Speaker 1: Also media, Oh what's Epstein? My Jeffries, I think a
Speaker 1: version of that before. Should we not? Is that bad, Sophie?
Speaker 1: Should we not start that way? How many chances do
Speaker 1: you get now that he's dead?
Speaker 2: You know, zero?
Speaker 3: We don't need to do a lot.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right. That's the real tragedy. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say tragedy. Likeston Kerrman, our guest, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I'm excited to hear more. This feels
Speaker 2: weird to say out loud, but I'm excited to hear
Speaker 2: more about Jeffrey Epstein and everything he's been up to
Speaker 2: with our boy Georgetown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thankfully we are past. We're done with the
Speaker 1: Epstein part of the story, because you know how that ends. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders sneaks into prison and puts him out of
Speaker 1: his misery in order to keep some certain people's secrets
Speaker 1: or something. You know, nobody knows, right, some people are
Speaker 1: pretty sure they know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was like I would say, like four or five
Speaker 2: people who probably know exactly.
Speaker 1: There's like four five Yeah, maybe you who know exactly? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I continue to be, you know, an agnostic. I'm an
Speaker 1: Epstein agnostic, but definitely fucking George Church. I feel like
Speaker 1: knows more than he's slepting on.
Speaker 2: He knows more than we do on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah man, But yeah, maybe it was George no that
Speaker 1: that'll go So we can't we can't accuse this bioscientist
Speaker 1: of having Epstein guilt. Fuck yeah. Yeah, maybe he like
Speaker 1: inserted a gene and do him that made him choke more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just made something explode in the middle of.
Speaker 1: Prison, right right, Yeah? Sure, Like yeah, created a spontaneously
Speaker 1: grew a noose out of his hair, so oh boy.
Speaker 1: Around the time he renewed his association with Epstein, which
Speaker 1: would have been in the twenty fourteen to fifteen era
Speaker 1: unless he'd been continuing to talk to him, which we
Speaker 1: really don't know, but we have records of them starting
Speaker 1: to meet again multiple times in twenty fourteen anyway, and
Speaker 1: around that same period of time in twenty fourteen and
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, that's when doctor Church first started seriously pushing
Speaker 1: the extinction as a scientific topic. Right where he was
Speaker 1: I think you can find some quotes where he sort
Speaker 1: of talked about the possibility, But two than fourteen fifteen
Speaker 1: is when he really is like, this is an actual
Speaker 1: thing we can and should do, and maybe even a
Speaker 1: potential business that I want to be in. He had
Speaker 1: danced around the issue in his twenty twelve book ReGenesis,
Speaker 1: where he had proposed bringing back Neanderthals, which people always
Speaker 1: get angry. Are like, Robert, you're mispronouncing it again. That
Speaker 1: is how you say what most people call Neanderthals.
Speaker 2: I'm not brave enough to have ever challenged to question.
Speaker 1: Some people did in my novel, and then they're like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, I looked it up.
Speaker 2: I say Neanderthal. But I'm a dumb dumbs so I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm very all dead. So that's not what they call themselves.
Speaker 1: You call us what they Yeah, wow wow, No, it's fine.
Speaker 1: We wipe them out because we're uh well, because we're monsters.
Speaker 1: We're the devils here, so uh. Anyway, he had proposed
Speaker 1: bringing back Neanderthals by genetic engineering and using an actual
Speaker 1: human woman to serve as their surrogate mother.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 1: He described in the book the ideal surrogate to rebirth
Speaker 1: the Neanderthal race as quote an extremely adventurous female human.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you can feel everyone about this, but my
Speaker 1: maybe Sophie you can chime in here, depending on how
Speaker 1: if you feel I'm getting this wrong. It's kind of
Speaker 1: fucked up to call her a female human as opposed
Speaker 1: to like an adventurous woman. Like either way it's fucked up,
Speaker 1: but female human seems worse somehow than like we're gonna
Speaker 1: find some adventurous woman, right. I don't know if neither
Speaker 1: is good, but female human like you sound like a
Speaker 1: star trek care you sound like Quark talking about ladies.
Speaker 3: Female human as if female human you didn't need both
Speaker 3: of those.
Speaker 1: Could just say woman again.
Speaker 3: Just say a woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what that word is for.
Speaker 1: It literally was like a female human. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of awkward.
Speaker 2: Man, you're not being chill.
Speaker 1: You're not being cool. Derspiegel and Derspiegel is a German
Speaker 1: news agency. I think it literally means the voice or
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know. Don't quote man that
Speaker 1: I'm bad at German. But it's it's a major It's
Speaker 1: like their New York Times almost right, it's a major
Speaker 1: publication over there. Interviewed doctor George Church in twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: because he had recently made the claim that it would
Speaker 1: soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. They asked him, will
Speaker 1: you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?
Speaker 1: And he replied, I think so. But boy, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of parts to that. He goes on a
Speaker 1: list a few of the technologies that have developed recently
Speaker 1: which might allow this kind of cloning, and then adds
Speaker 1: another technology that the de extinction of a Neanderthal would
Speaker 1: require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals,
Speaker 1: so it's very likely that we could clone a human.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't we be able to do so?
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we're getting to what you really want here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Now we're getting to the real sketchy shit.
Speaker 2: Something tells me you're not as concerned with these wolves
Speaker 2: and these Neanderthals as now.
Speaker 1: Der Spiegel very reasonably said, well you shouldn't, maybe because
Speaker 1: it's super illegal, right, Like, you're not it's very illegal
Speaker 1: to clone human beings. And Church's responses, Well, that may
Speaker 1: be true in Germany, but it's not true everywhere, and
Speaker 1: laws can change, by the way.
Speaker 2: WHOA cool?
Speaker 1: That's like if I was like if someone was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to commit some murders, but it's
Speaker 1: illegal to murder. Well, what if the law changed? That's
Speaker 1: not really my question.
Speaker 2: It's illegal to murder because you're living in the past, man,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the future.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not really like if it were legal to murder,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't change my judgment upon you for wanting to
Speaker 1: murder somebody, you know. And it's interesting because, again, he's
Speaker 1: always described as having this deep consideration of ethics and
Speaker 1: you know, putting even a lot of money into making
Speaker 1: sure that what he does is ethical. And he's asked like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like it's super illegal to clone human beings for
Speaker 1: like obvious reasons, and he's like, well, what if it
Speaker 1: wasn't not my question, my dude, Okay, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just fascinating. And the other thing that's interesting here
Speaker 1: is that, like, not only is he like his answer
Speaker 1: to like this is kind of fucked up. Well, we
Speaker 1: could make it legal, But when he's kind of pressed
Speaker 1: by der Spiegel, I'm like, why would you want to
Speaker 1: do this? Like what's the benefit? His answer is complete horseshit.
Speaker 1: First off, he's asked like why would the be desirable?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And when you ask that, you're asking like, give me
Speaker 1: a good reason to want a Neanderthal clone, that's not
Speaker 1: like some sort of cheap profit, Like, why is this desirable?
Speaker 1: And his first answer is, well, that's another thing. I
Speaker 1: tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus.
Speaker 1: My role is to determine what's technologically feasible. All I
Speaker 1: can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is bad scientific edicts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: First off, man, you shouldn't decide what's desirable based on
Speaker 1: societal consensus. Go back to the fifties. What was societal
Speaker 1: consensus on inerracial dating. If you're letting that move you
Speaker 1: to decide what's desirable, you're gonna be bad.
Speaker 2: It was also not taking genuine polls. No, he's just
Speaker 2: talking to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: The average human probably doesn't give a shit about this, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that bringing back a Neanderthal was possible,
Speaker 2: and frankly, it never was interested in.
Speaker 1: It was not on my list of concerns. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the attitude that like, well, my only job is to determine,
Speaker 1: like what are people willing to let me do, and
Speaker 1: then what's technically feasible. You're literally doing the Ian Malcolm
Speaker 1: in draask Park thing like you're literally your scientists are
Speaker 1: so busy asking what they can do, they're not asking
Speaker 1: should we Is this fucked up? Like Michael Crichton was
Speaker 1: not a good man, but he understood that this is
Speaker 1: bad ethics, right that just be like, I wonder if
Speaker 1: I can It's like evil, it leads you to do evil?
Speaker 2: No, you should chill out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, fine, probably fine, fuck it. Yeah. So it's very
Speaker 1: interesting to me how just he has he's completely incurious
Speaker 1: as to whether or not there's a practical benefit to
Speaker 1: doing this kind of cloning. And Derschpiegel has to prod
Speaker 1: him like two or three times to get him to
Speaker 1: answer kind of directly, like what is is there any
Speaker 1: potential benefit to bringing back this species? And here's what
Speaker 1: Church eventually says, Well, andertoles might think differently than we do.
Speaker 1: We know that they had a larger cranial size. They
Speaker 1: could even be more intelligent than us. When the time
Speaker 1: comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the
Speaker 1: planet or whatever. It's conceivable that their way of thinking
Speaker 1: could be beneficial. Okay, I got a lot of issues here.
Speaker 2: Fine, man, if we're just gonna pretend fine.
Speaker 1: First off, let's split my issues here into pragmatic and
Speaker 1: then ethical. Pragmatic. Bigger brain doesn't mean smarter. No, bigger brain.
Speaker 1: That dolphins have bigger brain than us, they're not so
Speaker 1: far prove it useful in getting us off the planet.
Speaker 1: They have other concerns, right. The other thing is if
Speaker 1: you're creating, if you're bringing back this species, this is
Speaker 1: a sentient, sapient species, an independent species, and you are
Speaker 1: saying we'll use their big brains to get off the planet.
Speaker 1: What if that's not what they want? What if they
Speaker 1: have other interests being their own independent beings. Because it
Speaker 1: seems like you're concerned, is like, well, we can just
Speaker 1: harness their big brains so that we can do the
Speaker 1: science stuff that I want to do because they'll be smart.
Speaker 1: But what if they don't want to do that? Are
Speaker 1: you just saying you'll own them? Is that kind of
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying, I think you're trying to
Speaker 2: make big ass slaves man. Yeah, I think you're trying
Speaker 2: to make some big old slaves. And that's yeah, that's
Speaker 2: something you should maybe just say out loud instead of
Speaker 2: pretending like it has some other value.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. He's not saying, I want
Speaker 1: to make big ass slaves, But if you say I
Speaker 1: want to bring back a new intelligent species, you kind
Speaker 1: of immediately have to say and they will immediately be
Speaker 1: full citizens and right with the rights of human But
Speaker 1: you have to like really emphasize that if you don't
Speaker 1: want me to be like, do you just want slaves?
Speaker 2: They don't have to live with me wherever they want.
Speaker 1: So that's the other thing, because like this this Der
Speaker 1: Spiegel journalist is like, how do you even go about
Speaker 1: raising this species that you've brought back to life? Right?
Speaker 1: Like they won't have parents or a culture, and as
Speaker 1: like this is an intelligent, homitted species. Presumably most of
Speaker 1: how the real ones knew how to do the things
Speaker 1: that they did was that they were raised in families
Speaker 1: like us, right, who like raise them? But there's no
Speaker 1: culture of these people anymore? So how do you raise them?
Speaker 1: And Church is kind of vaguely like, well, you'd like
Speaker 1: make a bunch at a lot at once, like a cohort,
Speaker 1: he calls them, and then he's like, maybe they'd become
Speaker 1: their own culture. Maybe they'd even become a political force.
Speaker 2: Who what name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep coming back to Jurassic Park because you
Speaker 1: can't not when it's talking about the extinction. But also
Speaker 1: what's amazing to me is again Michael Crichton, the climate
Speaker 1: change denier, fucking weird guy. Michael Crichton understood all of
Speaker 1: the ethical issues with this when applied to dinosaurs in
Speaker 1: a way this guy doesn't when applying them to like
Speaker 1: effectively a humanoid creature. Because in the actual book Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: one of the things that becomes clear, like the raptors,
Speaker 1: which are super intelligent, the ones that engine clones don't
Speaker 1: act like real velociraptors. They're terrible to their young. They
Speaker 1: like murder their own kids. They're just like crazy, violent
Speaker 1: and dangerous because they were not raised by adults that
Speaker 1: knew anything. They're just these monsters that got unleashed, and
Speaker 1: so they grew up completely without any kind of a
Speaker 1: culture that would teach them how to raise their young
Speaker 1: and as an intelligence speed like Crichton imagined this when
Speaker 1: talking about dinosaurs, yea, and George Church is just uncurious
Speaker 1: about it, like literally read Jurassic Park.
Speaker 2: We literally have a an economic system where you see
Speaker 2: what raising people without their families does, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I bet these ones will figure it out. Yeah, Like, no,
Speaker 2: that's not that's not how it's gonna work, big dog.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also like just even when you're talking outside
Speaker 1: of the andertoals, we talk about like the animals he
Speaker 1: wants to raise like a major story from like like
Speaker 1: animal you know, biology and whatnot. In the last couple
Speaker 1: of decades, as we used to have these beliefs about
Speaker 1: alpha wolves that deeply influenced a lot of toxic aspects
Speaker 1: of human culture. And then the scientist who came up
Speaker 1: with the idea was like, I was completely wrong. I
Speaker 1: was looking at wolves raised in prisons. Basically they don't
Speaker 1: act like wild wolves, right Yeah, Which, again, if you're
Speaker 1: just bringing back a dead ancient animal and it has
Speaker 1: no animals of its own type to raise it, how
Speaker 1: the fuck are you going to have it? Because his
Speaker 1: goal here is always for it to retake its original
Speaker 1: evolutionary niche how would it do that? It doesn't know
Speaker 1: when to do that.
Speaker 2: You ever seen those videos where like they'll like put
Speaker 2: a tiger in with a pig, like a baby tiger,
Speaker 2: and then the baby tigers starts acting like the pig
Speaker 2: a little bit it's like, well, yeah, that's because that's
Speaker 2: more influential than it being just raw tiger by itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is why I intend to raise a
Speaker 1: human being with a bunch of tigers. But that's a
Speaker 1: separate point. I just want to see if they'll grow claws.
Speaker 1: All the scientists are saying no, but I have my
Speaker 1: own theories.
Speaker 2: Scientists are saying a lot of things.
Speaker 1: They say a lot of shit has these episode show
Speaker 1: So yeah, my opinion here is that his primary interest
Speaker 1: isn't even I don't even think he ever intended to
Speaker 1: clone the antithosis, right, I think he knows that this
Speaker 1: is not really going to happen. It's clear to me
Speaker 1: that his real interest is a mix of both, like
Speaker 1: driving up hype because he's going to be starting this.
Speaker 1: He's trying to and he's gotten very good at using
Speaker 1: his lab. We'll do some work in like finding some
Speaker 1: Neanderthal DNA and sequencing it, and then he can use
Speaker 1: that to start making claims of we'll be able to
Speaker 1: clone them one day and eventually get investments so that
Speaker 1: he can spin off another startup company. Right, And that's
Speaker 1: kind of part of how where about Colossal bioscience is
Speaker 1: the Direwolf Company comes from. That's part of what he's doing.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that he's doing here, and
Speaker 1: this becomes clear later in the interview, is he's sort
Speaker 1: of giving away that his actual interest is not to
Speaker 1: bring back extinct species. It's to find traits of those
Speaker 1: species and edit them into other animals for much less
Speaker 1: altruistic purposes. At one point he has asked, like, do
Speaker 1: you think there's anything wrong with creating a whole new species,
Speaker 1: and he says, the main goal is to increase diversity.
Speaker 1: The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity.
Speaker 1: This is true for culture or evolution, for species, and
Speaker 1: also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you
Speaker 1: are at great risk of perishing. Therefore, the recreation of
Speaker 1: Neanderthals would mainly be a question of societal risk avoidance.
Speaker 1: And that's a really good example of using like the
Speaker 1: language of social justice and liberalism to advocate for horrifying
Speaker 1: things like first off, human beings have mostly done fine
Speaker 1: with that Neandthals. I don't know that there's any evidence
Speaker 1: that they would make us like more diverse. But also
Speaker 1: that's not what he's interested in doing. Later in the interview,
Speaker 1: dearsh People asks, Hey, wouldn't you just be able to
Speaker 1: add some of their genes to a human and change
Speaker 1: the human And the answer Doctor Church gives makes it
Speaker 1: clear that this is what I think he's really interested in,
Speaker 1: because he says, suppose you were to realize, wow, these
Speaker 1: five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size,
Speaker 1: a few key things that could give us what we
Speaker 1: want in terms of neural diversity. And that's when I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you just want to create designer smart babies for rich people, right,
Speaker 1: that's the blueprint here.
Speaker 2: You're just trying to make it so that so that
Speaker 2: the baby comes out exactly the way you planned and
Speaker 2: with no other stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, and you can make hyper smart babies for your
Speaker 1: rich friends that become a new species to rule over
Speaker 1: all of us. That's your goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're at your eyes and no need for braces, right,
Speaker 2: we get.
Speaker 1: It, right, Right, that's your dream. He continues, Even if
Speaker 1: you don't have the DNA, you can still make something
Speaker 1: that looks like it. And this is this is where
Speaker 1: he lays out the blueprint for what Colossal is going
Speaker 1: to do because he's like DNA doesn't last. We can't
Speaker 1: get full dinosaur DNA, you'll never be able to clone
Speaker 1: a real dinosaur. But then He's like, even if you
Speaker 1: don't know the DNA, you can still make something that
Speaker 1: looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, you'd first consider the ostrich, one of its
Speaker 1: closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is
Speaker 1: a large bird, and you would ask, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds loose their hair? Hands?
Speaker 1: And you would try to identify the mutations to try
Speaker 1: and back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible,
Speaker 1: and again it's not really.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's a I learned about this recently. But
Speaker 2: there's somebody who's making something called the chicken asaurs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where they are essentially claiming that they're like re they've
Speaker 2: rediscovered or re given us dinosaurs again via this chicken assaur.
Speaker 2: But it's just a fucked up chicken. Yeah, that like
Speaker 2: looks like it's got like some dinosaur qualities.
Speaker 1: And it's it's one of those things like is that
Speaker 1: kind of interesting? Sure? Would I want something that looks
Speaker 1: like a dinosaur and is a pet. I'm not made
Speaker 1: of stone? Of course? Is that a dinosaur that you've
Speaker 1: de extincted? Now it's a thing you made, And there's
Speaker 1: still these ethical questions about like, well, what are the
Speaker 1: rights of that animal? Like YadA YadA, Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of weird things, you know, Like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of weird shit about that. Right, I'm not thrilled with this,
Speaker 1: but that's my least kind of concern. Here is somebody
Speaker 1: who's like, look, this isn't a real dinosaur, but it
Speaker 1: looks like one. Do you want to have it as
Speaker 1: a pet? All right? I have bigger concerns, you know, Right.
Speaker 2: It's not the true crime that is that our boy
Speaker 2: George is working out on the back end.
Speaker 1: Of this, although there's also the day if it is
Speaker 1: like made out of it from a chicken. Chickens are
Speaker 1: soulless monsters, like you don't want to make them more powerful, like.
Speaker 2: And they're also not particularly bright and none of this
Speaker 2: feels like a great combination.
Speaker 1: If you know, chickens their favorite food is their own kind,
Speaker 1: like they are scary animals. Yeah, my favorite that Werner
Speaker 1: Herzog has some great quotes about if you want to
Speaker 1: see a frightened stare into the eyes of a chicken.
Speaker 1: There's like nothing but blackness in there.
Speaker 2: It's oh man.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff.
Speaker 2: Your chicken listeners are going to be pissed. You'll be nasty.
Speaker 1: You know, we've all had like I've had chickens. I
Speaker 1: remember once one of my chickens, raccoon got in the
Speaker 1: coop and one of my chickens fought it off and
Speaker 1: got injured, and all of its friends ate it to death.
Speaker 1: It's horrible. Chickens are nightmares.
Speaker 2: Oh I really didn't even like give him a shit
Speaker 2: shit Oh man, Chicken Run really sold me a different.
Speaker 1: Story about the chickens are not that good at solidarity,
Speaker 1: not their strong suit as a species. So we'll talk
Speaker 1: more in a little bit about his so called de
Speaker 1: extinction ambitions. But again this starts in like twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: to fifteen, and the fact that he's like working on
Speaker 1: this stuff, the fact that he's got this history with
Speaker 1: Epstein and Epstein's weird baby breeding project and all these
Speaker 1: this genome sequencing, all these that he's talking in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen about like editing human genes make designer babies. This
Speaker 1: all leads directly to the most fucked up thing about
Speaker 1: doctor George Church, which is how often he winds up,
Speaker 1: shall we say, tugging at the fringes of outright eugenics, right,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. In a twenty nineteen interview for CBS with
Speaker 1: Scott Pelley, Church talks about his goal, which is framed
Speaker 1: in the article as to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases,
Speaker 1: and aging. In the interview, George talks about age reversal,
Speaker 1: which he says has been proven about eight ways and animals.
Speaker 1: Now it hasn't, right, And that's a really vague statement
Speaker 1: for a scientist to make. And I want to know
Speaker 1: what are the eight ways? What do you mean by proven? Right?
Speaker 1: These are all the questions that aren't answered.
Speaker 2: I did find that there's that jellyfish that doesn't that
Speaker 2: can like regenerate it or like turn itself back into
Speaker 2: a child, But like that's not proving it. That's just
Speaker 2: that species, right.
Speaker 1: And there's like there's like turtles that may basically live
Speaker 1: forever if they're not killed by something, right, Like there's
Speaker 1: some tortoises that are like three hundred years old, right,
Speaker 1: And there's some other species where it may be a
Speaker 1: similar thing where like they kind of only die if
Speaker 1: something gets them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you can't just like, maybe there will
Speaker 1: be some sort of life extensions seecrets in that animal,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's just different enough from us that like
Speaker 1: there's no way to transfer that to human beings. He's
Speaker 1: saying that we have proved how to reverse age in animals, right,
Speaker 1: that we have done it using science, and that should
Speaker 1: be a falsifiable statement, but he doesn't give much more
Speaker 1: detail there. I did find an article for the Center
Speaker 1: for Genetics and Society that attempts to reverse engineer his claim,
Speaker 1: and they're like, he is almost surely over selling this,
Speaker 1: but they suspect one of the proven cases he's talking
Speaker 1: about here is a study about gene therapy for mitral
Speaker 1: valve disease and mice. Right, And it's a study that
Speaker 1: showed that by editing some genes you can fix like
Speaker 1: mitral valve disease and mice. Now, that's important and may
Speaker 1: have some really crucial implications for science, may allow us
Speaker 1: to extend a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's not good science, it's not
Speaker 1: age reversal. Right, that that's curing a valve disease. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the same thing.
Speaker 2: Now, you're still gonna die when you die, you just
Speaker 2: will die from that.
Speaker 1: You'll get older. It's just like you'll be this problem
Speaker 1: with your heart we might be able to fix with
Speaker 1: gene editing. And obviously, like, is it possible given enough
Speaker 1: time that we will be able to extend human life
Speaker 1: enough that we keep extending it. It's not impossible. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I don't think it's necessarily likely, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of shit you'd have to figure out, and
Speaker 1: I just don't know if we're going to get there,
Speaker 1: given all of the other things human beings civilization's going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with. But it's not impossible. It's
Speaker 1: just the way he talks about this is so blase
Speaker 1: a and he glosses over so much that it's not
Speaker 1: like serious scientific talk. And part some of the evidence
Speaker 1: for this is that like when he gets pressed on
Speaker 1: like a, right, well, how do you know where are
Speaker 1: we actually making animals younger? The only real evidence that
Speaker 1: he's able to cite is an ongoing clinical trial to
Speaker 1: see if gene therapy can extend the lifespan of dogs,
Speaker 1: and maybe that will be possible, but any resultant therapy
Speaker 1: is going to be number one, not proven yet. And
Speaker 1: number two, any resultant therapy that come out of this
Speaker 1: doesn't We don't know that it would work on people,
Speaker 1: because there's dogs, aren't people, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some noticeable difference.
Speaker 1: Not in a genetic sense, Sophie, in an ethical sense, share,
Speaker 1: but not in a genetic sense. We're different, we constructed.
Speaker 2: It's really funny when people sort of like sink into
Speaker 2: these types of sciences, because like, if you want your
Speaker 2: dog to live longer, just stop making it fuck its cousin,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like that's part of it, right,
Speaker 2: Stop breeding them till they're like sick the second they
Speaker 2: come out, and let them be whatever random mutt that
Speaker 2: they all are kind of supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, for the record, if we ever
Speaker 1: find a way to make dogs live like sixty years,
Speaker 1: I'm on board. Ditto cats. You know, I don't have
Speaker 1: an issue with like keeping our pets alive with us.
Speaker 2: I'd welcome their presence, the welcome their presence.
Speaker 3: I would do so many things to keep my dog
Speaker 3: alive longer.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that this thing he's talking about is
Speaker 1: going to work really on dogs, And even if it
Speaker 1: can extend the lifespan, it's also it's not the same
Speaker 1: as reversing age necessarily. But also even if, and again
Speaker 1: these are all many, these ifs are increasingly fractional long shots.
Speaker 1: Even if this study works on dogs, and even if
Speaker 1: there proves to be an application on human beings, any
Speaker 1: resultant therapy that allows you to extend human lifespan or
Speaker 1: reverse human age will be exhaust outlandishly expensive, so expensive
Speaker 1: that it will only be available to guys like Jeffrey Epstein. Right.
Speaker 1: In response to doctor Church's claims about age reversal science,
Speaker 1: historian Nathaniel Comfort noted, lengthening the lives of rich Westerners
Speaker 1: the obvious customers, would be the biggest ecological crime since
Speaker 1: standard oil. It's hard to argue with that.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, that's pretty fair.
Speaker 1: Obviously, that doesn't mean we wouldn't do it. The question,
Speaker 1: there's two separate questions. Is this ethical?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Is this possible? Also? So far no? Right that said,
Speaker 1: I should note that the ethics of this are not
Speaker 1: a topic that Church ignores. There's a whole nother CBS
Speaker 1: article I found where he talks about genetic equality and
Speaker 1: emphasizes the fact that he keeps an ethicist on staff. Quote,
Speaker 1: he does not want to see a world in which
Speaker 1: big advances in genetic engineering are available only to those
Speaker 1: who can afford it. He considers a quality both one
Speaker 1: of manipulating genes for therapy like correcting genetic defects to
Speaker 1: cure genetic diseases, and for enhancement augmenting genes beyond what
Speaker 1: is normal. But like it doesn't mean anything. Like, for
Speaker 1: one thing, the pharmaceutical companies that buy this from you
Speaker 1: are going to set the prices, right, they'll pay you off.
Speaker 2: Like, I just think it's always a bad sign when
Speaker 2: somebody has to outsource ethics, right, I mean, like you
Speaker 2: need somebody else to handle ethics because that's just not
Speaker 2: how you think is you're gonna do some vile shit.
Speaker 1: That that that's probably a fair point too, And it's
Speaker 1: it's also hard for me to square this statement that like, well,
Speaker 1: I really I don't want, you know, there to be
Speaker 1: netic you know, bias. I want everyone to have access
Speaker 1: to these wonderful things. We're definitely going to be able
Speaker 1: to do. His claims that that's what he wants are
Speaker 1: hard for me to square with other statements he has made,
Speaker 1: saying like but that I quoted earlier, where he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: it's just my job to figure out what we can
Speaker 1: do right. Whatever society's fine with is, you know what's right?
Speaker 2: Right, that's none of my business.
Speaker 1: My business, it's a very Vernervon braun. When the rockets
Speaker 1: go up, who knows where they come down? That's not
Speaker 1: my department, says Vernervon Brown.
Speaker 2: I'm just here to make as many humunculi as possible.
Speaker 2: I don't, right, I don't decide where they go.
Speaker 1: Look, man, I'm in the homunculi business. I'm not nowhere
Speaker 1: a monculy i go business. You know, he told CBS,
Speaker 1: We're not necessarily opposed to enhancement if everybody gets access
Speaker 1: to it simultaneously and again. But there's no how do
Speaker 1: you do that? You don't talking about how that would
Speaker 1: ever happen. You're just saying, obviously that's what I want.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are you going to turn down millions of dollars or
Speaker 1: billions of dollars to make sure that happens unless somebody
Speaker 1: guarantees it somehow?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 1: How doesn't seem real doesn't seem likely anyway. He doesn't
Speaker 1: propose any way to ensure this, nor do I believe
Speaker 1: he truly cares. Scott Pelley, who's the journalist who interviewed Church,
Speaker 1: made this statement after talking to him. He doesn't see
Speaker 1: a great distinction between being able to travel five hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty miles an hour on an airliner or changing
Speaker 1: somebody's genome in order to make them maybe cognitively more astute.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference.
Speaker 2: That's why I fuck with Scott Pelly. He really end
Speaker 2: of the day, he really breaks it all down in
Speaker 2: a very succinct, clear way. He's like, that man that
Speaker 2: I just spoke to is a psychopath, and you should
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 1: That would be like if like a weapons designer's like,
Speaker 1: what's really the difference between building a new artillery shell
Speaker 1: and genetically encoding a bomb into someone's DNA without them knowing?
Speaker 1: Is there really a difference?
Speaker 2: They're both dead, Yes, I think they're dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are both dead. But I do think there's
Speaker 1: a difference. Now, I know me saying I don't trust
Speaker 1: that this guy cares about ethics. I think he's lying
Speaker 1: about caring about a quality here. Maybe that just seems
Speaker 1: like old Robert being an asshole because all the bastards
Speaker 1: he reads about. There's other good reasons to doubt George
Speaker 1: Church here, and I want to quote from that article
Speaker 1: from the Center for Genetics and Society. The massive Chinese
Speaker 1: company BGI sees synthetic biology as a promising field, and
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen launched the George Church Institute of ReGenesis
Speaker 1: in Shinzhen. Bgi's corporate culture has been criticized as eugenics like,
Speaker 1: and the company is currently involved in state surveillance and
Speaker 1: harassment of millions of Wigers, a Muslim minority group in Zendjang.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's not great. And the company that starts
Speaker 1: the institute named after you has been criticized as eugenics like,
Speaker 1: or for surveilling a minority being targeted by the state.
Speaker 1: None of those are good things.
Speaker 2: I really was hoping this wasn't going to lead to
Speaker 2: you knowing who the test subjects were. But boy, oh.
Speaker 1: Boy, prove that. But yeah, the other thing is that, like,
Speaker 1: just outside of those ethics, the George Church Institute of ReGenesis,
Speaker 1: that's a dystopian name. I'm sorry, that's from like a
Speaker 1: cyberpunk source book like that.
Speaker 2: You're doing.
Speaker 1: You should know that's a bad name. But that said,
Speaker 1: I had to look further into this BGI and everything.
Speaker 1: When I heard the words eugenics like for this company culture,
Speaker 1: I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And
Speaker 1: holy fuck, is this company screwed up? So back in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Wang Jian, who's a co founder and president
Speaker 1: of the company, participated in a panel discussion at a conference.
Speaker 1: He stated that bgi's goal was for each of their
Speaker 1: employees to live to at least age one hundred. To
Speaker 1: ensure this, they have like they have to in order
Speaker 1: to work there, embrace three rules, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: read you about these rules. Per an article for the
Speaker 1: English language Chinese news website sixth Tone Quote, the first
Speaker 1: rule is that BGI staff are not allowed to have
Speaker 1: children with birth defects. If they were born with defects,
Speaker 1: it would be a disgrace to all seven thousand staff,
Speaker 1: Wang said, it would mean that me are fooling society
Speaker 1: and just eye hang each other's pockets. Whang added there
Speaker 1: are no known serious congenital diseases among the fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: infants that have been born to the company's employees. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: oh god, Well that's just I mean, do I have
Speaker 1: to like talk about why that's evil?
Speaker 2: God? Damn, they're just saying stuff plainly. Holy shit, Holy fuck,
Speaker 2: that's crazy.
Speaker 1: These people made a center named after you, George Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: They also, there's no way they mean that about like
Speaker 2: the cleaning staff. No, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: they're only talking about very specific employees at this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nuts. That's also what do you consider a defect? Right?
Speaker 1: And I know this is actually tricky. The ethics here
Speaker 1: are really tricky.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: If I was having a kid and I learned like, hey,
Speaker 1: this this few future potential child would have a heart
Speaker 1: defect we found evidence of and we can fix it
Speaker 1: in you to row, of course you'd want to fix
Speaker 1: that as a parent, bunce your kid have a heart defect.
Speaker 1: What about if they're like, hey, your child, they'll be
Speaker 1: perfectly healthy, perfectly intelligent, but they'll be on the autism
Speaker 1: spectrum or they'll have ADHD. Yeah, I got to give
Speaker 1: you an option to zapp that because that kind of
Speaker 1: feels like genocide to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're going to have they're going to have
Speaker 2: a sixth finger think this slope is so slippery for
Speaker 2: like what they'll decide is acceptable and not acceptable?
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is something we will have to grapple
Speaker 1: with and it's not going to be easy because obviously
Speaker 1: if you're like, hey, your kid's going to be has
Speaker 1: this genetic condition, that will mean that there will be
Speaker 1: constantly in horrible pain for every second of their short life.
Speaker 1: But we can fix that right now, Who wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to fix that? But then how do you build guard
Speaker 1: rails in so that you're not just saying we're going
Speaker 1: to get rid of everyone? It is different, right, like.
Speaker 2: And and who frankly are the scientists and charge of
Speaker 2: making those decisions?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: We know for a fact it's a real uh, I'll
Speaker 2: bring back dire wolves ass person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Wang who's like none of the kids of
Speaker 1: my employees can be defective?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like this is all just like it gets really bad,
Speaker 1: very very quickly.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And it's also like, you know, Church makes this big
Speaker 1: claim of like I'm a big believer in diversity. He
Speaker 1: talks about like I have narcolepsy, and I have a
Speaker 1: lot of my great nest ideas and when I like
Speaker 1: kind of have these quick narcoleptic naps and stuff. He's
Speaker 1: a big believer in neurodiversity, according to what he says,
Speaker 1: but also the science and the people he's working with
Speaker 1: are actively working to end neurodiversity. Yeah, like that's the
Speaker 1: result of this, right, Like we all know that's where
Speaker 1: these people would go. Yeah, not a problem.
Speaker 2: It's a real hit. Like it's like Hitler being like, well,
Speaker 2: my mom was Jewish, so that's why I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: That would have been a weird thing for Hitler's Oh Hitler.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Bgi's second rule is that the company can't detect cancer
Speaker 1: later than hospitals do, which I guess is fine as
Speaker 1: an ambition, right, you want your company to who does
Speaker 1: these screenings to be faster than the current technology. Okay,
Speaker 1: give you a pass on that one. The third rule
Speaker 1: for BGI employees is almost as fucked up as the first,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from sixth Tone again. Employees are
Speaker 1: forbidden from having a heart bypass surgery. Instead, they are
Speaker 1: expected to rely on gene tech and clean living to
Speaker 1: prevent cardiovascular disease. To promote fitness and healthy eating, Wang said,
Speaker 1: BGI tracks the dieting habits of employees at its cafeteria,
Speaker 1: and has put its elevators out of service. Now Man
Speaker 1: Wang describes this policy as a bit mean. He's also
Speaker 1: opposed women from the Chinese mainland getting HPV vaccines in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, not because he's anti vax, but because he
Speaker 1: thinks that genetic testing is a better value for the money,
Speaker 1: which is like, that's just none of your fucking business man.
Speaker 2: Like oh man, He's like, no, don't don't care their disease.
Speaker 2: I want to figure out out how to test more.
Speaker 2: I need more diseases to play with.
Speaker 1: What if they get vaccinated and get to anyway, this
Speaker 1: company is fucked up. And the fact that doctor Church
Speaker 1: is involved with this guy and his company to such
Speaker 1: an extent that this BGI named a center after George
Speaker 1: Church says more than every vague claim he makes about
Speaker 1: ethics and genetic equality about what I think his actual
Speaker 1: ethics are. And the more you read about him, the
Speaker 1: more it becomes clear that there are two very different
Speaker 1: George Churches. There's the one who legitimately contributed to some
Speaker 1: huge scientific breakthroughs and who runs a Harvard lab that
Speaker 1: does work on some really cool projects. One of the
Speaker 1: companies he's affiliated with is working to like clone pigs
Speaker 1: with organs that can be transplanted more easily into human beings.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good idea, right, not that
Speaker 1: there's no ethical concerns there, but like probably worth it
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Some people will feel differently, but like
Speaker 1: not enough organs out there right now for everybody who
Speaker 1: needs them. But there's another George Church, and that's the
Speaker 1: guy who will work with absolutely anyone in anything if
Speaker 1: there's money in it, right, and we'll kind of say anything,
Speaker 1: you know. That's my interpretation of events. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's objectively true my opinion. You see the first George
Speaker 1: in these hagiographic articles for the popular press that are
Speaker 1: talking about like how amazing he and his companies are.
Speaker 1: And you see the second George when you actually look
Speaker 1: into a lot of the companies that he's either co
Speaker 1: founded or been hired to advise. For example, of a
Speaker 1: company he's co founded, I'd like to introduce you to
Speaker 1: a venture that he co founded in twenty nineteen called
Speaker 1: Digit eight or Digitate Digitate. No, do you think you
Speaker 1: know where we're going here?
Speaker 2: I have no clue it's dating.
Speaker 1: It's a dating service. It's a genetic dating service. Oh no,
Speaker 1: no loops. Oh oh shit, Yeah that sounds bad.
Speaker 2: Fuck.
Speaker 1: His co founder is Bargavi Govindarajen, who is a Harvard
Speaker 1: graduate who met Church at a school event. They got
Speaker 1: to talking about consumer genetic testing, and she seems to
Speaker 1: have like soft pitched him, like what if we integrated
Speaker 1: genome sequencing into a dating app? And this is what
Speaker 1: she said later. It did not take us much time
Speaker 1: to uncover synergies in terms of how we wish to
Speaker 1: build a nimble, modern platform that taps into molecular biology
Speaker 1: and accelerates the impact of preventative health for a variety
Speaker 1: of consumers. Within a year of the first meeting that
Speaker 1: seated our conversations, we incorporated Digitate with planet wide ambitions. God,
Speaker 1: that's just it's both like such tech corporate speak and
Speaker 1: also evil supervillain speak at scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nuts. That's terrifying.
Speaker 1: You can probably guess the basics of this idea. You
Speaker 1: give Digitate your DNA, they sequence it, and they compare
Speaker 1: it to other people on the service to ensure that
Speaker 1: you only match with someone you're compatible with.
Speaker 3: I really don't like where this is going.
Speaker 1: This is going on, this kind of like eugenics. Eugenics
Speaker 1: me gen x who.
Speaker 2: Knows you plus me eugenics?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. Quote. The idea is to use DNA comparisons
Speaker 1: to make sure people and this is from the m
Speaker 1: t AT Technology of Review. The idea is to use
Speaker 1: DNA comparisons to make sure people who share a genetic
Speaker 1: mutation like those that cause Tay Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis,
Speaker 1: never meet, fall in love and have kids. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a really fucked up way to say.
Speaker 3: That's like, yes, two people say very brosis are dangerous
Speaker 3: to each other if they're near near each other.
Speaker 1: But well no, I mean, like that's not even true.
Speaker 1: It's like if two people who have like if two
Speaker 1: people are likely to have kids with a certain horrible disease,
Speaker 1: maybe like adoption is a better choice or something.
Speaker 3: I know, it's like wildly abusive and creepy.
Speaker 1: Making sure they never meet is just like reducing human
Speaker 1: beings to things that combine DNA. Or maybe they're not
Speaker 1: interested having kids, right yeah, maybe they just.
Speaker 2: They can meet, they can hang out, they can.
Speaker 1: Even talk about each other, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: They might be like, hey, you got that, zoo, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Let's make other choices like yeah, they have the ability
Speaker 2: to figure this out for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just the whole Like the goal is to
Speaker 1: make sure they don't fall in love. It's like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't like this, Sylvie. I want you to pull
Speaker 1: up the image of this tweet from digit Date in
Speaker 1: March sixteenth of twenty twenty one. Let's just take a
Speaker 1: look at this. I'm going to read this. Digitate is
Speaker 1: here to help enhance your relationships, providing a dining experience
Speaker 1: that relies on communication, teamwork, and it's intimacy. Give it
Speaker 1: a try today, hashtag couple, hashtag dating, hashtag virtual date,
Speaker 1: hashtag date. And then there's a little image macro that
Speaker 1: says intimacy isn't always easy, but Digitate is here to help.
Speaker 1: We provide a virtual dining experience for you and your date,
Speaker 1: leading to closer, more intimate connections. So again they're advertising
Speaker 1: other aspects of this, which is like we let you
Speaker 1: have a digital date before you meet. They're not talking
Speaker 1: in the public facing ads about the fact that like, also,
Speaker 1: we're sequencing your DNA to determine who you'll make a
Speaker 1: good genetic match.
Speaker 3: With I don't like these two little fuckers in the corner.
Speaker 2: No, no, I'll go so far as to say that
Speaker 2: that look how little they invested in the actual like images.
Speaker 1: Yes they don't. I don't know if there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money behind the side.
Speaker 2: They're like, just give us your DNA if you're going
Speaker 2: to fall for this. We're not spending a dime on advertising.
Speaker 1: That's right. But you know who is spending a dime
Speaker 1: on advertising? That's perfect our advertisers. Baby, we're back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about crimes, but we're not going to tell you
Speaker 1: what crimes. We're not planning an Ocean's eleven heist of
Speaker 1: a casino, of course it's not. Langston's not also the
Speaker 1: best safe cracker in the business. You know, I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, the world's best getaway river surfy, so surfy, jesus.
Speaker 1: The fun was that I got to make a joke
Speaker 1: about Sophie being trained in jiu jitsu, but I ruined
Speaker 1: it by mispronouncing your name. I'm sorry, that was weird.
Speaker 3: I don't think i'd be very good at that, It's okay,
Speaker 3: but i'd be good at crimes.
Speaker 1: You'll be good at great at crimes theoretically. Theoretically.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm just thinking, like you know, if you find
Speaker 3: I would, I would do so many crimes to keep
Speaker 3: Anderson alive longer.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of you as the mobster in the movie
Speaker 1: Ghost Dog starring Forrest Whitaker. Great film. Yeah you could.
Speaker 1: You could be using ghost Dog to assassinate your rivals.
Speaker 1: He would love you. You could be his. Uh Damio,
Speaker 1: I think Daimio.
Speaker 3: I'm looking eyes.
Speaker 1: Sorry, we got off the thing we're talking about digit Date,
Speaker 1: the creepy genetic dating company.
Speaker 3: I was trying to distract us away from it because
Speaker 3: it makes me so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: No, we still got worse ship to talk about. So
Speaker 1: here's the technology review that the m T technol You
Speaker 1: review in this article about Digitate describes Church's lab as
Speaker 1: gravitating towards provocative projects, and they describe Digitate not as
Speaker 1: a separate dating app, but as a service like GPS
Speaker 1: in the company's words, that could run in the background
Speaker 1: of any existent dating app. GPS. Yeah, I don't like
Speaker 1: that either. So basically, every dating app could use Digitate's
Speaker 1: technology in order to have their users send in their
Speaker 1: DNA and get their genomes sequenced to stop them from
Speaker 1: meeting genetically and campatical people. Now, genome sequencing costs like
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty bucks, so obviously this is not
Speaker 1: super easy to pencil out financially for a dating app,
Speaker 1: which generally is not that expensive. But Church thinks you
Speaker 1: could offset this by increasing the subscription price of dating apps.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I think this is a great business.
Speaker 1: Hasn't taken off yet, but as usual, he puts what
Speaker 1: is effectively eugenics, like this is a eugenics dating app
Speaker 1: in humanitarian terms, claiming it would eradicate huge numbers of
Speaker 1: diseases which cost quote about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.
Speaker 1: And again when it comes to horrific diseases, I'm all
Speaker 1: for stopping horrible diseases that harm people, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other ethical concerns when you start talking about
Speaker 1: this shit, and you're just not dealing with them at all.
Speaker 1: As a guy who is like I'm not neurotypical, and
Speaker 1: I think there's huge benefit and having people with brains
Speaker 1: that work different be involved in science, you're also creating
Speaker 1: an app to put an end to that. Maybe and
Speaker 1: you're not talking about that problem at all.
Speaker 2: Anyway, You're not and you're not being even transparent about
Speaker 2: to your point about what is being considered a deformity,
Speaker 2: a a not typical uh thing inside of a person.
Speaker 1: Because it's like some scientists are like, hey, there's a
Speaker 1: disease where people's skin is born inside out. We want
Speaker 1: to stop that. I'll be like, yeah, man, I don't
Speaker 1: think we gain anything from babies and their skin inside out, right,
Speaker 1: But that's just never where it ends, you know.
Speaker 2: And I also I want you to know what color
Speaker 2: that skin is when we flipped around. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 2: be the color we like, right, what other stuff you
Speaker 2: wanted to do with baby skin?
Speaker 1: This got announced this dating service for the first time
Speaker 1: during an appearance Church made on Sixty Minutes. He later
Speaker 1: claimed that the section about Digitate wasn't supposed to air, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had no idea they were putting that in the show.
Speaker 1: I was just talking, and that he'd intended to just
Speaker 1: talk about his pig cloning company. But here's how the
Speaker 1: documentary wound up sounding. I don't know if I believe
Speaker 1: him on this, but Sophie's just got to play this
Speaker 1: whole clip for you.
Speaker 5: Okay, wonderful church is a role model for the next generation.
Speaker 5: You got it working.
Speaker 1: It looks like he has co.
Speaker 5: Founded more than thirty five startups.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is incredibly important.
Speaker 5: Recently, investors put one hundred million dollars into the pig
Speaker 5: organ work on. Another church startup is a dating app
Speaker 5: that compares DNA and screens out matches that would result
Speaker 5: in a child with an inherited disease.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't find out who you're not compatible with, You'll
Speaker 4: just find out who you are compatible with.
Speaker 6: You're suggesting that if everyone has their genome sequenced and
Speaker 6: the correct matches are made, that all of these diseases
Speaker 6: could be eliminated.
Speaker 4: Right, it's seven thousand diseases. It's about five percent of
Speaker 4: the population. It's about a trillion dollars a year worldwide.
Speaker 1: Now, it's kind of like prone about five percent of
Speaker 1: the population. You know, of those types of people happening,
Speaker 1: I'm problematic there.
Speaker 3: I just want to walk through like some kind of
Speaker 3: like conference and walk up to a board and go,
Speaker 3: this is important, this is important.
Speaker 1: I do that. That's exactly what I'm like at cees.
Speaker 1: If I think they'll give me something cool consumer electronics
Speaker 1: show work. Oh yeah, it's important.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when you're a tall guy with a beard and
Speaker 1: you walk around leaning into screens going this is important,
Speaker 1: people will just give you stuff. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah he really, he really sped past it in a
Speaker 2: way that it's more about the elimination of like the diseases,
Speaker 2: and not the curation of yeah, of another species, like
Speaker 2: truly saying like important seven thousand.
Speaker 1: Huh can I get a list?
Speaker 2: He's so tall, he's so tough to look at. Yeah,
Speaker 2: given how bad he wants perfect people, right, like, you
Speaker 2: would think that he should not get to say what
Speaker 2: a perfect person is. And yet here we are.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: He you know what he looks like? Do you remember
Speaker 1: back when like internet comedy websites were all funded by
Speaker 1: T shirt ads where they would like photoshop different T
Speaker 1: shirts into the same like old white guy with a
Speaker 1: long beard. He was like, surprisingly jacked. He looks like
Speaker 1: that guy if he stopped taking hgh. So this this
Speaker 1: sixty minutes interview cost a Ruckus online to put it lightly,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I need to go to the
Speaker 1: obvious issue people had with the eugenics app. But it's
Speaker 1: worth emphasizing that this would be just a nightmare from
Speaker 1: a privacy standpoint, like your genome being out there, okay,
Speaker 1: Cupid having your genome?
Speaker 2: Yes, not good?
Speaker 1: Maybe not the best.
Speaker 2: No, not all of these apps are created equal. I
Speaker 2: don't even know that they have the staff that could
Speaker 2: manage your genome properly much, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So doctor Church responded to this by declaring his detractors
Speaker 1: clickbait critics who weren't thinking deeply about a complex problem.
Speaker 1: You assured everyone that any given person on the app
Speaker 1: would still be compatible with ninety five percent of the population,
Speaker 1: and that the app wouldn't provide health data to users.
Speaker 1: Although there's also stuff that got like brought up in
Speaker 1: that MIT article. They're like, what about people with like
Speaker 1: Huntington's disease markers, because like there's no one technically that
Speaker 1: you could match them with and be totally safe. Do
Speaker 1: people who have those markers not deserve to have relationships?
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you're saying? Like that seems
Speaker 1: kind of bad.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also can't find where he says the data
Speaker 1: would never be sold or used for any other purpose. Ever,
Speaker 1: I certainly don't know that that's written down anywhere in
Speaker 1: like an eu l al o. Again, this service does
Speaker 1: not exist really yet.
Speaker 2: I'm sure part of his funding says that he's not
Speaker 2: allowed to say that that, like there, we want to
Speaker 2: be able to use this in a different kind of way,
Speaker 2: and that's how we can we can justify giving you
Speaker 2: all this money. Also, the elimination of diseases is such
Speaker 2: a silly concept because you also might make new ones.
Speaker 2: It's not like we know for sure that like there's
Speaker 2: no new possibilities in these perfectly synchronized genomes.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, thank you for being the Ian Malcolm of
Speaker 1: these episodes and like reminding us all of chaos theory.
Speaker 1: If you want, you can drop a little bit of
Speaker 1: water down your hand. Maybe I'm button the top two
Speaker 1: buttons of your shiit, like, really go for it.
Speaker 2: I gotta get jacked first. Yeah, I'll get there. I
Speaker 2: forget it out.
Speaker 1: Oh man, he did look good in that movie. Right
Speaker 1: as to the whole eugenics of it all, When he
Speaker 1: gets got challenged on this church, who is a Twitter
Speaker 1: user replied, eugenics US Comma Germany, Comma, etc. Nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy interfered with human lives and personal reproductive choices. True,
Speaker 1: not just those two countries, not just that type. But okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it's Twitter.
Speaker 2: If we're listening facts. Yeah, that's sure, that's cool.
Speaker 1: And then he says like, that's not what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. I'm just trying to help people understand genetic risk.
Speaker 1: But you're saying they won't even be matched with those people.
Speaker 1: Is that really?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I cur it right now. And that MIT article also
Speaker 1: noted that like what he's claiming to do, like preconception
Speaker 1: genetic testing is already common. But that's a lot less
Speaker 1: sketchy because you're not saying we want to stop people
Speaker 1: from meeting who aren't quote unquote compatible. That's just saying,
Speaker 1: if people decide they might want to have a kid,
Speaker 1: we can test them both and see are their potential
Speaker 1: things that like illnesses that those kids could have. Right,
Speaker 1: And there's a debate to have about that too, But
Speaker 1: it is very different because those people have already met, right.
Speaker 1: And Church even responded to this by saying, if you
Speaker 1: do it after you've already fallen in love, it's mostly
Speaker 1: bad news. By that point, a quarter of kids will
Speaker 1: be diseased. If you can go back in time before
Speaker 1: they fall in love, you get a much more positive message.
Speaker 1: And not everyone wants kids, George.
Speaker 2: Not everyone wants kids. Not everyone frankly wants kids the
Speaker 2: way you want them. It really is putting a lot
Speaker 2: of your decision making on random people.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's not great. So Digit Date's motto is
Speaker 1: science is your Wingman, which I think makes it clear
Speaker 1: that their desired clientele is more on the tech pro
Speaker 1: side of things. That said, they've also sought to go
Speaker 1: he'd after what he was described in an ad as
Speaker 1: an untapped market at one point, which is communities around
Speaker 1: the world who do arranged marriages or only within a
Speaker 1: limited cast or tribe, right, like we can make sure
Speaker 1: that you only marry Brahmins with Brahmins in India or whatever.
Speaker 1: And this is this is what people were led to
Speaker 1: believe by a job ad posted on Digitate's website, and
Speaker 1: Church later claimed that post was an error and that no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we'd never help anyone with that sort of thing. That's
Speaker 1: obviously unethical.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's really smart to go that route, because I'm
Speaker 2: so ignorant, I just presumed that he was going at
Speaker 2: like young singles in the city it's like, no, you
Speaker 2: need nasty conservatives, sort of like principles that have already
Speaker 2: been established.
Speaker 1: Got to get the Saudi royal family, heir, yeah to
Speaker 1: agree to this. Yeah, oh man, And it's like yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, that's not what we wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll see, We'll see. So Digitate does still seem to
Speaker 1: exist in twenty twenty five, although it has not gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of press since the initial uproar, and it
Speaker 1: seems to be on George's back burner since the diet
Speaker 1: Wolf stuff. Apparently the company is now more focusing on
Speaker 1: like general dating planning and health planning and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kinda I don't know that they actually have a
Speaker 1: much of a product. So let's talk about another company
Speaker 1: George is involved with, this time as a board member
Speaker 1: and expert advisor, but not a co founder, and this
Speaker 1: company is bio Viva. They are a US biotech startup
Speaker 1: that sells anti aging therapies and may have twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: stat News reported that the CEO, Elizabeth Parrish, was awaiting
Speaker 1: data from a human study of six patients who received
Speaker 1: experimental gene therapy for Alzheimer's in Mexico the year before,
Speaker 1: these were supposed to be six people with dementia who
Speaker 1: were getting an experimental like Tilomeri's like lengthening therapy that
Speaker 1: would help deage their brains. Now, Langston, you've been on
Speaker 1: the show a while, Sophie, you've been on every episode.
Speaker 1: You all know that when we're talking in this show
Speaker 1: and say the words experimental therapy and Mexico, something not
Speaker 1: great is about to be right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a reason there's small of a sample size,
Speaker 2: and this because they're doing something pretty fucked up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pera write up by science journalist and formal molecular
Speaker 1: cell biologist Leonid Schneider on the website for Better Science,
Speaker 1: the gene therapy these Alzheimer's patients received was an aDNA
Speaker 1: associated virus AAV carrying the telomeres enzyme TERT, which may
Speaker 1: have zero effect on rejuvenation, but is known to be
Speaker 1: a potentially cancer transforming ONCA gene, which makes these clinical
Speaker 1: tests even more exciting, especially because Bioviva's CEO Parish announced
Speaker 1: in July twenty eighteen in a lifestyle magazine to have
Speaker 1: had turned AAV injections herself quote over a period that
Speaker 1: lasted well into the night. There would be more than
Speaker 1: one hundred injections in her triceps and thighs and buttocks
Speaker 1: and even her face just below the cheek. And again,
Speaker 1: we don't know that this has any impact on aging,
Speaker 1: but we do know it can cause cancer. Yeah, weird
Speaker 1: thing to shoot yourself up with one hundred times. WHOA,
Speaker 1: I love it when these people self experiment.
Speaker 2: That's nuts because that's full red hulk shit. You're really yes,
Speaker 2: you're doing something freaky.
Speaker 1: Fuck Now. The basis of this experiment was that, once again,
Speaker 1: it seemed like it worked on mice. Right, Perish is
Speaker 1: an outspoken believer, and the fact that if a scientific
Speaker 1: study shows benefits and animals, human patients should be allowed
Speaker 1: to volunteer to receive it. The issue is again and again,
Speaker 1: first off, that's not good that's not ethical or good science.
Speaker 1: That's not enough, right. You don't just jump immediately to
Speaker 1: putting it in people because you get a study that
Speaker 1: shows maybe this helps animals, Like, that's just not enough, right.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not enough to let volunteers pay to get it,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what she's saying. The issues again, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: All is where it gets icky is like, there's plan
Speaker 2: is never to put it like, uh, put it in people,
Speaker 2: you know, for for the greater good. It's put it
Speaker 2: in people because you have funding to do.
Speaker 1: Want this to be profitable. Yeah, and again, these enzymes
Speaker 1: can cause cancer. Now, the fact that that fact has
Speaker 1: made it very difficult to get approval to conduct these studies.
Speaker 1: And so the inventor of the treatment, a guy named
Speaker 1: Bill Andrews who worked at a different company before Bioviva,
Speaker 1: tried to conduct a trial with this other company in
Speaker 1: Mexico in twenty seventeen in which participants with mid to
Speaker 1: late stage Alzheimer's would pay eleven million dollars to attempt
Speaker 1: this treatment. Wound up not being able to find anyone
Speaker 1: with Alzheimer's who was willing to pay that, probably because
Speaker 1: their families had control of the money and were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I kind of want that. Eleven million
Speaker 1: for me was pretty old.
Speaker 2: I be here not long.
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm gonna keep that money in half.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This proved impossible. So they tried to recruit patients for
Speaker 1: another trial in Colombia for just one million dollars each.
Speaker 1: I don't think that worked either, as far as I know. No,
Speaker 1: evidence of it. Now the technology is in Bioviva's hands,
Speaker 1: and it's unclear how much they charged participants to be
Speaker 1: guinea pigs here. For his part, Church was asked in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen about ties to Biovia, and he said I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call them ties. I advise people who need advice,
Speaker 1: and they clearly needed advice. He has been on the
Speaker 1: board of the company since twenty fifteen. This isn't like
Speaker 1: informal you're on the board, man, this is public.
Speaker 2: Ties on the board is a tie?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: Do I have ties to iHeart Media. I've advised them
Speaker 1: on podcast, to them every two weeks. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't pay for my healthcare or anything, right.
Speaker 2: I drink blood with them every once in a while.
Speaker 2: It's not yes.
Speaker 1: Do I drink a little human blood? Is it the
Speaker 1: only way I can stay alive? Am I allergic to
Speaker 1: the son, of course? But I'm not a vampire. That'd
Speaker 1: be weird to call me a vampire.
Speaker 2: You're being crazy. You're honestly being crazy.
Speaker 1: When asked about the risk of causing cancer through this treatment,
Speaker 1: Church replied, I think that's still an issue with Tila Murres.
Speaker 1: I would not sugarcoat that so I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: it's time for that just yet, but it's close. It's
Speaker 1: extremely close. Meanwhile, bioethicist Leigh Turner of the University of
Speaker 1: Minnesota set of Bioviva's study using this dangerous treatment, everything
Speaker 1: I'm seeing indicates the involved parties are not conducting a
Speaker 1: credible clinical trial with appropriate safeguards. Now, despite Church being
Speaker 1: Cagy whenever someone asks, hey, don't you work with that
Speaker 1: like sketchy anti aging firm. In twenty twenty two, Church
Speaker 1: published a scientific article in the Proceedings of the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences alongside Elizabeth Parrish and like ten other authors.
Speaker 1: So he's one of a bunch of authors on this
Speaker 1: article that suggests that you can vape a gene therapy
Speaker 1: vector called CMV in order to if you like, vaporize
Speaker 1: it and let a mouse inhale it, it will increase
Speaker 1: their lifespan by forty one percent without increasing the risk
Speaker 1: of cancer.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: The article concludes the impact of this research on an
Speaker 1: aging population cannot be understated, as the global aging related
Speaker 1: non communicable disease burden quickly rises. So the article is like, obviously,
Speaker 1: if it extends a mouse's life, we'll count extend human
Speaker 1: lives by forty one percent just by having people vape
Speaker 1: this thing, right, Like, that's what they're insinuating.
Speaker 2: You remember when when they were climbing that vapes were
Speaker 2: were like killing people, that everybody was dropping dead from vaping.
Speaker 1: Like vapes make you immortal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now all of a sudden, this technology is not
Speaker 2: going to make you drop dead. It's going to make
Speaker 2: you live forever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's just weird that you just got to put the
Speaker 1: right thing at it, you know, you just got to
Speaker 1: throw the right thing at it.
Speaker 2: You have those knotty cartridges. We're gonna put really tap
Speaker 2: top shit cartridges in the.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, the good stuff, right, but we'll throw
Speaker 1: some Delta eight in there too, fuck it, you know.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: But it's also like, yeah, obviously Church is a real site.
Speaker 1: Some of the people on this are scientists. Maybe this
Speaker 1: is a thing you could vape to. Why not, let's
Speaker 1: look into it a little further. So. That write up
Speaker 1: by Leon and Schneider notes that this study was allowed
Speaker 1: to bypass the normal peer review process at pnas P
Speaker 1: and as the journal, and that George Church was listed
Speaker 1: as a contributor without noting that he and multiple other
Speaker 1: authors of this article testing something Bioviva's like advocating, all
Speaker 1: were employed by Bioviva in various capacities and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do that. They had to like update the article
Speaker 1: to be oh, by the way, like all these people
Speaker 1: work at this company that's got a financial interest in
Speaker 1: the Sorry, sketchy, sketchy, we don't have time to discuss
Speaker 1: all the different shady life extension companies and schemes that
Speaker 1: George Church is tangentially connected to. But I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't bring up his colleague Aubrey de Gray. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've ever been interested in the size, so if
Speaker 1: you pull up a picture of Aubrey de Gray real quick,
Speaker 1: if you've ever been interested in the in the scientific
Speaker 1: quest for immortality right for people or at least massively
Speaker 1: extending human lifespans, you've come across Aubrey to Gray. He
Speaker 1: was a major name in the in the field for
Speaker 1: a very long time.
Speaker 2: He was the former God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks like fucking rasp buttant. Yeah, And like
Speaker 1: I get that sometimes that he really looks like rasp buttant. Like,
Speaker 1: look at that rasp buttant as he's doing a rasp
Speaker 1: buttant In that picture, he's got his hands out in
Speaker 1: a prayer poster. I'm sorry, what else is that supposed
Speaker 1: to be?
Speaker 2: He looks like he's turning into a wise old tree.
Speaker 1: Yes, hissing in face. Yes. No. Yeah. If an Int
Speaker 1: was a sex criminal, that's not an idol comment.
Speaker 3: And I don't appreciate that in a sentence with ens,
Speaker 3: because ens are great.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't know about all of the ants, Sophie.
Speaker 1: One of those iNTS that attacked Eisngard had to have
Speaker 1: like a problematic That's why the wives left, Sophie. They're
Speaker 1: gone for a reason. I won't take Sanders bounced and
Speaker 1: we don't know why. One of those ends knows why.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ so.
Speaker 1: Aubrey de Gray was the former head of an organization
Speaker 1: called the SINS Research Foundation SCNS. Schneider described SINS as
Speaker 1: quote an anti aging eugenics club for the very rich.
Speaker 1: And this is like a big thing in the earlier
Speaker 1: to mid aughts. A lot of I think Peter Teel
Speaker 1: at least had some tangential. A lot of like very
Speaker 1: rich tech guys were super into this because the promises
Speaker 1: to Gray was making and he did a ton of media.
Speaker 1: He was very similar to like George Church in that
Speaker 1: he was really good at getting a lot of media.
Speaker 1: George Church is an actual scientist in a way that
Speaker 1: Aubrey wasn't. But Aubrey has since been revealed as per Schneider,
Speaker 1: a disgusting sex predator and pimp. And yeah, yeah, pimp,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. So Aubrey de Gray has been
Speaker 1: accused by multiple women of various kinds sexual harassment and abuse,
Speaker 1: women who worked with an at SINS his colleagues. You
Speaker 1: can find a lot of gross stuff about the guy online,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to just read one account because it
Speaker 1: reveals something important about the culture of the Immortality for
Speaker 1: Rich People movement and the organizations associated with it. Quote
Speaker 1: SINS funded much And this is from a woman who
Speaker 1: claims that Degray abused her. And she's going to explain
Speaker 1: how SINS funded much of my undergraduate and graduate work,
Speaker 1: and as such I was often paraded in front of
Speaker 1: their donors. The role of my attractiveness and discussions with donors,
Speaker 1: almost always older men, was made explicit by SINS executives.
Speaker 1: At one such dinner, I was sat next to Aubrey
Speaker 1: by a SINS executive. I was told to keep him entertained.
Speaker 1: Aubrey funneled me alcohol and hit on me the entire night.
Speaker 1: He told me that I was a glorious woman and
Speaker 1: that as a glorious woman, I had a responsibility to
Speaker 1: have sex with the SINS donors and attendance so they
Speaker 1: would give money to him. Who cool. All right, great guy, Aubrey,
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll talk about him more.
Speaker 2: We need you to bone a few people in here
Speaker 2: so that I can make money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just like pimping for fucking VC money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: attempted pipping. Now, victims have alleged that sexual harassment of
Speaker 1: this type was normal within the SINS Foundation in practice
Speaker 1: by more men than just Aubrey to Gray, and was
Speaker 1: routinely covered up. Now, there aren't allegations that George Church
Speaker 1: participated in this, but he was on the SINS Scientific
Speaker 1: Advisory Board while Degray worked there. They were colleagues. He
Speaker 1: worked for this organization with a very shady history of
Speaker 1: doing this with a guy who had a shady history
Speaker 1: of doing this, And I don't know, you look at that,
Speaker 1: and you look at the Epstein stuff, it's just a
Speaker 1: lot of times where you're really close to some people
Speaker 1: doing questionable things man, and I haven't separated yourself from it.
Speaker 2: Pimp me once, shame on you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, think if like he'd been the guy who
Speaker 1: blew the whistle on Aubrey to Gray or whatever, but
Speaker 1: like he didn't you know, I don't know, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, multiple sex traffickers, right, I mean right right?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think after a while it starts to feel like
Speaker 2: that's a thing you're into.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kind of a weird that it happened twice situation Now.
Speaker 1: The SINS Foundation represented the crest of a wave and
Speaker 1: hype for anti aging research and functional immortality that seems
Speaker 1: to be on a downswing at the present, largely because
Speaker 1: none of the promises people like Degray were making around
Speaker 1: twenty ten seem any closer to coming true. Schneider suggests
Speaker 1: that being a smart guy, doctor Church realized this early
Speaker 1: on and started pivoting to anti agent cures for pets
Speaker 1: because there's just as much money there. But you're not
Speaker 1: at any risk, right, Like, it's just a safer business
Speaker 1: to be in. In fact, I would say the primary
Speaker 1: genius George Church has exhibited over the last twenty years
Speaker 1: since his real scientific achievements has less to do with
Speaker 1: science and genetics and more to do with branding and merchandising.
Speaker 1: He understands the same thing Elon Musk used to understand,
Speaker 1: which is that if you're good enough at announcing sexy
Speaker 1: new products that go viral, even if you only deliver
Speaker 1: like five percent of the time, people will think you're
Speaker 1: a genius as long as you keep enough of those
Speaker 1: stories in the media, right, and you can get very
Speaker 1: rich doing that. This brings us back to the dire wolves.
Speaker 2: Right, We're back. They're back.
Speaker 1: We've come around full circle.
Speaker 5: Baby.
Speaker 2: I don't know they were coming back. I thought maybe
Speaker 2: they were going for good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Church's whole point is that they're coming back, baby. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about his whole crusade to the extinct animals.
Speaker 1: When the first claims of this went viral, they were
Speaker 1: focused on, obviously, Neanderthals, and George and his lab at
Speaker 1: Harvard started working on a scheme to clone and bring
Speaker 1: back the wooly mammoth in twenty fourteen. This was a
Speaker 1: micro budget endeavor for like a decade or more. George
Speaker 1: claims they spent about one hundred grand on it prior
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty one, quote, which is way, way less
Speaker 1: than any other project in my lab, but not through
Speaker 1: lack of enthusiasm. It's by far the favorite story. We've
Speaker 1: never done a press release on it in all those years.
Speaker 1: It just comes up naturally in conversation. And that may
Speaker 1: be true, but he talks about it in a lot
Speaker 1: of these media appearances, like he talks about this kind
Speaker 1: of shit de extinction in that twenty fifteen interview, and
Speaker 1: that's his pr. He doesn't need to put out press
Speaker 1: releases because he's mastered the art of using journalists as
Speaker 1: his PR right, and that's what he's doing with this
Speaker 1: Direwolf thing. The way Church tells it. In twenty one,
Speaker 1: Ben Lamb, who's the CEO of Colossal Biosciences and his
Speaker 1: co founder, kind of came out of nowhere to throw
Speaker 1: money behind the idea and help him start a company.
Speaker 1: Quote Ben came out of the blue, I think, inspired
Speaker 1: at a distance from what he was reading about this
Speaker 1: very charismatic project which was very underfunded. He and Ben
Speaker 1: met at Church's lab in Boston, which acts as an
Speaker 1: incubator and advertisement for his different business ventures. Lamb, being
Speaker 1: another serial entrepreneur, gets involved and Colossal is Lamb's sixth startup.
Speaker 1: His first was acquired for a fortune when he was
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and the others he's created did well enough
Speaker 1: that he's got He's worth like a fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: million dollars, so he's like rich, but he still hasn't.
Speaker 1: He's not a success by Silicon Valley standards, sure, right,
Speaker 1: so we're still looking for his big hit. His past
Speaker 1: ventures are all pretty standard, chasing the zeitgeist tech stuff.
Speaker 1: He had an e learning company, a mobile app development studio,
Speaker 1: a gaming company, and a Hypergiant, an enterprise AI software
Speaker 1: company that once had Bill Nye on the board. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Hypergiant announced a world changing product, the EOS Bioreactor,
Speaker 1: which was meant to use AI to optimize algel growth
Speaker 1: to sequester carbon, and they were like, it's a climate
Speaker 1: change solution. You can sequester more carbon per square you know,
Speaker 1: acre or whatever than you can with like a forest
Speaker 1: using this by optimizing algae growth. Sounds great right now.
Speaker 1: I know you're wondering is that real though? Like, is
Speaker 1: that a real product? I like?
Speaker 2: It crossed my mind, Yeah, cross my mind.
Speaker 1: I can't say no. Legally, it was acquired by Trive
Speaker 1: Capital in twenty twenty three. But a former employee on
Speaker 1: Glassdoor noted, and this is from an article called Colossal
Speaker 1: lyre for the blog for Better Science, there's no secret sauce,
Speaker 1: there is no product, there is no money, just hype.
Speaker 1: And another former employee commented, this isn't a software company,
Speaker 1: it's VC marketing hype. So those people claim there's no
Speaker 1: real product. Who worked there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people who work there saying we're not doing
Speaker 2: any work is really awesome.
Speaker 1: This is not a real company. Nothing really here now
Speaker 1: for this stage of George's plan, right like the Colossal
Speaker 1: Bio Sciences stage. Once they announced this company. His pr
Speaker 1: rep of choice was a journalist for CNBC who got
Speaker 1: the first big scoop. And when they put out this
Speaker 1: first big article about there is this new company they're
Speaker 1: going to bring back the mammoth in six years. Four
Speaker 1: years ago, one part of their article reads it could
Speaker 1: take as little as six years for Colossal to create
Speaker 1: a calf. George told CNBC the timeline is aggressive. He admitted,
Speaker 1: when people used to ask me that question, I said,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, we don't have any funding. But
Speaker 1: now I can't dodge it. I would say six is
Speaker 1: not out of the question. Now, obviously there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that they're any closer to doing this here, and if
Speaker 1: you actually read these articles, George isn't even really saying
Speaker 1: that they're trying to clone a wooly mammoth, right, just
Speaker 1: like the dire wolf is just a wolf with a
Speaker 1: couple dial wolf Jens kind of pluck in there here
Speaker 1: and there. What they're trying to do is alter the
Speaker 1: DNA of an endangered Asian elephant so it can withstand
Speaker 1: colder temperatures and then release a bunch of mutated Asian
Speaker 1: elephants in Siberia. When he was interviewed by The Times,
Speaker 1: Church even allowed that calling it a wooly mammoth was
Speaker 1: probably a bad idea. An Arctic elephant is a better term, Right,
Speaker 1: That's not what you're calling it, right, you're calling it
Speaker 1: a holy mammoth at all of the press coverage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also so we can skip past the fact
Speaker 2: that you're not actually helping the existing elephants, you're just
Speaker 2: trying to create a new species that'll mirror the old one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like if you go to like a family
Speaker 1: who's like like living on the edge and about to
Speaker 1: lose their Section eight housing, and you're like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to fix everything for you. Give them all haircuts that
Speaker 1: they don't like or didn't ask for. You're like, problem solved.
Speaker 1: Look at you guys.
Speaker 2: Right, guess what all of you guys got the Rachel?
Speaker 2: Ain't that nice?
Speaker 1: Isn't that good?
Speaker 2: You all got the Rachel?
Speaker 1: Anyway? Bye. Here's what his business partner Ben Lamb told
Speaker 1: CNBC in that same article. All goal is the successful
Speaker 1: de extinction of interbreedable herds of mammoths that we can
Speaker 1: leverage in the rewilding of the Arctic. And then we
Speaker 1: want to leverage those technologies for what we're calling thoughtful
Speaker 1: disruptive conservation. First off, using leverage twice in two sentences,
Speaker 1: that's a bad guy. That's just a bad guy. Disruptive
Speaker 1: conservation not what conservation is.
Speaker 2: So first, we're gonna leverage these people over here, and
Speaker 2: that's going to allow us to swoop in and leverage
Speaker 2: these people over here is the weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know how conservation is trying to stop
Speaker 1: species from going extinct and save ecosystems that are threatened.
Speaker 1: We're going to disrupt that by just making new shit
Speaker 1: and dropping at random places.
Speaker 2: We're gonna fuck up the elephants in a new kind
Speaker 2: of way. Isn't that exciting?
Speaker 1: That is disruptive. Yes, a bunch of random elephants being
Speaker 1: in Siberia would disrupt things.
Speaker 2: If you think you know what elephant's problem is now, yeah,
Speaker 2: you are going to be so surprised by the problems
Speaker 2: we're about to introduce.
Speaker 1: Oh, that are going to have a bunch of drunk
Speaker 1: Russians sniping them like all sorts of shit they don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with right now. So that article is
Speaker 1: a masterclass in what I call hype journalism, which primarily
Speaker 1: exists to pump up the perceived value of tech companies.
Speaker 1: It's like Pharheno style shit, right. And again they make
Speaker 1: the clan that like, well, this could stop climate change
Speaker 1: by slowing the melting of the permafrost. And I think
Speaker 1: that because they say it's like proponents of the project
Speaker 1: say this, I think it's just George Church right. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to look into like, is there even any
Speaker 1: evidence this would work? And I found an article in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Medical Sciences that says, quote, according to Colossal,
Speaker 1: the reintroduction of these animals into the environment, the ancient
Speaker 1: mammoths would change the environment from tundra wooded to step
Speaker 1: stabilize the permafrost and thus combat global warming. It's quite
Speaker 1: difficult to take these claims seriously now. The article goes
Speaker 1: on to note, it's we don't even know if they
Speaker 1: can modify an Asian elephant.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Modifying a wolf is one thing. There's a lot into
Speaker 1: like let alone, it's not there's nowhere near being able
Speaker 1: to clone a fucking mammoth.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Modifying an Asian elephant with mammoth genes is also a
Speaker 1: major undertaking, and they explain why. This presupposes the availability
Speaker 1: of early embryos of an Asian elephant, whose nucleus would
Speaker 1: be eliminated and replaced by that of a cultured pseudo
Speaker 1: mammoth cell. After a few divisions, this embryo would be
Speaker 1: implanted in the uterus of a female Asian elephant and
Speaker 1: would develop until the animal is born. This is the
Speaker 1: pattern that led to Dolly's birth in nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: and since then the cloning of many other animals, but
Speaker 1: this is not an option in this case. The Asian
Speaker 1: elephant is an endangered species, and given the low success
Speaker 1: rate of cloning generally less than one percent. Obtaining the
Speaker 1: many embryos needed and using dozens of surrogate females is
Speaker 1: not possible, not only for ethical but also practical reasons.
Speaker 1: This is what is indicated in the work plan presented
Speaker 1: on the Colossal website. But it seems that Church and
Speaker 1: his company are moving towards the use of induced pluripotent
Speaker 1: stem cell iPSC lines that would be obtained from the
Speaker 1: somatic tissues of the Asian elephant and could be used
Speaker 1: for cloning. These lines have yet to be obtained. The
Speaker 1: next step is to ensure the development of the embryos,
Speaker 1: which according to Church's recent interviews, could involve the use
Speaker 1: of an artificial uterus that avoids the use of female carriers.
Speaker 1: But of course this artificial elephant uterus has yet to
Speaker 1: be invented. It does not currently exist for any species,
Speaker 1: even if work is being carried out with a subjective. Again,
Speaker 1: their first plan is illegal because you would be destroying
Speaker 1: a ton of embryos and endangering a lot of females
Speaker 1: of an endangered species. Your second plan, you've done none
Speaker 1: of the actual work to acquire what you'd need. And
Speaker 1: your third plan, again, the science doesn't exist, and there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that you're getting closer to making it.
Speaker 2: And also as you just saying all right, we'll just
Speaker 2: make an elephant synthetically, is fucking nuts.
Speaker 1: That's hard. No, we don't know how to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not cool.
Speaker 1: And like bbing, like I'm just going to make a
Speaker 1: car that runs on water easy enough. Hydrogen power is
Speaker 1: potentially a thing, and it's like, well but you alays,
Speaker 1: try it. It's really difficult. It's really hard. When Colossal
Speaker 1: was brand new, doctor Church talked constantly about their ambition
Speaker 1: to create an artificial womb. But as the years have
Speaker 1: gone by, this goal was evidently no closer to reality,
Speaker 1: and so Colossal and its marketing have shifted to focus
Speaker 1: on promising other easier kinds of de extinction Perschneider's article
Speaker 1: and for Better Science. Church's problem is that its business
Speaker 1: investors and admirers in the media keep asking about the
Speaker 1: progress of his mammoth project. One has to throw them
Speaker 1: a stick to chase after. So here's Church's colossal new
Speaker 1: plan to de extinct the thylacine, also known as that
Speaker 1: Tasmanian wolf for tasm Mani and tiger. This Australia apex
Speaker 1: predator the size of a smallish dog, got wiped out
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. Incidentally, it is a marsupial, meaning
Speaker 1: it doesn't just state in a womb. Aren't real or
Speaker 1: artificial for very long? You know, in case the artificial
Speaker 1: womb isn't working. Detracting that yapping media and investors with
Speaker 1: a stick was a good idea, but even better to
Speaker 1: throw them two sticks. So after Mammoth and Thylacine, Church
Speaker 1: and his company Colossal announced in January of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three to de extinct the Dodo, the giant flightless pigeon
Speaker 1: from Mauritius, which was exterminated centuries ago. Birds don't need
Speaker 1: wombs to gest state. So again we see the first
Speaker 1: pivot away from like, fuck, we can't figure this out.
Speaker 1: We're not doing a mammoth. It's not going to work.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this tucking Tasmanian tiger. Let's try to
Speaker 1: get these Dodos back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about that bird that we beat the shit
Speaker 2: out of? Yeah, it was walking down the street.
Speaker 1: Right about that, Yeah, yeah, that one. We can bring
Speaker 1: that guy back right now. If you're trying to bring
Speaker 1: back the Dodo, and again they dad, recently could be possible, right,
Speaker 1: we might be able to do that someday, someday, just
Speaker 1: like it's possible someday a mammoth. Maybe, who would you
Speaker 1: bring what's the most serious scientist that you could bring
Speaker 1: on as an advisor to your project to bring back
Speaker 1: the Dodo?
Speaker 2: The most serious scientist I mostly can think of scientists
Speaker 2: who should not be there, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Well, I'll answer because obviously the answer is
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton. Right, that's what you bring on as an
Speaker 1: advisor for the Dodo project, right, I mean obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a fucking of course she's advising the company, a.
Speaker 2: Person deeply connected to both science and Dodo birds. Of
Speaker 2: course you need Paris Hilton.
Speaker 1: Of course you need Paris. And again she she announced
Speaker 1: that she had been made an advisor in a post
Speaker 1: about their Series B funding. My guess is she just
Speaker 1: helped fund this thing, and so they're like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: an advisor now, Paris, great science. I should also note
Speaker 1: that during this fundraising round, Coloss was found to have
Speaker 1: stolen Dodo artwork from another artist for their pitch deck.
Speaker 1: Very funny anyway, moving on, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And even we didn't even draw a Dodo make.
Speaker 1: Sure fucking Dodo level.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this brings us back to the start of the
Speaker 1: episode in Colossal's first and only real success, the dire Wolf.
Speaker 1: In their press release, they call this the world's first
Speaker 1: de extinction and a revolutionary milestone and scientific progress that
Speaker 1: would lead to the de extinction of other species. Robin
Speaker 1: Ganzert of the Humane Society cheered that this would make
Speaker 1: extinction a thing of the past, which is nonsense for
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. Actual scientists, like cell biology expert
Speaker 1: Paul Kepler at the UC Davis Medical Schools had this
Speaker 1: to say. The direwolf genome likely differs from that of
Speaker 1: the gray wolf in millions or tens of millions of ways.
Speaker 1: Editing fourteen genes is interesting, but it's not a reconstruction
Speaker 1: or de extinction. It's not even close. The three produced
Speaker 1: grey wolves with fifteen genetics, making them genetically a smidge
Speaker 1: more like dire wolves are not a de extinction event.
Speaker 1: Bin Lamb responded with anger at this, saying everyone just
Speaker 1: wants to argue about what to call these things. No
Speaker 1: one got deep into this science of how we created
Speaker 1: new models, range and DNA extraction and that's because Colossal
Speaker 1: has not been very transparent about telling people how they
Speaker 1: did that, because that's not what they're interested in. Those
Speaker 1: are company secrets, right, They're more interested in putting up
Speaker 1: photos with Like George R. R. Martin, in an interview
Speaker 1: with the Los Angeles Times, however, been made it clear
Speaker 1: that the company does have plans to profit from this nonsense.
Speaker 1: And this is where shit gets really this is like
Speaker 1: a Tesla con right. As for de extinction projects, to
Speaker 1: the extent they contribute to efforts at conservation, we just
Speaker 1: give them to the world for free, Lamb told me.
Speaker 1: But he also foresees marketing biodiversity credits to other companies,
Speaker 1: similar to the environmental regulatory credits that Tesla sells to
Speaker 1: automakers without its zero emission footprint, revenue from which enabled
Speaker 1: it to report a profit for the first quarter of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five this week. So he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the animals are free. What we're selling is credits to
Speaker 1: companies that just like throw more fake dire wolves out there,
Speaker 1: and like you know what, Chevron, buy some wolves and
Speaker 1: suddenly you can offset your carbon footprint. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: we go.
Speaker 2: That's the con that's the con these aren't just wolves.
Speaker 2: You're gonna like keep and take care of you. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna leverage these wolves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll admit when I first read the direwolf article,
Speaker 1: I did I called something being wrong. I did not
Speaker 1: call carbon credit scheme. No, that's really that I didn't get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really awesome if you think about it. It's
Speaker 2: like this ground such a long game for being able
Speaker 2: to not pay taxes everywhere else.
Speaker 1: You got to You gotta have the long game if
Speaker 1: you really want to avoid the most taxes. So that
Speaker 1: La Times article does a good job of puncturing the
Speaker 1: myth these are animals are dire wolves. One thing they
Speaker 1: point out is that, like they talk to a scientist
Speaker 1: about this, there's visible skin around the ears of these animals.
Speaker 1: You can see pink skin. Arctic wolves and other Arctic
Speaker 1: mammals have very thick fur around their ears because they
Speaker 1: need to survive and have their ears function while being
Speaker 1: constantly exposed to freezing temperatures. Right, And they also point
Speaker 1: out that like, well, dire wolves wouldn't have all looked
Speaker 1: had white coats because they're not all Arctic animals actually,
Speaker 1: like they lived in a lot of places, but they
Speaker 1: didn't just live in freezing temperatures, and all of these
Speaker 1: are like the Like the Direwolves they made look pure white,
Speaker 1: because that's how one are the dire Wolves, and Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones looked like That's probably what's going on is
Speaker 1: they were like, ah, people will buy this better, right,
Speaker 1: The arguably.
Speaker 2: The most famous dire wolve in Game of Thrones was white,
Speaker 2: so right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Megham look like ghost. He also notes suspiciously Colossal
Speaker 1: cannot stay consistent with how much direwolf DNA they sequenced.
Speaker 1: According to Colossal's preprint, they achieved three point four x
Speaker 1: and twelve point eight x sequence reads of the genomes
Speaker 1: from two different direwolf. It is also claiming fifty five
Speaker 1: x times more and seventy x more if they only
Speaker 1: sequenced two individuals as they claimed. Why am I seeing
Speaker 1: three differing figures? I don't know. That seems sketchy. There's
Speaker 1: a lot that's interesting about Colossal based on recent reporting,
Speaker 1: like the fact that doctor Church has no ongoing equity
Speaker 1: in the company he co founded. Maybe he just only
Speaker 1: cares about the science, or maybe he's kind of a
Speaker 1: cash upfront guy because he doesn't see this one lasting
Speaker 1: I don't know. Lamb has been the one to go
Speaker 1: on the Joe Rogan Experience to talk about their dire Wolf,
Speaker 1: where he responded to the criticism this way they live
Speaker 1: in the sort of this is his critics, this sort
Speaker 1: of fortune and glory world where it's a popularity contest.
Speaker 1: So one of the things people bitch about is they're like,
Speaker 1: you guys, don't write scientific papers for everything you do.
Speaker 1: We're not an academic university. I don't have to write
Speaker 1: a paper on anything. Ever. If we wrote scientific papers
Speaker 1: for every single thing we did that went through peer review,
Speaker 1: like we would have three thousand papers and no mammoths,
Speaker 1: Like you don't have any mammoths, Like whom mammothless? There's man, there.
Speaker 2: Hasn't been a single mammoth. Then I guess yeah, dear.
Speaker 2: Other point is kind of moved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that, Like it's one of those things you
Speaker 1: could start making. Maybe if if you were making that
Speaker 1: statement sit next to a man, I'd be like, well, shit,
Speaker 1: he does have a fucking mammoth, but he doesn't. That said,
Speaker 1: his company is now worth ten billion dollars, based largely
Speaker 1: on the strength of how viral those dire Wolves meant
Speaker 1: this is not real money.
Speaker 3: No, they have not.
Speaker 1: This is based on everyone getting hyped up about the
Speaker 1: dire wolves. There is so much more sketchy shit here.
Speaker 1: The company also claims to have cloned the nearly extinct
Speaker 1: red wolf, but they're red wolves are just coyotes with
Speaker 1: a few red wolf alleles stuck in there. Right and confusingly,
Speaker 1: Colossal claims that they have more red wolf DNA than
Speaker 1: any actual animals in the real red wolf recovery program,
Speaker 1: which isn't true because the red wolves in that program
Speaker 1: are not coyotes.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Quo.
Speaker 2: They don't have coyote mixed in, so they can't be less.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And the final point I'll make in these
Speaker 1: episodes is about this kind of sketchiest thing about Colossal,
Speaker 1: which is the Trump administration has taken a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in their de extinction claims. Trump's Department of the
Speaker 1: Interior head Doug Bergham visited Colossal, and the Washington Post
Speaker 1: reports that he does like a big press conference talking
Speaker 1: about like this is why we need to get over
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act. We don't need it anymore. We
Speaker 1: can de extinct animals, no need to protect endangered animals anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: Obviously this causes problems for Ben Lamb and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had backed the company is like, oh,
Speaker 1: are they just going to use this as an excuse
Speaker 1: to remove the Endangered Species Act? And Lamb goes on
Speaker 1: CBS and he's like, no, no, no, we need an
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act, right, But you know, Doug Bergham still
Speaker 1: wound up on Colossal's website and to an extent, do
Speaker 1: I believe Ben Lamb really cares all that much as
Speaker 1: long as he stays a payper billionaire and his company
Speaker 1: keeps getting investment dollars. I don't know. Is it possible
Speaker 1: Colossal would get in the business of selling credits that
Speaker 1: allow companies to create the illusion that they're keeping species
Speaker 1: alive while also destroying more environmental regulations. Maybe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem. It's just really hard to go
Speaker 2: back to like flying coach, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like whatever, Yeah, whatever his lifestyle is, he's not going
Speaker 2: to sacrifice it for the greater good of tigers and
Speaker 2: you know, dodo birds or whoever they're trying to protect.
Speaker 1: Now there's billions of dollars in fucking selling carbon credits
Speaker 1: to company or de extinction credits to companies who make
Speaker 1: more random wolves that they shoot into the world. Cool stuff.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: This show is always a lot of fun and really sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great stuff. I love it. Well, Agston, how
Speaker 1: are you feeling?
Speaker 2: I feel great.
Speaker 1: It's been a long one. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: No, this is great. I'm happy that we got to
Speaker 2: do it, and frankly, I'm devastated to know that there's
Speaker 2: a new man to be afraid of out there.
Speaker 1: There's a new hearted man to be frightened up.
Speaker 2: Really scared of him, and also don't care to look
Speaker 2: at him. But but here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, everybody, uh, you know, until next time, try
Speaker 1: not to take any of Jeffrey Epstein's money. Although if
Speaker 1: he's found a way to cheat death, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's like a sith lord or something. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. Whatever, You find your own ethical line, Langston,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you need to play your plugbles.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. Listen to my podcast. It's called my
Speaker 2: Mama Told Me. I host it with my friend David Borio,
Speaker 2: is about black conspiracy theories. Watch Everybody's Live on Netflix
Speaker 2: with John Mulaney. I was a writer and performer on
Speaker 2: that show. And you can watch my special it's called
Speaker 2: Bad Poetry. It's also on Netflix, and I'm really proud
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: And that's it.
Speaker 2: Follow me at Langston Kerman on all social media platforms.
Speaker 1: Follow Langston Kerman and and uh yeah, if you see
Speaker 1: a dire wolf, no you literally didn't.
Speaker 2: No, You're good.
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