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Speaker 1: Also media, Oh what's Epstein? My Jeffries, I think a

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Speaker 1: version of that before. Should we not? Is that bad, Sophie?

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Speaker 1: Should we not start that way? How many chances do

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Speaker 1: you get now that he's dead?

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Speaker 2: You know, zero?

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Speaker 3: We don't need to do a lot.

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Speaker 1: That's right, That's right. That's the real tragedy. You know,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't say tragedy. Likeston Kerrman, our guest, how are you?

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Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I'm excited to hear more. This feels

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Speaker 2: weird to say out loud, but I'm excited to hear

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Speaker 2: more about Jeffrey Epstein and everything he's been up to

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Speaker 2: with our boy Georgetown.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thankfully we are past. We're done with the

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Speaker 1: Epstein part of the story, because you know how that ends. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders sneaks into prison and puts him out of

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Speaker 1: his misery in order to keep some certain people's secrets

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Speaker 1: or something. You know, nobody knows, right, some people are

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Speaker 1: pretty sure they know. I don't know.

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Speaker 2: It was like I would say, like four or five

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Speaker 2: people who probably know exactly.

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Speaker 1: There's like four five Yeah, maybe you who know exactly? Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: I continue to be, you know, an agnostic. I'm an

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Speaker 1: Epstein agnostic, but definitely fucking George Church. I feel like

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Speaker 1: knows more than he's slepting on.

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Speaker 2: He knows more than we do on this podcast.

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Speaker 1: Yeah man, But yeah, maybe it was George no that

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Speaker 1: that'll go So we can't we can't accuse this bioscientist

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Speaker 1: of having Epstein guilt. Fuck yeah. Yeah, maybe he like

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Speaker 1: inserted a gene and do him that made him choke more.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, just made something explode in the middle of.

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Speaker 1: Prison, right right, Yeah? Sure, Like yeah, created a spontaneously

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Speaker 1: grew a noose out of his hair, so oh boy.

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Speaker 1: Around the time he renewed his association with Epstein, which

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Speaker 1: would have been in the twenty fourteen to fifteen era

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Speaker 1: unless he'd been continuing to talk to him, which we

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Speaker 1: really don't know, but we have records of them starting

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Speaker 1: to meet again multiple times in twenty fourteen anyway, and

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Speaker 1: around that same period of time in twenty fourteen and

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Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, that's when doctor Church first started seriously pushing

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Speaker 1: the extinction as a scientific topic. Right where he was

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Speaker 1: I think you can find some quotes where he sort

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Speaker 1: of talked about the possibility, But two than fourteen fifteen

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Speaker 1: is when he really is like, this is an actual

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Speaker 1: thing we can and should do, and maybe even a

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Speaker 1: potential business that I want to be in. He had

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Speaker 1: danced around the issue in his twenty twelve book ReGenesis,

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Speaker 1: where he had proposed bringing back Neanderthals, which people always

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Speaker 1: get angry. Are like, Robert, you're mispronouncing it again. That

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Speaker 1: is how you say what most people call Neanderthals.

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Speaker 2: I'm not brave enough to have ever challenged to question.

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Speaker 1: Some people did in my novel, and then they're like,

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Speaker 1: oh shit, I looked it up.

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Speaker 2: I say Neanderthal. But I'm a dumb dumbs so I'm glad.

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Speaker 1: I'm very all dead. So that's not what they call themselves.

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Speaker 1: You call us what they Yeah, wow wow, No, it's fine.

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Speaker 1: We wipe them out because we're uh well, because we're monsters.

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Speaker 1: We're the devils here, so uh. Anyway, he had proposed

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Speaker 1: bringing back Neanderthals by genetic engineering and using an actual

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Speaker 1: human woman to serve as their surrogate mother.

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Speaker 2: Oh no.

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Speaker 1: He described in the book the ideal surrogate to rebirth

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Speaker 1: the Neanderthal race as quote an extremely adventurous female human.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, you can feel everyone about this, but my

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Speaker 1: maybe Sophie you can chime in here, depending on how

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Speaker 1: if you feel I'm getting this wrong. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: fucked up to call her a female human as opposed

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Speaker 1: to like an adventurous woman. Like either way it's fucked up,

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Speaker 1: but female human seems worse somehow than like we're gonna

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Speaker 1: find some adventurous woman, right. I don't know if neither

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Speaker 1: is good, but female human like you sound like a

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Speaker 1: star trek care you sound like Quark talking about ladies.

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Speaker 3: Female human as if female human you didn't need both

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Speaker 3: of those.

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Speaker 1: Could just say woman again.

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Speaker 3: Just say a woman.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what that word is for.

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Speaker 1: It literally was like a female human. It's just kind

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Speaker 1: of awkward.

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Speaker 2: Man, you're not being chill.

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Speaker 1: You're not being cool. Derspiegel and Derspiegel is a German

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Speaker 1: news agency. I think it literally means the voice or

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Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know. Don't quote man that

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Speaker 1: I'm bad at German. But it's it's a major It's

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Speaker 1: like their New York Times almost right, it's a major

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Speaker 1: publication over there. Interviewed doctor George Church in twenty fifteen

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Speaker 1: because he had recently made the claim that it would

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Speaker 1: soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. They asked him, will

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Speaker 1: you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

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Speaker 1: And he replied, I think so. But boy, there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of parts to that. He goes on a

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Speaker 1: list a few of the technologies that have developed recently

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Speaker 1: which might allow this kind of cloning, and then adds

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Speaker 1: another technology that the de extinction of a Neanderthal would

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Speaker 1: require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals,

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Speaker 1: so it's very likely that we could clone a human.

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Speaker 1: Why shouldn't we be able to do so?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now we're getting to what you really want here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Now we're getting to the real sketchy shit.

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Speaker 2: Something tells me you're not as concerned with these wolves

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Speaker 2: and these Neanderthals as now.

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Speaker 1: Der Spiegel very reasonably said, well you shouldn't, maybe because

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Speaker 1: it's super illegal, right, Like, you're not it's very illegal

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Speaker 1: to clone human beings. And Church's responses, Well, that may

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Speaker 1: be true in Germany, but it's not true everywhere, and

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Speaker 1: laws can change, by the way.

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Speaker 2: WHOA cool?

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Speaker 1: That's like if I was like if someone was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I think I'm going to commit some murders, but it's

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Speaker 1: illegal to murder. Well, what if the law changed? That's

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Speaker 1: not really my question.

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Speaker 2: It's illegal to murder because you're living in the past, man,

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Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the future.

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Speaker 1: Like I'm not really like if it were legal to murder,

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Speaker 1: that wouldn't change my judgment upon you for wanting to

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Speaker 1: murder somebody, you know. And it's interesting because, again, he's

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Speaker 1: always described as having this deep consideration of ethics and

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Speaker 1: you know, putting even a lot of money into making

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Speaker 1: sure that what he does is ethical. And he's asked like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but like it's super illegal to clone human beings for

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Speaker 1: like obvious reasons, and he's like, well, what if it

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Speaker 1: wasn't not my question, my dude, Okay, yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's just fascinating. And the other thing that's interesting here

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Speaker 1: is that, like, not only is he like his answer

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Speaker 1: to like this is kind of fucked up. Well, we

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Speaker 1: could make it legal, But when he's kind of pressed

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Speaker 1: by der Spiegel, I'm like, why would you want to

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Speaker 1: do this? Like what's the benefit? His answer is complete horseshit.

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Speaker 1: First off, he's asked like why would the be desirable?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 1: And when you ask that, you're asking like, give me

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Speaker 1: a good reason to want a Neanderthal clone, that's not

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Speaker 1: like some sort of cheap profit, Like, why is this desirable?

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Speaker 1: And his first answer is, well, that's another thing. I

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Speaker 1: tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus.

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Speaker 1: My role is to determine what's technologically feasible. All I

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Speaker 1: can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that is bad scientific edicts.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: First off, man, you shouldn't decide what's desirable based on

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Speaker 1: societal consensus. Go back to the fifties. What was societal

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Speaker 1: consensus on inerracial dating. If you're letting that move you

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Speaker 1: to decide what's desirable, you're gonna be bad.

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Speaker 2: It was also not taking genuine polls. No, he's just

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Speaker 2: talking to Jeffrey Epstein.

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Speaker 1: The average human probably doesn't give a shit about this, right.

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Speaker 2: I didn't know that bringing back a Neanderthal was possible,

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Speaker 2: and frankly, it never was interested in.

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Speaker 1: It was not on my list of concerns. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: the attitude that like, well, my only job is to determine,

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Speaker 1: like what are people willing to let me do, and

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Speaker 1: then what's technically feasible. You're literally doing the Ian Malcolm

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Speaker 1: in draask Park thing like you're literally your scientists are

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Speaker 1: so busy asking what they can do, they're not asking

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Speaker 1: should we Is this fucked up? Like Michael Crichton was

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Speaker 1: not a good man, but he understood that this is

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Speaker 1: bad ethics, right that just be like, I wonder if

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Speaker 1: I can It's like evil, it leads you to do evil?

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Speaker 2: No, you should chill out?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, fine, probably fine, fuck it. Yeah. So it's very

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Speaker 1: interesting to me how just he has he's completely incurious

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Speaker 1: as to whether or not there's a practical benefit to

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Speaker 1: doing this kind of cloning. And Derschpiegel has to prod

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Speaker 1: him like two or three times to get him to

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Speaker 1: answer kind of directly, like what is is there any

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Speaker 1: potential benefit to bringing back this species? And here's what

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Speaker 1: Church eventually says, Well, andertoles might think differently than we do.

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Speaker 1: We know that they had a larger cranial size. They

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Speaker 1: could even be more intelligent than us. When the time

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Speaker 1: comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the

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Speaker 1: planet or whatever. It's conceivable that their way of thinking

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Speaker 1: could be beneficial. Okay, I got a lot of issues here.

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Speaker 2: Fine, man, if we're just gonna pretend fine.

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Speaker 1: First off, let's split my issues here into pragmatic and

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Speaker 1: then ethical. Pragmatic. Bigger brain doesn't mean smarter. No, bigger brain.

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Speaker 1: That dolphins have bigger brain than us, they're not so

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Speaker 1: far prove it useful in getting us off the planet.

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Speaker 1: They have other concerns, right. The other thing is if

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Speaker 1: you're creating, if you're bringing back this species, this is

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Speaker 1: a sentient, sapient species, an independent species, and you are

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Speaker 1: saying we'll use their big brains to get off the planet.

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Speaker 1: What if that's not what they want? What if they

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Speaker 1: have other interests being their own independent beings. Because it

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Speaker 1: seems like you're concerned, is like, well, we can just

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Speaker 1: harness their big brains so that we can do the

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Speaker 1: science stuff that I want to do because they'll be smart.

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Speaker 1: But what if they don't want to do that? Are

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Speaker 1: you just saying you'll own them? Is that kind of

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Speaker 1: what you're saying.

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Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying, I think you're trying to

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Speaker 2: make big ass slaves man. Yeah, I think you're trying

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Speaker 2: to make some big old slaves. And that's yeah, that's

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Speaker 2: something you should maybe just say out loud instead of

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Speaker 2: pretending like it has some other value.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things. He's not saying, I want

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Speaker 1: to make big ass slaves, But if you say I

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Speaker 1: want to bring back a new intelligent species, you kind

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Speaker 1: of immediately have to say and they will immediately be

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Speaker 1: full citizens and right with the rights of human But

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Speaker 1: you have to like really emphasize that if you don't

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Speaker 1: want me to be like, do you just want slaves?

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Speaker 2: They don't have to live with me wherever they want.

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Speaker 1: So that's the other thing, because like this this Der

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Speaker 1: Spiegel journalist is like, how do you even go about

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Speaker 1: raising this species that you've brought back to life? Right?

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Speaker 1: Like they won't have parents or a culture, and as

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Speaker 1: like this is an intelligent, homitted species. Presumably most of

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Speaker 1: how the real ones knew how to do the things

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Speaker 1: that they did was that they were raised in families

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Speaker 1: like us, right, who like raise them? But there's no

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Speaker 1: culture of these people anymore? So how do you raise them?

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Speaker 1: And Church is kind of vaguely like, well, you'd like

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Speaker 1: make a bunch at a lot at once, like a cohort,

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Speaker 1: he calls them, and then he's like, maybe they'd become

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Speaker 1: their own culture. Maybe they'd even become a political force.

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Speaker 2: Who what name.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep coming back to Jurassic Park because you

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Speaker 1: can't not when it's talking about the extinction. But also

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Speaker 1: what's amazing to me is again Michael Crichton, the climate

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Speaker 1: change denier, fucking weird guy. Michael Crichton understood all of

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Speaker 1: the ethical issues with this when applied to dinosaurs in

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Speaker 1: a way this guy doesn't when applying them to like

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Speaker 1: effectively a humanoid creature. Because in the actual book Jurassic Park,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that becomes clear, like the raptors,

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Speaker 1: which are super intelligent, the ones that engine clones don't

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Speaker 1: act like real velociraptors. They're terrible to their young. They

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Speaker 1: like murder their own kids. They're just like crazy, violent

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Speaker 1: and dangerous because they were not raised by adults that

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Speaker 1: knew anything. They're just these monsters that got unleashed, and

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Speaker 1: so they grew up completely without any kind of a

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Speaker 1: culture that would teach them how to raise their young

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Speaker 1: and as an intelligence speed like Crichton imagined this when

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Speaker 1: talking about dinosaurs, yea, and George Church is just uncurious

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Speaker 1: about it, like literally read Jurassic Park.

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Speaker 2: We literally have a an economic system where you see

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Speaker 2: what raising people without their families does, and he's like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I bet these ones will figure it out. Yeah, Like, no,

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Speaker 2: that's not that's not how it's gonna work, big dog.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's also like just even when you're talking outside

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Speaker 1: of the andertoals, we talk about like the animals he

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Speaker 1: wants to raise like a major story from like like

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Speaker 1: animal you know, biology and whatnot. In the last couple

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Speaker 1: of decades, as we used to have these beliefs about

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Speaker 1: alpha wolves that deeply influenced a lot of toxic aspects

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Speaker 1: of human culture. And then the scientist who came up

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Speaker 1: with the idea was like, I was completely wrong. I

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Speaker 1: was looking at wolves raised in prisons. Basically they don't

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Speaker 1: act like wild wolves, right Yeah, Which, again, if you're

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Speaker 1: just bringing back a dead ancient animal and it has

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Speaker 1: no animals of its own type to raise it, how

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Speaker 1: the fuck are you going to have it? Because his

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Speaker 1: goal here is always for it to retake its original

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Speaker 1: evolutionary niche how would it do that? It doesn't know

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Speaker 1: when to do that.

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Speaker 2: You ever seen those videos where like they'll like put

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Speaker 2: a tiger in with a pig, like a baby tiger,

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Speaker 2: and then the baby tigers starts acting like the pig

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Speaker 2: a little bit it's like, well, yeah, that's because that's

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Speaker 2: more influential than it being just raw tiger by itself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is why I intend to raise a

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Speaker 1: human being with a bunch of tigers. But that's a

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Speaker 1: separate point. I just want to see if they'll grow claws.

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Speaker 1: All the scientists are saying no, but I have my

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Speaker 1: own theories.

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Speaker 2: Scientists are saying a lot of things.

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Speaker 1: They say a lot of shit has these episode show

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Speaker 1: So yeah, my opinion here is that his primary interest

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Speaker 1: isn't even I don't even think he ever intended to

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Speaker 1: clone the antithosis, right, I think he knows that this

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Speaker 1: is not really going to happen. It's clear to me

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Speaker 1: that his real interest is a mix of both, like

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Speaker 1: driving up hype because he's going to be starting this.

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Speaker 1: He's trying to and he's gotten very good at using

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Speaker 1: his lab. We'll do some work in like finding some

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Speaker 1: Neanderthal DNA and sequencing it, and then he can use

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Speaker 1: that to start making claims of we'll be able to

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Speaker 1: clone them one day and eventually get investments so that

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Speaker 1: he can spin off another startup company. Right, And that's

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Speaker 1: kind of part of how where about Colossal bioscience is

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Speaker 1: the Direwolf Company comes from. That's part of what he's doing.

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Speaker 1: I think the other thing that he's doing here, and

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Speaker 1: this becomes clear later in the interview, is he's sort

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Speaker 1: of giving away that his actual interest is not to

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Speaker 1: bring back extinct species. It's to find traits of those

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Speaker 1: species and edit them into other animals for much less

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Speaker 1: altruistic purposes. At one point he has asked, like, do

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Speaker 1: you think there's anything wrong with creating a whole new species,

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Speaker 1: and he says, the main goal is to increase diversity.

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Speaker 1: The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity.

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Speaker 1: This is true for culture or evolution, for species, and

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Speaker 1: also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you

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Speaker 1: are at great risk of perishing. Therefore, the recreation of

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Speaker 1: Neanderthals would mainly be a question of societal risk avoidance.

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Speaker 1: And that's a really good example of using like the

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Speaker 1: language of social justice and liberalism to advocate for horrifying

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Speaker 1: things like first off, human beings have mostly done fine

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Speaker 1: with that Neandthals. I don't know that there's any evidence

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Speaker 1: that they would make us like more diverse. But also

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Speaker 1: that's not what he's interested in doing. Later in the interview,

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Speaker 1: dearsh People asks, Hey, wouldn't you just be able to

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Speaker 1: add some of their genes to a human and change

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Speaker 1: the human And the answer Doctor Church gives makes it

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Speaker 1: clear that this is what I think he's really interested in,

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Speaker 1: because he says, suppose you were to realize, wow, these

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Speaker 1: five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size,

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Speaker 1: a few key things that could give us what we

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Speaker 1: want in terms of neural diversity. And that's when I'm like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you just want to create designer smart babies for rich people, right,

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Speaker 1: that's the blueprint here.

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Speaker 2: You're just trying to make it so that so that

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Speaker 2: the baby comes out exactly the way you planned and

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Speaker 2: with no other stuff.

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Speaker 1: Right, and you can make hyper smart babies for your

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Speaker 1: rich friends that become a new species to rule over

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Speaker 1: all of us. That's your goal.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're at your eyes and no need for braces, right,

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Speaker 2: we get.

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Speaker 1: It, right, Right, that's your dream. He continues, Even if

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Speaker 1: you don't have the DNA, you can still make something

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Speaker 1: that looks like it. And this is this is where

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Speaker 1: he lays out the blueprint for what Colossal is going

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Speaker 1: to do because he's like DNA doesn't last. We can't

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Speaker 1: get full dinosaur DNA, you'll never be able to clone

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Speaker 1: a real dinosaur. But then He's like, even if you

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Speaker 1: don't know the DNA, you can still make something that

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Speaker 1: looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make

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Speaker 1: a dinosaur, you'd first consider the ostrich, one of its

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Speaker 1: closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is

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Speaker 1: a large bird, and you would ask, what's the difference

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Speaker 1: between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds loose their hair? Hands?

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Speaker 1: And you would try to identify the mutations to try

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Speaker 1: and back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible,

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Speaker 1: and again it's not really.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a I learned about this recently. But

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Speaker 2: there's somebody who's making something called the chicken asaurs. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: where they are essentially claiming that they're like re they've

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Speaker 2: rediscovered or re given us dinosaurs again via this chicken assaur.

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Speaker 2: But it's just a fucked up chicken. Yeah, that like

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Speaker 2: looks like it's got like some dinosaur qualities.

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Speaker 1: And it's it's one of those things like is that

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting? Sure? Would I want something that looks

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Speaker 1: like a dinosaur and is a pet. I'm not made

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Speaker 1: of stone? Of course? Is that a dinosaur that you've

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Speaker 1: de extincted? Now it's a thing you made, And there's

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Speaker 1: still these ethical questions about like, well, what are the

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Speaker 1: rights of that animal? Like YadA YadA, Like there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of weird things, you know, Like there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of weird shit about that. Right, I'm not thrilled with this,

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Speaker 1: but that's my least kind of concern. Here is somebody

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Speaker 1: who's like, look, this isn't a real dinosaur, but it

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Speaker 1: looks like one. Do you want to have it as

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Speaker 1: a pet? All right? I have bigger concerns, you know, Right.

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Speaker 2: It's not the true crime that is that our boy

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Speaker 2: George is working out on the back end.

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Speaker 1: Of this, although there's also the day if it is

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Speaker 1: like made out of it from a chicken. Chickens are

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Speaker 1: soulless monsters, like you don't want to make them more powerful, like.

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Speaker 2: And they're also not particularly bright and none of this

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Speaker 2: feels like a great combination.

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Speaker 1: If you know, chickens their favorite food is their own kind,

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Speaker 1: like they are scary animals. Yeah, my favorite that Werner

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Speaker 1: Herzog has some great quotes about if you want to

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Speaker 1: see a frightened stare into the eyes of a chicken.

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Speaker 1: There's like nothing but blackness in there.

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Speaker 2: It's oh man.

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Speaker 1: It's good stuff.

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Speaker 2: Your chicken listeners are going to be pissed. You'll be nasty.

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Speaker 1: You know, we've all had like I've had chickens. I

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Speaker 1: remember once one of my chickens, raccoon got in the

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Speaker 1: coop and one of my chickens fought it off and

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Speaker 1: got injured, and all of its friends ate it to death.

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Speaker 1: It's horrible. Chickens are nightmares.

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Speaker 2: Oh I really didn't even like give him a shit

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Speaker 2: shit Oh man, Chicken Run really sold me a different.

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Speaker 1: Story about the chickens are not that good at solidarity,

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Speaker 1: not their strong suit as a species. So we'll talk

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Speaker 1: more in a little bit about his so called de

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Speaker 1: extinction ambitions. But again this starts in like twenty fourteen

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Speaker 1: to fifteen, and the fact that he's like working on

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Speaker 1: this stuff, the fact that he's got this history with

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Speaker 1: Epstein and Epstein's weird baby breeding project and all these

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Speaker 1: this genome sequencing, all these that he's talking in twenty

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Speaker 1: fifteen about like editing human genes make designer babies. This

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Speaker 1: all leads directly to the most fucked up thing about

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Speaker 1: doctor George Church, which is how often he winds up,

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Speaker 1: shall we say, tugging at the fringes of outright eugenics, right,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah. In a twenty nineteen interview for CBS with

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Speaker 1: Scott Pelley, Church talks about his goal, which is framed

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Speaker 1: in the article as to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases,

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Speaker 1: and aging. In the interview, George talks about age reversal,

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Speaker 1: which he says has been proven about eight ways and animals.

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Speaker 1: Now it hasn't, right, And that's a really vague statement

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Speaker 1: for a scientist to make. And I want to know

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Speaker 1: what are the eight ways? What do you mean by proven? Right?

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Speaker 1: These are all the questions that aren't answered.

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Speaker 2: I did find that there's that jellyfish that doesn't that

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Speaker 2: can like regenerate it or like turn itself back into

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Speaker 2: a child, But like that's not proving it. That's just

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Speaker 2: that species, right.

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Speaker 1: And there's like there's like turtles that may basically live

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Speaker 1: forever if they're not killed by something, right, Like there's

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Speaker 1: some tortoises that are like three hundred years old, right,

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Speaker 1: And there's some other species where it may be a

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Speaker 1: similar thing where like they kind of only die if

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Speaker 1: something gets them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you can't just like, maybe there will

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Speaker 1: be some sort of life extensions seecrets in that animal,

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Speaker 1: but maybe it's just different enough from us that like

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Speaker 1: there's no way to transfer that to human beings. He's

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Speaker 1: saying that we have proved how to reverse age in animals, right,

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Speaker 1: that we have done it using science, and that should

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Speaker 1: be a falsifiable statement, but he doesn't give much more

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Speaker 1: detail there. I did find an article for the Center

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Speaker 1: for Genetics and Society that attempts to reverse engineer his claim,

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Speaker 1: and they're like, he is almost surely over selling this,

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Speaker 1: but they suspect one of the proven cases he's talking

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Speaker 1: about here is a study about gene therapy for mitral

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Speaker 1: valve disease and mice. Right, And it's a study that

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Speaker 1: showed that by editing some genes you can fix like

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Speaker 1: mitral valve disease and mice. Now, that's important and may

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Speaker 1: have some really crucial implications for science, may allow us

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Speaker 1: to extend a lot of people's lives.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's not good science, it's not

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Speaker 1: age reversal. Right, that that's curing a valve disease. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's not exactly the same thing.

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Speaker 2: Now, you're still gonna die when you die, you just

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Speaker 2: will die from that.

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Speaker 1: You'll get older. It's just like you'll be this problem

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Speaker 1: with your heart we might be able to fix with

431
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 1: gene editing. And obviously, like, is it possible given enough

432
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:10,760
Speaker 1: time that we will be able to extend human life

433
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:13,160
Speaker 1: enough that we keep extending it. It's not impossible. I'm

434
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,360
Speaker 1: not saying I don't think it's necessarily likely, because there's

435
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 1: a lot of shit you'd have to figure out, and

436
00:22:18,119 --> 00:22:19,760
Speaker 1: I just don't know if we're going to get there,

437
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 1: given all of the other things human beings civilization's going

438
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:25,880
Speaker 1: to have to deal with. But it's not impossible. It's

439
00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:28,560
Speaker 1: just the way he talks about this is so blase

440
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:31,320
Speaker 1: a and he glosses over so much that it's not

441
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:36,119
Speaker 1: like serious scientific talk. And part some of the evidence

442
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:37,879
Speaker 1: for this is that like when he gets pressed on

443
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:40,679
Speaker 1: like a, right, well, how do you know where are

444
00:22:40,720 --> 00:22:44,159
Speaker 1: we actually making animals younger? The only real evidence that

445
00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:47,159
Speaker 1: he's able to cite is an ongoing clinical trial to

446
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,960
Speaker 1: see if gene therapy can extend the lifespan of dogs,

447
00:22:50,520 --> 00:22:54,640
Speaker 1: and maybe that will be possible, but any resultant therapy

448
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,680
Speaker 1: is going to be number one, not proven yet. And

449
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: number two, any resultant therapy that come out of this

450
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 1: doesn't We don't know that it would work on people,

451
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,920
Speaker 1: because there's dogs, aren't people, right.

452
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:08,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some noticeable difference.

453
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:11,240
Speaker 1: Not in a genetic sense, Sophie, in an ethical sense, share,

454
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,080
Speaker 1: but not in a genetic sense. We're different, we constructed.

455
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:17,200
Speaker 2: It's really funny when people sort of like sink into

456
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 2: these types of sciences, because like, if you want your

457
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:24,439
Speaker 2: dog to live longer, just stop making it fuck its cousin,

458
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:26,600
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like that's part of it, right,

459
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:30,240
Speaker 2: Stop breeding them till they're like sick the second they

460
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,280
Speaker 2: come out, and let them be whatever random mutt that

461
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:35,080
Speaker 2: they all are kind of supposed to be.

462
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, for the record, if we ever

463
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:40,440
Speaker 1: find a way to make dogs live like sixty years,

464
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: I'm on board. Ditto cats. You know, I don't have

465
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: an issue with like keeping our pets alive with us.

466
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:48,600
Speaker 2: I'd welcome their presence, the welcome their presence.

467
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:52,440
Speaker 3: I would do so many things to keep my dog

468
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 3: alive longer.

469
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that this thing he's talking about is

470
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 1: going to work really on dogs, And even if it

471
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:02,920
Speaker 1: can extend the lifespan, it's also it's not the same

472
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: as reversing age necessarily. But also even if, and again

473
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,400
Speaker 1: these are all many, these ifs are increasingly fractional long shots.

474
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: Even if this study works on dogs, and even if

475
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 1: there proves to be an application on human beings, any

476
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 1: resultant therapy that allows you to extend human lifespan or

477
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: reverse human age will be exhaust outlandishly expensive, so expensive

478
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: that it will only be available to guys like Jeffrey Epstein. Right.

479
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: In response to doctor Church's claims about age reversal science,

480
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:40,320
Speaker 1: historian Nathaniel Comfort noted, lengthening the lives of rich Westerners

481
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,400
Speaker 1: the obvious customers, would be the biggest ecological crime since

482
00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:45,959
Speaker 1: standard oil. It's hard to argue with that.

483
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:48,480
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, that's pretty fair.

484
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: Obviously, that doesn't mean we wouldn't do it. The question,

485
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 1: there's two separate questions. Is this ethical?

486
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:54,199
Speaker 5: No?

487
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: Is this possible? Also? So far no? Right that said,

488
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 1: I should note that the ethics of this are not

489
00:25:01,160 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 1: a topic that Church ignores. There's a whole nother CBS

490
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 1: article I found where he talks about genetic equality and

491
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 1: emphasizes the fact that he keeps an ethicist on staff. Quote,

492
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 1: he does not want to see a world in which

493
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: big advances in genetic engineering are available only to those

494
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 1: who can afford it. He considers a quality both one

495
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: of manipulating genes for therapy like correcting genetic defects to

496
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: cure genetic diseases, and for enhancement augmenting genes beyond what

497
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:29,679
Speaker 1: is normal. But like it doesn't mean anything. Like, for

498
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: one thing, the pharmaceutical companies that buy this from you

499
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: are going to set the prices, right, they'll pay you off.

500
00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 2: Like, I just think it's always a bad sign when

501
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 2: somebody has to outsource ethics, right, I mean, like you

502
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 2: need somebody else to handle ethics because that's just not

503
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 2: how you think is you're gonna do some vile shit.

504
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: That that that's probably a fair point too, And it's

505
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:57,920
Speaker 1: it's also hard for me to square this statement that like, well,

506
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: I really I don't want, you know, there to be

507
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 1: netic you know, bias. I want everyone to have access

508
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: to these wonderful things. We're definitely going to be able

509
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 1: to do. His claims that that's what he wants are

510
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:10,640
Speaker 1: hard for me to square with other statements he has made,

511
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: saying like but that I quoted earlier, where he's like, hey, man,

512
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:14,720
Speaker 1: it's just my job to figure out what we can

513
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: do right. Whatever society's fine with is, you know what's right?

514
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 2: Right, that's none of my business.

515
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:24,400
Speaker 1: My business, it's a very Vernervon braun. When the rockets

516
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: go up, who knows where they come down? That's not

517
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: my department, says Vernervon Brown.

518
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 2: I'm just here to make as many humunculi as possible.

519
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 2: I don't, right, I don't decide where they go.

520
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 1: Look, man, I'm in the homunculi business. I'm not nowhere

521
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: a monculy i go business. You know, he told CBS,

522
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: We're not necessarily opposed to enhancement if everybody gets access

523
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: to it simultaneously and again. But there's no how do

524
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: you do that? You don't talking about how that would

525
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: ever happen. You're just saying, obviously that's what I want.

526
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 5: Yeah.

527
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: Are you going to turn down millions of dollars or

528
00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: billions of dollars to make sure that happens unless somebody

529
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: guarantees it somehow?

530
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 2: Are you?

531
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,879
Speaker 1: How doesn't seem real doesn't seem likely anyway. He doesn't

532
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: propose any way to ensure this, nor do I believe

533
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: he truly cares. Scott Pelley, who's the journalist who interviewed Church,

534
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: made this statement after talking to him. He doesn't see

535
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 1: a great distinction between being able to travel five hundred

536
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: and fifty miles an hour on an airliner or changing

537
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: somebody's genome in order to make them maybe cognitively more astute.

538
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:25,160
Speaker 1: There's a big difference.

539
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 2: That's why I fuck with Scott Pelly. He really end

540
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 2: of the day, he really breaks it all down in

541
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 2: a very succinct, clear way. He's like, that man that

542
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 2: I just spoke to is a psychopath, and you should

543
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 2: know that.

544
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: That would be like if like a weapons designer's like,

545
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: what's really the difference between building a new artillery shell

546
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: and genetically encoding a bomb into someone's DNA without them knowing?

547
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: Is there really a difference?

548
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 2: They're both dead, Yes, I think they're dead.

549
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are both dead. But I do think there's

550
00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:00,959
Speaker 1: a difference. Now, I know me saying I don't trust

551
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 1: that this guy cares about ethics. I think he's lying

552
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: about caring about a quality here. Maybe that just seems

553
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:09,399
Speaker 1: like old Robert being an asshole because all the bastards

554
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: he reads about. There's other good reasons to doubt George

555
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:14,679
Speaker 1: Church here, and I want to quote from that article

556
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: from the Center for Genetics and Society. The massive Chinese

557
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:22,240
Speaker 1: company BGI sees synthetic biology as a promising field, and

558
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen launched the George Church Institute of ReGenesis

559
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: in Shinzhen. Bgi's corporate culture has been criticized as eugenics like,

560
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: and the company is currently involved in state surveillance and

561
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: harassment of millions of Wigers, a Muslim minority group in Zendjang.

562
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's not great. And the company that starts

563
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: the institute named after you has been criticized as eugenics like,

564
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: or for surveilling a minority being targeted by the state.

565
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:52,240
Speaker 1: None of those are good things.

566
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 2: I really was hoping this wasn't going to lead to

567
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 2: you knowing who the test subjects were. But boy, oh.

568
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: Boy, prove that. But yeah, the other thing is that, like,

569
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: just outside of those ethics, the George Church Institute of ReGenesis,

570
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: that's a dystopian name. I'm sorry, that's from like a

571
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: cyberpunk source book like that.

572
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 2: You're doing.

573
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 1: You should know that's a bad name. But that said,

574
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 1: I had to look further into this BGI and everything.

575
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 1: When I heard the words eugenics like for this company culture,

576
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And

577
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: holy fuck, is this company screwed up? So back in

578
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Wang Jian, who's a co founder and president

579
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: of the company, participated in a panel discussion at a conference.

580
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: He stated that bgi's goal was for each of their

581
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: employees to live to at least age one hundred. To

582
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: ensure this, they have like they have to in order

583
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: to work there, embrace three rules, and I'm going to

584
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:51,960
Speaker 1: read you about these rules. Per an article for the

585
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: English language Chinese news website sixth Tone Quote, the first

586
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: rule is that BGI staff are not allowed to have

587
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 1: children with birth defects. If they were born with defects,

588
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: it would be a disgrace to all seven thousand staff,

589
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: Wang said, it would mean that me are fooling society

590
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: and just eye hang each other's pockets. Whang added there

591
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: are no known serious congenital diseases among the fourteen hundred

592
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: infants that have been born to the company's employees. Oh boy,

593
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: oh god, Well that's just I mean, do I have

594
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: to like talk about why that's evil?

595
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 2: God? Damn, they're just saying stuff plainly. Holy shit, Holy fuck,

596
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 2: that's crazy.

597
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: These people made a center named after you, George Jesus Christ.

598
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 2: They also, there's no way they mean that about like

599
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 2: the cleaning staff. No, you know what I mean, Like

600
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 2: they're only talking about very specific employees at this time.

601
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nuts. That's also what do you consider a defect? Right?

602
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: And I know this is actually tricky. The ethics here

603
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: are really tricky.

604
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:56,400
Speaker 5: Right.

605
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: If I was having a kid and I learned like, hey,

606
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: this this few future potential child would have a heart

607
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: defect we found evidence of and we can fix it

608
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: in you to row, of course you'd want to fix

609
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: that as a parent, bunce your kid have a heart defect.

610
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: What about if they're like, hey, your child, they'll be

611
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: perfectly healthy, perfectly intelligent, but they'll be on the autism

612
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: spectrum or they'll have ADHD. Yeah, I got to give

613
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 1: you an option to zapp that because that kind of

614
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: feels like genocide to me.

615
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're going to have they're going to have

616
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 2: a sixth finger think this slope is so slippery for

617
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 2: like what they'll decide is acceptable and not acceptable?

618
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is something we will have to grapple

619
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 1: with and it's not going to be easy because obviously

620
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 1: if you're like, hey, your kid's going to be has

621
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: this genetic condition, that will mean that there will be

622
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: constantly in horrible pain for every second of their short life.

623
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: But we can fix that right now, Who wouldn't want

624
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: to fix that? But then how do you build guard

625
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: rails in so that you're not just saying we're going

626
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: to get rid of everyone? It is different, right, like.

627
00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 2: And and who frankly are the scientists and charge of

628
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 2: making those decisions?

629
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 5: Right?

630
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 2: We know for a fact it's a real uh, I'll

631
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 2: bring back dire wolves ass person.

632
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Wang who's like none of the kids of

633
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 1: my employees can be defective?

634
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 2: Right?

635
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: Like this is all just like it gets really bad,

636
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: very very quickly.

637
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 5: Right.

638
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: And it's also like, you know, Church makes this big

639
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: claim of like I'm a big believer in diversity. He

640
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 1: talks about like I have narcolepsy, and I have a

641
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: lot of my great nest ideas and when I like

642
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: kind of have these quick narcoleptic naps and stuff. He's

643
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: a big believer in neurodiversity, according to what he says,

644
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 1: but also the science and the people he's working with

645
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: are actively working to end neurodiversity. Yeah, like that's the

646
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 1: result of this, right, Like we all know that's where

647
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: these people would go. Yeah, not a problem.

648
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 2: It's a real hit. Like it's like Hitler being like, well,

649
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 2: my mom was Jewish, so that's why I mean, yeah,

650
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 2: that's why I'm doing this.

651
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: That would have been a weird thing for Hitler's Oh Hitler.

652
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 3: So.

653
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: Bgi's second rule is that the company can't detect cancer

654
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: later than hospitals do, which I guess is fine as

655
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: an ambition, right, you want your company to who does

656
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: these screenings to be faster than the current technology. Okay,

657
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: give you a pass on that one. The third rule

658
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: for BGI employees is almost as fucked up as the first,

659
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from sixth Tone again. Employees are

660
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,959
Speaker 1: forbidden from having a heart bypass surgery. Instead, they are

661
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: expected to rely on gene tech and clean living to

662
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: prevent cardiovascular disease. To promote fitness and healthy eating, Wang said,

663
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: BGI tracks the dieting habits of employees at its cafeteria,

664
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: and has put its elevators out of service. Now Man

665
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: Wang describes this policy as a bit mean. He's also

666
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 1: opposed women from the Chinese mainland getting HPV vaccines in

667
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, not because he's anti vax, but because he

668
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: thinks that genetic testing is a better value for the money,

669
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:56,000
Speaker 1: which is like, that's just none of your fucking business man.

670
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 2: Like oh man, He's like, no, don't don't care their disease.

671
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 2: I want to figure out out how to test more.

672
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 2: I need more diseases to play with.

673
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: What if they get vaccinated and get to anyway, this

674
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:09,959
Speaker 1: company is fucked up. And the fact that doctor Church

675
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: is involved with this guy and his company to such

676
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,240
Speaker 1: an extent that this BGI named a center after George

677
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,439
Speaker 1: Church says more than every vague claim he makes about

678
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: ethics and genetic equality about what I think his actual

679
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: ethics are. And the more you read about him, the

680
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: more it becomes clear that there are two very different

681
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: George Churches. There's the one who legitimately contributed to some

682
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: huge scientific breakthroughs and who runs a Harvard lab that

683
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: does work on some really cool projects. One of the

684
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: companies he's affiliated with is working to like clone pigs

685
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: with organs that can be transplanted more easily into human beings.

686
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good idea, right, not that

687
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: there's no ethical concerns there, but like probably worth it

688
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Some people will feel differently, but like

689
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: not enough organs out there right now for everybody who

690
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: needs them. But there's another George Church, and that's the

691
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 1: guy who will work with absolutely anyone in anything if

692
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: there's money in it, right, and we'll kind of say anything,

693
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:05,919
Speaker 1: you know. That's my interpretation of events. I'm not saying

694
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: that's objectively true my opinion. You see the first George

695
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 1: in these hagiographic articles for the popular press that are

696
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: talking about like how amazing he and his companies are.

697
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: And you see the second George when you actually look

698
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: into a lot of the companies that he's either co

699
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 1: founded or been hired to advise. For example, of a

700
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: company he's co founded, I'd like to introduce you to

701
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: a venture that he co founded in twenty nineteen called

702
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: Digit eight or Digitate Digitate. No, do you think you

703
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: know where we're going here?

704
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 2: I have no clue it's dating.

705
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: It's a dating service. It's a genetic dating service. Oh no,

706
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 1: no loops. Oh oh shit, Yeah that sounds bad.

707
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:51,320
Speaker 2: Fuck.

708
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: His co founder is Bargavi Govindarajen, who is a Harvard

709
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: graduate who met Church at a school event. They got

710
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: to talking about consumer genetic testing, and she seems to

711
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:06,440
Speaker 1: have like soft pitched him, like what if we integrated

712
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 1: genome sequencing into a dating app? And this is what

713
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,399
Speaker 1: she said later. It did not take us much time

714
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 1: to uncover synergies in terms of how we wish to

715
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: build a nimble, modern platform that taps into molecular biology

716
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,240
Speaker 1: and accelerates the impact of preventative health for a variety

717
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: of consumers. Within a year of the first meeting that

718
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:29,439
Speaker 1: seated our conversations, we incorporated Digitate with planet wide ambitions. God,

719
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: that's just it's both like such tech corporate speak and

720
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: also evil supervillain speak at scale.

721
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nuts. That's terrifying.

722
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: You can probably guess the basics of this idea. You

723
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: give Digitate your DNA, they sequence it, and they compare

724
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: it to other people on the service to ensure that

725
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: you only match with someone you're compatible with.

726
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 3: I really don't like where this is going.

727
00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: This is going on, this kind of like eugenics. Eugenics

728
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:05,240
Speaker 1: me gen x who.

729
00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 2: Knows you plus me eugenics?

730
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. Quote. The idea is to use DNA comparisons

731
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:17,920
Speaker 1: to make sure people and this is from the m

732
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 1: t AT Technology of Review. The idea is to use

733
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: DNA comparisons to make sure people who share a genetic

734
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: mutation like those that cause Tay Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis,

735
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: never meet, fall in love and have kids. Well, I mean,

736
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: it's a really fucked up way to say.

737
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:36,400
Speaker 3: That's like, yes, two people say very brosis are dangerous

738
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 3: to each other if they're near near each other.

739
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 1: But well no, I mean, like that's not even true.

740
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 1: It's like if two people who have like if two

741
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: people are likely to have kids with a certain horrible disease,

742
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: maybe like adoption is a better choice or something.

743
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 3: I know, it's like wildly abusive and creepy.

744
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:57,320
Speaker 1: Making sure they never meet is just like reducing human

745
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: beings to things that combine DNA. Or maybe they're not

746
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: interested having kids, right yeah, maybe they just.

747
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:05,800
Speaker 2: They can meet, they can hang out, they can.

748
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: Even talk about each other, right, Yeah.

749
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 2: They might be like, hey, you got that, zoo, I'm good.

750
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 2: Let's make other choices like yeah, they have the ability

751
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 2: to figure this out for themselves.

752
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:19,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just the whole Like the goal is to

753
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: make sure they don't fall in love. It's like, wow, okay,

754
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: I don't like this, Sylvie. I want you to pull

755
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: up the image of this tweet from digit Date in

756
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: March sixteenth of twenty twenty one. Let's just take a

757
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: look at this. I'm going to read this. Digitate is

758
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:35,720
Speaker 1: here to help enhance your relationships, providing a dining experience

759
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: that relies on communication, teamwork, and it's intimacy. Give it

760
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: a try today, hashtag couple, hashtag dating, hashtag virtual date,

761
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,440
Speaker 1: hashtag date. And then there's a little image macro that

762
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: says intimacy isn't always easy, but Digitate is here to help.

763
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: We provide a virtual dining experience for you and your date,

764
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: leading to closer, more intimate connections. So again they're advertising

765
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 1: other aspects of this, which is like we let you

766
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: have a digital date before you meet. They're not talking

767
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:02,720
Speaker 1: in the public facing ads about the fact that like, also,

768
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: we're sequencing your DNA to determine who you'll make a

769
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: good genetic match.

770
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 3: With I don't like these two little fuckers in the corner.

771
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 2: No, no, I'll go so far as to say that

772
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:20,440
Speaker 2: that look how little they invested in the actual like images.

773
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 1: Yes they don't. I don't know if there's a lot

774
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: of money behind the side.

775
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 2: They're like, just give us your DNA if you're going

776
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 2: to fall for this. We're not spending a dime on advertising.

777
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 1: That's right. But you know who is spending a dime

778
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: on advertising? That's perfect our advertisers. Baby, we're back. We're

779
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: talking about crimes, but we're not going to tell you

780
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: what crimes. We're not planning an Ocean's eleven heist of

781
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: a casino, of course it's not. Langston's not also the

782
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 1: best safe cracker in the business. You know, I'm not,

783
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 1: you know, the world's best getaway river surfy, so surfy, jesus.

784
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: The fun was that I got to make a joke

785
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:07,360
Speaker 1: about Sophie being trained in jiu jitsu, but I ruined

786
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 1: it by mispronouncing your name. I'm sorry, that was weird.

787
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 3: I don't think i'd be very good at that, It's okay,

788
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 3: but i'd be good at crimes.

789
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:18,319
Speaker 1: You'll be good at great at crimes theoretically. Theoretically.

790
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 3: Now, I'm just thinking, like you know, if you find

791
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 3: I would, I would do so many crimes to keep

792
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:24,760
Speaker 3: Anderson alive longer.

793
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:27,760
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of you as the mobster in the movie

794
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:33,479
Speaker 1: Ghost Dog starring Forrest Whitaker. Great film. Yeah you could.

795
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: You could be using ghost Dog to assassinate your rivals.

796
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 1: He would love you. You could be his. Uh Damio,

797
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: I think Daimio.

798
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:43,479
Speaker 3: I'm looking eyes.

799
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: Sorry, we got off the thing we're talking about digit Date,

800
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: the creepy genetic dating company.

801
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,439
Speaker 3: I was trying to distract us away from it because

802
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:53,879
Speaker 3: it makes me so uncomfortable.

803
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: No, we still got worse ship to talk about. So

804
00:40:56,719 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: here's the technology review that the m T technol You

805
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:03,719
Speaker 1: review in this article about Digitate describes Church's lab as

806
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: gravitating towards provocative projects, and they describe Digitate not as

807
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: a separate dating app, but as a service like GPS

808
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 1: in the company's words, that could run in the background

809
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: of any existent dating app. GPS. Yeah, I don't like

810
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: that either. So basically, every dating app could use Digitate's

811
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,839
Speaker 1: technology in order to have their users send in their

812
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,759
Speaker 1: DNA and get their genomes sequenced to stop them from

813
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: meeting genetically and campatical people. Now, genome sequencing costs like

814
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty bucks, so obviously this is not

815
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,439
Speaker 1: super easy to pencil out financially for a dating app,

816
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 1: which generally is not that expensive. But Church thinks you

817
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: could offset this by increasing the subscription price of dating apps.

818
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if I think this is a great business.

819
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,360
Speaker 1: Hasn't taken off yet, but as usual, he puts what

820
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: is effectively eugenics, like this is a eugenics dating app

821
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 1: in humanitarian terms, claiming it would eradicate huge numbers of

822
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,399
Speaker 1: diseases which cost quote about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.

823
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 1: And again when it comes to horrific diseases, I'm all

824
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 1: for stopping horrible diseases that harm people, but there's a

825
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: lot of other ethical concerns when you start talking about

826
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:20,399
Speaker 1: this shit, and you're just not dealing with them at all.

827
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: As a guy who is like I'm not neurotypical, and

828
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: I think there's huge benefit and having people with brains

829
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,800
Speaker 1: that work different be involved in science, you're also creating

830
00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: an app to put an end to that. Maybe and

831
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 1: you're not talking about that problem at all.

832
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 2: Anyway, You're not and you're not being even transparent about

833
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 2: to your point about what is being considered a deformity,

834
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 2: a a not typical uh thing inside of a person.

835
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: Because it's like some scientists are like, hey, there's a

836
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: disease where people's skin is born inside out. We want

837
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:56,839
Speaker 1: to stop that. I'll be like, yeah, man, I don't

838
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:00,399
Speaker 1: think we gain anything from babies and their skin inside out, right,

839
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: But that's just never where it ends, you know.

840
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 2: And I also I want you to know what color

841
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 2: that skin is when we flipped around. Yeah, it's gonna

842
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,960
Speaker 2: be the color we like, right, what other stuff you

843
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 2: wanted to do with baby skin?

844
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: This got announced this dating service for the first time

845
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:23,799
Speaker 1: during an appearance Church made on Sixty Minutes. He later

846
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: claimed that the section about Digitate wasn't supposed to air, like, oh,

847
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: I had no idea they were putting that in the show.

848
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: I was just talking, and that he'd intended to just

849
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: talk about his pig cloning company. But here's how the

850
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: documentary wound up sounding. I don't know if I believe

851
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: him on this, but Sophie's just got to play this

852
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 1: whole clip for you.

853
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 5: Okay, wonderful church is a role model for the next generation.

854
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:47,959
Speaker 5: You got it working.

855
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 1: It looks like he has co.

856
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,399
Speaker 5: Founded more than thirty five startups.

857
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,759
Speaker 2: Oh, this is incredibly important.

858
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:58,479
Speaker 5: Recently, investors put one hundred million dollars into the pig

859
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:04,160
Speaker 5: organ work on. Another church startup is a dating app

860
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 5: that compares DNA and screens out matches that would result

861
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 5: in a child with an inherited disease.

862
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 4: You wouldn't find out who you're not compatible with, You'll

863
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 4: just find out who you are compatible with.

864
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:21,240
Speaker 6: You're suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and

865
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:24,719
Speaker 6: the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases

866
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 6: could be eliminated.

867
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 4: Right, it's seven thousand diseases. It's about five percent of

868
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,799
Speaker 4: the population. It's about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.

869
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: Now, it's kind of like prone about five percent of

870
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: the population. You know, of those types of people happening,

871
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:42,959
Speaker 1: I'm problematic there.

872
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 3: I just want to walk through like some kind of

873
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 3: like conference and walk up to a board and go,

874
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 3: this is important, this is important.

875
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,760
Speaker 1: I do that. That's exactly what I'm like at cees.

876
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: If I think they'll give me something cool consumer electronics

877
00:44:58,080 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: show work. Oh yeah, it's important.

878
00:44:59,560 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 2: Yeah.

879
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 5: Yeah.

880
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 1: So when you're a tall guy with a beard and

881
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: you walk around leaning into screens going this is important,

882
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 1: people will just give you stuff. It's nuts.

883
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 2: Yeah he really, he really sped past it in a

884
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 2: way that it's more about the elimination of like the diseases,

885
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 2: and not the curation of yeah, of another species, like

886
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: truly saying like important seven thousand.

887
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: Huh can I get a list?

888
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 2: He's so tall, he's so tough to look at. Yeah,

889
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 2: given how bad he wants perfect people, right, like, you

890
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 2: would think that he should not get to say what

891
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 2: a perfect person is. And yet here we are.

892
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 6: No.

893
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: He you know what he looks like? Do you remember

894
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: back when like internet comedy websites were all funded by

895
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: T shirt ads where they would like photoshop different T

896
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 1: shirts into the same like old white guy with a

897
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: long beard. He was like, surprisingly jacked. He looks like

898
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: that guy if he stopped taking hgh. So this this

899
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: sixty minutes interview cost a Ruckus online to put it lightly,

900
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: and I don't think I need to go to the

901
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: obvious issue people had with the eugenics app. But it's

902
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 1: worth emphasizing that this would be just a nightmare from

903
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: a privacy standpoint, like your genome being out there, okay,

904
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 1: Cupid having your genome?

905
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:18,279
Speaker 2: Yes, not good?

906
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 1: Maybe not the best.

907
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 2: No, not all of these apps are created equal. I

908
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 2: don't even know that they have the staff that could

909
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 2: manage your genome properly much, right, Yeah.

910
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,680
Speaker 1: So doctor Church responded to this by declaring his detractors

911
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:36,280
Speaker 1: clickbait critics who weren't thinking deeply about a complex problem.

912
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,919
Speaker 1: You assured everyone that any given person on the app

913
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 1: would still be compatible with ninety five percent of the population,

914
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:44,360
Speaker 1: and that the app wouldn't provide health data to users.

915
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: Although there's also stuff that got like brought up in

916
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:48,600
Speaker 1: that MIT article. They're like, what about people with like

917
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: Huntington's disease markers, because like there's no one technically that

918
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:55,319
Speaker 1: you could match them with and be totally safe. Do

919
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: people who have those markers not deserve to have relationships?

920
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you're saying? Like that seems

921
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: kind of bad.

922
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 2: I don't know.

923
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also can't find where he says the data

924
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: would never be sold or used for any other purpose. Ever,

925
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: I certainly don't know that that's written down anywhere in

926
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:15,040
Speaker 1: like an eu l al o. Again, this service does

927
00:47:15,080 --> 00:47:16,239
Speaker 1: not exist really yet.

928
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 2: I'm sure part of his funding says that he's not

929
00:47:19,440 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 2: allowed to say that that, like there, we want to

930
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 2: be able to use this in a different kind of way,

931
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 2: and that's how we can we can justify giving you

932
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:30,959
Speaker 2: all this money. Also, the elimination of diseases is such

933
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 2: a silly concept because you also might make new ones.

934
00:47:36,719 --> 00:47:39,479
Speaker 2: It's not like we know for sure that like there's

935
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 2: no new possibilities in these perfectly synchronized genomes.

936
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,759
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, thank you for being the Ian Malcolm of

937
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: these episodes and like reminding us all of chaos theory.

938
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: If you want, you can drop a little bit of

939
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:54,799
Speaker 1: water down your hand. Maybe I'm button the top two

940
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: buttons of your shiit, like, really go for it.

941
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 2: I gotta get jacked first. Yeah, I'll get there. I

942
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 2: forget it out.

943
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 1: Oh man, he did look good in that movie. Right

944
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: as to the whole eugenics of it all, When he

945
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: gets got challenged on this church, who is a Twitter

946
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 1: user replied, eugenics US Comma Germany, Comma, etc. Nineteen twenty

947
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy interfered with human lives and personal reproductive choices. True,

948
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: not just those two countries, not just that type. But okay, okay,

949
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:27,439
Speaker 1: it's Twitter.

950
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:32,319
Speaker 2: If we're listening facts. Yeah, that's sure, that's cool.

951
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: And then he says like, that's not what I'm trying

952
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,720
Speaker 1: to do. I'm just trying to help people understand genetic risk.

953
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 1: But you're saying they won't even be matched with those people.

954
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 1: Is that really?

955
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 3: Yeah?

956
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: I cur it right now. And that MIT article also

957
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: noted that like what he's claiming to do, like preconception

958
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:51,000
Speaker 1: genetic testing is already common. But that's a lot less

959
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,800
Speaker 1: sketchy because you're not saying we want to stop people

960
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: from meeting who aren't quote unquote compatible. That's just saying,

961
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: if people decide they might want to have a kid,

962
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 1: we can test them both and see are their potential

963
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: things that like illnesses that those kids could have. Right,

964
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: And there's a debate to have about that too, But

965
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 1: it is very different because those people have already met, right.

966
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:14,799
Speaker 1: And Church even responded to this by saying, if you

967
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 1: do it after you've already fallen in love, it's mostly

968
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,839
Speaker 1: bad news. By that point, a quarter of kids will

969
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 1: be diseased. If you can go back in time before

970
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,280
Speaker 1: they fall in love, you get a much more positive message.

971
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,880
Speaker 1: And not everyone wants kids, George.

972
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 2: Not everyone wants kids. Not everyone frankly wants kids the

973
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 2: way you want them. It really is putting a lot

974
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 2: of your decision making on random people.

975
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's not great. So Digit Date's motto is

976
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:46,720
Speaker 1: science is your Wingman, which I think makes it clear

977
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: that their desired clientele is more on the tech pro

978
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 1: side of things. That said, they've also sought to go

979
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: he'd after what he was described in an ad as

980
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 1: an untapped market at one point, which is communities around

981
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 1: the world who do arranged marriages or only within a

982
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:04,839
Speaker 1: limited cast or tribe, right, like we can make sure

983
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:08,160
Speaker 1: that you only marry Brahmins with Brahmins in India or whatever.

984
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: And this is this is what people were led to

985
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 1: believe by a job ad posted on Digitate's website, and

986
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,400
Speaker 1: Church later claimed that post was an error and that no, no, no,

987
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: we'd never help anyone with that sort of thing. That's

988
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: obviously unethical.

989
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 2: Maybe that's really smart to go that route, because I'm

990
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 2: so ignorant, I just presumed that he was going at

991
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:31,360
Speaker 2: like young singles in the city it's like, no, you

992
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 2: need nasty conservatives, sort of like principles that have already

993
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 2: been established.

994
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: Got to get the Saudi royal family, heir, yeah to

995
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: agree to this. Yeah, oh man, And it's like yeah,

996
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 1: he says, that's not what we wanted to do.

997
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 2: I don't know.

998
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: We'll see, We'll see. So Digitate does still seem to

999
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: exist in twenty twenty five, although it has not gotten

1000
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: a lot of press since the initial uproar, and it

1001
00:50:57,400 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: seems to be on George's back burner since the diet

1002
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: Wolf stuff. Apparently the company is now more focusing on

1003
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: like general dating planning and health planning and stuff like that. Yeah,

1004
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 1: I kinda I don't know that they actually have a

1005
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: much of a product. So let's talk about another company

1006
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: George is involved with, this time as a board member

1007
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: and expert advisor, but not a co founder, and this

1008
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 1: company is bio Viva. They are a US biotech startup

1009
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:28,359
Speaker 1: that sells anti aging therapies and may have twenty twenty one,

1010
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:31,760
Speaker 1: stat News reported that the CEO, Elizabeth Parrish, was awaiting

1011
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: data from a human study of six patients who received

1012
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 1: experimental gene therapy for Alzheimer's in Mexico the year before,

1013
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:40,880
Speaker 1: these were supposed to be six people with dementia who

1014
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: were getting an experimental like Tilomeri's like lengthening therapy that

1015
00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: would help deage their brains. Now, Langston, you've been on

1016
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: the show a while, Sophie, you've been on every episode.

1017
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 1: You all know that when we're talking in this show

1018
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:00,879
Speaker 1: and say the words experimental therapy and Mexico, something not

1019
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: great is about to be right.

1020
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a reason there's small of a sample size,

1021
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 2: and this because they're doing something pretty fucked up.

1022
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, pera write up by science journalist and formal molecular

1023
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 1: cell biologist Leonid Schneider on the website for Better Science,

1024
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: the gene therapy these Alzheimer's patients received was an aDNA

1025
00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 1: associated virus AAV carrying the telomeres enzyme TERT, which may

1026
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:29,880
Speaker 1: have zero effect on rejuvenation, but is known to be

1027
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:33,800
Speaker 1: a potentially cancer transforming ONCA gene, which makes these clinical

1028
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: tests even more exciting, especially because Bioviva's CEO Parish announced

1029
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: in July twenty eighteen in a lifestyle magazine to have

1030
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,360
Speaker 1: had turned AAV injections herself quote over a period that

1031
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: lasted well into the night. There would be more than

1032
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:48,720
Speaker 1: one hundred injections in her triceps and thighs and buttocks

1033
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:51,360
Speaker 1: and even her face just below the cheek. And again,

1034
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: we don't know that this has any impact on aging,

1035
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: but we do know it can cause cancer. Yeah, weird

1036
00:52:57,600 --> 00:53:01,200
Speaker 1: thing to shoot yourself up with one hundred times. WHOA,

1037
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 1: I love it when these people self experiment.

1038
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:10,280
Speaker 2: That's nuts because that's full red hulk shit. You're really yes,

1039
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 2: you're doing something freaky.

1040
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: Fuck Now. The basis of this experiment was that, once again,

1041
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 1: it seemed like it worked on mice. Right, Perish is

1042
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:29,920
Speaker 1: an outspoken believer, and the fact that if a scientific

1043
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: study shows benefits and animals, human patients should be allowed

1044
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: to volunteer to receive it. The issue is again and again,

1045
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: first off, that's not good that's not ethical or good science.

1046
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 1: That's not enough, right. You don't just jump immediately to

1047
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:47,360
Speaker 1: putting it in people because you get a study that

1048
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: shows maybe this helps animals, Like, that's just not enough, right.

1049
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: It's certainly not enough to let volunteers pay to get it,

1050
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 1: which is kind of what she's saying. The issues again, yeah, that's.

1051
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 2: All is where it gets icky is like, there's plan

1052
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 2: is never to put it like, uh, put it in people,

1053
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 2: you know, for for the greater good. It's put it

1054
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:12,719
Speaker 2: in people because you have funding to do.

1055
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:16,360
Speaker 1: Want this to be profitable. Yeah, and again, these enzymes

1056
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 1: can cause cancer. Now, the fact that that fact has

1057
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: made it very difficult to get approval to conduct these studies.

1058
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:23,919
Speaker 1: And so the inventor of the treatment, a guy named

1059
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: Bill Andrews who worked at a different company before Bioviva,

1060
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: tried to conduct a trial with this other company in

1061
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: Mexico in twenty seventeen in which participants with mid to

1062
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: late stage Alzheimer's would pay eleven million dollars to attempt

1063
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: this treatment. Wound up not being able to find anyone

1064
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 1: with Alzheimer's who was willing to pay that, probably because

1065
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:44,080
Speaker 1: their families had control of the money and were like,

1066
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: I don't know, I kind of want that. Eleven million

1067
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 1: for me was pretty old.

1068
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 2: I be here not long.

1069
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:53,319
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm gonna keep that money in half.

1070
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1071
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:57,920
Speaker 1: This proved impossible. So they tried to recruit patients for

1072
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 1: another trial in Colombia for just one million dollars each.

1073
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: I don't think that worked either, as far as I know. No,

1074
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,399
Speaker 1: evidence of it. Now the technology is in Bioviva's hands,

1075
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: and it's unclear how much they charged participants to be

1076
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:14,080
Speaker 1: guinea pigs here. For his part, Church was asked in

1077
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:17,759
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen about ties to Biovia, and he said I

1078
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:21,400
Speaker 1: wouldn't call them ties. I advise people who need advice,

1079
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:25,040
Speaker 1: and they clearly needed advice. He has been on the

1080
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:29,000
Speaker 1: board of the company since twenty fifteen. This isn't like

1081
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:33,400
Speaker 1: informal you're on the board, man, this is public.

1082
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 2: Ties on the board is a tie?

1083
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:37,439
Speaker 4: All right?

1084
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: Do I have ties to iHeart Media. I've advised them

1085
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:47,839
Speaker 1: on podcast, to them every two weeks. You know, they

1086
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: don't pay for my healthcare or anything, right.

1087
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:53,800
Speaker 2: I drink blood with them every once in a while.

1088
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 2: It's not yes.

1089
00:55:55,200 --> 00:55:57,759
Speaker 1: Do I drink a little human blood? Is it the

1090
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: only way I can stay alive? Am I allergic to

1091
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: the son, of course? But I'm not a vampire. That'd

1092
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:04,719
Speaker 1: be weird to call me a vampire.

1093
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 2: You're being crazy. You're honestly being crazy.

1094
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:12,040
Speaker 1: When asked about the risk of causing cancer through this treatment,

1095
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: Church replied, I think that's still an issue with Tila Murres.

1096
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: I would not sugarcoat that so I'm not sure that

1097
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:20,440
Speaker 1: it's time for that just yet, but it's close. It's

1098
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: extremely close. Meanwhile, bioethicist Leigh Turner of the University of

1099
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 1: Minnesota set of Bioviva's study using this dangerous treatment, everything

1100
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:32,680
Speaker 1: I'm seeing indicates the involved parties are not conducting a

1101
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:37,439
Speaker 1: credible clinical trial with appropriate safeguards. Now, despite Church being

1102
00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 1: Cagy whenever someone asks, hey, don't you work with that

1103
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 1: like sketchy anti aging firm. In twenty twenty two, Church

1104
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: published a scientific article in the Proceedings of the National

1105
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences alongside Elizabeth Parrish and like ten other authors.

1106
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:52,839
Speaker 1: So he's one of a bunch of authors on this

1107
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:56,920
Speaker 1: article that suggests that you can vape a gene therapy

1108
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:00,840
Speaker 1: vector called CMV in order to if you like, vaporize

1109
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:02,920
Speaker 1: it and let a mouse inhale it, it will increase

1110
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: their lifespan by forty one percent without increasing the risk

1111
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:06,280
Speaker 1: of cancer.

1112
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 4: Uh.

1113
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: The article concludes the impact of this research on an

1114
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:13,800
Speaker 1: aging population cannot be understated, as the global aging related

1115
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: non communicable disease burden quickly rises. So the article is like, obviously,

1116
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 1: if it extends a mouse's life, we'll count extend human

1117
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: lives by forty one percent just by having people vape

1118
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:26,640
Speaker 1: this thing, right, Like, that's what they're insinuating.

1119
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 2: You remember when when they were climbing that vapes were

1120
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 2: were like killing people, that everybody was dropping dead from vaping.

1121
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: Like vapes make you immortal.

1122
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:38,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now all of a sudden, this technology is not

1123
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:40,040
Speaker 2: going to make you drop dead. It's going to make

1124
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 2: you live forever. Yeah.

1125
00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 1: It's just weird that you just got to put the

1126
00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: right thing at it, you know, you just got to

1127
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: throw the right thing at it.

1128
00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 2: You have those knotty cartridges. We're gonna put really tap

1129
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:50,240
Speaker 2: top shit cartridges in the.

1130
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:52,920
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, the good stuff, right, but we'll throw

1131
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:54,680
Speaker 1: some Delta eight in there too, fuck it, you know.

1132
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 4: So.

1133
00:57:57,600 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: But it's also like, yeah, obviously Church is a real site.

1134
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,280
Speaker 1: Some of the people on this are scientists. Maybe this

1135
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: is a thing you could vape to. Why not, let's

1136
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:08,680
Speaker 1: look into it a little further. So. That write up

1137
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: by Leon and Schneider notes that this study was allowed

1138
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: to bypass the normal peer review process at pnas P

1139
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,760
Speaker 1: and as the journal, and that George Church was listed

1140
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: as a contributor without noting that he and multiple other

1141
00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:27,640
Speaker 1: authors of this article testing something Bioviva's like advocating, all

1142
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: were employed by Bioviva in various capacities and you're supposed

1143
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: to do that. They had to like update the article

1144
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 1: to be oh, by the way, like all these people

1145
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:38,920
Speaker 1: work at this company that's got a financial interest in

1146
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 1: the Sorry, sketchy, sketchy, we don't have time to discuss

1147
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:46,680
Speaker 1: all the different shady life extension companies and schemes that

1148
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 1: George Church is tangentially connected to. But I would be

1149
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:53,840
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't bring up his colleague Aubrey de Gray. Now,

1150
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: if you've ever been interested in the size, so if

1151
00:58:56,280 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: you pull up a picture of Aubrey de Gray real quick,

1152
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:01,240
Speaker 1: if you've ever been interested in the in the scientific

1153
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:05,960
Speaker 1: quest for immortality right for people or at least massively

1154
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,360
Speaker 1: extending human lifespans, you've come across Aubrey to Gray. He

1155
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 1: was a major name in the in the field for

1156
00:59:12,040 --> 00:59:12,919
Speaker 1: a very long time.

1157
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 2: He was the former God.

1158
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks like fucking rasp buttant. Yeah, And like

1159
00:59:18,600 --> 00:59:21,720
Speaker 1: I get that sometimes that he really looks like rasp buttant. Like,

1160
00:59:21,840 --> 00:59:24,200
Speaker 1: look at that rasp buttant as he's doing a rasp

1161
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:26,520
Speaker 1: buttant In that picture, he's got his hands out in

1162
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: a prayer poster. I'm sorry, what else is that supposed

1163
00:59:29,760 --> 00:59:29,960
Speaker 1: to be?

1164
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 2: He looks like he's turning into a wise old tree.

1165
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: Yes, hissing in face. Yes. No. Yeah. If an Int

1166
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:45,959
Speaker 1: was a sex criminal, that's not an idol comment.

1167
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:49,080
Speaker 3: And I don't appreciate that in a sentence with ens,

1168
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 3: because ens are great.

1169
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 1: Well, you don't know about all of the ants, Sophie.

1170
00:59:52,520 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 1: One of those iNTS that attacked Eisngard had to have

1171
00:59:55,160 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 1: like a problematic That's why the wives left, Sophie. They're

1172
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:04,080
Speaker 1: gone for a reason. I won't take Sanders bounced and

1173
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,800
Speaker 1: we don't know why. One of those ends knows why.

1174
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:09,960
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ so.

1175
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:13,400
Speaker 1: Aubrey de Gray was the former head of an organization

1176
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:19,240
Speaker 1: called the SINS Research Foundation SCNS. Schneider described SINS as

1177
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:22,439
Speaker 1: quote an anti aging eugenics club for the very rich.

1178
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:25,080
Speaker 1: And this is like a big thing in the earlier

1179
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:28,160
Speaker 1: to mid aughts. A lot of I think Peter Teel

1180
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 1: at least had some tangential. A lot of like very

1181
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:35,160
Speaker 1: rich tech guys were super into this because the promises

1182
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 1: to Gray was making and he did a ton of media.

1183
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 1: He was very similar to like George Church in that

1184
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 1: he was really good at getting a lot of media.

1185
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 1: George Church is an actual scientist in a way that

1186
01:00:44,760 --> 01:00:49,560
Speaker 1: Aubrey wasn't. But Aubrey has since been revealed as per Schneider,

1187
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 1: a disgusting sex predator and pimp. And yeah, yeah, pimp,

1188
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. So Aubrey de Gray has been

1189
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:01,520
Speaker 1: accused by multiple women of various kinds sexual harassment and abuse,

1190
01:01:02,120 --> 01:01:04,920
Speaker 1: women who worked with an at SINS his colleagues. You

1191
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 1: can find a lot of gross stuff about the guy online,

1192
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: but I'm going to just read one account because it

1193
01:01:09,640 --> 01:01:13,040
Speaker 1: reveals something important about the culture of the Immortality for

1194
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:17,200
Speaker 1: Rich People movement and the organizations associated with it. Quote

1195
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 1: SINS funded much And this is from a woman who

1196
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: claims that Degray abused her. And she's going to explain

1197
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:25,840
Speaker 1: how SINS funded much of my undergraduate and graduate work,

1198
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: and as such I was often paraded in front of

1199
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 1: their donors. The role of my attractiveness and discussions with donors,

1200
01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: almost always older men, was made explicit by SINS executives.

1201
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:37,160
Speaker 1: At one such dinner, I was sat next to Aubrey

1202
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:40,560
Speaker 1: by a SINS executive. I was told to keep him entertained.

1203
01:01:41,080 --> 01:01:44,080
Speaker 1: Aubrey funneled me alcohol and hit on me the entire night.

1204
01:01:44,440 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 1: He told me that I was a glorious woman and

1205
01:01:46,720 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 1: that as a glorious woman, I had a responsibility to

1206
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 1: have sex with the SINS donors and attendance so they

1207
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: would give money to him. Who cool. All right, great guy, Aubrey,

1208
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:01,240
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll talk about him more.

1209
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 2: We need you to bone a few people in here

1210
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:05,360
Speaker 2: so that I can make money.

1211
01:02:06,160 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just like pimping for fucking VC money. Yeah,

1212
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:14,800
Speaker 1: attempted pipping. Now, victims have alleged that sexual harassment of

1213
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 1: this type was normal within the SINS Foundation in practice

1214
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:20,320
Speaker 1: by more men than just Aubrey to Gray, and was

1215
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:24,320
Speaker 1: routinely covered up. Now, there aren't allegations that George Church

1216
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:28,960
Speaker 1: participated in this, but he was on the SINS Scientific

1217
01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:33,480
Speaker 1: Advisory Board while Degray worked there. They were colleagues. He

1218
01:02:33,640 --> 01:02:36,880
Speaker 1: worked for this organization with a very shady history of

1219
01:02:37,040 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 1: doing this with a guy who had a shady history

1220
01:02:40,240 --> 01:02:42,800
Speaker 1: of doing this, And I don't know, you look at that,

1221
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:44,680
Speaker 1: and you look at the Epstein stuff, it's just a

1222
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:47,000
Speaker 1: lot of times where you're really close to some people

1223
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 1: doing questionable things man, and I haven't separated yourself from it.

1224
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:54,680
Speaker 2: Pimp me once, shame on you.

1225
01:02:55,120 --> 01:02:57,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, think if like he'd been the guy who

1226
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:00,200
Speaker 1: blew the whistle on Aubrey to Gray or whatever, but

1227
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 1: like he didn't you know, I don't know, I.

1228
01:03:03,040 --> 01:03:07,160
Speaker 2: Don't know, multiple sex traffickers, right, I mean right right?

1229
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:08,000
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1230
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:10,360
Speaker 2: I think after a while it starts to feel like

1231
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:11,840
Speaker 2: that's a thing you're into.

1232
01:03:12,240 --> 01:03:12,439
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1233
01:03:12,600 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 1: Kind of a weird that it happened twice situation Now.

1234
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 1: The SINS Foundation represented the crest of a wave and

1235
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: hype for anti aging research and functional immortality that seems

1236
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:23,680
Speaker 1: to be on a downswing at the present, largely because

1237
01:03:23,720 --> 01:03:26,360
Speaker 1: none of the promises people like Degray were making around

1238
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 1: twenty ten seem any closer to coming true. Schneider suggests

1239
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:34,280
Speaker 1: that being a smart guy, doctor Church realized this early

1240
01:03:34,360 --> 01:03:37,200
Speaker 1: on and started pivoting to anti agent cures for pets

1241
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:39,320
Speaker 1: because there's just as much money there. But you're not

1242
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: at any risk, right, Like, it's just a safer business

1243
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:47,000
Speaker 1: to be in. In fact, I would say the primary

1244
01:03:47,160 --> 01:03:49,919
Speaker 1: genius George Church has exhibited over the last twenty years

1245
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 1: since his real scientific achievements has less to do with

1246
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:56,520
Speaker 1: science and genetics and more to do with branding and merchandising.

1247
01:03:56,920 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: He understands the same thing Elon Musk used to understand,

1248
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:02,360
Speaker 1: which is that if you're good enough at announcing sexy

1249
01:04:02,480 --> 01:04:05,320
Speaker 1: new products that go viral, even if you only deliver

1250
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:07,640
Speaker 1: like five percent of the time, people will think you're

1251
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 1: a genius as long as you keep enough of those

1252
01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:12,320
Speaker 1: stories in the media, right, and you can get very

1253
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:15,680
Speaker 1: rich doing that. This brings us back to the dire wolves.

1254
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:18,320
Speaker 2: Right, We're back. They're back.

1255
01:04:18,640 --> 01:04:19,960
Speaker 1: We've come around full circle.

1256
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:20,240
Speaker 5: Baby.

1257
01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:22,919
Speaker 2: I don't know they were coming back. I thought maybe

1258
01:04:22,920 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 2: they were going for good. Yeah.

1259
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 1: Church's whole point is that they're coming back, baby. So

1260
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:30,520
Speaker 1: let's talk about his whole crusade to the extinct animals.

1261
01:04:30,560 --> 01:04:33,960
Speaker 1: When the first claims of this went viral, they were

1262
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: focused on, obviously, Neanderthals, and George and his lab at

1263
01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:38,480
Speaker 1: Harvard started working on a scheme to clone and bring

1264
01:04:38,560 --> 01:04:41,600
Speaker 1: back the wooly mammoth in twenty fourteen. This was a

1265
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:44,640
Speaker 1: micro budget endeavor for like a decade or more. George

1266
01:04:44,680 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: claims they spent about one hundred grand on it prior

1267
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:49,520
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty one, quote, which is way, way less

1268
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:51,960
Speaker 1: than any other project in my lab, but not through

1269
01:04:52,040 --> 01:04:55,120
Speaker 1: lack of enthusiasm. It's by far the favorite story. We've

1270
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:57,240
Speaker 1: never done a press release on it in all those years.

1271
01:04:57,320 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: It just comes up naturally in conversation. And that may

1272
01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:02,440
Speaker 1: be true, but he talks about it in a lot

1273
01:05:02,480 --> 01:05:05,040
Speaker 1: of these media appearances, like he talks about this kind

1274
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 1: of shit de extinction in that twenty fifteen interview, and

1275
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: that's his pr. He doesn't need to put out press

1276
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 1: releases because he's mastered the art of using journalists as

1277
01:05:13,680 --> 01:05:16,120
Speaker 1: his PR right, and that's what he's doing with this

1278
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:19,560
Speaker 1: Direwolf thing. The way Church tells it. In twenty one,

1279
01:05:19,720 --> 01:05:22,600
Speaker 1: Ben Lamb, who's the CEO of Colossal Biosciences and his

1280
01:05:22,720 --> 01:05:24,880
Speaker 1: co founder, kind of came out of nowhere to throw

1281
01:05:25,000 --> 01:05:27,560
Speaker 1: money behind the idea and help him start a company.

1282
01:05:27,960 --> 01:05:30,200
Speaker 1: Quote Ben came out of the blue, I think, inspired

1283
01:05:30,240 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: at a distance from what he was reading about this

1284
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:35,880
Speaker 1: very charismatic project which was very underfunded. He and Ben

1285
01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:38,280
Speaker 1: met at Church's lab in Boston, which acts as an

1286
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,840
Speaker 1: incubator and advertisement for his different business ventures. Lamb, being

1287
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 1: another serial entrepreneur, gets involved and Colossal is Lamb's sixth startup.

1288
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:51,120
Speaker 1: His first was acquired for a fortune when he was

1289
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and the others he's created did well enough

1290
01:05:53,640 --> 01:05:55,280
Speaker 1: that he's got He's worth like a fourteen or fifteen

1291
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:58,080
Speaker 1: million dollars, so he's like rich, but he still hasn't.

1292
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: He's not a success by Silicon Valley standards, sure, right,

1293
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:04,520
Speaker 1: so we're still looking for his big hit. His past

1294
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:08,320
Speaker 1: ventures are all pretty standard, chasing the zeitgeist tech stuff.

1295
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:12,600
Speaker 1: He had an e learning company, a mobile app development studio,

1296
01:06:12,920 --> 01:06:17,280
Speaker 1: a gaming company, and a Hypergiant, an enterprise AI software

1297
01:06:17,360 --> 01:06:20,080
Speaker 1: company that once had Bill Nye on the board. In

1298
01:06:20,200 --> 01:06:25,680
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Hypergiant announced a world changing product, the EOS Bioreactor,

1299
01:06:25,760 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: which was meant to use AI to optimize algel growth

1300
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:32,160
Speaker 1: to sequester carbon, and they were like, it's a climate

1301
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:35,480
Speaker 1: change solution. You can sequester more carbon per square you know,

1302
01:06:35,880 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 1: acre or whatever than you can with like a forest

1303
01:06:38,240 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: using this by optimizing algae growth. Sounds great right now.

1304
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:44,320
Speaker 1: I know you're wondering is that real though? Like, is

1305
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:45,880
Speaker 1: that a real product? I like?

1306
01:06:46,120 --> 01:06:48,479
Speaker 2: It crossed my mind, Yeah, cross my mind.

1307
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:51,880
Speaker 1: I can't say no. Legally, it was acquired by Trive

1308
01:06:51,960 --> 01:06:54,960
Speaker 1: Capital in twenty twenty three. But a former employee on

1309
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 1: Glassdoor noted, and this is from an article called Colossal

1310
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: lyre for the blog for Better Science, there's no secret sauce,

1311
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:05,919
Speaker 1: there is no product, there is no money, just hype.

1312
01:07:06,320 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 1: And another former employee commented, this isn't a software company,

1313
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:14,040
Speaker 1: it's VC marketing hype. So those people claim there's no

1314
01:07:14,160 --> 01:07:15,680
Speaker 1: real product. Who worked there?

1315
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:19,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people who work there saying we're not doing

1316
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:21,080
Speaker 2: any work is really awesome.

1317
01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:25,000
Speaker 1: This is not a real company. Nothing really here now

1318
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 1: for this stage of George's plan, right like the Colossal

1319
01:07:29,680 --> 01:07:32,400
Speaker 1: Bio Sciences stage. Once they announced this company. His pr

1320
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:35,240
Speaker 1: rep of choice was a journalist for CNBC who got

1321
01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:37,560
Speaker 1: the first big scoop. And when they put out this

1322
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:39,919
Speaker 1: first big article about there is this new company they're

1323
01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: going to bring back the mammoth in six years. Four

1324
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: years ago, one part of their article reads it could

1325
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:47,680
Speaker 1: take as little as six years for Colossal to create

1326
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:51,200
Speaker 1: a calf. George told CNBC the timeline is aggressive. He admitted,

1327
01:07:51,280 --> 01:07:53,160
Speaker 1: when people used to ask me that question, I said,

1328
01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:55,040
Speaker 1: I have no idea, we don't have any funding. But

1329
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:57,320
Speaker 1: now I can't dodge it. I would say six is

1330
01:07:57,440 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 1: not out of the question. Now, obviously there's no evidence

1331
01:08:00,880 --> 01:08:03,960
Speaker 1: that they're any closer to doing this here, and if

1332
01:08:03,960 --> 01:08:07,280
Speaker 1: you actually read these articles, George isn't even really saying

1333
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:09,400
Speaker 1: that they're trying to clone a wooly mammoth, right, just

1334
01:08:09,440 --> 01:08:11,480
Speaker 1: like the dire wolf is just a wolf with a

1335
01:08:11,640 --> 01:08:14,600
Speaker 1: couple dial wolf Jens kind of pluck in there here

1336
01:08:14,680 --> 01:08:17,920
Speaker 1: and there. What they're trying to do is alter the

1337
01:08:18,080 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 1: DNA of an endangered Asian elephant so it can withstand

1338
01:08:21,400 --> 01:08:24,639
Speaker 1: colder temperatures and then release a bunch of mutated Asian

1339
01:08:24,720 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 1: elephants in Siberia. When he was interviewed by The Times,

1340
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:30,760
Speaker 1: Church even allowed that calling it a wooly mammoth was

1341
01:08:30,800 --> 01:08:34,639
Speaker 1: probably a bad idea. An Arctic elephant is a better term, Right,

1342
01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:38,160
Speaker 1: That's not what you're calling it, right, you're calling it

1343
01:08:38,240 --> 01:08:40,200
Speaker 1: a holy mammoth at all of the press coverage.

1344
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:43,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also so we can skip past the fact

1345
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:46,080
Speaker 2: that you're not actually helping the existing elephants, you're just

1346
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:51,040
Speaker 2: trying to create a new species that'll mirror the old one.

1347
01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:53,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like if you go to like a family

1348
01:08:53,680 --> 01:08:56,479
Speaker 1: who's like like living on the edge and about to

1349
01:08:56,560 --> 01:08:58,479
Speaker 1: lose their Section eight housing, and you're like, I'm going

1350
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 1: to fix everything for you. Give them all haircuts that

1351
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:04,320
Speaker 1: they don't like or didn't ask for. You're like, problem solved.

1352
01:09:04,360 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: Look at you guys.

1353
01:09:05,479 --> 01:09:08,799
Speaker 2: Right, guess what all of you guys got the Rachel?

1354
01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:09,760
Speaker 2: Ain't that nice?

1355
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:10,679
Speaker 1: Isn't that good?

1356
01:09:11,160 --> 01:09:12,519
Speaker 2: You all got the Rachel?

1357
01:09:12,960 --> 01:09:19,720
Speaker 1: Anyway? Bye. Here's what his business partner Ben Lamb told

1358
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:22,800
Speaker 1: CNBC in that same article. All goal is the successful

1359
01:09:22,840 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 1: de extinction of interbreedable herds of mammoths that we can

1360
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:27,880
Speaker 1: leverage in the rewilding of the Arctic. And then we

1361
01:09:27,960 --> 01:09:30,639
Speaker 1: want to leverage those technologies for what we're calling thoughtful

1362
01:09:30,720 --> 01:09:35,880
Speaker 1: disruptive conservation. First off, using leverage twice in two sentences,

1363
01:09:36,120 --> 01:09:39,680
Speaker 1: that's a bad guy. That's just a bad guy. Disruptive

1364
01:09:39,760 --> 01:09:41,880
Speaker 1: conservation not what conservation is.

1365
01:09:42,520 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 2: So first, we're gonna leverage these people over here, and

1366
01:09:45,200 --> 01:09:47,400
Speaker 2: that's going to allow us to swoop in and leverage

1367
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:49,320
Speaker 2: these people over here is the weekend.

1368
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:52,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know how conservation is trying to stop

1369
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:55,759
Speaker 1: species from going extinct and save ecosystems that are threatened.

1370
01:09:55,840 --> 01:09:58,280
Speaker 1: We're going to disrupt that by just making new shit

1371
01:09:58,320 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: and dropping at random places.

1372
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:03,120
Speaker 2: We're gonna fuck up the elephants in a new kind

1373
01:10:03,160 --> 01:10:04,519
Speaker 2: of way. Isn't that exciting?

1374
01:10:04,800 --> 01:10:09,439
Speaker 1: That is disruptive. Yes, a bunch of random elephants being

1375
01:10:09,479 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: in Siberia would disrupt things.

1376
01:10:11,240 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 2: If you think you know what elephant's problem is now, yeah,

1377
01:10:14,560 --> 01:10:16,679
Speaker 2: you are going to be so surprised by the problems

1378
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:17,719
Speaker 2: we're about to introduce.

1379
01:10:18,200 --> 01:10:20,080
Speaker 1: Oh, that are going to have a bunch of drunk

1380
01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:23,400
Speaker 1: Russians sniping them like all sorts of shit they don't

1381
01:10:23,400 --> 01:10:27,439
Speaker 1: have to deal with right now. So that article is

1382
01:10:27,520 --> 01:10:30,759
Speaker 1: a masterclass in what I call hype journalism, which primarily

1383
01:10:30,840 --> 01:10:33,519
Speaker 1: exists to pump up the perceived value of tech companies.

1384
01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:37,639
Speaker 1: It's like Pharheno style shit, right. And again they make

1385
01:10:37,720 --> 01:10:40,559
Speaker 1: the clan that like, well, this could stop climate change

1386
01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:44,160
Speaker 1: by slowing the melting of the permafrost. And I think

1387
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:46,679
Speaker 1: that because they say it's like proponents of the project

1388
01:10:46,760 --> 01:10:49,439
Speaker 1: say this, I think it's just George Church right. And

1389
01:10:49,680 --> 01:10:51,439
Speaker 1: I wanted to look into like, is there even any

1390
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:53,800
Speaker 1: evidence this would work? And I found an article in

1391
01:10:53,880 --> 01:10:57,759
Speaker 1: the Journal of Medical Sciences that says, quote, according to Colossal,

1392
01:10:57,840 --> 01:11:00,519
Speaker 1: the reintroduction of these animals into the environment, the ancient

1393
01:11:00,520 --> 01:11:03,400
Speaker 1: mammoths would change the environment from tundra wooded to step

1394
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:07,160
Speaker 1: stabilize the permafrost and thus combat global warming. It's quite

1395
01:11:07,200 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: difficult to take these claims seriously now. The article goes

1396
01:11:11,320 --> 01:11:13,559
Speaker 1: on to note, it's we don't even know if they

1397
01:11:13,680 --> 01:11:15,559
Speaker 1: can modify an Asian elephant.

1398
01:11:15,720 --> 01:11:15,840
Speaker 4: Right.

1399
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:19,679
Speaker 1: Modifying a wolf is one thing. There's a lot into

1400
01:11:19,800 --> 01:11:22,760
Speaker 1: like let alone, it's not there's nowhere near being able

1401
01:11:22,800 --> 01:11:24,679
Speaker 1: to clone a fucking mammoth.

1402
01:11:24,800 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 4: Right.

1403
01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:28,920
Speaker 1: Modifying an Asian elephant with mammoth genes is also a

1404
01:11:29,040 --> 01:11:33,760
Speaker 1: major undertaking, and they explain why. This presupposes the availability

1405
01:11:33,840 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 1: of early embryos of an Asian elephant, whose nucleus would

1406
01:11:37,240 --> 01:11:39,880
Speaker 1: be eliminated and replaced by that of a cultured pseudo

1407
01:11:39,960 --> 01:11:42,880
Speaker 1: mammoth cell. After a few divisions, this embryo would be

1408
01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:45,479
Speaker 1: implanted in the uterus of a female Asian elephant and

1409
01:11:45,479 --> 01:11:48,040
Speaker 1: would develop until the animal is born. This is the

1410
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:50,599
Speaker 1: pattern that led to Dolly's birth in nineteen ninety six

1411
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:53,240
Speaker 1: and since then the cloning of many other animals, but

1412
01:11:53,360 --> 01:11:55,840
Speaker 1: this is not an option in this case. The Asian

1413
01:11:55,880 --> 01:11:59,360
Speaker 1: elephant is an endangered species, and given the low success

1414
01:11:59,560 --> 01:12:02,960
Speaker 1: rate of cloning generally less than one percent. Obtaining the

1415
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:06,680
Speaker 1: many embryos needed and using dozens of surrogate females is

1416
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:10,280
Speaker 1: not possible, not only for ethical but also practical reasons.

1417
01:12:10,680 --> 01:12:13,040
Speaker 1: This is what is indicated in the work plan presented

1418
01:12:13,080 --> 01:12:15,240
Speaker 1: on the Colossal website. But it seems that Church and

1419
01:12:15,320 --> 01:12:18,520
Speaker 1: his company are moving towards the use of induced pluripotent

1420
01:12:18,640 --> 01:12:21,920
Speaker 1: stem cell iPSC lines that would be obtained from the

1421
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:24,439
Speaker 1: somatic tissues of the Asian elephant and could be used

1422
01:12:24,439 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 1: for cloning. These lines have yet to be obtained. The

1423
01:12:27,600 --> 01:12:30,040
Speaker 1: next step is to ensure the development of the embryos,

1424
01:12:30,040 --> 01:12:32,840
Speaker 1: which according to Church's recent interviews, could involve the use

1425
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:36,120
Speaker 1: of an artificial uterus that avoids the use of female carriers.

1426
01:12:36,320 --> 01:12:39,040
Speaker 1: But of course this artificial elephant uterus has yet to

1427
01:12:39,120 --> 01:12:42,320
Speaker 1: be invented. It does not currently exist for any species,

1428
01:12:42,720 --> 01:12:45,639
Speaker 1: even if work is being carried out with a subjective. Again,

1429
01:12:46,479 --> 01:12:49,760
Speaker 1: their first plan is illegal because you would be destroying

1430
01:12:49,880 --> 01:12:52,519
Speaker 1: a ton of embryos and endangering a lot of females

1431
01:12:52,560 --> 01:12:56,200
Speaker 1: of an endangered species. Your second plan, you've done none

1432
01:12:56,200 --> 01:12:59,160
Speaker 1: of the actual work to acquire what you'd need. And

1433
01:12:59,400 --> 01:13:03,280
Speaker 1: your third plan, again, the science doesn't exist, and there's

1434
01:13:03,360 --> 01:13:05,160
Speaker 1: no evidence that you're getting closer to making it.

1435
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:07,920
Speaker 2: And also as you just saying all right, we'll just

1436
01:13:08,080 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 2: make an elephant synthetically, is fucking nuts.

1437
01:13:12,040 --> 01:13:15,519
Speaker 1: That's hard. No, we don't know how to do that.

1438
01:13:15,880 --> 01:13:16,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not cool.

1439
01:13:16,960 --> 01:13:18,760
Speaker 1: And like bbing, like I'm just going to make a

1440
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:22,000
Speaker 1: car that runs on water easy enough. Hydrogen power is

1441
01:13:22,040 --> 01:13:24,960
Speaker 1: potentially a thing, and it's like, well but you alays,

1442
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:30,439
Speaker 1: try it. It's really difficult. It's really hard. When Colossal

1443
01:13:30,640 --> 01:13:33,679
Speaker 1: was brand new, doctor Church talked constantly about their ambition

1444
01:13:33,800 --> 01:13:35,920
Speaker 1: to create an artificial womb. But as the years have

1445
01:13:35,960 --> 01:13:38,519
Speaker 1: gone by, this goal was evidently no closer to reality,

1446
01:13:38,600 --> 01:13:41,160
Speaker 1: and so Colossal and its marketing have shifted to focus

1447
01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 1: on promising other easier kinds of de extinction Perschneider's article

1448
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:47,800
Speaker 1: and for Better Science. Church's problem is that its business

1449
01:13:47,840 --> 01:13:50,720
Speaker 1: investors and admirers in the media keep asking about the

1450
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:53,320
Speaker 1: progress of his mammoth project. One has to throw them

1451
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:56,240
Speaker 1: a stick to chase after. So here's Church's colossal new

1452
01:13:56,280 --> 01:13:58,800
Speaker 1: plan to de extinct the thylacine, also known as that

1453
01:13:58,880 --> 01:14:02,080
Speaker 1: Tasmanian wolf for tasm Mani and tiger. This Australia apex

1454
01:14:02,120 --> 01:14:04,080
Speaker 1: predator the size of a smallish dog, got wiped out

1455
01:14:04,080 --> 01:14:06,960
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. Incidentally, it is a marsupial, meaning

1456
01:14:07,000 --> 01:14:08,960
Speaker 1: it doesn't just state in a womb. Aren't real or

1457
01:14:09,040 --> 01:14:11,759
Speaker 1: artificial for very long? You know, in case the artificial

1458
01:14:11,800 --> 01:14:15,320
Speaker 1: womb isn't working. Detracting that yapping media and investors with

1459
01:14:15,360 --> 01:14:17,120
Speaker 1: a stick was a good idea, but even better to

1460
01:14:17,200 --> 01:14:19,880
Speaker 1: throw them two sticks. So after Mammoth and Thylacine, Church

1461
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:22,920
Speaker 1: and his company Colossal announced in January of twenty twenty

1462
01:14:22,960 --> 01:14:25,920
Speaker 1: three to de extinct the Dodo, the giant flightless pigeon

1463
01:14:26,000 --> 01:14:29,960
Speaker 1: from Mauritius, which was exterminated centuries ago. Birds don't need

1464
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:32,559
Speaker 1: wombs to gest state. So again we see the first

1465
01:14:32,600 --> 01:14:34,479
Speaker 1: pivot away from like, fuck, we can't figure this out.

1466
01:14:34,680 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 1: We're not doing a mammoth. It's not going to work.

1467
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:39,519
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this tucking Tasmanian tiger. Let's try to

1468
01:14:39,520 --> 01:14:40,599
Speaker 1: get these Dodos back.

1469
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:43,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about that bird that we beat the shit

1470
01:14:43,439 --> 01:14:46,240
Speaker 2: out of? Yeah, it was walking down the street.

1471
01:14:46,439 --> 01:14:48,760
Speaker 1: Right about that, Yeah, yeah, that one. We can bring

1472
01:14:48,840 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 1: that guy back right now. If you're trying to bring

1473
01:14:51,720 --> 01:14:54,479
Speaker 1: back the Dodo, and again they dad, recently could be possible, right,

1474
01:14:54,600 --> 01:14:56,479
Speaker 1: we might be able to do that someday, someday, just

1475
01:14:56,600 --> 01:14:59,720
Speaker 1: like it's possible someday a mammoth. Maybe, who would you

1476
01:14:59,760 --> 01:15:02,559
Speaker 1: bring what's the most serious scientist that you could bring

1477
01:15:02,640 --> 01:15:05,080
Speaker 1: on as an advisor to your project to bring back

1478
01:15:05,120 --> 01:15:05,479
Speaker 1: the Dodo?

1479
01:15:06,800 --> 01:15:10,479
Speaker 2: The most serious scientist I mostly can think of scientists

1480
01:15:10,520 --> 01:15:12,479
Speaker 2: who should not be there, right.

1481
01:15:12,560 --> 01:15:16,120
Speaker 1: Right, right, Well, I'll answer because obviously the answer is

1482
01:15:16,160 --> 01:15:19,120
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton. Right, that's what you bring on as an

1483
01:15:19,160 --> 01:15:23,160
Speaker 1: advisor for the Dodo project, right, I mean obviously, Yeah,

1484
01:15:23,960 --> 01:15:28,920
Speaker 1: there's a fucking of course she's advising the company, a.

1485
01:15:29,000 --> 01:15:32,320
Speaker 2: Person deeply connected to both science and Dodo birds. Of

1486
01:15:32,439 --> 01:15:33,759
Speaker 2: course you need Paris Hilton.

1487
01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:37,320
Speaker 1: Of course you need Paris. And again she she announced

1488
01:15:37,360 --> 01:15:39,360
Speaker 1: that she had been made an advisor in a post

1489
01:15:39,400 --> 01:15:41,760
Speaker 1: about their Series B funding. My guess is she just

1490
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:44,120
Speaker 1: helped fund this thing, and so they're like, yeah, you're

1491
01:15:44,120 --> 01:15:49,639
Speaker 1: an advisor now, Paris, great science. I should also note

1492
01:15:49,680 --> 01:15:51,960
Speaker 1: that during this fundraising round, Coloss was found to have

1493
01:15:52,040 --> 01:15:55,000
Speaker 1: stolen Dodo artwork from another artist for their pitch deck.

1494
01:15:55,320 --> 01:16:00,400
Speaker 1: Very funny anyway, moving on, Yeah.

1495
01:16:00,240 --> 01:16:02,840
Speaker 2: And even we didn't even draw a Dodo make.

1496
01:16:02,760 --> 01:16:04,200
Speaker 1: Sure fucking Dodo level.

1497
01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1498
01:16:05,520 --> 01:16:07,080
Speaker 1: So this brings us back to the start of the

1499
01:16:07,160 --> 01:16:10,679
Speaker 1: episode in Colossal's first and only real success, the dire Wolf.

1500
01:16:11,120 --> 01:16:13,439
Speaker 1: In their press release, they call this the world's first

1501
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:17,080
Speaker 1: de extinction and a revolutionary milestone and scientific progress that

1502
01:16:17,120 --> 01:16:20,120
Speaker 1: would lead to the de extinction of other species. Robin

1503
01:16:20,200 --> 01:16:22,760
Speaker 1: Ganzert of the Humane Society cheered that this would make

1504
01:16:22,800 --> 01:16:25,240
Speaker 1: extinction a thing of the past, which is nonsense for

1505
01:16:25,320 --> 01:16:29,160
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. Actual scientists, like cell biology expert

1506
01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:32,000
Speaker 1: Paul Kepler at the UC Davis Medical Schools had this

1507
01:16:32,160 --> 01:16:34,840
Speaker 1: to say. The direwolf genome likely differs from that of

1508
01:16:34,920 --> 01:16:37,559
Speaker 1: the gray wolf in millions or tens of millions of ways.

1509
01:16:38,080 --> 01:16:41,800
Speaker 1: Editing fourteen genes is interesting, but it's not a reconstruction

1510
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:45,439
Speaker 1: or de extinction. It's not even close. The three produced

1511
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:48,559
Speaker 1: grey wolves with fifteen genetics, making them genetically a smidge

1512
01:16:48,600 --> 01:16:51,040
Speaker 1: more like dire wolves are not a de extinction event.

1513
01:16:51,840 --> 01:16:54,519
Speaker 1: Bin Lamb responded with anger at this, saying everyone just

1514
01:16:54,560 --> 01:16:56,720
Speaker 1: wants to argue about what to call these things. No

1515
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:58,920
Speaker 1: one got deep into this science of how we created

1516
01:16:59,040 --> 01:17:02,639
Speaker 1: new models, range and DNA extraction and that's because Colossal

1517
01:17:02,680 --> 01:17:05,280
Speaker 1: has not been very transparent about telling people how they

1518
01:17:05,320 --> 01:17:07,800
Speaker 1: did that, because that's not what they're interested in. Those

1519
01:17:07,800 --> 01:17:10,920
Speaker 1: are company secrets, right, They're more interested in putting up

1520
01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:14,040
Speaker 1: photos with Like George R. R. Martin, in an interview

1521
01:17:14,080 --> 01:17:16,360
Speaker 1: with the Los Angeles Times, however, been made it clear

1522
01:17:16,439 --> 01:17:19,360
Speaker 1: that the company does have plans to profit from this nonsense.

1523
01:17:19,400 --> 01:17:21,640
Speaker 1: And this is where shit gets really this is like

1524
01:17:21,720 --> 01:17:25,160
Speaker 1: a Tesla con right. As for de extinction projects, to

1525
01:17:25,200 --> 01:17:28,000
Speaker 1: the extent they contribute to efforts at conservation, we just

1526
01:17:28,080 --> 01:17:30,160
Speaker 1: give them to the world for free, Lamb told me.

1527
01:17:30,439 --> 01:17:34,639
Speaker 1: But he also foresees marketing biodiversity credits to other companies,

1528
01:17:35,040 --> 01:17:38,360
Speaker 1: similar to the environmental regulatory credits that Tesla sells to

1529
01:17:38,439 --> 01:17:42,679
Speaker 1: automakers without its zero emission footprint, revenue from which enabled

1530
01:17:42,720 --> 01:17:44,439
Speaker 1: it to report a profit for the first quarter of

1531
01:17:44,479 --> 01:17:48,040
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five this week. So he's like, you know,

1532
01:17:48,240 --> 01:17:51,160
Speaker 1: the animals are free. What we're selling is credits to

1533
01:17:51,280 --> 01:17:54,120
Speaker 1: companies that just like throw more fake dire wolves out there,

1534
01:17:54,200 --> 01:17:57,920
Speaker 1: and like you know what, Chevron, buy some wolves and

1535
01:17:58,040 --> 01:18:02,280
Speaker 1: suddenly you can offset your carbon footprint. Yeah, yeah, there

1536
01:18:02,400 --> 01:18:02,680
Speaker 1: we go.

1537
01:18:03,240 --> 01:18:07,160
Speaker 2: That's the con that's the con these aren't just wolves.

1538
01:18:07,200 --> 01:18:11,040
Speaker 2: You're gonna like keep and take care of you. Really, Yeah,

1539
01:18:11,080 --> 01:18:12,479
Speaker 2: you're gonna leverage these wolves.

1540
01:18:12,880 --> 01:18:15,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll admit when I first read the direwolf article,

1541
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:18,280
Speaker 1: I did I called something being wrong. I did not

1542
01:18:18,479 --> 01:18:22,000
Speaker 1: call carbon credit scheme. No, that's really that I didn't get.

1543
01:18:22,240 --> 01:18:25,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really awesome if you think about it. It's

1544
01:18:25,360 --> 01:18:28,200
Speaker 2: like this ground such a long game for being able

1545
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:31,200
Speaker 2: to not pay taxes everywhere else.

1546
01:18:31,360 --> 01:18:33,040
Speaker 1: You got to You gotta have the long game if

1547
01:18:33,040 --> 01:18:35,960
Speaker 1: you really want to avoid the most taxes. So that

1548
01:18:36,200 --> 01:18:38,479
Speaker 1: La Times article does a good job of puncturing the

1549
01:18:38,520 --> 01:18:40,920
Speaker 1: myth these are animals are dire wolves. One thing they

1550
01:18:40,960 --> 01:18:43,280
Speaker 1: point out is that, like they talk to a scientist

1551
01:18:43,320 --> 01:18:47,080
Speaker 1: about this, there's visible skin around the ears of these animals.

1552
01:18:47,240 --> 01:18:51,080
Speaker 1: You can see pink skin. Arctic wolves and other Arctic

1553
01:18:51,160 --> 01:18:54,479
Speaker 1: mammals have very thick fur around their ears because they

1554
01:18:54,560 --> 01:18:56,880
Speaker 1: need to survive and have their ears function while being

1555
01:18:56,920 --> 01:19:00,880
Speaker 1: constantly exposed to freezing temperatures. Right, And they also point

1556
01:19:00,880 --> 01:19:03,679
Speaker 1: out that like, well, dire wolves wouldn't have all looked

1557
01:19:04,320 --> 01:19:07,960
Speaker 1: had white coats because they're not all Arctic animals actually,

1558
01:19:08,320 --> 01:19:10,360
Speaker 1: like they lived in a lot of places, but they

1559
01:19:10,400 --> 01:19:15,120
Speaker 1: didn't just live in freezing temperatures, and all of these

1560
01:19:15,160 --> 01:19:18,439
Speaker 1: are like the Like the Direwolves they made look pure white,

1561
01:19:18,520 --> 01:19:20,559
Speaker 1: because that's how one are the dire Wolves, and Game

1562
01:19:20,600 --> 01:19:23,400
Speaker 1: of Thrones looked like That's probably what's going on is

1563
01:19:23,400 --> 01:19:25,439
Speaker 1: they were like, ah, people will buy this better, right,

1564
01:19:25,720 --> 01:19:26,640
Speaker 1: The arguably.

1565
01:19:26,400 --> 01:19:28,960
Speaker 2: The most famous dire wolve in Game of Thrones was white,

1566
01:19:29,080 --> 01:19:29,799
Speaker 2: so right.

1567
01:19:29,840 --> 01:19:35,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, Megham look like ghost. He also notes suspiciously Colossal

1568
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:38,559
Speaker 1: cannot stay consistent with how much direwolf DNA they sequenced.

1569
01:19:38,600 --> 01:19:41,560
Speaker 1: According to Colossal's preprint, they achieved three point four x

1570
01:19:41,640 --> 01:19:44,040
Speaker 1: and twelve point eight x sequence reads of the genomes

1571
01:19:44,200 --> 01:19:47,320
Speaker 1: from two different direwolf. It is also claiming fifty five

1572
01:19:47,640 --> 01:19:50,080
Speaker 1: x times more and seventy x more if they only

1573
01:19:50,120 --> 01:19:52,639
Speaker 1: sequenced two individuals as they claimed. Why am I seeing

1574
01:19:52,680 --> 01:19:57,400
Speaker 1: three differing figures? I don't know. That seems sketchy. There's

1575
01:19:57,439 --> 01:19:59,960
Speaker 1: a lot that's interesting about Colossal based on recent reporting,

1576
01:20:00,240 --> 01:20:02,960
Speaker 1: like the fact that doctor Church has no ongoing equity

1577
01:20:03,000 --> 01:20:05,920
Speaker 1: in the company he co founded. Maybe he just only

1578
01:20:06,000 --> 01:20:08,280
Speaker 1: cares about the science, or maybe he's kind of a

1579
01:20:08,360 --> 01:20:10,920
Speaker 1: cash upfront guy because he doesn't see this one lasting

1580
01:20:11,560 --> 01:20:13,920
Speaker 1: I don't know. Lamb has been the one to go

1581
01:20:14,000 --> 01:20:16,400
Speaker 1: on the Joe Rogan Experience to talk about their dire Wolf,

1582
01:20:16,479 --> 01:20:19,360
Speaker 1: where he responded to the criticism this way they live

1583
01:20:19,400 --> 01:20:21,400
Speaker 1: in the sort of this is his critics, this sort

1584
01:20:21,439 --> 01:20:24,559
Speaker 1: of fortune and glory world where it's a popularity contest.

1585
01:20:24,880 --> 01:20:26,960
Speaker 1: So one of the things people bitch about is they're like,

1586
01:20:27,080 --> 01:20:29,519
Speaker 1: you guys, don't write scientific papers for everything you do.

1587
01:20:30,000 --> 01:20:32,519
Speaker 1: We're not an academic university. I don't have to write

1588
01:20:32,560 --> 01:20:35,120
Speaker 1: a paper on anything. Ever. If we wrote scientific papers

1589
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:37,439
Speaker 1: for every single thing we did that went through peer review,

1590
01:20:37,760 --> 01:20:40,360
Speaker 1: like we would have three thousand papers and no mammoths,

1591
01:20:41,640 --> 01:20:48,559
Speaker 1: Like you don't have any mammoths, Like whom mammothless? There's man, there.

1592
01:20:48,439 --> 01:20:52,479
Speaker 2: Hasn't been a single mammoth. Then I guess yeah, dear.

1593
01:20:52,560 --> 01:20:53,760
Speaker 2: Other point is kind of moved.

1594
01:20:54,200 --> 01:20:57,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that, Like it's one of those things you

1595
01:20:57,040 --> 01:20:58,760
Speaker 1: could start making. Maybe if if you were making that

1596
01:20:58,840 --> 01:21:01,160
Speaker 1: statement sit next to a man, I'd be like, well, shit,

1597
01:21:01,200 --> 01:21:08,080
Speaker 1: he does have a fucking mammoth, but he doesn't. That said,

1598
01:21:08,160 --> 01:21:11,040
Speaker 1: his company is now worth ten billion dollars, based largely

1599
01:21:11,080 --> 01:21:13,519
Speaker 1: on the strength of how viral those dire Wolves meant

1600
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:14,639
Speaker 1: this is not real money.

1601
01:21:14,960 --> 01:21:15,479
Speaker 3: No, they have not.

1602
01:21:16,080 --> 01:21:18,160
Speaker 1: This is based on everyone getting hyped up about the

1603
01:21:18,240 --> 01:21:21,200
Speaker 1: dire wolves. There is so much more sketchy shit here.

1604
01:21:21,280 --> 01:21:23,599
Speaker 1: The company also claims to have cloned the nearly extinct

1605
01:21:23,680 --> 01:21:27,040
Speaker 1: red wolf, but they're red wolves are just coyotes with

1606
01:21:27,120 --> 01:21:30,960
Speaker 1: a few red wolf alleles stuck in there. Right and confusingly,

1607
01:21:31,120 --> 01:21:33,960
Speaker 1: Colossal claims that they have more red wolf DNA than

1608
01:21:34,000 --> 01:21:37,599
Speaker 1: any actual animals in the real red wolf recovery program,

1609
01:21:37,880 --> 01:21:40,679
Speaker 1: which isn't true because the red wolves in that program

1610
01:21:41,040 --> 01:21:42,800
Speaker 1: are not coyotes.

1611
01:21:43,240 --> 01:21:43,639
Speaker 4: Right.

1612
01:21:45,320 --> 01:21:45,479
Speaker 1: Quo.

1613
01:21:45,880 --> 01:21:49,680
Speaker 2: They don't have coyote mixed in, so they can't be less.

1614
01:21:50,360 --> 01:21:53,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And the final point I'll make in these

1615
01:21:53,280 --> 01:21:56,520
Speaker 1: episodes is about this kind of sketchiest thing about Colossal,

1616
01:21:56,640 --> 01:21:59,400
Speaker 1: which is the Trump administration has taken a lot of

1617
01:21:59,479 --> 01:22:02,400
Speaker 1: interest in their de extinction claims. Trump's Department of the

1618
01:22:02,479 --> 01:22:06,559
Speaker 1: Interior head Doug Bergham visited Colossal, and the Washington Post

1619
01:22:06,640 --> 01:22:10,120
Speaker 1: reports that he does like a big press conference talking

1620
01:22:10,160 --> 01:22:12,760
Speaker 1: about like this is why we need to get over

1621
01:22:12,920 --> 01:22:15,640
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act. We don't need it anymore. We

1622
01:22:15,720 --> 01:22:20,200
Speaker 1: can de extinct animals, no need to protect endangered animals anymore. Right,

1623
01:22:20,880 --> 01:22:24,400
Speaker 1: Obviously this causes problems for Ben Lamb and a lot

1624
01:22:24,479 --> 01:22:26,559
Speaker 1: of people who had backed the company is like, oh,

1625
01:22:26,640 --> 01:22:28,120
Speaker 1: are they just going to use this as an excuse

1626
01:22:28,200 --> 01:22:31,560
Speaker 1: to remove the Endangered Species Act? And Lamb goes on

1627
01:22:31,680 --> 01:22:33,519
Speaker 1: CBS and he's like, no, no, no, we need an

1628
01:22:33,640 --> 01:22:38,320
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act, right, But you know, Doug Bergham still

1629
01:22:38,320 --> 01:22:41,280
Speaker 1: wound up on Colossal's website and to an extent, do

1630
01:22:41,400 --> 01:22:43,880
Speaker 1: I believe Ben Lamb really cares all that much as

1631
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:46,960
Speaker 1: long as he stays a payper billionaire and his company

1632
01:22:47,040 --> 01:22:50,559
Speaker 1: keeps getting investment dollars. I don't know. Is it possible

1633
01:22:50,600 --> 01:22:53,200
Speaker 1: Colossal would get in the business of selling credits that

1634
01:22:53,320 --> 01:22:56,599
Speaker 1: allow companies to create the illusion that they're keeping species

1635
01:22:56,680 --> 01:23:00,880
Speaker 1: alive while also destroying more environmental regulations. Maybe?

1636
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:04,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem. It's just really hard to go

1637
01:23:04,720 --> 01:23:07,320
Speaker 2: back to like flying coach, you know what I mean,

1638
01:23:07,600 --> 01:23:11,240
Speaker 2: Like whatever, Yeah, whatever his lifestyle is, he's not going

1639
01:23:11,320 --> 01:23:14,880
Speaker 2: to sacrifice it for the greater good of tigers and

1640
01:23:15,320 --> 01:23:18,120
Speaker 2: you know, dodo birds or whoever they're trying to protect.

1641
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:23,719
Speaker 1: Now there's billions of dollars in fucking selling carbon credits

1642
01:23:23,800 --> 01:23:28,639
Speaker 1: to company or de extinction credits to companies who make

1643
01:23:28,760 --> 01:23:32,679
Speaker 1: more random wolves that they shoot into the world. Cool stuff.

1644
01:23:33,960 --> 01:23:34,400
Speaker 5: I love it.

1645
01:23:35,080 --> 01:23:35,519
Speaker 1: I love it.

1646
01:23:36,080 --> 01:23:40,400
Speaker 2: This show is always a lot of fun and really sad.

1647
01:23:41,040 --> 01:23:46,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great stuff. I love it. Well, Agston, how

1648
01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:47,400
Speaker 1: are you feeling?

1649
01:23:47,840 --> 01:23:48,479
Speaker 2: I feel great.

1650
01:23:48,560 --> 01:23:49,799
Speaker 1: It's been a long one. I'm sorry.

1651
01:23:50,120 --> 01:23:53,320
Speaker 2: No, this is great. I'm happy that we got to

1652
01:23:53,400 --> 01:23:56,800
Speaker 2: do it, and frankly, I'm devastated to know that there's

1653
01:23:56,840 --> 01:23:58,559
Speaker 2: a new man to be afraid of out there.

1654
01:23:59,040 --> 01:24:01,559
Speaker 1: There's a new hearted man to be frightened up.

1655
01:24:01,800 --> 01:24:05,120
Speaker 2: Really scared of him, and also don't care to look

1656
01:24:05,160 --> 01:24:06,840
Speaker 2: at him. But but here we are.

1657
01:24:07,680 --> 01:24:14,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, everybody, uh, you know, until next time, try

1658
01:24:15,040 --> 01:24:18,040
Speaker 1: not to take any of Jeffrey Epstein's money. Although if

1659
01:24:18,080 --> 01:24:20,640
Speaker 1: he's found a way to cheat death, I don't know.

1660
01:24:20,800 --> 01:24:24,360
Speaker 1: Maybe he's like a sith lord or something. Maybe I

1661
01:24:24,400 --> 01:24:29,400
Speaker 1: don't know. Whatever, You find your own ethical line, Langston,

1662
01:24:29,600 --> 01:24:31,439
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you need to play your plugbles.

1663
01:24:31,680 --> 01:24:35,320
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. Listen to my podcast. It's called my

1664
01:24:35,439 --> 01:24:37,559
Speaker 2: Mama Told Me. I host it with my friend David Borio,

1665
01:24:37,640 --> 01:24:42,520
Speaker 2: is about black conspiracy theories. Watch Everybody's Live on Netflix

1666
01:24:43,000 --> 01:24:45,920
Speaker 2: with John Mulaney. I was a writer and performer on

1667
01:24:46,040 --> 01:24:48,920
Speaker 2: that show. And you can watch my special it's called

1668
01:24:48,960 --> 01:24:52,800
Speaker 2: Bad Poetry. It's also on Netflix, and I'm really proud

1669
01:24:52,840 --> 01:24:52,960
Speaker 2: of it.

1670
01:24:53,160 --> 01:24:54,280
Speaker 1: And that's it.

1671
01:24:54,479 --> 01:24:57,280
Speaker 2: Follow me at Langston Kerman on all social media platforms.

1672
01:24:57,920 --> 01:25:02,040
Speaker 1: Follow Langston Kerman and and uh yeah, if you see

1673
01:25:02,080 --> 01:25:04,679
Speaker 1: a dire wolf, no you literally didn't.

1674
01:25:05,240 --> 01:25:06,000
Speaker 2: No, You're good.

1675
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:13,760
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1676
01:25:14,160 --> 01:25:17,400
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1677
01:25:17,600 --> 01:25:20,800
Speaker 3: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1678
01:25:20,880 --> 01:25:24,040
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1679
01:25:24,080 --> 01:25:28,080
Speaker 3: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1680
01:25:28,240 --> 01:25:31,839
Speaker 3: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1681
01:25:32,080 --> 01:25:33,520
Speaker 3: at Behind the Bastards