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Speaker 1: Longtime listeners of dKu will know that I'm a wet

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Speaker 1: blanket about Okay, well, I'm a wet blanket about just

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Speaker 1: about everything, but in particular, I'm a wet blanket about

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Speaker 1: the topic of settling Mars. But hear me out. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's imagine a world where we do actually have thousands

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Speaker 1: of people living on the Martian surface, and they live,

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Speaker 1: they survive, and they start to have children. What might

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Speaker 1: that be like? This future is imagined by my friend,

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Speaker 1: colleague and regular dKu podcast guest, doctor Scott Solomon in

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Speaker 1: his new book Becoming Martian How Living in Space will

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Speaker 1: Change Our bodies and minds. Scott is an evolutionary biologist,

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Speaker 1: and his new book asks questions like whether evolutionary changes

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Speaker 1: might happen to Martians across many generations, and whether we

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Speaker 1: might even see a new species of human emerging on Mars.

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Speaker 1: So today we're going to chat with him about some

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Speaker 1: of these evolutionary questions about what might happen to humans

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Speaker 1: if we settle on the red planet. Welcome to Daniel

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Speaker 1: and Kelly's Alien Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who has evolved

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Speaker 2: to live on Earth. And on Earth I will live.

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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I am a space settlement

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Speaker 1: wet blanket and I love it here on Earth.

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Speaker 2: Do you like snuggling up under that wet blanket and

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Speaker 2: getting all cozy and damp?

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Speaker 1: Well, I throw it in the dryer first, and then

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Speaker 1: I snuggle up underneath it, and it's really wonderful there.

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Speaker 1: And then I look at the moths which we find

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Speaker 1: on this planet alone.

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Speaker 2: Well, since we're extending this analogy, aren't you supposed to

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Speaker 2: be throwing that wet blanket on other people's plans rather

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Speaker 2: than snuggling up under it.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to dampen other people's joy, really,

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Speaker 1: and you know I could be wrong. I just want

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Speaker 1: to make sure, No, I really don't. I just want

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Speaker 1: to like make sure everyone's aware of the complications. Let's

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Speaker 1: solve these problems first, and then we'll go out there

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Speaker 1: and uh, people the cosmos.

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Speaker 2: So you do think that that's the future, You think

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Speaker 2: we are going to be peopling the cosmos?

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Speaker 1: I mean I kind of hope we do at some point,

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Speaker 1: because I like, I also think the idea of somebody

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Speaker 1: waking up on a foreign planet and seeing the sun

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Speaker 1: rise or you know, seeing two moons standing on the

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Speaker 1: surface of Mars or something like. I don't know, that's

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Speaker 1: beautiful and that's exciting, but it's not beautiful and exciting

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Speaker 1: to me if it kicks off a war between China

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Speaker 1: and the US back here on Earth, Like, there are

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Speaker 1: conditions under which that is not a beautiful scenario, and

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Speaker 1: I'd like to avoid those.

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Speaker 2: I think a lot of the people who share that

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Speaker 2: fantasy with you are sci fi addicts like me, And

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Speaker 2: you know, we read books about this and it seems

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Speaker 2: like a glorious future and so many adventures. But also

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Speaker 2: in those books there are a lot of wars.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: That's what makes the books filled with drama and excitement.

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Speaker 2: It's not like and then we went to Jupiter and

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Speaker 2: everybody lived happily and yea, and we smiled at each other,

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Speaker 2: like that's not a very interesting book.

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Speaker 1: No, But like, real life doesn't have to be like

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Speaker 1: a book.

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Speaker 4: But I was.

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Speaker 1: I was being interviewed by someone the other day and

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Speaker 1: they asked, you know, what do you think the best

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Speaker 1: outcome would be? And I was like, oh, you know,

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Speaker 1: we could have like an international research station, you know,

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Speaker 1: and you know, I explained a scenario where maybe we

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have conflict back on Earth, and he was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I don't want to be mean here. Is that

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Speaker 1: a little naive? And I was like, yes, it does

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Speaker 1: feel naive saying that out loud right now. But I

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Speaker 1: don't think we should go until something like that can happen,

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Speaker 1: and so let's stay down here until that moment comes.

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Speaker 1: And if we have to wait, then we have to wait.

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Speaker 2: But that's my whole point, is that our life isn't

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Speaker 2: the book and shouldn't be a book. And I think

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Speaker 2: a lot of people who are excited about the future

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Speaker 2: need to remember that the future they're excited about is

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Speaker 2: when they read about in books filled with conflict and

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Speaker 2: suffering and devastation. And that's not necessarily how we want

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Speaker 2: things to go, you know. But as we push out

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Speaker 2: into the stars, you know, there's lots of ways that

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Speaker 2: we could make that work. Obviously, we're not just going

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Speaker 2: to like land on Mars and have everything work out.

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Speaker 2: We've all seen that movie. But you know, there are

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Speaker 2: ways we can improve our situation by changing ourselves. And

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Speaker 2: then also, of course, ways we could improve our experience

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Speaker 2: by developing technology, by finding solutions to these problems ways

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Speaker 2: that like, you know, earthy humans like Daniel could maybe

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Speaker 2: actually have a pleasant experience on the surface. I know

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Speaker 2: that we're going to talk to Scott in a minute

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Speaker 2: about the human side of things. But how optimistic are

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Speaker 2: you that, like engineers are going to solve some of

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Speaker 2: these problems for us before we have to like you know,

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Speaker 2: grow a third eyeball or like a red hard skin

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Speaker 2: or something like that.

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm optimistic, but I think the first thing

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Speaker 1: that we need to do is get a lot more

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Speaker 1: people on board with thinking that this is important, because

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Speaker 1: at the moment, I don't think there's enough money to

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Speaker 1: solve a lot of these problems, Like, not a lot

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Speaker 1: of people are convinced that this is a worthwhile thing

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Speaker 1: to do.

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Speaker 2: And doesn't Elon have a trillion? Now what do you

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Speaker 2: mean there's not enough money.

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Speaker 1: He's not spending He's spending it on the rockets, but

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Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to be spending it on you know,

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Speaker 1: like satellites that are out beyond Earth's magnetic field that

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Speaker 1: have you know, rodents that are experiencing Martian gravity so

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Speaker 1: we can see like are they able to have babies?

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Speaker 1: And how are those babies doing. And so money isn't

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Speaker 1: being spent on the kinds of things that you can

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Speaker 1: read about in a city on Mars, or you can

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Speaker 1: read about in Becoming Martian, which is the book we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today, and a really amazing book. And I

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Speaker 1: should be embarrassed that I pitched my book, but I'm not,

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Speaker 1: because that's kind of person I am.

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Speaker 2: So you're saying that Elon should be spending more of

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Speaker 2: his money on basic science.

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Speaker 1: Research, yeah, absolutely, or somebody needs to. Somebody needs to.

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Speaker 1: And so I think that technology probably can find solutions

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Speaker 1: to a lot of these problems. For example, you know,

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Speaker 1: radiation might just be about finding the right kind of

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Speaker 1: shielding or figuring out the right kind of technology for

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Speaker 1: digging underground, and you know, then trying to find ways

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Speaker 1: to make living underground pleasant, which could be very difficult,

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Speaker 1: but you know, we could experiment with that here on Earth.

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Speaker 1: There's probably ways to solve a lot of these problems.

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Speaker 1: But at the moment, the money isn't being released for

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Speaker 1: those things. And I think part of it is because

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Speaker 1: not enough people on Earth want to do this. And

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Speaker 1: I think until people decide this is a worthwhile thing,

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Speaker 1: or until enough people decide this is a worthwhile thing.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't think that money's necessarily going to

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Speaker 1: be released.

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Speaker 2: Hold on, you mean if we took a poll of

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Speaker 2: people and ask them should we go to Mars? Most

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Speaker 2: people would say no? Or do you mean that? Practically

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Speaker 2: people don't want it enough to call their Congress people

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Speaker 2: to get funding to do this kind of research.

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Speaker 1: So one thing that's really surprised me is that when

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Speaker 1: I go to space conferences, one thing they're frequently grousing

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Speaker 1: about is that there's just not enough people in Congress

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Speaker 1: who care about space settlement, who want to see money

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Speaker 1: released for space settlement science, which is very different than

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Speaker 1: like space exploration missions, right, and like you know, this

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Speaker 1: is a very particular kind of space science that needs

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Speaker 1: to get done. And so I don't think there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of Congress people who are clamoring for money to

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Speaker 1: get released. There was a time when folks were excited,

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Speaker 1: like Newt Gingrich really wanted to see space settlements on

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Speaker 1: the Moon and was like clamoring to make that happen.

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Speaker 1: But at the moment, there's no there's no person in

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Speaker 1: Congress who's really, like you know, ringing the bell for

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Speaker 1: space settlement as far as I know.

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Speaker 2: And I guess that's sort of the headline of your

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Speaker 2: book is like, yeah, this is a cool goal, but

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of sort of unglamorous science that needs

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Speaker 2: to happen first to answer these questions. You can't just

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Speaker 2: skip ahead.

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Speaker 1: To the good part, right, And to be honest, one

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Speaker 1: of the things that I was hoping to do with

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Speaker 1: the book was get the message out there that like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: if you're a congress person or probably much more realistically,

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Speaker 1: an aid to a congress person or a scientific advisor

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Speaker 1: to a congress person, please understand all of these risks.

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Speaker 1: And if you're a congress person gets excited about space settlement, fine,

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Speaker 1: but please make sure they understand all of these complications geopolitical, scientific,

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Speaker 1: blah blah blah. It's a whole bag of complications. Please

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Speaker 1: make sure they go in with their eyes wide open.

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Speaker 1: Here's what they need to know.

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Speaker 2: And so if any of you listening are aids to

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Speaker 2: congress people and want tips on how to talk to

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Speaker 2: your boss about space settlement, science, right to us. We

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Speaker 2: will help you out.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes, yes, and please buy Becoming Martian and a

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Speaker 1: City on Mars.

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Speaker 2: Okay, but you're right. Today we're not talking about a

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Speaker 2: city on Mars and technological solutions to getting humans off

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Speaker 2: the planet. We're talking about whether humans will actually need

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Speaker 2: to change or whether we'll evolve into a new species

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Speaker 2: if we live in a very different environment, i e.

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Speaker 2: On Mars. And so, Kelly, you went out there and

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Speaker 2: asked folks what they thought about this question.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So Scott's book imagines like, we're going to get people

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Speaker 1: to Mars. What happens if they stay there for a while?

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Speaker 1: How what kind of evolutionary trajectory might they take? And

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Speaker 1: so we asked our extraordinaries, if thousands of people settle

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Speaker 1: on Mars, will a new species of humans evolve?

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Speaker 2: And before we hear the answers, explain to me why

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Speaker 2: you said thousands of people, not millions of people or

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Speaker 2: just people.

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Speaker 1: When you read the literature, and the literature is mostly

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Speaker 1: by the quote archaeologists, which are the people who imagine

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Speaker 1: how many people you need to make interstellar travel work.

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Speaker 1: The numbers are usually in the thousands, not in the millions.

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk has sort of arbitrarily picked a million people

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Speaker 1: for his self sustaining settlement on Marks. But I think

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Speaker 1: more realistically, we'll get thousands of people in the near

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Speaker 1: ish term if this estimation, yes, right, yes, you know,

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Speaker 1: and so I'm guessing we'll have thousands in then it's

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Speaker 1: going to be a while before we have a million people,

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Speaker 1: is what I'm.

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Speaker 2: Thinking, right, Yeah, but we can't have too small a group, right.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense to talk about evolving a new

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Speaker 2: species if it's just like one.

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Speaker 1: Guy, that's right, that's right, to just send Daniel up there.

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Speaker 2: Please, no, don't send Daniel, all right. And so for

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Speaker 2: those listeners who participate and have not read the archaeological

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Speaker 2: literature before answering this question, here are their.

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Speaker 5: Thoughts, assuming that they are isolated.

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Speaker 2: Done eventually, Yes, but it would probably take a very

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Speaker 2: long time, something like hundreds or thousands of generations.

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Speaker 3: If the cross communication i e. If the people going

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Speaker 3: back and forth between Earth and Mars are few enough

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Speaker 3: and the time is long enough that people have been

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Speaker 3: settled on Mars thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years,

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Speaker 3: then I would say, yes, the new species would evolve

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Speaker 3: due to genetic drift.

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Speaker 6: Well, yeah, we're all evolving like constantly, and like it

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Speaker 6: would be different, like the people on Earth would get

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Speaker 6: like zap by different evolve rays I forget what they're called,

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Speaker 6: but then the people on Mars, so they would definitely

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Speaker 6: evolve differently and be different.

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Speaker 5: It would be a long time before a new species form,

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Speaker 5: because as it stands now, some humans have been separated

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Speaker 5: by tens of thousands of years and they could still

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Speaker 5: make babies just fine.

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Speaker 7: I believe that if a new civilization moved to Mars,

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Speaker 7: it would create a different species evolution of humans. Due

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Speaker 7: to the isolation of genes there.

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Speaker 2: It could although that's a small sample of population to

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Speaker 2: derive a new species from.

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Speaker 8: If it does survive, it might have some issues.

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Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that changes will occur through

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Speaker 1: human mediated means rather than traditional evolution.

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Speaker 9: No, we won't have a new species. For species is

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Speaker 9: to find is not being able to interbreed. This won't

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Speaker 9: happen unless they're completely isolated for quite long time, and

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Speaker 9: I don't think they would be. There will be people

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Speaker 9: coming back and forth.

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Speaker 7: I don't think it would really be a new species

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Speaker 7: of people, but maybe with a little genetic engineering we

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Speaker 7: might end up with a highly modified human being.

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Speaker 10: Selection pressure and mutation would both be pretty strong factors

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Speaker 10: in that so maybe, but it would take a while.

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Speaker 7: As with so many episodes, this comes down to definitions.

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Speaker 7: Depending on how you define human species, the question could

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Speaker 7: be answered yes or no.

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Speaker 4: Given enough time, of course, the new Martians would evolve

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Speaker 4: into a new spefee.

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Speaker 10: I don't think a new species of human will settle

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Speaker 10: and evolve on Mars. It lacks a global magnetic feel,

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Speaker 10: which would make the environment extremely harsh for any human

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Speaker 10: to survive, and be they an adult or a child.

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Speaker 5: Given enough time, every species on this planet will evolve

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Speaker 5: into another species. But if the thousand humans just die

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Speaker 5: on Mars, they won't evolve.

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Speaker 3: No.

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Speaker 8: I think possibly not, because if we were able to

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Speaker 8: like live on Mars, if society would want life on

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Speaker 8: Mars to be similar to life on Earth, then we

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Speaker 8: would probably try to make Mars as silar to Earth

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Speaker 8: as we could.

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Speaker 1: One thing I appreciate about these answers is that it

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Speaker 1: sort of reflects the experience that I had when interviewing

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Speaker 1: the space settlement community is that you get extremes. You

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Speaker 1: get a lot of people saying no, obviously you're not

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Speaker 1: going to get another species, because there's gonna have to

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Speaker 1: be gene flow, there's gonna have to be resupply trips,

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Speaker 1: and if there's gene flow, you're not gonna get a

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Speaker 1: new species. And then you get other people being like,

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Speaker 1: it's a very different environment. Obviously you're getting a new species.

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Speaker 1: And I think that this reflects that people have very

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Speaker 1: different assumptions about what it's going to be like when

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Speaker 1: a Martian settlement starts. Yeah, and I think that's very

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Speaker 1: interesting and it's a good way to start a conversation

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Speaker 1: about what kind of assumptions people have about what it's

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Speaker 1: going to be like living on Mars.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. It also hinges very specifically on the definition of species, right,

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Speaker 2: which we've talked about is a little bit fuzzy, and

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Speaker 2: hearing these answers, I was thinking, well, if the definition

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Speaker 2: is can't interbreed, then like you know, having a zillion

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Speaker 2: miles of space between you is enough to prevent you

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Speaker 2: from interbreeding.

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Speaker 1: As long as as long as there's no starships coming

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Speaker 1: back and forth.

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Speaker 2: Right, So, like, technically, if you have identical communities on

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Speaker 2: Earth and Mars, but there's no way for them to

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Speaker 2: like get it on, are they different species?

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess you could say if there

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Speaker 1: was some way that you could get them together. Then

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Speaker 1: you want to know if they could get it on.

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Speaker 1: But I should say that Scott's colleague, Scott Egan, in

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Speaker 1: a couple months, is going to come on the show

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Speaker 1: talk to us about what is a species? How do

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Speaker 1: you define it? And I'm looking forward to that conversation.

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Speaker 2: Awesome.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, But I.

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Speaker 2: Think there's also here a real understanding that life on

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Speaker 2: Mars will be very different from life on Earth, and

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Speaker 2: I was glad to see that these answers reflect people's

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Speaker 2: appreciation that evolution is in response to the environment. It's

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Speaker 2: not just like some trajectory towards more perfect humans in

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Speaker 2: the future.

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Speaker 1: Right, yep, yep. I also felt like there were a

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Speaker 1: couple people who were hedging their bets. They were like, look,

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Speaker 1: we know this is a show that Kelly is on,

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Speaker 1: and so the answer is probably they're just going to

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Speaker 1: die out there. And so there are a couple people

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Speaker 1: who were like, no, cause they're not going to make

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Speaker 1: it because Kelly's on the show, that's what she's going

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Speaker 1: to say.

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Speaker 2: All right, Well, neither of us are experts on human evolution,

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Speaker 2: and neither of us are evolutionary biologists. However, we have

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Speaker 2: a great friend who is and he just wrote a

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Speaker 2: great book on this exact topic. So we're going to

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Speaker 2: take a break, and when we come back, we're going

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Speaker 2: to talk to Scott Solomon about his book Becoming Martian.

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Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Scott Solomon. Scott is

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Speaker 1: a teaching professor in the Department of Biosciences at Rice University.

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Speaker 1: He's the author of Future Humans Inside the Science of

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Speaker 1: Our Continuing Evolution, and has a new book, which is

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Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today, called Becoming Martian

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Speaker 1: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds

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Speaker 1: out through MIT Press, and he also hosts the podcast

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Speaker 1: Wild World with Scott Solomon. Welcome back, Scott for your

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Speaker 1: third appearance on the show.

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Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm excited to be back.

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Speaker 1: So Scott, all right, let's start with sort of the

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Speaker 1: obvious question where these interviews typically tend to start. What

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Speaker 1: made you want to write this book in particular?

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Speaker 11: So this book really picks up where my first book

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Speaker 11: left off. In Future Humans, I was trying to answer

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Speaker 11: whether humans are still evolving and how we might evolve

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Speaker 11: in the future. And at the very end of that book,

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Speaker 11: I considered the scenario that would be like what happens

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Speaker 11: if some people leave Earth, that would lead on a

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Speaker 11: different evolutionary path.

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Speaker 4: And I decided to.

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Speaker 11: Kind of pick that thread up and run with it,

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Speaker 11: in part because it became clear that people are actively

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Speaker 11: working on making that happen, both commercial space companies like

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Speaker 11: SpaceX and Blue Origin, but also governmental space agencies like

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Speaker 11: NASA that are trying to create a base on the

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Speaker 11: Moon and eventually want to get people to Mars. So

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Speaker 11: my question as an evolutionary biologist is what happens if

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Speaker 11: they're successful.

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Speaker 2: Something I really enjoyed about your book is that it

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Speaker 2: brings out an element of evolution I think is not

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Speaker 2: widely enough understood, at least for non biologists, which is

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Speaker 2: the role of the environment. Right. Evolution is not some

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Speaker 2: march towards some eventual perfect human right through response of

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Speaker 2: an organization or population to changing stressors. And of course,

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Speaker 2: if you change where you're going to live, then evolution

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Speaker 2: is going to take a different path. I think your

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Speaker 2: book really does a great job of bringing that out.

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Speaker 1: Well.

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Speaker 11: Thanks, Yeah, I mean, look, the environment on Mars is

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Speaker 11: pretty extreme, as you guys know, and so I wanted

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Speaker 11: to consider, like, first of all, if it's actually possible

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Speaker 11: to live there, which is a big if, right, you know,

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Speaker 11: how would people in just the first generation born on Mars,

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Speaker 11: how would they be different? And then if they're able

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Speaker 11: to keep reproducing and you've got multiple generations living there,

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Speaker 11: like what happens later? Do they adapt and gradually get

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Speaker 11: sort of better at living in that environment? And I

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Speaker 11: basically think that's what we should expect.

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Speaker 2: And I know there's no value judgment here, but do

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Speaker 2: you think that's a good outcome? I mean, should we

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Speaker 2: expect different Martian humans and have them be adapted to

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Speaker 2: their local environment even if it means like they can't

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Speaker 2: come back to Earth as easily.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's where we end Daniels.

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Speaker 2: Conversation's got to flow naturally, Kelly.

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Speaker 11: I mean, it's really where I start the book, is like, Okay,

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Speaker 11: this is happening. Let's think through what the consequences would be,

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Speaker 11: Like what do we understand from a biological perspective that

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Speaker 11: we can sort of like predict what would happen?

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Speaker 4: And what can we not say?

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Speaker 11: And then at the end of the book, I get

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Speaker 11: back to this question of Okay, knowing what we know,

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Speaker 11: should we do this?

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Speaker 3: All right?

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Speaker 2: Well, then let's save the answer for the end of

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Speaker 2: the episode as Kelly designed.

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Speaker 1: So in the book you draw this beautiful comparison between

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Speaker 1: the human explorers who want to go and settle Mars

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Speaker 1: and and the Polynesian people who explored and settled the

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Speaker 1: Pacific islands. Can you draw those parallels for us here?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 11: So basically what I try to point out because like,

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Speaker 11: as you know, I'm evolutionary biologists by training. I've done

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Speaker 11: fieldwork on on islands in the Pacific, and I think

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Speaker 11: we can think about planets as islands. So we know

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Speaker 11: a lot about how when a species makes it to

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Speaker 11: an island where that species didn't previously exist, We know

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Speaker 11: a lot about kind of how the founders of that

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Speaker 11: first population influenced later generations and how they adapt as

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Speaker 11: a as they survive there. And so you know, I

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Speaker 11: wanted to basically ask, how can we apply what we

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Speaker 11: know about evolution on islands to thinking about human evolution

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Speaker 11: on planets?

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Speaker 4: Plants?

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Speaker 2: So just big space islands, aren't they?

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Speaker 11: It's just a different scale, right, And so you know,

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Speaker 11: the the islands of the Pacific are I'm not the

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Speaker 11: first person to point this out. Other authors, other people

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Speaker 11: have recognized that, like in a way the Pacific is

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Speaker 11: like this, you know, vast expanse of water with tiny

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Speaker 11: specks of land that reminds us a lot of space

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Speaker 11: and the celestial bodies that occupy it. And so the

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Speaker 11: Polynesian people are really they're really the world's most successful navigators.

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Speaker 11: I mean, it's just incredible that the ancestors of the

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Speaker 11: modern Polynesians were able to discover all of these tiny

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Speaker 11: specks of land by setting out in canoes without having maps.

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Speaker 11: They didn't know where to go, and yet they found

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Speaker 11: these places and they successfully set up a settlements there.

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Speaker 2: I would die, it is really amazing. I've flown to

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Speaker 2: some of these islands and you spend like hours of

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Speaker 2: the plane over nothing but water, and then you see

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Speaker 2: a tiny dot and you land on that tiny dot

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Speaker 2: and it's like, wow, I'm so glad that dot is there. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: imagine not knowing is there, just like setting out and

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Speaker 2: hoping to find something, Chris.

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Speaker 11: It's remarkable. I mean, the ultimate needle in a haystack.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 11: So one of the amazing experiences I got to have

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Speaker 11: and researching this book was actually going to this site

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Speaker 11: on an island in the Society Island. So this is

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Speaker 11: near Tahiti, and this spot is thought to be the

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Speaker 11: jumping off point for some of those great voyages of

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Speaker 11: discovery by the ancient Polynesians. So it's now it's an

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Speaker 11: archaeological site. It's actually a sacred site called Tapu Tapuatea

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Speaker 11: on the island of Riotea, and this is the place

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Speaker 11: that was a center of learning. It was a center

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Speaker 11: of training for navigators and for leaders. And what they

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Speaker 11: would do is they would take a stone from that

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Speaker 11: structure and bring it with them all their voyage, and

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00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:04,200
Speaker 11: then when they made it to land, they would use

443
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 11: that to establish this new site. So they think that

444
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:12,600
Speaker 11: that's where people who ultimately made it to Hawaii, to

445
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 11: New Zealand and to Easter Island, that's where they started.

446
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:19,399
Speaker 11: And so when I was there, I'm looking at this place.

447
00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 11: It's this big, wide expanse right next to the edge

448
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:26,719
Speaker 11: of the sea, and it's like a flat, square or

449
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 11: rectangular area made of volcanic stone. And I'm looking at

450
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:35,080
Speaker 11: that and I'm realizing this is a launchpad. I mean,

451
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:39,639
Speaker 11: this is their equivalent of, you know, setting out into

452
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 11: the unknown. You load up your canoe with all of

453
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:46,240
Speaker 11: the supplies that you need to set up a new settlement,

454
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 11: somewhere you've never been, and it must have been as

455
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:54,399
Speaker 11: terrifying as you know, loading up a rocket and setting

456
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 11: out into space, because once you're out in the open ocean,

457
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,080
Speaker 11: it's not like you can stop and make repairs. If

458
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 11: you forgot to bring something, you're pretty much out of luck.

459
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,439
Speaker 11: And I think, you know, Martian settlers would essentially have

460
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:07,160
Speaker 11: to do the same.

461
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to note that my research brought me

462
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 1: to Washington, d c. And yours brought you to Tahiti.

463
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: So I did something wrong and you did something right.

464
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 1: But do we know how long their journeys took? So,

465
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: like a mission to Mars is like what six to

466
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:21,639
Speaker 1: nine months?

467
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 6: Right?

468
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: How long were the Polynesian people on the water en

469
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: route to a new island?

470
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 4: I don't think we actually know.

471
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,160
Speaker 11: I mean, we've only been able to reconstruct this from

472
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 11: a combination of like archaeological records as well as some

473
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 11: genetic studies. You can sort of see the genetic relationships

474
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:42,199
Speaker 11: among people living on different islands today and even some

475
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 11: of the linguistic evolution that kind of you know, tracks

476
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:47,399
Speaker 11: those same things. So I don't think we actually know

477
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 11: that much about the voyages themselves. But I mean it

478
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 11: must have been you know, weeks at least, if not months, right,

479
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 11: Some of these are really far apart. I mean, I

480
00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 11: think Easter Island, the closest land, is like twelve hundred

481
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 11: miles away, so it's a long way.

482
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:06,119
Speaker 2: And so then bringing it back to Mars, the idea

483
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 2: is that we can study migration on these islands to

484
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:10,439
Speaker 2: get a sense for what it might be like for

485
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:12,680
Speaker 2: humans to live on Mars. I guess some of the

486
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 2: issues are things like population bottlenecks and founder effects. What

487
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 2: do we learn from studying how this happened on these

488
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 2: islands and what does that tell us about what it

489
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 2: might be like for humans on Mars.

490
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we know from studies of animals and plants

491
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 11: on islands that there are these things, like you said,

492
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:35,400
Speaker 11: like founder effects, where the founders of a new population

493
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 11: have a really big impact on the potential for future

494
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 11: evolution of that population once it's established. And one of

495
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 11: the things that often happens is they are only a

496
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 11: small subset of all of the diversity of the population

497
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:54,679
Speaker 11: that they came from, so usually you get a reduction

498
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 11: in genetic diversity. They don't represent all of the traits,

499
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:02,439
Speaker 11: all of the characteristics of the population they came from.

500
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:08,719
Speaker 11: And you also can have random fluctuations in which certain

501
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 11: traits become more common or less common, not because they're

502
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:18,919
Speaker 11: useful or harmful, but just because of random chance. And

503
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 11: that happens a lot in really small populations. And we

504
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 11: call that genetic drift. And so the question is would

505
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 11: that apply to humans in the same way that we

506
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 11: know it applies to animals and plants, And so studies

507
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 11: of people living on Pacific islands actually suggests that the

508
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 11: answer is yes, there's some evidence of genetic drift and

509
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 11: of founder effects happening in island populations.

510
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:48,719
Speaker 1: Can you give us some of those examples that you

511
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: used in the book? There were some fun examples.

512
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.

513
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 11: So one of the kind of famous examples comes from

514
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 11: the HMS Bounty. So the famous mutiny on the Bounty, right,

515
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 11: So this was in the late seventeen hundreds, and the

516
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,359
Speaker 11: Bounty was a British ship that was making its way

517
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 11: through the South Pacific and they stopped at Tahiti.

518
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 4: It's a lovely place.

519
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 11: The crew got very attached to some of the inhabitants,

520
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,680
Speaker 11: some of the Tahitians, and they decided they didn't want

521
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 11: to leave, and the captain was telling him, no, we

522
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 11: got to leave, and the crew was like, we're staying here.

523
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 11: And they had a mutiny and the mutineers ended up

524
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 11: escaping and setting up on another island. So this is

525
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 11: a small subset of the original crew, and they had

526
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 11: some Tahitian wives. They ended up having children with those

527
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 11: Tahitian wives, and the population kind of grew very slowly

528
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 11: at first, but once it did start growing, they had

529
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 11: to relocate to another island, the island of Norfolk. And

530
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 11: if you go to Norfolk Island today, the majority of

531
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,919
Speaker 11: its inhabitants can trace their their descendants back to the

532
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 11: mutineers from the Bounty. And so interestingly, they show evidence

533
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,120
Speaker 11: of having genetic drift and having a founder effect because

534
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 11: there's kind of a reduction of genetic diversity in that

535
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 11: population compared to other human populations. And there was a

536
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 11: study that showed that they are shorter on average than

537
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 11: other folks, which seems to be connected to this reduction

538
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 11: in genetic diversity.

539
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: Are they more likely to mutiny.

540
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 4: Or yeah, jury's still allowed on that, I think, but.

541
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 2: Mutation on the bounty biology yoah.

542
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 11: Oh, yeah, that's a good name, and I'll just share

543
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 11: one more if I can, because there's another really interesting example,

544
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 11: which is also a Pacific island. In this case, it's

545
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 11: an atoll called Ranglup in Micronesia, And in the late

546
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 11: seventeen hundreds, around the same time as the mutiny on

547
00:28:59,880 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 11: the Bounty, there was a typhoon that unfortunately killed the

548
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 11: majority of the human inhabitants of this island. Some of

549
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 11: the few people that survived, I think there were only

550
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 11: about twenty or so survivors, and one of the survivors,

551
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 11: perhaps not surprisingly, was the king or the leader, and

552
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 11: he happened to have a rare gene or an allele,

553
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 11: a version of a gene, which is the allele for

554
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,600
Speaker 11: complete color blindness, so not like the more common red,

555
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 11: green color blindness. But basically, if you have complete color blindness,

556
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 11: you see the world in black and white. You don't

557
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 11: see any color at all. Now, he didn't have complete

558
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 11: color blindness, he just carried the allele. It's a recessive allele,

559
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 11: so you need to have two copies of it to

560
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 11: be completely color blind. But because there were only a

561
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 11: small number of survivors, and basically in the next few generations,

562
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 11: you ended up getting lot of inbreeding. Then that meant

563
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 11: that those recessive alleles were more likely to show up

564
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 11: in the same individual and in a few generations you

565
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 11: got the first truly color blind individuals. And so now

566
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 11: that island has the highest proportion of complete color blind

567
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 11: people in the world. And so again it's not because

568
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 11: that was advantageous. It's you know, it doesn't seem to

569
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 11: give you any advantage to be colorblind, and it might

570
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 11: actually even be kind of a hindrance. But just because

571
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 11: of that population bottleneck, because they were reduced to a

572
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,959
Speaker 11: few number of individuals, that trait became more common.

573
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's hard to anticipate whether a trait could evolve

574
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 2: to be advantageous. I know, in my research we use

575
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 2: genetic algorithms a lot where you have like a population

576
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 2: of neural networks, for example, that you're training to do

577
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 2: some task. And something we do a lot is we

578
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 2: take a subsample of them and we put them on

579
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: their own genetic eyeland and we allow them to evolve

580
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 2: without competing against the mainland. And sometimes you know, they

581
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: do this thing when you have drift whatever, but they

582
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 2: have all something new and interesting that wouldn't have survived

583
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 2: in the first few generations on the mainland, but then

584
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 2: comes back and dominates. It's really fascinating. Yeah, So then

585
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 2: apply this to Mars. Is the Martian population going to

586
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 2: be small enough to have these effects? How big do

587
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 2: you have to be to effectively avoid these things? Because

588
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:26,840
Speaker 2: I thought Musk is talking about putting a million people

589
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 2: on Mars. If we're going to take that at face value.

590
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 11: Yeah, So I think what it tells us is that

591
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 11: it matters who you send, Like, who are the founders

592
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 11: of a new population makes a big difference. And if

593
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 11: you were to choose, say, people that were all fairly

594
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 11: similar to one another, right, that would be more likely

595
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 11: to set up a scenario where you get genetic drift

596
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 11: and random traits becoming more common or disappearing versus the

597
00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 11: same number of people. But if you have a very heterogeneous,

598
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 11: a very diverse set of founding members of the population,

599
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 11: then you're less likely to experience genetic drift. So it

600
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:09,959
Speaker 11: really matters how you choose the founders. So the size

601
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 11: is important, but the composition of the founding population is

602
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 11: even more important.

603
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 2: So we shouldn't just send Musk and all as friends.

604
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 11: Well, what I've said in the book is like what

605
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 11: we would want to do. I think if you're trying

606
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 11: to set this, you know, the Martians up for success

607
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 11: is you want as genetically diverse a founding population as

608
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 11: you can get. You want it to really be representative

609
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 11: of as much human diversity as you can. So the

610
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:41,160
Speaker 11: way that we've historically chosen astronauts definitely doesn't do that right.

611
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 11: You sort of screen for the people who are kind

612
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 11: of the best of the best, the elite, you know,

613
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 11: the right stuff. That whole thing you would want to

614
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 11: do more than that, you would want to also consider,

615
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 11: you know, are we representing human diversity as we know it?

616
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 11: And the more diversity the better.

617
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:03,400
Speaker 2: So we can't just bring physicists and biologists. We had

618
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 2: to invite the chemists.

619
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 11: So long you're saying, oh no, if there's a gene

620
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 11: for being a chemist, then yeah, you probably want to

621
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 11: include it.

622
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 4: I don't know we found that gene yet, all.

623
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: Right, So the Polynesians were separated for long periods of time,

624
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 1: but they never became separate species. And we're going to

625
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:22,239
Speaker 1: take a break and when we come back, we're going

626
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: to talk about what it might take for people to

627
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: move to Mars and actually become a different species.

628
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 2: All right, we're back and we're talking to Scott Solomon,

629
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 2: author of Becoming Martian, and on the topic of being

630
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 2: a separate species. A friend of mine who's like clearly

631
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 2: one hundred percent white, did his DNA testing at twenty

632
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 2: three and meters and it came back that he was

633
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 2: one percent samoan, which very skeptical of. But he used

634
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 2: that as an excuse to never wear sunscreen again. He

635
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 2: was like, hey, man, I'm samoan.

636
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 1: No no now, bad choice, bad choice. Yeah, but natural

637
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 1: selection will laugh. Well what that choice out pretty fast? Maybe,

638
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:21,840
Speaker 1: but I hope not. I hope your friend decides to

639
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: wear sunscreen. Okay, So the Polynesians were separated for long

640
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: periods of time, but they never became As far as

641
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: we know, we never ended up with separate human species

642
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: on these separate Pacific islands. And so, Scott, what does

643
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: it take to get a separate species? And do you

644
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,280
Speaker 1: think we'll end up with Martians becoming a different species?

645
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,280
Speaker 2: And because we have had separate human species on Earth

646
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 2: in the past.

647
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:45,760
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting.

648
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 11: And that was actually part of why I thought thinking

649
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,920
Speaker 11: about Pacific islands as an analogy for space is useful

650
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 11: because we tend to think of species evolving on islands, right,

651
00:34:57,080 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 11: I mean, the reason Darwin was inspired by vis in

652
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 11: the Galapagos Islands, and the reason why you know, biologists

653
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 11: like me still go to islands to study evolution is

654
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 11: we think that being separated, like physically geographically separated and

655
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 11: living in different environments is kind of a setup for speciation.

656
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 11: So why didn't that happen with the Polynesians? You know,

657
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 11: all humans today are the same species. We have some

658
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 11: subtle population differences, but nothing approaching the differences between species.

659
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 4: So why not.

660
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,359
Speaker 11: Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is

661
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 11: that they weren't actually isolated for very long. So the

662
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 11: Polynesians were really the last people to reach habitable specs

663
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,799
Speaker 11: of land on our planet. Some of the islands that

664
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,840
Speaker 11: they discovered and settled, like Easter Island, were only settled

665
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 11: in like twelve hundred CE, Like that's like not that

666
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 11: long ago in the you know, the saga of human history,

667
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 11: And so they were only perhaps isolated from one another

668
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 11: for a few hundred years because as soon as you know,

669
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 11: Europeans started making their way around the Pacific and you know,

670
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 11: having mutinies and whatnot. They you know, they started moving

671
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 11: between islands and creating more connection between them.

672
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 4: Connect right, that's right.

673
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 11: Well, one of the things I think I said in

674
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 11: the book is like, you know, people exchange goods and

675
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 11: when they do that, they also exchange genes.

676
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:26,760
Speaker 4: We know that's the case.

677
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:31,640
Speaker 11: But actually to that point, the idea that they were

678
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 11: isolated also assumes that once they reached these islands, that

679
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 11: that was it. That they weren't then going back and

680
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 11: ever interacting with people from either where they came or

681
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 11: other islands. And in a few cases that seems to

682
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 11: be the case, like Easter Island was truly isolated, but

683
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:54,720
Speaker 11: for most of the Polynesian islands, people were actually still

684
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 11: able to move back and forth and exchange goods and

685
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 11: genes with one another. And you know, we know this

686
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:04,839
Speaker 11: in part from genetic studies, but we also know it

687
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 11: from archaeology. There's stone tools that are widely used across

688
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 11: the Pacific, but the stone that they used to make

689
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 11: them is only found on like a small handful of islands.

690
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 11: And yet you see that stone all over the place.

691
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 11: They were trading goods as people do, so you know,

692
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 11: they weren't actually as isolated as you might think. And

693
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 11: that's important to recognize because gene flow, the exchange of

694
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 11: genes between populations, is another mechanism of evolution, and it

695
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 11: tends to prevent speciation from happening. So people might be

696
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 11: living far away on Mars, far away from the people

697
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 11: living on Earth, but if people are still moving between

698
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 11: those planets and exchanging goods and genes, then it's less

699
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 11: likely that speciation would happen.

700
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: So I suspect that we're going to need resupply ships

701
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: to keep the Martian settlers alt for a really long time,

702
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 1: and I think that will keep gene flow going. But

703
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: what do you think? Do you think that there will

704
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: be gene flow happening between the Martians and the Earthlings

705
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: or do you think that something will stop.

706
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 11: The gene I mean, I think people would probably like

707
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 11: to be able to come back to Earth if they're

708
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 11: living on Mars. Mars is, as you very well know,

709
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 11: is a very harsh place to live, and Earth is

710
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 11: a pretty nice place. So if I was living on Mars,

711
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 11: I should want to come visit Earth. But here's the thing.

712
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 11: I'm concerned that it won't be as easy as some

713
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 11: people have imagined to move between planets, and that's especially

714
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 11: true for a child that's born on Mars. For one thing,

715
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 11: as their body is growing, they're in one third g

716
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,439
Speaker 11: R one third of Earth's gravity, and we know that

717
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 11: muscles and bones, they don't develop the same strength when

718
00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 11: we're in a lower gravity environment. Now, we don't actually

719
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 11: know what happens to a child's growing body in a

720
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 11: lower gravity environment because we've only ever studied adults, but

721
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 11: I think there's a pretty good reason to suspect that

722
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 11: a child's growing body would be affected by being in

723
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 11: lower gravity. And if they don't build bones that are

724
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 11: strong enough to be able to handle Earth gravity, it

725
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 11: might be really hard for them to be able to

726
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 11: handle being on Earth. So there's the gravity issue. But

727
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 11: then there's another problem, which is our immune systems and

728
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 11: infectious disease. Because we know that a child's immune system

729
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 11: develops in response to all of the microbes that we

730
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 11: just interact with on a regular basis, and most of

731
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 11: those don't end up being dangerous to us. But if

732
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,839
Speaker 11: you're exposed to something that you've never encountered before, then

733
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,439
Speaker 11: it can be dangerous. And we also know that when

734
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 11: we travel, we bring our microbes, our microbiome with us, right,

735
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 11: and so people going to Mars will bring microbes that

736
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 11: are in and on their body, and we'll probably bring

737
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 11: other microbes. I mean, we have to have food, so

738
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 11: we're going to bring plants, and they come with their

739
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 11: own microbes. Every complex organism has a microbiome. But whatever

740
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 11: we bring is still going to be a tiny subset

741
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 11: of all of the microbial life on Earth. So a

742
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,279
Speaker 11: child born on Mars will never be exposed to the

743
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 11: vast majority of microbes we have on our planet. So

744
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 11: I worry that a child born on Mars who came

745
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 11: to Earth would be really at risk of getting sick

746
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 11: just from the you know, the stuff that isn't a

747
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 11: big deal for you and me, but for them might

748
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 11: be really dangerous.

749
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:45,840
Speaker 2: So then let's assume that there isn't a lot of

750
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 2: genes flow back and forth. What are the other selection

751
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:51,720
Speaker 2: pressures on Mars that might influence the way humans evolve?

752
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 2: You know, the radiation environment, the rotation, the you know,

753
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 2: the the sunlight, these kinds of things.

754
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 11: Yeah, So, I mean, we know the gravity is likely

755
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 11: to be a big factor, right. We know that being

756
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 11: in a lower gravity environment is tough for the body,

757
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 11: So I think being in a lower gravity environment is

758
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 11: likely to cause natural selection to favor people that have

759
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 11: certain traits that make them better at surviving and thriving

760
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 11: in that environment. So one of the things that could

761
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 11: happen with, you know, adapting to lower gravity is that

762
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 11: you know, people might actually be better off if they

763
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 11: start off life with denser bones, because we expect they

764
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 11: will lose bone density as they age. I mean, that's

765
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 11: what happens to astronauts. They lose about one and a

766
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 11: half percent to two percent bone density per month that

767
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 11: they're in space, and that's in a weightless environment. We

768
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 11: don't know if one third gravity means you lose bone density.

769
00:41:48,719 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 4: At a lower rate, but you probably are.

770
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,720
Speaker 11: Still losing bone density. So what happens to a person

771
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 11: who's born on Mars has been losing bone density their

772
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 11: entire life, and then by the time they go to

773
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 11: have kids, you know, a woman who's going through childbirth

774
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 11: is now doing that with a weakened skeleton. That could

775
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:12,320
Speaker 11: actually be really dangerous. I mean, childbirth's already dangerous enough,

776
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 11: but if you're doing it with a weakened skeleton, it

777
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:19,280
Speaker 11: could be it could be really dangerous. And so natural

778
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 11: selection might actually favor women who start off life with

779
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:26,959
Speaker 11: denser bones, so that they're more likely to be able

780
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 11: to survive childhood and that their children are more likely

781
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 11: to survive as well, So then you would actually get

782
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 11: like people with denser bones in future generations.

783
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 1: I also thought it was interesting in your book that

784
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: you suggested that, you know, if that ends up being

785
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: something that like, I don't know, maybe we don't have

786
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: the genetic diversity available so that we can't evolve denser bones.

787
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just going to have to do sea sections

788
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,360
Speaker 1: every generation because it turns out this will be just

789
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,680
Speaker 1: way too dangerous, so kids have to be delivered via

790
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 1: sea section to save Yeah, and like the implications that

791
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 1: could have I thought that was a really interest.

792
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 11: Right, because we know when we have complications with childbirth,

793
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 11: like one of the best things you could do is

794
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:11,600
Speaker 11: deliver through a cesarean section, a sea section, and so

795
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,720
Speaker 11: if you know people are having complications with birth on Mars,

796
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:18,279
Speaker 11: that might be the go to. And then if you

797
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 11: get to the point where that just becomes the standard

798
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:27,359
Speaker 11: everybody has sea section berths, then what are the evolutionary consequences. Well,

799
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 11: at that point, the head no longer has to fit

800
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,239
Speaker 11: through the birth canal, and that's been a major constraint

801
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,360
Speaker 11: throughout human evolution. So if the head is no longer

802
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 11: constrained to fit through the birth canal, at that point,

803
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 11: the head could actually evolve to become larger. So you know,

804
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 11: it's funny because you know, in one way, it's like

805
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 11: kind of sounds like the sci fi depictions of aliens, right,

806
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 11: you know, these big headed aliens. But that's a plausible

807
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:55,280
Speaker 11: evolutionary scenario.

808
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 1: And in a lower gravity environment you could hold up

809
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: that giant head like more easily or something.

810
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:03,359
Speaker 4: But then it's hard when you come back to Earth.

811
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 11: So yet another reason why people born on Mars might

812
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 11: struggle to come back to Earth. Yeah, but yeah, we

813
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 11: were talking about the radiation environment, and I think that's

814
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 11: another challenge because we know that, you know, Mars is

815
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 11: bombarded by quite a lot of radiation because it has

816
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 11: a very very thin atmosphere and it has basically no magnetosphere.

817
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 11: So you know, people on Mars, if you're on the surface,

818
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 11: you're exposed to, you know, nearly the full force of

819
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 11: deep space radiation, galactic cosmic rays and everything else. So

820
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 11: you know, you'd need to have some protection from that

821
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:44,399
Speaker 11: just to be able to survive. You know, maybe we're

822
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:48,479
Speaker 11: living underground. But I like to imagine that people aren't

823
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 11: going to be content to only be underground. I mean,

824
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 11: I don't want to go to Mars if I don't

825
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 11: ever get to go. You know, explore on the surface,

826
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 11: and you know, if you're growing crops and doing other activities,

827
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 11: you might need to be on the surface. So if

828
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 11: people are exposed to higher levels of radiation than we

829
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 11: are on Earth, on the one hand, there's cancer risks,

830
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 11: But on the other hand, mutation is the ultimate source

831
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:16,479
Speaker 11: of genetic diversity. So what you could find is that

832
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:21,600
Speaker 11: mutation rates overall are higher, and that's really the raw

833
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 11: material for natural selection. So that's a mechanism by which

834
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 11: you could have more rapid adaptation to the environment on

835
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 11: Mars because you have basically more raw material for natural

836
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,959
Speaker 11: selection to work with. And then the advantages that would

837
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 11: come with any mutation that happens to be beneficial.

838
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,320
Speaker 2: Well, that's fascinating. I want to underline that you're saying

839
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 2: that radiation itself could be creating the mutations which allow

840
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 2: us to survive radiation exactly. Incredible.

841
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:59,280
Speaker 1: Physics is amazing, But but what Blake and Kelly stepping

842
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: in here. But on average, what aren't most mutations likely

843
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 1: to be negative? So aren't like a bunch of people

844
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 1: probably going to kick the bucket from cancer and like

845
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:10,880
Speaker 1: one percent are going to like hit the genetic lottery

846
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: and have like a great mutation that like and one percent,

847
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: I'm just picking a random number. I don't that's not

848
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:17,720
Speaker 1: like a scientifically justified number.

849
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:20,239
Speaker 11: Yeah, probably less than one percent. Okay, Yeah, you're right.

850
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 11: So this is not a pleasant way forward. We're not

851
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 11: talking about like a happy way to see future generations

852
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 11: become better adapted, because what you're talking about is a

853
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 11: lot of death and suffering. I mean, we're talking about

854
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 11: a lot of people having, you know, cancer, probably at

855
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:43,880
Speaker 11: a younger age. Right, You're more susceptible to cancer caused

856
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:47,359
Speaker 11: by radiation exposures when you're young, because your cells are

857
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 11: dividing more rapidly, and every time they divide, there's an

858
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:52,240
Speaker 11: opportunity for a mutation.

859
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 2: And death is an essential part of this.

860
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 3: Right.

861
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 2: If people don't die, if they live and have kids,

862
00:46:56,920 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 2: then you don't evolve. People like to say that like

863
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:02,240
Speaker 2: physics moves one funeral at a time, but so does humanity.

864
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 11: That's how evolution works. You know, it's not a pleasant process.

865
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 11: And so that's why, you know, one thing that has

866
00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 11: been proposed is maybe we need to take matters into

867
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 11: our own hands, right, Maybe we should be manipulating our

868
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 11: genes to try to improve the ability to adapt without

869
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 11: having to kind of wait for natural selection, to wait

870
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 11: for mutation and then natural selection to discover new ways

871
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 11: to do things better. If we could make those changes ourselves,

872
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 11: it would help people by you know, enabling them to

873
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 11: be able to handle the high radiation, low gravity environment,

874
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,440
Speaker 11: you know, alleviate some of that death and suffering.

875
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 2: Wow, both of our eyebrows just went up because I

876
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:46,839
Speaker 2: thought you were going to go in another direction and

877
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 2: say we should be killing people because you know, we

878
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 2: might be like short un resources and you know, if

879
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:54,840
Speaker 2: we get hungry, we might just have to decide in

880
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 2: advance who we think is going to survive. And you know,

881
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 2: some of that flesh could be tasty. I don't know

882
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:01,480
Speaker 2: what Martians are going to like to eat.

883
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: Daniel got to the cannibalism.

884
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 2: It always happens naturally, that's right.

885
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: That was the perfect transition to genetic engineering. And so

886
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: then my question for you is, do we know what

887
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: genes we would need to tinker with? So, do we

888
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 1: know what we would need to do to people to

889
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:21,239
Speaker 1: make them well adapted to the Martian surface or at

890
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 1: this point would we just be like making changes and

891
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: crossing our fingers.

892
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 11: I think that we're sort of at the yes and

893
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 11: no point. We do know of some of the genes

894
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 11: that we might be able to alter. So, for example,

895
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 11: Tartar grades are famously really resilient and able to survive

896
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 11: being in space for long amounts of time, et cetera.

897
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,360
Speaker 11: And we know that they have a gene called d SUP,

898
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:46,919
Speaker 11: which stands for damaged suppressor, So this is how they're

899
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:51,839
Speaker 11: able to suppress damage to their DNA caused by radiation exposure.

900
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 11: And so one of the things I did when researching

901
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:58,280
Speaker 11: the book was visit Chris Mason's lab at Real Cornell

902
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 11: Medicine in New York, where they're actually taking genes from

903
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 11: Tartar grades, including deesub, and cloning them into human cells

904
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 11: in culture. And they've been able to show that those

905
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 11: human cells actually express the desub protein, suggesting that it

906
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:18,480
Speaker 11: might be possible to get some of that radiation protection

907
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 11: in our own cells. Now we haven't done that in

908
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:24,359
Speaker 11: a living human yet, but if you could do that

909
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,880
Speaker 11: safely and effectively, that could be really interesting.

910
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 4: So I think we.

911
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 11: Still have a lot of unanswered questions, both about what

912
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 11: genes we would want to be editing and also being

913
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 11: one hundred percent sure that that's not going to have

914
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:44,360
Speaker 11: any unintended consequences right and.

915
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 1: On Earth, We're not comfortable with making those changes in

916
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:51,480
Speaker 1: humans ethically yet, so we would also have to decide

917
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 1: that we're going to, you know, eschew all of the

918
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:56,880
Speaker 1: ethical concerns that we have about making those changes on

919
00:49:56,960 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: humans and then decide we're going to go ahead and

920
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,359
Speaker 1: make them on martians. What do you think about that?

921
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 6: Oh?

922
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 11: Absolutely, I mean I think the ethical considerations are enormous,

923
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,200
Speaker 11: and I try to address that a bit in the book.

924
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,360
Speaker 11: I mean, I think, look, we have a long history

925
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 11: of trying to think that we can control our own

926
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 11: evolution and that really not going well. I mean, the

927
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 11: entire field of eugenics was based on the premise that

928
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 11: we could make humanity better by controlling who lives, who dies,

929
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:31,279
Speaker 11: and who reproduces, and we all know how that turned out. Yeah,

930
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 11: so we clearly don't want to repeat those sins of

931
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 11: our past.

932
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 4: But part of what's.

933
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,320
Speaker 11: Interesting about this is that the ethics, I think, become

934
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 11: a bit different once you're talking about living in this

935
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:46,319
Speaker 11: incredibly harsh environment. So if you had the ability to

936
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:51,440
Speaker 11: alleviate death and suffering by making gene edits, would it

937
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:53,920
Speaker 11: be unethical to do that or would it be unethical

938
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,799
Speaker 11: not to do that? But then it gets tricky too,

939
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 11: because it's one thing to agree to edit your DNA

940
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 11: knowing the risks, and it's a very different thing to

941
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 11: edit the DNA of an unborn child who has no

942
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 11: ability to understand the risks and to consent to that.

943
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:18,960
Speaker 11: And so you know, doing a genetic edit to each

944
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 11: individual is one thing. Doing germline gene editing, which is

945
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:28,000
Speaker 11: making changes to the cells that make sperm and eggs

946
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 11: that would be heritable changes. At that point, you are

947
00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:37,720
Speaker 11: manipulating the future evolution of our species, and you're making

948
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 11: changes to future generations that weren't able to consent.

949
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 2: But aren't you doing that anyway? Even if you only

950
00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:46,360
Speaker 2: edit your own genes. I mean, if I edit my

951
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 2: genes to give myself, you know, laser eyes or something,

952
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 2: then my kids have laser eyes and you know, kids

953
00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 2: are always brought into the world without consent anyway from

954
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 2: the gene pool of their parents.

955
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 11: So it depends which of your cells your editing. So

956
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 11: you could make changes to your own DNA that wouldn't

957
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 11: be passed on to your kids. So it has to

958
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 11: be the cells that make the game mates, the sperm

959
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 11: and the eggs.

960
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:13,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, given what you've learned, do you think we should

961
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: become Martian?

962
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 4: So here's the thing.

963
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,320
Speaker 11: I looked at some of the like motivations for why

964
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:21,760
Speaker 11: people are trying to do this in the first place,

965
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 11: which I know Kelly, you and Zach get into this

966
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:27,799
Speaker 11: in your book as well, The City on Mars, and

967
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:30,759
Speaker 11: I think I came to some similar conclusions as you

968
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 11: guys did, which is that eventually maybe we should, Like

969
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:38,919
Speaker 11: I'm not saying we should never go and live on

970
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 11: Mars or any other planet, but I think there's enough

971
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:48,360
Speaker 11: unanswered questions, such as, you know, is human reproduction even possible?

972
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 11: Could a child born on Mars come back to Earth?

973
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 11: We need to know those answers before I think we

974
00:52:55,680 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 11: can responsibly start loading people onto ships and sending them

975
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 11: out there. But I am kind of convinced by the

976
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 11: idea that in the long run, eventually, if we don't

977
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:12,279
Speaker 11: do that, we might eventually go extinct. I mean, there

978
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 11: could be a disaster on Earth, and there will be

979
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 11: a disaster if you wait long enough. You know, whether

980
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 11: it's self imposed or whether it's an asteroid impact or

981
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 11: super volcano eruption, it's gonna happen. The thing that matters

982
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 11: is the time frame. So I just don't think we're

983
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 11: ready yet. I'd want to see more science, more answers

984
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 11: to important questions that we don't know, we could know,

985
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:41,839
Speaker 11: we could find out about, you know, human reproductive biology

986
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 11: in space. There just hasn't been enough research on it yet.

987
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 11: And so that's what I'm saying. We need to do

988
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 11: that science. Let's learn, let's discover, let's continue doing space science,

989
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 11: human space exploration, but let's not start actually living out

990
00:53:58,080 --> 00:53:59,759
Speaker 11: there until we know we can do it.

991
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 2: Say so, do you think that this is an issue

992
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 2: that species around the galaxy face? You know, if you're

993
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,799
Speaker 2: an alien now you're on some other home planet and

994
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 2: you're wondering about hopping to the next planet. Is this

995
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 2: a conversation that's being had across the galaxy? Should we

996
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 2: be shipping your book to Alpha Centauri.

997
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 11: Oh, I gladly donate a copy to ship to Alpha

998
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:22,320
Speaker 11: Centauri if you know of any missions that are heading

999
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 11: that way.

1000
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1001
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 11: I think some of the general conclusions of what I'm

1002
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 11: trying to argue in this book would be applicable to

1003
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,920
Speaker 11: any species living anywhere in the cosmos. I mean the

1004
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 11: idea that species adapt to new conditions, the idea that

1005
00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 11: the founders of a population have a big influence on

1006
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 11: what can happen next, and the idea that it might

1007
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,640
Speaker 11: be hard to move between planets because of how different

1008
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 11: those environments are and how well adapted species are to

1009
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 11: the planet that they came from. Those patterns are going

1010
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:01,239
Speaker 11: to be true of any kind of life living anywhere.

1011
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:05,359
Speaker 11: So I think it's really interesting that HG. Wells back

1012
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:09,600
Speaker 11: in eighteen ninety eight wrote War of the World's imagining

1013
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 11: a future when sophisticated Martians came and attacked Earth and

1014
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 11: we couldn't stop them because their technology was too advanced.

1015
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 11: But what ultimately stopped them bacteria. It was the microbes

1016
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 11: that they had no defenses against that ultimately were their downfall.

1017
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:28,960
Speaker 11: So I didn't come up with that idea that's been

1018
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:31,799
Speaker 11: around since at least eighteen ninety eight. But I think

1019
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 11: that's actually really prescient. I mean, I think he was

1020
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 11: onto something that is likely to be a challenge. It's

1021
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:41,320
Speaker 11: not an insurmountable challenge, but we need to better understand

1022
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 11: it before we can expect that it'll be easy to

1023
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 11: move around between planets once we're actually living out there.

1024
00:55:47,239 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks Scott for coming back on the show.

1025
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: Becoming Martian is available in all great bookstores everywhere, and

1026
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 1: all terrible ones and all terrible ones, and everyone should

1027
00:55:56,520 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: run out and grab a copy.

1028
00:55:57,719 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 4: Thanks Daniel, Thanks Kelly, This is always so much fun

1029
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 4: to talk with you, guys. I appreciate it.

1030
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We

1031
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:13,239
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00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:19,200
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1037
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:29,480
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