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Adam Thorne
You're listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Review. What a bizarre thing we've created now with your host, Adam Thorne. This might either be the worst podcast or the best one. Go enjoy the show. Hey, guys. And welcome to another episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Review. This week we are reviewing Beth Shapiro, no relation to Ben.
Sean
Bam.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, she would speak quicker.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Joined this week we got Sean on the. On the pod.
Sean
Hello again, everyone. Thanks for being glad we're talking about evolution and DNA and not people dying.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. I'm trying to give you more positive reviews to do. I feel like you've had the short list or the short straw for a while on this one.
Sean
No, I'm excited. This, this was a good episode. Honestly. I thought it was really good. It was a big departure from I think a lot of things that I know about which I found really interesting.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Super interesting stuff. I mean, this is literally Jurassic Park.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
In real life.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
It always seems to not end well, but I'm hopeful.
Adam Thorne
That's just a movie, dude. Yeah, it's a movie. I'm sure we could keep those dinosaurs under wraps.
Sean
Maybe.
Adam Thorne
Maybe, you know, they can't bring the dinosaurs back, can they? Because fossils, there's no DNA in there.
Sean
I don't know. I think that they don't have the desire to go get off. Well, it's a. I mean, yeah, it would be cool to have an amusement park with dinosaurs, but I think a lot of what she was saying was that they're trying to bring back old extinct animals and some of them reintroduce them into the population to kind of balance the ecosystem. Because, I mean, we've. With invasive species and just our general tendencies to fuck up the ecosystem, we've done a number of terrible things and we've trying to. I guess we're trying to fix it with this technology.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. However, every time we've reintroduced some, or not reintroduced, but introduced something new which they talked about on the pod, you know, like taking whatever cats or rabbits or whatever we did over in Australia, everything got completely out of whack. So somehow we think bringing a woolly mammoth back is going to be just fine.
Sean
I don't know how that's going to Work that seems. Yeah, it's interesting when they. I don't know a lot about this. There are a lot more people that are way more smart about. But I do know when they brought back wolves to Yellowstone, it like fucked up the level of water in the rivers. And they were like, we don't know why this happened, but it was like they were somehow going in there and either eating something or just messed with the ecosystem. And it had like, effects that we just didn't understand.
Guest
Huh? Yeah, Yeah.
Adam Thorne
I mean, it has effects.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You know, how are they gonna figure that out? Are they gonna have, like some council of ecologists that are just like sitting around running scenarios like, oh, I'm sure the saber tooth tiger do just fine in this area.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
They're like, what, now everyone's getting eaten. Terrible idea. Well, Beth is Ph.D. evolutionary molecular biologist, chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, author of Life as We made it, how 50,000 years of human Innovation Refined and Redefined Nature. Interesting names. Specializing in ancient DNA and de extinction Projects. That's pretty cool.
Sean
That's, I guess what they're calling this. De extinction.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, the extinction.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
She was a good guest. Honestly, I really enjoyed her. She was a good storyteller and you can tell she has a lot of passion for what she does. And just about. Yeah, just everything she talked about was. She's very excited.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. She had a good sense of humor, too. She was, you know, silly enough. She didn't sound like she's taking herself super serious in this. I mean, you know, she's a serious person, a scientist. But she was having fun on there. Yeah, it was a fun conversation. It wasn't like a stuffy lecture.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You know, oh, I'm so smart and look at my. Look at all my knowledge.
Sean
And she wasn't like a. Like an awkward scientist. You know, sometimes Jo has people on that are, you know, very, very, very smart and great at what they do, but they're not as good at, like, the conversation side and social skills.
Adam Thorne
Bit of a nerd alert.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
Yeah, that can happen sometimes. But she was great, honestly.
Adam Thorne
Mm. Yeah. And I mean, they've already brought the direwolf back, which is nuts.
Sean
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
So these wolves are supposed to grow up to be quite a lot bigger than regular wolves.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And they look different. They're white.
Guest
Mm.
Sean
They're white as snow.
Guest
Yeah, that's.
Sean
That's an interesting one. Yeah. It sounds like they're not going to release those. They're just gonna keep them there, even reproducing them she was like, no, we don't. We don't plan on doing that. Like, they're in separate areas. You know, we keep them contained and monitored.
Guest
Yeah, yeah.
Sean
That's the thing. They're wolves. Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You wait till Elon buys the company. He's like half bear, half pig, half man. You're like, that's too many halves, Elon. Let's do it. Fired into space. Yeah. So basically they take DNA from ancient remains. So like basically ice age stuff I get. I guess they can get stuff from 10,000 years old, 20,000. Just these remnants.
Sean
They can. Yeah, they can extract DNA from bones. Sick of dead people or not people, but animals. Also people.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, they don't want to do that.
Sean
No. They don't have any plans of bringing back Neanderthals or.
Adam Thorne
No. China's already doing. Yeah, they've done it.
Sean
They're doing human. I can just hear in the back of my head Alex Jones's voice screaming, they're making human hyperfits.
Adam Thorne
The frogs are gay. You're like, that's unrelated, Alex.
Sean
I also, just a side point on Alex Jones. I don't know if this was real, but on Spotify they have the comment section now and the first comment and most liked one was from Alex Jones and it said, let me be back on the podcast.
Adam Thorne
Oh, brilliant. I think even under that, Tucker wrote, I'll come on with Alex.
Sean
That would be legendary.
Adam Thorne
A powerhouse of conspiracy.
Sean
The one with Tim Dillon and Alex Jones is just pure gold.
Guest
It's amazing.
Adam Thorne
Tim Dillon just had to be there.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
He was like, let me experience.
Sean
I would want to be there too.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. I mean, that's just too entertaining in. In a lot of ways. I mean, I wonder if he will have Alex back on. Maybe he like kind of let some of the frustration and hate die down. I mean, there's still always going to be people very, very mad at Alex Jones. But maybe over time, give him a few 911 style predictions again, he might win some favor. And you know, he stopped drinking. He's lost some weight. He's not saying, dare I say, as crazy shit. I'm sure he's pretty close to it, but he's not maybe screaming as loud.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And who knows? I mean, I think he'd be back on. Hopefully he's too just it. Those ones are just so popular.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
I mean, Joe doesn't really do it for like that, but I. I'm sure it doesn't hurt. Yeah, sure doesn't.
Sean
Well, I'm sure for Joe it's just probably Entertaining as well.
Adam Thorne
Right. All right, so back to.
Sean
Back to the science.
Adam Thorne
This Beth lady, good old Beth, they were talking about Neanderthal DNA. So most humans have 2 to 5%, so they didn't really die out per se. We just kind of like, bred them out, maybe.
Sean
Oh, really?
Adam Thorne
Is what it seems like.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
If we have some of that DNA, I wonder what bits.
Guest
What.
Adam Thorne
What was beneficial.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I don't know.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I mean, honestly, like, I mean, it.
Adam Thorne
Must have made us more effective because, one, we still carry that DNA and there doesn't seem to be any humans with only human DNA. Right. So there's no, like, pure humans.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
We all come from Homo sapien form.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
It's like we're a little bit mixed.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And I wonder, like, I don't know about this topic, but how much do we really know about Neanderthals? I mean, that was a long time ago.
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Sean
You know, it'd be interesting to talk to someone and figure out, like, you know, what were their patterns of life? Like, what kind of things do we inherit from them? Like, I imagine a lot of our just, like, intuitive instincts are probably handed down from those times, you know, like the fear of falling, stuff like that. I bet a lot of that.
Adam Thorne
No doubt.
Sean
I feel a lot of times whenever I have a campfire. I don't know if you've ever had this feeling, but, you know, you're looking at the campfire and you're just like, wow, we must have been doing this for, I don't know, however long we've been alive. That feels like there's some primitive thing going on. Whenever you look into a campfire, it.
Adam Thorne
Certainly feels very familiar.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And there's something very comforting and kind of magical about it. It's like I could. You can stare at a campfire as long as you would watch a TV show almost.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And it's just fire.
Sean
Entertaining for whatever reason.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. Or just maybe it's just more of a comforting thing, you know, I mean, that might be what TV is as well, just comforting. But there seems to be something very special happening when you're around a campfire. For sure. I believe that.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
But, I mean, this podcast is brought.
Adam Thorne
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Sean
You know, there's no discussions about bringing those things back. I. I mean, even if we could, like, what do we learn from that, you know?
Adam Thorne
Oh, like, anything. We'd learn a lot. But there's. There's some bigger ethical concerns. Yeah, you know, it's like, like she was saying, like, they didn't give their permission to be brought back. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, listen, I don't want to make that decision. I'm happy with whatever ethical decisions are made by the body of ethics that come up with this stuff, but I'd be super curious to meet a Neanderthal. Like, if they wanted to bring one back, I'd be like, well, I wasn't to do with this, but I'll go check him out.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
See how strong he is. Imagine if they're like, they can just, like, bench like an extra 50 more than everyone. Probably just super strong.
Sean
I think if you look at a lot of monkeys that are still alive now, their strength is, like, different than ours. Their muscles are, I think, in some cases, more compact. And so they have, like, much better strength to weight ratio than us, particularly in their arms and shoulders, like swinging and stuff. Yeah, it's. It's interesting, but then in some ways, you know, we're way more advanced than they are.
Adam Thorne
Well, yeah, we build all the cool shit.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
We just make cages and put them inside. Like, they kind of, kind of outdone. But if you throw me into a jungle and a monkey, the monkey's gonna do a lot better than I am.
Guest
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
I think it's an interesting one because reintroducing them into areas where we have had overpopulation of certain species as a way to balance that. I imagine that there is a lot of discussion about that because a lot of times people have done that before, thinking that it's going to work out one way, and then it completely backfires. They were talking about. In the show, they were talking about. What did they call them? They were talking about bringing in hippopotamuses to this specific lake because they brought a native plant and it, like, overgrew and was like, clogging shipping vessel routes and was becoming a huge problem. And they were. They called them Lake Cow Bacon.
Adam Thorne
Right.
Sean
And it almost went through. It, like, went into the government and then they just, like, tossed it aside. But.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, who was that?
Sean
Jackson or Adams or Jefferson, maybe Roosevelt out of camera.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, one of them.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
They say it in the podcast. I can't remember who, but how wild is that? Yeah, we could be. We could have a bunch of lakes with hippos in the U.S. not great.
Sean
Not ideal. I mean, we have alligators, but.
Adam Thorne
True. And they fight each other in Africa, right?
Sean
I think.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I mean, alligators do fight each other. I think. Crocodiles.
Adam Thorne
No, no, I mean hippos and alligators.
Guest
Oh, yeah.
Adam Thorne
They get hypocrites.
Sean
Hippos are super territorial and aggressive.
Adam Thorne
They're very dangerous.
Sean
Yeah, they're very dangerous. And their jaws are massive.
Adam Thorne
Massive. Have you ever seen one eat a watermelon? Giant one.
Sean
A video. Not in person. I would love to see a hippopotamus in person.
Adam Thorne
I'd like to feed them watermelons.
Sean
Yeah. Throw watermelon.
Adam Thorne
It's almost as satisfying as watching those YouTube videos where the press just squashes different things.
Sean
Oh, yep. Hydraulic press.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. I don't know why that's so interesting, but it's kind of like that, but with animals.
Sean
Yeah, Pretty good. But we're not going to squish them. They're going to squish stuff.
Guest
Mm.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. So the company is called Colossal, which is kind of a cool name for a company.
Sean
Kind of a cool name.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And they aim to revive extinct species like they did the direwolf. They want to bring back woolly mammoths. Pretty sure they're, like, quite close to this.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
They've replicated the entire genome of a lot of things.
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Sean
Which is incredibly hard to do, especially if something isn't around nowadays, because you're, like, piecing together parts of stuff.
Adam Thorne
And I think AI is probably helping a ton.
Sean
Oh, yeah. Or if it is not now, will certainly help a lot in the future.
Adam Thorne
Imagine if I got so good. We didn't even need the. We didn't even need the, like, DNA to start with. We just literally describe the animal and it can write a code that mostly fills it out. That would be wild.
Sean
That would be wild.
Adam Thorne
That's probably how we would have to bring dinosaurs back if we did. Yeah, it's just like this wild trial and error event.
Sean
I feel like it would not be exactly the same as what they were when they actually existed.
Adam Thorne
Oh, yeah.
Sean
A different version of them, of course. And that's one thing I wonder, too, you know, like, I mean, Joe mentions that there's a lot of controversy of people saying, like, with the dire wolf, it's. It's not actually a dire wolf. It's just, like, genetically modified. But she's like, no, it literally became. It is genetically modified to be a dire wolf. And so I wonder, like, how. Like, is it a hundred percent? Or, like, are there some things that are not as. Like, what's the accuracy level on that? Probably, I imagine, pretty high if they've actually successfully done it. But, like.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
Is it exactly the way that it was before, or is it just our interpretation of it?
Adam Thorne
Well, I think what she was implying, and she didn't really say specifically, but I think it is. Is simple, is if they take a DNA sample from it and run that and create the whole genome, it matches exactly what they had from other direwolves. Like, that's the match.
Sean
Okay.
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Sean
So I guess what it's.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I mean, if you can completely replicate the entire genome, it would literally.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
It would, in every sense of it, become what it was.
Guest
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adam Thorne
That's wild. And then they're also talking potentially bringing back the longhorn bison.
Sean
Oh, yeah.
Adam Thorne
So in case you see the picture, massive.
Sean
I mean, yeah, there's. They showed it in the podcast, but it's a picture of the head and the. The antlers, and there's a scientist sitting or laying down next to it, like, above the head, next to the antlers, and the antlers are still, like, you've got like, a foot or two on both sides. Like, it's hard to tell how tall the person is, but even if it's just any sort of adult, like, even a small adult, that thing is huge.
Adam Thorne
Wow.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
Massive.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. I guess. I guess what we. What makes the most sense to do, like, bring back and kind of incorporate into environments is animals similar to ones we already have.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Because then it's like, well, we kind of know what these other ones do. But saying that, where are they gonna put woolly mammoths, they can't put them where they. With the regular elephants are because that's much hotter.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
So we're literally just chucking them into the tundra and we're like, go ahead.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And I wonder too, because, like, when they existed, the Earth was different, you know, so how are they going to respond to, like. Yeah, the different temperatures, the difference in, like, glacial melting and things like that. Like, their migration patterns are probably entirely different. And I wonder too, like, when these animals are created, do they. They must already have all of the instincts that they did when they existed. So, like, when you create that first breed of them, are they just naturally, when you release them into the wild, just going to assume the roles that they used to have before, like, start hunting and doing the things that they used to do, or are they gonna have to be, like, trained to do that?
Adam Thorne
Like, it might take a couple of generations because you have to think that.
Sean
The.
Adam Thorne
Like, babies learn from their parents to some degree, and the first ones are just gonna be born from, I guess, another elephant and then gives birth to a mammoth. So maybe they could learn something that way.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
But it might take a few generations for their instincts to kind of kick in and then teach. Teach their offspring. And I don't know. It's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. But at the end of the day, I think it's safe to say we don't have any idea. And probably these genetic scientists don't either. They're just, like, making stuff. Let's check it out. If it sucks, we won't do it anymore.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And I think, at least from what she said, it sounds like they're approaching this pretty cautiously, you know, making sure that they're, for one, doing it successfully, but then also, like, just not going wild and releasing them and, like, thinking of the implications that would happen, like, many steps ahead as to how this is going to work successfully, which, you know, that's an important thing. But, yeah, I. The whole time, you know, in the back of my head, I'm like, I could see a scenario where this goes terribly wrong again, you know, like, it kind of seems like I'm hopeful that it doesn't, and I think more likely it won't. But, you know, it kind of sounds like the beginning of a Jurassic park movie, you know? Well, a lot of that. Maybe it's just because it's so new and, like, that's our only association with it, but I could see it not going well.
Adam Thorne
It's certainly gonna change things.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You Know, I mean, just like the wolves being reintroduced. Change the rivers, I mean.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You're telling me woolly mammoths won't change some stuff.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
They're ginormous. They're gonna be eating a lot. They're gonna be doing all kinds of stuff.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Those big old tusks.
Guest
Yeah, yeah.
Sean
You're gonna find poachers now. I have a new breed of poachers hunting these things down, trying to get their tusks.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And, you know, and it brings up some interesting questions. Like, the. The best thing for me when I was listening to it is like, you know, through my life, they would like. For a while, it looked like whales were gonna go extinct. Certain ones, because they were being just killed left and right. And then there's other animals that are, you know, that have been wiped out within our lifetime, as far as we could tell. And the idea that we can bring those back is quite nice.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You know, I mean, there is also a natural balance to these things. It's like this is kind of the evolution of existence. Like, stuff does die out.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
But if humans have gotten the way of it, if we've, like, overfished salmon and now there's none, it's nice to think, all right, now no one can have any salmon for a generation, and then we clone some or whatever, bring them back, and there we go, we got salmon. You know, it's just like that's. That's a cool, interesting piece of technology, and it leans into. The more they practice this stuff, the more they can edit other things that probably will be medically very useful to human beings.
Guest
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
It kind of seems like a nice safeguard for our irresponsible tendencies on Earth, you know, like, they have. Can't remember where it is. Some really safe place, but they have, like, a bank of a lot of seeds, apparently.
Adam Thorne
Oh, seed bank?
Guest
In.
Sean
In the Octa, I guess. I heard that it flooded not too long ago. A couple years ago, it flooded or something. But just the central idea of that, like, having a backup in case shit gets wiped out.
Adam Thorne
Like, we still have a rec garden in there now.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I don't know.
Adam Thorne
Just corn everywhere. Yeah, just berries. And they, like. Oh, shit.
Sean
They got, like, hybrids growing everywhere.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, well, hopefully it didn't leak. I heard that thing costs, like, millions of dollars, so.
Sean
I'm sure it's expensive.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Get a good seal on that door.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Not rocket science.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
I said, couldn't afford sandbags.
Adam Thorne
Somebody should be up. At least one guy should be up there. Just keep an eye on.
Sean
Give somebody a bucket.
Adam Thorne
Get up there. Yeah, well, I mean, look, Shapiro kind of emphasizes responsible gene editing and kind of alluded to like a regulatory framework of sorts, which it sounds like needs to happen. Like an ecological conservation for the extinction.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You know, group. And I think that's pretty interesting because if you get like, if it's like a global style committee and they really sit there and decide which ones come back and when, it's just nice for us to really take the time and create like an ethical framework for things. I think it sets a good precedent for a lot of the things that we like to lean into that could have a huge impact on us. One area that where there's really not happening right now is AI.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And you know, that needs to be put together. It's kind of a different subject. But it's good that people are taking the time to do this because, you know, it's almost too fun just randomly bringing animals back and chucking them out into the garden.
Sean
I bet, like, I wonder on these people's free time, do they just like, ponder like, oh, what should we bring back next?
Adam Thorne
You know, I would no doubt. What would you bring back if you could bring back anything?
Sean
I don't know. My catalog of extinct animals is slim, but I don't know, probably something that's not going to like kill us. So maybe some like nice, cool, exotic birds.
Adam Thorne
Yep.
Sean
Not much of a birder, but, you know, going with kind of a safe option in that sense, you know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I wish I knew more about. I don't know. I mean, I think the bear one would be kind of interesting. Oh, the short face.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
But that seems like it would be a disaster.
Adam Thorne
Sounds terrifying. Yeah, 12ft just can wreck any other bear with one punch. Punk.
Sean
It's like a Thor of bears.
Adam Thorne
Super bears.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
There's supposedly in the US like hundred, 200,000 years ago, like this giant bird that was like, could straight up eat people.
Sean
Oh, really?
Adam Thorne
Yep. It didn't fly. It was just like a big bird that like ran around on land.
Sean
Oh, damn.
Adam Thorne
And it was huge. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like what? Kill that?
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Birds are terrifying. Yeah, yeah, giant ones.
Guest
I mean. Yeah.
Sean
Even like nowadays they have like California Condors, which can like pick up deer. What, like small deer and. And dogs too. Like, I know in a lot of areas where they have birds. I think like, California is a good place where, like, if you have a small dog, like, you got to be careful because that thing is gonna swoop in and steal your Sparky.
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
You got to be careful. But I don't know, I mean, I think there are a lot of examples of animals where it's like, clearly, like, we probably shouldn't bring that back.
Guest
Right? Yeah.
Sean
But I mean, what's that shark? That's ginormous Megalodon.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. Don't do that.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Horrifying.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
That one is terrifying.
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Sean
Think about even great white sharks are terrifying.
Adam Thorne
They are.
Guest
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
I mean, I. You got to wonder, I mean, did.
Adam Thorne
You hear about the Disney cruise recently where the girl fell overboard, like the five year old?
Sean
Oh, really?
Adam Thorne
They sat her up on the railing to take a picture with the mom, she fell off. The dad, luckily enough, he was brave, so he jumped straight in. And for like 20 minutes they were just in the water. Ship turned around pretty quick. Fair play to Disney ship. Good job.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
But also, did they. What a dumbass. Like, what are you doing putting your daughter on the rail? Yeah, they lived.
Sean
Okay, that's good.
Adam Thorne
But they could have easily not.
Sean
There's a staggering amount of people that have died, not due to Disney, but around Disney. Like Disney parks in Florida, there's a ton of people who get eaten by alligators.
Adam Thorne
A baby got eaten by alligators.
Sean
Yeah, that happens. That's happened a couple of times, hasn't it?
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And Disney's really good about like covering that stuff up and like not, not making it public. But for like having grown up in Florida, I know that that's a problem. And a lot of times it's unfortunate because it's negligent. Parents, like, parents are fucking. Like. There was this one case in Orlando where this kid was just like walking around, not paying attention, and the parents were like sitting at a bar. And then the kid gets swooped by an alligator and dies.
Adam Thorne
What?
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Like by some water?
Guest
Yeah, yeah.
Sean
The thing just jumps out and grabs it.
Adam Thorne
How can I know they can move around and go from like body of water to body of water, so it's very difficult to like, keep them out. But how can there not be like traps or just have like on site hunters?
Sean
Well, just. Yeah, it's challenging though, because Disney is huge. Like, the park itself in Florida is a massive area and there's a lot of bodies of water. I mean, Florida is essentially a big swamp.
Adam Thorne
Right.
Sean
And so it's built on top of a swamp. And so there are natural streams of water that like have to go through certain areas.
Adam Thorne
Gotcha.
Sean
And I think it. It's just really hard for Them just.
Adam Thorne
Too much to manage.
Sean
Yeah, I don't know if it's too much to manage, but it's very challenging and I think probably there is not enough emphasis put on it, like safety and stuff. But in recent years they've really cracked down on it and there's a lot of signs like around water sources, like gators and stuff because, like they can't move very fast on land, but in the water they can jump pretty high out of the water and grab ships. I mean, they can, they can, they can jump almost their full body length out of the water.
Adam Thorne
But yeah, it's like, almost encourages everybody to go watch Peter Pan again. So you like. Yeah, you're, you know, you're aware that alligators are dangerous.
Sean
And I mean, just like anything, like any massive tourist area, you just get people that are just fucking dumb, you know, like every single year someone gets killed by a bison in Yellowstone because they think it's fluffy and they can pet it. You know, there's always going to be that certain percent that's pretty stupid.
Adam Thorne
Don't do that, ladies and gentlemen, don't. You don't need to just photoshop yourself in there with a bison. If you want. You can do that now. AI will do it.
Sean
Yeah, it's pretty easy.
Adam Thorne
And then lie to your friends and.
Sean
Say that also, like you can in Yellowstone.
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Sean
Most of the time. Like almost every time I've been in Yellowstone, if you're in your car, you'll probably see them pretty close. Like they'll just walk next to your car. Is that right? Like, you're gonna get close to them regardless. But people will like get out of their car and like walk up to them and just be dumb. But I guess getting back to what we were talking about originally, one thing I found interesting, which I had never really thought about a lot Before. But a lot of the records that we have of animals, like fossils and things, it's so hard for things to become fossilized successfully. So there's a lot of shit that we just don't know about.
Adam Thorne
Right.
Sean
Like, we just don't have the records of. Because it got destroyed.
Adam Thorne
Well, that's one thing that makes actually aging human beings quite difficult is, relatively speaking, as mammals, we have some of the least dense bones of mammals. Obviously, birds have way less density. That's not a mammal, though, right? It's not. No. It's different thing.
Sean
What is birds? Those are birds. Yeah.
Adam Thorne
They lay eggs, but they have, like, hollowy bones, so they can fly. But humans, Homo sapiens, have relatively low density bones, so they don't fossilize well. And that's kind of a big part of it. So it's harder to. Like, we could have potentially been here a lot longer than we found, but it's tough to date us because there's just not as many fossils. I mean, like they said, Joe, they said most things don't fossilize.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Right.
Sean
So there's a lot of lost information.
Adam Thorne
Who knows what the number is? Let's say it's like 0.1% of all things fossilized. You're working with a really small sample size of what existed, you know?
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And you have to wonder, like. Well, it's clear, too, because when you go to a lot of ancient areas where, like, they thought early humans lived, a lot of times there's just records of us, like, being there. There's no records of us, actually. Like, no physical records of us being there, Just what we've left. So, like, paintings, tools, pottery, things like that. It's like there's no actual humans here unless they're mummified or, you know, preserved in some way. But a lot of times it's just like, what we left, you know?
Adam Thorne
Yeah.
Sean
Because that stuff preserves a lot better than our organic matter.
Adam Thorne
Sure. Yeah. Like a bit of a building.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And then nothing else.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
But that's an interesting one because.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
It's like how we have in our own minds some idea of how things went throughout history, but we have a lot of information that's just completely missing.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if we can ever really, truly fill in the blanks. And so much of it is guesswork built on top of other guesswork and assumptions. We might just be writing, like, a complete nonsense narrative.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Who knows?
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And another thing that they talk about in the show is when a lot of times when New evidence comes forth that challenges pre existing evidence. It's oftentimes pushed away. And, you know, you get a lot of arrogant scientists who don't support new evidence because it challenges their own work. And so a lot of times, you know, even if there is strong evidence against a certain case, you know, the scientific community just kind of pushes it away because it doesn't fit with their own narrative.
Adam Thorne
Right. Yeah. I mean, you see that in archeology all the time. A lot of pushback. I mean, you know, it's in physics and all the rest of it too. The only difference there is with math and physics, they can kind of prove it.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
So they're like, here you go. We prove this and it works.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
So suck it, nerds. Yeah, but with archeology, you can't do that because it's so much of like. Well, I mean, I guess that erosion could be seen as water erosion, but we think it was wind because if it was water, that would make it another 5,000 years old. And that changes our whole story.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
So then you just get that tit for tat kind of back and forth. Who even knows what the answer is?
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And a lot of stubbornness. I mean, if somebody's written a book or they've been lecturing on something for a long time, they don't want to change that.
Sean
Yeah, exactly.
Adam Thorne
They don't want to be wrong. Then they look stupid.
Sean
Well, it's also like they don't understand what you're talking about. And so if you're an expert on a certain field, you know, you don't want new information coming in that you can't explain or doesn't fit with what you're saying that just completely dismantles everything that you've just tried to prove, you know?
Adam Thorne
Exactly.
Sean
And yeah, I mean, it's just the same thing as, like, you know, if. If we have a differing set of beliefs and I try to challenge your set of beliefs, you're going to naturally push back at mine. Because I'm challenging what you believe.
Adam Thorne
I don't agree.
Sean
Exactly.
Adam Thorne
Pushing back. Yeah, I'm challenging you. Yeah, no, it's a good point. I mean, we kind of have to do that naturally anyway for like, self preservation. If you were constantly open to every idea that anybody gave you, you'd be all over the bump.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
You'd probably be British.
Adam Thorne
We're gonna edit that out. Okay. Okay. Well, it's interesting you say. I mean, you know, Beth brings up the challenges as an academia. She described it as like a scarcity mindset. Right. So it's like, fosters gatekeeping and resistance to controversial fields and ideas. And then there's funding competition, which is, like, heavily controlled. So why she likes the idea of podcasts, for example, kind of bypasses the traditional gatekeepers. Like, you get in front of Rogan, you get to talk about whatever skeptics aren't able to push back in the same way, you get a huge audience and, you know, you get people really interested in the stuff that you're doing.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And you can go into detail, you know, I mean, the podcast was almost three hours long. And while they talked about a bunch of different things, you know, you can. You have the time to go into detail of how certain things work and processes and things like that. Whereas, like, traditional news media, you know, you don't. You don't have the time. How are you going to explain all of the complicated things that she's describing in seven minutes? It's just not possible to do it.
Adam Thorne
Do it properly. It'd be way too difficult. I mean, one quote that I had written down is she said, nobody knows what's going to be the next big thing. By shutting down things that are weird, you might be shutting down the things that's going to change everything. And that's kind of interesting to think about, right? Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, that's possible. Now, is changing everything good? I don't know. That sounds wild.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
But, you know, there could be positive kind of conservation things happening by bringing back certain animals.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And it's gonna take some careful consideration, but with time, we get better at it, of course. And I think. I think it's, you know, I think it's interesting. I think it's important. We'll find out.
Sean
Yeah, I liked she was talking about. I guess she does some teaching and she did this exercise with some of her students, which was a debate. And I think debates are great for education. But the way that she did it was really smart because she assigned everyone different roles. So you had, like, politicians, scientists, you know, like all these different people that would be brought up in conversation and have their own opinion on this kind of thing. And then she randomly assigned whether they were pro or against the debate topic, which in this example was whether to reintroduce wolves in California. And then the kids can debate, you know, they have time to prepare, and then they can debate and things. And she said that there was always a massive shift before and after the bait of people usually going pro before, and then kind of more leaning con at the end, huh? But I thought it was just a great tool for education because, you know, then kids are looking in it with, with detail, in a perspective that they didn't think already. You know, you're putting yourself in someone else's shoes and imagining how they would react to it. And everyone else is doing that. And so, you know, you can, you can have really good conversations that way.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. And I think it's a good reminder too. And this comes back to something Joe says all the time, like, you are not your ideas.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Right. You're a different thing. And what I mean by that is take a point of view that you believe in and then force yourself for a week to understand and actually speak to the opposite of that viewpoint. Right. So you're like pro something, but you tell yourself, no, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be con this against this for the next week, come up with all the arguments to why that would be and really hammer it down. Just like she's saying with this little experiment, it changed those people's minds.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
And it kind of would. It's like your own propaganda that you're succumbing to, even though you decided to do the thing to yourself. And I think it would highlight how really, truly loosely connected to your ideas you often are.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And I think a lot of times people have ideas that are based on like a pre existing notion that they have in their head, which is false, you know, and that then their whole framework is built on false ideas. But yeah, and I think like that's, that's a great example for how these kinds of conversations should happen. You know, you need to have a bunch of people talking about them. You need to have people examining it from different angles. Not just putting forth their side, but trying to understand the other side and then re. Enter, you know, like rework it.
Adam Thorne
And yeah, never hurts to have some empathy with, with an opinion, especially if you find yourself having really strong opinions on a certain subject. I think it's worth diving in a little bit to just see what the other point of view is and try and understand. Try and, you know, maybe you won't fully understand it, but just try to get a picture of what they're thinking.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
You know.
Guest
Yeah.
Sean
And I think that that's an important skill in life. You know, everyone in the world is different. And I think it's. A lot of people have an arrogance that the way that they live is better or the things that they do are better or what they believe is somehow superior. And it's Very helpful to branch outside of that and really put yourself in someone else's shoes. And you know, because a lot of times, I mean, I think this more gets into like a political side of thing. But you know, your general geographic area of where you were raised will have a impact on your perspective in life. And so challenging that with people who live in different areas is a great way to expand the way you thought about the world. I mean, this is why traveling is so important for people, you know, because you can see like, oh, these people live in a different way than I do, but yet they are still happy or, you know, they have all of these different things and yeah, they're thriving.
Adam Thorne
Having kids and having families.
Sean
Maybe there's more than one way to do things, you know, and just at the end of the day, having respect for each other's perspectives, you know, understanding that like, while I may disagree with you, you know, you still have that perspective because that's who you are and we can agree to disagree, still be friends.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, no, that's a really good way of looking at it. And, and it just kind of open like comes back to that like open mindedness. And with science that's important because it's not just the ethical concerns, but being open to these different ideas. And you know, a lot of this when it comes down to genetics and bringing back extinct creatures, I mean there's gotta be some open minded thinking in order to achieve this in a, in a positive way. Yeah, and it sounds like they're making a lot of traction. I mean, you know, people are really starting to talk about this and understand it. I didn't know anything about this before Rogan started to bring it up.
Sean
I knew vaguely that people were working on this, but I didn't know anything about like how far they've gotten or how they're doing it. But it was good to hear. And I think, you know, I'm sure that Beth doesn't speak for the entire scientific community and is not a, you know, she's not the shining example of how everyone in that field is. But if that is somewhat the case, I think that that's a good thing because it seemed like she was very balanced on the ethics side of things and in general, I mean one of the things that stood out to me was she was like, she was describing like trying to change the DNA in the least invasive way possible or the least amount of steps possible, essentially like doing it in the simplest way you can and slowly, which I think is an important thing. You know, you got to Be cautious and follow the steps and sure, do your due diligence.
Adam Thorne
I wonder how they decided that they had done a good enough job sequencing a genome to be like, right, we're bringing this back and the direwolf is the first thing. Yeah, I wonder what that process was. He just has to hit like 100%.
Sean
Well, maybe, I mean, I don't know. I would assume, I would assume that some species are easier to replicate than others. And so maybe they just had enough evidence of this dire wolf and they evaluated it from an ethical perspective and they're like, all right, we have the research, we can go through with this. Like, everything's good on our end. And they were just like, fuck it, let's just do it, you know? But I. Maybe it was like one of those things where they're like, you know, trying to piece together some other thing and like, we don't really have enough information on this to make it successful. But the dire wolf, they did, you know.
Adam Thorne
Yeah. Let's say it was like 3% different than a regular wolf and it might even be less.
Guest
Yeah.
Adam Thorne
Right. Because we're very closely related to even a chimpanzee. Yeah, I think it's like 90. It's like a 10 difference. So if you've got animals today that are around that are only a few percent difference, you don't have to juggle much of that splicing DNA in that.
Sean
Yeah, you're working a lot off of what you already know.
Adam Thorne
Yeah, that makes sense. Whereas if you've got no model for it and you've got to kind of build it from the ground up, then you don't even have another creature to like birth it from.
Sean
And you're building off of incomplete pieces of DNA, damaged DNA and things like that. Whereas at least you can collect a wolf and get a DNA sample.
Adam Thorne
That's it. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I found it fascinating. I hope she comes back on. I can't wait to go see a woolly mammoth. Yeah, I'm super stoked. That zoo or wherever it is is gonna be real busy for a real long time. That's gonna be a huge attraction. And I think that will only fund efforts that bring back a bunch of other things.
Sean
Yeah, there'll be like a vote. There's like a little suggestion box in the game.
Adam Thorne
Buy a ticket. You get to choose. They're like overwhelmingly short faced bear. 99% of the vote. Damn it, we're bringing it back. Let's build some giant enclosures. Okay, that's it for this week. Go check that one out. Thanks for listening Sean, as always. Thanks for having me and we will talk to you guys next week.
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Joe Rogan Experience Review Podcast: Episode 453 – Beth Shapiro
Published on July 2, 2025
In Episode 453 of the Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast, hosts Adam Thorne and Sean delve into an insightful discussion about de-extinction with Beth Shapiro, a renowned evolutionary molecular biologist and Chief Science Officer at Colossal Biosciences. Beth, the author of Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined and Redefined Nature, offers a comprehensive look into the science, ethics, and future of bringing extinct species back to life.
Beth Shapiro is a prominent figure in the field of ancient DNA research and de-extinction projects. Her work focuses on using genetic technology to revive extinct species with the aim of restoring ecological balance and rectifying the adverse impacts humans have had on various ecosystems.
Beth discusses Colossal Biosciences' ambitious projects, including the revival of the dire wolf and the woolly mammoth.
Dire Wolves:
Woolly Mammoths:
Bringing extinct species back to life involves overcoming significant technical hurdles:
Ancient DNA Retrieval:
Genome Sequencing and Editing:
Genetic Modification:
Beth highlights the profound ethical questions surrounding de-extinction:
Consent and Welfare:
Ecological Impacts:
Regulatory Frameworks:
The discussion draws parallels between current de-extinction efforts and historical instances of species reintroduction:
Wolves in Yellowstone:
Hippos in U.S. Lakes:
These examples underscore the complexity of ecological systems and the potential unintended consequences of introducing new species.
Beth addresses the resistance often faced when introducing groundbreaking ideas:
Gatekeeping in Academia:
Importance of Open-Mindedness:
Beth shares her approach to educating the next generation of scientists:
Debate-Based Learning:
Encouraging Empathy and Critical Thinking:
Looking ahead, the conversation explores the potential and risks of gene editing:
Advancements in AI and Genetics:
Ethical Gene Editing:
Potential for Medical Advances:
The hosts reflect on the broader implications of de-extinction:
Balancing Conservation and Innovation:
Public Engagement and Awareness:
Optimism and Caution:
Episode 453 of the Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast offers a deep dive into the fascinating and contentious field of de-extinction through the expertise of Beth Shapiro. The conversation balances excitement about scientific advancements with a thoughtful examination of the ethical and ecological challenges involved. As technology progresses, the insights shared by Beth and the hosts underscore the importance of responsible innovation and the need for comprehensive regulatory frameworks to guide the revival of extinct species.
Notable Quotes:
"Nobody knows what's going to be the next big thing. By shutting down things that are weird, you might be shutting down the things that's going to change everything." – Beth Shapiro ([36:44])
"Everyone in the world is different. And I think it's a lot of people have an arrogance that the way that they live is better or the things that they do are better or what they believe is somehow superior." – Sean ([40:45])
"If you can completely replicate the entire genome, it would literally become what it was." – Sean ([17:23])
This episode provides valuable perspectives for Rogan fans and anyone interested in the cutting-edge intersections of biology, ethics, and technology. By examining Beth Shapiro's work, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of bringing extinct species back to life.