Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 1: someone who has a front row seat to the most
Speaker 1: fascinating things happening in tech today. We're joined by Ben Lamb,
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences.
Speaker 1: By now, you might have heard of the company's wooly mice,
Speaker 1: fluffy creatures with the same type of fur as the
Speaker 1: extinct wooly mammoth. Or maybe you saw the April issue
Speaker 1: of Time magazine, the one with a white direwolf on
Speaker 1: the cover, a type of wolf that hasn't walked the
Speaker 1: Earth in over ten thousand years. It might sound like sorcery,
Speaker 1: but Colossal Biosciences actually genetically engineered these animals ancient DNA,
Speaker 1: and while resurrecting extinct animals is pretty cool on its own,
Speaker 1: our guest today, Ben Lamb, wanted to start the company
Speaker 1: because of what he believed the extinction could do for
Speaker 1: our current ecosystem and the future of science.
Speaker 2: I learned in this process that in the next twenty
Speaker 2: five years, half of species will either be extinct or
Speaker 2: be at least threatened with extinction. So I thought maybe
Speaker 2: there was an opportunity to build a company that we
Speaker 2: could develop tools to help conservation, hopefully inspire kids and
Speaker 2: give people excited about science through something that was like
Speaker 2: truly a moonshot and like the Apollo Days.
Speaker 1: CEO Ben Lamb has a background in tech entrepreneurship, but
Speaker 1: became interested in the extinction after meeting the renowned geneticist
Speaker 1: George Church and having a pivotal experience in his own life.
Speaker 1: Ben Lamb, thank you so much for joining on tech stuff.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about Willy mammoths and Willie
Speaker 1: mice and dire wolves and gene editing and fa but
Speaker 1: I kind of want to start with you and your
Speaker 1: drive to create arguably the most engaging, live scientific experiment
Speaker 1: ongoing in the world. So my question is why this
Speaker 1: science project and why this mission for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my background is in just building technology companies
Speaker 2: with much smarter women and men than me, and I
Speaker 2: met this guy, George Church. He's the head of genetics
Speaker 2: at Harvard and he'd actually invented a lot of these
Speaker 2: core technologies. So he's one of the first people to
Speaker 2: ever use Crisper and some of these advanced technologies in
Speaker 2: genome engineering, and I was really fascinated about the intersection
Speaker 2: of synthetic biology, access to compute and AI and really
Speaker 2: being able to direct life and be able to engineer
Speaker 2: life and be able to evolve life.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And one of my employees, my chief strategy officer, was fantastic.
Speaker 2: His name was Greg. He passed away of a sudden
Speaker 2: cardiac event. And it causes you to really kind of
Speaker 2: you reconsider your priorities, and especially when with someone that
Speaker 2: you've known for fifteen years. You're flying back from NASA
Speaker 2: one night joking about UFOs and the next morning you're
Speaker 2: talking to his wife and widow right, and so you
Speaker 2: know those moments where mortality and reality hits you. I
Speaker 2: think you know our major inflection points. So I thought
Speaker 2: I would jump into the weird world of biology.
Speaker 1: You had that moment of how much time might I
Speaker 1: have left? And the time I do have left is
Speaker 1: more of a blessing than I may have considered. Therefore,
Speaker 1: how do I want to spend it? I remember, I
Speaker 1: think before twenty twenty, reading about George Church and reading
Speaker 1: about the Wooly memmoth project and being fascinated by it,
Speaker 1: but how did you catch this de extinction bug? In
Speaker 1: other words, going not just from the mammoth but to
Speaker 1: this larger project you're working on mount.
Speaker 2: So I had met George and was fascinated by the
Speaker 2: fact that this person that's at the top of their
Speaker 2: field had told.
Speaker 3: Me that we have all the tools to do this.
Speaker 3: This is really a.
Speaker 2: Function of funding, and if we could bring the right
Speaker 2: people together with the right focus and the right funding,
Speaker 2: we had the technologies to make extinction a thing of
Speaker 2: the past. But over time, if we can make them
Speaker 2: more efficient, well then that has massive ripples into conservation,
Speaker 2: into human healthcare.
Speaker 3: So he told me that.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, I just kind of went back to
Speaker 2: my day job and I was interested.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'd fund his lab, maybe I'd work with him.
Speaker 2: But then after I went through this introspection period, I
Speaker 2: was like, well, worst case scenario, this is a massive failure,
Speaker 2: and I'll just go back to making software. And then
Speaker 2: what George was right about was there are no real
Speaker 2: science gits. We have all of the tech in some
Speaker 2: form or fashion, and so we really these are in
Speaker 2: some cases innovation problems. And I think that with AI
Speaker 2: and automation, we're seeing scientific discoveries slowly moving from scientific
Speaker 2: experiment to scientific engineering. So I think that science and
Speaker 2: engineering are going to continue to blur and get closer
Speaker 2: and closer together in the next five to ten years.
Speaker 1: What do you actually mean by the extinction? And was
Speaker 1: there an accepted definition or if you kind of created
Speaker 1: to concept it on with George.
Speaker 2: So, the extinction is a made up word, right, like
Speaker 2: a stinction of the word the extinction. You know, we
Speaker 2: learned from Jurassic Park and whatnot. It's become one of
Speaker 2: these these just part of the nomenclature. And up until
Speaker 2: this year, Wikipedia defined the extinction as engineering a species
Speaker 2: to look like an extinct species, or cloning an extinct species. Well,
Speaker 2: I don't like to say things are impossible, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like it is or will be possible to
Speaker 2: clone an extinct species because you don't have living cells.
Speaker 2: You're not just going to take nucleus from one cell
Speaker 2: and put it into another cell because there are no
Speaker 2: living cells.
Speaker 3: For extinct organism that's been dead for quite some time.
Speaker 2: Right, we thought that just engineering something that look like
Speaker 2: an extinct species is kind of like phoning it in,
Speaker 2: and so we came up with this idea that the
Speaker 2: definition of the extinction was flawed, and so we really
Speaker 2: wanted to focus on how do we bring back loss diversity,
Speaker 2: lost genes, how do we ensure that it has the
Speaker 2: core phenotypes or physical attributes, but are also are there
Speaker 2: opportunities for enhancements?
Speaker 1: Right, So I guess you're thinking beyond using genetic engineering
Speaker 1: to make animals that look like extinct animals, but actually
Speaker 1: trying to bring back extinct genes or re express extinct genes,
Speaker 1: and then in turn trying to see if any of
Speaker 1: them can be used to solve genetic problems that are
Speaker 1: found in species today.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you one example of that is like EEHV,
Speaker 2: which is the number one killer of elephants, specifically Asian elephants,
Speaker 2: but it kills about twenty percent of elephants every year.
Speaker 3: More than poaching, more than anything.
Speaker 2: We're working with Baylor College of Medicine and others to
Speaker 2: actually eradicate this disease, and we've actually have a MR
Speaker 2: and A based vaccine that's being tested right now in
Speaker 2: elephants and is conferring resistance, which is awesome for existing elephants.
Speaker 2: But here's the deal, mammas are actually closely related to
Speaker 2: Asian elephants. They are African elephants, and they were susceptible
Speaker 2: to eat.
Speaker 3: We know that.
Speaker 2: And so if you can engineer in resilience at EEHV,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: I really want to talk about the wooly mice and
Speaker 1: the dire wolves. I was at south By Southwest this
Speaker 1: year as you were, and I think the release of
Speaker 1: the wooly mouse. I've never seen a conference being taken
Speaker 1: by storm, or not just a conference, I mean the
Speaker 1: whole internet, frankly, as the release of.
Speaker 3: The wooly mouse, I think you saw the direwolves, and.
Speaker 1: Then and then you saw the dire wolves, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: which were an apex predator. When it came to hype
Speaker 1: that said, it's a little uncanny to talk about animals
Speaker 1: as though their product releases. But hold my hand and
Speaker 1: walk me through this. You guys are trying to make
Speaker 1: the wooly mammoth, a species that existed and then went
Speaker 1: extinct thousands of years ago, and in that process you
Speaker 1: make an entirely new creature, which is the wooly mouse.
Speaker 1: Why mice? Why not just work on the mammoth?
Speaker 3: So one we wanted to test our Indian pipeline two.
Speaker 2: We want to ensure that if your I didner find
Speaker 2: phenotypes or physical attributes that you believe will be engineered
Speaker 2: that have been lost to time in the Asian elephant lineage,
Speaker 2: but engineered back into that lineage from the mammoth. And
Speaker 2: you want to confer cold tolerance, hair color, hair texture,
Speaker 2: hair thickness, wave length. Your three options, or you make
Speaker 2: a mammoth, right, But going back to an ethics perspective,
Speaker 2: like if you have better ways to test it, let's
Speaker 2: test it there.
Speaker 3: The second is you grow organoids, which this sounds.
Speaker 2: Frankenstein, It's super cool, though, is we actually create stem cells,
Speaker 2: program them into organoids, and we actually grow mammoth hair
Speaker 2: in little follicles and dishes, so it's alive, so we.
Speaker 3: Know it's working.
Speaker 2: But that's still not a complete animal model, right, And
Speaker 2: so taking that same into end pipeline, applying it from
Speaker 2: the specific variance from mammoth to the mouse specific variance.
Speaker 1: In terms of the gene that expresses as hey, you
Speaker 1: can mention the mammoth headed gene to the mouse head.
Speaker 2: Gene exactly exactly when we did this for the mouse,
Speaker 2: It's like there's two hundred million years of genetic divergence
Speaker 2: between an ELpH in the mouse, and so I believe
Speaker 2: it's irresponsible and unethical to just shove it in, cross
Speaker 2: your fingers and see what happens, right, because why would
Speaker 2: we do that, right, Because we're really trying to test
Speaker 2: if the pathways and the edits express the phenotypes or
Speaker 2: physical attributes. Right, So we did an extra step of
Speaker 2: like mapping all to mouse, and what we found was that,
Speaker 2: you know, in twenty days versus twenty two months, that
Speaker 2: all of the hair phenotypes.
Speaker 1: Twenty days versus twenty two months because the gestation period
Speaker 1: of the mouse versus an elephant correct correct.
Speaker 2: And we found that we get healthy wooly mice with
Speaker 2: the exact predicted phenotype that all of our modeling showed.
Speaker 2: And so it's a much faster, easier, and more ethical
Speaker 2: way to test. And then the only unintended consequence is
Speaker 2: that they were objectively cute and they took the Internet
Speaker 2: by storm. We thought it was interesting and we thought
Speaker 2: it proved our endo end process works really well.
Speaker 3: We did in one month, by the way, which I
Speaker 3: think no one seemed to write or care about.
Speaker 2: But that's amazing and most people at the time, we
Speaker 2: made eight edits and seven genes. And what most people
Speaker 2: think is that sometimes the number like eight doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like a big deal, but when you're dealing with genome engineering,
Speaker 2: and most people were making an edit in one generation
Speaker 2: of a mouse, making an edit in the next generation
Speaker 2: of mouse, and so that they were stacking eight generations
Speaker 2: to get to eight edits, right, And so we did
Speaker 2: it all with one multiplex delivery in one shot with
Speaker 2: nearly one hundred percent efficiency, which is insane, But we
Speaker 2: did it because we wanted to really do three things.
Speaker 2: One is, we built this end the end process right
Speaker 2: of taking competitional analysis from ancient DNA, identifying genes, engineering
Speaker 2: those genes, and doing a combination of either editing those
Speaker 2: in the actual embryos themselves or somatic some onny code transfer.
Speaker 3: Where we edit the cell and then move the nucleus.
Speaker 2: And then we wanted to test our monoclonal screening process
Speaker 2: at the end to ensure that all the sequencing. So
Speaker 2: Colossal does a lot of extra steps. Probably the most
Speaker 2: people would in our.
Speaker 1: Boat this just to make sure you don't make Frankenstein
Speaker 1: woody mice switch it, which have horrible illnesses and which
Speaker 1: are in pain and one of those things exactly.
Speaker 3: So none of these technologies are perfect.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, before the Wooly Mouse and before the Dire Wolf,
Speaker 2: people were making like one, maybe two edits at a
Speaker 2: time that weren't what are called linear repeats.
Speaker 3: We neither the same edit over and over again.
Speaker 2: Right, there's thousands of those, but those are just copies
Speaker 2: of the same thing. Right, But making a lot of
Speaker 2: edits all over the genome with ninety plus percent efficiency
Speaker 2: and not creating what's called off target effects or unintended
Speaker 2: consequences is what you're talking about. It's really really hard,
Speaker 2: and that's where I think Colossal is really succeeding. But
Speaker 2: still you want to screen, and so we sequence, and
Speaker 2: so think about like sequencing is.
Speaker 3: Reading the DNA.
Speaker 2: We read the DNA at every step and that's insanely
Speaker 2: computationally heavy and it's exanely costly.
Speaker 3: But here's what we know.
Speaker 2: The embryos that we transfer, we know one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of them are healthy. And so we're certified by American
Speaker 2: Humane Society. And we don't do it because that certification,
Speaker 2: but we do it because we care about conservation.
Speaker 3: We care about animal welfare.
Speaker 2: And so the reason why we have successfully birth, you know,
Speaker 2: animals with no unintended consequences, is because we do it
Speaker 2: before the editing, during the editing, after the after the
Speaker 2: embryo creation.
Speaker 3: And I think that's really really important.
Speaker 1: But practically functionally, how much closer to the wooly mice
Speaker 1: take you to the wooly mammoth? Have they knocked off?
Speaker 1: Three months? Six months a year?
Speaker 3: So they don't speed up anything. They're just a validator.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, okay, well this is behaving exactly as
Speaker 2: we were predicting, and so this is a validation step.
Speaker 2: So we're all the edits that we made the woy mouse.
Speaker 2: We've already made the mammoth equivalent of them in Asian
Speaker 2: elephant cels. We just haven't taken them to term right,
Speaker 2: So I'd say less likely that it will speed up
Speaker 2: the project, more likely that it means that we aren't
Speaker 2: getting the project wrong.
Speaker 1: When we come back. What Ben says is the first
Speaker 1: the extinct species, the dire wolf, stay with us. So
Speaker 1: the Woolli mice were a validator, but the dire wolves were,
Speaker 1: at least as far as you're concerned, the first the
Speaker 1: extinct species.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think the dire wolves were the first extinct
Speaker 2: species brought back. The will mice never existed, so we
Speaker 2: can't classify them in that category.
Speaker 1: And the dire wolf this species that went extinct about
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago. I guess it was kind of
Speaker 1: reintroduced into the popular imagination, at least by George R. R.
Speaker 1: Martin in the Game of Thrones series, which I know
Speaker 1: you're a fan of. But can you tell me what
Speaker 1: it was like to see these die wolves coming into existence,
Speaker 1: being born? Holding them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was highly emotional.
Speaker 2: So I was on FaceTime while they were being born,
Speaker 2: so I was actually in London.
Speaker 3: I remember exactly where I was.
Speaker 2: Your hearts palpitating, You feel like like you want everything
Speaker 2: because everything healthy is.
Speaker 3: I was like, it's like when you have your first child,
Speaker 3: was like to they have the right feet.
Speaker 2: And when they came out, they were white, which you
Speaker 2: know wolf when they're born they're all black or gray
Speaker 2: dark gray, like super dark gray, so that was an
Speaker 2: early indicator.
Speaker 3: They were much larger.
Speaker 2: They're about forty percent larger than normal wolf puppies. So
Speaker 2: I didn't because I'm not an animal veterinarian, like, I
Speaker 2: had no value add I actually waited until they were
Speaker 2: about five weeks.
Speaker 3: And then I got to see them.
Speaker 2: So and when I saw them the first time, I
Speaker 2: got I mean, I still do, I get chill bumped,
Speaker 2: I teared up.
Speaker 3: It's very very emotional.
Speaker 2: And what's been interesting is even people that aren't as
Speaker 2: attached specifically to the Extinction or specifically to Colossal, they
Speaker 2: have a very similar response. And it awakened something in you.
Speaker 2: The importance of the moment isn't lost on you. I
Speaker 2: remembered one of the first people I showed the how
Speaker 2: video that became very very popular on the internet.
Speaker 1: You're talking, of course, about the YouTube video of the
Speaker 1: die Wolf Pops Howling. Who did you show it to?
Speaker 3: Peter Jackson.
Speaker 2: Peter's a dear friend and he's director for Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings and he's an investor in Colossal, And so
Speaker 2: I was in his living room with his partner fran
Speaker 2: I hooked up old school like HDMI to my laptop.
Speaker 2: I said, I got to show you something, and I
Speaker 2: showed it to him. He was overwhelmed. It's a very
Speaker 2: very surreal experience.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine. Ben, this is the Tech Stuff podcast.
Speaker 1: So I just want to make sure, I do have
Speaker 1: the tech right. I actually wrote down seven bullet points
Speaker 1: for myself about the the extinction process, which includes the
Speaker 1: use of generating tools like CRISPA. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could sort of let me know if I've got
Speaker 1: the steps right. Starting with step one, which is you
Speaker 1: go out and find as much DNA as you can
Speaker 1: of an extinct species.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that can come in the form of some
Speaker 2: researchers already have it on their hard drives, sometimes from
Speaker 2: museum specimens.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's expeditions.
Speaker 1: Digging through permafrost.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you go.
Speaker 2: Into the permafrosts, you go into caves, but it's really
Speaker 2: a global collaborative effort. It's you're in the sub basement
Speaker 2: of a museum talking to a researcher at some university
Speaker 2: that's sent their whole life sequencing it.
Speaker 3: To You're actually out in a cave or in the
Speaker 3: Arctic and whatnot. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now I'm going to go through steps two
Speaker 1: to five. You take the sample from the field back
Speaker 1: to the lab and sequence the DNA. Then you cross
Speaker 1: reference to DNA with other samples from the extinct species.
Speaker 1: Then you build as complete a genome as you can
Speaker 1: of the extinct species using AI, and then you cross
Speaker 1: reference with that genome with all living animals to find
Speaker 1: the closest living relative.
Speaker 2: That is correct, But on that last parts to those
Speaker 2: don't exist either, so you actually have to go build
Speaker 2: the reference genome for the closest living relative. There's not
Speaker 2: like a database of all life on Earth.
Speaker 1: So you have a hypothesis about what the closest living
Speaker 1: relative might be and then go and build that genome
Speaker 1: in parallel. Then yeah, okay, yeah, Then you identify the
Speaker 1: key genes that you need to edit in the living
Speaker 1: species to make it genetically closer to the extinct.
Speaker 3: Species exactly right.
Speaker 1: Then you use CRISP gene editing to edit the embryo
Speaker 1: of the living species.
Speaker 3: So this is where it kind of forks a little bit.
Speaker 2: So we use a combination of I think it's better
Speaker 2: to classify it as genome engineering tools. One of the
Speaker 2: things that colossals I think done a really good job
Speaker 2: of is figuring out, we actually built an AI model
Speaker 2: for this, what is.
Speaker 3: The right tool for the right job.
Speaker 2: And with that our system actually now recommends what combination
Speaker 2: of tools in what order, and how that guide design
Speaker 2: should be packaged to deliver the highest levels of efficient
Speaker 2: see AI for us.
Speaker 3: Has been a game changer in how we then deliver
Speaker 3: the edits.
Speaker 1: So then you've made the edits, you go to an embryo.
Speaker 3: Sorry, you've got to cell.
Speaker 2: Okay, And then so the next step is to do
Speaker 2: the same thing they do with Dolly the sheep, which
Speaker 2: is sematic cell nuclear transfer. So you've got two types
Speaker 2: of cells, germ cells and sematic sels. Germ cells are
Speaker 2: like egging sperm. Somatic cells are everything else, right, So
Speaker 2: we're editing sematic cells in most cases. And so you
Speaker 2: take the nucleus from the sematic cell and you put
Speaker 2: it into that of a germ cell, and that almost
Speaker 2: acts like the fertilization process of like when egg and
Speaker 2: sperm meets, and then you go through a process that
Speaker 2: stimulates those cells to start dividing, and then you have
Speaker 2: the precursor to something that you would implant.
Speaker 1: Two big criticisms.
Speaker 3: One is only two that's incredible, fantastic.
Speaker 1: We only have an em no. But one is that
Speaker 1: it's not really the extinction if you're just changing a
Speaker 1: few phenotypes. In other words, you justanging the appearance of
Speaker 1: an animal to look more like an animal that was extinct.
Speaker 1: Some people accuse you guys of doing that. On the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, some people say, no, you're
Speaker 1: playing god. And Jennifer Dowton at the inventor of Chris,
Speaker 1: but she didn't say this in reference to what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but she said more broadly in her book, if we
Speaker 1: can avoid altering nature more than we already have, shouldn't
Speaker 1: we try to do so?
Speaker 2: So I come from software, right is predominantly my background
Speaker 2: in some space hard mostly software. And if you can
Speaker 2: build something to achieve a function that's got three hundred
Speaker 2: lines of code, and then you've got something that can
Speaker 2: do it in seven lines code, every great programmer will
Speaker 2: take you to the second one because there's less room
Speaker 2: for error, there's less things to troubleshoot, it's cleaner, it
Speaker 2: runs fast, it's more efficient.
Speaker 3: There's a million reasons to do that.
Speaker 2: We spend a lot of time and a lot of
Speaker 2: money on compute AI comparative genomics, because no matter how
Speaker 2: good you get at this, we're still in the world
Speaker 2: of discovery. I do think, as I mentioned, it will
Speaker 2: move to the world of strictly engineering and the entire
Speaker 2: idea of genotype of phenotype expression. What genes cause different
Speaker 2: things to do different things that result in a physical
Speaker 2: attribute of an animal is.
Speaker 1: The great medical question of our age.
Speaker 2: It's a huge medical question, right, And that is the
Speaker 2: core of what we were doing at Colossal, right. And
Speaker 2: so you know, I would argue that we're a genetic
Speaker 2: engineering company and a genotype of phenotype company at our core.
Speaker 2: And so when you can do that, and you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at a species, if you ask me
Speaker 2: if you could just make a couple changes to the elephant,
Speaker 2: you know, and it wasn't informed in any way by mammos,
Speaker 2: but you just made like a hairy elephant.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't consider that the extinction. I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: But if you can take data like true data from
Speaker 2: a mammoth and it can tell you what are the
Speaker 2: genes that were fixed over time that really drove these phenotypes,
Speaker 2: and you can either engineer in those exact variants which
Speaker 2: we did in the direwolf, and potential enhancements that are
Speaker 2: in the world of synthetic biology to produce those phenotypes
Speaker 2: that are informed by ancient DNA, that's the extinction.
Speaker 3: And so what's.
Speaker 2: Interesting to me is all the people that saw Jurassic
Speaker 2: Park and say it's a movie about dinosaurs, but then
Speaker 2: don't want to call my direwolf direwolves. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: you're just a fucking hypocrite because those are either genetically
Speaker 2: modified frogs and birds with dino DNA in it, or
Speaker 2: their dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And so this is a semantic question. It is not
Speaker 2: a scientific question. It is a human construct that we're
Speaker 2: putting on this. And so going to your second.
Speaker 1: Question, the accusation that you're playing gold, you know.
Speaker 2: I think that we play God every day, and I
Speaker 2: think that taking cholesterol medication is a form of playing
Speaker 2: God on a personal level.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: I think the idea of cutting down the rainforest or
Speaker 2: overfishing the ocean is playing God. So if you think
Speaker 2: of if you define playing God is interfering with the
Speaker 2: natural order.
Speaker 3: To Jennifer's point, we do that all day long.
Speaker 2: So why not do it in a way that helps
Speaker 2: us develop technologies for human health care, inspires kids, and
Speaker 2: can help with conservation. Because every conservationist will tell you
Speaker 2: that while conserving land and protecting species is the primary
Speaker 2: focus of conservation, which by the way we agree with.
Speaker 2: We think that's where everyone should just spend ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of their time. Everyone in that field will still
Speaker 2: tell you, even the most hardcore conservations in the world,
Speaker 2: that is a losing battle in the end human progress
Speaker 2: or whatever you want to define it as encroachment, overfishing,
Speaker 2: overfeeding livestock versus natural order of animals that will end
Speaker 2: with massive losses of biodiversity and potentially various ecosystem collapses.
Speaker 2: And so the best thing in the world is for
Speaker 2: us to continue to conserve land and save species because
Speaker 2: of the hell of a lot, cheaper and more efficient
Speaker 2: to save a species then bring back a species.
Speaker 3: But there may be a day in humanity's future.
Speaker 2: And I'm an eternal optimist, so I hope I'm wrong
Speaker 2: on this, even though im running.
Speaker 3: At the Extinction Company.
Speaker 2: There could be a day in human history where there
Speaker 2: is a species that we lose in the near future
Speaker 2: that we have to bring back. You know, not to
Speaker 2: get too Star Trek four on you, but who knows.
Speaker 2: We may have to bring back blue whales, not to
Speaker 2: appease some drone from an alien planet like in Star Trek,
Speaker 2: but to potentially help with ocean currents and the phytal
Speaker 2: plankton turnover in the nutrient cycling in the oceans. Right,
Speaker 2: we don't know, and I think that having these technologies
Speaker 2: are inevitable. In applying them in a way that helps humans,
Speaker 2: helps animals and hopefully inspires kids is probably not a
Speaker 2: bad thing.
Speaker 1: Just to play Demod's evocat though. I mean, the dire
Speaker 1: wolves are living on the enclosure, going to breed. What
Speaker 1: will be different in future about animals that you bring back?
Speaker 1: How will they be integrated in a way that these
Speaker 1: tibles on being to the real world.
Speaker 2: So they could breed. They are physiological capable of breeding.
Speaker 2: We use different cellions as with male and females, right,
Speaker 2: and then you know they are to your point, secure
Speaker 2: expansive ecological preserve.
Speaker 3: But what isn't these days? Like what is truly the wild?
Speaker 2: This Kruger National Park is six million acres in Africa
Speaker 2: that's fully fenced with lots of biodiversity.
Speaker 3: Some would consider that the wild. It's still a park.
Speaker 2: Right, So these animals, I assure you you know, they've
Speaker 2: got ten full time people that take care of them.
Speaker 2: They're on two thousand acres of a yellowstone like environment.
Speaker 2: They live quite quite well, but our long term goal
Speaker 2: with all of our species is to put them back
Speaker 2: into the wild in collaborations with indigenous people groups, private landowners,
Speaker 2: and governments. Right, So those are very long term processes.
Speaker 2: I won't say that we have a clear date that
Speaker 2: we could put dire wolves back in the wild, but
Speaker 2: I also say we won't. Right, that's really not even
Speaker 2: up to colossal, that's up to We've had indigenous people
Speaker 2: groups express interest in wanting that, but we have to
Speaker 2: work with you know, the government, the EPA.
Speaker 3: There's a lot that goes into this, right.
Speaker 2: So, like one of the projects we just announced was
Speaker 2: in partnership with Yellowstone is using AI for bioacoustics for wolves,
Speaker 2: so we understand migratory patterns, so we understand different call patterns,
Speaker 2: so we understand things, right, Because you know, the best
Speaker 2: thing that humans can do is figure out how we
Speaker 2: live with nature, not just bring back nature. And I
Speaker 2: think that those technologies are critical to be developed in
Speaker 2: concert with the extinction projects so that we can make
Speaker 2: rewilding work for the animals themselves and humanity that has
Speaker 2: encroached on their land.
Speaker 1: No, and I like what you said earlier about some
Speaker 1: of these secondary benefits like the vaccine for the elephants.
Speaker 1: I know there are tons and tons of others, including
Speaker 1: you know, potentially bacteria to eat, ocean plastic. We've talked
Speaker 1: at the beginning about mortality, and then we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about de extinction. So I just want to close
Speaker 1: with this question. If you had a Chillncee to read
Speaker 1: your obituary and you're happy with it, how do you
Speaker 1: complete the sentence? He did this because.
Speaker 2: He did this because others were too afraid to do it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: I think that making change is hard, and I think
Speaker 2: it requires determination, it requires thick skin. I think that
Speaker 2: some of the biggest and boldest things have had a
Speaker 2: perspective of abundance, and it's also a not zero sum game.
Speaker 2: And I think that's important because I think right now,
Speaker 2: sometimes when you work on new things, it's scary and
Speaker 2: it's hard, and I've been criticized a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: I've been a very long term supporter of developing technologies
Speaker 2: for climate change. Yet I have a lot of people
Speaker 2: that have been very very kind to me for quite
Speaker 2: some times that aren't as kind of me today as
Speaker 2: they used to be.
Speaker 3: But it's okay, because at.
Speaker 2: The end of the day, I am convicted in what
Speaker 2: I'm doing and I'm not afraid to do it because
Speaker 2: I truly believe that we need these technologies for conservation,
Speaker 2: and I think we need to also do big, bold
Speaker 2: things that will inspire the next generation so that we
Speaker 2: have more scientists and astronauts and fewer influencers.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very very well said, Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me for tech Stuff. I'm most velocian. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Eliza Dennis and Tori Dominguez. It was
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate Osborne for
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed
Speaker 1: this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join
Speaker 1: us on Friday for the Week in Tech, when Karen
Speaker 1: and I will run through the tech headlines that you
Speaker 1: may have missed, and please do rate, review, and reach
Speaker 1: out to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: We love hearing from you.