0:01

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

0:04

The Joe Rogan experience. Train

0:06

by day. Joe Rogan podcast by

0:08

night, all day. What's up Ben?

0:10

Hey, thanks so much for having.

0:12

My pleasure. Very nice to meet

0:14

you, man. So, why don't

0:16

you, instead of me, because

0:18

why don't you explain to

0:21

people what you do? So

0:23

I'm the CEO and co-founder

0:25

of a company called Colosal

0:27

Biosciences. We're the world's first

0:29

deextinction and species preservation company.

0:31

Yeah, and that is a

0:33

wild thing. I mean, this

0:36

is essentially, literally wild. This

0:38

is essentially real-life Jurassic

0:40

Park. Yeah, we get the Jurassic

0:42

Park occasionally, like, believe it or not, we

0:45

get them. Of course. I mean, I got

0:47

to drop my hydrogen tablet in. Oh, you

0:49

do those, the Gary Breckle ones, right? I'm

0:51

all in. I'm all in. Yeah, so. Yeah,

0:54

I love those. I just didn't want you

0:56

to think it was, we're going a different

0:58

direction. How did you get started even thinking

1:00

about doing something like this? So I kind

1:03

of fell into it. I didn't wake up

1:05

and say I saw Jurassic Park Park Park

1:07

Park Park. So there's this guy named George

1:10

Church. If you don't know George, you should

1:12

look him up. He's the father of synthetic

1:14

biology. He's at Harvard University. He's six foot

1:16

seven with narcolepsy. He's just the best, right?

1:18

So if you ever had him on, he

1:21

may fall asleep during the podcast, but he's

1:23

just the absolute best. He's a genius. And

1:25

I thought my background's in software and just

1:27

building teams of people that are smarter than

1:30

me, right? And so I was interested in

1:32

synthetic synthetic biology. engineer life and that we

1:34

could use AI and compute to make it

1:36

even better. Like how do we do directed

1:38

evolution and how that can apply to like

1:41

crops and animals and all kinds of stuff.

1:43

So I get on the phone with George

1:45

and I ask him my questions. He answers

1:47

him in like six seconds because he's a

1:49

genius. And then I start asking about all

1:51

the other weird stuff that's coming out of

1:53

his lab. In that process he's like, you

1:55

know, I've also been working on mammoth and

1:57

other things. I was like, wait, wait, wait,

1:59

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. mammoth project

2:01

and then he went down this whole path

2:03

about how he'd bring back mammoth, reintroducing the

2:05

Arctic, help the ecosystem, use those technologies for

2:07

conservation, use those technologies for human health care

2:09

and I kind of thought it was a

2:11

fucking joke. I literally thought that like the

2:13

smartest man I've ever met and been on

2:15

the phone with was a joke. Well then

2:17

I stayed up all night just googling George

2:19

and there was this weird mammoth rule line.

2:22

whether he was in 60 minutes or, you

2:24

know, Stephen Colbert, whatever he's in, there was

2:26

this weird mammoth through line where he was

2:28

just obsessed with these mammoth and everyone kind

2:30

of wanted him to do this. So I

2:32

called him back the next day, seven days

2:34

later I'm in his lab and we were

2:36

off to the races on, okay, we're going

2:38

to try to go build a company to

2:41

bring back sink species. So how do you

2:43

decide what to start with? So we started

2:45

with the mammoth first, right? Because George had

2:47

been working on it for eight years. We

2:49

needed his core technologies. We thought that there

2:52

was a huge application to elephant conservation. There

2:54

was some ecological modeling that had been done

2:56

to shows that the reintroduction of mammoth back

2:58

into the wild could actually have a net

3:00

benefit to the ecosystem. And so that

3:03

was an easy place to start. after

3:05

we launched the company and went crazy

3:07

viral and all these other folks from

3:09

the extinction research started calling us like

3:11

folks from like the thylocene or Tasmanian

3:13

tiger which looks like a mythical creature

3:15

is awesome. The best ship here with

3:17

the dodo everyone just started calling us

3:20

and then we just started expanding

3:22

you know our entire set. So how

3:24

does one do this? It's like let's.

3:26

Before we get to what you showed

3:28

me earlier, which is fucking amazing, before

3:30

that, how does one do this? Like,

3:32

from what I understand, you have to

3:34

take the gene of an Indian elephant,

3:36

which is the closest thing to a

3:39

mammoth? Yeah, let me walk through the

3:41

whole process. So first you have to

3:43

find ancient DNA, which is pretty shitty

3:45

on a good day. So the minute

3:47

we take DNA out of our bodies

3:49

or out of anything, it starts to

3:51

degrade to degrade at an

3:53

insanely rapid rate. 109 mammoth

3:56

samples ranging from 3,000 years

3:58

old to 1.2. million years

4:00

old which is awesome. But it's also

4:02

fragment. It's like it's like a shitty

4:05

jigsaw puzzle that you don't know what

4:07

the box is and someone stolen part

4:09

of the puzzle and then oh by

4:11

the way people have taken other puzzle

4:13

pieces and put them in there. So

4:16

there's all kinds of problems with that.

4:18

So this is really an AI and

4:20

compute problem. It's not as much a

4:22

human problem. So you have to get

4:24

a lot of samples first and then

4:27

you have to start mapping them to

4:29

their closest living relative living relative and

4:31

genotyping. that's Asian elephants, right? So Asian

4:33

elephants are 99.6% the same as mammals.

4:35

They're actually closer related to mammals than

4:38

they are to African elephants. Really? Yeah,

4:40

which always blows people mind. That and

4:42

the fact that mammals were alive when

4:44

we were building the pyramids or aliens

4:46

or whoever's building the pyramids, like literally

4:49

like humans were building the pyramids while

4:51

mammals existed and sometimes that blows people's

4:53

mind because they always think of them

4:55

as in this like weird like prehistoric,

4:57

like go extinct. So the last one

4:59

went extinct about 4,000 years ago on

5:02

Rangel Island. Yeah. Wow, they've been around

5:04

for a long time. Four thousand years

5:06

ago. I know they weren't. I mean,

5:08

now they appeared about two and a

5:10

half million years ago as far as

5:13

we understand in the, they were mostly

5:15

a Pleistine species. But as we moved

5:17

into the Holocene and kind of the

5:19

period that we're in right now, they

5:21

existed. They existed all the way up

5:24

until they had this like small genetic

5:26

bottleneck on Rangel Island. Wow, where's Rangel

5:28

Island? It's northeast east of Siberia. Was

5:30

it a small island? They just ran

5:32

out of resources there? Like what happened?

5:35

Well, there's a couple different theories, right?

5:37

One of the theories with Rangel Island

5:39

is that they actually, there's lots of

5:41

inbreeding, so there's lots of genetic bottleneck

5:43

which happened because there's not a different

5:46

species there. How large is Rangel Island?

5:48

I'm not quite sure. Can you give

5:50

me a photo again, Jamie? Okay. And

5:52

so essentially though, Rangel Island and then

5:54

there's another island called St. Paul Island,

5:57

which is also between a... Alaska and

5:59

Russia also is where they were. Those

6:01

are kind of the last two places

6:03

that we know Mammus existed today. And

6:05

they died out 4,000 years ago. Yeah,

6:08

and now some actually, there is actually

6:10

another working hypothesis that they actually ran

6:12

out of water. They ran out of

6:14

access to fresh water on the island.

6:16

Oh wow. So some combination of genetic

6:18

bottleneck and that occurred. Wow. 4,000 years

6:21

is so recent. I know, it's crazy

6:23

recent, right? Jamie, can you please pull

6:25

up a photo of an Asian elephant

6:27

versus a African elephant? And they're actually

6:29

mammists, because there's, you know, mammists themselves,

6:32

yeah. Mammus themselves are close related to

6:34

the Asian elephant. They have that- Which

6:36

is on the left? Yeah, which is

6:38

on the left. So they have that

6:40

dome cranium, they have the small ears,

6:43

they have a little bit of a

6:45

hump structure, you know, Mammus because they

6:47

had these massive, massive tusks, right? And

6:49

you know, you've talked to lots of

6:51

folks in kind of the mammoth world.

6:54

They actually, you know, moved their heads

6:56

quite slowly, they had to have this

6:58

entire ridge of extra muscle muscle in

7:00

order to do that. But one of

7:02

the things that's also about the Asian

7:05

elephants is some Asian elephants Some of

7:07

the ones that are born actually have

7:09

they look they're not mammoth like but

7:11

they have a lot of fur on

7:13

them and they kind of lose it

7:16

over time Wow, so those the ones

7:18

that you would find like in Thailand

7:20

Yes, and Thailand and then parts of

7:22

different parts of India and the Indian

7:24

subcar I actually wrote one of those

7:27

ones with my family Did you get

7:29

one of those places that you like

7:31

to take care of? Yeah, you have

7:33

to like get a relationship with them

7:35

So you feed them sugarcane and you

7:37

wash them and you know, you play

7:40

nice with them for like a while

7:42

Yeah, a couple hours. It was like

7:44

at least an hour You're just hanging

7:46

out with them petting them and and

7:48

then once they decide you're cool. They

7:51

didn't let you ride them. Yeah, but

7:53

my whole family wrote them and I

7:55

was like totally opposed to it. Oh

7:57

just want to feed them. Yeah. Hang

7:59

out with them. Yeah. They just felt

8:02

weird. My daughter fell off, I think

8:04

twice, one of my youngest daughter fell

8:06

off once at least. And I was

8:08

like, do we know that this elephant

8:10

wants us riding? You know what I

8:13

mean? It's kind of a weird thing.

8:15

And then afterwards you get in the

8:17

water and you wash them and everything

8:19

and I just kind of hung out

8:21

with them. I'd be cool. Very very

8:24

very sweet. Yeah, there is. Definitely is.

8:26

Because she was eating a log. I

8:28

was like, why are you eating a

8:30

log? Yeah. It's just weird. They're so

8:32

enormous, but they're really like peaceful and

8:35

chill. Yeah. And they have incredible packed

8:37

dynamics, right? Yeah. They live in a

8:39

herd. They've even had all these different

8:41

examples where they also adopt other animals.

8:43

I don't know if you've seen any

8:46

of these videos. But yeah. So here

8:48

it is. So here it is. This

8:50

is a few years ago. An Asian

8:52

elephant, just chilling with this elephant. This

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9:54

okay there it is it was really

9:56

cool Yeah, it's awesome. It's just cool

9:58

to be around them. They're just a

10:00

fascinating animal. Just the biodiversity of Earth,

10:02

the fact that that thing exists. This

10:05

enormous thing with this like robotic potential

10:07

art. Yeah, it's crazy. As long as

10:09

you're cool to them, they're cool to

10:11

you. Yeah, they sense it, right? Yeah.

10:13

I mean, we see that nature with

10:15

a lot of animals, right? If you

10:18

sense it and they don't feel like

10:20

they're... you know, being backed into a

10:22

corner or fearful, then they're not going

10:24

to be around that. So some of

10:26

our animals I've been around and they're

10:29

starting to get quite large, which I'm

10:31

sure we'll talk about at some point.

10:33

Yes. That, yeah, at some point though,

10:35

you're still kind of like, they are

10:37

wild animals, so you have to. Maintain

10:40

some level of healthy distance. Yeah, so

10:42

well, let's just get right to it.

10:44

Wait wait. You want to finish the

10:46

process? Yeah, yeah. Please so we have

10:48

the ancient ancient ancient Genome so you

10:51

have to collect and assemble right and

10:53

that's a lot of people just think

10:55

of us in the lab like just

10:57

a bunch of people in the lab

10:59

But that's like some Indian adjonship like

11:02

we're literally going into the permafrost and

11:04

like collecting dead samples from the permafrost

11:06

which you know you know you've literally,

11:08

I mean, I guess it is death.

11:10

It's just over time piled up death.

11:13

And- Have you visited John? Yeah, I

11:15

visited John. Do you went to the

11:17

bone yard? Yeah, I went to the

11:19

bone yard. What's it like there? It's

11:21

crazy. It's exactly what you'd expect. I

11:24

didn't know John. So I'm on the

11:26

board of trustees of the Explorers Club,

11:28

so we take these expeditions. We did

11:30

an expedition to Alaska to do mammoth

11:32

retrieval, and then we're also doing some

11:34

cultural studies with some of the indigenous

11:37

people groups around mammoth. Like, do you

11:39

want mammoth back? Because this is a

11:41

good idea, right? Because we tried to

11:43

be pretty inclusive. And they're like, oh,

11:45

we got to meet the biggest landowner

11:48

in Alaska, John. And I was like,

11:50

OK, I'm excited. So go meet him.

11:52

So go meet him. We pull up,

11:54

he's in a different. He's in a

11:56

different car. He's in a different car.

11:59

And he's like, and I think he

12:01

wanted us to follow him. He's like,

12:03

get in. I was like. Okay, and

12:05

he's big dude. He's enormous. I'm not

12:07

that big of a dude, right? No,

12:10

especially after Gary Breck has been working

12:12

on him, the smaller dude, right? And

12:14

so, like, I literally get in, I

12:16

get in the car, there's a bunch

12:18

of stickers and there's one that has

12:21

a butterflies on it that says, give

12:23

zero fucks. And I was like, and

12:25

then there's, and he's like, just move

12:27

the gun over. And he goes, listen,

12:29

listen, and this is the first. I

12:32

didn't even ask a follow-up question because

12:34

like what do you do when you

12:36

get in the car with John and

12:38

he says you hand me that gun

12:40

if I stop quick and I say

12:42

hand me that gun you hand me

12:45

that gun I was like that's awesome

12:47

he showed me around the book kind

12:49

of gun was it it it was

12:51

just some type of rifle so it's

12:53

grizzlies I assume it was for grizzlies

12:56

yeah or bears or you know something

12:58

large yeah yeah but then he showed

13:00

me around the boat and showed me

13:02

his collection and he was completely I

13:04

mean he didn't know us from anybody

13:07

he just opened up everything to us,

13:09

right? And he's like, let me show

13:11

you all this, showed us his call.

13:13

He actually has a warehouse. I don't

13:15

know if he ever discloses where it

13:18

is, but he has a warehouse where

13:20

he has some of the greatest specimens

13:22

ever. So it's cool. You should go.

13:24

It's cool. I do want to go.

13:26

He's an amazing guy. Yeah, he's an

13:29

amazing guy. Yeah, and he's a cool,

13:31

and he's a cool, and he's in

13:33

the mammoth research business. like before your

13:35

podcast with him, we kind of learned

13:37

that story, right? And so that's what

13:40

sucks is how like some people can

13:42

ruin it for everybody. You know, because

13:44

he's, you know, outside of Fairbanks, it's

13:46

not the easiest place to build a,

13:48

you know, bio containment level three lab.

13:51

But he's like, but he was over,

13:53

he's like, you build a lab here,

13:55

you use whatever you want, but he's

13:57

like the bones stay here. So he's

13:59

very consistent with his messaging with his

14:01

messaging. And I totally believe it. I

14:04

totally believe it. Well, it's a fact

14:06

now. They've found these bones in the

14:08

East River. Exactly where they told them

14:10

to drop it off. of step bison

14:12

fragments and woolly mammoth fragments so they

14:15

know that they're there. Yeah and well

14:17

I mean you you've built a relationship

14:19

with John he's just a normal no

14:21

bullshit kind of guy yeah he's like

14:23

you stole this stuff give it back

14:26

yeah or he's also like hey if

14:28

you want to come work on it

14:30

come on like he's very collaborative it's

14:32

also it's like what what do you

14:34

guys have like why are you keeping

14:37

that shit in a basement like what

14:39

is that? I mean, when we do

14:41

work, you know, outside of the expeditions

14:43

of collecting ancient DNA, when we do

14:45

work, we also work with museums, right?

14:48

And so we go to like the

14:50

catacombs of the museums. And it's exactly

14:52

what you think of like the Vatican

14:54

archives, right? You go down to like

14:56

the Vatican archives, right? You go down

14:59

to like sub-basement four of the Smithsonian,

15:01

and it's like, like, like, like, like,

15:03

like, like, like, little drawers. DNA and

15:05

I was like well this is like

15:07

you know the card catalog of like

15:10

all speak of all like dead species

15:12

yeah but it's not on display for

15:14

the public it's just in a basement

15:16

and is it extensively archived they know

15:18

where everything is there some stuff down

15:20

there I mean there I wouldn't say

15:23

that they are the at least any

15:25

museum they have all they I think

15:27

they have a lot more than they

15:29

know I don't see it in like

15:31

massive computer systems because we asked for

15:34

inventory list and you know Like, what's

15:36

the shop? What's the shopping list? It's

15:38

been over 100 years they've been doing

15:40

this. Yeah. So people have come and

15:42

gone. Oh, they'll pull out. Yeah, and

15:45

they'll pull out drawers that have like

15:47

Darwin's name on it and stuff like

15:49

that. Wow. I mean, that's how we

15:51

did the thylacine. We actually found in

15:53

a cup about this size, we actually

15:56

found what's called, we called the miracle

15:58

pup, we called the Miracle, from the

16:00

first sample of that pup. But they

16:02

didn't even know they had it. They

16:04

also, on the thylacine, which I'm sure

16:07

I'll talk about more later, they also

16:09

found a head in a bucket. They

16:11

didn't even, it was the mom's head.

16:13

So we actually knew, we could actually

16:15

look at the genetic. relation between the

16:18

two and they actually found they didn't

16:20

know they had the head in the

16:22

bucket. They just had a head in

16:24

a bucket. They opened it up as

16:26

Mark Thylacine. They opened up and there

16:29

was a full Thylacine skull in there.

16:31

There's pictures of it online and everything

16:33

and we used that to get to

16:35

a 99.9% complete genome because we also

16:37

had the ancestry of the two of

16:39

the pup and mother. Wow. Yeah. So

16:42

there's there's probably treasure troves in some

16:44

of these museums in some of these

16:46

museums that aren't being you know fully

16:48

utilized. If you have 98% or you

16:50

have 99%, what's the process of going

16:53

from that? So here's the head in

16:55

the bucket. So Andrew Pass, who leads

16:57

are in partnership with the University of

16:59

Melbourne, leads our thylacine work. And yeah,

17:01

that's the head and bucket. I mean,

17:04

there's soft tissue, there's teeth, there's petrous

17:06

bones, which we'll talk about it. Do

17:08

you buy into any of these sightings?

17:10

No. I did. So Andrew Pass, for

17:12

years. He's been working on it for

17:15

15 years. and he's had people send

17:17

them, you know, poop, clippings from, you

17:19

know, hair, and all this stuff over

17:21

the year, so he just sent it

17:23

to him, and then he loves the

17:26

thylacine so much, he just sequences it,

17:28

and he's like, no, it's a dog.

17:30

You sent me more dog shit, thanks.

17:32

I mean, it's demoralizing, but like when

17:34

I got into thylacine, you know, we

17:37

met Andrew, we did a partnership with

17:39

them, we actually made the largest investment

17:41

in marsupial research, more than the Australian

17:43

government, we made the largest investment in

17:45

research for marsupial development of anyone. So

17:48

we do this, and then. you get

17:50

into the myth of it, right? So

17:52

you start reading it, right? You start

17:54

reading, I start reading all the books

17:56

on the thiocene, I want to be,

17:58

I get obsessive about projects, and so

18:01

I'm pretty obsessed about extinction right now.

18:03

And so got super deep in it,

18:05

and then I started calling Pask, I

18:07

was like, hey, I've been watching these

18:09

YouTube videos, and I kind of think

18:12

they're still there, and Pask, like, no,

18:14

stop it, don't go down that rabbit,

18:16

that rabbit hole, don't believe. But why

18:18

did he say that? Well, because he's

18:20

been testing for the last 15 years

18:23

all over Tasmania, right? So not just

18:25

southern Australia, but all over Tasmania. So

18:27

samples, poop and stuff like that. Just

18:29

everything, using camera traps. And nobody's, I

18:31

think that they officially say that the

18:34

file scene went extinct in 1936. Probably

18:36

into the late 40s and early 50s.

18:38

They still existed But I mean, I

18:40

think you I think it's very unlikely

18:42

that one so exists It'd make our

18:45

lives a lot easier for us really

18:47

believes in it He does he thinks

18:49

they're in Papua New Guinea Because of

18:51

sightings. Yeah, he said he thinks in

18:53

the western part of Papua New Guinea

18:56

in the mountains and also incredibly remote.

18:58

Yeah. Very difficult in the separation of

19:00

that topography separates the Papua New Guinea

19:02

singing dogs, which could be competitive for

19:04

them for a predator-prey, from where the

19:07

thiles, the insideings were. What's a singing

19:09

dog? It's just another large canid that

19:11

has a unique howl. Oh, wow. Yeah,

19:13

so it still exists. I mean, I'm

19:15

sure Jamie can find a video. I

19:17

never heard of this. Singing dog. Yeah.

19:20

Wow. I didn't get any singing dogs.

19:22

By the way, folks, this is, we're

19:24

teasing, yeah, because... This is not just

19:26

theoretical. Yeah, so this is what's going

19:28

to get crazy. Yeah, it's going to

19:31

get weird. This podcast is going to

19:33

blow your fucking mind. Go ahead, Jimmy.

19:35

These queer animals have a neck for

19:37

holding a tune, even to an exact

19:39

key. That looks like a dog dog.

19:42

Yeah, it looks like a dog. That

19:44

looks like a dog. They're wild dogs

19:46

in pop in the beginning, but I'm

19:48

sure people have domesticated them. Wow. Pretty

19:50

fucking cool dogs. And hang out with

19:53

a fox. So once you have enough

19:55

of that DNA, right, from all these

19:57

different samples, and you can assemble it,

19:59

you then have to build comparative genomic

20:01

models to its closest living relatives in

20:04

the case of the mammoth. the Asian

20:06

elephant. But I'm from software, so I

20:08

just assume there's like the, you know,

20:10

Google cloud of DNA. Like we backed

20:12

up, like we've all done 23 and

20:15

me before it went bankrupt, right? So

20:17

we should assume that, I assume that

20:19

the government or someone backed up and

20:21

had kind of like the 23 and

20:23

me of all species. That doesn't exist.

20:25

Wow, which is insane. So there's like

20:28

there's no back there's no like Noah's

20:30

Ark bio vault for life, like kind

20:32

of like the seed vaults. That doesn't

20:34

exist. And so we're actually petitioning the

20:36

US government to help put a massive

20:39

project together to help biobank. It's starting

20:41

with just American mega fauna and Keystone

20:43

species. So that doesn't exist at all.

20:45

And so so then you so then

20:47

colossal had to go out and go

20:50

build the reference genomes for all the

20:52

species for all the species. like the

20:54

closest living relatives for all the species

20:56

that we're working on. So this is

20:58

the question. If you have, say let's

21:01

go to Willie Mammoth, so if you

21:03

have Willie Mammoth and you have 99%

21:05

how do you bridge that gap? How

21:07

do you create? That's synthetic biology. So

21:09

you never have to get to 100%

21:12

right? You need to get to probably

21:14

synthetic biology. Synthetic biology. That's where you

21:16

are. using all of these different genetic

21:18

tools. Probably, you've heard of CRISPR, all

21:20

these other things, genetics, you know, which

21:23

is, it breaks the DNA, it's not

21:25

always the best tool. We can now

21:27

actually make individual edits to, when you

21:29

think of the DNA double. you know

21:31

helix right in those rungs of the

21:34

latter those individuals are called nucleotides we

21:36

can change the letters like that's how

21:38

precise we can be we can say

21:40

at spot you know four million eight

21:42

I need to change that letter and

21:44

so you change that letter and then

21:47

other times you actually synthesize big blocks

21:49

of DNA so when you notice that

21:51

in the mammoth and in in in

21:53

the Asian elephant there's a difference and

21:55

if it's in these certain like coat

21:58

protein coating regions in all these different

22:00

of the genome that drive phenotypes or

22:02

physical like like attributes like, you know,

22:04

curved tusks, dome cranium, small ears, the

22:06

subcutaneous fat layer, and then hair and

22:09

coat color, you can actually then engineer

22:11

that into the Asian elephant, right? Because

22:13

you're only looking, you're. you're only really

22:15

looking at that 0.4% difference, right? It's

22:17

still a lot of numbers. But you're

22:20

only looking at that. And so the

22:22

better you can be at software, and

22:24

the better you can be using AI

22:26

and computer models, the less edits you

22:28

have to make, right? Because you're really

22:31

just trying to target those core phenotypes.

22:33

Right. Are there specific genes that regulate

22:35

size? Because they're larger than mammas for

22:37

about the same size. They're a little

22:39

bit bigger than Asian elephants, a little

22:42

bit smaller than African elephants, than African

22:44

elephants. So there were. 11, you know,

22:46

everyone argues over the definition of speciation

22:48

because it's a stupid concept that humans

22:50

made, not nature made. And so there

22:53

are 11 different types of mammoth out

22:55

there that evolved in different ways and

22:57

some of them were larger, but the

22:59

wooly mammoth, the one that we were

23:01

pursuing that has that wooly phenotype, it

23:03

was about the size of an Asian

23:06

elf. But to your question on size,

23:08

it's actually a cluster of genes. We're

23:10

finding more and more about how different

23:12

genes also map across all species as

23:14

well. And so there's specific characteristics that

23:17

these animals have, one of them being

23:19

the big furry coats, that you guys,

23:21

what did you do with mice? We

23:23

made wooly mice. See if you can

23:25

find that. The only, the only, like,

23:28

unintended consequences was they were cute as

23:30

fuck. Like, people lost their minds, right?

23:32

Like, we're, there's, there's, I was, I

23:34

was on the phone recently with it,

23:36

you know, moderately aggressive. journalist and and

23:39

it was going quite poorly as some

23:41

calls go. Modernly aggressive? Not being aggressive

23:43

in what way? Some people, some people,

23:45

yeah, they, everyone like, look out cute.

23:47

My daughter actually found this online and

23:50

wants one. Yeah, so we get that

23:52

a lot from Willie Mice. So every

23:54

week, I don't have my laptop, I

23:56

show out here. But every week. Oh

23:58

my God, they're adorable. So this, so

24:01

these willy mice aren't just adorable. We

24:03

basically said, look, look, what are the,

24:05

what are the... core genes that drive

24:07

the hair phenotype or physical attribute of

24:09

a of a mammoth from an Asian

24:12

elephant to a mammoth. And then because

24:14

we want to do this in the

24:16

most ethical way as possible, there's about

24:18

200 million years of genetic divergence between

24:20

mice and elephants, we didn't just want

24:22

to ram mammoth DNA in there and

24:25

see what happens. So we look for

24:27

the mouse equivalent, right? So we look

24:29

for like all of us have similar

24:31

genes, so we can try to look

24:33

for those genes and then edit those

24:36

genes with the data we got from

24:38

the mammoth, so that we're then not

24:40

just putting random genes in there that

24:42

could... either hurt the animal or kill

24:44

them, right? Or they may not even

24:47

be compatible with life, right? So we

24:49

tried to be really, really thoughtful about,

24:51

and the woolly mice went like, it

24:53

went insane. There's people that are like

24:55

making T-shirts a meme coin. And so

24:58

we made 36 mice. They're all healthy.

25:00

There's 36 mice that we made. And

25:02

what was crazy about it is we're

25:04

excited about it because it shows that

25:06

the end-to-end process of taking data from

25:09

an ancient DNA Comparing it to a

25:11

living animal making those changes doing it

25:13

with a hundred percent efficiency And that's

25:15

really important and really hard so we

25:17

did it with a hundred percent efficiency.

25:20

Yeah, that's the difference one of them

25:22

if it was in a trap you'd

25:24

be so sad. Yeah, exactly a little

25:26

bit of fur yeah makes you love

25:28

them and that's the color that we

25:31

think most mammals were really they were

25:33

like a blonde they were like they

25:35

were like a golden brown color right

25:37

because when we pull them out the

25:39

permafrost they've been sitting in mud for

25:41

quite some time but if you see

25:44

very fresh mammals like from Siberia and

25:46

whatnot like in yacoots and other places

25:48

in northern Siberia that they actually have

25:50

pretty pretty well preserved mammals. They actually

25:52

have kind of a dirty blonde meat

25:55

gold meets brown fur. Wow. Interesting. So

25:57

we did that and now there's people

25:59

that are making t-shirts that aren't us

26:01

and pillows they're like legalized willy mice.

26:03

I'm like they're not illegal. And then

26:06

there's a meme account for the guy

26:08

that did the like the crisper babies

26:10

you know that went to in trouble

26:12

for you know making edited babies in

26:14

China. A meme account. Oh wow, so

26:17

that's mammoth for wow. A meme account

26:19

though, actually said on X that these

26:21

are a bio weapon and that Colossus

26:23

made a bio. So the weirdness of

26:25

the woolly mouse went crazy viral. What

26:28

we were trying to show is that

26:30

we used our multiplex editing tools, meaning

26:32

that we edited all of those genes

26:34

at the same time. Most people edit

26:36

one gene, let that mouse live. from

26:39

the second lineage, they'll do one more

26:41

gene, let that mouse live, and then

26:43

they'll stack those edits over multiple generations.

26:45

We've developed a system so that we

26:47

can deliver all of those edits at

26:50

one time, all over the genome, get

26:52

exactly what we want, and then we

26:54

have this what's called monoclonal screening where

26:56

we're screening the cells at the end,

26:58

sequencing all the cells, which is expensive

27:00

and sounds like overkill. But then we

27:03

know that none of them have unintended

27:05

consequences or off-target effects in the genome

27:07

so that we know the mice that

27:09

we then do cloning with, we know

27:11

that they'll be healthy. And so we

27:14

try to spend a lot of time

27:16

on that because we're certified by American

27:18

Humane Society. It's the oldest human organization

27:20

in the world. And if you've seen

27:22

the film that's like no animals were

27:25

harmed in the making of this film,

27:27

that's those guys. So we've ended up,

27:29

so we really care about kind of

27:31

not just the... De extinction efforts, the

27:33

genome engineering efforts, but ensuring that the

27:36

animals are healthy when they come out.

27:38

And so the the woolly mouse was

27:40

a really interesting proof of concept. It

27:42

shows that the edits that we are

27:44

working on are working right and we're

27:47

getting exactly what we predicted. Is there

27:49

any plans to sell those? No, everyone

27:51

keeps asking us that. But you know

27:53

what museums actually are now calling us

27:55

saying and zoos are calling us saying

27:58

can we display the woolly mice? They're

28:00

like it'll drive so much value. sell

28:02

our animals or to sell you know

28:04

wooly mice but it's kind of gone

28:06

crazy. Is it dangerous though to leave

28:08

these mice in the hands of someone

28:11

even at a zoo who decides I

28:13

want more of these? Yeah if we

28:15

ever if we ever put them I

28:17

think more like we'd put them in

28:19

a museum for that needs to be

28:22

free like the Smithsonian or something like

28:24

that from an education perspective versus something

28:26

that's more attraction base I think we

28:28

do it more in the case of

28:30

do you plan on keeping this batch

28:33

alive? Yeah, they're going to live out

28:35

their normal lives. And you're not going

28:37

to make new ones. We may make

28:39

new ones with new, these won't, they're

28:41

all separated. They're all separated by sex.

28:44

So we're not going to like a

28:46

Jurassic Park moment where they change. They're

28:48

all separated by sex. But if you,

28:50

if Jamie finds a picture of their

28:52

habitats, they actually live in pretty sweet

28:55

digs that we we made for them.

28:57

They're all, yeah, like, we spared no

28:59

expense. Cool little house. Yeah, and they're

29:01

big and we, you know, we put

29:03

fun stuff in them to play with

29:06

like, like this. And what's been crazy

29:08

is we only named two of them

29:10

and we named two of them and

29:12

we named Chip and Dale because we,

29:14

people were asking what the names were

29:17

and I was like, uh, Chip and

29:19

is the only thing that I could

29:21

think of at the moment. That's not

29:23

chip, that's stale. We need a picture

29:25

of chip. So you can't get involved.

29:27

Yeah, so we've just, yeah, we don't,

29:30

don't get involved with those people. We've

29:32

not, we've not leaned in, yeah. You

29:34

cannot. We're excited, they're excited, but we

29:36

just can't. Yeah, we're busy. So, so

29:38

this is a new thing, the willy

29:41

mouse model, because it's a 20 day

29:43

gestation versus 22 months in elephants. great

29:45

way to test phenotypes because with you

29:47

know with a mammoth you have three

29:49

ways to test if you got the

29:52

edits right. One you can do molecular

29:54

tasks you can do DNA sequencing to

29:56

see if it worked. Two I guess

29:58

there's four two you could grow a

30:00

mammoth and see if it looks like

30:03

it that's a lot of work in

30:05

22 months like a lot of gestational

30:07

time a lot of money I think

30:09

there's a lot of risk in that.

30:11

The third, and this is a little

30:14

weird, we created what's called induced pluripotent

30:16

stem cells. So we created cells that

30:18

you can then turn into any type

30:20

of tissue. So we actually do have

30:22

mammoth hair follicles growing in a lab.

30:25

So we have hair growing in Petri

30:27

dishes in the lab, which is pretty

30:29

cool. And then the fourth way is

30:31

mice, right? Because it's like, if we

30:33

can then engineer them into mice, we

30:36

can see immediately within 20 days. if

30:38

the edits were working, if there were

30:40

any unintended consequences that or would be

30:42

detrimental to the animal. Wow. So we'll

30:44

probably make more iterations of the William

30:46

Ice. The Thylacine's closest living relative is

30:49

the fat-tailed Dunart, which is a mouse-sized

30:51

marsupial, and it actually gestates in 13

30:53

and a half days versus 20 days.

30:55

So there's no reason to do it

30:57

in mice when you can do it

31:00

immediately in the model species. Wow. Yeah.

31:02

Okay. How did you make the decision

31:04

to do what you ultimately did, what

31:06

you showed me before the show? So

31:08

we're working on the mammoth, the Tasmanian

31:11

Tiger, and the dodo for different reasons.

31:13

We work with a lot of different

31:15

private landowners, governments, and indigenous people groups.

31:17

And a project that we announced through

31:19

our colossal foundation about two and a

31:22

half years ago is doing a population

31:24

genomics map. We talked about biobanking a

31:26

little bit. So we want to understand

31:28

from the bison that are still here

31:30

in America, what's genetic diversity, what's been

31:33

lost, you know, what's the number of

31:35

inbreeding. So we go through this whole

31:37

process to try to understand and then

31:39

we were giving a report back to

31:41

MHA Nation. Chairman Fox, it's one of

31:44

the largest indigenous people groups in the

31:46

United States, one of the largest tribes,

31:48

one of the largest tribes based in

31:50

North Dakota. What other projects would you

31:52

work on that we could do that's

31:55

helpful outside of helping bison? And they

31:57

said that we needed to help with

31:59

wolf conservation. And they brought up that.

32:01

They said that we needed to help

32:03

with more bison conservation. They said if

32:05

we do stuff around eagles and fish.

32:08

And so we kind of got that

32:10

feedback. And when Chairman Fox is walking

32:12

me through their cultural heritage museum, he

32:14

actually stopped on this incredible picture of

32:16

a white wolf. And he said, you

32:19

know, that's the great wolf. And he

32:21

talked about the ancestral knowledge that was

32:23

passed down and that's been lost and

32:25

how many people believed that it could

32:27

have even been a dire wolf. And

32:30

I was like, from Game of Thrones,

32:32

that's cool. I love the show that's

32:34

interesting. So we did that. We talked

32:36

about that. And then, you know, three

32:38

months later, I was in North Carolina.

32:41

understanding that for a completely different meeting

32:43

around financing and in that meeting The

32:45

red wolf program came up. I don't

32:47

know if you know anything about the

32:49

red wolf, but it's kind of a

32:52

disaster You know, it's the only endemic

32:54

wolf to America. It's a red wolf.

32:56

It's beautiful and there's like 15 left

32:58

in the wild with massive loss of

33:00

genetic diversity, massive bottleneck. And I was

33:03

like, wait, we're supposed to be this

33:05

country of innovation. We can't save our

33:07

own. When you think of like the

33:09

American West, right? You think of wolves,

33:11

you think of like, you know, eagle

33:14

soaring, you think of like, you know,

33:16

eagle soaring, you think of like trout,

33:18

bears catching trout, you know, you think

33:20

of bison. The thought that we could

33:22

lose one of these amazing icons, we've

33:24

had all. of these kids over the

33:27

last three years sent in teachers and

33:29

parents sending us pictures of Willie Mammus

33:31

or Dodos. It seems like we get

33:33

like boxes of this every single week

33:35

which is pretty cool. So we're gonna

33:38

make a colossal kids corner at our

33:40

new labs and in that we've had

33:42

all this some Hollywood talent like you

33:44

know Tom Brady others that have invested

33:46

in the business. They're just excited about

33:49

it. Most of them learned about it

33:51

through their kids. Kind of like with

33:53

the Willie Mouse with you. And so

33:55

everyone's excited about it. And then we

33:57

talked to Ginda MHA. they brought up

34:00

the dire wolf again. And so we

34:02

thought maybe there was an opportunity to

34:04

bring back an American species because dire

34:06

wolves were only found in the US,

34:08

a little in North America, but predominantly

34:11

in the United States. coastal United States

34:13

and we thought if we could do

34:15

something that could bring back the dire

34:17

wolf also help wolf conservation and bring

34:19

people from like sci-fi fantasy and kids

34:22

more into science and into the conversation

34:24

around conservation we thought it was a

34:26

cool idea but we had no idea

34:28

if we could pull it off. Is

34:30

there... Dead dire wolves that were trapped

34:33

in permafrost or is no most are

34:35

most of the dire wolf skulls out

34:37

there There's thousands of them in LeBron

34:39

Tarfret. So if you go there they

34:41

have this beautiful wall, but because of

34:43

heat and acid acidification there isn't anything

34:46

that's protected. Like there's nothing you can

34:48

get from that. But about six years

34:50

ago, a group, including Best Shapiro, our

34:52

chief science officer, sequenced a tooth that

34:54

was found in a cave, just a

34:57

single tooth, right? And in that tooth,

34:59

they actually found a, they actually got

35:01

0.15. X or coverage of the genome,

35:03

so they got about 15% of the

35:05

genome. But that's not really enough. You

35:08

need to get up to about 10X,

35:10

meaning that you can read the entire

35:12

genome about 10 different times, so that

35:14

even if there are gaps, you understand

35:16

enough of the core kind of... coding

35:19

regions that you could bring back that

35:21

animal. Is this done by AI? It's

35:23

done by AI and software, yeah. So

35:25

we built, part of our business model

35:27

is building technologies to solve these really

35:30

complicated problems. They're much harder to solve

35:32

than, you know, just solving them for,

35:34

you know, existing species, open sourcing that

35:36

for conservation for free, but then also

35:38

taking those acknowledges that we can monetize

35:41

for humans and spinning them out. So

35:43

our first computational analysis company was called

35:45

Formed. Yeah, point five, so 15% of

35:47

the genome. And so I went to

35:49

Beth, who's only an advisor at the

35:51

time, and said, could you resample the

35:54

tooth? And she's like, it's like, you

35:56

know, half an inch long. She's like,

35:58

it's destructive sampling, like it's going to

36:00

ruin us. Well, could we scour the

36:02

other museums and see if it's even

36:05

possible? So we lucked out in that

36:07

tooth. 13,000 years old. The skull itself

36:09

is 72,73,000 years old, not exactly sure,

36:11

but it was found in a riverbed

36:13

and it wasn't found in a riverbed

36:16

at the mouth of a cave, so

36:18

it wasn't found like in the permafrost,

36:20

it also wasn't found in like heatness

36:22

acidification. So there's a bone in all

36:24

of us called the petrous bone, which

36:27

is insanely dense and it doesn't change

36:29

a lot from after you're born. It's

36:31

a great DNA storage, better than teeth,

36:33

better than anything. It's like in the

36:35

inner ear kind of head area. And

36:38

so we got permission from the museum

36:40

to very carefully drill into the back

36:42

at the underside of the skull and

36:44

remove... the petri-spone to see if we

36:46

could get DNA. And we got really

36:49

lucky between resampling the first and the

36:51

skull, we ended up getting about 13

36:53

to 14 X coverage. So that's more

36:55

than we needed to potentially bring back

36:57

the dire wolves. And then would you

37:00

do? Well, and then, then we got

37:02

a knock on the door. I don't

37:04

see. No, so we took that DNA.

37:06

Can I ask you before we even

37:08

start with this? Yeah. The aggressive reporters.

37:10

Is it you're playing God? How do

37:13

you have the right to do this?

37:15

So it's been a journey, okay? So

37:17

the journey that we've had is when

37:19

we started the business, we didn't have

37:21

any scientists. We just didn't, right? They're

37:24

like, this is tech pros, wanting to

37:26

see cool animals, and oh, they've only

37:28

got $16 million of funding, and they

37:30

don't have any scientists, ha ha. So

37:32

that was phase one. And then we're

37:35

like, oh, well, you know, as an

37:37

entrepreneur, my job is to hire much

37:39

smarter people than me. Gary's got me

37:41

on quite a kick. So health kick.

37:43

Yeah, so I mean, I mean, I'm

37:46

not saying they're bad for you. Well,

37:48

I'm not saying they're bad for you.

37:50

I'm just saying that I allegedly, yeah,

37:52

I don't care. So this is the

37:54

last of the things that I partake

37:57

in that are probably bad for you.

37:59

Yeah, but you got to, you got

38:01

to do what you got to do.

38:03

Everyone's got their vice. like what right

38:05

do you have to invade the natural

38:08

process of nature and to inject your

38:10

curiosity and your ability to create new

38:12

life? I think that we've become the

38:14

apex predator on this planet and we

38:16

inject our curiosity in choices every day

38:19

that we overfish the ocean, we over

38:21

hunt something. In the case of the

38:23

Thylacine, the Australian government put a bounty

38:25

on its head and killed it off,

38:27

right? Every time we cut down the

38:29

rainforest, every time we... drink hydrogenated water,

38:32

we are, you know, playing God on

38:34

some level, right? We are, we are,

38:36

we are, we are change, humans are

38:38

very good at changing the natural flow

38:40

of things. Now, the good news is,

38:43

is that there's been a lot of

38:45

work around ecology and understanding what the

38:47

impacts to rewilding can be. And so

38:49

it's been really, really helpful for us

38:51

to understand, you know, one of the

38:54

most successful rewilding programs of all times

38:56

was reintroducing of 14 or 15 wolves

38:58

back into the Alston. Right. And looking

39:00

at how the ecology of the system

39:02

completely changed, like it changed the shape

39:05

of rivers, you know, because the elk

39:07

population were just, you know, they were

39:09

getting fat, they were getting lazy, they

39:11

weren't migrating, the sick and the old

39:13

in the week weren't getting killed off,

39:16

they were spreading disease, they were eating

39:18

all of the willows and everything along

39:20

the banks, so therefore the beavers went

39:22

away. Beavers are like the most super,

39:24

you know, climate impact animals that probably

39:27

exists. and ponds to get deeper so

39:29

it allows different types of fish and

39:31

different types of animals. So you have

39:33

this thing called tropic downgrading and you

39:35

have this tropic cascading effect when you

39:38

reintroduce these species. That documentary is fascinating.

39:40

It's so fascinating. How wolves change rivers?

39:42

Yeah. I know people that lived in

39:44

Montana before the wolf reintroduction and a

39:46

lot of people don't like that the

39:48

wolves are there but most of them

39:51

are elk hunters that were used to

39:53

something that's just outrageously overpopated. That's the

39:55

reality of it. but they were telling

39:57

me that they were They had so

39:59

many alcohol that were living, they had

40:02

such a large population versus the actual

40:04

resources that were available, that they had

40:06

all these crazy hunts that were available

40:08

over the counter, like you can hunt

40:10

cows in the snow. So in the

40:13

middle of the winter, where they can't

40:15

move, good, you just pick them off

40:17

in the snow, because they were just

40:19

trying to call the population. They were

40:21

trying to diminish them. And that's not

40:24

good for the elk population itself. Right.

40:26

I have a good friend who lives

40:28

in Colorado. He has a ranch in

40:30

Colorado and we were at his place

40:32

approximately two weeks after they reintroduced wolves.

40:35

They actually reintroduced wolves on his property.

40:37

Oh yeah. And he didn't know what

40:39

was going to happen before it happened

40:41

and all the people around there are

40:43

ranchers. So already these five wolves that

40:46

they've reintroduced, he said killed over a

40:48

dozen cows and calves. So the problem

40:50

is they've killed elk as well. In

40:52

fact, I took a photo of an

40:54

elk leg that we found on the

40:57

ground that the wolves had killed. I'm

40:59

not a big fan of people getting

41:01

to vote on whether or not you

41:03

should do something with wildlife. I'm a

41:05

big fan on having real wildlife biologists

41:07

assess situations. In the case of Colorado,

41:10

Colorado obviously borders Wyoming and Wyoming has

41:12

wolves. Wolves were making their way into

41:14

Colorado already and they are protected. The

41:16

problem with reintroducing, you're essentially asking a

41:18

wolf that doesn't know the territory to

41:21

start killing things in that territory. Or

41:23

to stop it. at a imaginary border,

41:25

it doesn't exist. There's no border. They

41:27

go hundreds and hundreds of miles. But

41:29

the idea that you're doing this, and

41:32

you're doing this, where there's ranches, is

41:34

crazy. And in Colorado, particularly stupid, because

41:36

the first batch were literally animals that

41:38

they had captured because they were killing

41:40

wildlife. So they moved them from Oregon

41:43

to Colorado, where they started killing wildlife.

41:45

Yeah, they're killing wildlife. Excuse me, excuse

41:47

me, I'm saying wild. life, what I

41:49

really meant to say was animals, agriculture.

41:51

They're killing domesticated cows. They're killing these

41:54

calves and they're having a real fucking

41:56

problem with that. And it is something

41:58

that needs to be continually monitored that

42:00

shouldn't just be on some random vote

42:02

of how you feel about it, right?

42:05

Like you just can't let people vote

42:07

on that. No, I, I, too many

42:09

people live in these high population areas.

42:11

I couldn't, I couldn't agree more, right?

42:13

And so like we as humanity, like

42:16

if you look at the, the third

42:18

leading cause of death, of, of, of

42:20

elephants, it's human elephant conflict, right? Like

42:22

we have to, we have to, we

42:24

have to, we have to, we have

42:26

to, we have to, we have to.

42:29

you have to do this in a

42:31

very thoughtful and measured way, right? Like

42:33

with Yellowstone, they're like, this is. big

42:35

enough ecological reserve, we're tagging the animals,

42:37

we're gonna walk and measure it. I

42:40

don't think that it's safe or smart

42:42

to put any, you know, not just

42:44

predators, but also like large herbivores in

42:46

these heavy population dense areas. We can

42:48

just, we just, we have to understand

42:51

that some of these areas, not our

42:53

loss, but have already been changed for

42:55

a different reason. Yes, and they've achieved

42:57

homostasis, they've achieved a balance, right, which

42:59

is the big issue with Colorado right

43:02

now. it's going to be the big

43:04

issue whenever you reintroduce an animal that

43:06

used to be there and there's no

43:08

one there. And I think in the

43:10

case of Montana... I think you're right

43:13

and I think that there is an

43:15

argument that maybe the wolves being there

43:17

is better. Obviously not if you're a

43:19

rancher. Well, the Colorado stuff is completely

43:21

going to destroy all of the stats.

43:24

So pre- Colorado, right? So I'm talking

43:26

about reintroduction into Montana, reintroduction into parts

43:28

of Canada, reintroduction into Yellowstone, the Red

43:30

Wolf, which is a very small population

43:32

in North Carolina. There's been less than

43:34

five... confirmed fatalities in all of North

43:37

America in the last 100 years. You

43:39

mean humans? Humans. Right. And most of

43:41

them in Alaska? Most of them in

43:43

Alaska or in Canada. And then it's.

43:45

before Colorado. So I'm not saying, I

43:48

don't know if the data has, I

43:50

don't think it has the latest from

43:52

Colorado, but it represents 0.02% of deaths

43:54

associated with wolves and cattle and livestock,

43:56

right, and all livestock, not just cattle.

43:59

And so the problem is when you

44:01

go out there and you have a

44:03

maintained balance that people can understand and

44:05

governments actually give subsidies to the ranchers

44:07

when they get killed by the, by

44:10

wolves. So that I think that is

44:12

a good program. because you have to

44:14

be fair to the people that are

44:16

actually ranching. But the problem is when

44:18

you're not as thoughtful with a rewilding

44:21

program and you don't. and you're not

44:23

as measured as like what they did

44:25

in Yellowstone, and they start encroaching in

44:27

these areas, then the stats are gonna

44:29

go crazy. And what the stats go

44:32

crazy, then you're gonna start looking to

44:34

the animals that are the problem, but

44:36

it's not the animals that are the

44:38

problem. It was the decision that we

44:40

gave that power to the masses that

44:43

were really not informed to make that

44:45

decision. Exactly. The problem is people just

44:47

have these ideas, like wolves are beautiful,

44:49

they're amazing, we all love wolves. It's

44:51

an incredible animal, so happy it exists.

44:53

Don't put it near where there's a

44:56

ranch. You can't vote on that if

44:58

you live in Denver. That's crazy. Yeah,

45:00

if it doesn't affect your livelihood, if

45:02

it doesn't affect the risk to your

45:04

animals or your family, yeah, you have

45:07

to be mindful of that. There's also,

45:09

they're getting a very skewed perspective because

45:11

the governor's really interested in it. His

45:13

husband apparently is the one who really

45:15

wanted it to happen. And you have

45:18

to be mindful of that. There's also

45:20

they're getting a mandate, like, like, like,

45:22

fuck it. Yeah, it's just not. It's

45:24

just, you have, in, the, a lot

45:26

of, so the project that we'll probably

45:29

eventually talk about is, we brought in

45:31

a lot of the teams, so many

45:33

people that have been on your show,

45:35

that know how to do the rewilding

45:37

the right way over time. Okay, so

45:40

this is what, we'll just get to

45:42

it. You made a fucking dire wolf.

45:44

I didn't. Our team, our incredible team.

45:46

Uh, made three dire wolves so far.

45:48

Let's see the photos. Jamie bust out

45:51

some photos. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself,

45:53

because this is truly fucking crazy. Yeah,

45:55

that's the pop. Yeah, so this is,

45:57

uh, so that's actually, uh, Romulus as,

45:59

so we have two boys, Romulus and

46:02

Remus, uh, founders of Rome, and then,

46:04

uh, and then we have, Kelese, who's

46:06

the new girl. So, this is Romus

46:08

and Remus. So, funny story about this,

46:10

so, so, Peter Jackson from Lord of

46:12

the Rings was actually one of our

46:15

investors and he has this huge museum

46:17

in Wellington that he's building for all

46:19

these movie props and he's like where

46:21

I was sitting in Peter's house with

46:23

he and his partner Fran and I

46:26

was like you know I showed him

46:28

the video of them howling he started

46:30

tearing up he goes this is the

46:32

first time I've heard a dire wolf

46:34

or anyone's heard a dire wolf in

46:37

10,000 years started well he like he

46:39

like physically emotionally got chills and started

46:41

crying and he's like Well you know

46:43

I do have. the throne. I was

46:45

like, what do you mean? He goes,

46:48

I bought the throne last week at

46:50

auction at a private auction for like

46:52

Sotheby's or someone, right? And so, so

46:54

he did, and it just happened to

46:56

be where the wolves were doing their

46:59

vet checkup. Like talk about cosmic coincidence,

47:01

incredible, right? And so, you know, what

47:03

you don't see in this photo is

47:05

you don't see the fact that we

47:07

have American Humane Society there, because of

47:10

virus. from that they can get from

47:12

the soil at eight at eight weeks

47:14

they do get basic virus they do

47:16

get basic vaccines. Are we concerned about

47:18

that? I mean you have this animal

47:21

that you're just yeah so these are

47:23

staying on you know like these are

47:25

not going back into the wild right

47:27

not yet right now they're on a

47:29

2,000 acre secure expansive ecological preserve with

47:31

24 7 care that we have an

47:34

animal hospital that we built. People always

47:36

like you guys raise so much money

47:38

and I was like well it because

47:40

we didn't just. Spend it on the

47:42

labs. You have to spend it on

47:45

the animal care the facilities. Yeah, let's

47:47

see the photo of the actual grown

47:49

ones because they're fucking nuts Yeah, so

47:51

so this is Rhymus and Remus in

47:53

playing in the snow on the preserve

47:56

when they are Three months old so

47:58

this is three months. How big are

48:00

they? Three months they were north of

48:02

45 pounds. Wow So, um, look at

48:04

that face. God, they're so beautiful. Oh,

48:07

they just get, they just get, like,

48:09

as they've aged, they've just got more

48:11

and more beautiful. So let's go to

48:13

the adults, because the adults have crazy

48:15

characteristics. You were saying that you didn't

48:18

even know that we didn't know, right?

48:20

And so we, we, we, we ended

48:22

up getting a, is this a full

48:24

grown one? Uh, no. They're still five

48:26

months old. So they're still five months

48:29

old. So they're. Wolves Wolves typically grow

48:31

12 to 14 months, so they're not

48:33

full grown yet. Wow, and how big

48:35

is it already? 80 pounds, about five

48:37

and a half feet. And the main.

48:40

Yeah, and so a couple things about

48:42

the wolves, James, you go back, yeah.

48:44

So we didn't know this right we

48:46

knew that they were a Pleistine wolf

48:48

we knew that they existed and went

48:50

extinct about 12,000 years ago When a

48:53

lot of megafauna went extinct like the

48:55

during kind of that younger dry period

48:57

that younger dryest kind of cooling period

48:59

They went they went extinct as well,

49:01

right? And we knew all we know

49:04

because all we have is we don't

49:06

frozen dire wolves or frozen samples We

49:08

literally just know from skeletal remains that

49:10

they were 20 to 25% larger they

49:12

were stockier, they probably weren't as fast

49:15

based on their body weight as a

49:17

normal wolf would be. But we knew

49:19

that they had thicker skulls, larger cranium,

49:21

and whatnot. And we assumed that they're,

49:23

and we did find this out in

49:26

the genome, which is pretty cool, that

49:28

they're white, because there's like this misconception

49:30

for a while that they were red,

49:32

because some scientists wanted to make a

49:34

paper and assume that they were red

49:37

so they get their paper. Doesn't it

49:39

make sense for natural selection for natural

49:41

selection? Yeah. this beautiful we didn't notice

49:43

they have this beautiful like main like

49:45

quality to them and when they're babies

49:48

you saw a couple of pictures, their

49:50

fur almost feels like polar bears. It's

49:52

crazy. Wow. Is it like polar bears

49:54

and it's hollow or is it not?

49:56

It's not, it's like typical wolves, but

49:59

it's incredibly thick, it grows in kind

50:01

of these these clumps, but then as

50:03

they've, as they've grown in, they've started

50:05

to get this kind of like main

50:07

to them, which is incredible. The females

50:09

as well? Well, the female, she's only

50:12

six weeks old, so it's too too

50:14

soon as well. So it's two. So

50:16

it's two. So it's two. So two.

50:18

So two. So two. So two. So

50:20

two. So two. So two. So. So.

50:23

So. So. So. So. So. So. So.

50:25

So. So. So. So. So. So. So.

50:27

So. So. So. So. So. So. So.

50:29

So. So. So. So. So. So. So.

50:31

So. So. So. So. So. So. So.

50:34

So. So They're just beautiful and I

50:36

mean it's funny someone actually said they

50:38

on our two is like they almost

50:40

look like Shetland pony wolves at some

50:42

point right right there's something they're so

50:45

stocky they're stocky they're thicker they are

50:47

I mean they're they're absolutely beautiful that

50:49

so this is Calisie so who looks

50:51

like a baby and we nailed it

50:53

we we we named her can we

50:56

hear it let me hear We

51:00

named Kelsey for George R. Martin, obviously.

51:02

Obviously. Who's an investor in colossal? Oh.

51:04

Nature's cute little murderers. Well, everything in

51:07

nature murders is something, right? Yeah. Like,

51:09

we were... Well, cows murdered grass. Yeah.

51:11

And people are now saying you can

51:13

hear grass and other plants like scream

51:16

now. Yeah, they scream. So I guess

51:18

we all are bad. Life eats life.

51:20

This is, this is, I mean, that's

51:22

the reason why plants have chemicals to.

51:25

dissuade us from eating them. What are

51:27

they eating there? So they love to

51:29

chew on horns in this state. So

51:31

we have a different phases of we

51:34

built a 145 page animal guide. These

51:36

are actually different horns from different elk

51:38

and other species that we're putting out

51:41

there. And they chew on like a

51:43

dog does. Like a dog does, right?

51:45

So are you letting these animals kill

51:47

things? Are you feeding them? So we're

51:50

feeding them. So they had a combination

51:52

of bison meat, horse meat, and some.

51:54

Do you plan on letting them kill

51:56

things eventually? So we're just about to

51:59

introduce carcasses to them. So giving them

52:01

part of a carcass, letting them feed,

52:03

building in that dynamic between the two

52:05

brothers for now. And then, and they

52:08

are starting to exhibit some hunting behavior.

52:10

Are you going to let them hunt

52:12

on that preserve? But they're not doing

52:15

it yet. They're starting to exhibit the

52:17

original kind of the first inklings that

52:19

that it will trend toward that but

52:21

we want them to live we want

52:24

them and we're gonna probably make two

52:26

or three more we want a solid

52:28

little social pack that we can monitor

52:30

that can live a seemingly wildlife that

52:33

we can understand more about them. Wow.

52:35

That's cool. But the other thing that's

52:37

that's equally cool to it, going back

52:39

to the Redwill story, can you, what's

52:42

just crazy to me that you have

52:44

reignited these 10,000 year old hunting jeans.

52:46

Yeah, that they're starting. Including size, including

52:49

size. We understand more about like. We

52:51

looked at what genes made really a

52:53

dire wolf, a dire wolf, like what

52:55

was separated. And the beautiful thing for

52:58

us is that we had a 13,000

53:00

year old tooth and a 73,000 year

53:02

old skull, so we could actually understand

53:04

the genetic distance, with that much genetic

53:07

distance between them, we could actually understand

53:09

what truly was fixed and conserved in

53:11

the dire wolf genome and what wasn't

53:13

just population genomics, right? If you and

53:16

I are 50,000 years apart, there's a

53:18

lot of different mutations in that time

53:20

period. But if we can then really

53:23

say, okay, you know, what made Ben

53:25

Ben and what made Joe Joe, oh,

53:27

here's the overlaps. It allowed us to

53:29

really understand that. Wow. It's just fascinating

53:32

that the behavior characteristics are kind of

53:34

baked into those genes. Yeah. And they

53:36

just were dormant for 10,000 years. And

53:38

now these things are waking up. And

53:41

so I was like, so I was

53:43

in, you know, because I bottle fed.

53:45

Romulus. And Ramos was partly raised with

53:47

me. I could go out to the

53:50

preserve. I'd check on him quite frequently.

53:52

It's in the northern United States where

53:54

we don't say where it is. But

53:57

mainly because we're for not just the

53:59

animals health, but for human health, ever

54:01

since we've launched the woolly mouse, we've

54:03

had very excited people just show up

54:06

at our labs are not open to

54:08

the public. And we've had lots of

54:10

people just show up wanting to see

54:12

the mice. And so. Showing people too

54:15

much of the preserve we're always very

54:17

very nervous about we scrub all the

54:19

videos and want to ensure that no

54:21

one can pick it out Because we

54:24

assume people will be moderately excited. Oh,

54:26

yeah. Oh the internet sluice will try

54:28

to find you Yeah, so we've we've

54:31

done not I'm not trying to challenge

54:33

them, but we've been we've done everything

54:35

we can to protect it. Yeah, I

54:37

understand I mean you have to Some

54:40

dude from Saudi Arabia wants a wolf.

54:42

Yeah, exactly. Somebody wants a dire wolf.

54:44

We get a lot of we already

54:46

get a lot of weird calls. But

54:49

the other thing though, someone with deep

54:51

pockets. Oh, we make me a dire

54:53

wolf, my friend. I have everything in

54:55

my collection. We get a lot of

54:58

weird calls. Yeah, from people that are

55:00

like. Those people that have private zoos.

55:02

Oh yeah. Yeah, like enormous. Like in

55:05

India. Yeah. They have that family has

55:07

like the largest private zoo and preserve

55:09

just so wild. It's so crazy. Yeah,

55:11

well, you know, Texas is history with

55:14

animals, right? Yeah. There's more tigers in

55:16

captivity and private collections in Texas than

55:18

in the wild. Then in the wild

55:20

of the world. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy.

55:23

But I was I was in the.

55:25

I was in so we of the

55:27

2,000 acres we have a subset subsection

55:29

of it that's about six and a

55:32

half acres where we have an animal

55:34

hospital a storm rescue shelter we have

55:36

a couple of natural dens that we've

55:39

built for them as well as an

55:41

animal husbandry area so that that way

55:43

when we want to take photos of

55:45

them or videos them or do blood

55:48

tests they're in a seemingly more contained

55:50

area and it's funny two weeks ago

55:52

I sent the most amount of time

55:54

with. Remus came up, came pretty close,

55:57

and I was able to touch him.

55:59

again, but I thought of that moment

56:01

and then you kind of get itished

56:03

away. I was like, That's the last

56:06

time I'm touching Rima. It's like, what

56:08

am I doing? And I mean, don't

56:10

me wrong, I had our animal. Yeah,

56:13

what I have animal care teams there

56:15

and everything. And they have been some,

56:17

there's some level of habituation between the

56:19

care team, they really know and love

56:22

the care team, but they're still wild

56:24

animals, right? And so they probably hunted

56:26

humans. Yeah, I don't, I don't, we

56:28

don't know, right, right, but the rise

56:31

of kind of the change, the massive.

56:33

I don't know, it's some of the

56:35

stuff that there's like several different prevailing

56:37

theories, one of which is human predation,

56:39

right, that like the rise of humans

56:41

led to the extinction of the megafauna.

56:44

That's kind of, you know, I think,

56:46

I think it's the answer is probably

56:48

a combination. Could have there been an,

56:50

you know, astrological event? They're starting to

56:52

be more and more data around that.

56:54

I've seen Randall Carlson talk about it.

56:57

I've seen Randall Carlson talk about it,

56:59

Graham Hancock talk about it. And they

57:01

just got the ship beat out of

57:03

them. Yeah, but not anymore. Yeah, no

57:05

longer tries impact theory is well respected

57:08

now. Yeah, and it happened. Yeah, and

57:10

it definitely also happened in kind of

57:12

a regional sense, right? Because you see

57:14

different, which also tracks to the theory,

57:17

right? So not only do you have

57:19

these different layers that you can prove

57:21

from a sedimentation presentation perspective. and some

57:23

of the glaciers up there that rapidly

57:26

liquefied, they then dumped in the ocean,

57:28

that also changed ocean patterns. So you

57:30

went from a period, you know,

57:32

in that kind of transition from

57:35

Pleistocene to Holocene, there was this

57:37

period of. insanely accelerated cooling. Do

57:39

you know how Randall came up

57:41

with that idea before it was

57:44

brought to like his idea is

57:46

that it was an instantaneous melting

57:48

of these caps for some

57:50

sort of immense cosmic event

57:52

and millions and millions and

57:55

millions of trillions of gallons

57:57

of water at an insane

57:59

rate? ran through the land and

58:01

just carved deep gouges into the earth.

58:03

He was on acid. He was on

58:05

acid and this idea came to him.

58:07

He was looking out over a ridge.

58:09

He was looking at this enormous gorge

58:12

and he realized the gorge was formed

58:14

by water rushing at an insane rate

58:16

of speed. And then he started noticing

58:18

that there's... these huge boulders that

58:21

are just out in the middle of

58:23

nowhere that were just moved by this

58:25

immense amount of water and then the

58:28

way the ground the the features

58:30

of the ground looks like the features

58:32

that you see on sandy beaches when

58:34

the tide rolls in and out yeah

58:37

this is great and it all

58:39

tracks it tracks all over the world

58:41

it's like it's like those it reminds

58:43

me those stories where they show people

58:45

like the side of the sphinx and

58:47

they're like like flip the photo and

58:50

then you see the head of things

58:52

like that's not water erosion. It's Dr.

58:54

Robert chalk from Boston University. I've interviewed

58:56

him. He was the first guy to

58:58

propose this. He's like this is thousands

59:00

of years of rainfall and we know

59:02

that the last time there's rainfall like

59:05

that in the Nile Valley was 9,000

59:07

years ago. So the whole thing is

59:09

really screwy in terms of like what

59:11

is the timeline that this stuff was

59:13

actually built and are we just assuming because

59:15

we've decided that it's it forever and and

59:18

no one wants to let that go. Well,

59:20

that, that, that, I'm not a scientist, but

59:22

that's, and I don't come from academia. I'm

59:24

just an entrepreneur that knows how to build

59:27

teams of smarter people than me, and I

59:29

find cool shit interesting, and I try to

59:31

work on it, right? And what's crazy to

59:33

me is the academic system, you know, once

59:36

again, not an academic, I'm sure I'll get.

59:38

crucified for this, but I don't read the

59:40

comments. I don't read the comments. I

59:42

don't read the comments. I don't,

59:44

trust me, I don't read the

59:46

comments. Good for you. I sleep

59:48

quite well. The, but you know,

59:51

the academics, we have 95 of

59:53

the top scientific advisors in the

59:55

world, Nobel laureates and whatnot. We've

59:57

got, we fund 17 academic universities,

59:59

right? of the world, right? And they're

1:00:01

doing this. So we're very integrated with

1:00:03

different ideas from academia and these scholars.

1:00:06

And our top people that were at

1:00:08

Colosso came from academia. So I think

1:00:10

where you try to be very academic

1:00:12

friendly, but they live in this world,

1:00:15

this super kind of like fortune and

1:00:17

glory world, where it's like, it's a popularity

1:00:19

contest. If someone has a paper, because their

1:00:21

entire motivation is publish or perish. So one

1:00:23

of the other things that people bitch about

1:00:26

us is like. We're not an academic university.

1:00:28

We're not a lot. I don't have to

1:00:30

write a paper on anything ever. We do

1:00:33

a couple here and there because we want

1:00:35

to share our knowledge with. with the community,

1:00:37

right? But we get this feedback of like,

1:00:39

if we wrote a scientific paper for every

1:00:42

single thing that we did that went through

1:00:44

peer review, like we would have 3,000 scientific

1:00:46

papers and no mammoth ever, right?

1:00:48

Because we'd just be sitting around

1:00:51

writing fucking papers all day long.

1:00:53

This is interesting because they want

1:00:55

to impose their idea of writing

1:00:57

fucking papers all day long. This

1:00:59

is interesting because they want to

1:01:01

impose their idea that they've already

1:01:04

established to that. fall in all

1:01:06

sides of the political spectrum, all

1:01:08

sides of every single spectrum out

1:01:10

there. We have another probably 40

1:01:12

advisors. They're like, we love you.

1:01:14

You can't say anything because if I

1:01:17

submit it, we know these other

1:01:19

people don't like me. If I

1:01:21

submit a paper, and we totally agree

1:01:23

with you and we'll help you, but

1:01:25

if we submit a paper, they

1:01:27

judge my paper, it gets rejected, then

1:01:30

I don't get my grant, so then

1:01:32

I can't continue my research, I

1:01:34

have to fire my postdocs. So then

1:01:36

I can't continue my research, I have

1:01:39

to fire my postdocs. So it's

1:01:41

a complete research, I have to fire

1:01:43

my postdocs. us from the scientific

1:01:45

community. And some of our

1:01:48

biggest people that hate us are

1:01:50

people that we deny their funding.

1:01:52

Of course. Well, the problem is

1:01:54

not the scientific community.

1:01:56

The problem is weak men. It's this, what

1:01:58

you see in the. these squabbles, these

1:02:01

like ultra-personal squabbles were like

1:02:03

horrible vitriolic statements made about

1:02:06

people. They're just not happy

1:02:08

people. Exactly. It's the same

1:02:11

problem with all of life.

1:02:13

It's these... bitchy little people these

1:02:15

bitchy little monsters and they have taken

1:02:18

over something that's incredibly important and their

1:02:20

work their work these bitchy little people

1:02:22

their work is incredibly important yes but

1:02:24

at the core of their being they're

1:02:26

a bitchy little person yes but at

1:02:28

the core of their being they're a

1:02:30

bitchy little person and they can't and

1:02:32

that's why and that is why we

1:02:34

don't have flying cars we don't have

1:02:37

mammoth and until Elon we're not gonna

1:02:39

live on Mars right and so like

1:02:41

we didn't have like we didn't have

1:02:43

like we didn't systems, right? So if

1:02:45

you want to go to Mars

1:02:47

or you want to bring back

1:02:49

a mammoth, you have to design

1:02:51

the entire system and you have

1:02:53

to innovate across everything. Whereas in

1:02:55

academia, you're only incentivized to get

1:02:57

that piece of paper and get

1:02:59

that approved. Well, it's also, you're

1:03:01

dealing with grants and enormous amounts

1:03:03

of money that gets donated

1:03:05

and given to these institutions, along

1:03:08

with a whole ideology. Like,

1:03:10

it's not just as simple as

1:03:12

let's follow data. It's all got

1:03:14

to be attached to this very

1:03:16

left leaning, almost preposterous in some

1:03:18

aspects, ideology. And everyone has to

1:03:20

say things as a fucking scientist

1:03:22

that you know is not true.

1:03:24

You should just follow the scientific

1:03:27

method. I'm not a scientist, but

1:03:29

we should just, and guess what,

1:03:31

when new data shows up that.

1:03:33

you know, changes your old data,

1:03:35

you shouldn't get mad about that,

1:03:37

you should celebrate it. Exactly. Well,

1:03:39

also you have to look at all

1:03:41

data, you know, like I don't want

1:03:43

to get into this, but like if

1:03:46

you have academics who are legitimate scientists

1:03:48

and have published papers who are telling you

1:03:50

that a man could be a woman,

1:03:52

and which is fine in terms of

1:03:54

like who you are, but now when

1:03:56

you're having them compete with women and

1:03:58

sports, you've entered into nonsense. and you're

1:04:00

the person we're counting on to be

1:04:02

the most intelligent person on the subject,

1:04:04

you're trapped by an ideology that you're

1:04:07

now ignoring biology in favor of sociology.

1:04:09

I just wish we could get philosophy,

1:04:11

we separate like philosophical perspectives from science.

1:04:13

We do, one of the things that

1:04:15

we fight about all the time, you

1:04:17

know, because It's like once we got

1:04:20

the scientists, once we got the money,

1:04:22

and once we prove that we are

1:04:24

the most advanced, you know, synthetic biology

1:04:26

company in the world, once Incutell, which

1:04:28

is a, the funding arm of the

1:04:30

CIA and other government started investing in

1:04:33

colossal because of our technologies, and once

1:04:35

we started proof points, the last arguments

1:04:37

that we have against some of those

1:04:39

scientists are philosophical. It's not a mammoth.

1:04:41

It's not a dire wolf. And it's

1:04:43

like, this concept of speciation is a

1:04:45

human construct that we are trying to

1:04:48

impose. on nature that flows more like

1:04:50

a river than a rock. So are

1:04:52

they saying that it's not because it

1:04:54

didn't come straight from nature? It's something

1:04:56

that you've recreated by piecing this together

1:04:58

with that. Like what are the genes

1:05:01

that you had to use to create

1:05:03

a dire wolf? We didn't totally explain

1:05:05

this. So you have CRISPR, you have

1:05:07

these gene editing tools, you have a

1:05:09

good sample of DNA. How do you

1:05:11

turn that into a wolf? So you

1:05:14

map them next to it. of academic

1:05:16

scientists. There was a paper that came

1:05:18

out a few years ago because they

1:05:20

didn't have much data. They said that

1:05:22

dire wolves were closer related, weren't closer

1:05:24

related to wolves. they were close related

1:05:27

to jackals. And that's because at the

1:05:29

time, they only had 0.15% of the

1:05:31

genome, right? They just didn't have all

1:05:33

the data. They just didn't have all

1:05:35

the data. Now we know that they

1:05:37

actually were close related to wolves because

1:05:40

we have more data. Which wolves? Gray

1:05:42

wolves, or the precursor to gray wolves,

1:05:44

right? So, so they were closer to

1:05:46

the wolf ancestry line in kind of

1:05:48

the broader canid group and family group.

1:05:50

And so what we found is once

1:05:52

you do that, we start to understand.

1:05:55

and what are the differences and we

1:05:57

start to see that in certain. parts

1:05:59

of the genome that are responsible for

1:06:01

size, for muscle, for cranial facial, that

1:06:03

there's differences, right? So we can start

1:06:05

to map and say, okay, where are

1:06:08

the differences between gray wolves and where

1:06:10

are the differences between gray wolves and

1:06:12

dire wolves? And then with those, we

1:06:14

have a lot of different tools that

1:06:16

we can then go use to make

1:06:18

those changes from the dire wolves in

1:06:21

a gray wolf cell line. And so,

1:06:23

and then once you go through that

1:06:25

process, we didn't talk about this earlier,

1:06:27

nucleus of one cell, you put that

1:06:29

into another egg cell, and then you

1:06:31

take that embryo and you insert it

1:06:34

into a surrogate. And is this a

1:06:36

100% dire wolf or is this a

1:06:38

new thing? So this goes into the

1:06:40

philosophical thing. Right. So if you look

1:06:42

at speciation, right, there's basically, the scientists

1:06:44

don't agree on how you classify a

1:06:47

species. So you've got certain people that'll

1:06:49

say, well, if a species is dictated

1:06:51

by something that can't breed, that's literally

1:06:53

a definition, like if this animal can't

1:06:55

breed with this animal, then that's its

1:06:57

own species. Then you have other people,

1:06:59

you have the paleontologists, and some of

1:07:02

them. One paleontologist in the world that

1:07:04

loves us, but then you have other

1:07:06

paleontologists that just hate us. And they

1:07:08

do it based solely on tooth morphology,

1:07:10

because they argue that's the only thing

1:07:12

that is going to be persistent over

1:07:15

time. And I asked a paleontologist recently

1:07:17

that hates us. I said, if I

1:07:19

made a mammoth, that was giant, with

1:07:21

like paint curly fur, and it had

1:07:23

the right tooth morphology, you're saying that

1:07:25

based on your scientific papers that you

1:07:28

would say that's a mammoth. And she's

1:07:30

like. Yes, but that doesn't matter and

1:07:32

I'm like, well, do it. It's so

1:07:34

so but then you hate you guys

1:07:36

because Why does anyone you know any

1:07:38

time you do anything in this world

1:07:41

now that's like moderately bold or polarizing

1:07:43

people give you push back. But this

1:07:45

is heavily bold. I wouldn't say this

1:07:47

is moderately bold. You made three fucking

1:07:49

dynamos. That's not moderately bold. It's really

1:07:51

kind of one of the craziest things

1:07:54

that a human being's ever done. It's

1:07:56

definitely in the realm. This is right

1:07:58

up there with inventing the internet. Yeah,

1:08:00

so when you see, well, and we

1:08:02

have more stuff to come that I

1:08:04

think is equally interesting. There's people out

1:08:06

there, did you worry that someone is

1:08:09

gonna get, you know, because this falls

1:08:11

into religious. Well, it's it's it's there's

1:08:13

philosophical and religious and so like back

1:08:15

on speciation, you know, polar bears and

1:08:17

brown bears are two different species. Right.

1:08:19

But they may produce five offspring all

1:08:22

the time and a bear expert will

1:08:24

tell you that a polar bear is

1:08:26

just a whole aquatic adapted cold adapted

1:08:28

bear. Right. And so I always ask

1:08:30

people that they their offspring are they

1:08:32

can have children. Yes. Yes. It's not

1:08:35

like a donkey. Yeah. Exactly. So there's

1:08:37

different ways to say. something right and

1:08:39

so you know we are not the

1:08:41

same right if I don't know what

1:08:43

percent you probably from 23 and me

1:08:45

or something have some percentage Neanderthal you'll

1:08:48

say that you're an ad mixture or

1:08:50

a hybrid you just say you're a

1:08:52

human you don't you don't really but

1:08:54

that's a good point though because a

1:08:56

Neanderthal if you want to talk about

1:08:58

us different species just because they could

1:09:01

breed with us god they're so different

1:09:03

but that's it but there's six different

1:09:05

ways there's actually a species species of

1:09:07

toad that they built a road through

1:09:09

and the same toads live on both

1:09:11

on two sides of the street and

1:09:13

they're different species and they're the same

1:09:16

fucking toad just because there's a road

1:09:18

just because because we as humans It's

1:09:20

called geographic isolation of speciation. So it's

1:09:22

just crazy. And so the only arguments

1:09:24

that we now have is, but is

1:09:26

it a mammoth? And it's like, well,

1:09:29

then don't call it a mammoth. I

1:09:31

asked people, I was like, did you

1:09:33

see Jurassic Park? And they're like, yeah.

1:09:35

I was like, did you see Jurassic

1:09:37

Park? And they're like, yeah. I was

1:09:39

like, what was the draft part? What

1:09:42

was Jurassic Park? What was Jurassic? Is

1:09:44

it? Or they genetically modified animals, GMOs,

1:09:46

genetically modified organisms that have inserted genes

1:09:48

from lots of different things, or they

1:09:50

dinosaurs. If they serve the ecological function,

1:09:52

this is what's called functional de extinction.

1:09:55

If they serve the ecological function, if

1:09:57

they serve the ecological function and they

1:09:59

have the lost biodiversity and phenotypes that

1:10:01

made that animal unique, like the polar

1:10:03

and a bear, they're just that animal.

1:10:05

So these goes into, this starts the

1:10:08

whole religious and philosophical debates, where it's

1:10:10

funny. like what you're doing that's what

1:10:12

they go to. So what was the

1:10:14

argument? How did they present it? Oh

1:10:16

it's just like it's by their own

1:10:18

definition they're like well it doesn't have

1:10:20

enough DNA so I was like so

1:10:23

if I said but the second dire

1:10:25

wolf that we have or the second

1:10:27

genome that we have from the tooth

1:10:29

has is has less of the same

1:10:31

DNA than the skull does that mean

1:10:33

that it wasn't a dire wolf? And

1:10:36

it just turns into a, you're missing

1:10:38

the point conversation. I was asking questions.

1:10:40

I would like to know the point

1:10:42

though. What is their point? What is

1:10:44

she, what is her overall argument? The

1:10:46

general point of the people is that

1:10:49

they want to pick one speciation definition

1:10:51

and adhere as to that. And if

1:10:53

you do that, no animal, including our

1:10:55

animals, will fall into one species, right?

1:10:57

It's just people that are using the

1:10:59

framework. that they set that doesn't isn't

1:11:02

consistent kind of against the there are

1:11:04

based on the argument that they want

1:11:06

to make interesting so species is just

1:11:08

something it's a human construct it's not

1:11:10

and it's just a thing if it

1:11:12

can breed with another thing well I

1:11:15

mean that's that is one definition there

1:11:17

is another definition saying that it's only

1:11:19

a species if it can't breed with

1:11:21

another thing so if I genetically modify

1:11:23

them to make it where they can't

1:11:25

breed with wolves does that mean they're

1:11:27

now their own species it just gets

1:11:30

into this dumb philosophical perspective because we

1:11:32

made up this construct. Right, but as

1:11:34

a person who studies biology, which this

1:11:36

person is, right, I could kind of

1:11:38

understand her perspective where she's like, what

1:11:40

are you doing? Like what are you

1:11:43

doing? How is this group of people

1:11:45

with a bunch of money and a

1:11:47

bunch of eggheads? How are these geniuses?

1:11:49

to get together, splice some jeans up,

1:11:51

and serve up a dire wolf. I

1:11:53

could see it from her perspective. 100%

1:11:56

right? But I think that if we

1:11:58

don't do big bold things, it's important.

1:12:00

You know, one of the things we

1:12:02

should definitely show is the red. Just

1:12:04

like the guy in Jurassic Park. But

1:12:06

we should just basically the same conversation.

1:12:09

But John Hammond, I don't think that

1:12:11

they were really focused on conservation. Yeah,

1:12:13

so if we could show the red.

1:12:15

I think that'd be amazing because all

1:12:17

the technologies that we made on the

1:12:19

path to bring back the dire wolf

1:12:22

We won make available to conservation. Well,

1:12:24

this explained the red wolf to people

1:12:26

because you were saying before I didn't

1:12:28

even know how few of them there

1:12:30

are. Yeah, so if you go to

1:12:32

Um, the, one more, yeah. So this

1:12:34

is a red wolf. That's hope. That's

1:12:37

the world's first cloned red wolf. So

1:12:39

I've actually made more red wolves than

1:12:41

I've made dire wolves. So I've made

1:12:43

four red wolves, one female. Are you

1:12:45

just releasing these fuckers? No, no. They're,

1:12:47

they're in an ecological preserve as well.

1:12:50

And so, but you're, you're gonna. you're

1:12:52

going to die when you hear what

1:12:54

I went through on this. So I

1:12:56

found out that, you know, we try

1:12:58

to pair every deextinction project with a

1:13:00

species preservation project outside of making all

1:13:03

of our technology for free, right? Everything

1:13:05

that we make that has an application

1:13:07

of conservation, anyone in the world can

1:13:09

use to help save animals. They don't

1:13:11

pay us a dime. It's all open

1:13:13

source, it's all free. We have 48

1:13:16

conservation partners, the team that's running the

1:13:18

Northern White Rhino Project, were their exclusive

1:13:20

genetic rescue partner. It doesn't, we're working

1:13:22

with elephants in Botswana, working elephants in

1:13:24

Kenya, so anybody can use our technologies

1:13:26

for free, right? We're working on ketri,

1:13:29

terrible fungus in Australia. And so, so

1:13:31

if that's not enough, I found out

1:13:33

that, you know, that there's only 15

1:13:35

of those of Red Wolves back in

1:13:37

the wild, in North Carolina. So I

1:13:39

met with the the upcoming governor. Are

1:13:41

they in other states as well or

1:13:44

no? No, no, we'll get to that.

1:13:46

We'll get to that So they're they're

1:13:48

only recognized by US Fish and Wildlife

1:13:50

there But this incredible woman from Princeton,

1:13:52

you know top of her field. She's

1:13:54

one of the wolf top wolf genus

1:13:57

in the world, Bridget von Holt, identified

1:13:59

a population of wolves in Louisiana that

1:14:01

have red wolf-like characteristics. So she started

1:14:03

darting them, taking samples, and what she

1:14:05

found is they actually have more quote-unquote

1:14:07

red wolf in them than the... Red

1:14:10

wolves that are being identified in in

1:14:12

North Carolina. And is it part of

1:14:14

the problem they're in breeding with coyotes?

1:14:16

Yeah, but they've all been like these

1:14:18

guys like the ones in North Carolina

1:14:20

have all inbred with coyotes. They all

1:14:23

the red wolves have some coyote in

1:14:25

them because they look like coyotes. Well,

1:14:27

because every well, the ones in North

1:14:29

Carolina even look more like coyotes. And

1:14:31

yeah, because the reality is every single

1:14:33

species is what's called an ad mixture.

1:14:35

that goes back to the Neanderthal. So

1:14:38

this binary idea that we have is

1:14:40

silly? No, it's a human cause construct,

1:14:42

right? And it's insane. So I went

1:14:44

to some folks from the last administration,

1:14:46

right? And I took some data with

1:14:48

me and I said, hey, we really

1:14:51

want to help this Red Wolf program.

1:14:53

We don't need any money. We've searched

1:14:55

all of our technologies. And we've used

1:14:57

a technology that's not invasive for cloning.

1:14:59

where we actually take a vial of

1:15:01

blood, we isolate what's called endothelial progenitor

1:15:04

cells, basically the inner lining of your

1:15:06

blood vessel, right? Because there's no nucleus

1:15:08

in blood cells. So we catch those,

1:15:10

and when we catch those, we then

1:15:12

isolate them, we grow them, and we

1:15:14

grow them, and we clone from them,

1:15:17

right? Which is amazing, because if you

1:15:19

think about typical cloning from an animal

1:15:21

welfare perspective, a lot of times you

1:15:23

have to an esotize, you have to.

1:15:25

It's pretty invasive, terrible process to do

1:15:27

cloning. We can simply do it. Every

1:15:30

single zoo takes blood from their animals

1:15:32

to check certain levels and whatnot. We

1:15:34

give blood all the time. And so

1:15:36

it's a very non-invasive. It's about as

1:15:38

non-invasive as you can get, right? And

1:15:40

so we found a way which we're

1:15:42

open sourcing on Tuesday is open sourcing

1:15:45

this model of how you go clone

1:15:47

from blood, which is a game. for

1:15:49

biobanking because now you don't have to

1:15:51

go herd and animal, take pieces of

1:15:53

the animal, nest-sized animal. We can just

1:15:55

take bloods and put them in freezers

1:15:58

and be able to bring them back

1:16:00

or clone them if there's a lack

1:16:02

of genetic diversity using the thing. So

1:16:04

I went out to Washington with my

1:16:06

team. I showed them hope as a

1:16:08

baby in little videos of, and you

1:16:11

may have videos of hope Jamie. I

1:16:13

don't know if it's in the fall.

1:16:15

I showed them videos of hope. And

1:16:17

I said, I said, four wolves from

1:16:19

three different genetic lines. We made these

1:16:21

from three different genetic lines, right? So

1:16:24

there's actually more genetic diversity in these

1:16:26

wolves than what's alive in the population.

1:16:28

And we said we'd like for you

1:16:30

to help protect the work that's being

1:16:32

done in Louisiana. And then how many

1:16:34

wolves would you like us to make

1:16:37

using that population as well as frozen

1:16:39

samples that are dead? And we'll just

1:16:41

give them to you. There's no cost.

1:16:43

Here was the feedback. We need to

1:16:45

spend five to six years on an

1:16:47

internal study and spend $22 million to

1:16:49

see if it's possible to clone wolves

1:16:52

And I was I was blown away.

1:16:54

I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.

1:16:56

I wasn't very clear This is a

1:16:58

cloned wolf like here is you can

1:17:00

fly with me to the preserve. Yes

1:17:02

sign in DA but you fly to

1:17:05

me sir You know like we need

1:17:07

to spend five to six years in

1:17:09

20 plus million dollars to go to

1:17:11

go understand this to understand what I

1:17:13

was like, we'll give you all of

1:17:15

the technology. And if you tell me

1:17:18

you on a hundred wolves, I'll just

1:17:20

make you a hundred wolves. And we'll

1:17:22

even engineer in more genetic diversity for

1:17:24

you. And the response was, we'll get

1:17:26

back to you. We went to, we

1:17:28

tried to have three other meetings, no

1:17:31

showed and canceled every time. When we

1:17:33

flew there, I just got back from

1:17:35

meeting with Department of Interior, which Fish

1:17:37

and Wildlife rolls, rolls up to, and

1:17:39

they're very, very focused on innovation, not

1:17:41

regulation, which has been. pretty amazing. And

1:17:44

immediately they said, we celebrate, Doug Burgam,

1:17:46

the Secretary of Interior there, who we

1:17:48

met with, said, we celebrate, he's a

1:17:50

huge conservationist, huge Teddy Roosevelt guy, member

1:17:52

of the Explorers Club, and he's like,

1:17:54

that we do not have a celebration

1:17:56

when animals come off the endangered species

1:17:59

list. Only about 3% ever come off

1:18:01

and we're really good at putting them

1:18:03

on and we celebrate putting them on.

1:18:05

So we have to do something about

1:18:07

this and if you're saying that we

1:18:09

could productionize species and as long as

1:18:12

we have the right support to re-wild

1:18:14

them, people can use your technologies for

1:18:16

free to make more of these different

1:18:18

species that are critically endangered while also

1:18:20

biobanking the samples along the samples along

1:18:22

the way. He's like... Why about the

1:18:25

previous folks and they said that we

1:18:27

need, you know, five years and 20

1:18:29

million that they they were gonna spend

1:18:31

internally They weren't gonna use us to

1:18:33

do the feasibility so they were gonna

1:18:35

spend it internally on this and we're

1:18:38

like we'll just do it for free

1:18:40

And he's like we will completely support

1:18:42

the initiative and we're gonna help get

1:18:44

you plugged in so you can help

1:18:46

biobank our species and also help us

1:18:48

support, you know, red wolf conservation so

1:18:51

when will you start reintroducing these so

1:18:53

we just had that meeting last week?

1:18:55

You've created a lab, they're gonna

1:18:58

start eating people. And so we're

1:19:00

gonna, uh, we just met with

1:19:02

them last week, so. Well, it's,

1:19:04

it's, they're beautiful. God, they're so

1:19:06

beautiful. Well, it's just like, why,

1:19:08

we shouldn't be afraid of innovation,

1:19:11

right? No, but you know the

1:19:13

real question is, where do you

1:19:15

stop? Yeah. Because 90, what percent

1:19:17

of all animals that have ever

1:19:19

existed, all species are extinct? Yeah.

1:19:21

Like, are we gonna? I think

1:19:24

you focus on the species that

1:19:26

are critically endangered and are keystone

1:19:28

species, meaning the environment needs them.

1:19:30

Right, but the ones that we

1:19:32

drove to extinction. Right? Okay. So

1:19:34

that's right. So it's debatable whether

1:19:37

or not we drove dire wolfs

1:19:39

to extinction. We don't really know

1:19:41

what happened 10,000 years ago. I'm

1:19:43

inclined to think that when you

1:19:45

see the death of 65% of

1:19:47

North American megafauna that happened really

1:19:50

quickly. Really quickly. Yeah, I'm inclined

1:19:52

to think that these scientists that

1:19:54

believe it was an asteroid or

1:19:56

a common impact are correct. I

1:19:58

think I think it's a most

1:20:00

likely it's a combination. to a

1:20:03

landmass at scale, that we start

1:20:05

to see that. We see that

1:20:07

in Australia and other places. But

1:20:09

to your point, it's much slower.

1:20:11

It's much much slower. This is

1:20:13

a different thing. Are you going

1:20:16

to bring back saber-toothed tigers? So

1:20:18

we get, everyone seems to have

1:20:20

their favorite animal for us to

1:20:22

save, right? Dire wolves. You've got

1:20:24

to come maybe at some point

1:20:26

you see them. But I want

1:20:29

to. amazing. I mean they're they're

1:20:31

they're just beautiful animals. So we

1:20:33

they're in there. So saber, saber

1:20:35

too tiger is a class. We

1:20:37

put that as a class. Most

1:20:39

commonly people think of the smileadon

1:20:42

as the saber too tiger. There's

1:20:44

not to date. been really great,

1:20:46

Smyladon DNA. There is great home

1:20:48

Ethereum DNA, which is another type

1:20:50

of saber-toothed guy. Oh, I didn't

1:20:52

know there was more than one

1:20:55

type of saber-toot. How many are

1:20:57

there? They classify them differently, you

1:20:59

know, based on it. Obviously you've

1:21:01

been studying this, so you're thinking

1:21:03

about doing it. I'm not, I

1:21:05

mean, we like to study ancient

1:21:08

DNA. Right. there were no saber-toot

1:21:10

tigers in Alaska. That's just an

1:21:12

incorrect statement. There were no, there

1:21:14

were probably no Smyla-dons there, but

1:21:16

there are homeotheriums which are a

1:21:18

saber-toothed cat. Yeah, he's found things

1:21:21

that were not supposed to be.

1:21:23

I've held things in his, I've

1:21:25

held a dire wolf skull in

1:21:27

his, I hope he's fine with

1:21:29

me saying that, in his facility.

1:21:31

Yeah, I think he's talked about

1:21:34

that. But they found cave bear,

1:21:36

short face bears. Wow. Yeah, so

1:21:38

Homeotherium is still a saber-toothed cat.

1:21:40

But what happens is, this goes

1:21:42

back to that philosophical, that philosophical

1:21:44

perspective. They think that only, if

1:21:47

you look up Smylodon in comparison.

1:21:49

Oh, so this has shorter saber

1:21:51

teeth, but still. Can you give

1:21:53

me that CGI image of it

1:21:55

again, Jamie on the left? That's

1:21:57

so fucking cool. That's. I mean

1:22:00

I want to see that they

1:22:02

take down a bite. Look at

1:22:04

what's paws. There was a, I

1:22:06

mean wait you see, see the

1:22:08

dire old pause. But that would

1:22:10

be so crazy. Now all of

1:22:13

a sudden I want you to

1:22:15

do it. Give me another large

1:22:17

picture of it Jamie. There's some

1:22:19

other pictures of those. So Smile

1:22:21

of Dawn's the one that has

1:22:23

the largest teeth? It has the

1:22:26

largest known teeth. But when people

1:22:28

think of Save Too Tiger Tiger,

1:22:30

this is what they think of.

1:22:32

Those are crazy. I wonder why

1:22:34

nature wanted to do to have

1:22:36

that. I mean, probably having to

1:22:39

pierce things like mammotides in them

1:22:41

is not quite thick. It has

1:22:43

to be, right? Something where there's

1:22:45

a genetic advantage. And they're jonges.

1:22:47

Look at that one on the

1:22:49

right, lower right, Jamie. Below that,

1:22:52

below that to the right, to

1:22:54

the right. Yeah, right there. Click

1:22:56

on that. Look at that, man.

1:22:58

And I love because we don't,

1:23:00

you know what's amazing, we don't

1:23:02

have the DNA from it, so

1:23:05

we have no idea what the

1:23:07

color pattern is, which you can

1:23:09

see here, right? It's like, it's

1:23:11

got a short tail, it's got

1:23:13

a long tail, it's got leopard,

1:23:15

it's got stripes, right? We don't

1:23:18

even know if they had long

1:23:20

tail or short tail. They could

1:23:22

have been white. Wow. Have you

1:23:24

seen the American short face bear?

1:23:26

Yeah. That's the thing I'm probably

1:23:28

the most scared of. Yeah, you

1:23:31

can't bring that back. 17 or

1:23:33

18 foot giant bear. We're not

1:23:35

working on it, I'm just saying.

1:23:37

But somebody might, that's the problem.

1:23:39

There might be some fucking crackhead

1:23:41

out there that's got 40 billion

1:23:44

dollars, it's out of his mind.

1:23:46

Well, I also think that, like

1:23:48

some crazy dude who's just got

1:23:50

the resources. That's insane. Well, that's

1:23:52

that yeah, that is an enormous

1:23:54

animal and they think that's one

1:23:57

of the animals that probably prevented

1:23:59

people from crossing the bearing straight

1:24:01

I read that. Yeah, it's a

1:24:03

theory, but it's a pretty good

1:24:05

one. If you knew that if

1:24:07

you knew there was a lineage

1:24:10

of like super, you know, polar

1:24:12

bears were out there, I would

1:24:14

go near it. And it is

1:24:16

essentially a super polar bear, which

1:24:18

is really scary because polar bears

1:24:20

are terrifying and completely carnivorous. And

1:24:23

they don't care. They'll just walk

1:24:25

right up to you and kill

1:24:27

you. Oh yeah, there's a great

1:24:29

video of these guys that are

1:24:31

behind a fence that was somebody

1:24:33

sent to me yesterday. I'll

1:24:36

find it. I know where it

1:24:38

is. Someone sent it to me

1:24:40

yesterday of these guys that are

1:24:42

right behind a fence while this

1:24:44

polar bear is trying to get

1:24:46

through the fence. There's three of

1:24:48

them. And they're, you know, they're

1:24:51

talked to like, hey big guy,

1:24:53

you can't come in here. Hey

1:24:55

fellow. And it's just common walking

1:24:57

towards like I'm gonna get in

1:24:59

there. Exactly. Yeah. It's polar bear

1:25:01

scare me. Very spooky. Well they're

1:25:03

spooky because they breathe is on

1:25:05

the menu. I got it

1:25:07

here, where is it? Shit. It'll

1:25:09

take me a few minutes, sorry.

1:25:11

Jamie, pause for a second, let

1:25:13

me find this, because it's good.

1:25:15

Okay, I just sent it to

1:25:17

you. So, it looks like they're

1:25:19

in, I don't know where they

1:25:21

are, I think it'll say in

1:25:23

the video. So these guys, here,

1:25:25

give me some volume. Polar bears,

1:25:27

that's an oil rig. So it's

1:25:29

probably Canada. Look at these guys.

1:25:35

That's sound. Yeah. They're just

1:25:37

trying to eat you. Look

1:25:39

at this. I have two

1:25:42

more behind it. Yep. Hey.

1:25:44

Go on. Go on. Go

1:25:46

on. Go on. Go on.

1:25:48

Try not going to work.

1:25:51

They're just trying to figure

1:25:53

out how to get in

1:25:55

to eat you. Hey sweetheart.

1:25:58

Hey. Sweetheart.

1:26:00

Sweetheart wants to rip your liver out.

1:26:02

Go on. They're so beautiful. They are

1:26:04

beautiful. It's interesting that they're the most

1:26:07

dangerous ones because they're the ones we

1:26:09

use for Coca-Cola and Klondike bars. Yeah.

1:26:11

Isn't that wild though? Yeah, I'm just

1:26:13

like playing around in the snow, but

1:26:16

they're actually terrifying. Yeah, you were saying

1:26:18

the younger gyrus is really interesting. It's

1:26:20

very, very interesting because it's a fairly

1:26:22

new theory and explains a lot, and

1:26:25

especially when you look at the mass

1:26:27

extinction that did take place during that

1:26:29

time. I would love to have seen

1:26:31

what it looked like. When all those

1:26:34

animals were around like what what was

1:26:36

a you know, we kind of have

1:26:38

a sense of what because of safaris

1:26:40

and videos We know what it looks

1:26:43

like when lions are interacting with will

1:26:45

to be San Africa like what did

1:26:47

it look like in Kansas? Yeah, like

1:26:49

15,000 years ago Yeah, like what was

1:26:52

it like? You know, there's a extinct

1:26:54

bison species that is the bison lot

1:26:56

of fronts. Have you seen those guys?

1:26:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're like, they have

1:27:01

like eight foot long, Texas long horns,

1:27:03

crazy. On like, you know, super hjH,

1:27:05

like bison. Yeah, our bison are small

1:27:08

compared to the extinct biceps, right? Were

1:27:10

they the largest of the North American

1:27:12

biceps? Yeah, the bison lot of fronts

1:27:14

was. See if you get a photo

1:27:17

of that. Yeah. I didn't know about

1:27:19

that until a few years ago. Yeah.

1:27:21

I didn't even know that was a

1:27:23

thing. It's, I mean, there were so

1:27:26

many different things. Giant sloths, there's the

1:27:28

saber-toothed tiger, the American lion, which is

1:27:30

the American cheetah. Yes. The American cheetah.

1:27:32

The American cheetah. Yes. The American cheetahs.

1:27:35

You know, we have, we actually have

1:27:37

a full genome of it. And then

1:27:39

there's a, there was a, one of

1:27:41

my favorite animal's, Think of like a

1:27:44

manatee or doong, right? That's the size

1:27:46

of like a large whale. What? Yeah.

1:27:48

And the sad thing is it died,

1:27:50

it actually died off before, it died

1:27:53

off in, yeah, it died off though

1:27:55

within a hundred years of its discovery.

1:27:57

When was that? We killed them all,

1:27:59

huh? Yeah, we could probably turn them

1:28:02

into candles or something. Yeah, or burn

1:28:04

their fat. Yeah, so, but it was

1:28:06

actually really important. The largest, this, serenean,

1:28:09

to ever exist is haunted extinction only

1:28:11

30 years after being described in the

1:28:13

18th century. Wow. Yeah, and it was,

1:28:15

and we actually, we have a whole

1:28:18

genome of this too, which is pretty

1:28:20

cool. You gonna bring it back? We

1:28:22

can't just, I would bring this back

1:28:24

in heartbeat. It was hugely important to

1:28:27

the Cal Force of the Pacific Northwest.

1:28:29

It was great. It's a great. It's

1:28:31

not scary. It's huge. It's like right,

1:28:33

but then if you bring that back,

1:28:36

why wouldn't you bring back a megalodone?

1:28:38

There is no megalodone DNA. There's done.

1:28:40

No, I will say that the CEO

1:28:42

of the largest free museum in America

1:28:45

really wants me to do me to

1:28:47

megalodone, but he's like I can never

1:28:49

set up. But there's a lot of

1:28:51

museums. I could be wrong on the

1:28:54

size, yeah, whatever. He's great though. But

1:28:56

there is no DNA. We have to

1:28:58

eat a lot. We already killed everything

1:29:00

in the ocean. So one of the

1:29:03

things that's weird and interesting that we're

1:29:05

also working on is artificial wounds at

1:29:07

colossal. Because if you want to get

1:29:09

to this world where you could productionize.

1:29:12

endangered species like northern white rhinos instead

1:29:14

of having to use surrogates for an

1:29:16

animal welfare perspective You know you if

1:29:18

you can get the point that you

1:29:21

can engineer genetic diversity into 200 northern

1:29:23

white rhinos grow them in labs and

1:29:25

bags and then work with and then

1:29:28

you can control that population very very

1:29:30

well you could then reintroduce them you

1:29:32

know with folks in the field that

1:29:34

are the re-wilding experts right and so

1:29:37

we we're really not focusing on the

1:29:39

we kind of rely on third parties

1:29:41

on the re-wilding modeling and all of

1:29:43

our you know our 48 conservation partners

1:29:46

we are really just kind of focused

1:29:48

on the kind of the core science

1:29:50

that supports their initiatives but if we

1:29:52

are successful with our artificial wounds and

1:29:55

we are quite We are quite far

1:29:57

on that project. that you know I

1:29:59

would not be surprised if eventually you

1:30:01

see a we have to get a

1:30:04

mouse first but if you guys had

1:30:06

these conversations where you sit down you

1:30:08

go how does this scale outward what

1:30:10

does this look like this technology in

1:30:13

a hundred years did we just fuck

1:30:15

up no I think I think that

1:30:17

if you look at the birthing crisis

1:30:19

that that we're in and kind of

1:30:22

population decline prices crisis I think that

1:30:24

you you look at global like People

1:30:26

having women having kids later, IVF clinics,

1:30:28

people freezing their embryos, all of that's

1:30:31

massively on the increase. It's all going

1:30:33

up to the right, right? And we

1:30:35

also know that like globally like sperm

1:30:37

and fertility and others is going down

1:30:40

to the right, right? So it's not

1:30:42

a good look for the future of

1:30:44

humanity in general. And so I think

1:30:47

though, you know, especially, and then we

1:30:49

also have. philosophical and You have religious,

1:30:51

you have philosophical, and then you have

1:30:53

socio issues, right, that people have different

1:30:56

perspectives on like having kids, having kids,

1:30:58

same sex couples, all these things. So

1:31:00

we at colossal have kind of made

1:31:02

this mandate that we're not going to

1:31:05

work on humans, right? Because it's just,

1:31:07

it gets too weird. We get asked

1:31:09

the Neanderthal and the dinosaur question every

1:31:11

fucking day. So we're just not going

1:31:14

to like bridge that gap. What we'll

1:31:16

do is spin out those technologies. But

1:31:18

I do think it is spin out.

1:31:20

in an artificial woman or exogenous development

1:31:23

system than it is a human. Not

1:31:25

ethically or through an FDA process, but

1:31:27

it is scientifically harder to jestate some

1:31:29

of the animals we're trying to jestate

1:31:32

X utero. So I do think that

1:31:34

some of those technologies could make it

1:31:36

eventually into the human population. But that's

1:31:38

where it gets really weird, right? You

1:31:41

could create a child with no mother

1:31:43

or father. I do think that, I

1:31:45

think it's about optionality, right? I think

1:31:47

that there are certain situations where that

1:31:50

would be a blessing. You know, I

1:31:52

just had my first kid. So, you

1:31:54

know, we did not grow up in

1:31:57

an artificial room. Yeah, but I mean,

1:31:59

the people that are skeptical about this.

1:32:01

stuff this is what they point to

1:32:03

it's like what what is involved in

1:32:06

the creation of life well it's been

1:32:08

people having sex and then a sperm

1:32:10

fertilizes the egg a child was born

1:32:12

they raise the child that gets some

1:32:15

of their behavior characteristics it gets the

1:32:17

genetics and then we integrated into a

1:32:19

community and there's like but you could

1:32:21

just make life without any of that

1:32:24

like what is that that you where

1:32:26

is that You know what I'm saying?

1:32:28

Like... No, it's a good, it's a

1:32:30

great philosophy. How much of the child's

1:32:33

development is taking place while it's in

1:32:35

the mother and in getting a sharing

1:32:37

that shared experience, that hormonal cues and

1:32:39

whatnot. I wouldn't have a child that

1:32:42

way. Right. What if you're making a

1:32:44

sociopath? Like what if you're making a

1:32:46

completely... Ted Kaczinsky, all fucked up. Like

1:32:48

really, that's a fair, it's a fair

1:32:51

point, you know. We don't know what

1:32:53

the process is while a baby is

1:32:55

inside of a woman's body. And there's

1:32:57

people that are working on this technology

1:33:00

specifically for humans. Like right now, we're

1:33:02

focusing on it for extinct species and

1:33:04

endangered animals. What I, the question was,

1:33:06

when this scales out, when you scale

1:33:09

out a hundred years from now, like

1:33:11

what did you just do? Well, I

1:33:13

think, I mean, I mean, my biggest

1:33:16

thing that I think that I think