Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 2: Really now, really.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to Really Know Really with Peter Tilden
Speaker 3: and Jason Alexander on today's episode, Are we really about
Speaker 3: to bring back a long extinct species? Will we soon
Speaker 3: be doing organ transplants with synthetic organs? What's the deal
Speaker 3: with cryogenic freezing? What are the ethical challenges of genetic editing?
Speaker 3: And will woolly mammoth meatballs soon be on the menu?
Speaker 3: And do they pair better with a twenty thousand year
Speaker 3: old merlou or Cabernet All on Really No Really, America's
Speaker 3: number one podcast, No Real occasionally listens to our podcast,
Speaker 3: so we've been told can't really be verified? And now
Speaker 3: here's Jason and Peter really.
Speaker 4: No Really, Well, yes, this is either we're gonna talk
Speaker 4: today about something that's either the greatest thing ever or
Speaker 4: a nightmare.
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. I don't understand the why of it.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: That's the big question is are correct the why? And
Speaker 1: we'll hopefully we'll find that out. And what are we
Speaker 1: talking about?
Speaker 2: Well, here's what we discovered that there is.
Speaker 4: A company, There are companies, but certainly a company that
Speaker 4: has been tasked with bringing back to bring back to
Speaker 4: de extinctualize, among other things, the wooly mammoth and the
Speaker 4: Dodo bird. We're going to bring them back, Peter, We're
Speaker 4: going to take them from extinct to back a hero
Speaker 4: to real life Jurassic Park. There is a company that's
Speaker 4: gonna do it, and we.
Speaker 1: Really really no, no, really, And it also brings up
Speaker 1: we're fascinated with bringing stuff, bringing our lives back. Sure
Speaker 1: like their techniques to bring people back from the dead,
Speaker 1: new techniques for that.
Speaker 2: New definitions, the definition.
Speaker 1: There may be a definition for death, which is amazing
Speaker 1: and playing with the genetic code. There was a scientist
Speaker 1: in China who got arrested for changing the genetics of
Speaker 1: a baby who had an illness, and he went in
Speaker 1: and was able to manipulate. Our guest is involved in that.
Speaker 1: Not that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: How are we going to create Captain America's if we're
Speaker 4: not allowed to genetically manipulate thinking and cryogenically freeze and preserve.
Speaker 2: It's happening.
Speaker 4: It's happening, and our guest today, doctor George Church.
Speaker 2: Is one of the people that's making it happen.
Speaker 4: Doctor Church is a geneticist, a molecular engineer, a chemist,
Speaker 4: an entrepreneur, a pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology.
Speaker 4: He is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School,
Speaker 4: professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and
Speaker 4: at MIT, and a founding member I'm going to say
Speaker 4: this wrong the wiss or the Weis's Institute for Biologically
Speaker 4: Inspired Engineering at Harvard. In twenty seventeen, Time magazine listed
Speaker 4: him in the Time one hundred, the list of one
Speaker 4: hundred most influential people in the world, listened as one
Speaker 4: of the top eight famous geneticists of all time.
Speaker 2: That's all of human history. That's our guest.
Speaker 1: You know what, you know what what? Time just found
Speaker 1: out he's on our show. He went down to he
Speaker 1: went down eleven. That's why we off the list.
Speaker 4: You're off the story to doctor George, good to see you.
Speaker 5: It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you one question before we get into
Speaker 1: the topic, because this depresses me. I hear your bio.
Speaker 1: In one hundred years, I couldn't do all of that stuff. Classes,
Speaker 1: a night's school and this and then my team and
Speaker 1: you're going to here. I get a pizza, I lie down,
Speaker 1: I take a nap, I get up, I really wonder
Speaker 1: what kind of person to you that you did all that?
Speaker 1: Do you have like unlimited energy? Do not sleep? Are
Speaker 1: you taking uppers down?
Speaker 3: At?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? How do you do all of that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: No, I actually I'm just like you. I take a
Speaker 6: lot of nabs. I'm narcoleptic, which means I fall asleep.
Speaker 6: He'll particularly want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, we got to work hard. We have to
Speaker 1: be very to put people asleep, by the way, so
Speaker 1: we will be cognizant of your north. But it is,
Speaker 1: it is. I got to tell you, I've not often
Speaker 1: do I see a bio that has that much. It
Speaker 1: really has that much accomplishment. So congratulations.
Speaker 4: It just makes us feel worse about us I did
Speaker 4: for harmorn't even get past it. And so bring the
Speaker 4: big issue.
Speaker 1: We saw the article about bringing back the Wooly Mammoth,
Speaker 1: and I guess Jason and I both had We went really, no, really,
Speaker 1: and both of us went.
Speaker 2: Why why why? Why?
Speaker 4: Now you're first of all, can you explain to us
Speaker 4: what your participation in that program is, specifically.
Speaker 5: Almost every aspect of it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: We we didn't really have much.
Speaker 6: Ability to do it for a decade, partly because technology
Speaker 6: and partly because of funding. Didn't really seek that much funding.
Speaker 6: But now, as of about a year and a half ago,
Speaker 6: we have adequate funding. And yeah, so I came up
Speaker 6: with the idea partly prompted by people like you asking questions.
Speaker 6: A journalist from the New York Times asked the right question,
Speaker 6: and I started thinking about it and decided we could
Speaker 6: do it. But it was only recently that we could
Speaker 6: We really could do it. So I developed my lab
Speaker 6: developed the technology for making multiple changes in DNA, essentially
Speaker 6: writing DNA into elephant cells to WOW, to make them
Speaker 6: less endangered and to make them more adaptable.
Speaker 5: To the cold. As a starting point for this adventure.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: First of all, I want to know at the end
Speaker 4: of this the name of every funder he has, because
Speaker 4: he went to them and said, Hey, I'm going to
Speaker 4: bring back the mammoth, and they went, I'm in. We
Speaker 4: can get funding for almost anything.
Speaker 1: We wanted to.
Speaker 2: Doctor Church very very very close. We're very close.
Speaker 4: So why so Peter's right, that begs the question why
Speaker 4: do this?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What? What? What?
Speaker 4: What's the guiding light for you on this project?
Speaker 6: Well, so we wanted to both deal with endangered species,
Speaker 6: developed technologies that could help endangered species and also endangered
Speaker 6: environments uh in to some extent, including the global environment.
Speaker 6: And so that it's a little complicated answer.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Answers will be will be simple, but this one is
Speaker 6: that the elephant is endangered. All species of elephant are
Speaker 6: endangered because they coexist with humans that either uh, they're
Speaker 6: a nuisance to them by destroying their farms, or they
Speaker 6: are a target for coaching for their ivory. It would
Speaker 6: be nice if they could have a homeland. They used
Speaker 6: to be spread all over almost the entire globe, and
Speaker 6: one of those prominent places were close relatives to the
Speaker 6: modern elephants. The Willie mammos were present in the Arctic,
Speaker 6: So if we could make them cold resistant, then they
Speaker 6: would have twenty million square kilometers they could roam all
Speaker 6: over where they're basically or almost no people and much
Speaker 6: less conflict, and that then they can return that favor
Speaker 6: to the Arctic.
Speaker 5: The Arctics in big.
Speaker 6: Trouble because it's melting, and it's melting it twice the
Speaker 6: rate of the temperatures going up twice the rate of
Speaker 6: most other parts of the Earth. And what's its risk
Speaker 6: is in the art there's a lot of methane they
Speaker 6: can be released, and then methane is eighty times worse
Speaker 6: than carbon dioxide. Then the question is, well, how can
Speaker 6: hold resistant elephants help keep the permafrost frozen? And in
Speaker 6: the three ways, and then I'm done with this long hand.
Speaker 6: The three ways are that a lot of the snow
Speaker 6: builds up kind of like a down blanket in the trees,
Speaker 6: and there's no animals that can really feel they could
Speaker 6: penetrate and tromp down the snow and look there. But
Speaker 6: not too long ago, a few thousand years ago, before
Speaker 6: the mammoth ten thousand years ago, before the mammoths were extinct, actually.
Speaker 5: Before a lot of.
Speaker 6: Herbivores were driven to extinction in the Arctic. They were
Speaker 6: it was mostly grasslands. It was very rich, much richer,
Speaker 6: more species rich than it is today. And the grasslands
Speaker 6: were easy to maintain, and they chomped around them the snow,
Speaker 6: and then the cold winter wind which minus forty degrees
Speaker 6: would get down and freeze the permafrost every year after
Speaker 6: the summer thaw.
Speaker 5: So that's one thing. Is is that the.
Speaker 6: Changing trees the grass allows the herbivores to trump it
Speaker 6: down and dig around and let the wind penetry. The
Speaker 6: second thing is that grass is more uh better photosynthesis
Speaker 6: and carbon sess trace sequestration, pulling the carbon outside out
Speaker 6: of the air. And the third thing is it's better
Speaker 6: at reflecting uh you know, the heat and the light
Speaker 6: that heats up the promocross. So those are the three
Speaker 6: three reasons the elephants might tulp with probably one of
Speaker 6: the biggest risks to glow warming, which humans are not.
Speaker 4: One is amazing because that I got to tell you
Speaker 4: that answer alone, just spun my head around on this
Speaker 4: entire thing, because it really to me at first glance,
Speaker 4: and and I would imagine then to a lot of people,
Speaker 4: this seemed like a sort of ego driven project about
Speaker 4: we can do it, so we will do it in
Speaker 4: a sort of Jurassic parky.
Speaker 2: In kind of a way.
Speaker 4: But the notion that it actually preserves a species that
Speaker 4: is endangered currently and allows them to inhabit a different
Speaker 4: part of an impact, and an impact that is that
Speaker 4: my head is.
Speaker 1: Thinking outside of the box, outside of that box, and
Speaker 1: outside of that box, because one of the questions I
Speaker 1: was going to ask you is how does this apply
Speaker 1: to all the extinction? Because they see the rate of
Speaker 1: extinction is just so rapid. But the other question, man,
Speaker 1: is you know when you bring back an animal, is
Speaker 1: it based on good eating? Because I saw there was
Speaker 1: a story about the massive meatball that was made from
Speaker 1: only mammoths DNA, which they put out there just to
Speaker 1: show that they could do cultured meat in creation.
Speaker 2: Who did this?
Speaker 1: There's a company, the ones that that that is going
Speaker 1: to produce cultured meat, which again is to help save
Speaker 1: the environment ostensibly, so they did the woly mammoths to
Speaker 1: get attention for this. Do you what do you think about?
Speaker 1: Is that a realistic thing? Is cultured meat and bringing
Speaker 1: back animals for that reason a thing?
Speaker 5: Well, ironically, I work both on the.
Speaker 6: Ancient and endangered species that we were just talking about
Speaker 6: and also on cultured meat. So with a company called
Speaker 6: upside Yes, and that was not the company that did
Speaker 6: the stunt. I guess they felt they didn't need to
Speaker 6: because they could easily credit with my cooperation, I think
Speaker 6: it is realistic. I'm a vegan myself, have been, I
Speaker 6: don't know, mostly since nineteen seventy three. There are a
Speaker 6: lot of vegan burgers that taste as good as regular burgers,
Speaker 6: or as I can tell, and the cultured meat is
Speaker 6: not vegan, but it's also not arming animals and not
Speaker 6: maybe not expensive events right now sincerely expensive.
Speaker 5: So I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 6: I'm kind of putting a little bit of scientific advice
Speaker 6: into each of these solutions. I think the vegan one
Speaker 6: is probably the most cost effective and long term.
Speaker 4: So I now have clarity on the specifics of the
Speaker 4: mammoth project. But we've also discovered, you know, and perhaps
Speaker 4: you're working on this, the Dodo. There's a project where
Speaker 4: they're trying to bring the Dodo back, the Christmas rat,
Speaker 4: the Tasmanian tiger, And I guess my head goes to again,
Speaker 4: why why we're bringing back the Dodo? Do we need
Speaker 4: more rats? Are we running low on the rat population
Speaker 4: that we need to? You know, how do how to
Speaker 4: the extent that you know, who determines and how do
Speaker 4: they determine what animal is worth de extinctifying?
Speaker 6: Right, So a lot of this is being done by
Speaker 6: a single company called Colossal, which which I'm a co
Speaker 6: founder of along with Ben Lamb. They're they're responsible at
Speaker 6: least for the Dodo, the Thilocene, and the mammoth. They
Speaker 6: have not announced any others and I think the rat
Speaker 6: was just something where people studying the rat wanted attention
Speaker 6: and they claimed that they couldn't be extincted. Oh, but
Speaker 6: I don't think anybody is actively interested in doing that.
Speaker 6: But I think the technology is is. I don't see
Speaker 6: anything about the technology that rules out the possibility of
Speaker 6: synthesizing a complete gheno.
Speaker 2: But so specifically, why the dodo. Is there a reason
Speaker 2: allah the mammoth for bringing the dodo?
Speaker 6: So both the Thilocene and the Dodo have to do
Speaker 6: with national interest, that there's a national pride. It would
Speaker 6: be like if the American eagle went extinct tomorrow, would
Speaker 6: you say, well that's done, you know, forget about it,
Speaker 6: or would you you know, molt an effort. I don't
Speaker 6: think there's the same strong ecological argument that we have
Speaker 6: for the cold resistant elephant for the mammoth elephant hybrids.
Speaker 5: There, but there might be.
Speaker 6: But I think that the countries that where they went
Speaker 6: extinct recently, much more recently than the mammoths, still feel
Speaker 6: that their spirit is still there and should be given
Speaker 6: it another chance to give.
Speaker 1: The them their DODO. So when we talked about these issues,
Speaker 1: you've mentioned the permafrage and we've talked about it another show.
Speaker 1: Permafrost is melting at a at a rate that's really dangerous,
Speaker 1: and once in the permafras are viruses that we're going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with from hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago that we don't know if we're
Speaker 1: resistant to. Animals are being uncovered. All kinds of ramifications
Speaker 1: of that, and the permafrost covers a good part part
Speaker 1: of the planet. So when this thing starts melting, holy crap,
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of stuff to look at. I'm
Speaker 1: curious with someone like you. Are scientists working independently to
Speaker 1: solve issues because there's a monetary reward with a big company,
Speaker 1: or are is the community sharing information? Are you sharing
Speaker 1: it with China? Are you sharing it with Iran? Is
Speaker 1: everybody their top scientists on board because they all realize
Speaker 1: the extent of all of these issues, bringing back the
Speaker 1: extincting basically to save the planet. Is that happening now
Speaker 1: because we understand where we're at.
Speaker 5: I think this is.
Speaker 6: Most of my experience in science and engineering has been
Speaker 6: one of sharing reciprocated all over the world. There are
Speaker 6: a few examples where there's some kind of race for
Speaker 6: a particular monetary or goal or nationalistic goal. But I
Speaker 6: think this is definitely one where as far as I know,
Speaker 6: the whole world world wants to do what it can
Speaker 6: to stop climate that to have climate change be under
Speaker 6: control or reversed. I think the debate there is more
Speaker 6: about how do we do it without going broke, more
Speaker 6: than how do we not share? And I have to
Speaker 6: give credit where credits do a lot of my inspiration
Speaker 6: for this project with the elephants and the mammoth came
Speaker 6: from Russian scientist Sergey Zimov, who has about one hundred
Speaker 6: and sixty square kilometers of land given to him by
Speaker 6: the Russian government in the northernmost part of Siberia, and
Speaker 6: I visited there. We collaborate basically, and yeah, we're sharing
Speaker 6: all that information. He's sharing it. He has monitoring for carbon,
Speaker 6: diacin and methane on the land, and he does experiments
Speaker 6: where he reintroduces herbivores no elephants yet, but many other
Speaker 6: kinds of herbivores that are well adapted to the Arctic
Speaker 6: to see their impact on the forest versus grass and
Speaker 6: the and the release of methane. So that's one example.
Speaker 6: I mean, I could go on about all the examples
Speaker 6: of sharing.
Speaker 4: Now, considering the ecological impact that you're talking about, is
Speaker 4: it dip I would imagine it should be easier to
Speaker 4: get funding for something like this, But is it difficult
Speaker 4: to get funding for these projects?
Speaker 6: I think the difficulty in this case I have to
Speaker 6: lay all the blame at my own feet. That is
Speaker 6: to say, I just assumed it was difficult, and so
Speaker 6: I didn't actually try. In my defense, I was working
Speaker 6: on the technology that would be useful for a variety
Speaker 6: of different things, including this, and so I didn't feel
Speaker 6: like there was a giant rush to go out and
Speaker 6: raise money. And quite frankly, I don't like making a
Speaker 6: lot of noise. I have to say. I do get
Speaker 6: attention occasionally, but it's not the it's not my jas.
Speaker 1: I'm going to write your check. By the way, Jason,
Speaker 1: you write a check for the mammage project.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, No, I'm doing the DODO. I'm gonna do Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm doing the dodo.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, because it just it seems you judging
Speaker 1: it appears to like the dot whatever animal, by the way,
Speaker 1: you should do that. They do it to zoo adopt
Speaker 1: a de extinct animal. Yes, did they do it to zoo?
Speaker 4: Well it works.
Speaker 1: Come on, you're sparading at the fifty degrees. I think
Speaker 1: you show the picture and you say you do sad music,
Speaker 1: and would you like to see the Dodo back? He
Speaker 1: deserves to be back. Send your check to and in
Speaker 1: your LIFETIMEE. We couldn't have it.
Speaker 4: Now, I'd probably do you know what, I get one
Speaker 4: of the little frogs that disappeared. I'd probably get one
Speaker 4: of those you like. No, I'm just saying that would
Speaker 4: be if it was a lottery and they drew my
Speaker 4: name in an animal, I'd get the little frog.
Speaker 1: Your voice because you went there, let me ask the doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing my mother's voice right now, going they're extinct
Speaker 1: because they're supposed to be. Letting go, let it go,
Speaker 1: bring it. But why are you playing with that? Keep
Speaker 1: what's here here and let that go it? It was
Speaker 1: meant to be gone. Resonate with you, my mother.
Speaker 5: I mean I can, I can, I can see it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: But to some extent we're mainly we're not really not.
Speaker 6: Initially bringing back the mammoth. We're making the endangered elephants.
Speaker 6: So it's not extinct yet, got it, don't let it go,
Speaker 6: and now we may get around to the mammoth pretty quickly.
Speaker 6: The technology is improving the point where we could make
Speaker 6: all the changes rather than just the cold resistant ones.
Speaker 6: But there's no there's no rush on that. I think
Speaker 6: there is a rush on the on the cold resistance
Speaker 6: of the climate change, and and so that might so
Speaker 6: we don't have to deal with the extinction except the
Speaker 6: extinct species issue, except for the dodo and the biologic
Speaker 6: there is.
Speaker 4: If I understand this correctly, I could be I'm about
Speaker 4: to be my ignorance is thrown on my face. But
Speaker 4: because you are using non extinct animals as part of
Speaker 4: this regeneration process, you're not literally recreating a wooly mammoth.
Speaker 4: You're creating a hybrid using the genetics of a wooly mammoth.
Speaker 4: In all these projects, right, you're not literally bringing back
Speaker 4: a species from the dead.
Speaker 2: You are creating a new hybrid species.
Speaker 6: That is correct, But there's nothing we haven't ruled out
Speaker 6: the possibily we could get it one percent mammoth. So
Speaker 6: that's just not our initial priority. And I can say
Speaker 6: that not only is it not our initial priority, but
Speaker 6: it might. But there's there are things that we can
Speaker 6: do that are neither mammoth nor modern elephants that would
Speaker 6: be beneficial.
Speaker 1: Are there medical applications that we can see today presently
Speaker 1: that are offshoots of all the work you're doing where
Speaker 1: they're because people listening to just going bringing back a
Speaker 1: mammoths is something that's great and it's kind of sci fi.
Speaker 1: And I hear that the permafarce and mouthing whatever. But
Speaker 1: does this yield medical results continuously? Where you go, Wow,
Speaker 1: this can be applied to ms or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's not that far off in the future either.
Speaker 6: I think we have done a very similar set of
Speaker 6: experiments in a way de risks the elephant project on pigs.
Speaker 6: So in pigs, we've made sixty nine changes in their genomes.
Speaker 6: So think of each edit. We call them editing the genome.
Speaker 6: Each edit is difficult. It would be like editing Mount
Speaker 6: Rosmore or something to change one of the phases.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of work to do.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 6: We did sixty nine of them, and those pigs are
Speaker 6: healthy and their impact on medicine is that their organs
Speaker 6: are being transplanted now into non human primates and into humans.
Speaker 6: The clinical trials phase is just beginning, so that not
Speaker 6: only addresses the shortage of organs worldwide, but also it
Speaker 6: allows us to make organs that are in a certain
Speaker 6: stance healthier on demand, resistant to certain human paths.
Speaker 5: It's amazing and so on.
Speaker 2: It is so clear.
Speaker 4: That the work you're doing seems massively beneficial to everyone
Speaker 4: and everything. But do you have any feelings about personally
Speaker 4: or do you respond in some way to the people
Speaker 4: that would look at the work you're doing and say
Speaker 4: you're playing god, that you are you know, changing the
Speaker 4: ethics of it exactly? I mean, I know, I totally
Speaker 4: get that it is beneficial work and that the intent
Speaker 4: is to benefit the planet and humankind. But when you,
Speaker 4: for instance, I'm thinking, like if Peter heard that you
Speaker 4: made sixty nine genetic changes to a pig so that
Speaker 4: we can now have pigs born to harvest their organs,
Speaker 4: they might have a reaction to that. What is your
Speaker 4: feelings about all that?
Speaker 6: Like I said, I I am a vegan, and I
Speaker 6: wouldn't that the number of pigs that you need for
Speaker 6: organs is is a tiny compared to the number of
Speaker 6: pigs we use for bacon, So it's on the order
Speaker 6: of billions of pigs are given up for bacon, while
Speaker 6: it would be you know, hundreds of thousands, and you
Speaker 6: could harve us many organs at once for many different
Speaker 6: people in principle. But I still think it's a valid
Speaker 6: concept and we're so we're working in parallel on a
Speaker 6: much harder strategy where we can make human organs from
Speaker 6: human cells in culture.
Speaker 5: So not so it's just like.
Speaker 6: The the meat that was humane that's grown without animals.
Speaker 6: We can we want to grow organs. Now that's much harder,
Speaker 6: but there are possible exponential there is it is possible.
Speaker 6: So in the meantime, we don't want millions of people
Speaker 6: to die, and I think that's the that's the trade off.
Speaker 6: But you know what i'd mentioned, I certainly wouldn't kill
Speaker 6: the pigs just to eat them. But anybody who wants to,
Speaker 6: you know, join me in being a vegan, then they can,
Speaker 6: and they can, and if they don't have any friends
Speaker 6: or family that need organs, then we can have a conversation.
Speaker 1: A Chinese doctor did gene editing in an embryo of children,
Speaker 1: three children, to eliminate the possibility of a certain disease
Speaker 1: that they could identify, and he's in jail right now.
Speaker 1: That's that's taking it to the next level. How do
Speaker 1: you get to that point where you can identify that
Speaker 1: somebody that the genetics we have, we have the capability
Speaker 1: to do that, and this person looks like they have
Speaker 1: a certain gene that's going to give them this, How
Speaker 1: do we decide and when and how does that even plausible?
Speaker 6: Well, so this is is this person is jk Uh
Speaker 6: and he's not in jail anymore. He was in jail
Speaker 6: for three years. He was creating a technology that really
Speaker 6: wasn't necessary, isn't and is and is ethically problematic for
Speaker 6: a huge fraction of the of the population of the Earth.
Speaker 6: And that's why he was put in jail. And he
Speaker 6: was well aware of the ethical concerns and he thought
Speaker 6: he was addressing them maybe, but he was basically ignoring them.
Speaker 6: So I think that that's that's an example of ethical
Speaker 6: decision that that I think most people agreed on, just
Speaker 6: one person deviated. I teach a course in ethics. It's
Speaker 6: actually required by the UH, and it's a it's a
Speaker 6: great opportunity to discuss this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you before you go, because you
Speaker 1: look so dignified you got the beard, you got the
Speaker 1: cort Wory racket. Is there a memo that you guys
Speaker 1: get about how to do something like that? Is there
Speaker 1: a Jurassic big and Tall store in Indiana? Jones? The
Speaker 1: line of clothing that we don't know about it because
Speaker 1: you are is that look. I couldn't carry it off,
Speaker 1: but you look.
Speaker 2: You look like a guy. You look some artifacts back there,
Speaker 2: But I whip.
Speaker 5: No memo that I got.
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you kind of you kind of blended.
Speaker 2: Okay. He was fascinating.
Speaker 4: That was one of those guys that you go in
Speaker 4: the room, you meet him, and you go his.
Speaker 2: Brain is better than mine.
Speaker 4: He's got things going on that I no way my
Speaker 4: brain could function at that level.
Speaker 1: It's so far, it's so far into me that I
Speaker 1: can't even wrap. That's why I said to him, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you have time in a day to
Speaker 1: do all the stuff you do because it involves so
Speaker 1: much genius work. Right, It's not like I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a puzzle and a crossword puzzle or a word
Speaker 1: excuse me. It's like so interesting bringing back stuff, bringing
Speaker 1: back to dead is really interesting. It used to be
Speaker 1: if you perished a couple hundred years ago, they might
Speaker 1: have tickled you with feathers, tied you to horses for
Speaker 1: trotting therapies. Don't know. And if you're back, I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to if you died from you know, you swallow.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's something wrong that might dislige the original Himlett's, which,
Speaker 4: by the.
Speaker 1: Way, is the only time I saw my parents touch.
Speaker 1: And at the Saffer Institute in the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: they're doing stuff now where they're stopping gunshot victims' hearts.
Speaker 1: They're replacing it with a saline solution and cooling them
Speaker 1: down their place and keeping alive the blood with a
Speaker 1: sailing solution injected in their veins, replacing the patient's blood,
Speaker 1: which allows them to give them ample time in another
Speaker 1: two hours to work on people to resuscitate them. And
Speaker 1: the guy who's studying that, the author of Trauma Red,
Speaker 1: who also worked on Gabrielle Gifford, said, now every time
Speaker 1: he declares somebody dead, he says, I could write and
Speaker 1: then think, could I have suspended them? And is going
Speaker 1: to change the definition of dead, That we're going to
Speaker 1: be actually able to bring people back in a way
Speaker 1: that we never have before, which is really strange. And
Speaker 1: our scientists said, the reviving cells and dead pigs to
Speaker 1: grow the dead cells, so they can actually give us
Speaker 1: organs that we didn't have before. And if they can
Speaker 1: do that, then they can do human organs and bring it.
Speaker 4: Bringing to television series that we're cancer.
Speaker 1: No, our series is dead. Okay, there's nothing. And then
Speaker 1: we got cloning. Barber Streuising cloned her animals. I don't
Speaker 1: know how I feel longed the dog, her dog, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: her dog, And I don't know that. I think the
Speaker 1: new dog went barbar Streis And I don't know who
Speaker 1: you were.
Speaker 4: You know that that's the thing, you know, I have
Speaker 4: to say doctor Church. Really he turned my head around
Speaker 4: about all this because I came into this episode thinking
Speaker 4: this is an ego thing.
Speaker 2: But I absolutely see.
Speaker 4: All that is positive and perhaps glorious about this work.
Speaker 4: But I also a part of me goes, does it
Speaker 4: make us more cavalier?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the species is dying. If I don't worry, we'll
Speaker 4: bring it back. We'll bring it back. Instead of looking
Speaker 4: at why is it done?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: He actually is though.
Speaker 4: He's looking at the end of us, and he's and
Speaker 4: he's going, you know, he's going their resistance to call.
Speaker 1: But a lot of us are cavalier. But thank god,
Speaker 1: there are guys like that that exist, that are digging down.
Speaker 1: Thank god, I mean, because us, what are we? What
Speaker 1: are we doing? If this Ted Williams is cryogenically frozen,
Speaker 1: that kind of just his head, just his head, He's
Speaker 1: gonna be pissed if they do bring him. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. So the first thing I'm singing, if I'm
Speaker 1: Ted Williams, I go. I had a career, I made money.
Speaker 1: You guys couldn't spring for the other fifteen.
Speaker 2: Month known for my head. I was, yeah, everything else?
Speaker 4: Would you now? Is that a thing you would do?
Speaker 4: Are you if? I? If you God forbid, God forbid?
Speaker 4: You had a disease that we cannot cure, and they
Speaker 4: said you're gonna You're gonna go, And they gave you
Speaker 4: the opportunity, right, wouldn't cost you anything.
Speaker 2: They gave you the opportunity.
Speaker 4: They said, we can cryogenically freeze you, either full body
Speaker 4: or just your head. When we can cure this disease,
Speaker 4: we will build you either an android body, or we
Speaker 4: can clone the rest of your body, or grow your
Speaker 4: organs and yourselves back cure your disease and bring you back.
Speaker 2: But it'll be two hundred years from that you in.
Speaker 1: That is the most absurd pitch. You know. You listen
Speaker 1: to pitch at sales pitchers and I go, so you're
Speaker 1: gonna hold mind money now on the bet in two
Speaker 1: hundred years, Well, somebody's going to keep you frozen, and
Speaker 1: that's going to that's going to that you're going to
Speaker 1: keep me frozen number one.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, that's the freezer of the He's But let's
Speaker 4: assume that they could keep you frozen. Let's even assume
Speaker 4: that two hundred years from now they can do this.
Speaker 1: You're doing it though, Why would I want to come back?
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody. I'll be the dumbest person in
Speaker 1: the room, whatever room I going through because the technology,
Speaker 1: I'll be going, what's that you got? What do you eating?
Speaker 1: I never saw it? No, I don't. I want to
Speaker 1: be here with my family and when it's the end,
Speaker 1: it's stand. How about you?
Speaker 4: I think I'm the same way. I mean, like anybody else,
Speaker 4: I am curious to see what the future would look like.
Speaker 4: I'm curious to see what my grandson's grandson might be
Speaker 4: a grandchild.
Speaker 2: I should say but I don't know that I would.
Speaker 4: I would be a stranger in a stranger I mean,
Speaker 4: so I would have no frame of reference. I already feel,
Speaker 4: at the age of sixty, like the world is changing
Speaker 4: to a place where I can't keep up with it.
Speaker 4: I can't keep pace with it. The technology has changed.
Speaker 4: You're already playing with chat chat, gip. I'm afraid to
Speaker 4: go near it. I don't want to get involved with it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to. It feels alien to me, you know,
Speaker 4: And and it feels like a different reality to me,
Speaker 4: not one that I grew up in, not one that
Speaker 4: I'm familiar with. It it it doesn't frighten me. It
Speaker 4: just makes me feel displaced. And I don't I can't
Speaker 4: now jump two hundred years. At the rate of change
Speaker 4: that we're going through, it's it's madness. Madness, all right.
Speaker 4: But who if you could bring back somebody?
Speaker 1: You tell me first, who do you bring back?
Speaker 4: Well, jokingly, I said to the other day, we miss.
Speaker 2: I bring back you know who?
Speaker 1: I would?
Speaker 2: Okay, honestly, I would bring back my dad.
Speaker 1: And I was going to say the same exact thing.
Speaker 1: And because we didn't have enough time.
Speaker 4: I now I know the things I should have asked
Speaker 4: and the things I should have maybe done. You know,
Speaker 4: he was of that generation where he didn't talk about
Speaker 4: what was going on with him, you know, And I
Speaker 4: feel like now as an elderly man myself an older man,
Speaker 4: you could discuss with him and the stuff. I could
Speaker 4: get him to talk about stuff. But Google, I'll tell
Speaker 4: you one other thing, let me ask him one other thing.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure about talking about being preserved. So I
Speaker 4: know I'm not going to get frozen. But I'm watching
Speaker 4: now these popular entertainments like I went to circ to
Speaker 4: solay the Michael Jackson Show, and Michael Jackson's on the stage.
Speaker 2: He's literally on the stage performing as a hologram Tupac
Speaker 2: right Abba.
Speaker 4: They got all these things where they've preserved these guys
Speaker 4: and now they can present them, you know, in nearly
Speaker 4: total realistic form.
Speaker 2: Do I want that done? Do I want somebody?
Speaker 1: Here's the deal? May I tell you? And then we
Speaker 1: can move on to go go on. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it because your heirs, no matter what
Speaker 1: you tell him, will sell. Jason Alexander and he's not
Speaker 1: even a question about it. Lez you're gonna say to
Speaker 1: them on your deathbed. You know what, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't make me hologram. You're gonna pass away, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna come to your kids. They're gonna say, would you
Speaker 1: make your down a hologram? And they say, they're gonna say,
Speaker 1: what number we talking? That's what's what number we're talking?
Speaker 1: And then and then it's all better off.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, I know you, I know you deal
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: You will live. Yeah, ye, hologram, google him? What do
Speaker 1: we have?
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I just can't wait till the post mortem.
Speaker 2: Jason Alexander cameo appearance.
Speaker 1: So that he's gonna be selling.
Speaker 2: He's gonna be selling sheath white, nurse hair grows.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't everything anything they bring, the kids are gonna say,
Speaker 4: check it out.
Speaker 1: We're good. No, we're good, and we're good.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: All right, So we were learning about you, obviously the
Speaker 7: the wooly mammoth that existed during the Ice Age, and
Speaker 7: of course there were other things like deanerthals you know,
Speaker 7: that were back then, back there and then, and the
Speaker 7: Ice Age of course was approximately two point four million
Speaker 7: years ago and last up until just eleven hundred years ago,
Speaker 7: So it wasn't that.
Speaker 2: Far along off. It feels like yesterday.
Speaker 7: I wanted to see if you guys know, because we
Speaker 7: all know about dinosaurs, right, but do you know which
Speaker 7: animals were existing in the ice.
Speaker 2: Age, in the ice age? In the ice age? So
Speaker 2: here's a it's a quiz for you, yes or no?
Speaker 2: True or false? The saber toothed tiger. No, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: So here's They're gonna be the basis for many of
Speaker 4: my answers. I'm going to go to my inside base.
Speaker 4: I live near the Librea tar pits. Wow, so any
Speaker 4: of the animals that are in that tar pit are
Speaker 4: probably ice age ish, and I believe they have a
Speaker 4: saber tooth tiger.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna say say it. No, they couldn't died
Speaker 2: off in the ice age. No, no, on the saber.
Speaker 7: Tooth tag correct, because the sabertooth tiger doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: It's actually the saber toothed cat that was. That was
Speaker 2: we were taught. We were taught incorrectly.
Speaker 7: They were actually more similar to African lions and they're
Speaker 7: most closely related to the clouded leopard.
Speaker 2: I've always said that.
Speaker 4: How about the master don mastadon I believe was the
Speaker 4: ice age.
Speaker 1: You'll say no, just to be contrary.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's done. Correct.
Speaker 7: That was an ice age creature. The wooly rhinoceros.
Speaker 1: That's a thing.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe not. Oh, I've never heard of the world.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2: I think I think I think you are making that up.
Speaker 7: The wooly rhinoceros was covered with long, thick air that
Speaker 7: allowed it to survive the extreme cold, harsh mammoth steps. Wow,
Speaker 7: all right, Next animal, the cranium rat.
Speaker 2: The cranium rat around in the ice age.
Speaker 1: Yes, just to say yes, the only rat that was
Speaker 1: forging in the ice age was the cranium rot.
Speaker 7: So, Peter, you say trum rat was no?
Speaker 2: Know that?
Speaker 7: No, the cranium route, that's a it's a Dungeons and
Speaker 7: Dragons monster.
Speaker 2: So no, that's not a real thing.
Speaker 1: And I should get points from not knowing that. Okay.
Speaker 1: As far as.
Speaker 7: Dungeons, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens.
Speaker 4: The ice age, Nope, we are post ice age creatures.
Speaker 7: Almost Sapiens emerged about three hundred thousand years ago, So yes,
Speaker 7: we were through the ice.
Speaker 1: It gives one last one because I'm going to strangle myself.
Speaker 2: The giant beaver.
Speaker 1: Giants beef.
Speaker 2: The giant beaver.
Speaker 1: Not only did you not only did it live during
Speaker 1: the ice age, but it was worshiped as the animal.
Speaker 1: It was actually the animal of the year one year
Speaker 1: and on.
Speaker 2: All the you know if you squeeze.
Speaker 1: That, a calendar was ever with different beaver every month.
Speaker 1: They had the January.
Speaker 2: Uh what was it? The name of it, the giant
Speaker 2: the beaver.
Speaker 4: If it did, remember, if it exists, and I'm not
Speaker 4: saying it, it had to be post, I said. Growing
Speaker 4: up to two meters long and weighing up to one
Speaker 4: hundred kilograms, the giant beaver is the largest rodent known
Speaker 4: from the eyes age of North America.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was where the statue we learned as I
Speaker 4: was right on em as as you see the permafroge, nothing,
Speaker 4: you'll see statues of.
Speaker 1: The giant beaver that the other animals worship used their
Speaker 1: their teeth to shoes all out because they just worshiped the.
Speaker 4: Giant beaver, they said, of all animals. Everybody see it.
Speaker 4: And that's the kind of factory information. Really really, you've got.
Speaker 1: It now, really.
Speaker 3: Really now, really, As this episode of really No really
Speaker 3: comes to an end, you may be wondering what other
Speaker 3: animals have scientists already cloned. Well, i'll tell you right
Speaker 3: after I think our guest doctor George Church. You can
Speaker 3: follow doctor Church on the x app formerly Twitter, where
Speaker 3: his handle is at Geo Church. You can reach us
Speaker 3: at reallynoreally dot com. We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
Speaker 3: and threats, where we are at really No Really podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for watching us on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Now hit that subscribe button and tick that bell so
Speaker 3: you're updated when we release new videos, which we tend to.
Speaker 2: Do every Tuesday.
Speaker 3: If you have a really no really something that amazes you,
Speaker 3: let us know and if we use it, we'll send
Speaker 3: you something nothing useful or expensive, obviously, but something laying
Speaker 3: around that we don't really need anymore. Follow us on
Speaker 3: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
Speaker 3: podcasts now. Other cloned animals include a ferret, a mooflawn,
Speaker 3: a carp a gower, and a common fruitfly. That's right,
Speaker 3: we're cloning fruitflies because someone decided we need more of them.
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