals from Africa and put them in national parks so that people would want to go to national parks because they could hunt them and they could, and that would have more reason for people to want to support the idea of national parks at the time, which is great. Like, you know, this utility of nature.

1:11:25It seems weird compared to how we think of it now, but I think this is really, it's really important. And it was a really important part of the way we got conservation legislation in the US. So he was excited about this. And then the congressman, when he was pulling together the team of people that he wanted to be on his side for this, he went to a show that this other guy, the sort of con man traveling salesman, pimped escape artist dude, was having about how he was an intrepid explorer. And he was like, that guy is an expert as well. He can also be on my team. And they testified in front of congress.

1:11:56And they asked questions like, you know, how do you know that they're safe? How do you know that they're tame? This con man, he was like, well, you know, there's plenty of evidence that you can even feed them from a baby's bottle with no evidence whatsoever. Everybody was like, yeah, awesome. Even the New York Times was completely behind it. They published an editorial talking about, they called the hippos Lake Cow Bacon. What year was this? It's the early 20th century. In 2010. Wow. Lake Cow Bacon. Yeah, everybody was like, this is it. This is what's going to solve the problem. Teddy Roosevelt was behind it.

1:12:32Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt was behind it. It was a bill all the way in congress just in past. Yeah, well, it didn't go up for a vote. How is it going to happen? You have almost given a nation of hippo ranchers. Oh my god. Yeah. That failed house bills such an increased availability of low cost meat by importing the hippo ponies that would be killed to make Lake Cow Bacon. Yes, brilliant. I mean, this is such a, it's so funny, but it's not fair to call it failed because it didn't fail. It never came up for a vote. So they had testified in front of congress too late for it to come up to a vote that year and then just other shit happened and people stopped paying a test.

1:13:04That's it. It just went away. Just went away. Yeah. So near miss on the hippos. Well, they kill more people in Africa than any other mammal, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and now we know that they're good at becoming invasive. You saw there's hippos that live now in Columbia because of the Pala Vazkovar. Nobody knew what to do with them. Yeah. And they started off with just a handful of them. Now there's like dozens of them down there. And what are they doing about that? Nothing. I think they keep rounding them up and putting them back on his property. What can you do? So how much property did he have up there?

1:13:36I don't know the answer to that, man. This episode is brought to you by Paramount Pictures new film The Naked Gun. There's comedy. And then there's The Naked Gun. It's in a league of its own. If the trailer is anything to go by, this new film does not hold back. Liam Neeson is Frank Treben, Jr. son of the celebrated police squad lieutenant from the original films. Let's just say you've never seen Neeson like this. Nor Pamela Anderson or Paul Walter Hauser. A must watch on the big screen The Naked Gun only in theaters August 1st. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something.

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1:15:02Terms apply, see Visible .com for planned features and network management details. It's so crazy that you just have hippos and they just get loose and now Columbia has hippos. He took them there on purpose though, just like we wanted to bring them here. Can you imagine how bad that would be though? Well, that's the wild boars in the United States. Great. That's William Randolph Hearst. William Randolph Hearst wanted wild pigs on his property. And so he imported them from, I think from, I don't remember, Russia or somewhere in Europe. And then these wild pigs have now populated all through California.

1:15:41I mean, they're all over the place now. Yeah, that's crazy. We did have wild pigs around the US at some point, probably not the same thing, right? Were there wild pigs? That's a good question. I think they came over on boats with explorers, you know, and I know William Randolph Hearst. All the ones around like the northern California area, I think all of those are the remnants of the William Randolph Hearst pigs. Yeah. They think. We don't see them in Alaska, Yukon, where we find all these big, you know, stashes of boats coming out from a frost. So it's probably not that they came over like that.

1:16:14We find bison and horses and mackerel mostly bisoned. Like where did the wild boars emanate from? Like what's the original country of origin? I think, well, I have a friend who works on domestication of pigs and they've published a bunch of different papers that are always contradicting each other. He gave a hilarious talk out of meeting I was at last week about how he keeps saying something different as a way of, you know, keeping to publish more papers. He was just being nice about how he's open to changing his mind with new data, which I think is a valued trait in a show. But yeah, so he saw these days or around Asia, I think it's the origin or at least the domestication and normally things are domesticated around where they were.

1:16:50Well, they're the weirdest animal, right? Because the domestic ones will become, they change, they morph when they go feral really quickly. I think it's like they start within like six weeks. I mean, this is the way evolution works, right? You know, something has a particular suite of traits. The testimony of the, when this was going on, this is the guy who presented this. And he says, he's talking about pigs right here where they're going to bring him from northern Manchuria because of, Oh, were they the most delicious pigs? There's also Tomah bringing in rhinos. Yeah, I think they did bring in camels in like 1853.

1:17:23Well, we have camels. There were North American camels that were here during the ice ages. Is it a bad test or something? This is like 1853? They're Tomah bringing antelopes in and they asked like, are they easily tame? They're domesticated. He's like, they're very easily tame. That's Irwin. So this is a guy who worked for the, I guess what became the USDA, but he was in charge of apples. But he was really dedicated to trying to solve this meat problem. And he saw importing African animals and animals from other places as the real solution to this. Well, they've definitely done that in Texas. Texas is overrun with African animals.

1:17:58Well, all the private ranches filled with ealons and Neil guy and William. That's cool. We used to have so many cool animals here that all went extinct at the end of the ice age. So why not? I mean, we had mammoths. Why shouldn't we have elephants? I don't, but isn't it weird? But it's again, that's the same argument. Like, you're bringing in an invasive species. Is it invasive though, if it used to live here? Well, it's invasive in a sense that the wolves that are in Colorado right now that are eating all the cattle are kind of invasive. Yeah, I mean, I think they're not invasive because they do live.

1:18:30I mean, there are, the wolves actually just have moved into the sand wands. I think, I think documented, like, natural migration as opposed to the reintroduction. I think there was something I read about that yesterday. But the wolves that they've introduced to, like, outside of Aspen in particular, I have a friend who has a ranch out there and I posted about it on Instagram. He actually sent me some more pictures yesterday. And I was going to post about it, but so much crazy stuff was happening in L .A. I'm like, there's not time to talk about, like, wolf problems. But they, they're just killing calves and eating their liver.

1:19:03They're not even that hungry. They're just eating the tasty parts and leaving these calves alone. And these people are on a 24 -hour run ragged, you know, they have these teams of guys that have to patrol the area 24 hours a day to try to scare off the wolves. And they're not allowed to shoot them. And, you know, they spent millions of dollars bringing them there. And they're just eating cattle. Yeah, I imagine it's really devastating to see something like that happening. And know that somebody else made this decision. Yeah. And that you, who actually experienced it, weren't. I mean, I imagine the people who voted for that.

1:19:43I wonder what they imagined. Well, it's ballot box biology, right? You get a bunch of people that are living the cities that don't have a lot of experience in nature and wild ecosystems. And then you introduce this idea, we're going to bring wolves back to their native habitat. Oh, that sounds amazing. What they're not telling you is like this, with this rancher told me, is that first of all, the original wolves that were introduced into Colorado were wolves that were taken from Oregon because these wolves were praying on cattle. So they already had a taste for it. Exactly. And they already had habits.

1:20:17And so then they brought them into Colorado where they start praying on cattle. And so then they moved them from this area where they were praying on cattle and put them outside of Aspen. Where they... Pray on cattle. Start praying on cattle. Yeah. It's just stupid. Yeah. And it's, again, it's not biologists. It's not their idea. It's ballot box biology. This is why. It's all being instigated by the Colorado governor. Yeah. It's so important to actually talk to wildlife biologists and ecologists. And we can see from Yellowstone how important having this Keystone Predator is in ecosystems where they can be.

1:20:51And where there is space for them. But the land is not the same as everywhere as it is in Yellowstone. And we need to be able to make... You know, when I was at Santa Cruz, I taught an introductory biology class for non -majors where my goal was to give the students tools to be able to think on their own, which is harder than you might imagine. And their midterm exam was a debate. And the topic of the debate was that wolves should be introduced into California. Why not New York City? Let's go. Well... Put them everywhere they used to be. I mean, this is where it gets silly. It's like when you're dealing with people that have cattle wrenches, and this is their entire livelihood.

1:21:28And all they're doing now is just compensating them for the calves that get killed. And then so you have a less output every year. So it's like the whole thing is crazy. But... They were already on their way to do a natural migration into Colorado. Right. And it would have been different wolves. Yes. It would have been different size wolves too. Because I think there's also like some of the wolves that are being introduced. They're introduced from British Columbia. Or they're being introduced from Alberta or somewhere up there. Like I think that was the ones that came into Yellowstone. Like the Yellowstone thing is cool.

1:22:01Right. It's been a few decades now. People have kind of like come to this sort of equilibrium. You know, people recognize that there was an overpopulation of elk for sure. I mean, they used to have these hunting seasons where they would hunt them in the snow in the winter. Because there were so many of them, they wanted you to just pick them out and just shoot them for meat. Because they really didn't have the resources because they didn't have the apex predators. Right. Because a lion can only eat so many of them. So mountain lions weren't really putting the dent in the population that a pack of intelligent hunting cooperative animals like wolves could do.

1:22:38So they brought it back and it's relatively successful. They've knocked the population of elk down more than 40%. Wow. But that's probably good. Yeah. I mean, not for the people that hunt elk, they're really mad. But wolves are cool. School's a lot more out. But Montana is very different than Aspen. Right. It's very different in the mountains of Montana. You see a wolf versus in someone's cattle ranch in Aspen. Right. This is stupid. Like, why did you do this? But what's interesting, this class that I took, so it was a debate that I taught. Sorry, it was a debate. And what I made them do was assume roles of a rancher, a politician, a conservationist.

1:23:19And I had several different roles. And then I randomly assigned whether they were pro or con. And they had a couple of weeks to figure out what their debate was going to be. And I took a vote before the debate. And as you might expect for 18 -year -olds in California, you say at the beginning, should wolves be introduced? 100 % yes. Right. They do this debate. And I did it four years in a row. And every year, after they had to do this, after they had to put themselves in somebody else's shoes, and think about it from their perspective, it would shift. And the majority of people would be like, yeah, no, it's a bad idea.

1:23:53I think if you give people the tools to be able to think, they can imagine themselves in a different scenario. And we need to do that. We need to be arming people with thoughtfulness rather than jumping to a conclusion. Yeah. And also, ballapox biology. But everybody's going to vote. Right. But you shouldn't be able to vote on things that you're not educated in. Yeah. It's like if you allow people to vote on things that have tremendous consequences to the ecosystem, like a reintroduction of an apex predator, and they don't understand those consequences, they just have this very utopian idea of what it means to bring back wolves.

1:24:28Look, I love them. I think they're amazing animals. It's just like putting them in, you know, calabassus is probably not the best idea. Right. Putting them where people live, they're going to eat pets. They're going to eat a lot of things that are pinned up, whether they're sheep or goats, or whatever they, whatever people have that they can get at easily. They're not going to chase down or hurt a elk. That's hard. Well, they're biology, right? They're not, they're making decisions on where they can find their next meal. Exactly. But we're not planning on rewilding dire wolves, just to put that out there.

1:24:58I like that. Plus, you've met Kalise, I don't think she would be. I bet you will in a couple of years. Yeah, maybe so. But right now. A couple of years for freaking out. Because it freaks me out already when you look at it. She's making it so intense. They're so intense. You know, when you look into a predator's eyes, there's something about it. It's like, you realize, like, oh my god, I'm like a water balloon. I'm so, you know, we're just like so weak and soft. Yeah, we've been putting together not because we're not going to release them. And the next step for their lives is to study them and see, you know, how they're changed by their DNA being modified, measure things like their gene expression, their growth, their health span, their lifespan, learn the consequences of the work that we're doing.

1:25:41Learn how they interact with the habitat, introduce Kalise to her brothers, and the next animals that we make into that pack to make a small pack. But they will stay on that secure, expansive, ecological reserve. Yeah. And you're not going to let them breed. No. The plan is not to let them breed. How will you prevent them from breeding? Well, at the moment, they're separated. Right. But we'll probably use subcutaneous, you know, you can put a hormonal contraceptive. Right. There's been some ideas of maybe, so we don't want to castrate them, which would obviously be a way to stop it. But because we want them to be able to reach their full size, because we want to know what that would be.

1:26:24Right. And we want them to be able to have the hormones to be able to do that. But they will be controlled. We track them. There's cameras on them all the time. There's three separate layers of fencing to keep them in. We know exactly where they are. They couldn't get a splinter without a camera somewhere seeing it. And we know exactly what's going on with them. So, yeah. Well, That sounds like a scene in Jurassic Park. We have a totally other control. I've seen that scene. Don't worry. We have cameras upon cameras. Do I sound like the scientist? No, you don't. And I kind of do, actually. I was in Mauritius, working on it.

1:26:58Which scientist? Jeff Goldblum was the scientist that got me. I'm Henry Wu, right? I'm the chief scientist, right? So, I'm a good guy for now. Right. But he becomes a bad guy in the future, right? So, I'm looking forward to my evil transition. We're not making dinosaurs. But, you know, there were other cool animals that we have DNA for. We have a... I heard you talking about the American Cheetah. Yeah. So, we have two high -quality genome sequences from American Cheetah. Wow. And if we want them back to help with our population problems. So, let's get to the criticisms. Because there's people that are saying that these are not direwolves.

1:27:40That what you've done is just manipulate the DNA of a gray wolf. They are direwolves because we have manipulated the DNA of gray wolves. We took direwolf genome sequences from animals, one animal that lived 72 ,000 years ago, and one animal that lived 13 ,000 years ago. And we lined them up next to each other and figured out what it is that makes a direwolf, a dire wolf. And then we used the tools of genome engineering to bring those traits back in Romulus, Riemus, and Calisi that are three direwolves that are alive now. And that has created these animals that you saw that are bigger and they're stronger.

1:28:20And they have that direwolf coat. And that's a cool thing too. That coat, the light coat color that you see, was something that we absolutely could not have known without the ancient DNA. Because no one has ever seen a direwolf. When we published a paper before I joined colossal many years ago, that was about direwolf evolution. We had a paleo artist reconstruct what direwolves looked like, and they made them red. And, or ready brown. And that's because so many other animals seem to be ready brown. Like, bamoths are neon or tall, seem to have had red hair. And so we thought, sure, why not? We didn't know because we hadn't sequenced the part of their genome that we could use to see what color their coats were.

1:28:57But both of these two animals that we had higher coverage DNA from had gene variants in genes that are associated with pigmentation. How are coats, the hair color and eye color and things like that? That suggested they had light colored coats. And so we thought that's cool. We'll have that as one of our key direwolf traits that we're bringing back. Is it possible that it's like other wolves where there's a variation, but you would only sequence the DNA of ones that had white? It's possible, yeah. And I'm sure there were different colors. But it's interesting to me that two animals that lived so far apart from each other in time and geography would both have this light color coat.

1:29:35So maybe it wasn't that every direwolf had a light coat, but it must have been a predominant color in the population. What was the environment in which they lived? So if they lived 13 ,000 years ago, you're talking about the ice age, right? Do you think that that's why they had white hair? It's possible. Both of these animals were from northern part of their range where it would have been colder. They did live through previous interglacial periods. 125 ,000 years ago it was as warm as it is today or even warmer with predicted to be no ice at the poles. And also we know direwolves were really common around the Lebraya tarpits in Los Angeles.

1:30:09We haven't been able to get any DNA out of anything from Lebraya. That would be an amazing discovery. This is the hardest destroys everything. Don't know if it destroys it or if it gets into the bone in a way that we can't get the DNA out. So somehow inhibiting the recover of the DNA will get there. I mean, someday we'll figure it out and that's going to open up a lot of really cool. It kind of makes sense that like polar bears having that white color would eat a polar bear. It's clear, right? Yeah, they have their hair is long and it's clear in the end. That's why polar bears, if you see those pictures of bears and zoos, where they look polar bears and zoos would look green.

1:30:45No, whether it covered in moss. It grows in the hairs hollow. Wow. And so if they're too wet and not cold enough, they can turn like this weird. Oh, they are mold. Inside their hair. Oh, wow. But it just makes sense that them being that color would have an evolutionary advantage for hunting. Because you're in something that's completely white. And you don't see like a grizzly bear. You'd see like, oh, look at that dark blob that's moving towards us. We did some work in my academic lab where we discovered that polar bears and brown bears hybridize with each other. This is one of those funny stories about academia with a scarcity mindset there where we publish.

1:31:25We submit a grant proposal and we say, hey, we have this really cool observation that polar bears and brown bears hybridized during the last ice age when they overlap with each other. And it gets rejected because they're like, that's dumb. We know that doesn't happen. And then we found another hybrid polar bear from the previous interglacial. And then there's evidence that they're hybridizing today. Yeah, they found them to go out and do this. So whenever they overlap, geographically, they breed. But what's interesting about this is that we always find the hybrids living like brown bears. Even though it's probably that the mom is a polar bear.

1:31:59Because a brown bear boy will wake up from hibernation and go out onto polar bear territory to scavenge for food. And a polar bear female is an induced ovulator, whereas brown bear females are seasonal. So a polar bear female will ovulate in the presence of a male. So the male comes up to her and will mate her. The other way around, if a polar bear bear, brown male had encountered a brown bear female, he's probably more likely to eat her than to mate her. Oh, wow. And so, but that's weird then. So why do we always find the hybrids living with brown bears instead of living with polar bears? And the polar bear biologists who we've worked with worked a lot of time with Ian Sterling, who's a fantastic polar bear biologist from the Canadian Wildlife.

1:32:45And his hypothesis is straightforward that they can't successfully hunt seals if they don't have that white fur. Completely makes sense. It does, right? Because they have that ability to swim and they dive under the water. And they're also really clever and how they use those ice shelves and swim from one ice shelf to another. Yeah. But they hide in... They even have those things where they cover their nose with their hand, the black nose with their hand, because the black nose... I know, it's insane, right? Biology is cool. It is cool. It's cool to think of how they became successful doing that way.

1:33:22Who figured that out? How do they have the self -awareness to know that the end of their nose is dark and that other animals can see it? But they also hybridize, just given the chance to do so, right? Because biology doesn't recognize species concepts, right? Biology doesn't care that that animal is called a brown bear, by us, and that animal is called a polar bear. Right. They run into each other. They're like, cool. Just like our Neanderthal ancestors, right? Are those hybrids? Are they... This episode is brought to you by UberEats. Summer is here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with UberEats.

1:33:57What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well -groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken Parmesan delivered. A day in the sun? No. A bottle of rum? Yes. UberEats can definitely get you that. For almost, almost anything delivered with UberEats order now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region, sea app for details. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Sometimes, it's good to be a little controlling. It can help you protect yourself, your health, your well -being, and your possessions. There's only so much you can do, though, especially when it comes to your personal info.

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1:35:22You might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it with LifeLock. Save up to 40 % your first year, call 1 -800 -LIFLOCK and use the promo code JRE -OR. Go to lifelock .com slash JRE for 40 % off Terms Apply. Are they fertile? Can they have babies? Yes, this is actually how we discovered it, because we found that the place where brown bears hybridized with polar bears during the last ice age was probably the ABC Islands off the coast of Alaska, because the ice was that far south at the peak of the last ice age. And brown bear boys would move onto the islands as the habitat got better, where they encountered these populations of polar bears that had been stranded there, as the ice receded pretty much.

1:36:11And so they hybridized there, and all brown bears in North America today have ancestry from that admixture with polar bears. Geez, wow, that's so fascinating. Yeah, it's just like how we all have ancestry from mixing with neanderthals. Is that from the German zoo? I don't know. Because there's a couple of bears at it. But that really looks like a hybrid, doesn't it? Yeah. That looks like there's a lot of traits of both of them. Yeah, it's impressive. Bears are some of the most fascinating animals ever. I'm gonna say it's a cause. Yeah, it's just an incredible animal. So that's it's really, I'm really glad you said it that way, that nature doesn't know that there's a polar bear and a brown bear.

1:36:53Why would it? You're right. It's just our definitions. Yeah. Is this part of the problem with the criticism of the science? Is that we are being very specific about what we're calling these things based on our own definitions that we've all agreed upon? Yeah. But that the true nature of genes is that there's just like proliferation and fluctuation, and all these animals breed with each other, and it's like... It's kind of that, but it's also that we haven't agreed, right? So there's this group of academic scientists who are trying to say, trying to grasp so tightly to this very precise definition of a species as having to do with DNA.

1:37:38How much DNA matches something else? But that is... and it's interesting. I think the reason that we keep having this conversation is because it's genuinely interesting to talk about species concepts. We have come up with dozens of different species concepts, and they're all for a particular purpose. If I am wanting to have a conversation about dinosaur fossils or anything that's a fossil, I'm going to use the morphological species concept. Because that's all I've got. I'm going to compare the shape of this bone with the shape of this bone, and if they're similar enough to my trained eye, I'm going to call that a species.

1:38:15That's all you had a bison priscus, I'm going to say, skull out there. That's from the bone yard. That's from the bone yard, yeah. Step bison. Step bison priscus. Or bison chrasochornus, bison oxydentalis, bison alloscensis, bison... I could go on forever, I know this is. The naming of bison was like sport in the 18th, 19th centuries, mostly 19th centuries. Did you go to the bone yard? I haven't... I don't think I've been to his. I didn't go with Ben, but I've been working up in that part of the world for 30 years. We spend a lot of time working at gold mines outside of Dawson City. Have you been to Dawson City?

1:38:55No. It's amazing. It's an old timey gold town, dirt roads, wooden sidewalks. The buildings are all crooked because the fire is burned at one end and it melts the permafrost underneath and it goes into... It's where I learned what you're supposed to do when a fight breaks out in the bar that you've gone into. What are you supposed to do? Grab your beer. Back up. Right? No, get out of there. Otherwise your beer's going to get knocked over. I'm not leaving. You're not leaving when a fight breaks out? Not in Dawson City. There's mosquitoes outside. No, it's... I would tell you to leave. It's a weird place.

1:39:29Unless there are women fighting, don't scare me as much as you've been fighting. But then women can pull out guns. That's true. But this is... It's Canada. So less likely for that to happen than in Alaska. But this is... There have been weird things happen there. And, you know... There's... You go out to the bars in Dawson City. Oh, why am I telling these stories? This is ridiculous. You go out to the bars in Dawson City. And they still have this thing where there's the bell. And if you ring the bell, the person who's running the bell is buying a round for everybody who's in the bar. And you learn after you've been there for a while that a person is only ringing that bell because he wants the right to talk to everybody who's in there because he wants to fight with somebody.

1:40:07This is somebody who's like a diamond driller who's just got paid in cash for the first time. And he's like, now I want to fuck somebody up. That's what they want to do when they get paid. Rings the bell. And then goes from table to table, sitting around with people. And we, they're like nerdy scientists, paleo -geneticists, sitting in the corner. I'm trying to just be super nice Canadians like talking to these people. Like, I don't want to fight. And he's just looking to fight on with someone? Just, yeah, just looking to fight. Poor. Yeah, it's a weird part of the world. It's, it's a fun place to work.

1:40:37But anyway, I digress. There's gold mines like that, like the site outside Fairbanks that are super productive like this. And every one of the miners out there has like this cool collection. Not nearly as cool as his, but because he's got so much landed in collecting it for such a long time. And I heard these, those great stories about how he donated materials to the American Museum. Well, it was previous owners of his property. Right. Because that, right? That's the case, right? And they dumped it in the East River. And so they denied dumping it in the East River. So then they hired these guys to go and die for it.

1:41:12And John Reeves told everybody where it was. Yeah. I don't know if he hired them or just told them. But so these guys dove in the East River. They found stepbison, bones, jaw fragments, all sorts of different, you know what I think is great about that story. I really like it, right? Because I'm sure it's true because they have so much of that material at the American Museum. When I started working on bison, and I've worked on bison for 30 years, right? When I started working on bison, getting back to the species concept, I was trying to figure out if the DNA mapped to these species names, and they've got a fantastic collection at the AM &H.

1:41:44But a lot of it is crap. You know, there's so much bone there, broken pieces or other pieces. And you get to the point where you're like, what the hell am I going to do with this? Now they shouldn't have dumped it in the river. Obviously, that's dumb. But he is going to get the last laugh. He won't know because he'll be long dead. But in 10 ,000 years, when the paleontologists of the future are looking in that river, they're going to be like, what the fuck? Right, because there's like tons of it out there. What happened here? They found, what is that guy's name? Dirty water Don, is that his name?

1:42:12This one guy who's one of the divers, he's found multiple pieces. Yeah, I'm sure it's there. And they probably didn't mean anything terrible by it. Well, no, those people aren't even around anymore. I think this was in the 20s, wasn't it? Probably around the 50s. That was when the most of the collection came from. There was a ton of gold mining activity in the 50s and 60s around Fairbanks. So what they have found on John's property that's so spectacular is that it's really only a few acres that he's getting all this stuff from. Which makes you question, how did all these animals die off in mass in this very small area where you've got warehouses filled with bones and tusks?

1:42:51Near Dawson, it's called the Klondike region, you have this really fine glacial silt. And that settles in different places in different quantities. And it settles really quickly. So you get this really fast, thick buildup of this really fine silt that preserves the bones really well. So when we go, the gold miners are their plaster mining. So they're taking these high pressure water hoses and washing away this frozen dirt. Then they let it thaw for a bit and then they wash away the next layer. They're trying to get to the gold bearing gravel that's underneath. But while they're doing that, literally thousands, tens of thousands of bones come out of there.

1:43:25And in some places it's more rich, more intense than others. But it's there. I've taken students up there. And they're all mopey because of the mosquitoes and they're mopey because they're 19. And they're like, oh, we're never going to find anything. They jump out of the trucks and they're like, holy shit, is that a mammoth tooth? Like, yeah, that's a mammoth tooth. Yeah. Is that what you brought? That's what I brought you. It's a fossil. This is from South Carolina. Wow. That's from South Carolina. And it's a fossil. You can see it's fossil. I know they like knife handles out of this stuff, which seems to me.

1:43:56It's kind of gross. Yeah. That has, um, a logo on it. It has, of course, it's branded. It's colossal, you know. Yeah. Wow. But, yeah, mammoths, do you know the story about our founding fathers and mammoths? No. Yeah. So Thomas Jefferson was obsessed with mammoths. Yeah. How did he even know about them? So they were, they were, it was probably mastodons because it was these teeth that were melting out of the salt mix and things like that. And in the part of the United States. But he was, he was obsessed with them. He was getting his friends to, to mail him teeth that he was finding. And he was, um, this is a, this is a funny story.

1:44:37Let me see if I can get it right. You should look this up too, because it's hilarious. Um, how mammoths made America great before. And now when we bring our mammoth back, we're going to do it again. So there was a guy in, in France who was writing a series of books. He was like, comp to perform, comp to perform. I think it was his name. I'm terrible with French, so I probably did it wrong. But he was writing a series of books about natural history. And the fifth, I think of his books was called, uh, the theory of American degeneracy. And when it was essentially about how all American animals were more shit than animals from everywhere else in the world.

1:45:12And it was during the war of independence. And so it was really popular to hate on American stuff. Right? Right. And so he couldn't have pissed off Thomas Jefferson more if he tried. He didn't know anything about Thomas Jefferson. He was busy fighting with Linnaeus. And Linnaeus was busy classifying things. And this guy was like, there's no more than 200 species of animals anywhere. So why would you bother with that sort of academic silliness rather than think about like how the animals got this way in the first place? And his mind, like discovering why American animals were so shit was the right way to be spending your time as a natural historian.

1:45:48But this pissed Teddy Roosevelt off. And so he was trying to figure out how he could prove to this guy that American animals were actually better bigger. So he was getting his friends to compile lists of things about like how American bears are bigger than European bears. American wolves are bigger than European wolves. That it isn't that you come to America like this guy said. And you suddenly get weaker and your blood gets watery. That was what he thought. That's what he thought. And it was really, it was a bestseller apparently. That's incredible. He thought like living under oppression was really good for you.

1:46:21It's like strength training. They were probably imagining, I guess when people came over they did, there were new diseases. They probably did. Oh yeah, for sure. And so there was probably something in it. But so Jefferson went so far as he had a moose sent to this guy's house on his doorstep. But it was like partly rotten when he'd gotten there and somebody put the wrong antlers on his head. And he was just like really dumb. But his main feature was mammoths that he knew that this animal, he didn't think they were extinct at the time. Nobody really knew about the idea of extinction. He was convinced that loose and clock were going to find them.

1:46:55That people were going to find these mammoths still there. Isn't that incredible? That was going to prove. Isn't that incredible when you just think that just a few hundred years ago, that was the pinnacle of science. That was like the peak of understanding of all the species that were still alive. We really didn't know. What I don't understand about this is how a person who is a scientist can look at how everything has changed in a couple hundred years or in 20 years when it comes to genetics and still say, oh, we know everything. Like, I'm right. I think it's what you were saying earlier. It's a famine mentality.

1:47:32Yeah. It's just weak people's minds. There's and there's weak human beings out there. The way they think is a very weak way of thinking. And they want all the attention for themselves and they're very egotistical. And it's also very supported by academia. There's a lot of bitchy and fighting in academia. It's really gross. Late 18th century, the idea of extinction was only just beginning to be popularized by some thinkers. George Kuvier. He's going. Kuvier. Jefferson wasn't among the believers. In a pre -Darwinian age, extinction was a violation of religious ideals. God would not let animals go extinct.

1:48:05And secular ideas, the balance of nature could never be so significantly upset. So for Jefferson in particular, extinction was just an unusual theory. It's fine. The bones exist, he wrote. Therefore, the animal has existed. The movements of nature are in a never -ending circle. Well, that's the real question. There have been animals that went extinct and then came back. The dire wolf. Right, but that was because of you guys. Wasn't there a bird that thought was extinct? That's not, then they didn't go extinct. Right, right. Sort of like the Tasmanian tiger. They just became, or Bigfoot. Oh no, Tasmanian tiger was definitely real.

1:48:44But some leave with the thylsi. But Bigfoot was real. It was dark cantopithecus. They think that that was real. But Gigantopithecus is really old. Right. But and would have changed until today. I mean, I told you, I have tested. People send me all kinds of crazy things. The insulation was one of my favorites. This is something that I got while I was still doing my PhD. People would send us all sorts of crazy things. Is it your insulation? They said it's Bigfoot fur? Yeah, it was from a guy somewhere. No, no, no, no. They didn't say it was fur. No, it was better than that. Oh. Yeah, he was from somewhere in the Carolina, as I can't remember where.

1:49:16And he'd sent a letter. And it was a handwritten letter on his personal stationary, which had a naked girl dancing around a pole, which gave him obviously more credibility. That's a stationary. He's the emailing you from his trip club. It was a written letter. A letter from his trip club. Sorry. Everything's an email domain now. So a while ago. And he sent a couple of cuttings of insulation from his basement, telling me that the family of Bigfoot's that lived in his basement, he had seen urinating on this insulation. And so if I was going to get Bigfoot DNA, it was going to be from that insulation.

1:49:47Oh, boy. Did you test it? Of course I did. You really did. What? I only tested him for math. I said, I'll test something. Let me find out what you're doing, dude. You're from Bigfoot Bees in your basement. I didn't get any gigantopithecus DNA. There was some human DNA on it. So what was the year that gigantopithecus we believe went extinct? So the bones were found in an apothecary shop in China in the early 20th century, right? I don't actually know. I think that's a story. Millions of years old. I think the story is that an anthropologist was in an apothecary shop in China and found the bones.

1:50:27I think this was in the early 20th century. And I think he said, where did you get this? He said, giant primate teeth. And they took them to the place. And they found jaw bones that indicated it was bipedal. And then they started digging and discovering. I don't think they have a full skeleton. Well, most things from paleoanthropology are, you know, I'm going to rewrite human history because I found a partial jawbone with three worn teeth. Here's the problem, right? You could tell me whether this is correct. Most things will never be fossils. Right. So we don't even know how many species existed and never left a fossil.

1:51:04Right. Because fossils are hard to make. Right. So we're essentially getting the tiniest little bits of information and we're trying to piece together this understanding of millions and millions and millions of years of creatures on this earth and to do so arrogantly seems so crazy. Right. To be arrogant about something that has just by the nature of its existence, how do you find it? It's a very limited resource. Right. This is one of the super fun things about ancient DNA, right? So I think, I don't know, remember who it was who said this? But we don't have any idea if your bone, you paleoanthropologist, if your bone has descendants, but I know that my DNA has ancestors.

1:51:49So I can learn a ton by sequencing the DNA from the people that are around. And if I am lucky enough to get it from these bones that I know is real about human history and paleoanthropologists and archaeologists in the beginning of ancient DNA hated it because it was going in and going, oh no, turns out you were wrong about that. Oh, yeah. Oh, Neanderthals and humans didn't, didn't interpret. Oh, turns out you were wrong about that. Oh, remember them teaching us that in high school? Based on what data? I know, but that's the thing is they taught it so arrogantly. Did people breed with Neander?

1:52:21Nope, that was impossible. They would say it so arrogantly. And this is just high school teachers. And now we know that they did. And we've been able to learn so many cool things about humans from studying this Neanderthal genome. I mean, I know people will get hung up on DNA and how you need lots of DNA to define a species. But we have been able now to look, I think one of the coolest things that we've learned from the Neanderthal genome is that we all know that we have somewhere between two and five percent Neanderthal DNA in our genomes. We kind of get that now. You can get your DNA tested at one of these DNA testing places and they'll even tell you how much Neanderthal you are so you can have a competition with your brother and your cousins.

1:53:04I'm more Neanderthal than you. I'm amazing. Happy New Year. That's a lot more. Less well known though, is that we all have a different two to five percent Neanderthal DNA. And if you were to go around the world and collect all of the Neanderthal DNA sequences that are in people alive today, we could put together like 93 percent of the Neanderthal genome. Wow. That's cool, right? It's crazy. Two questions then. Are they actually extinct? If we can put together 93 percent of their genome by pulling together people who are alive today, that's just a fun philosophical question. Second is, what the hell is going on in that other seven percent, right?

1:53:44And if we want to know what it is that makes us human, that's where we look. That's where we ask, what are the mutations that arose since we split from Neanderthals? That if a baby got that part of the Neanderthal DNA, it didn't survive. It couldn't make it as a human. That is the bit that is important to define us. We've actually been able to narrow that down. There's less than 100 genes, we think. Less than 100 mutations in genes now that have evolved since that split that most people that are alive today have. And that is what makes us human. I think I'm still fixated on what you said earlier because I think it's so important that we decided what these animals were.

1:54:28We gave them these very specific names. And that genes in nature don't care what we're saying. There's this weird thing that's happening from the time we were proto -hominids to what we are today. It makes sense though. We want to have a conversation. And if we want to talk about something, we have to call it something. Right, Austria -Pethicus. We have species concepts that we designed that allow us to have a conversation and know what we're talking about. When I talk about, and I call this fossil a name, you and I know that we're having the same conversation. If I am in charge of delineating species because I'm trying to figure out which agency is going to care for this endangered species, I might use geography to figure out what one species is and what another species is.

1:55:21The species concept that we learn when we take our introductory biology course is a species concept that was developed in the middle part of the 20th century called the biological species concept, which says you're a species if you can breed and if you're offspring are fertile. But we know that lots of things violate that. Brown bears and polar bears, we just talked about how their hybrids humans in the antitalls violate that. Cattle and bison violate that. To a way less of an extent than we thought that they did, this is actually a cool story that I think that I think. Do you know what a beefalo is?

1:55:56Yes, yeah. Is it the female cow and the male bison or vice versa? No, a beefalo is a breed of hybrid that is 5 -8ths cattle and 3 -8ths bison that supposedly has better meat. Do they do it on purpose? Yes, it was one of these breeds that they tried to make. But is it work both ways? Is it work with a male bison and a female cow or a male bull and a female bison? Is that it? Does that mean it barely works at all? Oh, do they do it artificially or they haven't partied together? No, they just lied. Oh, it's fake. It's not real. Oh my goodness. So I've always, I've spent a lot of time being interested in this.

1:56:40That's right. Admixture history and so is interested in brown bears and polar bears and humans in the end of Talson. And what is it that suddenly makes a species not able to breed with another species? What is it that causes that sort of last wall to go up? Right. And then suddenly you're the biological species. Yeah, well, what exactly is it? Can we figure it out? And so I wanted to look at these different species pairs. And we knew about beefalo because people have beefalo ranches. There's a beefalo of the weak. You should look that up because this is going to be like, there's beefalo up the weak competition where you see these animals.

1:57:12Anyway. So people in the early 20th century decided that they wanted to make hybrid cattle and bison because they wanted animals that were as robust in the North American prairies as bison, but as tame and easy to deal with as cattle. So they started breeding them together. And we're just like, this and working. You know, this is really hard. When we get the F1s, that's first generation hybrids, often it's only the females and they're not reproductive. You know, there's problems here. We can't do this. And because the, yeah. And so then people kept trying to do it because they really wanted to do this.

1:57:51And then there was this guy called, a caribou the name of the person who actually did it, who claimed that he had been able to create this animal that was three eighths bison and five eighths cattle. And he sold his animal to a guy called Budbosolo in California, who created this herd of 5 ,000 beef below. And it was announced with great fanfare, like the front pages of newspapers. He sold one animal to a farmer in Canada for $2 .5 million 1975. It's still the most expensive single animal that has ever been sold. Right? 2 .5 million 1975 dollars for this animal. And so we have this thing. I was like, we're going to sample them.

1:58:30We were working with collaborators from the USDA. We were reaching out to people, reaching out to ranches and saying, can we have a piece of your piece of some of your stuff? And they were like, nah, not sure about research on this. And so we started buying tongues. Because if you buy steak, you just get the same animal over and over again, but they all have one tongue. So you can just buy tongues. And then you get lots of different animals. We sequence their genomes. And then we got from the USDA, their expired sperm straws that they have for the animals that they give away to start your beef below.

1:58:59I think we sequenced their genomes as well, including this 2 .5 million dollar 1975 individual. And we've done a lot of work on bison and cattle throughout the last, you know, 30 years of my life. And so we have this big plot that shows bison on one side and cattle on the other. And we had made a hybrid so we could sequence their genomes. It wasn't born. It was an aborted animal because, you know, it's very hard to make a hybrid. He fell right in between them in the middle where you expect them to be. So now we know exactly where we think our beef aloe should be. You know, there are 5, 8s cattle, 3, 8s bison.

1:59:31They should fall out closer to cattle, but still up here. And so you plot them and they're all just cattle. 100%. They're just cattle. It was fake. So did they use like highland cattle or something like that? Have those crazy furs? There's some evidence that they used Zeebu. So it's a different type of cattle. It's the one that came from Asia. They have them in Brazil because they have a hump. So it makes it look a little bit more like bison. Oh, there it is. If you look at it, if you look at the pictures of the beef aloe of the week, you look at them and you're like, yeah, those are cattle. Let me see a beef aloe, Jamie.

2:00:02Why did the beef aloe of the week I was, I went down a weird path, so I just got a beef aloe. Oh, boy, wrong websites. No, I didn't seem like I was on the same path. When was this all discovered that these are just cattle? Oh, just look at beef aloe. And then you look at historic beef aloe. You can see the pictures of historical beef aloe. Yeah. When was it discovered that these are just cattle? We just published the paper like a few months ago. Oh, no. So this poor dude from 1975 that spent two million bucks. Oh, yeah. And he sold it back to Pesolo for some of the money getting back. I mean, I think there was a thing going on there.

2:00:38So these people are out here still selling beef aloe. Yeah. Like it's real. Like this is a website. And their hybrid was something. They're mixed with a little bit of Zeebu. Some of them have a little bit of bison in them. But this is a, this is a, a, a, a house. Interesting. Yeah. I talked to Steve Vernello about this. I know that he's, he's a friend of his. He was like, that's hilarious. It is hilarious. It's very funny. It does look different than a regular cow though. A little bit. I mean, they were trying to do that, right? Right. And we can, we can engineer everything. That's not what they did.

2:01:10I mean, a, a, a Chihuahua looks different from a great dain, but their DNA has a lot the same. So in 1975, how much of an understanding of this stuff that we have? Did these people think that they were doing this or was it just a scam? I think it, well, this is me speculating at this point. Yes. I think he had to know, right? And there was, at one point, there was a test, a blood test that they had done, where they were looking for markers in the blood. And there were five different markers, and they tested about 150 different animals, and they published a paper saying, oh, look, we tested all these animals.

2:01:38None of them have all of the markers. One of them has one of the markers, and we just think the test is bad. Oh. No, just. Boy. Yeah, fun. Anyway, I digress. I don't remember what we were talking about. Well, we're just talking about a bunch of different animals that used to exist. You know, we were talking about a gigantic epitheticist at one point in time. He said it's really old. Was it 100 ,000 years ago? I think it's... They speculate the age of them? Older. Older? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. So two, two million, two approximately three to 200 ,000 years ago? Okay. So as recently as 200 ,000 years ago, so you like kind of...

2:02:19The homo sapiens are like 300, 400 ,000 years old? Diverged from Neanderthals? So they're like around that time? Yeah. So it is possible that at one point... And so this is just a very limited amount of bones, right? It's just limited. Just like everything else in Paleo -Earthly. So it's possible that they existed later than that. We just haven't found those samples yet. Maybe. There was a really cool... This is just about how we don't know anything. We can actually get DNA directly from sediments. And this has been a relatively recent revelation. It's super cool because it means that you can take a plug of dirt from the inside of a lake and you can reconstruct the whole ecosystem as it changes over time.

2:02:57Super cool, right? Wow. But recently there was a paper that was published by some colleagues of mine that had done this for sites in Canada. They found mammoth DNA and horse DNA in Canada in these really well -preserved parts of the world where we've been working. That date to probably around 4 ,000, 5 ,000 years ago. Horse DNA. Yes, in that... That's weird, right? Because they're supposed to be extinct in North America when? 10 ,000? Around the last... But you know, there are a lot of Native American cultures who believe that they have a long history of the horse and that the horse has survived.

2:03:29And it's just dismissed because we don't have evidence for it. But until we find DNA directly in dirt, I mean this is just showing us how much we don't know. Right. How much we have to be really willing to... Obviously, we have a model of the way the world works. And we don't just throw away the model with new data, but we have to incorporate the new data. Right, you can't be arrogant about the model. So the model is, if you correct me from wrong, that horses evolved in North America, but it went to other continents, but then eventually died off in North America. But survived elsewhere. Yeah, eohypis, the very first horses are from 50 million years ago.

2:04:04They're found in Wyoming, within the fossil deposits in Wyoming. Those are the little house cat -sized horses. House cat -sized horses. Yeah, but this is early horses. Around the same time as we have the first primates and the first of the other things that we know. That's so fascinating. It's so cool. So fascinating. Well, we were talking about this the other day, the big debate that happened with Clovis first, that they used to think that human beings, they came over here at a very specific time and then they found those footprints in White Sands, New Mexico, and they're like, okay, we've got to rethink this.

2:04:36And we're being forced to rethink this. And there was another time where archaeologists were horrible to each other. These scientists were horrible to each other because they attacked the guy who made the discovery. They said, this is nonsense. This is impossible. We know we're very clear, which is the arrogance of these people. Yeah, they did that to Zaksankaras who discovered the bones in Alaska, northern Canada that had cut marks on them that were older than the accepted time of when humans could be there. And now everybody accepts that as it's true. We know that they can. Yeah, it's so gross.

2:05:06It's so gross and they keep doing it over and over and over again. So then the question is, okay, if we have 22 ,000 year old footprints, how many thousands of years were they here before that? Like, have they always been here? How'd they get here? Like, what's the earliest known humans? You know, we know that there's no Neanderthals here so far. So far? So far, there's no Denisovans, but you imagine they found a different kind of human. Wasn't there something that came up where they found some human that lived? Oh, God, I want to say 6 ,000 years ago and it's DNA is different. This is like very recent, different than anybody that they've ever discovered before.

2:05:44So they're like, okay. Well, that would be different. The thing is, it's like super recent, like yesterday or the day before. But it's just these things keep finding new stuff. Here it is. This is 6 ,000 year old skeletons with never -before -seen DNA rewrites human history. Huh. Yeah, so this was just June 7th. Yeah, I don't know anything about this. Yeah, they uncovered 6 ,000 year old skeletons in Columbia that belonged to a mysterious group of people that could rewrite human history. It doesn't match any of the other known digits of populations. No, wild. They're genetics -related to reveals a distinct, now extinct lineage that may have descended from the earliest humans to reach South America, one that diverged early and remained genetically isolated for thousands of years.

2:06:26Yeah, this is, I mean, I have no doubt that this is true. I mean, how many of these human settlements are gone now? And so we don't have any evidence of them. And there are all the lineages that they'll go back to humans originating in Africa at some point. But we haven't seen all of them. We haven't seen all of the pattern. We don't know. Even what questions we should be asking. You know what you guys really need to try to bring back those little Tridactyl skeletons they find in Peru? That's like when we had Luke Caverns on and Jesse, when we had Jesse Michaels on the other day, who has an amazing YouTube show, both great guys.

2:07:03They were showing us these skeletons that they found in Peru that are very bizarre. And people initially thought they were hoax, but then they found these newer ones that they've discovered that they have three fingers and three toes and they've done cat scans on these things. And they seem to be human, or human -like, these things. Yeah, I've seen of these. I thought 100 % horseshit when I first saw them. Because I think some of them are horseshit. But then when they've done, like look at that image below, they do X -rays of them. Like, come on, like what the hell is that? Like what is that? That's seen, there's no way, again, I'll say it again.

2:07:41But if that's art, let me buy it. Like if you've so many made that. So those X -rays are from the things themselves. I think I've seen some of these of them. The cat scans are even weirder. Because the cat scans, when they show like the 3D cat scan to the body, you're seeing all the areas where the cartilage is, but it doesn't look totally human. Because this is it. So they have three fingers and three toes. It's really weird stuff. Like there's layers of them. As you go through a cat scan. Now, older, I've seen some of the reports. This is the thing that was presented to the Mexican government at some point.

2:08:19This is Peru. The Mexican ones seem to be horseshit. It seems like in the guy who discovered them, air quotes. It seems to have a history of finding silly things. But this seems real. This seems very real. Like look at this thing. What's that on the neck? Exactly. What is that on the neck? Who the hell knows? Like who the hell knows? Why does it have so many ribs? Like look at it, go back to that image where it shows the back. Jamie, where it was like, yeah. Like when you see this thing, this guy's not showing you the full body in this particular image. Whatever the hell that thing is on the back of his head is where the shape of his head is very weird.

2:08:55But it looks real. Like if you ask it find that that's real, I know you won't bring back Neanderthals. But why don't you bring back one of them in a little three -toed alien people? I don't know. I mean, you still have to ask their permission. It looks like a personal thing. Listen, you talk to them. Bring them back. Ask them if they know. Shoot them in the head. Right. I don't know what to tell you. But bring them back. Like some things you just have to do. Like if we find out that that thing was a real thing, like what is that? What's that thing in the back of its head? People tried to do DNA work or protein work on these things.

2:09:27I think there's a small select group of people that are even taking it seriously. But more people are taking it seriously now because they're cat scans. Oh right. Because I think initially, have you seen the original ones, the ones that look super fake? Yes. They look like something you'd buy in like a roadside stand. They look totally bullshit. But then I was going back and forth with Jesse Michaels and Luke Caverns. And they were sending me these images of, I think it was 800 BC. This is how old these drawings are in these tapestries that show these weird three -toed, three -fingered things that look like a little one of those things.

2:10:13So was this another type of human that lived with us at some point in time? It's interesting. There are the three -toed and three -fingered things. Interesting. I wonder if there's a genetic mutation that leads to that. You've seen that the tribe, there's an isolated tribe that has the two. Yeah, very weird. Yeah. So maybe that was that. Maybe that's what that was. I mean, who knows. It would be fascinating to see if there's any DNA that could be recovered or proteins. So why don't you guys get down to Peru? Yeah. I'll run it by Ben, see what he thinks. He would be in there. Ben seems like he would let's go.

2:10:49Like if you could find Gigantos Pithicus DNA, I think Ben would want to bring back Bigfoot. Yes, probably. Let's not tell him. I think that's what Bigfoot is. Don't you think? Gigantos Pithicus. Yeah. Was it in Asia though? Yes. Bigfoot is supposed to be in North America. Well, they found the bones in China. Yeah, so it could have come across. It's make sure that store is right that I said I'm pretty sure it's true. Gigantos Pithicus bones found in the Pothcary shop in China. Yeah, I was looking at it. I just didn't want to bring it up. That's a guy named Ralph von Konigswahl 1935. They're being sold as dragon bones.

2:11:22Yeah. So they bought a bunch of stuff and then they started looking at them and it's found out that that's not what they were. So it's 35. It's a friend. Early to middle -place to say in China. That was super interesting. And I wonder if these populations were there. They're there at the same time as Denise of them were there. The antitolls were there. If they could have hybridized with humans, they probably could have used. Who knows? Yeah. We know so little. Well, it seems to like it coexisted with homo sapiens. So I mean, but when did it start existing? How long was it? I mean, we know that the antitolls were around for what, 300 ,000 years or so.

2:12:00Yep. Which is kind of crazy when you think that people, you know, we've really only been running things for a small period of time. I don't know who added this. Closely allied with orangutans. Once thought to be a homonym. Oh. Now thought to be closely allied with orangutans. So once thought to be a member of the human line. Ooh. Well, it was thought for a long time that orangutans were our closest living relative as well. Have you ever seen them spearfishing? No. Yeah, they've learned how spearfish. That's amazing. They don't know whether it's from observing people. That's what they assume. But there's this crazy photograph of this orangutans hanging onto his branch.

2:12:37He's got a long stick in his hand. And he's like leaning into the river, stabbing a fish. You got to see it. Because it's so crazy. Did they learn from us? We don't not necessarily know. That's so cool. It's not crazy. Really crazy. Like, he's figured out how to catch fish. Yeah. Really? Oh, it says after observing locals. Which totally makes sense, right? Smart. Yeah. I mean, he's seen people catch a fish and he's like, whoa. How did you do that? Which is probably how people learned. Like some really smart ape guy was like, you know, I think I can hit that bird with a rock. Yeah. Learning and being able to communicate is one of the ways that we got the advantage over everything else, right?

2:13:16Because I don't have to evolve the ability to cook dinner. I can learn from my own. Right. But that's what's so fascinating about living today is you don't have to even learn from someone who's anywhere near you. Right. You're learning from things on your phone instantaneously, on your laptop. And you don't have to learn because there's door dash. Right. You can stay alive very easy. That's true too. But it's just, you know, when AI gets involved in this stuff, when we have sentient AI that you can use. To try to, you know, figure out what the consequences of bringing certain species back. And whether or not be a pro or a con.

2:13:55Like what, you know, that's, that's where things get weird. Like if we decide, okay, let's bring back the woolly mammoth. Okay, what's going to be the negative impact of bringing back the woolly mammoth? Well, they're going to eat a lot. So they're going to push out. You can be sentient AI to do that. I mean, we have a big problem. No, you don't. But humans will make decisions based on biased evidence. We'll make decisions based on our, the potential for a financial windfall. You know, we'll, we'll, we'll gaslight people and to think and think is really a good idea. And it's safe for everyone.

2:14:25And we'll do things if we know that we could profit. Whereas if you have AI that's going to be completely objective. And its only mission is to analyze the outcome. Yeah. Ooh, that world. You know, we're, we're actually working with teams of people that are external to colossal to put together the rewilding plans. And that sort of thing for each of the different species. We're not planning to rewild the dire wolves, but we still have done this. We've put together a plan of what the potential impacts would be. But we'd liberally keep that outside and hire people to put this together for us. And we haven't been delivered this yet.

2:15:00So we'll see what it says when we get it. Like, yeah, they're going to say to you. They're going to kill everything. They are not going to kill everything. So they're not going to be rewilded. What animal do you think? Well, obviously you guys are working with the red wolves and you plan to use which are normal native animals in North America that are threatened. Which most people would agree is a good idea to give them a healthy population and release them. And that's, that's the, the best argument. Because there's a lot of people saying, oh, this work could be used for conservation. It is being used for conservation.

2:15:31Yeah. That's, that's so infuriating about some of these haters. They don't even bother looking it up. Or they don't care because they just want attention. And they just want to be negative. And that's the best way to get attention. They want to click, right? And the best way to get that click is to wine. Yeah. To wine and complain. It's annoying. Yeah, it's gross. But they have to be themselves. That's their punishment. You know, that's the life you've chose. You just want to be this bitchy person. You're going to say that one thing forever. Yeah, I mean, this is, Congratulations. You get a lot of attention for just being super negative all the time.

2:16:00But the, if you had to like look at their argument, like the, so the argument of like not doing this, and that you're not really creating a dire wolf, and this is just, you're just taking dire wolf genes and adding them to gray wolves. Have you ever have conversations with these people where they want to tell you that what you're doing is wrong? And what is your response to these people? I think that this idea that the technology that we are developing is something that we shouldn't be developing because it's wrong. It's, for some, somehow, somehow playing God. Yes, I mean, people have been playing God for as long as we've existed as a lineage.

2:16:42First by making species become extinct as we spread around the world, not intentionally initially, but we changed the habitat. We hunt things. Then we figured out that we didn't have to make a species go extinct and order to feed our families. And so we evolved domestication. We figured out how to only take the males or leave the juveniles, or some way of maintaining that population so that you knew you could go back to the hunt the next year and they would be there again. And we domesticated things. And then we transformed to really authority over everything. When we protect a species, people who think about conservation often think of this as super hands -off.

2:17:19Like, I'm not doing anything. Everything just gets to evolve the way that it should be. That's bullshit. Like, we decide how many animals live, where they get to live, what they get to eat, how many they get to eat. We call them when we want to. We protect them if we want to. We don't, if we want to. We are, as gods, as Stuart Brandt wrote in the whole Earth catalog. And we just better get good at it. These technologies are not exactly the same as the technologies that our ancestors had because we are directly changing DNA sequences. But they are technologies that we can deploy to hopefully try to fix some of the things that we have fucked up already.

2:17:58And I think the biggest challenge that I have is to show people that deciding not to allow ourselves the space that we need to figure out what we can do with these technologies, we're still operating within regulatory frameworks. We're still operating within the bounds of biological reality. There's a long way to go here. But if we decide that that's too scary, that we don't trust ourselves, that we're always going to make the worst decision, first of all, it's that attitude of negativity. It's the, I don't want to do it because it's too scary because I'm going to be bad. Second of all, it's a decision.

2:18:35And to think that that decision has no consequences is naive. We know what the consequences are. The rate of extinction today is thousands to tens to thousands, hot times higher than it is across the history of the fossil record. And a lot of that is because of us. But we have the capacity to slow that rate. We have the capacity to help species that are alive today, adapt to the rapid changes in their habitat. What if we could make Hawaiian honey creepers resistant to avian malaria, which we introduced by introducing mosquitoes into their habitat and save them from becoming extinct, or figure out how to transfer resistance to bleaching to corals around the world, or anything that we could do to save some of these habitats that we know are in trouble because of this combination of people expanding and natural change to the ecosystem that we just don't like.

2:19:28We don't want to see spruce forest disappearing because it's getting drier. And that means that they can't make enough resin to fight off the beetles. Right. We have the capacity to use these tools, or at least to think about how we might develop and deploy these tools, to have a future that is both filled with people and biodiversity. I think what people are concerned with is the crude application of this, these techniques and the science when it's in its infancy. And if you just take that and draw it out to its natural conclusion with improvements over time and innovation over time, it could be something that's an enormous benefit to not just animal species, but humans.

2:20:11Right. To everyone. It's kind of like a test run. Like we can make a dire wolf. Can we make a super person? Like, if you know what I mean? Like, it's probably the future. Yeah. I mean, having regular children, like just rolling the dice on seeing what your kid turns out, will probably be super novel, like a hundred years from now. Yeah, it's an interesting thing to think about. Right. And I think we're getting gradually more accustomed to using these technologies to cure genetic diseases like the baby that was in the news over the last couple of weeks. Baby KJ, the boy who was born with a metabolic disease, he couldn't, he had a genetic change, just a single mutation that meant that he couldn't digest protein.

2:20:55And people came together and mounted this incredible, like collaborative effort to find a cure using the tools of genome engineering for this child. And he went home from the hospital last week with CRISPR editing, having gone into his own body to cure this particular disease. No, wild. It's amazing. Wild. And it was such, it was a rush, you know. And it's a, but it's a, it's a really great example of personalized medicine that right now, obviously, this is slow. But we start somewhere. And we always have to start somewhere. Like, yes, it took six months and it's one baby and it took a lot of people to do this.

2:21:31But this is the beginning of how we can use these tools to cure your cancer, to figure out how we can engineer a fix for a baby who's born with cystic fibrosis. Or if you get blood cancer, can we edit the blood cells to make sure, make that cancer mutation just go away? This is the beginning of these tools. And for the extinction and conservation, this is also just the beginning. You know, we've figured out how to learn DNA sequences from the past and actually transform that into an animal that has, that's bigger than a gray wolf. And it's more muscular than a gray wolf. We've made dire wolves using dire wolf DNA and these amazing tools that we will have the potential to use to stop other species from becoming extinct.

2:22:17I love it. I think it is, obviously, there are risks associated with using technologies that we don't fully understand. But we're not taking those risks. We're very carefully evaluating every single one of the edits that we make. We are, in every case, interested in making the fewest number of changes possible to still bring those animals back. What other animals are you going to bring back? Well, what's the plan? What's the plan, Beth? Well, we have announced, obviously, the mammoth and the thylacine, that's the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo, which is my favorite, I see my dodo. Oh, it's cool.

2:22:57But we have DNA from lots of different animals, so you never know. So, but is there like, so you've announced the woolly mammoth? That's right. And where will that be? Where are we going to put mammoths? Yeah, are you going to reintroduce them, area into areas? Eventually, that is the goal to have animals that live in wild habitats. But this will be a very long process. But not dire wolves. No, we won't be reintroducing dire wolves. Okay, so not predators, but you would consider... Well, not dire wolves. Oh, so you weren't joking about the cheetah? Well, I mean, we don't currently have any plans to bring cheetahs or saber -toothcats back to life.

2:23:36But you might. I don't like how you said that. But if you did that, like, that would be where it would get sketchy. If you reintroduce an animal that can run 60 miles an hour to the plains, those poor antelopes who have been living it up, because they evolved, you know, that pronghorn antelopes, the reason why they're so fast, they evolved, get away from these cheetahs that don't exist anymore. That's true. But we know also from looking at the cheetahs that we have, that they didn't only eat pronghorns, they were eating lots of things in their habitat. We found... Because pronghorns are fast. They had to eat something else, otherwise they would die, right?

2:24:11They had to eat some slow stuff, because the pronghorns were like, let's get out of here. Yeah. I mean, for every species, there will be different work that has to be done to figure out whether and where is a good idea to reintroduce them. And for each of the species that we're working with, we have councils that we've put together in the part of the world where we would bring them back together to have conversations about where they should go, whether they should go, how many there should be, and who is willing to be the long -term stewards for these animals? Now, I know that they've talked about releasing woolly mammoths if they ever do make them in Siberia.

2:24:42Right? Well, right now we're not focusing on Russia, because issues... Obviously. Right. So, probably it would be somewhere in North America. Maybe that's why Trump wants Greenland. For mammoths. It isn't good place to put them. They're in good place to put them. I mean, mammoths really need a lot of... The vegetation. Yeah, so I think maybe not. That's right. But, you know, there's plenty of space in Alaska, right, or Northern Canada, or even around the plains. I mean, mammoths lived through warm periods and cold periods. I mean, they're cold adapted because they're big and furry. Alaska would be the move, right?

2:25:17Because it's like the size of one -third of the United States, and they lived there. Right? And, you know... Right. And I'm not worried about the mammoth population getting out of control. I mean, these are animals that take 10 to 14 years to reach reproductive maturity. They have a two -year pregnancy. It's not like they're suddenly going to be... A thousand mammoths. Right. This will be a very slow and deliberate and careful process. And, like with the diorolves, there will be a stage in between the first cafting born, and understanding how they're able to thrive in whatever habitat they're in.

2:25:52And these are really important parts of the deextinction process. I was blown away when I heard that mammoths lived up till about 4 ,000 years ago in an island. Yes, a wrangle island off the coast of Siberia. But now, maybe even in mainland North America, based on that environmental DNA data, isn't that crazy? That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. I did it really. I did it for the horses for 4 ,000 years, right? In that day, but it was in the end of the mammoths. Of course, it's in the end of the mammoths. Yeah. Wow. Right, because we're not going to find the last fossils of something. Right, of course.

2:26:22Because fossils are so difficult to make. Right. Most of the things don't leave fossils when they die. That's right. Like, what percentage of the entire fossil record, bad pun, bad word to use there, but in record of animals, have been fossilized? It's really hard to know, right? And because the tathonomy, which means how things are going to preserve, differs so much depending on where you are in the world, when things die in Alaska, and you have this glacial silt that preserves things really quickly, we're probably finding a lot of things. But we've never found woolly rhinos in North America.

2:26:54So the hypothesis is they never made it across. The bearings, there was a, you know, when the sea level was lower, the bearing straight was not a sea level. And it was, they call it barringia. It was a land bridge. Right. Animals walked across that land bridge, including people walked across the land bridge to come into, into North America. Which brings me to the short face bear. Oh, I don't like how you giggled. Are you guys going to try to bring that thing back? I don't know. We do have its DNA. Oh my goodness. I love the short face bear. You know what I like the most about it is because I think it's so dumb that it's called the short face bear.

2:27:30Like why? Who was, who was giving it that common name? And they're like, oh, here's a bear that if it stands up, it's 12 feet tall. I'm going to call it the short face bear. Right, it's such an innocuous name for such a terrifying animal. Right. Yeah. One of my favorite photos on the internet is a photo of the short face bear standing up. Next to these scientists, they're standing there and you realize the size of it, you're like, that one. Yeah. Like what in the hell? Have you seen the longhorned bison, this bison that lived, 120, 150 ,000 years ago? I think I have. This is, there's a great photo that's somewhere on the internet of one of a skull on the ground and a scientist like laying that one.

2:28:10Yeah, there it is. Yeah, that's crazy. We have DNA from him. You might bring that back. Yeah, wouldn't that be cool? What about the Irish elk? Yeah, we could do that one. Yeah. We have DNA from the megalancerous. When did that thing go extinct? I think that's also the end of the ice age. It wasn't in North America. Right. Yeah, super cool. That thing's nuts. It's like a moose slash elk. I love it. Lookin' thing. There were also camels in North America. There was a camel called camelops. That was pretty cool. Yeah. And a giant beaver, like a five foot tall beaver, which... Oh, that's right. I forgot about the giant beaver.

2:28:44Beaver's scared me. Especially a five foot beaver. A five foot beaver? Think about what a little beaver could do with its teeth. People have found logs that have been chewed on by this thing. Just, yeah. Just imagine. What did that die out in the ice age as well? So that's like 65 % of all the megafauna in North America, right? So many big things. It lost so many big things. Thomas Jefferson thought he had discovered a giant lion. But it was a sloth. It turned out a sloth. Yeah. Giant sloth. It's named after a little different species of giant sloths. It's named after him, a megalonics Jeffersonie.

2:29:16Wow. Well, when you look at its face, it kind of looks like it could be a cat. If you don't know that much. Like, if you don't know what we know now... From the fossils. Yeah. That bone right there. Make that head... Look at that thing. It was like some crazy cat. Oh. What a weird animal. Sloths. I wonder if they moved as slowly as the small ones did. I can't imagine that they could have or they would have been really easily eaten by the giant short face bear. Right. Maybe that's why I don't know. Or the American cheetah or the smileodon. Well, the cheese probably too little. You know, it would get smashed.

2:29:50Yeah, but if that thing was moving super slowly, you could just hack at it for a while. Well, have you ever seen sloths, even a little slow -moving ones swing at leopards or jaguars further? Yeah. There's a video of a sloth, a regular one, that is crawling on this vine and this jaguar is trying to get at it. It's swinging at it pretty fast. I was like, well, I didn't know they could swing that fast. But it moves really slow. Which is like... I wonder if it... Why does nature want you to die so easily? Don't they move so slowly that stuff grows on them? Yes. Mold grows on them. There's a rescue place.

2:30:22So, look at that. Look how beautiful this jaguars are. God, they're so beautiful. Big cats, yeah. So, would you want the big cats that were here to come back? Well, I mean, I don't know. It's like the jaguars are re -emerging in the Southwest. They've spotted at least a couple of them in Arizona. Which I think is great. I mean, I think they're awesome. But I would want to run into one. You know what I mean? I think if you're out there camping, you see a jaguar. You're in a lot of trouble. That's a giant mountain lion. Yeah. And I think about mountains, too. When I go running in the woods and the red woods, I live in Santa Cruz.

2:31:02I go running and I'm thinking, ooh, mountain lions. Bring my dog, right? Yeah, well, the dog's going to get eaten, I guess. I think they're afraid of dogs. A little bit. Yeah, it depends on the dog. They eat a lot of dogs. I have a 75 pound Labrador retriever. He would probably want to be his friend. Yeah, that's like my dog, my golden retriever. Ooh, friend, can we play? Or he would just like tuck his tail and run. And just leave me there to defend myself. But, you know, they know that like the ones that they get, the ones that are problem cats in northern California, when they've found them and they do these depredation tags, they found that 50 % of their diet is dogs and cats.

2:31:40Wow. 50%. That's nuts. Yeah. That's nuts. They're just eating people's dogs and cats. Yikes. Yeah. I don't know, they're spooky. They're cool, but they're spooky. You know, I don't know how many you want around. And there are a lot of cats. Maybe it's because we don't have any of the other predators that used to be there. I mean, the California golden bear. There's another one that hers, I think hers collected one of the last ones of the California golden bear in southern California. Had him shipped up to San Francisco and he became the bear that's the inspiration for the flag. Oh, really? His name is Monarch.

2:32:11We actually sequenced his genome too. The last guy that got killed by a grizzly bear or a brown bear, whatever it was in California, they have a town named after him. LeBette, California. It's named after the guy. Yeah, named after the last guy to get killed by a bear. I wonder if it's worth it to his... Nope. Nope. Nope. It's kind of funny though that the bear is on the flag and then they kill all of them. Yeah. There's none of them. Yeah. Well, by the time I think it was on the flag, it was already on the ground. Probably. Well, people are probably wanting to bring them back too, you know? You know, we showed recently using DNA that they're really closely related to the bears that are in Yellowstone right now.

2:32:49So if you really want bears in California, you can just bring them there. Oh, I don't do it, people. It's Mon... Because the thing about it is once you have them in your area, you can't manage them. Because then people have decided that they're precious. So once they become problems and once they become overpopulated, like Montana has a bit of an issue with them. But they're not going to get that now. They would like to list them sort of people, yes, with grizzly bears. They would like people to be able to hunt them on our... They put a smile on his face. Oh, hi guys. That's only you can prevent for as far as...

2:33:22Mon had a miserable life though. He was mostly in a cage. He was being fed the wrong diet for a brown bear, just mostly meat. And yeah, so right now he's on display. He's not on display actually. He is in the basement in a fridge at the Cal Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. But his post cranial skeleton, everything except his head is at Berkeley in the museum. We've sampled it for DNA. So his diet should have been fruit and vegetables and meat. But they were just giving him meat. I imagine he was just really uncomfortable all the time. Oh really? If you imagine if you just ate only meat. That's all I eat.

2:33:56And mostly just eat meat. I'm not uncomfortable at all. I think meat is... Need a little bit of fiber to help your digestive system. But I bet if you had like a plate, well actually not true. I was saying if you had a plate of meat and a plate of fruit, the bear would just eat the meat. But the bear would probably eat the fruit too. They'd eat everything. They'd eat the cars. Why lived in Colorado? Just like people, not us would have been. Like they're evolved in the world of scarcity where you eat the stuff that's in front of you. Also, they really have to get fat because they're going to chill out and just take naps for three months.

2:34:26I love the fat bear week competition. I love that. Do you know that? What is that? It's around the time when they come out there eating all the salmon because they're going to get some food. And they have a competition between which is the best fat bear and you get to vote for them. And there's a fat bear that wins. Yeah, that's good fun. To me, that's the most fascinating species of bears. It's the bears that live on those salmon rivers because they don't care about people at all. Like there's this crazy video of this guy that's sitting in a lawn chair and this bear comes up beside them. And this bear, or the...

2:34:57He's not in the lawn chair, right? He's beside the lawn chair. But the lawn chair is great for perspective when you see how big the bear is. This bear is huge. It's like 10, 11 feet tall, long, whatever. And it doesn't care about the person at all. It just has been eating salmon. So this is it. And salmon are so much better. Look at the size of that thing. Imagine... Give me some volume. See here, this guy talking. Because it's so crazy.

2:35:24Bear's not interested in them. There's meat right to his right. He just lays down. I'm a chill. The humans probably make a terrible snack though. Even we're bony, we're... Or fatty. That salmon is absolutely delicious or supprotein. Also, it's, you know, just flopping around and there it's easy to catch. And he's probably full. Which is also why they're so big, right? He looks full. He's like him. He looks chill. That's the bear that I would want to run into in the field. He's going to be like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. It's crazy. Like it's a dog. Like I get out of here. Yeah. You're going to give it some, hey, man, this is my space.

2:36:03Don't invade it. Yeah. They just, they, all those Kodiak bears. They're, that's why they're so huge. They get so much protein. Never been out there. Never been out there. Oh, I want to watch them. I want to watch them eat salmon with a high powered rifle right next to me. And maybe in a giant bulletproof hamster wheeler. I don't, I'm so scared of those things. You've seen the documentary, Grizzly Man? Yes, oh. Another great Werner Herzog film. Okay. I have to look at this. Werner is actually in that film. And he's interviewing the people in that film, which is like that. It's one of the best unintentional comedies.

2:36:36It's a really funny movie. Like I think I don't even think it's unintentional because Werner Herzog is a genius. I think he made it funny on purpose because there's some like smash cuts where he's just like, oh my god, we're just laughing. And the guy was so nuts. And he just decided to, I think in my eyes, I think he was like suicide by bear. I think he just decided to stay long enough or eventually they just got him. He was like super depressed and. Oh my god. One to be an actor and it never made it. So he decided he's going to save the bears. And the bears like didn't even care that he was alive.

2:37:05Like they're not used to people being around and all. They didn't even know what he was. And then one of them eventually decided to eat him. I can't imagine that it's a good way to go. It's not a good way to go, but if you're completely obsessed with bears and you know. Yeah. There's a woman who's worked in my lab for a long time. She works on mountain lions, where mountain lion genetics. And she said when it's her time, she wants to go. Oh god, lady. Don't say that. Don't say that. But one thing better about getting killed by a cat than a bear is a cat will kill you and then eat you. A bear will just hold you down.

2:37:35And eat you while you're still alive. Yeah. They don't care at all. They're probably going to die of shock. For an after photos of these. Wow. They found bears before they got fat. It's going to look like a dog home. Yeah. Well, they look real weird when they get skinny and they look real long -legged. That's one of the things that freaks hunters out is when they see them skinned and they're hanging. They look like humans. It's like very weird. Bigfoot. No. Well, that's probably what bigfoot is, honestly. When people are seeing bigfoot, have you ever seen a bear walk on two legs before? No. They walk on two legs all the time.

2:38:10Yeah. All the time. They walk on two legs to present themselves as larger, to scare the other males. And sometimes they have injuries. Like there was a famous bear in New Jersey that was missing a paw. And so he always walked on two legs. And it just looked like a man. Like a man. It was just like a bigfoot. Like if you see him through the woods, right? If it's dusk and you're going on a hike and you're already like heightened senses, it's just a little weirded out already. And you see this thing. It's a black bear that's walking on two legs through the woods. You would be convinced that you saw a bigfoot.

2:38:41Don't you think? Yeah. There was a paper that was published, I made a decade ago or so, where people had done niche modeling, environmental niche modeling based on bigfoot sightings. There he is. Look at that. Isn't that crazy? Oh my goodness. Yeah. And then nuts. So if you saw that walking through the woods, 100 % you'd think it's bigfoot. Oh my God, I found it. He's real. He's real. If that picture was just a little bit blurrier, it would be bigfoot. Right. Yeah. A little blurrier and then a little more distance and in between trees. Yeah. I talked to a lady once we did this television show.

2:39:12Look at him. That's amazing. I know. It's nuts. And that's a small one. We did this television show a long time ago. Me and my friend Duncan, we went to go look for bigfoot. This part of the show is called Joe Rogan Questions Everything and we went to the... And I met this one lady who was so convincing and she told me she saw bigfoot. She said, the Pacific Northwest where we were at outside of Seattle, like up in those mountains, it's so dense. Because it's a rainforest and it's like the way I describe it, it's like a box of cute tips. That's what the trees are like. You know you get a box of cute tips.

2:39:44You can't see them between those cute tips. Super dense. Super dense. And she said she saw something that was like a hundred yards away that was moving through the trees that she is sure. She was like, I saw a giant ape. And I was like, what is that? A ape? Oh my god, it's bigfoot. And my brain was going, I think it was a bear. Well that's what this niche... Nish modeling or environmental modeling study found is they looked at all the reported sightings of bigfoot and then created what would be the environmental niche for a bigfoot. And it pretty much just overlapped the niche for bears for brown.

2:40:17Yeah, of course. I mean it's something that makes sense. But the weird thing about it is the Native Americans. Because Native Americans have a name for that creature. And they have many names for it in different tribes. It's not like an isolated thing, but they don't have a lot of mythical animals. They don't have fake animals other than Sasquatch. It's weird. It is weird. Because if Beringa, as I was called, the Beringland Bridge? Beringia. Beringia existed and we know that it did and we know that people during that time made their way across. If Gigantopithecus lived alongside people, we don't know if it did, but it could have.

2:40:54And if it did, it would be in the same area. It would be in the same area of Asia and perhaps it would have... I have to come really far north though to get across the Beringland Bridge because that was really far. Right. That was all glaciated and cold. So it would have to be something that was adapted to living in warmer climates like where it was found as well as being able to survive. It's not like a week of a walk across the Beringland Bridge, right? Right. Also, we don't find primates in cold climates like that, right? Other than humans. Right. Yeah. You have to have the ability to keep yourself warm.

2:41:22Just keep walking north. We've got to get away from these other assholes. Yeah, I really love mosquitoes. I think this has been going for like more mosquitoes the better. I think they're probably just chasing animals, right? Yeah. That's probably what they were doing. Bison. Bison mostly. Following the herds. Yeah. And then eventually they had to learn to adapt to these colder climates. Yeah, it's funny. We talk about it as people are moving deliberately through this landscape. When clearly they weren't. Right. They're just trying to find food like the Doolgun people. Right. They're going to places where they're still grass that their reindeer can graze on.

2:41:52Yeah, they just want to eat. And it's just so weird to think that we live in houses and we have internet and we, you know, you drive an electric car to work and, well, living in this sophisticated world. Yeah. But not all the people are living in this world. And there's indigenous people that are living the same way they've lived for, but that now they have a snowmobile. Now they have a rifle. Right. But they're still located. If you had a live there, you'd be like, oh my god. Like, what am I doing? Like, where is Starbucks? Right. But somehow they're happier than us. That's so weird. It's really weird.

2:42:28Out of all the animals that you guys might potentially, what's the word rebirth? What's the word? I mean, people have used the word de -extinction, which I kind of hate because I can't figure out how to conjugate it in a way that doesn't make me cringe. Right. If you've done it successfully, do you say you de -extincted something? So what would be the word? I don't know. Do we need a new word? Because it's never happened before. Bring it back. Resurrect. I think Resurrect's probably, but that has biblical appreciation. Right. So that's why we try to stay away from that. But you kind of play in God.

2:43:01So let's go with that. Okay. Cool. I'm in. Is there one that gives you pause? Like maybe the short face bear? Pause? Like maybe like maybe this isn't the best idea. The Host Eagle. Well, humans. I've already been had pause at this. Like, Neanderthals and Denise Funds. They were people. Right. So I feel like that's not really a thing that's not somewhere we should go. Host Eagle, that's a cool one. That's a cool one. This was a massive, massive giant eagle that ate Moa, which was a bird in the extinct. And eight people too. Probably they were huge. No, they think that they found the markings on human skulls there that indicate talons of raptors.

2:43:40Wow. Yeah. Wow. Right. Which makes sense that that's how they went extinct. Like the New Zealanders are like enough of this shit. Yeah. Well, the Moa went extinct and so they couldn't eat Moa anymore. I was at what it was. But maybe it was both, right? Right. Why did short face bears go extinct? Probably because nobody wanted a bear that stood 12 feet high. What are you going to do about it, though? Like, imagine. Would you imagine the daunting task of getting a group of guys together with spears to go after a short face bear? When you know at least four or five of you are getting whacked before you can get a spear tip in one of them.

2:44:13Maybe, doesn't it depend? I mean, maybe what they were doing is, you know, they would ambush mammoths and things like that. So you hide around bluffs and you can have a group of people in different places and hit them all at once. Maybe you wait until that bear is eating something else. Oh, sure. And then it's paused and you have time to... I mean, how much did they even understand the wind back then? They probably understood it really well, right? Yeah, that's absolutely true. Because these are people who relied on that. They probably understand it better than people who aren't hunters today, right?

2:44:41So... They probably knew that these animals had a greater sense of smell than we do. They probably had a greater sense of smell than we do. Or more tuned. Oh, yeah, for sure. They probably could smell it. Because you can smell certain animals when you're... Like, if you go into the elk woods, you 100 % can smell elk. And is that something that you've been able to develop? Well, I was taught it. You know, I would smell something and then, you know, like the guys that I'd be hunting with, like you smell that. Right. That's elk. Because you could... Because they urinate everywhere and you know, you get this sense.

2:45:12They have like this really musty smell during the rut, too. And you could smell them. Could you smell the dire wolves? Well, they were stinky. I don't think you guys are bathing them. Why would we bathe a dire wolf? I know. My wife would be like, take him to the grim air. I guess she hates when my dog gets stinky. She hates when I take him out into the dirt and play around with him. And he comes back, covered in burrs and stinky. You got to brush him down. Did they smell different? Yeah. They did smell different. But I don't smell a lot of dogs that I never bathed. Right. You know, most of the dogs that I've ever smelled.

2:45:47These aren't dogs. Yeah. Right wolves. Right. But what is really weird, those are the other conversations that we had that they all come from wolves, like even a French... Jamie has French bulldog. He's adorable. That's a wolf. Yeah. At one point in time. And... We don't know which wolf. Right. I mean, this is... I think dog domestication is one of those places where both we come to terms with what we don't know and the opportunity to discover new things. You know, the very first scientific paper that said when dogs were domesticated looked at a type of DNA that's only inherited from your mom called mitochondrial DNA.

2:46:24Our cells have a nucleus that has the DNA and our chromosomes that make us look and act the way we do. And then it has little cells that were one's bacteria that we co -opted that make energy. And you're only inherited from your mom and there's a ton of them. Like there's thousands of mitochondrial genomes in every cell and only one of your nuclear genomes. So in ancient DNA, because there's way more, we started just with that. It was the only thing we could recover. And the first dog mitochondrial genomes that were recovered, people were like, dogs were domesticated in Asia 150 ,000 years ago.

2:46:55Which is clearly wrong, right? There weren't human populations, societies, which is kind of what you need for dog domestication. Because they're attracted to the garbage or the living around where people were. So you need communities of people that are staying in place together for some time before you can have dog domestication. Do we know for sure there weren't human populations like that 150 ,000 years ago? We don't, but we do know now that dogs probably aren't that old, right? I think what I read was 36 ,000. I think it changes all the time, which is because we don't know everything. Right.

2:47:26And also probably because the first dogs were in warm parts of the world. And so we don't have the fossils. We don't have the DNA and the fossils just didn't preserve. I think right now what people are happiest with is that it was probably sometime after the peak of the last ice age, sometime 15 to 20 ,000 years ago. And not sure where, because again, probably in a warmer spot, there's been lots of gene flow, lots of hybridization between domestic dogs and wolves that have made this a really hard problem. Like you were talking about with the black wolves. Right. Exactly like that. But what's cool about this date, 15 to 20 ,000 years ago, is that most of these people are like, yeah, that's probably the date for dogs, which means if dogs only form when there are human communities that are together, groups of people that are living together in the same place for a long time, that they were around 15 to 20 ,000 years ago.

2:48:19That is not what archaeologists think, right? So these two weights of evidence are saying, you know, we still don't know. Sort of, right, but they do believe hunter gatherers existed in small tribes 15 ,000 years ago. And maybe that was enough, but you know, if you think of domestication and scientists like to have names, we like to have ways of classifying things. And so there was recently, sort of a couple of friends of mine have published a paper which they've redefined how you consider something domestic, and they say a domestic population is something that can only survive within a human environment, within a human niche.

2:48:53And if you think of that as what our dogs are, right, they can only really survive and breed as dogs within this human niche, then you need a lot of humans around and you need a steady stream of the crap that humans produce to do this. But still kind of early, like it's still, yeah, maybe there were hunter gatherer populations that were more established somewhere in the South, where we don't have dog bones. Right, right, that's what's weird. We don't know, right? And then wolves don't, are most wolves from warmer climates? No, right? They're from colder climates. All over the place. All over the place.

2:49:29Well, Mexican wolves, right? There's Mexican wolves. There's Mexican wolves. But we think that the closest living relative of dogs is gray wolves. It's this gray wolf, Lydia. But we don't know if dogs are outside of the diversity of gray wolves. So it's an extinct type of gray wolf that was the progenitor of dogs, or if they fall within the diversity of all the lineages of gray wolves that are around. And that's just because there's been so much movement of DNA around that part of the tree. I think it's a fascinating story that as we get more information, we're going to learn more about people as well.

2:50:04Yeah, well, dogs are the most fascinating to me because it's so obvious that there is manipulation involved. It's so obvious that through selective breeding and also getting these animals to get accustomed to people getting close to the fire, feeding them so they don't have to hunt anymore. And then they bark when intruders come and they, you know, we developed this sort of relationship where we work together. It's so interesting that we see the genes change into a poodle. We see this weirdness, or now it's a border collie. And then the bride. All of those two are probably Victorian, right? All of the breeds that we think of today, whether it's cattle or bison, they're, you know, within the last couple hundred years.

2:50:47That is really fast selection by human. So we are manipulating the DNA of the species that we surround ourselves with. And we have been for 15 to 20 ,000 years, and probably longer. Just not an old laboratory. Just not an laboratory, but, you know, is our backyard a laboratory? If I say, I like the way that dog looks, but I like the way that that one can swim in water. And I bet if I breed them together, I can make one that has this double layer coat so they can go get in that frozen water, but they'll still have that cute look or something. That's interesting, right? Because we're thinking about science as only being done in a laboratory or manipulation only being done in a laboratory.

2:51:25It's clearly done with food. I mean, it was done with plants forever. Right? Selective breeding of plants, splicing two plants together. Right. I mean, when we graft plants together, I mean, that is like all of the vineyards in France, which are grafted onto American root stocks because of the introduction of philoxera, this aphid that came from North America, that was going to completely devastate the wine industry. Now they're all spliced onto American root stocks that can survive this aphid and... In that wild. Yeah. I talked to a rancher in California and they were telling me that I think it was either the avocado trees were spliced onto the pistachio trees or vice averse.

2:52:06It's amazing that the plants can survive that, that they don't go like, oh, that's not me. Right. We can't do that. We can take a pig liver and shove it in your... Yeah, your body would fight it off. Your immune system would fight it off. Well, we're trying. Again, that's another cropping that we can do with this gene editing technology. We can turn off the genes that would cause that rejection to happen. So maybe someday we can use pig organs in the recent humans and save people from dying. Or we can just re -engineer a new version of your organs. Yeah, so that is really cool science. This thing called the organoids where you can actually grow in a dish, in a lab, a version of a little brain.

2:52:44Something that approximates a brain or that approximates a heart or a kidney or something else. We're using this at Colossal, for example, to test hypotheses about what changes we might make to bring about, to resurrect, to de -extinct the phenotypes that were interested in. If we grow an organoid that grows hair, can we see what that hair looks like without having to make a mammoth in order to see what that change is going to do? But it has really amazing potential for personalized medicine. So I can take some of your cells, if you get a tumor, I can grow them in this dish. And I can challenge those cells with different drug cocktails to see what works before I put them in you.

2:53:21Now, this is, this technology is so cool and really just beginning. What is, it's amazing when you think about this technology and you think about what we had just a few hundred years ago. And then you push a few hundred years from now and you think what are the possibilities? And the only way to find out is to do experiments like what you guys are doing. And so that's one of the reasons why some of this pushback is so silly. Like, would you rather no one ever do this work? Or would you like to be the one who does the work? Or is it just that you think the work should never be done? Like, what is the thought process?

2:53:59Again, it's, I think it's this negativity and it's this scarcity mindset that if they do this, then we can't do this. Which is just, it's not, it's not the way we innovate. It's not the way we make progress. But is this the nature of academia? Because it's very gate -keeping, even inside of academia, right? You work for a university and you have to get the approval of all the other people and you have to be politically aligned with them. And everyone has to say the right things on Twitter. You know, it's like there's a lot of like weirdness, a lot of group think that comes along with all that stuff.

2:54:32And then you have to play politics in order to get funding. You know, you can't be ostracized. If you're ostracized, even if you have tenure, you know, when you see this with certain scientists that have very outside the box ideas, they get pushed out. And they can't get funding anymore. Or if they don't agree with a certain narrative of what's being pushed, whether it's public health or the environment or anything, they get ostracized. Even if they're actually talking about real data and science. Yeah, I think, you know, we can agree that it's a mess, right? It's a hot mess. But there is genuine real science that comes out of the university system of the academic system that we need.

2:55:12You know, all the technology that led to MRIs, the early technology that gave us CRISPR, this gene editing platform, was developed using, you know, funding from the government in scientific labs. And then it's taken us by people who are willing to take risks and step outside of that box. And then it's taken outside of their own turned into all of these cool things. I mean, there has to be a place where we get both of these things. Right. Because there's some things that no one is ever going to build a business around until it exists. And we need this, you know, public system in order to do that.

2:55:43Yeah, and that's what's so scary about what's going on with politics and funding and research. You know, it's because it's like, as soon as you stop defunding research, you start making it more scarce and then making people... It's just going to get worse. Right. It'll get worse. And we're going to fall behind and we are going to lose the place that we have had as innovators. And by we, I mean, this country, we are going to lose the place we have as innovators and biotechnology, innovators and physics, innovators, and all of these technologies because we've had such a robust system. It's a balance.

2:56:16You know, we clearly need both of these things. And right now, it's broken. And there's a lot of weirdness that's going on with biology in general in the world right now. And one of them is, I think there was a third scientist that was arrested for trying to bring in toxic mold from China. We know that this one scientist was arrested. And then I think there's been two more. So they're trying to introduce this toxic mold into our food supply. It's the same toxic mold. I think so. It might have been a different one. But I know it's also, it's the same kind of thing. See if you can find it, Jamie.

2:56:55When I heard this the first time and I've only heard about the first one, my first thought was, you know, is this deliberate or is this super naivete on the topic of this student? Yeah, which scares the shit out of me. Because if China wanted to cripple America's food supply, there'd be a great way to compromise basically everything. And there is a country that is investing in science. Oh my God. Yeah, just their drone technologies off the charts. I was watching a documentary yesterday on the autonomous production of coal. And so they have these coal mines now that are done entirely with electric trucks and everything's done with AI.

2:57:30And humans are involved at all. So these trucks go, they dig, they mine, they fill the trucks, they bring the coal back. And then when they're low on batteries, they charge themselves. Yeah, and they're running 24 hours a day around the clock. Yeah, and we don't have anything like that. No. We're not even close to doing that. No, and we're fighting about the amount of money that we should invest into. Exactly. It's terrifying. It is terrifying. It's terrifying because we always hope that with every administration, there'll be positive changes. And it just never seems to be the case. It's just like more and more of the same and more short -sightedness.

2:58:11Is it also this scary city mindset? Like I can't agree with this person because they want said this thing. I mean, why can't we have just a normal conversation like you and I are having right now? Well, I think it's because it's kind of engineered into our social media structure that human beings are going to fight with each other. The algorithm favors you looking and interacting with things that upset you. You know, this is just natural human nature. If you look at like some of the people that we were talking about earlier, negative scientists, you see them online. They're tweeting negative things like all day long.

2:58:46It's probably because they don't have any funding. So they can't actually do any science. Chinese scientists was the rest of our wife in the US at Detroit Airport. A second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material. But is it the same biological? No, different stuff. What is this stuff? This is worms. Worms? Worms. Certain worms require government permit. I had heard that there was a third one. This is the third. This is the third. So there's a second one. And this one happened. Oh, second case in days. I was saying they were going to the same place. Oh boy. That's weird.

2:59:20Another Chinese scientist also going to the University of Michigan. Boy, that's also really crazy because the thing about China and their scientists that come over to America is they all have to check in with the CCP. If you are a Chinese scientist and you're from China and you're working in America, you got to check in. Which means like how much of this research is just getting shared with China. And it's all weird. And we're focused on something else. We're focused on, yes. They play a very long game. And I think their game involves raptors and T -rexes. They're going to release all the stuff you want to.

2:59:54I've seen that movie. I wonder, like I worry about that. Like your information, the stuff that you guys are working on. If that stuff can be compromised, if someone can get a hold of it. And then they start doing that stuff over there. The thing is the foundation for what we're doing. All of the stuff from sequencing ancient DNA to gene -editing technologies to learning how do we link certain DNA sequences? Since 2015, which is different. The thing is that that happens the way it works.

3:00:28And the thing, the one in the US wall is automatic. And so the difference with our Federal Intelligence Infrastructure Institute. In publication, that image needs to help all of our China progress. But that is fairly awful. Someone just хоч up to find telling you where to go, And let's where to go and tell the story, where to go, what to do. for three years, he actually did some training in the US. His name is but he was trying to make, trying to use gene editing tools to make these babies have a particular mutation that we know is protective against HIV. It's the one that stops the HIV from entering the cells where it then kills the cells.

3:01:12And I think this was a story that was broken by a guy at MIT Tech Review a couple of days before it was announced but he thought that he was going to be able to announce this to great fanfare in front of a community that was going to celebrate him for having done this. And the story broke a few days early but he had set this up the whole PR thing. He had like YouTube videos that were ready to go to explain what he had done. He wasn't trying to do it in secret. He thought he was going to be a hero. Right? But but people were like, holy shit dude. What the fuck? Like no. We're not editing human germlines.

3:01:44The cells that will be passed on to the next generation. There's still a moratorium against doing that work. The baby that was just born for example. They didn't edit any of his cells that would get passed on to the next generation. It's only the cells in his body. So those edits will only ever live in him. There's a difference between doing that and it's the second one that we're uncomfortable with. I thought they were editing it to make the children have a potential for higher intelligence. I think that's maybe an unintended consequence of the gene that they were editing because in mice it did something like that.

3:02:19And so I think they just assume they're going to be smarter. But I don't think that they're old enough to even test that. Yeah. Interesting maybe. But but if they knew that. But it wasn't it didn't end up even being the racist. Because it's HIV and real issue today. It's not really. So the reason that this that he got whatever ethical permission he did in China to do this is because they were children that were born by IVF because the dad had AIDS. And so what they were trying to do was create what he claimed he was trying to do was create an environment where they would never accidentally get it.

3:02:50I guess if there's blood and it also makes them smarter. They knew that at the time. Oh, they did. They did. They just played a long game. They definitely affected their brains with it. They just keep saying sort of in this article. Yeah, but they don't they don't know because they haven't been able to measure anything with these. I mean, they're guessing that would have affected their brains at this point. Well, when they're the leaders of the world in 20 years. We'll know. We'll know. We'll know. We'll know. Yeah. Yeah. This is I mean, what makes us smart has been a a thing that people have been trying to solve for a long time.

3:03:19And we're always looking for like the one or two genes that cure that figure out this. Very few traits are are encoded by one or two genes. There are some hair traits. Whether your your lobes are attached or not. That's one gene that you can. But it is quite fascinating to think that in the future, dumb people will not access. I doubt that's true. Why? It may be relatively dumb compared to everyone else that's alive then, but maybe far more intelligent than people that are alive today. Do you know what's interesting about the efforts that have gone on to try to figure out genes that make people smart?

3:03:51Is that they can find associations between what we're classifying as smart. And this is hard. Like when you're when you're saying smart, do you mean somebody who can have a conversation with another person and shut up so that you're actually listening to other person? Do you mean? Do you mean somebody who can solve shitload of math problems and be a physicist or whatever? And be awkward socially. Do you mean somebody who's just really fucking good looking? Right? I mean, what do you mean when you say is this thing? And so you have to define that first. And then once it's defined, if you look for associations between genes at high frequency with people who rank high on whatever your thing is that you're you're ranking them on, it's different depending on which human population you're studying.

3:04:34So it's I mean, and this makes total evolutionary sense. Different things were under selection in different habitats at different times. And that made different people smarter in different ways for whatever that was. I actually think this is not how we start editing ourselves because that's not how evolution works. As soon as we edit everybody to be smart in that particular way and to be 5 foot 10 blonde with blue eyes and perfect and never going to have diabetes, the most attractive thing out there is going to be the opposite of that. Right. So there will be I just don't think I people are always thinking about we're going to get super humans, but they have a specific picture in their mind of what that means.

3:05:17That's not the same picture that the Chinese government has in mind. It's not the same picture that I have in mind, right? And that's that's why I don't fear it as much, I think, because that's not that's not how it's going to happen. How it will happen is there will be some massive pandemic, and we discover that there is a particular mutation that means you're going to die. And then suddenly this most unethical thing that is like completely abhorrent and you absolutely can't do it will be the only ethical solution. That is how we get there. Wow. In my imagination. Wow. Well, I would love to have you back on when you get more information and more breakthroughs and more stuff that you do.

3:06:01I really, really enjoyed our conversation. I would love to come to the lab. I will definitely do that. I promise you. I promise. Thank you so much for being here. It was really great. I really, really enjoyed it in your book. Life as we made it, how 50 ,000 years of human innovation refined and redefined nature best, pure. I think the rest of my Siberia stories in there, including the part of the end where I read the audiobook. I did. I read the audiobook for that. Yes. Yes. I love it. I'm so glad you read it. I hate when other people have to read people's work. Well, I asked if I could read it because my first book, How to Clone a Mammoth, I didn't read and I heard the audiobook and I write in first person and I tell stories and I try to make it funny and I was like, that's not how it should be read.

3:06:43So I wrote to them and I said, can I read this book? And they said, oh, you're going to have to audition. Audition for your own book. What if I am not good enough to read my own audiobook? Well, you clearly are. Well, luckily, you're a great talker. Thank you so much. Thank you really for being here. I really appreciate it. It's really fun. Thank you. Bye everybody.

3:07:14You Being here, I really appreciate it. This was really fun. Thank you. All right, bye everybody.