Speaker 1: Longtime listeners of dKu will know that I'm a wet
Speaker 1: blanket about Okay, well, I'm a wet blanket about just
Speaker 1: about everything, but in particular, I'm a wet blanket about
Speaker 1: the topic of settling Mars. But hear me out. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's imagine a world where we do actually have thousands
Speaker 1: of people living on the Martian surface, and they live,
Speaker 1: they survive, and they start to have children. What might
Speaker 1: that be like? This future is imagined by my friend,
Speaker 1: colleague and regular dKu podcast guest, doctor Scott Solomon in
Speaker 1: his new book Becoming Martian How Living in Space will
Speaker 1: Change Our bodies and minds. Scott is an evolutionary biologist,
Speaker 1: and his new book asks questions like whether evolutionary changes
Speaker 1: might happen to Martians across many generations, and whether we
Speaker 1: might even see a new species of human emerging on Mars.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to chat with him about some
Speaker 1: of these evolutionary questions about what might happen to humans
Speaker 1: if we settle on the red planet. Welcome to Daniel
Speaker 1: and Kelly's Alien Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who has evolved
Speaker 2: to live on Earth. And on Earth I will live.
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I am a space settlement
Speaker 1: wet blanket and I love it here on Earth.
Speaker 2: Do you like snuggling up under that wet blanket and
Speaker 2: getting all cozy and damp?
Speaker 1: Well, I throw it in the dryer first, and then
Speaker 1: I snuggle up underneath it, and it's really wonderful there.
Speaker 1: And then I look at the moths which we find
Speaker 1: on this planet alone.
Speaker 2: Well, since we're extending this analogy, aren't you supposed to
Speaker 2: be throwing that wet blanket on other people's plans rather
Speaker 2: than snuggling up under it.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to dampen other people's joy, really,
Speaker 1: and you know I could be wrong. I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure, No, I really don't. I just want
Speaker 1: to like make sure everyone's aware of the complications. Let's
Speaker 1: solve these problems first, and then we'll go out there
Speaker 1: and uh, people the cosmos.
Speaker 2: So you do think that that's the future, You think
Speaker 2: we are going to be peopling the cosmos?
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of hope we do at some point,
Speaker 1: because I like, I also think the idea of somebody
Speaker 1: waking up on a foreign planet and seeing the sun
Speaker 1: rise or you know, seeing two moons standing on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars or something like. I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: beautiful and that's exciting, but it's not beautiful and exciting
Speaker 1: to me if it kicks off a war between China
Speaker 1: and the US back here on Earth, Like, there are
Speaker 1: conditions under which that is not a beautiful scenario, and
Speaker 1: I'd like to avoid those.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the people who share that
Speaker 2: fantasy with you are sci fi addicts like me, And
Speaker 2: you know, we read books about this and it seems
Speaker 2: like a glorious future and so many adventures. But also
Speaker 2: in those books there are a lot of wars.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's what makes the books filled with drama and excitement.
Speaker 2: It's not like and then we went to Jupiter and
Speaker 2: everybody lived happily and yea, and we smiled at each other,
Speaker 2: like that's not a very interesting book.
Speaker 1: No, But like, real life doesn't have to be like
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 4: But I was.
Speaker 1: I was being interviewed by someone the other day and
Speaker 1: they asked, you know, what do you think the best
Speaker 1: outcome would be? And I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we could have like an international research station, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, I explained a scenario where maybe we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have conflict back on Earth, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to be mean here. Is that
Speaker 1: a little naive? And I was like, yes, it does
Speaker 1: feel naive saying that out loud right now. But I
Speaker 1: don't think we should go until something like that can happen,
Speaker 1: and so let's stay down here until that moment comes.
Speaker 1: And if we have to wait, then we have to wait.
Speaker 2: But that's my whole point, is that our life isn't
Speaker 2: the book and shouldn't be a book. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people who are excited about the future
Speaker 2: need to remember that the future they're excited about is
Speaker 2: when they read about in books filled with conflict and
Speaker 2: suffering and devastation. And that's not necessarily how we want
Speaker 2: things to go, you know. But as we push out
Speaker 2: into the stars, you know, there's lots of ways that
Speaker 2: we could make that work. Obviously, we're not just going
Speaker 2: to like land on Mars and have everything work out.
Speaker 2: We've all seen that movie. But you know, there are
Speaker 2: ways we can improve our situation by changing ourselves. And
Speaker 2: then also, of course, ways we could improve our experience
Speaker 2: by developing technology, by finding solutions to these problems ways
Speaker 2: that like, you know, earthy humans like Daniel could maybe
Speaker 2: actually have a pleasant experience on the surface. I know
Speaker 2: that we're going to talk to Scott in a minute
Speaker 2: about the human side of things. But how optimistic are
Speaker 2: you that, like engineers are going to solve some of
Speaker 2: these problems for us before we have to like you know,
Speaker 2: grow a third eyeball or like a red hard skin
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm optimistic, but I think the first thing
Speaker 1: that we need to do is get a lot more
Speaker 1: people on board with thinking that this is important, because
Speaker 1: at the moment, I don't think there's enough money to
Speaker 1: solve a lot of these problems, Like, not a lot
Speaker 1: of people are convinced that this is a worthwhile thing
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: And doesn't Elon have a trillion? Now what do you
Speaker 2: mean there's not enough money.
Speaker 1: He's not spending He's spending it on the rockets, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to be spending it on you know,
Speaker 1: like satellites that are out beyond Earth's magnetic field that
Speaker 1: have you know, rodents that are experiencing Martian gravity so
Speaker 1: we can see like are they able to have babies?
Speaker 1: And how are those babies doing. And so money isn't
Speaker 1: being spent on the kinds of things that you can
Speaker 1: read about in a city on Mars, or you can
Speaker 1: read about in Becoming Martian, which is the book we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, and a really amazing book. And I
Speaker 1: should be embarrassed that I pitched my book, but I'm not,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of person I am.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that Elon should be spending more of
Speaker 2: his money on basic science.
Speaker 1: Research, yeah, absolutely, or somebody needs to. Somebody needs to.
Speaker 1: And so I think that technology probably can find solutions
Speaker 1: to a lot of these problems. For example, you know,
Speaker 1: radiation might just be about finding the right kind of
Speaker 1: shielding or figuring out the right kind of technology for
Speaker 1: digging underground, and you know, then trying to find ways
Speaker 1: to make living underground pleasant, which could be very difficult,
Speaker 1: but you know, we could experiment with that here on Earth.
Speaker 1: There's probably ways to solve a lot of these problems.
Speaker 1: But at the moment, the money isn't being released for
Speaker 1: those things. And I think part of it is because
Speaker 1: not enough people on Earth want to do this. And
Speaker 1: I think until people decide this is a worthwhile thing,
Speaker 1: or until enough people decide this is a worthwhile thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think that money's necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be released.
Speaker 2: Hold on, you mean if we took a poll of
Speaker 2: people and ask them should we go to Mars? Most
Speaker 2: people would say no? Or do you mean that? Practically
Speaker 2: people don't want it enough to call their Congress people
Speaker 2: to get funding to do this kind of research.
Speaker 1: So one thing that's really surprised me is that when
Speaker 1: I go to space conferences, one thing they're frequently grousing
Speaker 1: about is that there's just not enough people in Congress
Speaker 1: who care about space settlement, who want to see money
Speaker 1: released for space settlement science, which is very different than
Speaker 1: like space exploration missions, right, and like you know, this
Speaker 1: is a very particular kind of space science that needs
Speaker 1: to get done. And so I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Congress people who are clamoring for money to
Speaker 1: get released. There was a time when folks were excited,
Speaker 1: like Newt Gingrich really wanted to see space settlements on
Speaker 1: the Moon and was like clamoring to make that happen.
Speaker 1: But at the moment, there's no there's no person in
Speaker 1: Congress who's really, like you know, ringing the bell for
Speaker 1: space settlement as far as I know.
Speaker 2: And I guess that's sort of the headline of your
Speaker 2: book is like, yeah, this is a cool goal, but
Speaker 2: there's a lot of sort of unglamorous science that needs
Speaker 2: to happen first to answer these questions. You can't just
Speaker 2: skip ahead.
Speaker 1: To the good part, right, And to be honest, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I was hoping to do with
Speaker 1: the book was get the message out there that like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're a congress person or probably much more realistically,
Speaker 1: an aid to a congress person or a scientific advisor
Speaker 1: to a congress person, please understand all of these risks.
Speaker 1: And if you're a congress person gets excited about space settlement, fine,
Speaker 1: but please make sure they understand all of these complications geopolitical, scientific,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. It's a whole bag of complications. Please
Speaker 1: make sure they go in with their eyes wide open.
Speaker 1: Here's what they need to know.
Speaker 2: And so if any of you listening are aids to
Speaker 2: congress people and want tips on how to talk to
Speaker 2: your boss about space settlement, science, right to us. We
Speaker 2: will help you out.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes, yes, and please buy Becoming Martian and a
Speaker 1: City on Mars.
Speaker 2: Okay, but you're right. Today we're not talking about a
Speaker 2: city on Mars and technological solutions to getting humans off
Speaker 2: the planet. We're talking about whether humans will actually need
Speaker 2: to change or whether we'll evolve into a new species
Speaker 2: if we live in a very different environment, i e.
Speaker 2: On Mars. And so, Kelly, you went out there and
Speaker 2: asked folks what they thought about this question.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So Scott's book imagines like, we're going to get people
Speaker 1: to Mars. What happens if they stay there for a while?
Speaker 1: How what kind of evolutionary trajectory might they take? And
Speaker 1: so we asked our extraordinaries, if thousands of people settle
Speaker 1: on Mars, will a new species of humans evolve?
Speaker 2: And before we hear the answers, explain to me why
Speaker 2: you said thousands of people, not millions of people or
Speaker 2: just people.
Speaker 1: When you read the literature, and the literature is mostly
Speaker 1: by the quote archaeologists, which are the people who imagine
Speaker 1: how many people you need to make interstellar travel work.
Speaker 1: The numbers are usually in the thousands, not in the millions.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has sort of arbitrarily picked a million people
Speaker 1: for his self sustaining settlement on Marks. But I think
Speaker 1: more realistically, we'll get thousands of people in the near
Speaker 1: ish term if this estimation, yes, right, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: and so I'm guessing we'll have thousands in then it's
Speaker 1: going to be a while before we have a million people,
Speaker 1: is what I'm.
Speaker 2: Thinking, right, Yeah, but we can't have too small a group, right.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense to talk about evolving a new
Speaker 2: species if it's just like one.
Speaker 1: Guy, that's right, that's right, to just send Daniel up there.
Speaker 2: Please, no, don't send Daniel, all right. And so for
Speaker 2: those listeners who participate and have not read the archaeological
Speaker 2: literature before answering this question, here are their.
Speaker 5: Thoughts, assuming that they are isolated.
Speaker 2: Done eventually, Yes, but it would probably take a very
Speaker 2: long time, something like hundreds or thousands of generations.
Speaker 3: If the cross communication i e. If the people going
Speaker 3: back and forth between Earth and Mars are few enough
Speaker 3: and the time is long enough that people have been
Speaker 3: settled on Mars thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years,
Speaker 3: then I would say, yes, the new species would evolve
Speaker 3: due to genetic drift.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, we're all evolving like constantly, and like it
Speaker 6: would be different, like the people on Earth would get
Speaker 6: like zap by different evolve rays I forget what they're called,
Speaker 6: but then the people on Mars, so they would definitely
Speaker 6: evolve differently and be different.
Speaker 5: It would be a long time before a new species form,
Speaker 5: because as it stands now, some humans have been separated
Speaker 5: by tens of thousands of years and they could still
Speaker 5: make babies just fine.
Speaker 7: I believe that if a new civilization moved to Mars,
Speaker 7: it would create a different species evolution of humans. Due
Speaker 7: to the isolation of genes there.
Speaker 2: It could although that's a small sample of population to
Speaker 2: derive a new species from.
Speaker 8: If it does survive, it might have some issues.
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that changes will occur through
Speaker 1: human mediated means rather than traditional evolution.
Speaker 9: No, we won't have a new species. For species is
Speaker 9: to find is not being able to interbreed. This won't
Speaker 9: happen unless they're completely isolated for quite long time, and
Speaker 9: I don't think they would be. There will be people
Speaker 9: coming back and forth.
Speaker 7: I don't think it would really be a new species
Speaker 7: of people, but maybe with a little genetic engineering we
Speaker 7: might end up with a highly modified human being.
Speaker 10: Selection pressure and mutation would both be pretty strong factors
Speaker 10: in that so maybe, but it would take a while.
Speaker 7: As with so many episodes, this comes down to definitions.
Speaker 7: Depending on how you define human species, the question could
Speaker 7: be answered yes or no.
Speaker 4: Given enough time, of course, the new Martians would evolve
Speaker 4: into a new spefee.
Speaker 10: I don't think a new species of human will settle
Speaker 10: and evolve on Mars. It lacks a global magnetic feel,
Speaker 10: which would make the environment extremely harsh for any human
Speaker 10: to survive, and be they an adult or a child.
Speaker 5: Given enough time, every species on this planet will evolve
Speaker 5: into another species. But if the thousand humans just die
Speaker 5: on Mars, they won't evolve.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 8: I think possibly not, because if we were able to
Speaker 8: like live on Mars, if society would want life on
Speaker 8: Mars to be similar to life on Earth, then we
Speaker 8: would probably try to make Mars as silar to Earth
Speaker 8: as we could.
Speaker 1: One thing I appreciate about these answers is that it
Speaker 1: sort of reflects the experience that I had when interviewing
Speaker 1: the space settlement community is that you get extremes. You
Speaker 1: get a lot of people saying no, obviously you're not
Speaker 1: going to get another species, because there's gonna have to
Speaker 1: be gene flow, there's gonna have to be resupply trips,
Speaker 1: and if there's gene flow, you're not gonna get a
Speaker 1: new species. And then you get other people being like,
Speaker 1: it's a very different environment. Obviously you're getting a new species.
Speaker 1: And I think that this reflects that people have very
Speaker 1: different assumptions about what it's going to be like when
Speaker 1: a Martian settlement starts. Yeah, and I think that's very
Speaker 1: interesting and it's a good way to start a conversation
Speaker 1: about what kind of assumptions people have about what it's
Speaker 1: going to be like living on Mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also hinges very specifically on the definition of species, right,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about is a little bit fuzzy, and
Speaker 2: hearing these answers, I was thinking, well, if the definition
Speaker 2: is can't interbreed, then like you know, having a zillion
Speaker 2: miles of space between you is enough to prevent you
Speaker 2: from interbreeding.
Speaker 1: As long as as long as there's no starships coming
Speaker 1: back and forth.
Speaker 2: Right, So, like, technically, if you have identical communities on
Speaker 2: Earth and Mars, but there's no way for them to
Speaker 2: like get it on, are they different species?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess you could say if there
Speaker 1: was some way that you could get them together. Then
Speaker 1: you want to know if they could get it on.
Speaker 1: But I should say that Scott's colleague, Scott Egan, in
Speaker 1: a couple months, is going to come on the show
Speaker 1: talk to us about what is a species? How do
Speaker 1: you define it? And I'm looking forward to that conversation.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But I.
Speaker 2: Think there's also here a real understanding that life on
Speaker 2: Mars will be very different from life on Earth, and
Speaker 2: I was glad to see that these answers reflect people's
Speaker 2: appreciation that evolution is in response to the environment. It's
Speaker 2: not just like some trajectory towards more perfect humans in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 1: Right, yep, yep. I also felt like there were a
Speaker 1: couple people who were hedging their bets. They were like, look,
Speaker 1: we know this is a show that Kelly is on,
Speaker 1: and so the answer is probably they're just going to
Speaker 1: die out there. And so there are a couple people
Speaker 1: who were like, no, cause they're not going to make
Speaker 1: it because Kelly's on the show, that's what she's going
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, neither of us are experts on human evolution,
Speaker 2: and neither of us are evolutionary biologists. However, we have
Speaker 2: a great friend who is and he just wrote a
Speaker 2: great book on this exact topic. So we're going to
Speaker 2: take a break, and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk to Scott Solomon about his book Becoming Martian.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Scott Solomon. Scott is
Speaker 1: a teaching professor in the Department of Biosciences at Rice University.
Speaker 1: He's the author of Future Humans Inside the Science of
Speaker 1: Our Continuing Evolution, and has a new book, which is
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today, called Becoming Martian
Speaker 1: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds
Speaker 1: out through MIT Press, and he also hosts the podcast
Speaker 1: Wild World with Scott Solomon. Welcome back, Scott for your
Speaker 1: third appearance on the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm excited to be back.
Speaker 1: So Scott, all right, let's start with sort of the
Speaker 1: obvious question where these interviews typically tend to start. What
Speaker 1: made you want to write this book in particular?
Speaker 11: So this book really picks up where my first book
Speaker 11: left off. In Future Humans, I was trying to answer
Speaker 11: whether humans are still evolving and how we might evolve
Speaker 11: in the future. And at the very end of that book,
Speaker 11: I considered the scenario that would be like what happens
Speaker 11: if some people leave Earth, that would lead on a
Speaker 11: different evolutionary path.
Speaker 4: And I decided to.
Speaker 11: Kind of pick that thread up and run with it,
Speaker 11: in part because it became clear that people are actively
Speaker 11: working on making that happen, both commercial space companies like
Speaker 11: SpaceX and Blue Origin, but also governmental space agencies like
Speaker 11: NASA that are trying to create a base on the
Speaker 11: Moon and eventually want to get people to Mars. So
Speaker 11: my question as an evolutionary biologist is what happens if
Speaker 11: they're successful.
Speaker 2: Something I really enjoyed about your book is that it
Speaker 2: brings out an element of evolution I think is not
Speaker 2: widely enough understood, at least for non biologists, which is
Speaker 2: the role of the environment. Right. Evolution is not some
Speaker 2: march towards some eventual perfect human right through response of
Speaker 2: an organization or population to changing stressors. And of course,
Speaker 2: if you change where you're going to live, then evolution
Speaker 2: is going to take a different path. I think your
Speaker 2: book really does a great job of bringing that out.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 11: Thanks, Yeah, I mean, look, the environment on Mars is
Speaker 11: pretty extreme, as you guys know, and so I wanted
Speaker 11: to consider, like, first of all, if it's actually possible
Speaker 11: to live there, which is a big if, right, you know,
Speaker 11: how would people in just the first generation born on Mars,
Speaker 11: how would they be different? And then if they're able
Speaker 11: to keep reproducing and you've got multiple generations living there,
Speaker 11: like what happens later? Do they adapt and gradually get
Speaker 11: sort of better at living in that environment? And I
Speaker 11: basically think that's what we should expect.
Speaker 2: And I know there's no value judgment here, but do
Speaker 2: you think that's a good outcome? I mean, should we
Speaker 2: expect different Martian humans and have them be adapted to
Speaker 2: their local environment even if it means like they can't
Speaker 2: come back to Earth as easily.
Speaker 1: Well, that's where we end Daniels.
Speaker 2: Conversation's got to flow naturally, Kelly.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's really where I start the book, is like, Okay,
Speaker 11: this is happening. Let's think through what the consequences would be,
Speaker 11: Like what do we understand from a biological perspective that
Speaker 11: we can sort of like predict what would happen?
Speaker 4: And what can we not say?
Speaker 11: And then at the end of the book, I get
Speaker 11: back to this question of Okay, knowing what we know,
Speaker 11: should we do this?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: Well, then let's save the answer for the end of
Speaker 2: the episode as Kelly designed.
Speaker 1: So in the book you draw this beautiful comparison between
Speaker 1: the human explorers who want to go and settle Mars
Speaker 1: and and the Polynesian people who explored and settled the
Speaker 1: Pacific islands. Can you draw those parallels for us here?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 11: So basically what I try to point out because like,
Speaker 11: as you know, I'm evolutionary biologists by training. I've done
Speaker 11: fieldwork on on islands in the Pacific, and I think
Speaker 11: we can think about planets as islands. So we know
Speaker 11: a lot about how when a species makes it to
Speaker 11: an island where that species didn't previously exist, We know
Speaker 11: a lot about kind of how the founders of that
Speaker 11: first population influenced later generations and how they adapt as
Speaker 11: a as they survive there. And so you know, I
Speaker 11: wanted to basically ask, how can we apply what we
Speaker 11: know about evolution on islands to thinking about human evolution
Speaker 11: on planets?
Speaker 4: Plants?
Speaker 2: So just big space islands, aren't they?
Speaker 11: It's just a different scale, right, And so you know,
Speaker 11: the the islands of the Pacific are I'm not the
Speaker 11: first person to point this out. Other authors, other people
Speaker 11: have recognized that, like in a way the Pacific is
Speaker 11: like this, you know, vast expanse of water with tiny
Speaker 11: specks of land that reminds us a lot of space
Speaker 11: and the celestial bodies that occupy it. And so the
Speaker 11: Polynesian people are really they're really the world's most successful navigators.
Speaker 11: I mean, it's just incredible that the ancestors of the
Speaker 11: modern Polynesians were able to discover all of these tiny
Speaker 11: specks of land by setting out in canoes without having maps.
Speaker 11: They didn't know where to go, and yet they found
Speaker 11: these places and they successfully set up a settlements there.
Speaker 2: I would die, it is really amazing. I've flown to
Speaker 2: some of these islands and you spend like hours of
Speaker 2: the plane over nothing but water, and then you see
Speaker 2: a tiny dot and you land on that tiny dot
Speaker 2: and it's like, wow, I'm so glad that dot is there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: imagine not knowing is there, just like setting out and
Speaker 2: hoping to find something, Chris.
Speaker 11: It's remarkable. I mean, the ultimate needle in a haystack.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: So one of the amazing experiences I got to have
Speaker 11: and researching this book was actually going to this site
Speaker 11: on an island in the Society Island. So this is
Speaker 11: near Tahiti, and this spot is thought to be the
Speaker 11: jumping off point for some of those great voyages of
Speaker 11: discovery by the ancient Polynesians. So it's now it's an
Speaker 11: archaeological site. It's actually a sacred site called Tapu Tapuatea
Speaker 11: on the island of Riotea, and this is the place
Speaker 11: that was a center of learning. It was a center
Speaker 11: of training for navigators and for leaders. And what they
Speaker 11: would do is they would take a stone from that
Speaker 11: structure and bring it with them all their voyage, and
Speaker 11: then when they made it to land, they would use
Speaker 11: that to establish this new site. So they think that
Speaker 11: that's where people who ultimately made it to Hawaii, to
Speaker 11: New Zealand and to Easter Island, that's where they started.
Speaker 11: And so when I was there, I'm looking at this place.
Speaker 11: It's this big, wide expanse right next to the edge
Speaker 11: of the sea, and it's like a flat, square or
Speaker 11: rectangular area made of volcanic stone. And I'm looking at
Speaker 11: that and I'm realizing this is a launchpad. I mean,
Speaker 11: this is their equivalent of, you know, setting out into
Speaker 11: the unknown. You load up your canoe with all of
Speaker 11: the supplies that you need to set up a new settlement,
Speaker 11: somewhere you've never been, and it must have been as
Speaker 11: terrifying as you know, loading up a rocket and setting
Speaker 11: out into space, because once you're out in the open ocean,
Speaker 11: it's not like you can stop and make repairs. If
Speaker 11: you forgot to bring something, you're pretty much out of luck.
Speaker 11: And I think, you know, Martian settlers would essentially have
Speaker 11: to do the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to note that my research brought me
Speaker 1: to Washington, d c. And yours brought you to Tahiti.
Speaker 1: So I did something wrong and you did something right.
Speaker 1: But do we know how long their journeys took? So,
Speaker 1: like a mission to Mars is like what six to
Speaker 1: nine months?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: How long were the Polynesian people on the water en
Speaker 1: route to a new island?
Speaker 4: I don't think we actually know.
Speaker 11: I mean, we've only been able to reconstruct this from
Speaker 11: a combination of like archaeological records as well as some
Speaker 11: genetic studies. You can sort of see the genetic relationships
Speaker 11: among people living on different islands today and even some
Speaker 11: of the linguistic evolution that kind of you know, tracks
Speaker 11: those same things. So I don't think we actually know
Speaker 11: that much about the voyages themselves. But I mean it
Speaker 11: must have been you know, weeks at least, if not months, right,
Speaker 11: Some of these are really far apart. I mean, I
Speaker 11: think Easter Island, the closest land, is like twelve hundred
Speaker 11: miles away, so it's a long way.
Speaker 2: And so then bringing it back to Mars, the idea
Speaker 2: is that we can study migration on these islands to
Speaker 2: get a sense for what it might be like for
Speaker 2: humans to live on Mars. I guess some of the
Speaker 2: issues are things like population bottlenecks and founder effects. What
Speaker 2: do we learn from studying how this happened on these
Speaker 2: islands and what does that tell us about what it
Speaker 2: might be like for humans on Mars.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we know from studies of animals and plants
Speaker 11: on islands that there are these things, like you said,
Speaker 11: like founder effects, where the founders of a new population
Speaker 11: have a really big impact on the potential for future
Speaker 11: evolution of that population once it's established. And one of
Speaker 11: the things that often happens is they are only a
Speaker 11: small subset of all of the diversity of the population
Speaker 11: that they came from, so usually you get a reduction
Speaker 11: in genetic diversity. They don't represent all of the traits,
Speaker 11: all of the characteristics of the population they came from.
Speaker 11: And you also can have random fluctuations in which certain
Speaker 11: traits become more common or less common, not because they're
Speaker 11: useful or harmful, but just because of random chance. And
Speaker 11: that happens a lot in really small populations. And we
Speaker 11: call that genetic drift. And so the question is would
Speaker 11: that apply to humans in the same way that we
Speaker 11: know it applies to animals and plants, And so studies
Speaker 11: of people living on Pacific islands actually suggests that the
Speaker 11: answer is yes, there's some evidence of genetic drift and
Speaker 11: of founder effects happening in island populations.
Speaker 1: Can you give us some of those examples that you
Speaker 1: used in the book? There were some fun examples.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 11: So one of the kind of famous examples comes from
Speaker 11: the HMS Bounty. So the famous mutiny on the Bounty, right,
Speaker 11: So this was in the late seventeen hundreds, and the
Speaker 11: Bounty was a British ship that was making its way
Speaker 11: through the South Pacific and they stopped at Tahiti.
Speaker 4: It's a lovely place.
Speaker 11: The crew got very attached to some of the inhabitants,
Speaker 11: some of the Tahitians, and they decided they didn't want
Speaker 11: to leave, and the captain was telling him, no, we
Speaker 11: got to leave, and the crew was like, we're staying here.
Speaker 11: And they had a mutiny and the mutineers ended up
Speaker 11: escaping and setting up on another island. So this is
Speaker 11: a small subset of the original crew, and they had
Speaker 11: some Tahitian wives. They ended up having children with those
Speaker 11: Tahitian wives, and the population kind of grew very slowly
Speaker 11: at first, but once it did start growing, they had
Speaker 11: to relocate to another island, the island of Norfolk. And
Speaker 11: if you go to Norfolk Island today, the majority of
Speaker 11: its inhabitants can trace their their descendants back to the
Speaker 11: mutineers from the Bounty. And so interestingly, they show evidence
Speaker 11: of having genetic drift and having a founder effect because
Speaker 11: there's kind of a reduction of genetic diversity in that
Speaker 11: population compared to other human populations. And there was a
Speaker 11: study that showed that they are shorter on average than
Speaker 11: other folks, which seems to be connected to this reduction
Speaker 11: in genetic diversity.
Speaker 1: Are they more likely to mutiny.
Speaker 4: Or yeah, jury's still allowed on that, I think, but.
Speaker 2: Mutation on the bounty biology yoah.
Speaker 11: Oh, yeah, that's a good name, and I'll just share
Speaker 11: one more if I can, because there's another really interesting example,
Speaker 11: which is also a Pacific island. In this case, it's
Speaker 11: an atoll called Ranglup in Micronesia, And in the late
Speaker 11: seventeen hundreds, around the same time as the mutiny on
Speaker 11: the Bounty, there was a typhoon that unfortunately killed the
Speaker 11: majority of the human inhabitants of this island. Some of
Speaker 11: the few people that survived, I think there were only
Speaker 11: about twenty or so survivors, and one of the survivors,
Speaker 11: perhaps not surprisingly, was the king or the leader, and
Speaker 11: he happened to have a rare gene or an allele,
Speaker 11: a version of a gene, which is the allele for
Speaker 11: complete color blindness, so not like the more common red,
Speaker 11: green color blindness. But basically, if you have complete color blindness,
Speaker 11: you see the world in black and white. You don't
Speaker 11: see any color at all. Now, he didn't have complete
Speaker 11: color blindness, he just carried the allele. It's a recessive allele,
Speaker 11: so you need to have two copies of it to
Speaker 11: be completely color blind. But because there were only a
Speaker 11: small number of survivors, and basically in the next few generations,
Speaker 11: you ended up getting lot of inbreeding. Then that meant
Speaker 11: that those recessive alleles were more likely to show up
Speaker 11: in the same individual and in a few generations you
Speaker 11: got the first truly color blind individuals. And so now
Speaker 11: that island has the highest proportion of complete color blind
Speaker 11: people in the world. And so again it's not because
Speaker 11: that was advantageous. It's you know, it doesn't seem to
Speaker 11: give you any advantage to be colorblind, and it might
Speaker 11: actually even be kind of a hindrance. But just because
Speaker 11: of that population bottleneck, because they were reduced to a
Speaker 11: few number of individuals, that trait became more common.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's hard to anticipate whether a trait could evolve
Speaker 2: to be advantageous. I know, in my research we use
Speaker 2: genetic algorithms a lot where you have like a population
Speaker 2: of neural networks, for example, that you're training to do
Speaker 2: some task. And something we do a lot is we
Speaker 2: take a subsample of them and we put them on
Speaker 2: their own genetic eyeland and we allow them to evolve
Speaker 2: without competing against the mainland. And sometimes you know, they
Speaker 2: do this thing when you have drift whatever, but they
Speaker 2: have all something new and interesting that wouldn't have survived
Speaker 2: in the first few generations on the mainland, but then
Speaker 2: comes back and dominates. It's really fascinating. Yeah, So then
Speaker 2: apply this to Mars. Is the Martian population going to
Speaker 2: be small enough to have these effects? How big do
Speaker 2: you have to be to effectively avoid these things? Because
Speaker 2: I thought Musk is talking about putting a million people
Speaker 2: on Mars. If we're going to take that at face value.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So I think what it tells us is that
Speaker 11: it matters who you send, Like, who are the founders
Speaker 11: of a new population makes a big difference. And if
Speaker 11: you were to choose, say, people that were all fairly
Speaker 11: similar to one another, right, that would be more likely
Speaker 11: to set up a scenario where you get genetic drift
Speaker 11: and random traits becoming more common or disappearing versus the
Speaker 11: same number of people. But if you have a very heterogeneous,
Speaker 11: a very diverse set of founding members of the population,
Speaker 11: then you're less likely to experience genetic drift. So it
Speaker 11: really matters how you choose the founders. So the size
Speaker 11: is important, but the composition of the founding population is
Speaker 11: even more important.
Speaker 2: So we shouldn't just send Musk and all as friends.
Speaker 11: Well, what I've said in the book is like what
Speaker 11: we would want to do. I think if you're trying
Speaker 11: to set this, you know, the Martians up for success
Speaker 11: is you want as genetically diverse a founding population as
Speaker 11: you can get. You want it to really be representative
Speaker 11: of as much human diversity as you can. So the
Speaker 11: way that we've historically chosen astronauts definitely doesn't do that right.
Speaker 11: You sort of screen for the people who are kind
Speaker 11: of the best of the best, the elite, you know,
Speaker 11: the right stuff. That whole thing you would want to
Speaker 11: do more than that, you would want to also consider,
Speaker 11: you know, are we representing human diversity as we know it?
Speaker 11: And the more diversity the better.
Speaker 2: So we can't just bring physicists and biologists. We had
Speaker 2: to invite the chemists.
Speaker 11: So long you're saying, oh no, if there's a gene
Speaker 11: for being a chemist, then yeah, you probably want to
Speaker 11: include it.
Speaker 4: I don't know we found that gene yet, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So the Polynesians were separated for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: but they never became separate species. And we're going to
Speaker 1: take a break and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what it might take for people to
Speaker 1: move to Mars and actually become a different species.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back and we're talking to Scott Solomon,
Speaker 2: author of Becoming Martian, and on the topic of being
Speaker 2: a separate species. A friend of mine who's like clearly
Speaker 2: one hundred percent white, did his DNA testing at twenty
Speaker 2: three and meters and it came back that he was
Speaker 2: one percent samoan, which very skeptical of. But he used
Speaker 2: that as an excuse to never wear sunscreen again. He
Speaker 2: was like, hey, man, I'm samoan.
Speaker 1: No no now, bad choice, bad choice. Yeah, but natural
Speaker 1: selection will laugh. Well what that choice out pretty fast? Maybe,
Speaker 1: but I hope not. I hope your friend decides to
Speaker 1: wear sunscreen. Okay, So the Polynesians were separated for long
Speaker 1: periods of time, but they never became As far as
Speaker 1: we know, we never ended up with separate human species
Speaker 1: on these separate Pacific islands. And so, Scott, what does
Speaker 1: it take to get a separate species? And do you
Speaker 1: think we'll end up with Martians becoming a different species?
Speaker 2: And because we have had separate human species on Earth
Speaker 2: in the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 11: And that was actually part of why I thought thinking
Speaker 11: about Pacific islands as an analogy for space is useful
Speaker 11: because we tend to think of species evolving on islands, right,
Speaker 11: I mean, the reason Darwin was inspired by vis in
Speaker 11: the Galapagos Islands, and the reason why you know, biologists
Speaker 11: like me still go to islands to study evolution is
Speaker 11: we think that being separated, like physically geographically separated and
Speaker 11: living in different environments is kind of a setup for speciation.
Speaker 11: So why didn't that happen with the Polynesians? You know,
Speaker 11: all humans today are the same species. We have some
Speaker 11: subtle population differences, but nothing approaching the differences between species.
Speaker 4: So why not.
Speaker 11: Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is
Speaker 11: that they weren't actually isolated for very long. So the
Speaker 11: Polynesians were really the last people to reach habitable specs
Speaker 11: of land on our planet. Some of the islands that
Speaker 11: they discovered and settled, like Easter Island, were only settled
Speaker 11: in like twelve hundred CE, Like that's like not that
Speaker 11: long ago in the you know, the saga of human history,
Speaker 11: And so they were only perhaps isolated from one another
Speaker 11: for a few hundred years because as soon as you know,
Speaker 11: Europeans started making their way around the Pacific and you know,
Speaker 11: having mutinies and whatnot. They you know, they started moving
Speaker 11: between islands and creating more connection between them.
Speaker 4: Connect right, that's right.
Speaker 11: Well, one of the things I think I said in
Speaker 11: the book is like, you know, people exchange goods and
Speaker 11: when they do that, they also exchange genes.
Speaker 4: We know that's the case.
Speaker 11: But actually to that point, the idea that they were
Speaker 11: isolated also assumes that once they reached these islands, that
Speaker 11: that was it. That they weren't then going back and
Speaker 11: ever interacting with people from either where they came or
Speaker 11: other islands. And in a few cases that seems to
Speaker 11: be the case, like Easter Island was truly isolated, but
Speaker 11: for most of the Polynesian islands, people were actually still
Speaker 11: able to move back and forth and exchange goods and
Speaker 11: genes with one another. And you know, we know this
Speaker 11: in part from genetic studies, but we also know it
Speaker 11: from archaeology. There's stone tools that are widely used across
Speaker 11: the Pacific, but the stone that they used to make
Speaker 11: them is only found on like a small handful of islands.
Speaker 11: And yet you see that stone all over the place.
Speaker 11: They were trading goods as people do, so you know,
Speaker 11: they weren't actually as isolated as you might think. And
Speaker 11: that's important to recognize because gene flow, the exchange of
Speaker 11: genes between populations, is another mechanism of evolution, and it
Speaker 11: tends to prevent speciation from happening. So people might be
Speaker 11: living far away on Mars, far away from the people
Speaker 11: living on Earth, but if people are still moving between
Speaker 11: those planets and exchanging goods and genes, then it's less
Speaker 11: likely that speciation would happen.
Speaker 1: So I suspect that we're going to need resupply ships
Speaker 1: to keep the Martian settlers alt for a really long time,
Speaker 1: and I think that will keep gene flow going. But
Speaker 1: what do you think? Do you think that there will
Speaker 1: be gene flow happening between the Martians and the Earthlings
Speaker 1: or do you think that something will stop.
Speaker 11: The gene I mean, I think people would probably like
Speaker 11: to be able to come back to Earth if they're
Speaker 11: living on Mars. Mars is, as you very well know,
Speaker 11: is a very harsh place to live, and Earth is
Speaker 11: a pretty nice place. So if I was living on Mars,
Speaker 11: I should want to come visit Earth. But here's the thing.
Speaker 11: I'm concerned that it won't be as easy as some
Speaker 11: people have imagined to move between planets, and that's especially
Speaker 11: true for a child that's born on Mars. For one thing,
Speaker 11: as their body is growing, they're in one third g
Speaker 11: R one third of Earth's gravity, and we know that
Speaker 11: muscles and bones, they don't develop the same strength when
Speaker 11: we're in a lower gravity environment. Now, we don't actually
Speaker 11: know what happens to a child's growing body in a
Speaker 11: lower gravity environment because we've only ever studied adults, but
Speaker 11: I think there's a pretty good reason to suspect that
Speaker 11: a child's growing body would be affected by being in
Speaker 11: lower gravity. And if they don't build bones that are
Speaker 11: strong enough to be able to handle Earth gravity, it
Speaker 11: might be really hard for them to be able to
Speaker 11: handle being on Earth. So there's the gravity issue. But
Speaker 11: then there's another problem, which is our immune systems and
Speaker 11: infectious disease. Because we know that a child's immune system
Speaker 11: develops in response to all of the microbes that we
Speaker 11: just interact with on a regular basis, and most of
Speaker 11: those don't end up being dangerous to us. But if
Speaker 11: you're exposed to something that you've never encountered before, then
Speaker 11: it can be dangerous. And we also know that when
Speaker 11: we travel, we bring our microbes, our microbiome with us, right,
Speaker 11: and so people going to Mars will bring microbes that
Speaker 11: are in and on their body, and we'll probably bring
Speaker 11: other microbes. I mean, we have to have food, so
Speaker 11: we're going to bring plants, and they come with their
Speaker 11: own microbes. Every complex organism has a microbiome. But whatever
Speaker 11: we bring is still going to be a tiny subset
Speaker 11: of all of the microbial life on Earth. So a
Speaker 11: child born on Mars will never be exposed to the
Speaker 11: vast majority of microbes we have on our planet. So
Speaker 11: I worry that a child born on Mars who came
Speaker 11: to Earth would be really at risk of getting sick
Speaker 11: just from the you know, the stuff that isn't a
Speaker 11: big deal for you and me, but for them might
Speaker 11: be really dangerous.
Speaker 2: So then let's assume that there isn't a lot of
Speaker 2: genes flow back and forth. What are the other selection
Speaker 2: pressures on Mars that might influence the way humans evolve?
Speaker 2: You know, the radiation environment, the rotation, the you know,
Speaker 2: the the sunlight, these kinds of things.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So, I mean, we know the gravity is likely
Speaker 11: to be a big factor, right. We know that being
Speaker 11: in a lower gravity environment is tough for the body,
Speaker 11: So I think being in a lower gravity environment is
Speaker 11: likely to cause natural selection to favor people that have
Speaker 11: certain traits that make them better at surviving and thriving
Speaker 11: in that environment. So one of the things that could
Speaker 11: happen with, you know, adapting to lower gravity is that
Speaker 11: you know, people might actually be better off if they
Speaker 11: start off life with denser bones, because we expect they
Speaker 11: will lose bone density as they age. I mean, that's
Speaker 11: what happens to astronauts. They lose about one and a
Speaker 11: half percent to two percent bone density per month that
Speaker 11: they're in space, and that's in a weightless environment. We
Speaker 11: don't know if one third gravity means you lose bone density.
Speaker 4: At a lower rate, but you probably are.
Speaker 11: Still losing bone density. So what happens to a person
Speaker 11: who's born on Mars has been losing bone density their
Speaker 11: entire life, and then by the time they go to
Speaker 11: have kids, you know, a woman who's going through childbirth
Speaker 11: is now doing that with a weakened skeleton. That could
Speaker 11: actually be really dangerous. I mean, childbirth's already dangerous enough,
Speaker 11: but if you're doing it with a weakened skeleton, it
Speaker 11: could be it could be really dangerous. And so natural
Speaker 11: selection might actually favor women who start off life with
Speaker 11: denser bones, so that they're more likely to be able
Speaker 11: to survive childhood and that their children are more likely
Speaker 11: to survive as well, So then you would actually get
Speaker 11: like people with denser bones in future generations.
Speaker 1: I also thought it was interesting in your book that
Speaker 1: you suggested that, you know, if that ends up being
Speaker 1: something that like, I don't know, maybe we don't have
Speaker 1: the genetic diversity available so that we can't evolve denser bones.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just going to have to do sea sections
Speaker 1: every generation because it turns out this will be just
Speaker 1: way too dangerous, so kids have to be delivered via
Speaker 1: sea section to save Yeah, and like the implications that
Speaker 1: could have I thought that was a really interest.
Speaker 11: Right, because we know when we have complications with childbirth,
Speaker 11: like one of the best things you could do is
Speaker 11: deliver through a cesarean section, a sea section, and so
Speaker 11: if you know people are having complications with birth on Mars,
Speaker 11: that might be the go to. And then if you
Speaker 11: get to the point where that just becomes the standard
Speaker 11: everybody has sea section berths, then what are the evolutionary consequences. Well,
Speaker 11: at that point, the head no longer has to fit
Speaker 11: through the birth canal, and that's been a major constraint
Speaker 11: throughout human evolution. So if the head is no longer
Speaker 11: constrained to fit through the birth canal, at that point,
Speaker 11: the head could actually evolve to become larger. So you know,
Speaker 11: it's funny because you know, in one way, it's like
Speaker 11: kind of sounds like the sci fi depictions of aliens, right,
Speaker 11: you know, these big headed aliens. But that's a plausible
Speaker 11: evolutionary scenario.
Speaker 1: And in a lower gravity environment you could hold up
Speaker 1: that giant head like more easily or something.
Speaker 4: But then it's hard when you come back to Earth.
Speaker 11: So yet another reason why people born on Mars might
Speaker 11: struggle to come back to Earth. Yeah, but yeah, we
Speaker 11: were talking about the radiation environment, and I think that's
Speaker 11: another challenge because we know that, you know, Mars is
Speaker 11: bombarded by quite a lot of radiation because it has
Speaker 11: a very very thin atmosphere and it has basically no magnetosphere.
Speaker 11: So you know, people on Mars, if you're on the surface,
Speaker 11: you're exposed to, you know, nearly the full force of
Speaker 11: deep space radiation, galactic cosmic rays and everything else. So
Speaker 11: you know, you'd need to have some protection from that
Speaker 11: just to be able to survive. You know, maybe we're
Speaker 11: living underground. But I like to imagine that people aren't
Speaker 11: going to be content to only be underground. I mean,
Speaker 11: I don't want to go to Mars if I don't
Speaker 11: ever get to go. You know, explore on the surface,
Speaker 11: and you know, if you're growing crops and doing other activities,
Speaker 11: you might need to be on the surface. So if
Speaker 11: people are exposed to higher levels of radiation than we
Speaker 11: are on Earth, on the one hand, there's cancer risks,
Speaker 11: But on the other hand, mutation is the ultimate source
Speaker 11: of genetic diversity. So what you could find is that
Speaker 11: mutation rates overall are higher, and that's really the raw
Speaker 11: material for natural selection. So that's a mechanism by which
Speaker 11: you could have more rapid adaptation to the environment on
Speaker 11: Mars because you have basically more raw material for natural
Speaker 11: selection to work with. And then the advantages that would
Speaker 11: come with any mutation that happens to be beneficial.
Speaker 2: Well, that's fascinating. I want to underline that you're saying
Speaker 2: that radiation itself could be creating the mutations which allow
Speaker 2: us to survive radiation exactly. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Physics is amazing, But but what Blake and Kelly stepping
Speaker 1: in here. But on average, what aren't most mutations likely
Speaker 1: to be negative? So aren't like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: probably going to kick the bucket from cancer and like
Speaker 1: one percent are going to like hit the genetic lottery
Speaker 1: and have like a great mutation that like and one percent,
Speaker 1: I'm just picking a random number. I don't that's not
Speaker 1: like a scientifically justified number.
Speaker 11: Yeah, probably less than one percent. Okay, Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 11: So this is not a pleasant way forward. We're not
Speaker 11: talking about like a happy way to see future generations
Speaker 11: become better adapted, because what you're talking about is a
Speaker 11: lot of death and suffering. I mean, we're talking about
Speaker 11: a lot of people having, you know, cancer, probably at
Speaker 11: a younger age. Right, You're more susceptible to cancer caused
Speaker 11: by radiation exposures when you're young, because your cells are
Speaker 11: dividing more rapidly, and every time they divide, there's an
Speaker 11: opportunity for a mutation.
Speaker 2: And death is an essential part of this.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If people don't die, if they live and have kids,
Speaker 2: then you don't evolve. People like to say that like
Speaker 2: physics moves one funeral at a time, but so does humanity.
Speaker 11: That's how evolution works. You know, it's not a pleasant process.
Speaker 11: And so that's why, you know, one thing that has
Speaker 11: been proposed is maybe we need to take matters into
Speaker 11: our own hands, right, Maybe we should be manipulating our
Speaker 11: genes to try to improve the ability to adapt without
Speaker 11: having to kind of wait for natural selection, to wait
Speaker 11: for mutation and then natural selection to discover new ways
Speaker 11: to do things better. If we could make those changes ourselves,
Speaker 11: it would help people by you know, enabling them to
Speaker 11: be able to handle the high radiation, low gravity environment,
Speaker 11: you know, alleviate some of that death and suffering.
Speaker 2: Wow, both of our eyebrows just went up because I
Speaker 2: thought you were going to go in another direction and
Speaker 2: say we should be killing people because you know, we
Speaker 2: might be like short un resources and you know, if
Speaker 2: we get hungry, we might just have to decide in
Speaker 2: advance who we think is going to survive. And you know,
Speaker 2: some of that flesh could be tasty. I don't know
Speaker 2: what Martians are going to like to eat.
Speaker 1: Daniel got to the cannibalism.
Speaker 2: It always happens naturally, that's right.
Speaker 1: That was the perfect transition to genetic engineering. And so
Speaker 1: then my question for you is, do we know what
Speaker 1: genes we would need to tinker with? So, do we
Speaker 1: know what we would need to do to people to
Speaker 1: make them well adapted to the Martian surface or at
Speaker 1: this point would we just be like making changes and
Speaker 1: crossing our fingers.
Speaker 11: I think that we're sort of at the yes and
Speaker 11: no point. We do know of some of the genes
Speaker 11: that we might be able to alter. So, for example,
Speaker 11: Tartar grades are famously really resilient and able to survive
Speaker 11: being in space for long amounts of time, et cetera.
Speaker 11: And we know that they have a gene called d SUP,
Speaker 11: which stands for damaged suppressor, So this is how they're
Speaker 11: able to suppress damage to their DNA caused by radiation exposure.
Speaker 11: And so one of the things I did when researching
Speaker 11: the book was visit Chris Mason's lab at Real Cornell
Speaker 11: Medicine in New York, where they're actually taking genes from
Speaker 11: Tartar grades, including deesub, and cloning them into human cells
Speaker 11: in culture. And they've been able to show that those
Speaker 11: human cells actually express the desub protein, suggesting that it
Speaker 11: might be possible to get some of that radiation protection
Speaker 11: in our own cells. Now we haven't done that in
Speaker 11: a living human yet, but if you could do that
Speaker 11: safely and effectively, that could be really interesting.
Speaker 4: So I think we.
Speaker 11: Still have a lot of unanswered questions, both about what
Speaker 11: genes we would want to be editing and also being
Speaker 11: one hundred percent sure that that's not going to have
Speaker 11: any unintended consequences right and.
Speaker 1: On Earth, We're not comfortable with making those changes in
Speaker 1: humans ethically yet, so we would also have to decide
Speaker 1: that we're going to, you know, eschew all of the
Speaker 1: ethical concerns that we have about making those changes on
Speaker 1: humans and then decide we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: make them on martians. What do you think about that?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 11: Absolutely, I mean I think the ethical considerations are enormous,
Speaker 11: and I try to address that a bit in the book.
Speaker 11: I mean, I think, look, we have a long history
Speaker 11: of trying to think that we can control our own
Speaker 11: evolution and that really not going well. I mean, the
Speaker 11: entire field of eugenics was based on the premise that
Speaker 11: we could make humanity better by controlling who lives, who dies,
Speaker 11: and who reproduces, and we all know how that turned out. Yeah,
Speaker 11: so we clearly don't want to repeat those sins of
Speaker 11: our past.
Speaker 4: But part of what's.
Speaker 11: Interesting about this is that the ethics, I think, become
Speaker 11: a bit different once you're talking about living in this
Speaker 11: incredibly harsh environment. So if you had the ability to
Speaker 11: alleviate death and suffering by making gene edits, would it
Speaker 11: be unethical to do that or would it be unethical
Speaker 11: not to do that? But then it gets tricky too,
Speaker 11: because it's one thing to agree to edit your DNA
Speaker 11: knowing the risks, and it's a very different thing to
Speaker 11: edit the DNA of an unborn child who has no
Speaker 11: ability to understand the risks and to consent to that.
Speaker 11: And so you know, doing a genetic edit to each
Speaker 11: individual is one thing. Doing germline gene editing, which is
Speaker 11: making changes to the cells that make sperm and eggs
Speaker 11: that would be heritable changes. At that point, you are
Speaker 11: manipulating the future evolution of our species, and you're making
Speaker 11: changes to future generations that weren't able to consent.
Speaker 2: But aren't you doing that anyway? Even if you only
Speaker 2: edit your own genes. I mean, if I edit my
Speaker 2: genes to give myself, you know, laser eyes or something,
Speaker 2: then my kids have laser eyes and you know, kids
Speaker 2: are always brought into the world without consent anyway from
Speaker 2: the gene pool of their parents.
Speaker 11: So it depends which of your cells your editing. So
Speaker 11: you could make changes to your own DNA that wouldn't
Speaker 11: be passed on to your kids. So it has to
Speaker 11: be the cells that make the game mates, the sperm
Speaker 11: and the eggs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, given what you've learned, do you think we should
Speaker 1: become Martian?
Speaker 4: So here's the thing.
Speaker 11: I looked at some of the like motivations for why
Speaker 11: people are trying to do this in the first place,
Speaker 11: which I know Kelly, you and Zach get into this
Speaker 11: in your book as well, The City on Mars, and
Speaker 11: I think I came to some similar conclusions as you
Speaker 11: guys did, which is that eventually maybe we should, Like
Speaker 11: I'm not saying we should never go and live on
Speaker 11: Mars or any other planet, but I think there's enough
Speaker 11: unanswered questions, such as, you know, is human reproduction even possible?
Speaker 11: Could a child born on Mars come back to Earth?
Speaker 11: We need to know those answers before I think we
Speaker 11: can responsibly start loading people onto ships and sending them
Speaker 11: out there. But I am kind of convinced by the
Speaker 11: idea that in the long run, eventually, if we don't
Speaker 11: do that, we might eventually go extinct. I mean, there
Speaker 11: could be a disaster on Earth, and there will be
Speaker 11: a disaster if you wait long enough. You know, whether
Speaker 11: it's self imposed or whether it's an asteroid impact or
Speaker 11: super volcano eruption, it's gonna happen. The thing that matters
Speaker 11: is the time frame. So I just don't think we're
Speaker 11: ready yet. I'd want to see more science, more answers
Speaker 11: to important questions that we don't know, we could know,
Speaker 11: we could find out about, you know, human reproductive biology
Speaker 11: in space. There just hasn't been enough research on it yet.
Speaker 11: And so that's what I'm saying. We need to do
Speaker 11: that science. Let's learn, let's discover, let's continue doing space science,
Speaker 11: human space exploration, but let's not start actually living out
Speaker 11: there until we know we can do it.
Speaker 2: Say so, do you think that this is an issue
Speaker 2: that species around the galaxy face? You know, if you're
Speaker 2: an alien now you're on some other home planet and
Speaker 2: you're wondering about hopping to the next planet. Is this
Speaker 2: a conversation that's being had across the galaxy? Should we
Speaker 2: be shipping your book to Alpha Centauri.
Speaker 11: Oh, I gladly donate a copy to ship to Alpha
Speaker 11: Centauri if you know of any missions that are heading
Speaker 11: that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I think some of the general conclusions of what I'm
Speaker 11: trying to argue in this book would be applicable to
Speaker 11: any species living anywhere in the cosmos. I mean the
Speaker 11: idea that species adapt to new conditions, the idea that
Speaker 11: the founders of a population have a big influence on
Speaker 11: what can happen next, and the idea that it might
Speaker 11: be hard to move between planets because of how different
Speaker 11: those environments are and how well adapted species are to
Speaker 11: the planet that they came from. Those patterns are going
Speaker 11: to be true of any kind of life living anywhere.
Speaker 11: So I think it's really interesting that HG. Wells back
Speaker 11: in eighteen ninety eight wrote War of the World's imagining
Speaker 11: a future when sophisticated Martians came and attacked Earth and
Speaker 11: we couldn't stop them because their technology was too advanced.
Speaker 11: But what ultimately stopped them bacteria. It was the microbes
Speaker 11: that they had no defenses against that ultimately were their downfall.
Speaker 11: So I didn't come up with that idea that's been
Speaker 11: around since at least eighteen ninety eight. But I think
Speaker 11: that's actually really prescient. I mean, I think he was
Speaker 11: onto something that is likely to be a challenge. It's
Speaker 11: not an insurmountable challenge, but we need to better understand
Speaker 11: it before we can expect that it'll be easy to
Speaker 11: move around between planets once we're actually living out there.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks Scott for coming back on the show.
Speaker 1: Becoming Martian is available in all great bookstores everywhere, and
Speaker 1: all terrible ones and all terrible ones, and everyone should
Speaker 1: run out and grab a copy.
Speaker 4: Thanks Daniel, Thanks Kelly, This is always so much fun
Speaker 4: to talk with you, guys. I appreciate it.
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