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Speaker 1: We're so excited.

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Speaker 2: You know, I'm excited first of all for Gandhi, because

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Speaker 2: Gandhi is extra excited about the excitement. The excitement is exciting.

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Speaker 2: We'll leave it at that. This is gonna be a

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Speaker 2: great conversation. Ben Lamb and Beth Shapiro from Colossal Biosciences,

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Speaker 2: this incredibly cool company you're gonna learn about in a second.

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Speaker 2: They are here to talk about many things you've been

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Speaker 2: seeing in the news. Last week there was a big,

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Speaker 2: huge announcement about the dire wolf.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people are like, what do you know

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Speaker 1: this dire wolf? What's a dire wolf?

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Speaker 2: Well, this wolf is I'm gonna let them explain to

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Speaker 2: you in just a second about that. Then, maybe several

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Speaker 2: months ago you heard Gandhi all giddy and doing cartwheels

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Speaker 2: over the Colossal wooly mouse.

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Speaker 3: So cute.

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Speaker 1: It is objectively adorable.

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Speaker 4: It is.

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Speaker 2: But Ben and Beth, thank you for being here. Thank

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Speaker 2: you so much for coming in and talking about this.

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Speaker 2: This is so exciting, it really is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having us.

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Speaker 2: I don't want us to go into all of the

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Speaker 2: above until we also talk about the arguably the most

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Speaker 2: critically endangered wolf in the world, the red Wolves that

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Speaker 2: you guys have basically brought into our world again through

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Speaker 2: this non invasive blood cloning technique, and let's talk about

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Speaker 2: Let's start with them, because I love conservation being a

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Speaker 2: big headline at Colossal Biosciences.

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Speaker 1: Talk about it.

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Speaker 5: No, that's great. I mean most people just want to

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Speaker 5: make de extinction the headline. We always talk that. You know,

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Speaker 5: de extinction and species preservation go hand in hand. De

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Speaker 5: extinction is not a replacement for modern conservation. We need

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Speaker 5: all of the tools, including new tools, to help save species,

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Speaker 5: and so we're very glad to talk about the red wolves.

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Speaker 5: But on the path to de extincting the dire wolf,

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Speaker 5: we actually develop some new, really great technologies which we're

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Speaker 5: open sourcing for the world, one of which is how

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Speaker 5: to isolate a type of cell called endothelial progenitor cells,

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Speaker 5: which is not fully differentiated. It's it's really easy to cultivate,

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Speaker 5: and then it's great for biobanking, so for backing things

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Speaker 5: up and protecting them, and it's great to clone from.

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Speaker 5: And it's also non invasive, so you don't have to

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Speaker 5: take skin biopsy and ear punch or anything for the animal.

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Speaker 5: So it's even better from an animal welfare perspective, and

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Speaker 5: then we use that technology to actually make four red wolves.

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Speaker 5: And to your point, red wolves are the most endangered

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Speaker 5: canids on the planet. They're the only wolves that were

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Speaker 5: endemic here to the United States. So I think it's

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Speaker 5: really really important that you know, we're not just thinking

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Speaker 5: about the theory of applying the extinction technologies to conservation,

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Speaker 5: but doing it in real time. And most people don't

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Speaker 5: even know that we've made more red wolves than dire wolves.

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Speaker 2: Wow, okay, I love it. By the way, the dire wolves.

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Speaker 2: I saw the photos, I saw the videos. I want

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Speaker 2: one immediately. I don't know, Yeah, I don't know where.

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Speaker 5: We're gonna start adopting those most are the third most

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Speaker 5: popular requests. The first is they want dinosaurs. The second

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Speaker 5: is they want wooly mice. And now we're getting the

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Speaker 5: flood of dms and messages of that. They want teakup

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Speaker 5: dire wolves, which which is.

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Speaker 2: Got one step at a time. So so, Beth, I mean,

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Speaker 2: you know, the first thing, I'm sure many of our

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Speaker 2: audience members are thinking.

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Speaker 1: They're thinking of Jurassic Park.

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Speaker 2: They're thinking of people running through this gated park and

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Speaker 2: being killed by terosaurs. And things, and I don't know

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Speaker 2: what what what is it you guys are doing?

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Speaker 1: What do you guys have about at all?

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Speaker 2: What is it you are doing that's sort of related

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Speaker 2: to Jurassic Park, but nothing like Jurassic Park.

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Speaker 1: Just to bring it into perspective.

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Speaker 3: Well, what we are doing is we're getting DNA from

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Speaker 3: remains of things that used to be alive and using

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Speaker 3: that DNA to figure out what it is that made

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Speaker 3: those extinct species look at act like those extinct species,

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Speaker 3: And that I guess was the idea for Jurassic Park.

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Speaker 3: They supposedly got DNA from dinosaurs that was in mosquitoes

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Speaker 3: in amber. I've actually tried that.

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Speaker 6: You're you're the only one that we know that actually tried.

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Speaker 1: Is actually not a great storage vehicle of it's it's terrible.

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Speaker 3: So amber only forms in a really hot place. It's

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Speaker 3: it's porous, which means fungi and bacteria can get in there,

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Speaker 3: and they just chew up the DNA, so there's nothing lefty.

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Speaker 3: Dinosaurs when extinct more than sixty five million years ago.

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Speaker 3: The oldest ancient DNA that anybody has ever recovered from

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Speaker 3: a bone is somewhere between one and two million years old,

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Speaker 3: which is way more recent. But most of the ancient DNA,

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Speaker 3: the DNA that's preserved in bones that we can recover,

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Speaker 3: is really much more recent than that, like the last

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Speaker 3: several tens of thousands of years. So we're really thinking

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Speaker 3: ice Age Park, not Jurassic parks. And there's not as

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Speaker 3: many scary animals in the well, there's I mean, there's some.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, is that ever a thought when you

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Speaker 2: sit down and start at base one to start one

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Speaker 2: of these projects? Do we really want do we really

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Speaker 2: want to do this? Is this an ethical thing that

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Speaker 2: is good for us to do?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, we actually have a whole framework for this, right,

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Speaker 5: so we try to think about what, you know, should

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Speaker 5: we do it?

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Speaker 1: You know, believe it or not?

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Speaker 5: To the drastic park comment, we get the scientists were

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Speaker 5: so preoccupied whether they could they didn't stop to.

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Speaker 1: Think if we should.

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Speaker 5: We've heard that at time or two, basically every time

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Speaker 5: we say anything on X or any social media platform.

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Speaker 5: But what's interesting is we actually have a whole framework,

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Speaker 5: right like, is it possible, is there a closely related

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Speaker 5: species that we can help with it? You know, are

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Speaker 5: there cultural application? Is there ramifications to indigenous and First

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Speaker 5: nation groups, So we try to take all of that

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Speaker 5: into account when we select these species. In every species

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Speaker 5: we work on actually has a connection to a existing

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Speaker 5: species that's in trouble, right, like the Asian elephants with

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Speaker 5: the mammoth, the pink pigeon with the dodos, and even

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Speaker 5: the northern coal with the Tasmanian tiger, and obviously the

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Speaker 5: red wolves with the dire wolves.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, it was in fact this checklist that led

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Speaker 3: us to the dire wolf as really the ideal species

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Speaker 3: for the first de extinction. Dire Wolves are morphologically similar

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Speaker 3: to gray wolves. We know that they are very closely

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Speaker 3: related to gray wolves. They share ninety nine point five

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Speaker 3: percent of their DNA. But the other thing that makes

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Speaker 3: gray wolves and dire wolves a really important pair for

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Speaker 3: this is that we know so much about gray wolves

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Speaker 3: because domestic dogs are a gray wolf, and so we

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Speaker 3: have tons of information about how to care for them

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Speaker 3: in the wild, how to do surrogacy, how to interpret

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Speaker 3: anything that changes as a consequence of the work that

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Speaker 3: we're doing, and ultimately we want these technologies to be

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Speaker 3: able to be applied broadly as a tool for conservation,

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Speaker 3: not a replacement for traditional conservation, but a new tool

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Speaker 3: for conservation, and so we need all of this foundational

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Speaker 3: scientific knowledge, and the gray wolf and dire wolf make

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Speaker 3: that possible in a way that really no other species could.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm loving that my little Schnauzers are a gray

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Speaker 2: from the gray wolf family. So I mean, gandha, you

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Speaker 2: had them on your podcast before and give us a

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Speaker 2: reach around to one of the most some of the

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Speaker 2: most fascinating things you learned on that podcast that we

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Speaker 2: can bring to light today.

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Speaker 7: Okay, so a couple things. One you guys were talking about.

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Speaker 7: You figured out that you could, but why should you? Why?

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Speaker 7: Because everyone's the biggest question, why bring back a wooly mammoth?

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Speaker 7: What is the benefit of that to society today?

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Speaker 3: For each of our species, what we're thinking about is

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Speaker 3: how does the ecosystem in which they used to live,

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Speaker 3: How has that ecosystem been impacted by the loss? So

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Speaker 3: in the Arctic, we know that we're missing most of

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Speaker 3: the big animals that used to be there, and we

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Speaker 3: have this amazing resource. And there's a place up in

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Speaker 3: northeastern Siberia called Pleistocene Park where Russian Academy of Science

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Speaker 3: biologist Serge Zimov and his son Nikita are doing this

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Speaker 3: crazy experiment where they've imported some of the animals that

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Speaker 3: used to be there, deer, muskoks, bison, horses, and they're

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Speaker 3: looking at what happens when you have the animals there,

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Speaker 3: and they do things like spread seeds and spread nutrients

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Speaker 3: and aerate the soil. And during the winter they scrape

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Speaker 3: away the snow from the surface and expose the surface

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Speaker 3: of the dirt to the really cold Siberian winter air.

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Speaker 3: And some places don't get exposed to the air and

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Speaker 3: they stay warmer and wetter because the snow stays on top.

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Speaker 3: And then in the spring when the snow melts, you

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Speaker 3: get this really interesting diverse landscape where you have pockets

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Speaker 3: of plants that prefer dryer habitat and pockets that prefer

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Speaker 3: wetter and this means that there are more plants there

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Speaker 3: and this different species of plants can support different species

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Speaker 3: of animals. And so we see how every species is

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Speaker 3: really intricately tied to everything else in their ecosystems. So

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Speaker 3: what we're doing with our projects is try to identify

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Speaker 3: species that are going to have the most impact if

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Speaker 3: we can put them back now. Not identical copies of

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Speaker 3: these species it's extinction is forever. It's not possible to

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Speaker 3: bring something back that is one hundred percent identical to

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Speaker 3: a thing that used to be alive. But we can

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Speaker 3: bring back some of these key functions, and when we

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Speaker 3: talk about functional de extinction, this is exactly what we mean.

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Speaker 3: Bringing back the big animals that can help spread the

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Speaker 3: seeds and spread the nutrients. Bringing back the only top

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Speaker 3: predator of the ecosis to men tasmania, so that we

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Speaker 3: can restore balance to that ecosystem. This is the goal

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Speaker 3: of our de extinction projects, and then also of our

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Speaker 3: species preservation projects that are tied to these projects, where

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Speaker 3: we can keep these important components of ecosystems there because

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Speaker 3: it's going to be way simpler to make sure that

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Speaker 3: species stay alive than it is to try to bring

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Speaker 3: them back.

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Speaker 2: So there is there any point to the argument things

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Speaker 2: or animals become extinct for a reason at that time,

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Speaker 2: they should have gone extinct for whatever reason.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I'm just throwing that out there because I've heard that

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Speaker 2: thrown against the wall before. Is that a possible true statement?

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Speaker 5: Well, there's lots of different ways that people think that

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Speaker 5: megafauna went extinct, right, and so one of the things

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Speaker 5: that is pretty clear is that the rise of early

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Speaker 5: man at certain population levels on all of the continents

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Speaker 5: and in subcontinents, we see a directly inverse relationship to

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Speaker 5: the decline of megafauna, which which kind of makes sense.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 5: It's like, if you're working as a group, and you're

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Speaker 5: working as a tribe going after a kind of big

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Speaker 5: you know, large, slow moving megafauna is a great target, right,

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Speaker 5: if you start moving into from that, you know, into

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Speaker 5: that hunting and gathering kind of a way. Now, there's

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Speaker 5: other theories, right that talk about climate change. There's other

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Speaker 5: theories that talk about rapid cooling. Most likely, and Beth

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Speaker 5: and I spend a lot of time talking about this

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Speaker 5: is it was probably some combination, right of anthropologic effects

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Speaker 5: being from human and as well as you know, changing

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Speaker 5: in rapid cooling in that kind of that younger dryest

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Speaker 5: period is probably most likely the reason why we lost

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Speaker 5: a lot of that megafauna.

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Speaker 3: I think it's important to look at what's happening today.

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Speaker 3: I mean, yes, there has been a rate of extinction

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Speaker 3: that has existed throughout the history of life on Earth,

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Speaker 3: but the rate of extinction today is somewhere between one

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Speaker 3: thousand and ten thousand times higher than that background rate,

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Speaker 3: and a lot of that is because of stuff that

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Speaker 3: we are doing. I mean, habitats around the world are

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Speaker 3: changing faster than species can keep up. And some of

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Speaker 3: that is climate, and some of that is the way

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Speaker 3: that we are changing landscapes by building towns and cutting

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Speaker 3: off connections and corridors.

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Speaker 5: Between fishing right and erradicate the entire forests.

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Speaker 3: That's really where this technology I think has the most

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Speaker 3: potential impact. We need traditional approaches to conservation, We need

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Speaker 3: to do habitat restoration, We need to continue to do

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Speaker 3: the things that have been working for the last one

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Speaker 3: hundred years of conservation.

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Speaker 1: But we're still not winning this war.

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Speaker 3: We are still driving species to extinction. There's still the

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Speaker 3: threat that scientists have predicted that in twenty five years,

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Speaker 3: more than half of species on the planet will be

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Speaker 3: in danger of becoming extinct. And that's terrifying. We need

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Speaker 3: new tools, and we need tools that can act as

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Speaker 3: quickly to help species catch up as these changes are happening.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: So if you're just turning us on and your head

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Speaker 2: is blowing up like mine, because this is all a

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Speaker 2: lot of information, but it's fascinating as f I may say,

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Speaker 2: Ben Lamb and Beth Shapiro are from Colossal Biosciences. And

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Speaker 2: if you've read recently in the news, gosh, the dire wolves,

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Speaker 2: those beautiful, cuddly little howling. I love that howl that

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Speaker 2: we haven't heard in how many years exactly, And of

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Speaker 2: course several months ago we're talking about the wooly mouse,

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Speaker 2: which I think is adorable. It is incredible to actually

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Speaker 2: also not forget that a lot of these beings are

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Speaker 2: extinct because of us. We did this, we continue to

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Speaker 2: do it every day. Right, that's the point you wanted

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Speaker 2: to make, right, Nate, Yeah, we had a converse. I'm

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Speaker 2: a big nerd like Gandhi when it comes to this

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Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And there are so many species outside

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Speaker 2: of the wooly mammoth and the dire wolf that a

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Speaker 2: lot of people have no idea about. And it's because

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Speaker 2: of man encroaching on these places where these animals were

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Speaker 2: just living.

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Speaker 4: Their happy little lives. And then oh wait, we're hungry.

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Speaker 4: Oh this dodo bird can't really run that fast. Let's

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Speaker 4: just eat it. Yeah, boom, they're gone.

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Speaker 6: Right, So it.

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Speaker 4: Is kind of because of us that a lot of

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Speaker 4: these species aren't around anymore. It's fascinating that you guys

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Speaker 4: are doing this.

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Speaker 7: I feel like like, go ahead, no, And some.

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Speaker 5: Are direct right like the testmiantiger orthilosine. You know, the

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Speaker 5: Australian government actually put a bounty on their heads to

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Speaker 5: remove them. And so sometimes people say, well, did these

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Speaker 5: things happen naturally? And it's like, no, that's not natural.

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Speaker 5: When a government puts a bounty on your head to

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Speaker 5: kill you and eradicate you, that is not a natural

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Speaker 5: cause of extinction.

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Speaker 7: So I think a huge part obviously, maybe the only

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Speaker 7: thing that you guys are doing is things that are

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Speaker 7: going to better humanity, society, the planet right now. And

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Speaker 7: when you were on my podcast, you mentioned something that

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Speaker 7: I found fascinating and I feel like it needs so

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Speaker 7: much more attention. And it was a micro organism that

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Speaker 7: you guys had pretty much found one.

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Speaker 1: Of your researchers.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, and it eats through plastic and leaves behind only carbon. Yep,

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Speaker 7: that would change the world dramatically if it can be

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Speaker 7: I don't want to say mass produced, but if it

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Speaker 7: can be used to get away to rid ourselves of

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Speaker 7: all the plastic that they are right now, where are

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Speaker 7: you guys out on that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: So part of our mission with Colossal is as we

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Speaker 5: develop technologies that have an application of conservation, we give

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Speaker 5: those to the world or free. If there's applications that

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Speaker 5: have an application, ways that can apply to human health

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Speaker 5: care or to actually you know, helping industrial use cases,

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Speaker 5: we spin those out right. Because we do have investors,

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Speaker 5: we have to find ways to monetize. And one of

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Speaker 5: our spinouts is Breaking. It's just breaking dot com. It's

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Speaker 5: led by an incredible woman, su Kanya, and su Kanya

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Speaker 5: in our partner Ofvascar, actually had this discovery at the

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Speaker 5: VS Institute where they discovered this microbe that amidst this

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Speaker 5: enzyme that actually breaks down every type of plastic. Now

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Speaker 5: you've probably heard about plastic degradation. You've heard of other

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Speaker 5: companies working on it, which is great. We need a

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Speaker 5: thousand companies working about it. But what's unique about this

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Speaker 5: is they don't have to be pre treated, right, they

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Speaker 5: don't have to have extra chemicals spread on them. The

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Speaker 5: enzymes work just by you know, putting the enzymes in

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Speaker 5: a contained environment with the plastics, and it literally we

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Speaker 5: call it breaking because it doesn't make smaller microplastics it

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Speaker 5: breaks the chemical bonds. So we raise a bunch of

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Speaker 5: capital for that business, and we actually have eleven pilots

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Speaker 5: with very large one from textiles to industrial, military use

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Speaker 5: cases and others where we as humanity build a lot

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Speaker 5: of plastics in.

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Speaker 1: Plastic is in so many things that we do. Right,

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Speaker 1: we think of it as like plastic bottles, but it's

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Speaker 1: in everything.

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Speaker 5: It's in our clothes, it's in you know, our airplanes,

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Speaker 5: it's in our it's definitely in our body, right, and

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Speaker 5: it's in microplastics are a bigger thing. So a lot

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Speaker 5: of the plastic degradation tools out there are just making

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Speaker 5: smaller plastics. That's not helpful. We actually have to disintegrate

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Speaker 5: and break the chemical bonds, and so we are now

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Speaker 5: using synthetic biology to supercharge.

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Speaker 1: Those microisms organisms.

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Speaker 5: So that we were we've already made it where plastic

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Speaker 5: that could never be broken down, so literally never that

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Speaker 5: we know of, can now be broken down in twenty

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Speaker 5: two months, and we're trying to get that down under

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Speaker 5: twenty two hours.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta get faster because a lot of people

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Speaker 2: are trying to get rid of those top secret vibrators.

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Speaker 1: It'll help so many people.

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Speaker 2: I gotta melt that thing down before mom and dad

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Speaker 2: get right, So if you accelerate that pilot that we

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Speaker 2: haven't explored.

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Speaker 6: Ye, just talking real world right now. I know, I

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Speaker 6: know you've.

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Speaker 2: Got a lot, you've got a busy schedule today. If

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Speaker 2: you want to know more about what all the above,

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Speaker 2: you can actually go back and listen to that podcast

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Speaker 2: featuring uh Ben and Beth with Gandhi and her Sauce

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Speaker 2: on the side podcast.

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Speaker 1: Where else can we see you? How can we learn more?

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Speaker 5: So we try, we try to communicate, right, So we

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Speaker 5: have a YouTube channel, right, we're constantly putting out content.

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Speaker 5: We're putting We're constantly putting out content on social our websites,

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Speaker 5: just colossal dot com. It's very easy to find. Got

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Speaker 5: that good for you, and so please please go to it,

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Speaker 5: please watch it because you know, people get excited about

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Speaker 5: the headlines, right, and everyone's very busy. But like I said,

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Speaker 5: and like we talked about at the top of the show,

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Speaker 5: most people don't even know about the red Wolf for

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Speaker 5: because they just focused on the dire wolves. And it's

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Speaker 5: great that everyone in the world is talking about de

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Speaker 5: extinction and species preservation and the extinction crisis, right I

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Speaker 5: love that people are talking about that and that projects

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Speaker 5: like the Direwolf did that. But I also want to

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Speaker 5: make sure people understand the applications to conservation.

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Speaker 1: Uh Gandhi, is there anything you want to do to

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Speaker 1: wrap up?

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Speaker 7: Yeah, because in the company, but he said they don't

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Speaker 7: need any By the way, I love.

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Speaker 1: What you guys are doing.

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Speaker 2: Ben, Are you interested in buying well, a media company

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Speaker 2: called I'm Heart.

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Speaker 5: We're very very focused, and you know, I think I think,

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Speaker 5: I think we've seen a lot of other big tech

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Speaker 5: people buy media companies.

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Speaker 1: Let's see how they'll shake you off.

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Speaker 2: All right, Well, Ben, Lamb Best Shapiro. We could go

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Speaker 2: on and on and on. You were fabulous for being

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Speaker 2: here and in good luck with everything. We'll keep an

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Speaker 2: eye on you. Thanks so much, awesome, thank you.

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Speaker 5: Thank