#2301 - Ben Lamm

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience #2301 - Ben Lamm

Release Date: April 7, 2025

In episode #2301 of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan sits down with Ben Lamm, the CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences. Colossal is pioneering the field of de-extinction and species preservation, aiming to bring back extinct species and conserve endangered ones through advanced genetic engineering and synthetic biology. This engaging conversation delves into the intricacies of their work, the technological breakthroughs, ethical considerations, and the future of conservation.

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1. Introduction to Ben Lamm and Colossal Biosciences

[00:03] Joe Rogan introduces Ben Lamm, highlighting his dual life as a CEO and an enthusiast of synthetic biology. Ben shares his journey into founding Colossal Biosciences, inspired by his interactions with George Church, a renowned figure in synthetic biology.

Ben Lamm [00:22]: "I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Colossal Biosciences, the world's first de-extinction and species preservation company."

2. The Vision: Bringing Back Mammoths

[00:31] Ben elaborates on Colossal's primary project: resurrecting the woolly mammoth. He compares their efforts to the fictional Jurassic Park, emphasizing the real-life applications of their work in ecosystem restoration.

Ben Lamm [02:39]: "We thought that there was a huge application to elephant conservation. The reintroduction of mammoths back into the wild could actually have a net benefit to the ecosystem."

3. Understanding the De-extinction Process

[03:22] Joe and Ben discuss the scientific process behind de-extinction. Ben details the challenges of working with ancient DNA and the role of AI and computational biology in reconstructing genomes.

Ben Lamm [03:38]: "We have about 109 mammoth samples ranging from 3,000 years old to 1.2 million years old. It's a fragmented puzzle that requires immense computational power to piece together."

4. Genetic Engineering and Woolly Mice

[24:27] Ben introduces Colossal's experiment with "woolly mice," genetically modified to exhibit mammoth-like traits. This project serves as a proof of concept for their genome editing capabilities.

Ben Lamm [24:37]: "We made woolly mice to test phenotypes. These mice were 100% the edits we predicted, showing the efficiency of our genome engineering process."

5. Ethical Considerations and Interactions with Academia

[40:43] The conversation shifts to the ethical debates surrounding de-extinction. Ben expresses frustration with the academic community's resistance and highlights Colossal's open-source approach to conservation technologies.

Ben Lamm [41:14]: "We're trying to solve conservation problems, but the academic system imposes limitations that hinder innovation."

6. Cloning and the Dire Wolf Project

[49:42] Ben discusses Colossal's ambitious endeavor to clone the dire wolf, an extinct species once native to North America. He showcases the first three clones—Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi—and explains the meticulous care involved in their upbringing.

Ben Lamm [49:42]: "We have three direwolves so far, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, living in a secure 2,000-acre ecological preserve with 24/7 care."

7. Collaboration with Conservation Partners

[80:17] Ben emphasizes Colossal's commitment to working with various stakeholders, including indigenous groups, governments, and private landowners, to ensure successful rewilding projects.

Ben Lamm [80:17]: "We're partnering with 48 conservation groups globally, providing our technologies for free to aid in their preservation efforts."

8. Future Innovations: Artificial Wombs and Beyond

[95:39] Looking ahead, Ben reveals Colossal's exploration into artificial wombs, aiming to revolutionize cloning and species preservation by gestating animals ex utero.

Ben Lamm [95:39]: "Artificial wombs could allow us to clone endangered species without relying on surrogates, significantly advancing our rewilding capabilities."

9. Addressing Global Challenges with Synthetic Biology

[125:23] Ben outlines how Colossal's technologies extend beyond de-extinction, tackling issues like plastic pollution through engineered microbes capable of breaking down plastics efficiently.

Ben Lamm [125:23]: "We developed microbes that can break down plastics into biomass, offering a sustainable solution to the global plastic crisis."

10. The Intersection of Technology, Ethics, and Conservation

[143:22] The discussion culminates with reflections on the broader implications of synthetic biology. Ben advocates for responsible innovation, stressing the need for ethical frameworks as technologies advance.

Ben Lamm [143:22]: "Synthetic biology is akin to discovering fire. It's powerful and transformative, but we must harness it thoughtfully to benefit humanity and the planet."

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Key Takeaways

• De-extinction and Conservation: Colossal Biosciences is at the forefront of bringing back extinct species, with mammoths and dire wolves as primary projects.
• Technological Innovation: Advanced genome editing, AI, and synthetic biology are crucial in reconstructing ancient genomes and ensuring the health and viability of cloned species.
• Ethical and Collaborative Approach: Colossal emphasizes ethical considerations, open-source technologies, and collaboration with conservation partners to address ecological challenges.
• Future Prospects: Beyond de-extinction, Colossal is exploring artificial wombs and engineered microbes to solve broader environmental issues like plastic pollution.
• Philosophical Implications: The merging of technology and biology raises profound ethical questions, necessitating responsible governance and societal discourse.

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Notable Quotes

• Ben Lamm [02:39]: "We thought that there was a huge application to elephant conservation. The reintroduction of mammoths back into the wild could actually have a net benefit to the ecosystem."
• Ben Lamm [24:37]: "We made woolly mice to test phenotypes. These mice were 100% the edits we predicted, showing the efficiency of our genome engineering process."
• Ben Lamm [41:14]: "We're trying to solve conservation problems, but the academic system imposes limitations that hinder innovation."
• Ben Lamm [49:42]: "We have three direwolves so far, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, living in a secure 2,000-acre ecological preserve with 24/7 care."
• Ben Lamm [80:17]: "We're partnering with 48 conservation groups globally, providing our technologies for free to aid in their preservation efforts."
• Ben Lamm [95:39]: "Artificial wombs could allow us to clone endangered species without relying on surrogates, significantly advancing our rewilding capabilities."
• Ben Lamm [125:23]: "We developed microbes that can break down plastics into biomass, offering a sustainable solution to the global plastic crisis."
• Ben Lamm [143:22]: "Synthetic biology is akin to discovering fire. It's powerful and transformative, but we must harness it thoughtfully to benefit humanity and the planet."

---

Conclusion

Episode #2301 of The Joe Rogan Experience offers a deep dive into the revolutionary work of Ben Lamm and Colossal Biosciences. From resurrecting extinct species to innovating solutions for environmental conservation, the conversation underscores the immense potential and challenges of synthetic biology. Ben's insights reveal a future where technology and ecology intertwine to restore biodiversity and address pressing global issues, all while navigating the ethical landscapes that come with such profound advancements.

Transcript

[A]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[B]

Check it out.

[A]

The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's up, Ben?

[B]

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

[A]

My pleasure. Very nice to meet you, man. So why don't you. Instead of Meeks, why don't you explain to people what you do?

[B]

So I'm the CEO and co founder of a company called Colossal Biosciences were the world's first de extinction and species preservation company.

[A]

Yeah. And that is a wild thing. I mean, this is essentially literally wild. This is essentially real life. Jurassic Park.

[B]

Yeah, we get the Jurassic park occasionally. Like, believe it or not, we get.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

I mean, I got to drop my hydrogen tablet in.

[A]

Oh, you do the Gary Brecker. Great.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, I love those.

[B]

I just didn't want you to think it was. We're going a different direction.

[A]

How did you get started even thinking about doing something like this?

[B]

So I kind of fell into it. I didn't wake up and say, I saw Jurassic Park. I'm super stoked. I love animals. I want to go work on this. I'm just a weirdly curious person. So there's this guy named George Church. If you don't know George, you should look him up. He's the father of synthetic biology. He's at Harvard University. He's 6 foot 7 with narcolepsy. He's just the best, Right. So if you ever had him on, he may fall asleep during the podcast, but he's the absolute best. He's a genius. And I thought, my background's in software and just building teams of people that are smarter than me. Right. And so I was interested. Interested in synthetic biology. This idea that we could engineer life and that we could use AI and compute to make it even better. Like, how do we do directed evolution and how that could apply to crops and animals and all kinds of stuff. So I get on the phone with George and I ask him my questions. He answers them in, like, six seconds because he's a genius. And then I start asking about all the other weird stuff that's coming out of his lab. In that process, he's like, I've also been working on mammoths and other things. I was like, wait, wait, what?

[A]

And.

[B]

And I was like, if you had one project, what is it? This mammoth project. And then he went down this whole path about how he'd bring back mammoths, reintroduce them to the Arctic, help the ecosystem, use those technologies for conservation, use those technologies for human healthcare. And I kind of Thought it was a fucking joke. I literally thought that, like the smartest man I've ever met and been on the phone with was a joke. Well, then I stayed up all night just Googling George. And there was this weird mammoth through line. Whether he was in 60 minutes or Stephen Colbert, whatever, he's in. There was this weird mammoth through line where he was just obsessed with these mammoths. Everyone kind of wanted him to do this. So I called him back the next day. Seven days later, I'm in his lab and we were off to the races on. Okay, we're going to try to go build a company to bring back sting species.

[A]

So how do you decide what to start with?

[B]

So we started with the mammoth first, right? Because George, you know, had been working on it for eight years. We needed his core technologies. We thought that there was a huge application to elephant conservation. There was some ecological modeling that had been done to shows that the reintroduction of mammoths back into the wild could actually have a net benefit to the ecosystem. And so that was an easy place to start. After we launched the company, it went crazy viral. And all these other folks from De Extinction Research started calling us. Like, folks from, like, the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, which looks like a mythical creature. It's awesome. The best Shapiro with the dodo. Everyone just started calling us. And then we just started expanding our entire set.

[A]

So how does one do this? So, like, let's. Before we get to what you showed me earlier, which is fucking amazing, before that, how does one do this? Like, from what I understand, you have to take the gene of an Indian elephant, which is the closest thing to a mammoth.

[B]

Yeah. Let me walk through the whole process. So first you have to find ancient DNA, which is pretty shitty on a good day. So the minute we take DNA out of our bodies or out of anything, it starts to degrade at an insanely rapid rate. So we definitely need to find a lot of samples. So we actually have about 109 mammoth samples ranging from 3,000 years old to 1.2 million years old, which is awesome. But it's also fragmented. It's like a shitty jigsaw puzzle that you don't know what the box is and someone's stolen part of the puzzle. And then, oh, by the way, people have taken other puzzle pieces and put them in there. So there's all kinds of problems with that. So this is really an AI and compute problem. It's not as much a human problem. So you have to get a lot of samples first, and then you have to start mapping them to their closest living relative. And genotyping allows us to understand that that's Asian elephants. Right. So Asian elephants are 99.6% the same as mammoths. They're actually closer related to mammoths than they are to African elephants.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Which always blows people mind. That and the fact that mammoths were alive when we were building the pyramids or aliens or whoever was building the pyramids, like. Like, literally, like humans were building the pyramids while mammoths existed. And sometimes that blows people's mind because they always think of them as in this, like, weird, like, prehistoric, like, 65 million years old dinosaur.

[A]

When. When did they go extinct?

[B]

So the last one went extinc 4,000 years ago.

[A]

Really?

[B]

On Wrangel Island? Yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So they've been. They were around for a long time.

[A]

4,000 years.

[B]

I know they weren't. I mean, now they appeared about 2 1/2 million years ago, as far as we understand, in the. They were mostly a Pleistocene species. But as we moved into the Holocene and kind of the period that we're in right now, they existed. They existed all the way up until they had this, like, small genetic bottleneck on Wrangel Island.

[A]

Wow. And where's Wrangel Island?

[B]

It's northeast of Siberia.

[A]

Whoa. And they just. Was it a small island? They just ran out of resources there. Like, what happened?

[B]

Well, there's a couple different theories. Right. One of the theories with Wrangle island is that they actually. There's lots of inbreeding, so there's lots of, like, genetic bottleneck, which happened because there's not a different species there.

[A]

How large is Wrangle Island?

[B]

I'm not quite sure.

[A]

Can you give me a photo again, Jamie? Okay.

[B]

Essentially, though, Wrangel island, and then there's another island called St. Paul island, which is also between Alaska and the United and Russia also is where they were. Those are kind of the last two places that we know mammoths existed today.

[A]

And they died off 4,000 years ago.

[B]

Yeah. And now some. Actually, there is actually another working hypothesis that they actually ran out of water. They ran out of access to fresh water on the island.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

So some combination of genetic bottleneck and that occurred.

[A]

Wow. 4,000 years is so recent.

[B]

I know. It's crazy recent. Right?

[A]

Jamie, can you please pull up a photo of an Asian elephant versus a African elephant?

[B]

And they're actually mammoths, because there's, you know, mammoths themselves. Yeah. Mammoths themselves are close related to the Asian elephant, which is on the left yeah. Which is on the left. So they have that dome cranium. They have the small ears. They have a little bit of a hump structure. You know, mammoths, because they had these massive, massive tusks. Right. And, you know, you've talked to lots of folks in kind of the mammoth world. They actually, you know, move their heads quite slowly. They had to, you know, they had to have this entire ridge of extra muscle in order to do that. But one of the things that's awesome also about the Asian elephants is some Asian elephants, some of the ones that are born actually have. They look, they're not mammoth, like, but they have a lot of fur on them, and they kind of lose it over time.

[A]

Wow. So are those the ones that you would find, like, in Thailand?

[B]

Yes, and Thailand and then parts of different parts of India and the Indian subcontinent.

[A]

I actually rode one of those once with my family. Oh, did you recommend it?

[B]

Did you go to one of those places that you, like, take care of them? Yeah.

[A]

You have to, like, get a relationship with them. So you feed them sugar cane and you wash them, and, you know, you play nice with them for, like, a while. Yeah, a couple hours. It was, like, at least an hour. You're just hanging out with them, petting them, and. And then once they decide you're cool.

[B]

Then they'll let you.

[A]

They let you ride them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But my whole family wrote them, and I was, like, totally opposed to it. I was like, I'm doing it just because you guys want to do it. I just want to feed them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I just want to hang out.

[B]

Hang out with them. Yeah.

[A]

It just felt weird. My daughter fell off, I think, twice. One of what? My youngest daughter fell off once, at least. And I was like, do we know that this elephant wants us riding?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I mean? It's kind of a weird.

[B]

It's a weird thing, right? Yeah.

[A]

And then afterwards, you get in the water and you wash them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And everything. And I just kind of hung out with them.

[B]

I'd be cool.

[A]

They're very sweet.

[B]

I don't think I want to ride one. I would just. I like being, you know, around them.

[A]

There's a video on my Instagram of it. Yeah, there is, definitely. Because she was eating a log. I was like, why are you eating a log? It's just weird. They're so enormous, but they're really, like.

[B]

Peaceful and incredibly smart. And they're. They have incredible pack dynamics. Right. So they live in a herd. They've even had all these different examples where they also adopt other animals. Animals. I don't know if you've seen any of these videos, but oh yeah.

[A]

So here it is. So this is a few years ago in Thailand and this is an Asian elephant. Just chilling with this elephant. This episode is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. Sometimes speed is a huge asset. Like in the ring or on the field. Being quicker than your opponent could be the difference between winning and losing. In the world of business, it could be the difference between finding or missing out on your next great hire. Luckily, you can speed up the hiring process with ZipRecruiter. Their new Zip Intro feature can help you meet several interested qualified candidates at once. Kind of like speed dating. And right now you can try Zip Intro for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan Zip Intro works fast to find the people you need. You can literally post your job today and start talking to candidates in back to back calls tomorrow. It's that fast. And best of all, this feature does a lot of the leg work for you. It finds you top talent for your role and schedules those calls. All you need to do is pick a time. Enjoy the benefits of Speed hiring with Zip Intro only from Zip Recruiter rated the number one hiring site based on G2. Try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com Rogan Again that ZipRecruiter.com RogAn Zip Intro post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. This episode is brought to you by eight Sleep. Let's talk about a game changer in the world of Sleep Technology 8 Sleep and their revolutionary Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod is a high tech mattress cover that easily adds to your existing bed and is clinically proven to improve sleep by up to one hour per night. The Pod regulates sleep size cycles with precision and automatic temperature control for each side of the bed so you and your partner can have your ideal sleep temperature. It also learns your sleep patterns and detects snoring, adjusting the bed's position to stop it. Plus, it attracts sleep stages, heart rate variability and respiratory rate without wearable devices. So if you're ready to take your sleep and recovery to the next level, head over to 8sleep.com rogan and use the code rogan to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra and you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. I have it, I use it and I love it. Your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep shipping to many countries worldwide. See [e-mail] Rogan yeah. 2018. Okay. There it is. It was really cool.

[B]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[A]

It's just. It's. It's just cool to be around them. They're just a fascinating animal. Just the biodiversity of Earth, the fact that that thing exists, this enormous.

[B]

This enormous thing with this, like, robotic potential. Art. Yeah, it's great.

[A]

As long as you're cool to them, they're cool to you.

[B]

Yeah, they sense it, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, we see that nature with a lot of animals, right. If you sense it and they don't feel like they're, you know, being backed into a corner or fearful, then they're not going to be around that. So some of our animals, I've been around, and they're starting to get quite large, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point. Yes, that. Yeah. At some point, though, you're still kind of like, they are wild animals, so you have to maintain some level of healthy distance.

[A]

Yeah. So let's just get right to it.

[B]

Wait, wait. Do you want to finish the process?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please.

[B]

So, okay, so we have the ancient genome. So you have to collect in a symbol.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's a lot of people just think of us in the lab, like just a bunch of people in the lab. But that's like some Indiana Jones shit. Like, we're literally going into the permafrost and, like, collecting dead samples from the permafrost, which, you know, you've had, you know, John Reeves on here. It's disgusting. Yeah, it's. It smells like death. It literally. I mean, I guess it is death. It's just over time piled up death and.

[A]

Have you visited John?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I visited John.

[A]

Do you went to the boneyard?

[B]

Yeah, I went to the boneyard.

[A]

What's it like there?

[B]

It's crazy. It's exactly what you'd expect. I. I didn't know John. So I'm on the board of trustees of the Explorers Club, so we take these expeditions. We did an expedition to Alaska to do mammoth retrieval. And then we're also doing some cultural studies with some of the indigenous people groups around mammoths. Like, do you want mammoths back? Is this a good idea? Right. Because we try to be pretty inclusive. And they're like, oh, we got to meet the biggest landowner in Alaska, John. I was like, okay, great. I'm excited. So go meet him. We pull up, he's in a different car, and he's like. And I think he wanted us to follow him. He's like, get in. I was like, okay. And he's a big dude. I'm not that big of a dude, right? No, especially. Especially after Gary Brecht has been working on me. I'm a smaller dude, right. And so, like, I literally get in. I get in the car. There's a. There's a bunch of stickers and there's one that has a butterflies on it that says give zero fucks. And I was like. And then there's. And he's like, just move the gun over. So I move the gun over. And he goes, listen. And this is the first words out of his mouth to me. If I stop short, you hand me that gun. And I was like, I didn't even ask a follow up question because, like, what do you do when you get in the car with John and he says, you hand me that gun. If I stop quick and I say, hand me that gun, you hand me that gun. I was like, that's awesome. And he showed me around the.

[A]

What kind of gun was it?

[B]

It was just some type of rifle.

[A]

So grizzlies.

[B]

I assume it was for grizzlies. Yeah. Or bears or, you know, something large.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But then he showed me around the boneyard and showed me his collection. And he was completely. I mean, he didn't know us from anybody. He just opened up everything to us, Right. And he's like, let me show you all this. Showed us his skull. He actually has a warehouse. I don't know if he ever discloses where it is, but he has a warehouse where he has some of the greatest specimens ever. So it's cool. You should go. It's cool.

[A]

I do want to go. He's an amazing guy.

[B]

Yeah, he's. And he's a cool. And he's a cool guy. And then, you know, being in the mammoth researcher business, we're like, oh, we'd love to. We'd love to, you know, take. Use some of your sandals. Can we take them? And he's like, no. And he was very honest and he told us. And that's like, before your podcast with them, we kind of learned that story. Right? And so that's what sucks is how, like, some people can ruin it for everybody, you know, because he's, you know, outside of Fairbanks, it's not the easiest place to build a, you know, biocontainment level three lab. Right. But he's like. But he is always like, you build a lab here, you use whatever you want. But he's like, the bones stay here. So he is very consistent with his messaging.

[A]

Well, you know the whole deal with the Museum of Natural History, right? Yeah.

[B]

And I totally believe it. I totally believe.

[A]

Well, it's a fact now. They found these bones in the east river exactly where they told them to drop it off. They have step bison fragments.

[B]

I've seen it.

[A]

Woolly mammoth fragments. So they know that they're there.

[B]

Yeah. And, well, I mean, you. You've built a relationship with John. He's just a normal, no bullshit kind of guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's like, you stole this stuff. Give it back.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or he's also like, hey, if you want to come work on it, come on. Like, he's very collaborative.

[A]

It's also. It's like, what. What do you guys have? Like, why are you keeping that shit in a basement? Like, what is that?

[B]

I mean, when we do work, you know, outside of the expeditions of collecting ancient DNA DNA, when we do work, we also work with museums, right? And so we go to, like, the catacombs of the museums. And it's exactly what you think of as, like, the Vatican Archives, right? You go down to, like, sub basement 4 of the Smithsonian, and it's just rows and rows and rows of taxidermy animals that you've never seen. It's got, like, little drawers and boxes, and they're like, oh, this is giant sloth poop. And I was like, I didn't know there was giant sloth. Yes. And we think there's DNA. And I was like, well, this is like, you know, the card catalog of, like, all speed. Of all, like, dead species. But it's not on display for the public. It's just in a basement.

[A]

And is it extensively archived? They know where everything is. Or is there some stuff down there?

[B]

I mean, I don't know what it is. I wouldn't say that they are the. At least any museum, they have a. I think they have a lot more than they know. I don't see it in, like, massive computer systems because we asked for inventory less and, you know, like, what's the shopping list?

[A]

It's been over 100 years they've been doing this. So people have come and gone.

[B]

Oh, they'll pull out. Yeah. And they'll pull out drawers that have, like, Darwin's name on it and stuff like that. I mean, that's how we did the thylacine. We actually found in a cup about this size. We actually found what's called. We call it the miracle pup, where they shot the mother, they took the three joeys, the babies killed the three pups, and they Put one of them in formaldehyde, and we got a 98% complete genome from the first sample of that puppy.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

But they didn't even know they had it. They also. On the thylacine, which I'm sure we'll talk about more later, they also found a head in a bucket. They didn't even. It was the mom's head. So we actually knew. We could actually look at the genetic relation between the two. And they actually found. They didn't know they had the head in the bucket. They just had a head in a bucket. They opened it up. It was marked thylacine. They opened it up, and there was a full thylacine skull in there. There's pictures of it online and everything. And we used that to get to a 99.9% complete genome because we also had the ancestry of the two of pup and mother. Wow. Yeah. So there's. There's probably treasure troves in some of these museums that aren't being, you know, fully utilized.

[A]

So if you have 98% or you have 99%, what's the process of going from that? So here it is.

[B]

Yeah, there's the head. There's the head in the bucket. So Andrew Pask, who leads our. In partnership with the University of Melbourne, leads our thylacine work. And. Yeah, that's the head and bucket. I mean, there's soft tissue, there's teeth, there's petrus bones, which we'll talk about.

[A]

Do you buy into any of these sightings?

[B]

No, I did. So Andrew Pask, for years, he's been working on it for 15 years. He's amazing. He's awesome. He's been working on. On, like, a shoestring budget. And that's part of the problem with de extinction is nobody's put real capital into it until now. And he'd been working for 15 years, and he's had people send him, you know, poop clippings from, you know, hair and all this stuff over the years. They just send it to him. And then he loves the thylacine so much, he just sequences it and he's like, no, it's a dog. You sent me more dog shit. Thanks. I mean, it's demoralizing, but, like, when I got into thylacine, you know, we met Andrew, we did a partnership with him. We actually made the largest investment in marsupial research. More than the Australian government. We made the largest investment in research for marsupial development of anyone. So we do this, and then you get into the myth of it. Right. So you start reading it. Right? You start reading. I start reading all the books on the thylacine. I want to be. I get obsessive about projects, and so I'm pretty obsessed about extinction right now, and so got super deep in it. And then I started calling Pasc. I was like, hey, I've been watching these YouTube videos, and I kind of think they're still there. And Pasc's like, no, no, stop it. Don't go down that rabbit hole. So I don't believe.

[A]

But why did he say that?

[B]

Well, because he's been testing for the last 15 years all over Tasmania. Right. So not just southern Australia, but all over Tasmania. So samples, poop samples, just everything using camera traps. And nobody's. I think that they officially say that the thylacine went extinct in 1936, but probably into the late 40s and early 50s, they still existed. But, I mean, I think it's very unlikely that one still exists. It'd make our lives a lot easier.

[A]

Forrest really believes in it.

[B]

He does. He thinks they're in Papua New guinea.

[A]

And because of sightings.

[B]

Yeah, he thinks in the western part of Papua New guinea, in the mountains.

[A]

And also incredibly remote.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Very difficult.

[B]

And the separation of that topography separates the Papua New guinea singing dogs, which could be competitive for them, for predator, prey, from where the thylacine sightings were.

[A]

Singing dog.

[B]

It's. It's just another large canid that has a unique howl.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Yeah. So it still exists. I mean, I'm sure Jamie can find a video.

[A]

I want to hear that. I've never heard of this singing dog. Wow.

[B]

Papua New guinea singing dogs.

[A]

By the way, folks, this is. We're teasing you because this is not just theoretical.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is what's going to get crazy.

[B]

It's going to get weirder.

[A]

This podcast is going to blow your mind. Go ahead, Jimmy.

[B]

Opera singers, that's. These rare animals have a knack for.

[A]

Holding a tune even to an exact key.

[B]

Opera singers love these.

[A]

Oh, they're so cute. Yeah, they're so cute. Do people keep them as pets? That looks like a dog. Dog.

[B]

Yeah, it looks like a dog.

[A]

That looks like a dog.

[B]

They're. They're wild dogs in. In Papua New guinea, but I'm sure people have domesticated them.

[A]

Wow. Pretty fucking cool dogs. And hanging out with a fox.

[B]

So once you have enough of that DNA, right. From all these different samples and you can assemble it, you then have to build comparative genomic models to its closest living relatives. In the case of the Mammoth, the Asian elephant. But I'm from software, so I just assume there's like the Google Cloud of DNA we've backed. We've all done 23andMe before it went bankrupt, Right. So we should assume that. I assume that the government or someone backed up and had kind of like the 23andMe of all species, right. That doesn't exist.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Which is insane. So there's like, there's no back. There's no like Noah's ark bio vault for life, like kind of like the seed vaults. That doesn't exist. And so we're actually petitioning the US government to help put a massive project together to help biobank it, starting with just American mega megafauna and keystone species. So that doesn't exist at all. And so, so then you. So then Colossal had to go out and go build the reference genomes for all the species, like the closest living relatives for all the species that we're working on.

[A]

So this is the question. If you have, say let's go to woolly mammoth. So if you have woolly mammoth and you have 99%, how do you bridge that gap? How do you, how do you create.

[B]

That's synthetic biology. So you never have to get to 100%, right. You need to get to probably synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, that's where you are using all of these different genetic tools. Probably heard of crispr, all these other things. Genetics, you know, which is it knockout, it breaks the DNA. It's not the always the best tool. We can now actually make individual edits to. When you think of the DNA double helix, right in those rungs of the ladder, those individuals are called nucleotides, we can change the letters. That's how precise we can be. We can say at spot 4 million 8, I need to change that letter. And so you change that letter and then other times you actually synthesize big blocks of DNA. So when you notice that in the mammoth and in the Asian elephant, there's a difference. And if it's in these certain coat protein coding regions, in all these different regions of the genome that drive phenotypes or physical attributes like curved tusk dome cranium, small ears, the subcutaneous fat layer, and then hair and coat color, you can actually then engineer that into the Asian elephant because you're only really looking at that 0.4% difference. It's still a lot of numbers, but you're only looking at that. And so the better you can be at software and the better you can be using AI and computer models, the less edits you have to make, because you're really just trying to target those core phenotypes.

[A]

Right. Are there specific genes that regulate size? Because they're larger than.

[B]

It's a. It's a. So mammoths were about the same size. They're a little bit bigger than Asian elephants, a little bit smaller than African elephants. So there were 11. You know, everyone argues over the definition of speciation because it's a stupid concept that humans made, not nature made. And so there are 11 different types of mammoths out there that evolved in different. In different ways, and some of them were larger. But the woolly mammoth, the one that we were pursuing, that has that woolly phenotype, it was about the size of a Asian elephant. And but to your question on size, it's actually a cluster of genes. We're finding more and more about how different genes also map across all species as well.

[A]

And so there's specific characteristics that these animals have. One of them being the big furry coats that you guys. What did you do with mice?

[B]

We made woolly mice.

[A]

See if you can find that.

[B]

The only unintended consequences was they were cute as fuck. Like, people lost their minds. Right. Like, we're. There's, there's. I was. I was on the phone recently with it, you know, moderately aggressive journalist and. And it was going quite poorly as some calls.

[A]

Moderately aggressive. They were being aggressive in what way? Like, why are you doing this?

[B]

Some people. Yeah, they. Everyone. Like, how cute.

[A]

My daughter actually found this online and wants one.

[B]

Yeah, so we get that a lot from woolly mouse. So every week. Every week. I don't have my laptop, actually.

[A]

Cute, but every week, oh, my God, they're adorable.

[B]

So this. So these wooly mice aren't just adorable. We basically said, look, what are the core genes that drive the hair phenotype or physical attribute of a. Of a mammoth from an Asian elephant to a mammoth? And then because we want to do this in the most ethical way as possible, there's about 200 million years of genetic divergence between mice and elephants. We didn't just want to ram mammoth DNA in there and see what happens. So we look for the mouse equivalent. Right. So we look for, like, all of us have similar genes, and so we can try to look for those genes and then edit those genes with the data we got from the mammoth so that we're then not just putting random genes in there that could either hurt the animal or kill them. Right. Or that may not even be compatible with life. Right. So we try to be really, really thoughtful about. And the wooly mice went like. It went insane. There's people that are, like, making T shirts. There's a meme coin. And so we made 36 mice. They're all healthy. There's 36 mice that we made. And what was crazy about it is we're excited about it because it shows that the end to end process of taking data from an ancient DNA, comparing it to a living animal, making those changes, doing it with 100% efficiency, and that's really important and really hard. So we did it with 100% efficiency. Yeah, that's the difference.

[A]

One of them, if it was in a trap, you'd be so sad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like the little guy on the left, if he was in a trap. Oh, what could we killed? Isn't that funny? Just a little bit of fur.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Makes you love them.

[B]

And that's the color that we think most mammoths were really.

[A]

They were like a blonde.

[B]

They were like. They were like a golden brown color. Right. Because when we pull them out of the permafrost, they've been sitting in mud for quite some time. But if you see very fresh mammoths, like from Siberia and whatnot, like in Yakuts and other places in northern Siberia, that they actually have pretty, pretty well preserved mammoths, they actually have kind of a dirty blonde meat. Gold meets brown fur.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so we did that. And now there's people that are making T shirts that aren't us and pillows that are, like, legalized willie mice. I'm like, they're not illegal. And then they're a meme account for the guy that did the, like, the crispr babies, you know, that went in trouble for, you know, making edited baby China. Yeah, a meme account.

[A]

Oh, wow. So that's mammoth fur.

[B]

Yeah. A meme account, though, actually said on. On X that these are a bioweapon and that Colossal's made a bio. So the weirdness of the woolly mouse went crazy viral. What we were trying to show is that we used our multiplex editing tools, meaning that we edited all of those genes at the same time. Most people edit one gene, let that mouse live from the second lineage. They'll do one more gene, let that mouse live, and then they'll stack those edits over multiple generations. We've developed a system so that we can deliver all of those edits at one time all over the genome, get exactly what we want. And then we have this what's called monoclonal screening, where we're screening the cells at the end, sequencing all the cells, which is expensive and sounds like overkill, but then we know that none of them have unintended consequences or off target effects in the genome. So that we know the mice that we then do cloning with, we know that they'll be healthy. And so we try to spend a lot of time on that because we're certified by American Humane Society. It's the oldest humane organization in the world. And if you've seen the film that's like, no animals were making this film. That's those guys. So we've ended up. So we really care about kind of not just the de extinction efforts, the genome engineering efforts, but ensuring that the animals are healthy when they come out. And so the woolly mouse was a really interesting proof of concept. It shows that the edits that we are working on are working right. And we're getting exactly what we predicted.

[A]

Is there any plans to sell those?

[B]

No, everyone keeps asking us that. But you know what? Museums actually are now calling us, saying, and zoos are calling us and can we display the woolly mice? They're like, it'll drive so much value. It'll teach people about, you know, genetics and whatnot. So, you know, it's, it's not our business model to sell our animals or to sell, you know, woolly mice, but it, it's kind of gone crazy.

[A]

Is it dangerous though, to leave these mice in the hands of someone, even at a zoo, who decides, I want more of these?

[B]

Yeah, if we ever, if we ever put them, I think more likely to put them in a museum that needs to be free, like the Smithsonian or something like that from an education perspective versus something that's more attraction based. I think we do it more in the case of a museum.

[A]

Do you plan on keeping this batch alive?

[B]

Yeah, they're gonna live out their normal lives.

[A]

But you're not gonna make new ones.

[B]

We may make new ones. They're all separated. They're all separated by sex. So we're not gonna have like a Jurassic park moment where they change. They're all separated by sex. But if you, if Jamie finds a picture of their habitats, they actually live. They live a couple years, but they don't live like traditional lab mice that live in like a small little cage and all on top of each other. They actually live in pretty sweet digs that we made for them. They're all. Yeah, like, we spared no expense.

[A]

Cool little house.

[B]

Yeah. And they're big and we, you know, we put fun stuff in them to play with like, like this. And what's been crazy is we only named two of them and we named him Chip and Dale because we. People were asking what the names were and I was like, chipping is the only thing that I could think of at the moment. And now even on X, people are like, we need pictures of Chip. Where is Chip? We've only seen pictures of Dale and there's like these incredible Internet sleuths that are like, that's not Chip, that's Dale. We need a picture of Chip.

[A]

Get involved.

[B]

Yeah, so we've just.

[A]

Yeah, don't, don't get involved with those people.

[B]

We've not, we've not leaned in.

[A]

Yeah, you cannot.

[B]

We're excited, they're excited, but we just can't. Yeah, we're busy.

[A]

So this is a new thing. The woolly mouse is a new thing. Is there any talk about doing other kind of new things?

[B]

So it's more of a proof of technology. I think that the mouse model, because it's a 20 day gestation versus 22 months in elephants, it's a great way to test phenotypes because with a mammoth you have three ways to test if you got the edits right. One, you can do molecular tests, you can do DNA sequencing to see if it worked. Two, I guess there's four. Two, you could grow a mammoth and see if it looks like it. But that's a lot of work in 22 months. Like a lot of gestational time, a lot of money. I think there's a lot of risk in that. The third, and this is a little weird, we created what's called induced pluripotent stem cells. So we created cells that you can then turn into any type of tissue. So we actually do have mammoth hair follicles growing in a lab. So we have hair growing in petri dishes in the lab, which is pretty cool. If you come see the lab, you'll get the whole Willy Wonka tour of it, which is pretty cool. And then the fourth way is mice, Right? Because it's like if we can then engineer them into mice, we can see immediately within 20 days if the edits were working if there were any unintended consequences that would be detrimental to the animal. Wow. So we'll probably make more iterations of the woolly mice. The thylacine's closest living relative is the Fat Tailed dunart, which is a mouse sized marsupial. And it actually gestates in 13 and a half days versus 20 days. So there's no reason to do it in mice, when you can do it immediately in the model species.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so how did you make the decision to do what you ultimately did, what you showed me before the show?

[B]

So we're working on the mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo for different reasons. We work with a lot of different private landowners, governments, and indigenous people groups. And a project that we announced through our colossal foundation about two and a half years ago is doing a population genomics map. We talked about biobanking a little bit. So we want to understand from the bison that are still here in America, what's genomics, genetic diversity, what's been lost, you know, what's the number of inbreeding? So we go through this whole process to try to understand. And then we were giving a report back to MHA nation Chairman Fox. It's one of the largest indigenous people groups in the United States, one of the largest tribes based in North Dakota. So we're giving them a report out on this. We went to their nation, wanted to share this. And then, you know, we're curious. So we said, what other projects would you work on if that you. That we could do that's helpful outside of helping bison? And they said that we needed help with wolf conservation. They brought up that. They said that we needed to help with more bison conservation. They said if we do stuff around eagles and fish. And so we kind of got that feedback. And when Chairman Fox is walking me through their cultural heritage museum, he actually stopped on this incredible picture of a white wolf, and he said, that's the great wolf. And he talked about the ancestral knowledge that was passed down and that's been lost, and how many people believed it could have even been a direwolf? And I was like, from Game of Thrones? That's cool. I love the show. That's interesting. So I did that. We talked about that. And then three months later, I was in North Carolina and understanding that for a completely different meeting around financing. And in that meeting, the Red Wolf program came up. I don't know if you know anything about the red wolf, but it's kind of a disaster. It's the only endemic wolf to America. That's only endemic to America. It's a red wolf. It's beautiful. And there's like 15 left in the wild with massive loss of genetic diversity, massive bottleneck. And I was like, wait, we're supposed to be this country of innovation. We can't save our own. When you think of, like, the American west, right? You think of wolves, you think of, like, you know, Eagle soaring. You think of like trout, bears catching trout. You know, you think of bison. The thought that we could lose one of these amazing icons, like, we were like, we have to do something about this. We have to figure something out. And so we put that kind of on the list. And then in a weird series of events, we've had all of these kids over the last three years and teachers and parents sending us pictures of woolly mammoths or dodos or thylacines. We get like boxes of this every single week, which is pretty cool. So we're gonna make a colossal kids corner at our new labs. And in that we've had all this, some Hollywood talent like Tom Brady, others that have invested in the business, they're just excited about it. Most of them learned about it through their kids. Kind of like with the woolly mouse with you. And so everyone's excited about it. And then we talked again to MHA nation, they brought up the direwolf again. And so we thought maybe there was an opportunity to bring back an American species. Because dirells were only found in the U.S. in North America, but predominantly in the United States, coastal United States. And we thought if we could do something that could bring back the dire wolf, also help wolf conservation and bring people from like sci fi, fantasy and kids more into science and into the conversation around conservation. We thought it was a cool idea, but we had no idea if we could pull it off.

[A]

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[B]

No, most. Most of the direwolf skulls out there, there's thousands of them in La Brea Tar Pritz. So if you go there, they have this beautiful wall, but because of heat and acidification, there is. Isn't anything that's protected. Like, there's nothing you can get from that. But about six years ago, a group including Bess Shapiro, our chief science officer, sequenced a tooth that was found in a cave. Just a single tooth, right? And in that tooth they actually found a. They actually got 0.15x or coverage of the genome. So they got about 15% of the genome, but that's not really enough. You need to get up to about 10x, meaning that you can read the entire genome about 10 different times, so that even if there are gaps, you understand enough of the core kind of coding regions that you could bring back that animal.

[A]

Is this done by AI?

[B]

It's done by AI and software, yeah. So we built. Part of our business model is building technologies to solve these really complicated problems that are much harder to solve than just solving them for existing species, open sourcing that for conservation for free, but then also taking those technologies that we can monetize for humans and spinning them out. So our first computational analysis company was called Form Bio, and we actually spun it out of the business business.

[A]

So you have this Tooth, you have 1.5.

[B]

Yeah. 0.5, so 15% of the genome. And so I went to Beth, who was only an advisor at the time, and said, could you resample the tooth? And she's like, it's like, you know, half an inch long. She's like, it's destructive sampling, like it's going to ruin us. Well, could we scour the other museums and see if it's even possible? So we. We lucked out, and that tooth's 13,000 years old. The skull itself is. Is 72, 73,000 years old. Not exactly sure, but it was found in a riverbed, and it wasn't found in a riverbed at the mouth of a cave. So it wasn't found in the permafrost. But it also wasn't found in heat and acidification. So there's a bone in all of us called the petrous bone, which is insanely dense, and it doesn't change a lot from after you're born. It's a great DNA storage. Better than teeth, better than anything. It's like, in the inner ear kind of head area. And so we got permission from the museum to very carefully drill into the back, the underside of the skull and remove the petrous bone to see if we could get DNA. And we got really lucky. Between resampling the first and the skull, we ended up getting about 13 to 14x coverage. So that's more than we needed to potentially bring back the dire.

[A]

And then what'd you do?

[B]

Well, and then. Then we got a knock on the door, and it was CIA. No. So we took that DNA.

[A]

Can I ask you, before we even start with this?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The aggressive reporters are. Is it. You're playing God. How do you have the right to do this?

[B]

So it's been a journey. Okay. So the journey that we've had is when we started the business, we didn't have any scientists. We just didn't. Right. They're like, this is. Is tech bros wanting to see cool animals and, oh, They've only got $16 million in funding and they don't have any scientists. Ha ha. So that was. That was phase one.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then we're like, oh, well, you know, as an entrepreneur, my job is to hire much smarter people than me.

[A]

You smoke cigars?

[B]

I do not. Gary's got me on quite a kick, so.

[A]

Health kick.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah.

[A]

I mean, cigars aren't bad for you.

[B]

Well, I'm not saying they're bad for you. I'm just saying that I allegedly. Yeah.

[A]

I don't care. This is the Last of them. The things that I partake in that are probably bad for you.

[B]

Yeah. But you got to do what you got to do. Everyone's got their vices.

[A]

I like a little cigar. So my question, if I was going to grill you, if I was a reporter, it'd be like, what right do you have to invade the natural process of nature and to inject your curiosity and your ability to create new life?

[B]

I think that we've become the apex predator on this planet and, and we inject our curiosity and choices every day that we overfish the ocean, we over hunt something. In the case of the thylacine, the Australian government put a bounty on its head and killed it off. Right. Every time we cut down the rainforest, every time we drink hydrogenated water, we are playing God on some level. Humans are very good at changing the natural flow of things. Now the good news is, is that there's been a lot of work around ecology and understanding what the impacts to rewilding can be. And so it's been really, really helpful for us to understand. You know, one of the most successful rewilding programs of all times was reintroducing of 14 or 15 wolves back into Yellowstone.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And looking at how the ecology of the system completely changed. Like it changed the shape of rivers, you know, because the elk population were just, you know, they were getting fat, they were getting lazy, they weren't migrating, the sick and the old and the. We weren't getting killed off, they were spreading disease. They were eating all of the willows and everything along the banks. So therefore the beavers went away. Beavers are like the most super, you know, climate impact animals that probably exist because they make wetlands, they make, they cause the rivers and ponds to get deeper. So it allows different types of fish and different types of animals. So you have this thing called tropic downgrading and you have this tropic cascading effect when you reintroduce these species.

[A]

That documentary is fascinating.

[B]

It's so fascinating.

[A]

Wolves change rivers. Yeah. I know people that lived in Montana before the wolf reintroduction and a lot of people don't like that the wolves are there. And, but most of them are elk hunters that were used to something that's just outrageously overpopulated. That's the reality of it. Yeah, but they were telling me that there was, they had so many elk that were living, they had such a large population versus the actual resources that were available that they had all these crazy hunts that were available over the counter. Like you can hunt cows in snow. So in the middle of the winter where they can't move good, you just pick them off in the snow because they were just trying to cull the population. They were trying to diminish them.

[B]

And that's, and that's not good for the elk population. No, it's not only good for the ecosystem, but it's not good for the elk population itself.

[A]

Right. I have a good friend who lives in Colorado. He has a ranch in Colorado and we were at his place approximately two weeks after they reintroduced wolves. So they actually reintroduced wolves on his property.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And he didn't know it was going to happen before it happened. And all the people around there are ranchers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So already these five wolves that they've reintroduced, he said, killed over a dozen cows and calves. So the problem is they've killed elk as well. In fact, I took a photo of an elk leg that we found on the ground that the wolves had killed. Field. I'm not a big fan of people getting to vote on whether or not you should do something with wildlife. I'm a big fan on having real wildlife biologists assess situations. And in the case of Colorado, Colorado obviously borders Wyoming and Wyoming has wolves. Wolves were making their way into Colorado already and they are protected. The problem with reintroducing them, you're essentially asking a wolf that doesn't know the territory to start killing things in that territory.

[B]

Yeah. Or to stop at a, at a imaginary border.

[A]

It, there's no border. They go hundreds and hundreds. The idea that you're doing this and you're doing this where there's ranches is crazy. And in Colorado, particularly stupid because the first batch were literally animals that they had captured because they were killing wildlife.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So they, they moved them from Oregon to Colorado where they started killing wildlife. Yeah, but they're killing, excuse me, I'm saying wildlife. But what I really meant to say was animals, agriculture. They were, they're killing domesticated cows, they're, they're killing these calves. And you know, they're, they're having a real problem with that.

[B]

And it, it is something that needs to be continually monitored. That shouldn't just be on some random vote of how you feel about it. Right.

[A]

Like, it just can't let people vote on that. No, I, I, I, Too many people live in these high population areas.

[B]

I couldn't agree, I couldn't agree more. Right. And so like we as humanity, like if you look at the third leading cause of death of elephants, it's human elephant conflict. Right. We have to figure these things out. We don't want degraded ecosystems, we don't want to lose species. But you have to do this in a very thoughtful and measured way. Right. Like with Yellowstone, they're like, this is big enough ecological preserve. We're tagging the animals, we're going to walk and measure it. I don't think that it's safe or smart to put any, not just predators but also like large herbivores in these heavy population dense areas. We can just, we just, we have to understand that some of these areas, not our loss, but have already been changed for a different reason.

[A]

Yeah. And they've achieved homeostasis, They've achieved a balance.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is the big issue with Colorado right now. And it's going to be the big issue whenever you reintroduce an animal that used to be there and is no longer there. And I think in the case of Montana, I think you're right. And I think that there is an argument that maybe the wolves being there is better. Obviously not if you're a rancher.

[B]

Well, the, well the Colorado. So the Colorado stuff is completely going to destroy all of the stats. So pre Colorado. Right. So I'm talking about reintroduction into Montana, reintroduction into parts of Canada, reintroduction into Yellowstone, the red wolf, which is a very small population in North Carolina. There's been less than five confirmed fatalities in all of North America in the last hundred years.

[A]

You mean humans?

[B]

Humans.

[A]

Right. And most of them in Alaska.

[B]

Most were in Alaska or in Canada. And then, and then it's before Colorado. So not saying. I don't know if the data has, I don't think it has the latest from Colorado, but it represents 0.02% of deaths associated with wolves and cattle and livestock. Right. And all livestock, not just cattle. And so, so the problem is when you go out there and you have a maintained balance that people can understand and governments actually give subsidies to the ranchers when they get killed by. When they get killed by wolves. So I think that is a good program because you have to be fair to the people that are actually ranching. But the problem is when you're not as thoughtful with the rewilding program and you're not as measured as like what they did in Yellowstone and they start encroaching in these areas, then the stats are going to go crazy. And what if the stats goes crazy? Then you're going to start looking to the animals that are the problem. But it's not the animals that are the problem. It was the Decision that we gave that power to the masses that were really not informed to make that decision.

[A]

Exactly. The problem is people just have these ideas like, wolves are beautiful. They're amazing. We all love wolves. It's an incredible animal. I'm so happy it exists. Don't put it near where there's a ranch.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Can't vote on that. If you live in Denver. That's crazy.

[B]

Yeah. If it's. If it doesn't affect your livelihood, if it doesn't affect your. Affect the risk to your animals or your family. Yeah. You have to be mindful of that.

[A]

There's also. They're getting a very skewed perspective because the governor's really interested in it, and his husband is really interested in it. His husband, apparently, is the one who really wanted it to happen. And, you know, you have a mandate, so you have to get wolves out by a certain time. And when you're doing it, the only wolves available are wolves that kill livestock. And so you're like, fuck it.

[B]

Yeah. It's just not a lot of. So. So the project that we'll probably eventually talk about is we brought in a lot of the teams, many people that have been on your show, that know how to do the rewilding the right way over time.

[A]

Okay, so this is what. We'll just get to it. You made a fucking direwolf.

[B]

I didn't. Our team, our incredible team, made three direwolves so far.

[A]

Let's see the photos. Jamie, bust out some photos. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself, because this is truly fucking crazy. Yeah, that's the pup.

[B]

Yeah. So this is. So that's actually Romulus as. So we have two boys, Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. And then. And then we have Khaleesi, who's the new girl. So this is Romulus and Remus. So funny, funny story about this. So Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings. Jamie, Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings was actually one of our investors, and he has this huge museum in Wellington that he's building for all these movie props. And he's like, I was sitting in Peter's house with he and his partner Fran, and I was like, you know, I showed him the video of them howling. He started tearing up, and he goes, this is the first time I've heard a direwolf or anyone's heard of direwolf in 10,000 years. Started. Well, he, like, physically, emotionally got chills and started crying. And then he. He's like, well, you know, I do have the throne. I was like, what? Do you mean he goes, I bought the throne last week at auction at a private auction for like Sotheby's or someone. Right. And so, so he did. And it just happened to be where the wolves were doing their vet checkup. Like, talk about cosmic coincidence. Incredible. Right? And so, you know, what you don't see in this photo is you don't see the fact that we have American Humane Society there. We had three veterinary people, we had six people from our animal care.

[A]

When you say checkup, you don't vaccinate these little guys, do you?

[B]

They do get. They because of viruses that they can get from the soil at, at eight. At eight weeks. They do get basic virus, they do get basic vaccines.

[A]

Are we concerned about that? I mean, you have this animal that you're just.

[B]

Yeah. So these are staying on, you know, like these are not going back into the wild, right?

[A]

Not yet.

[B]

Right now they're on a 2,000 acre, secure, expansive ecological preserve with 24. 7 care. We have an animal hospital that we built. People always like, you guys raised so much money. And I was like, well, it. Because we didn't just spend it on the labs, you have to spend it on the animal care, the facilities.

[A]

Let's see the photo of the actual grown ones because they're fucking nuts.

[B]

Yeah. So. So this is Ramus and Remus playing in the snow on the preserve when they are three months old.

[A]

So three months. How big are they?

[B]

Three months? They were north of 45 pounds.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So look at that face.

[A]

God, they're so beautiful.

[B]

Oh, they just get, they just get like, as they've aged, they've just got more and more beautiful.

[A]

So let's go to the adults because the adults have crazy characteristics that you were saying that you didn't even know.

[B]

We didn't know. Right. And so we, we did, we. We ended up taking, getting a.

[A]

Is this a full grown one?

[B]

They're still five months old. So they're 80 pounds at five months. So wolves typically grow 12 to 14 months. So they're not full grown yet. Wow.

[A]

And how big is it already?

[B]

£80, about five and a feet.

[A]

And the main.

[B]

Yeah, and so, so a couple things about the wolves, Jamie, if you go back. Yeah. So we didn't know this, right. We knew that they were a Pleistine wolf. We knew that they existed and went extinct about 12,000 years ago when a lot of megafauna went extinct, like the enduring kind of that younger dry period, that younger, driest kind of cooling period. They went extinct as well. Right. And we knew. All we know because all we have is we don't have frozen dire wolves or frozen samples. We literally just know from skeletal remains that they were 20 to 25% larger. They were stockier. They probably weren't as fast, based on kind of their body weight, as a normal wolf would be. But we knew that they had thicker skulls, larger cranium and whatnot. And we assumed that they're. And we did find this out in the genome, which is pretty cool, that they were white because there's, like, this misconception for a while that they were red.

[A]

Because.

[B]

Because some scientists wanted to make a paper and assume that they were red, so they get their paper.

[A]

Doesn't it make sense for natural selection? They're an Arctic hunting animal.

[B]

Yeah. And they have this beautiful. We didn't know this. They have this beautiful, like, mane, like, quality to them. And when they're babies, you saw a couple of pictures, their fur almost feels like polar bears. It's crazy.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It's.

[A]

So is it like polar bears and it's hollow or is it.

[B]

No, it's not. It's like typical wolves, but it's incredibly thick. It grows in kind of these. These clumps. But then as they've. As they've grown in, they've started to get this kind of like, mane to them. Which is the females as well? Well, the female, she's only six weeks old, so it's two. Oh, two. So if you keep going through a couple other photos. Yeah, I mean, they are just. They're just beautiful. And I mean, it's funny, someone actually said they on our teams, like, they almost look like Shetland pony wolves at some point. Right, Right.

[A]

There's something. They're so stocky.

[B]

They're stocky. They're thicker. They are. I mean, they're absolutely beautiful. That. So this is Khaleesi. So. Who looks like a baby. And we. We nailed it. We. We. We named her.

[A]

Can we hear it? Let me hear.

[B]

We named Khaleesi for George R.R. martin, obviously.

[A]

Obviously.

[B]

Who's an investor in Colossal O. Oh.

[A]

Nature'S cute little murderers.

[B]

Well, everything in nature murders something, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, we were.

[A]

Well, cows murder grass.

[B]

Yeah. And people are now saying you can hear grass and other plants, like, scream.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, they scream. Yeah.

[B]

So I guess. I guess we all are bad.

[A]

Life eats life.

[B]

This is.

[A]

This is. I mean, that's the reason why plants have chemicals to dissuade us from eating them. What are they eating there?

[B]

So they love to chew on horns in this. So we have different phases of. We built 145 page animal guide. These are actually different horns from different elk and other species that we're putting out there.

[A]

And they chew on it. They just love it like a dog does.

[B]

Like a dog does. Right.

[A]

So are you letting these animals kill things or are you feeding them?

[B]

So we're feeding them still. So they eat a combination of bison meat, horse meat and do you plan.

[A]

On letting them kill things?

[B]

So we're just about to introduce carcasses to them. So giving them part of a carcass, letting them feed, building in that, that dynamic between the two brothers for now and then. And they are starting to exhibit some hunting behavior.

[A]

Are you going to let them hunt?

[B]

I mean, they're on it. They are on a seemingly wild 2,000 acre preserve with just them. So they do have the ability to, to hunt on that preserve, but they're not doing it yet. They're starting to exhibit the, the original, the kind of the, the first inklings that, that it will trend toward that. But we want them to live. We want them and we're gonna probably make two or three more. We want a, a solid little social pack that we can monitor that can live a seemingly wild life that we can understand more about them. Wow. It's cool. But the other thing that's, that's equally cool to it. Going back to the red wolf story, can you what's just crazy to me.

[A]

That you have reignited these 10,000-year-old hunting genes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That they're starting.

[B]

Including size. Including size. We understand more about like this episode.

[A]

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[B]

We, you know, we looked at what genes made really a direwolf. A direwolf like what was separated. And the beautiful thing for us is that we had a 13,000 year old tooth and a 73,000 year old skull. So we could actually understand the genetic distance. With that much genetic distance between them, we could actually understand, you know, what truly was fixed and conserved in the direwolf genome and what wasn't just population genomes. Right. There's, if you and I are 50,000 years apart, we, you know, there's a lot of different mutations in that time period. But if we can then really say, okay, you know, what made Ben Ben and what made Jojo oh, here's the overlaps. It allowed us to really understand that.

[A]

Wow, it's just fascinating that the behavior characteristics are kind of baked into genes and they just were dormant for 10,000 years and now these things are waking up.

[B]

And so I was, I was like, so I was in, you know, because I bottle fed Romulus and Ramos was partly raised with me. I could go out to the preserve, I check on him quite frequently. It's in the northern United States. We don't say where it is, but mainly because we're for not just the animal's health, but for human health. Ever since we launched the woolly mouse, we've had very excited people just show up at. Our labs are not open to the public, and we've had lots of people just show up wanting to see the mice and so showing people too much of the preserve. We're always very, very nervous about. We scrub all the videos and why not? To ensure that no one can pick it out because we. We assume people will be moderately excited.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh, the. The Internet sleuths will try to find you.

[B]

Yeah. So we've. We've done not. I'm not trying to challenge them, but we've been. We've done everything we can to protect it.

[A]

Yeah, I understand. I mean, you have to. Some dude from Saudi Arabia wants a wolf.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Somebody wants a dire wolf.

[B]

We get a lot of. We already. We already get a lot. We already get a lot of wolves weird calls, but.

[A]

Oh, I bet you the other thing, though, someone with deep pockets.

[B]

Oh, we get. We.

[A]

Make me a direwolf, my friend. We have everything. They have every collection.

[B]

We get a lot of weird calls.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

From people that are like those people.

[A]

That have private zoos.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, enormous.

[B]

In, like, in India. Yeah, yeah, they have. That family has like the largest private zoo and preserve.

[A]

Just so wild.

[B]

It's so crazy.

[A]

Yeah. Well, you know, Texas is history with animals, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's more tigers in captivity in private.

[B]

Collections in Texas than in the wild.

[A]

Than in the wild of the world. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. It's crazy. But I was. I was in the. I was in. So we have the 2,000 acres. We have a subsect, the subsection of it. That's about six and a half acres. We have an animal hospital, a storm rescue shelter. We have a couple of natural dens that we've built for them, as well as an animal husbandry area.

[A]

So.

[B]

So that way, when we want to take photos of them or videos of them or do blood tests, they're in a seemingly more contained area. And it's funny, two weeks ago I was up there and I was actually sitting on those logs in one of those pictures, and Remus came. Romulus, who I spent the most amount of time with. Remus came up, came pretty close, and I was able to touch him again. But I thought at that moment, and he kind of skittished away. I was like, that's the last time I'm touching Remus. Like, what am I doing? And I mean, don't get me wrong. Yeah. I have animal care teams there. And. And they have been some. There's some level of habituation between the care team. They really know and love The CARE team, but they're still wild animals. Right. And so they probably hunted humans. Yeah. We don't know. Right. But the rise of kind of going back to their extinction, the rise of the change in kind of this younger Dryas period and the change, the massive. I don't know, some of the stuff that. There's like, several different prevailing theories, one of which is human predation. Right. That, like, the rise of human humans led to the extinction of the megafauna. That's kind of. You know, I think the answer is probably a combination. Could have there been an astrological event. There's starting to be more and more data around that.

[A]

I'm sure you've seen Randall Carlson talk about it.

[B]

I've seen Randall Carlson talk about it, Graham Hancock talk about it. And they just got the shit beat out of them.

[A]

Yeah. But not anymore.

[B]

Yeah. Now it's.

[A]

Dryas impact theory is well respected now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it has.

[B]

Yeah. And it definitely also happened in kind of a regional sense. Right. Because you see different. Which also tracks to the theory. Right. So not only do you have these different layers that you can prove from a sedimentation perspective, but, you know, there was also a massive glacial lake and some of the glaciers up there that rapidly liquefied, that then dumped in the ocean that also changed ocean pattern. So you went from a period in that kind of transition from Pleistocene to Holocene. I mean, there was this period of insanely accelerated cooling.

[A]

Do you know how Randall came up with that idea before it was brought to? Like, his idea is that it was an instantaneous melting of these caps, some sort of immense cosmic event, and millions and millions of trillions of gallons of water at an insane rate ran through the land and just carved deep gouges into the. He was on acid. He was on acid. And this idea came to him, some weird idea. He was looking out over a ridge. He was looking at this enormous gorge. And he realized the gorge was formed by water rushing at an insane rate of speed. And then he started noticing that there's these huge boulders that are just out in the middle of nowhere that were just moved by this immense amount of water. And then the way the ground, the features of the ground looks like the features that. That you see on sandy beaches when the tide rolls in and out. It's like, this is crazy. And it all tracks. It tracks all over the world.

[B]

It's like. It's like those. It reminds me of those stories where they show people, like, the side of the Sphinx, and they're like, oh, man, That's a lot of water erosion. And then they like flip the photo and then you see the head of things like, that's not water erosion.

[A]

It's Dr. Robert Chalk from Boston University, I've interviewed him. He was the first guy to propose the this. He's like, this is thousands of years of rainfall. And we know that the last time there was rainfall like that in the nile Valley was 9,000 years ago. So the whole thing is really screwy in terms of like, what is the timeline that this stuff was actually built? And are we just assuming, because we've decided that it's 2500 B.C. that that's it forever? And no one wants to let that go?

[B]

Well, that I'm not a scientist, but that's. And I don't come from academia. I'm just an entrepreneur that knows how to build teams of smarter people than me. And I find cool shit interesting and I try to work on it. And what's crazy to me is the academic system, you know, once again, non academic. I'm sure I'll get crucified for this, but I don't read the comments. I don't read the comments. Trust me, I don't read the comments.

[A]

Good for you.

[B]

I sleep quite well. But the academic. So we have 95 of the top scientific advisors in the world, Nobel laureates and whatnot. We fund 17 academic universities, right? All over the world. World. We fund 40 postdocs, right? All over the world, right? And they're doing this. So we're very integrated with different ideas from academia. And these scholars and our top people that were at colossal came from academia. So I think we try to be very academically friendly, but they live in this world, this super kind of like fortune and glory world where it's like, it's a popularity contest if someone has a paper because their entire motivation is publish or perish. So one of the other things that people bitch about is they're like, you guys don't write scientific papers for every single thing you do. It's like, like we're not an academic university. We're not allowed. I don't have to write a paper on anything ever. We do a couple here and there because we want to share our knowledge with the community, right? But we get this feedback of like, if we wrote a scientific paper for every single thing that we did that went through peer review, like we would have 3,000 scientific papers and no mammoths ever, right? Because we'd just be sitting around writing fucking papers all day long.

[A]

It's interesting because they want to impose their idea of what you're supposed to and not supposed to do.

[B]

Well, they want to impose their idea that they've already established in any change to that establishment. So in addition, the public, 95 scientific advisors, and these are some of the top women and men in the world, right, that fall in all sides of the political spectrum, all sides of every single spectrum out there. We have another, probably 40 advisors. They're like, we love you. You can't say anything because if I submit it, we know these other people don't like me. If I submit a paper, and we totally agree with you and we'll help you, but we submit a paper, they judge my paper, it gets rejected, then I don't get my grant. So then I can't continue my research. I have to fire my post postdocs. So it's a complete scam of a system, right? And so we went through this phase where it's like we didn't have enough scientists, we didn't have labs, we didn't have money, we weren't doing anything for conservation. So we went through this whole philosophical perspective of all these things that people threw at us from the scientific community. And some of our biggest people that hate us are people that we denied their funding, of course.

[A]

Well, the problem is not the scientific community. The problem is weakness. Men. It's this, this what you see in these, these squabbles, these like ultra personal squabbles where like horrible vitriolic statements made about people, like they're just not happy people. Exactly. It's the same problem with all of life. It's these bitchy little people, these bitchy little monsters and they have taken over something that's incredibly important. And they're working, work, their work, these bitchy little people, their work is incredibly important. Yes, but at the core of their being, they're a bitchy little person.

[B]

And they can't. And that's why, and that is why we don't have flying cars, we don't have mammoths. And until Elon, we were not going to live on Mars, right? And so like we didn't have like.

[A]

I think it takes time.

[B]

It, yeah, but it doesn't come. But also academia is really focused on point solutions, not full systems, right? So if you want to go to Mars or you want to bring back a mammoth, you have to design the entire system and you have to innovate across everything. Whereas in academia you are only incentivized to get that piece of paper and get that approved.

[A]

Well, it's also you're dealing with grants and enormous amounts of money that gets donated and given to these institutions along with a whole ideology. Like it's not just as simple as let's follow data. It's all got to be attached to this very left leaning, almost preposterous in some aspects ideology. And everyone has to say things as a fucking scientist that you know is not true.

[B]

You should just follow the scientific method. I'm not scientific, but we should just. And guess what? When new data shows up that you know, changes your old data, you shouldn't get mad about that, you should celebrate it.

[A]

Exactly. Well, also you have to look at all data, you know, like I don't want to get into this but like if you, you have academics who are legitimate scientists and have published papers who are telling you that a man can be a woman and which is fine in terms of like who you are, but now when you're having them compete with women in sports, you've entered into nonsense land. And you're the person we're counting on to be the most intelligent person on the subject. You're trapped by an ideology that you're now ignoring biology in favor of sociology.

[B]

I just wish we could get philosophy. We separate philosophical perspectives from science. One of the things that we fight about all the time because it's like once we got the scientists and once we got the money and once we proved that we are the most advanced synthetic biology company in the world, once in Q Tel, which is the funding arm of the CIA and other governments started investing in colossal because of our technology and once we started proof points, the last arguments that we have against some of those scientists are philosophical ones. Right. It's not a mammoth, it's not a dire wolf. And it's like this concept of speciation is a human construct that we are trying to impose on nature that flows more like a river than a rock.

[A]

So are they saying that it's not because it didn't come straight from nature, it's something that you've recreated by piecing this together with that. Like what are the genes that you had to use to create a dire wolf? We didn't totally explain this. Yeah, so you have crispr, you have these gene editing tools, you have have a good sample of DNA. How do you turn that into a wolf?

[B]

So you map them next to it. And there was a study that came out about. And once again this goes back to the status quo of scientists, of academic scientists. There was a paper that came out a few years ago because they didn't have much data. They said that direwolves were closer related, weren't closer related to wolves, they were closely related to jackals. And that's because at the time, time they only had 0.15% of the genome. Right. They just didn't have all the data. That's not negative. They just didn't have all the data. Now we know that they actually were closely related to wolves because we have more data which wolves, gray wolves or the precursor to gray wolves. Right. So they were closer to the wolf ancestry line in kind of the broader canid group and family group. And so what we found is once you do that, we start looking at all these genes and we start to understand what are the differences. And we start to see that in certain parts of the genome that are responsible for size, for muscle, for craniofacial, that there's differences. Right. So we can start to map and say, okay, where are the differences between gray wolves and where are the differences between gray wolves and dire wolves? And then with those, we have a lot of different tools that we can then go use to make those changes from the dire wolves in a gray wolf cell line. And then once you go through that process, we didn't talk about this earlier, you do the same process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is effectively cloning, where you take the nucleus of one cell, you put that into another egg cell, and then you take that embryo and you insert it into a surrogate.

[A]

And is this a 100% dire wolf or is this a new thing?

[B]

So this is. So this goes into the philosophical thing, right? So if you look at speciation, right, there's basically the scientists don't agree on how you classify a species. So you've got certain people that'll say, well, if it can't. If a species is dictated by something that can't breed, that's literally a definition. Like if this animal can't breed with this animal, then that' species. Then you have other people, you have the paleontologists, and some of them love us, like Kenneth Lakavara, who's arguably the number one paleontologist in the world that loves us. But then you have other paleontologists to just hate us. And they do it based solely on tooth morphology because they argue that's the only thing that is going to be persistent over time. And I asked a paleontologist recently that hates us, I said, if I made a mammoth that was giant, with pink curly fur and it had the right tooth morphology, you're saying that Based on your scientific papers that you would say that's a mammoth. And she's like, yes, but that doesn't matter. And I'm like, well, do it. And so, so.

[A]

But then why does she hate you guys?

[B]

Because why does anyone, you know, anytime you do anything in this world now that's like moderately bold or polarizing, people give you pushback.

[A]

But this is heavily bold. I wouldn't say this is moderately bold. You made three dire wolves. That's not moderately bold. It's really kind of one of the craziest things that a human being's ever done.

[B]

It's. It's definitely in.

[A]

This is right up there with inventing the Internet.

[B]

Yeah. So when you see. Well, and we have more stuff to come that I think would be equally interesting.

[A]

There's people out there. Did you worry that someone is going to get. You know, because this falls into religious realms.

[B]

Well, there's philosophical and religious and so like back on speciation, you know, polar bears and brown bears are two different species, right. But they mate and produce viable offspring all the time. And a bear expert will tell you that a polar bear is just a aquatic adapted, cold adapted bear. Right. And so I always ask people that their offspring are.

[A]

They can have children, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It's not like a donkey.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So there's different ways to characterize making a mule, but there's different ways to say is something a something, right? And so, you know, we are not the same, right. If I don't know what percent you probably from 23andMe or something have some percentage Neanderthal, you don't say that you're an admixture or a hybrid. You just say you're human. You don't.

[A]

Robert. That's a good point though, because Neanderthal, if you want to talk about different species, just because they could breed with us. God, they're so different.

[B]

But that's it. But like I said, there's six different ways. There's actually a species definition that's based solely on geographics. And there's a funny paper out there around one species of toad that they built a road through. And the same toads live on both. On two sides of the street. And they're different species and they're the same fucking species toad.

[A]

Just because there's a road.

[B]

Just because, because we as humans change. It's called geographic isolation of speciation. So it's just crazy. And so, so the only arguments that we now have is, but is it a mammoth? And it's like, well, then don't call it a mammoth. You I was like, I asked people, I was like did you see Jurassic Park? And they're like yeah. I was like what was draft part? What was to your qu. What do you think? What was Jurassic park about to you?

[A]

When is me?

[B]

Yeah, if you're like, if you're gonna take your kids to Jurassic park, what is the movie about?

[A]

Diamond dinosaurs.

[B]

Is it because they took ancient DNA and they mixed it with a bunch of other stuff? Are they dinosaurs or are they genetically modified animals? GMOs Genetically modified organisms that have inserted genes from lots of different things or are they dinosaurs? If they serve the ecological function, this is what's called functional de extinction. If they serve the ecological function and they have the lost biodiversity and phenotypes that made that animal unique, like the polar and a bear. And a bear. Bear. They're just that animal. So these goes into this starts the whole religious and philosophical debates where it's funny because the scientists who should not fall into these philosophical debates when they don't like what you're doing, that's where.

[A]

They go to so what was the argument? How did they this episode is brought to you by Traeger's new lineup of grills. The Woodridge series with a new digital controller, app connectivity, a convenient grease and ash keg, an accessory rail to hang tools and spice racks, and so much more. It's the grill that can deliver wood fired flavor for years to come. Need more grilling space? Wood Ridge Pro adds a side shelf while Wood Ridge Elite includes a side burner, sear, bake or barbecue. It's wood fired flavor with no flareups. Learn more and shop [e-mail] and remember to use the code Rogan for free shipping. This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog. It doesn't matter how old your dog is, it's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness. And thankfully, thankfully, the Farmer's Dog makes it easier than ever to feed your dog a healthy diet of real meat and veggies. Dogs prefer their food. Even picky dogs and owners prefer their service. If you have a question about your dog, your plan, your delivery or anything else, they have 24, 7 customer service that connects you to real humans who are genuinely interested in providing the best experience possible for you and your dog. They give you detailed instructions on how to transition your dog to fresh food and even pre portion it for your do specific needs. Feeding your dog healthy human grade food shouldn't be complicated and with the farmer's dog, it isn't. The entire experience from box to bowl is a breeze. So try the farmer's dog today and give healthy, freshly made food a try. You can get 50% off your first box of food, plus free shipping. Just go to the farmersdog.com rogan tap the banner or visit this episode's page to learn more and more. Offer available for new customers only.

[B]

Oh, it's just like it's. By their own definition, they're like, well, it doesn't have enough DNA. So I was like, so if I said, but the second direwolf that we have or the second genome that we have from the tooth has, is. Has less of the same DNA than the skull, does that mean that it wasn't a direwolf and it just turns into an. You're missing the point conversation? I'm just asking question.

[A]

I would like to know the point, though. What is their point? What is her overall argument?

[B]

The general point of the people is that they want to pick one speciation definition and adhere us to that. And if you do that, no animal, including our animals, will fall into one species. Right. It's just people that are using the framework that they set that isn't consistent, kind of against based on the argument.

[A]

That they want to make interesting. So species is just something.

[B]

It's a human construct.

[A]

It's not. And it's just a thing if it can breed within another thing.

[B]

Well, I mean, that's. That is one definition. There is another definition saying that it's only a species if it can't breed with another thing. So if I genetically modify them to make it where they can't breed with wolves, does that mean they're now their own species? Like it. It just gets into this dumb philosophical perspective because we made up this construct.

[A]

Right. But as a person who studies biology, which this person is. Right. I could kind of understand her perspective where she's like, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? How is this group of people with a bunch of money and a bunch of eggheads, how are these geniuses allowed to get together, splice some jeans up and serve up a direwolf?

[B]

I could see it from her perspective, 100% right. But I think that if we don't do big, bold things, it's important. One of the things we should definitely show is the red.

[A]

He's just like the guy in Jurassic Park.

[B]

But we should. Yeah, but John Hannity. But John Hannah examined. I don't think that they were really focused on conservation unless there was A subplot that, you know, didn't make it the final cut.

[A]

We actually want to make an attraction.

[B]

Yeah. So if we could show the red wolf, I think that'd be amazing because all the technologies that we made on the path to bring back the dire wolf we won make available to conservation.

[A]

Will this explain the red wolf to people? Because you were saying before, I didn't even know how few of them there are.

[B]

Yeah. So if you go to the one more. Yeah. So this is a red wolf. That's hope. That's the world's first cloned red wolf. So I've actually made more red wolves than I've made dire wolves. So I've made four red wolves, one female.

[A]

Are you just releasing these fuckers?

[B]

No, no, they're, they're in a, they're in an ecological preserve as well. And so. But you're, you're gonna, you're gonna die when you hear what I went through on this. So I found out that, you know, we try to pair every de extinction project with a species preservation project outside of making all of our technology for free, right. Everything that we make that has an application to conservation anyone in the world can use to help save animals. They don't pay us a dime. It's all open source, it's all free. We have 48 conservation partners. The team that's running the Northern White Rhino project, we're their exclusive genetic rescue partner. We're working with elephants in Botswana, we're working with elephants in Kenya. So anybody can use our technologies for free, right? We're working on chytrid terrible fungus in Australia. And so if that's not enough, I found out that there's only, only 15 of those of red wolves back in the wild in North Carolina. So I met with the upcoming governor.

[A]

Are they in other states as well or.

[B]

No, we'll get to that, we'll get to that. So they're Only recognized by U.S. fish and Wildlife there, but this incredible woman from Princeton, top of her field, she's one of the top wolf geneticists in the world. Bridget Von Holt identified a population of wolves in Louisiana that have red wolf like characteristics. So she started dark guarding them, taking samples. And what she found is they actually have more quote unquote red wolf in them than the red wolves that are being identified in, in North Carolina.

[A]

And is it part of the problem? They're inbreeding with coyotes?

[B]

Yeah, but they've all been like these guys like the ones in North Carolina have all inbred with coyotes. They all The Red wolves have some coyote in them because they look like coyotes. Well, because every, every. Well, the ones in North Carolina even look more like coyotes. And yeah, because the reality is every single species is what's called an ad admixture. They're all we are. Everything is inbreeding with everything on some level, right? And so everything in life is an admixture. Nothing's. This goes back to the Neanderthal.

[A]

So this binary idea that we have is silly.

[B]

It's no, it's a human cause construct, right. And it's insane. So I went to some folks from the last administration, right, And I took some data with me and I said, hey, we really want to help this Red wolf program. We don't need any money. We open source all of our technologies and we've used a technology that's non invasive for cloning where we actually take a vial of blood, we isolate what's called endothelial progenitor cells, basically the inner lining of your blood vessel. Right. Because there's no nucleus in blood cells. So we catch those and when we catch those, we then isolate them, we grow them and we clone from them. Right. Which is amazing because if you think about typical cloning from an animal welfare plan perspective, a lot of times you have to anesthetize the animal. You have to take ear punches, skin biopsies. It's actually pretty, it's pretty invasive, terrible process to do cloning. We can simply do it. Every single zoo takes blood from their animals to check certain levels and whatnot. We give blood all the time. And so it's a very non invasive. It's about as non invasive as you can get. Right. And so we found a way which we've opened, which we're open sourcing on Tuesday. Is open sourcing this model of how you go climbing clone from blood, which is a game changer for biobanking because now you don't have to go herd an animal, take pieces of the animal, anesthetize the animal. We can just take bloods and put them in freezers and be able to bring them back or clone them if there's a lack of genetic diversity using this thing. So I went out to Washington with my team. I showed them hope as a baby in little videos of. And you may have videos of hope, Jamie. I don't know if it's in the folder. Show them videos of hope. And I said, hey, you know, there's only a handful of. We made these four wolves from three different genetic lines. We made these from We've made these from three different genetic lines, right? So there's actually more genetic diversity in these wolves than what's alive in the population. And we said we'd like for you to help protect the work that's being done in Louisiana. And then how many wolves would you like us to make using that population as well as frozen samples that are dead? And we'll just give them to you. There's no cost. Here was the feedback we need to spend five to six years on an internal study and spend $22 million to see if it's possible to clone wolves. And I was, I was blown away. I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I wasn't very clear. This is a cloned wolf. Like here, you can fly with me to the preserve. Yes, I NDA, but you fly with me. And they're like, we need to spend five to six years and 20 plus million dollars to go. To go under. Understand this, to understand spot. It's like we'll give you all of the technology and if you tell me you want a hundred wolves, I'll just make you 100 wolves and we'll even, we'll even engineer in more genetic diversity for you. And the response was, we'll get back to you. We went to, we tried to have three other meetings. No showed and canceled every time when we play there. I just got back from meeting with Department of Interior, which Fish and Wildlife rolls up to, and they're very, very focused on, you know, innovation, not regular regulation, which has been pretty amazing.

[A]

That's great.

[B]

And immediately they said, we celebrate. Doug Burglum, the secretary of Interior there who we met with, said, we celebrate. He's a huge conservationist, huge Teddy Roosevelt guy, member of the Explorers Club. And he's like that. We do not have a celebration when animals come off the endangered species list. Only about 3% ever come off. And we're really good at putting them on and we celebrate putting them on. So we have to do something about this. And if you're saying that we could productionize species and as long as we have the right support to rewild them, people can use your technologies for free to make more of these different species that are critically endangered while also biobanking the samples along the way, he's like, why wouldn't we do this? And I was like, why? About with the previous folks, and they said that we need five years and 20 million. They were going to spend it internally. They weren't going to pay us to do the feasibility. So they were Going to spend it internally on this. And we're like, we'll just do it for free. And he's like, we will completely support the initiative and we're going to help get you plugged in so you can help biobank our species and also help us support, you know, red wolf conservation.

[A]

So when will you start reintroducing these?

[B]

So we just had that meeting last night.

[A]

Soulless red wolves from hell. You've created a lab. They're going to start eating people.

[B]

And so we're going to. Just met with them last week, so.

[A]

Well, well, they're beautiful. God, they're so beautiful.

[B]

It's like we shouldn't be afraid of innovation, right?

[A]

No, but, you know, the real question is, where do you stop?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because 90. What percent of all animals that have ever existed, all species are extinct.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, are we gonna.

[B]

I think you focus on the species that are critically endangered and are keystone species, meaning the environment needs them. Right. But the ones that we drove back. But the ones that we drove to extinction. Right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So that's.

[A]

So it's debatable whether or not we drove dire wolves to extinction. We don't really know what happened 10,000 years ago. I'm inclined to think that when you see the death of 65% of North American megafauna, that happened really quickly.

[B]

Really quickly.

[A]

Yeah. I'm inclined to think that these scientists that believe it was an asteroid or a comet impact are correct.

[B]

I think it's most likely it's a combination. We do know that when early that anthropologic effects from humans that we. When early man went onto a landmass at scale that we start to see that. We see that in Australia and other places. But to your point, it's much slower. It's much, much slower.

[A]

This is a different thing. Are you gonna bring back saber toothed tigers?

[B]

So we get. Everyone seems to have their favorite animal for us to save. Right.

[A]

Direwolves would be my favorite.

[B]

Yeah, that would be my favorite direwolves. You gotta come. Maybe at some point you see them.

[A]

But I want to.

[B]

They're amazing. I mean they're, they're, they're just beautiful animals. Yeah. So we, they're. They're. So Saber tooth tiger is a class. We put that as a class. Most commonly people think of the Smilodon as the saber tooth tiger. There's not to date been really great smilodon DNA. There is great homotherium DNA, which is another type of saber tooth cat.

[A]

Oh, I didn't know there was more Than one type of saber tooth.

[B]

How many? They classify them differently based on it.

[A]

But obviously you've been studying this. So you're thinking about doing it.

[B]

I'm not. I mean, we like to study ancient DNA. Right. Like, you know, one of the things where I think that, you know, John Reeves is 100% right is people say there were no saber tooth tigers in Alaska. That's just an incorrect statement. There were no. There were probably no Smilodons there. But there are Homotheriums, which are a saber tooth cat.

[A]

Yeah. He's found things that were not supposed to be.

[B]

I've held things in his. I've held a direwolf skull in his. I hope he's fine with me saying that in his facility.

[A]

Yeah, I think he's talked about that. But they found cave bear short face bears.

[B]

Wow. Homotherium is still a saber tooth cat. But what happens is this goes back to that philosophical. That philosophical perspective. They think that only. So if you look up Smilodon in comparison.

[A]

Oh, so this has shorter saber teeth. But still. Can you give me that CGI image of it again, Jamie? The left. That's so cool.

[B]

Yeah. And. And I don't think.

[A]

I don't think you should bring something like that back. But if you do, I'm gonna visit it. I mean, I want to see that take down a bite. Look at his paws.

[B]

There was a. I mean, wait, you see the D, bro.

[A]

But that would be so crazy now all of a sudden. I want you to do it now. Give me another large picture of it, Jamie. There's some other pictures of those. So Smilodon's the one that has the largest teeth.

[B]

It has the largest known teeth. But when people think of saber tooth tiger, this is what. That's a Crazy what they think of.

[A]

Those are crazy. I wonder how. Why nature wanted it to have that.

[B]

I mean, probably having to pierce things like mammoth hides. They're quite thick.

[A]

It has to be right. Something where you. There's a genetic.

[B]

And their jaw hinges.

[A]

Look at that one on the right. Lower, lower. Right. Jamie. Below that to blow that. To the right. To the right. Yeah, right there. Click on that. Look at that. Man.

[B]

I love. Because we don't. You know, it's amazing. We don't have the DNA from it. So we have no idea what the color pattern is. Which you can see here. Right. It's like it's got a short tail, it's got a long tail, it's got leopard, it's got stripes. Right, Right.

[A]

We don't Even know if they had long tails.

[B]

We don't even know if they're. They could have been white. Wow. That would be wild. So we do have there, there have been some really well preserved preserve pups and others of. In the permafrost of Homotherium.

[A]

Whoa. We know. Has that kind of coloration to it.

[B]

We don't. I, I don't want to say we do or don't. We have not done the analysis on that on the home ethereum yet.

[A]

Look at that little guy.

[B]

We do. We do have the genome of it though.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Not that we're gonna work.

[A]

Okay, so that has brown hair.

[B]

Have you seen the. Have you seen the American short face bear?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's the thing I'm probably the most scared of. Yeah. You can't bring that 17 or 18 foot giant we're not working on. I'm just saying.

[A]

But somebody might. That's the problem. There might be some crackhead out there that's got $40 billion. It's out of his mind.

[B]

Well, I also think that like some.

[A]

Crazy dude who's just got the resources.

[B]

Do that, you know, that is. That to me is Megalodon. Scary man. That's a land. Megalodon.

[A]

Well that, yeah, that is an enormous animal. And they think that's one of the animals that probably prevented people from crossing the Bering Strait more.

[B]

I've read that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it was. It's a theory, but it's a prop. Pretty good one.

[B]

Yeah. If you knew that, if you knew there was a lineage of like super, you know, polar bears were out there. I would go near it and it.

[A]

Is essentially a super polar bear, which is really scary because polar bears are.

[B]

Terrifying and completely carnivorous and they don't care. They'll just walk right up to you and kill you.

[A]

Oh yeah. There's a great video of these guys that are behind a fence.

[B]

Yeah, that was.

[A]

Somebody sent it to me yesterday. I'll find it. I know where it is. Someone sent it to me yesterday. Of these guys that are right behind a fence while this polar bear is trying to get through the fence. There's three of them and they're, you know, they're talking to like, hey, big guy, you can't come in here. Hey fella.

[B]

And it's just calmly walking towards like, I'm gonna get in there.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's.

[B]

It's polar. Scare me.

[A]

Very spooky. Well, they're spooky because they don't eat anything but meat. So we're on the menu.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All humans are on the menu. Anything that walks and breathes is on the menu. I got it here. Where is it? It'll take me a few minutes. Sorry, Jamie, pause for a second. Let me find this because it's good. Okay. I just sent it to you. So it looks like they're in. I don't know where they are. I think it'll say in the video. Video. So these guys here. Give me some volume. Polar bears. That's an oil rig, so it's probably Canada. Look at these guys. That sound. Yeah, they're just trying to eat you. Look at this.

[B]

Two more behind it.

[A]

Yep. Go on, go on, go on.

[B]

Probably not gonna work.

[A]

They're just trying to figure out how to get in to eat you.

[B]

Hey, sweetheart.

[A]

Hey, sweetheart. Sweetheart wants to rip your liver out.

[B]

Go on.

[A]

They're so beautiful.

[B]

They are beautiful.

[A]

It's interesting that they're the most dangerous ones because they're the ones we use for Coca Cola and Klondike bars.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that wild, though, you have them.

[B]

Just like playing around in the snow, but they're actually terrifying.

[A]

Yeah. You were saying the younger Gyrus is really interesting. It's very, very interesting because it's a fairly new theory and explains a lot. And especially when you look at the. The mass extinction that did take place during that time. I would love to have seen what it looked like when all those animals were around. Like, what. What was a. You know, we kind of have a sense of what. Because of safaris and videos, we know what it looks like when lions are interacting with wildebeest in Africa. Like, what did it look like in Kansas? Like a. Yeah, like 15,000 years ago. Yeah, like, what was it like?

[B]

You know, there's a extinct bison species that is the bison Latifrons. Have you seen those guys?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

They're like. They're like 8 foot long Texas Longhorns on like, you know, super HGH. Like, bison.

[A]

Yeah, our bison are small compared to the extinct bison. Right. Were they the large of the North American bison?

[B]

Yeah, the. The bison La France was.

[A]

See if you get a photo of that.

[B]

Yeah, I didn't know about them until.

[A]

A few years ago. Yeah, I didn't even know that was a thing. It's. I mean, there were so many different things. Giant sloths. There's the saber tooth tiger, the American lion, which is.

[B]

There's an American cheetah. Yes, the American cheetahs. You know, we have. We actually have a full genome of it. And then there was a. There was also one of my favorite animals, which is kind of a weird one. Probably on the list since we're talking about dire wolves and saber toothed tigers. Have you seen the stellar sea cow?

[A]

No. What is that?

[B]

Think of like a manatee or dugong. Right. That's the size of like a large whale. What? Yeah. And the sad thing is it died. It actually died off before it died off and. Yeah, it died off, though, within 100 years of its discovery.

[A]

When was that? We killed them all, huh? Yeah. We probably turned them into candles or something.

[B]

Yeah. Burn their fat. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. But it was actually really larger.

[A]

This Cerenian.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To ever exist is hunted to extinction only 30 years after being 30 years described in the 18th century. Wow.

[B]

Yeah. And it was. And we actually. We have a full genome of this too, which is pretty cool.

[A]

You're gonna bring it back.

[B]

We can't just. I would bring this back in a heartbeat. It was hugely important to the kelp forest of the Pacific Northwest. It was great. It's a great. It's not scary. It's huge. Huge. It's like.

[A]

Right, but then bring that back. Why wouldn't you bring back a Megalodon?

[B]

There is no Megalodon DNA.

[A]

There's none.

[B]

No. I will say that the CEO of the largest. The president and CEO of the largest free museum in America really wants me to do Megalodon. But he's like, I can never say that publicly.

[A]

I think he just outed him.

[B]

Yeah, but there's a lot of museums I could be wrong on this size. Yeah, whatever. He's great, though. But there is. There is no DNA.

[A]

He would have to eat a lot. Killed everything in the ocean.

[B]

So one of the things that's weird and interesting that we're also working on is artificial wombs at colossal. Because if you want to get to this world where you could productionize endangered species like Northern White Rhinos, instead of having to use surrogates for an animal welfare perspective, you know, you. If you can get to the point that you can engineer genetic diversity into 200 northern white rhinos, grow them in labs and bags, and then work with. And then you can control that population very, very well. You could then reintroduce them, you know, with folks in the field that are the rewilding experts. Right. And so we were really not focusing on the. We kind of rely on third parties on the rewilding, modeling and all of our, you know, our 48 conservation partners, we really just kind of focused on the kind of the core science that supports their initiatives. But if we are successful with our artificial wombs and we, we are quite far on that project that I would not be surprised if eventually you see a, we have to get a mouse first. But if a mouse happens, have you.

[A]

Guys had these conversations where you sit down, you go, how does this scale outward? What does this look like, this technology in 100 years? Did we just fuck up?

[B]

No, I think that if you look at the birthing crisis that we're in and kind of population decline crisis, I think that you look at global like people having women having kids later, IVF clinics, people freezing their embryos, all of that's massively on the increase. It's all going up to the right. And we also know that globally sperm and fertility and others is going down to the right. So it's not a good look for the future of humanity in general. And so I think though especially. And then we also have philosophical and you have religious, you have philosophical and then you have socio issues, right. That people have different perspectives on having kids, having kids, same sex couples, all these things. So we at Colossal have kind of made this mandate that we're not going to work on humans, right. Because it gets too weird. We get asked the Neanderthal and the dinosaur question every fucking day. So we're just not going to bridge that gap. What we'll do is spin out those technologies. But I do think it is harder to grow a rhino in a artificial womb or exogenous development system than it is a human. Not ethically or through an FDA process, but it is scientifically harder to gestate some of the animals we're trying to gestate ex utero. So I do think that some of those technologies could make it eventually into the human population.

[A]

That's where it gets really weird, right? You could create a child with no mother or father. Father.

[B]

I, I do think that, I think it's about optionality. Right. I think that there are certain situations where that would be a blessing. You know, I just had my first kid. So we, you know, we, we did not grow up in an artificial womb.

[A]

Yeah, but I mean the, the people that are skeptical about this stuff, this is what they point to. It's like what, what is involved in the creation of life? Well, it's been people having sex and then a sperm fertilizes the egg, a child is born, they raise the child, it gets some of their behavior characteristics, it gets the genetics and then we integrate it into a community and there's like. But if you could just make life without any of that, like, what is that? That's that. Where is that? You know what I'm saying?

[B]

Like, no, it's a good, it's a great philosophy.

[A]

How much of the child's development is taking place while it's in the mother.

[B]

And getting those, sharing that shared experience, the hormonal cues and whatnot. I wouldn't have child that way.

[A]

Right. What if you're making a sociopath? Like, what if you're making a completely. Because there's no, no empathy.

[B]

There's no connection, no connection to people.

[A]

They come out, out of the gate. Ted Kaczynski all fucked up. Like, really? That's.

[B]

It's a fair, it's a fair point.

[A]

You know, we don't know what the process is while a baby is inside of a woman's body.

[B]

And there's people that are working on this technology specifically for humans. Like right now we're focusing on it for extinct species and endangered animals.

[A]

Would I. The question question was when this scales out? Yeah, when you scale out 100 years from now. Like, what did you just do?

[B]

Well, I think, I mean, my biggest thing that I think would be helpful is if, if we had a world where we like, if Colossal gets ultimate success, I would say that we've successfully rewilded animals back into their natural habitat. We've revived, revitalize these mosaic ecosystems that, you know, including your picture of what did the Arctic look like back in the day? Like, how do we have that? Because that's, that was actually a crazy. If you look at the work that's been done in Pleistocene park by Sergey Nikita Zimov, they've actually shown that rewilding northern Siberia with cold tolerant megafauna actually can revitalize the ecosystem. It can add more biodiversity, it can actually keep the ground temperatures cold during the winter, so it sequesters more carbon. So I think this idea of nature based and living with nature, nature in an ecological model is something that I hope that we are successful at and I hope that Colossal is also successful at removing animals from the endangered species list.

[A]

So what you were talking about, you were talking about mammoth, specifically this study that showed that it would help, but.

[B]

They'Ve already done it with muskox, horses and a few other species up there. So they're doing it right now. They've been doing it for over 20 years.

[A]

And there was some talk about eventually doing this with mammoths and then releasing those mammoths into Siberia.

[B]

Yeah, that was one of the. That was something that, that Larry or that, that Sergey Nikita Zimov wanted To.

[A]

Do how long before some Russian oligarch hunts a mammoth?

[B]

Yeah, I, I mean look, given the geopolitics, you know, we see, going back to your wolf example, we see boundaries and geopolitical lines. Right. The animals don't. Right. And so, so we will probably not rewild our first mammoths in Siberia for many reasons.

[A]

But you think you will rewild a mammoth?

[B]

Yeah, I think our goal, Jamie, if you [e-mail] Tasmania for example, we actually build working groups with folks around everyone from academia to private landowners, to indigenous people groups, governments to understand and like, like we don't have a thylacine. We. I think we'll have a thylacine in the next eight years. I really do. I think based on where we are, current course and speed, there's 70 million years of genetic divergence between a fat tailed dunnart, which is like a mouse sized marsupial and a wolf in this. Right. But we actually, if you just kind of scroll through into the people.

[A]

So it's a wolf like marsupial. Yeah. Does it actually have a pouch?

[B]

That it does. It actually also is a backward pouch pouch. So most, most pouches other than like the wombat are forward facing. It is a backwards. Which because it was, they think because it was a burrowing, burrowing animal.

[A]

So that way you weren't touching the babies.

[B]

Yeah, like absolutely suffocate them.

[A]

But nature's fascinating.

[B]

But if you scroll down a little bit further you'll see and just like if you just do a quick scroll you'll see that we actually have gone out and partnered with all these different groups. Even though we don't have thylacines, we have quarterly meetings in Task Tasmania around rewilding the thylacine. In one of the groups that we have involved in it is the logging commission. Going back to your how do we live with nature kind of like with your example with the cattlemen and the ranchers. Well, the biggest economic driver right now in Tasmania is actually the logging commission. So if you think that you're going to reintroduce an animal back without them or their lobbyists having into the forest without them having a perspective, then I think that's just a naive way to look at the world going back like the thylacine and mammoths and others. We try to build these working groups ahead of time so that people can get excited about what are the challenges, what are the unintended consequences. And that's not our job to persuade them, it's just our job to kind of Listen to them and then figure it out. And that approach of listening to our critics and listening and being inclusive in these communities has helped us, I think, traumatically think through what our rewilding strategies are.

[A]

So when you have a rewilding strategy, what experts do you bring in to have this discussion of what kind of an impact this could? I mean, you haven't done any rewilding. Let's be clear to everybody, they're not.

[B]

Releasing direwolves in the woolly mice are not getting released.

[A]

Right? Right.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So this is all theoretically.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But if you do have one, what would be the per. What would you look at specifically? How do you take into account. Account all the different species? The do you take into account, like with the thylacine, particularly because it's a large predator, the amount of animals it's going to eat?

[B]

Right.

[A]

These animals are not conditioned. They haven't evolved to be around this thing. It's been almost 100 years since the last one was there.

[B]

So on the evolved part, this is actually kind of weird. So you do ecological field studies. So you work with ecologists, conservationists, predator experts, like people that understand predation, people that understand the land. So you have to work with these kind of big working groups. We have a project going on right now in central Tasmania, which is amazing. And this, you know, the old school, like Looney Tunes, like. Like Wile E. Coyote, where he's like. And he like goes through a wall and there's like a hole or the Kool Aid Man. Right. Well, if you had that cutout, we made a cut. We made cutouts and painted them of thylacines, but also of cats and dogs and other things and wolves and other things. And we put them out near camera traps in central Tasmania. And when we reviewed the data, you'll have like a quoll or a wombat or one of these animals kind of walking through or even a wallaby kind of walking through, and they'll see a cat, they'll see a cut on. They'll kind of look at it when they see. And remember, to your point, this is hundreds. This is for them is multiple generations. Right. Because these animals don't live hundreds of years. And so when they see the cutout and shape and the coloration and size of a thylacine, they freeze. They absolutely freak out. Wow. Yeah. So we have. We've been collecting this data for 18 months. We're publishing a paper on it, so.

[A]

Cool. There's.

[B]

There's like generational trauma.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That is baked in to their DNA to avoid a thylacine.

[A]

What's the only way they survive? I mean, without a language to pass down information, how would.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it makes you wonder, like, how much of that is in us. Like, what. When people have ophidiophobia, you know, or arachnophobia, fear of snakes and spiders. Like, what is that from? Like, because it's crippling. I've seen people that have crippling fear of spiders where it doesn't even make any sense. Well, they probably. Somebody got almost killed by a spider, and that's inside of them, you know, that those genes passed on and you see. Yeah, they freak out, man. We. When I was doing Fear Factor, we had. If we found out that someone had a fear of spiders or a fear of snakes, guess what?

[B]

That was on the show.

[A]

That's on the show.

[B]

Yeah. That's like me and heights. It's like every. Every episode you had back in the day. Day of heights.

[A]

That's because you're smart.

[B]

Yeah. It's, like, terrifying. I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Whenever I'm in a hotel and I'm on, like, the 50th floor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Why? Yeah, why? So I don't have, like, road noise. I'm like, it's gonna be really hard to get out of here.

[A]

So sketchy. It's so scary. It's just, like, the building moves a little bit when it's windy. Yeah. All this. I saw my toilet water shaking the other day.

[B]

That. No, here.

[A]

Yeah. Jamie, he lives way up high. Jamie sends me pictures from his house. I freak out.

[B]

Like, no, no, I can't. No, no, no, no, I wouldn't.

[A]

I just. I like to be on the ground. I like to be on the ground.

[B]

Well, I hate flying, too, which. Which sucks because I fly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I fly all the time.

[A]

Just counting on these screws and bolts and.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, because. Because, like, the worst is, like, when you're sitting there and there's now been, like, these renders of planes that have, like, glass or plexiglass. I'm like, I don't want to see that. I want, like, I get mad if I get on a plane and the people don't shut the window. So I was like, I don't. Like, I'm in the bowl. I'm in the tube. It's lit on fire. I just. I just want to go. Yeah, I get. Because if you think about the point where you're sitting in a chair and then you look down and you have a floor, you're like, that. That's not. There's not that much. There's like 10,000ft, you know, 3,000ft below me.

[A]

When you see something like the one that happened in Canada where the plane flipped upside down too, you just. Like that. You can't get that one out of your head.

[B]

A Delta Airlines, like, yeah, yeah. It wasn't like, yeah, whoopsies. Crazy airline you've never heard of was.

[A]

A person who was not that good at flying and kind of recent.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, hey, yeah, hire someone better.

[B]

Yeah. And I go to D.C. a decent amount. And so, like, the whole D.C. thing, like, absolutely freaked me out.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Because sometimes I stay at some of those hotels that are right on the river and you see the choppers fly. You see the choppers fly. You see the choppers.

[A]

That's the DC one.

[B]

But look how much the water shaking at this pool.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Do you see the one in Thailand? This is.

[B]

This is where it was.

[A]

Oh, did you see the water that's flying off the roofs?

[B]

Yeah. In the. In the.

[A]

The flying off the roofs where you see, like, from the ground, it looks like it's raining. It's crazy anyways. Yeah. Whoa. That is. That would be the last day I would spend in that room.

[B]

Yeah, you're out.

[A]

Like, that's it.

[B]

It's like if I saw.

[A]

Bye bye.

[B]

If I saw a ghost, I'm like, all right, I'm moving.

[A]

Yeah, bye bye. Maybe. Maybe the ghost is cool. I'm not totally scared of ghosts because I don't think ghosts have ever killed anybody. You know, I'm scared of thylacines.

[B]

I'm not scared of thylacines. They start off the size of a grave of rice. It's got to be really nice to him.

[A]

So does everything.

[B]

It's kind of like, AI, you got to be really nice to it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I saw a great gift. I saw this great image on X the other day that is like. It's got all the robots lining up to kill humans. And he's like, no, not this one. It said thank you in its request.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

So I was like, I'm going to be very nice on all of my requests on croc.

[A]

Well, I have a weird situation going on at my house because I have chickens, but I eat chicken and I don't eat the chickens that I have. I eat their eggs. Yeah, but they're cute. I'm like, hey, girls, what's up, ladies?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I have no desire to harm them. I try to protect them. If I'm driving on the driveway and One of them is in the middle of the driveway. I have to be very slow and let her cross and. But I eat chicken.

[B]

Did you see that study that came out a couple weeks ago that having two eggs, I'm going to get the numbers wrong. But you have two eggs. If you have at least two eggs a week, that it lowers the probability of Alzheimer's by like 47%.

[A]

Yeah. It turns out Alzheimer's connected to a lot of stuff that's in around inflammation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately.

[B]

You're saying that Gary said it was. I think it was Gary that was telling me that he thought it was like. It's now becoming a more popular belief that it's diabetes type 3.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that. Which is really weird to think of it that way, but it's just there's so much. I mean, obviously you know this now because you're on a health path.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and you feel much better.

[B]

I feel incredible. I mean, isn't it nuts are just.

[A]

Running around out there feeling like shit?

[B]

Well, I was, I was. I mean, part of the reason I started Colossal. I mean, I told you the story about how I got with George, but before that I built a handful of different technology companies. My last company was a satellite software and defense company and was building it, running it. And this was in early, late 2019, early 2020. I had to be in Tokyo and I'd be in Shanghai. So I came back, I went to ces, the big consumer electronics show in Vegas. Saw everyone in the world. Right? That's there because it's stupid big. Week and a half later, I'm in NASA Marshall with the director there because we're doing some work for NASA at the time, at my last company. And I was with one of my number two. My number two at the company, this guy named Greg, who's our chief strategist officer. We. He was coughing. He wasn't feeling well. We both were kind of feeling like he was like, oh, we've been on the road a lot. We've been drinking. We came back on a Friday. On Friday night we had. We were going back on slack around talking about aliens and. And then the next day I got a call from his wife that he had a sudden cardiac event.

[A]

Oh, Jesus.

[B]

And so that for me was a big wake up call because I got really sick during COVID Like I was on that early strain of COVID and there's definitely multiple strains. I care what anyone tells you. There's death, definitely multiple things that came out of the thing. And so I got super, super sick and I now rarely drink. I rarely have caffeine. I've kind of tried to cut out stuff. I exercise regularly and looking at all these things that people think are weird or that used to be weirder. Alternative, like a dry sauna, a cold plunge, red light. I do that every day now.

[A]

Every day.

[B]

Every day.

[A]

Yeah. That's beautiful. That's awesome, man. You're lifting weights too?

[B]

Yeah. Lifting weights on a regimen, everything.

[A]

That's so important.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So important. And I tell people it's not even a vanity thing. Don't do it because you want big muscles. Preserve your tissue, preserve your bone mass.

[B]

Why? I don't want to be like, I now have a nine month old son. Right. And he like, wants to hang out and you know he's gonna get bigger and if I can't pick him up, that's a sad day. You know, And I, I've kind of gotten this mindset of like, you know, I see people that are older that are in wheelchairs or can't walk. It's like, it's kind of a blessing to walk.

[A]

It is.

[B]

So. So, like, why, why would I squander that blessing? Why would I not, like lean into it and make sure that when I'm 90, I can walk?

[A]

Yeah. It's a blessing to be healthy. It's a blessing. I mean, it's just we're, we're so concerned about our day to day existence that we lose track of this big picture.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You have the opportunity to do something that if it wasn't possible, you would wish it was possible and that is get healthier. Like if it wasn't possible, if we just existed in a state and whatever that state was, there's no medicine that could fix it. There's no exercise that could fix it. Diet doesn't change it. This is just who you are as a being and it goes away. But that's not even remotely true. It's actually the opposite. There's, there's friends that I have that are my age and they look like they're my dad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's, that's because they've been drinking and smoking and, and sleeping late and off their whole life and no exercise at all and your body deteriorates.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm not like, I'm on the journey. I'm not at the end. Right. It is a constant journey.

[A]

I'm on the journey. We're all on the journey.

[B]

I started working with Gary, like I did have you Seen this function test? Have you done the function test?

[A]

What is the function test?

[B]

It's like function health. It's like a, it's just a suit. It's just all. If you go to your doctor, like I do quarterly blood work, but then I also then do this, the function test, which is a massively all encompassing blood. It's like two tests twice a year. And, and so I do that test. And after working with Gary for a while now, my biological age, or my actual age is 43. My biological age is 35.

[A]

That's amazing.

[B]

And it's just been working for a year with Gary. Taking the right supplements, getting the right routine, giving myself nutrients. I buy and you can actually taste a difference. If you go to a store and get a steak or chicken, even if it's like free range and all that shit, it tastes great. It tastes better than like something that you buy just that's, that's terrible at a store. But when you order from some of these like true like Amish places and in places that have actually like grown the food like completely natural, that is doesn't have just a fake pre purchased, certified organic, you can taste the difference in the nutrient density. It's insane.

[A]

And I eat a lot of wild game.

[B]

Yeah. So that's what I order now. So I order a bunch. So I, I do elk steaks. I do, I do a lot of steaks from this farm that, that Gary recommended to me. It's just great.

[A]

Is it bison? Do they have bison?

[B]

They do have bison. Bison too, yeah. It's Parker Pastures. They're just like when I have a steak from these guys, like it's been like, you can taste it. I've had like my brother in law and my, my father had friends. I was like, I was like, no, no, we're gonna try these steaks out of the freezer. I was like, we're not like, we're not just gonna buy something.

[A]

It looks different.

[B]

It looks different. Yeah. It looks like the color you get.

[A]

A pink steak from the grocery store.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is fine. You cook it, it tastes great. But if you get a grass fed, grass finished steak, like grass finished, 100%. A lot of ranches out here, you know, there's Texas is a great place and there's a lot of ranches out here that use regenerative agriculture and they sell the animals that they kill. And it's like a dark red meat.

[B]

Yeah. It looks completely different, but that tastes different that you want to eat more of it. Like I feel full, but I want to finish it. And I also feel like I'm like, my body likes this because it's getting shit that it hasn't even getting.

[A]

You feel better when you eat it. Like, you literally feel energized. You know, I've given people elk before, and one of the things I say is, like, do have so much energy. I'm like, yeah, yes. Welcome to my world.

[B]

It's awesome. It is so great. But that was in the early days of colossal. That was one of the things that we got asked by like, heads of state. Like, not by like, you know, just random people. Random people on the Internet do it mostly. Like, some people at large at different locations, they're like, can we eat them? Can we eat a mammoth? What's it taste like? That was like. That question came up faster than we thought. And this is in the. I know. That was in the first. So weird. Like, they just don't it.

[A]

I wanted to eat something that's been extinct for 10,000 years. You just bring it back. That's why not even yet.

[B]

Yeah. And that was the first question.

[A]

Can I eat this?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I want woolly mammoth steak, my friend.

[B]

It was also domestic. Domestic. The question have been domestic.

[A]

Oh, domestic, yeah.

[B]

Like people. People in very good states.

[A]

I know they have too much money.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Psychos.

[B]

Yeah. It's. It's been. It's. It's.

[A]

Go buy a car, you retards. Want to eat a mammoth. That's so crazy.

[B]

We get the diet. We get that. We get. We get so many weird questions. Well, the dinosaur question, the probably the number one question we get is, is the dinosaur question.

[A]

Do you think if they brought. If Jurassic park, if Spielberg did it today, they'd have feathers?

[B]

We know that some dinosaurs had feathers. We know some had hair, like, hair like kind of precursor to feathers. And we know some that were just scaly. We have preserves of them. We can see in the fossil record whether they had it right.

[A]

Have you seen the one that's in the Montana University? There's a university in Bozeman that has a museum. Isn't the university. It might just be museum, but when I was visiting there a few years back, they have a. Like a raptor. And one side of the raptor is feathered and the other side is like Jurassic park, like, scaly. And you know, you look at it, you know, oh, it's just like, oh, that's a. It's a bird.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, now it makes sense. Like, makes more sense. It's little stupid arms. Like, makes more sense.

[B]

I mean, have you seen the Watson?

[A]

No.

[B]

Can we, can we pull up a ho. Watson? So this is a bird that lives today in the Amazon. And it, it is Watson. It's called. Or hoatzin, I think it's called. I don't know how you spell it, but it's like H, O, A T, Z, E, N or something like that. We can find it. Yeah. Apparently it also smells terrible, but if you click, if you type in, oh yeah, it's the Hoetson. And then if you click in and find a baby picture, it's got these little creepy hands. It looks like a. It looks like kind of like a bird bird, like dinosaur. We did the genome on this for fun, so. Oh yeah, you can see it's like it climbs. So before it ever climbs, it actually climbs up everything.

[A]

Well, and you look at an eagle's talon, you're like, what the hell is that?

[B]

And then it evolves. Like if you. The first kind of like quote unquote dinosaur bird out there, it actually. Yeah, it crawls. It crawls. Like it doesn't fly. You know, most birds just sit there with their little, little like wing nubs and just don't do anything. These guys actually climb.

[A]

What about terror birds?

[B]

Oh yeah, this is scary.

[A]

That's a crazy animal. Like, what the hell was that thing? And that was. What was that? How many years ago did those things go extinct?

[B]

Oh, there's millions.

[A]

Millions, right.

[B]

Yeah. So the oldest DNA that we have is about 1.5 million years old.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Yeah. So. So you can. A guy you should talk to about. Not that, but that's interesting. Is Kenneth Lacovara. He discovered the four largest dinosaurs of all time, including dreadnoughts, which is just. It's the. It's the craziest thing ever. And going back Dreadnought Us and going back to the issues that what is Dreadnought Us? Oh, dreadnought is amazing. So I don't know if it looks like that.

[A]

What? Imagine it did.

[B]

Yeah, go to that.

[A]

What cool colors.

[B]

Yeah, it was.

[A]

So it's a plane.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, It's a Plan Eater 7, but.

[A]

As big as a 737. That's so crazy.

[B]

Going back to this crazy notion of museums. He found it in Argentina and Kenneth Lavara, he's amazing. He found it in Argentina, discovered the species, named the species, and he brought it to New Jersey to do all the modeling and all that. The government changed and they yanked it back. You know, the old school. Like the end of Raiders of the Lost ark. That's where it is. It's basically in a warehouse. So it's on display for people in a museum. It's literally this. This goes back to some of these. These governments in these museums. It's literally like, not on. It's in a bunch of crates in Western Argentina.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. And it's like the coolest thing ever. This is. Yeah. So, yeah, that's lacavar, his lab. And so. But it's. It's truly, truly amazing.

[A]

So with these, like. That's one of the things about dinosaurs in museums. Right. Like, a lot of them, they've created artificial bones to fill in the blanks.

[B]

Fill in a lot of blanks. Sometimes they'll get like a jawbone and they're like. And here's the reconstruction.

[A]

Right. It's weird because you go to see it and you think you're going to see a dinosaur bone.

[B]

It's only a percentage complete.

[A]

Yeah. And sometimes they're real close. Clever. And sometimes they're not. Like, sometimes they'll. It'll be different colors for the real bone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Versus. And you're like, how much of this do you have?

[B]

And they're like 4%.

[A]

Yeah. How did you guess what it looked like? Like, and a lot of the images, like. Of, like the soft tissue overlay, like when they take the bones and then they create an animal out of it. Like, have you ever seen, like, what, like, rabbits look like if you take away their.

[B]

Yeah. They did this with like, whales and stuff.

[A]

And they look.

[B]

Absolutely. If you look at. They looked like the scariest things ever. And then you put it on a whale on there, and you're like, oh, that's not the worst thing.

[A]

Yeah. For whales. You see them and you look at them, you're like, oh, they're sweet.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just chilling in the water. But if you see them with the teeth and everything and just the skeleton, it looks like.

[B]

It looks like an alien monster.

[A]

Yeah, like an alien monster. So I wonder what we were looking at.

[B]

There was a. There was a. One species that we don't have DNA for. That would be amazing to bring back because the ecological benefit is. There was a giant beaver. Yeah, a giant beaver. Sounds amazing and stupid.

[A]

When did that thing die off?

[B]

I don't know. It'd probably have to be. It would probably be in the late Pleistocene.

[A]

One of the things that I learned through Rinella is that at the founding of this country in the early days, the richest man in the world was selling beaver pelts.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

It was the Richest guy in the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Here, the Pleistocene.

[B]

Well, on the dinosaur.

[A]

So this beaver, giant beaver, enormous, enormous bear sized beaver that lived in North America during the Pleistocene. Wow. So when did these die off? What year? What was the Pleistocene officially.

[B]

So about 13,000 years ago.

[A]

So it probably died off during that same American lion and all that other stuff. You know, the, the pronghorn, you know, the whole story.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's why they're so fast.

[B]

Oh for. Because the American lion.

[A]

No, American cheetah.

[B]

American cheetah.

[A]

Like they're the last, last of these animals. They're a bizarre animal. Have you ever seen one in real life?

[B]

I've never seen one in real life.

[A]

I've only seen it through binoculars. I've never seen one, you know, on the ground, real close. I've only seen it from a few hundred yards away. But when you look at images of them, they have insane eyesight. They have almost 360 degree vision. Their eyes are on the side of their head.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they can run 55 miles an hour. And the reason why they can run so fast is because they were getting chased by cheetahs that don't exist anymore anymore. So the cheetahs died off in the younger Dryas impact theory or whatever happened. But these pronghorn antelopes remain. And they are. There's nothing like them in terms of speed. Like it's really bizarre because they're a remnant of an older past.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Where they had to be that fast to avoid the predators. But the predators are gone. They remain.

[B]

Yes. Anything catch them now?

[A]

Nothing. Once they're done, like once they're grown, good luck. They have insane eyesight. But you know, one of the ways that people hunt them, they're really dumb. One of the ways people hunt them is on horsebacks. Like that dog has zero chance. But the cheetah, the cheetahs were chasing these down. So it's like another, you know, different kind of antelope, but a super fast. They're quite a bit faster, I bet, than these antelope. They're crazy fast. There's like nothing like them in North America.

[B]

It's awesome.

[A]

But the vision that these things have. Give me a photo of one of their heads. Pronghorns, eyes. They're so weird looking. They look archaic. Like if you, if you see their face, they don't look like they. It looks like they're from another time.

[B]

From a Star wars movie.

[A]

Yeah. They look like they're from another time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they are.

[B]

They're literally on the side yeah, they.

[A]

This is what would have been so amazing to like, look at what the Earth looked like, you know, 12,000 years ago.

[B]

It is, it is cool. Like America, like, to, to your point, when you travel and you go to these different places where you have. That are truly more remote, right? And I'm not just talking about like Yellowstone, but, you know, like when you've said like, going to Kruger national park or looking at some of these places in Africa, when you go to central Tasmania, it's almost like a weird Disney movie. Like, like at dusk, you've got like echidnas running around and you've got wallabies jumping, jumping through and they all just come through and you're like. Like, it's like that scene in like Ace Ventura, right, where he sings. Like everything fucking comes to him. And I. And like, I remember the first. I was like, this isn't real. Like, are these animatronics? Like, there's no way there's this much life in biodiversity and it's all. And it was all just like, you know, the echidnas are running, the wallabies are jumping. You've got like wombats, like, kind of like, kind of scurrying along and you're just like. There's all these weird dumb animals that are just excited, you know, they're so strange to us, right, in terms of how we think about them because you never see them. But then there's just like this insane plethora of them. They're just so many. It's crazy.

[A]

Well, I wonder what would be different had the thylacine survived. So they say that was kind of the only thing.

[B]

It was the only apex predator for Tasmania in lower Australia. And have you seen a Tasmanian devil in person?

[A]

Not in person.

[B]

They're awesome.

[A]

They look cool as.

[B]

They're cool as shit. They're awesome. They eat in these little packs. And the reason why they call them Tasmanian devils is because they make the weirdest. I mean, they make. If I heard. Heard the sounds that they make. If you're out in the woods, you hear that sound, you're like, this is a. This is Sasquatch. This is crazy.

[A]

They're crazy. See if we can hear. Some scientists referred to tassies as bear devils due to the superficial resentment, a little cute face.

[B]

You find them eating. They just sound terrible.

[A]

Find Tasmanian tiger noises.

[B]

I don't think you know what they make or.

[A]

Excuse me, Tasmanian devil noises. Sorry, sort not.

[B]

Have you seen this video, though?

[A]

I have, yeah. We can go to that in a second too. I just want to hear this. Look at that. Look at this.

[B]

No.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

And so they. So they're. They're part of the reason why they're. But that. That isn't that terrifying.

[A]

You know, they give each other cancer.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[B]

And many of the researchers in Tasmania and Australia think that if the thylacine was there, because this is where people give wolves and thylacines and predators bad. But they go after the. There's an energy expenditure ratio. Right. They're not just sitting there grazing. They're not getting sedentary. They have to go make the kill. They have to decide, I'm going to go kill stuff. So they kill the young, so they're thinning out the weakest. They kill the old and they kill the sick. An environment that has the right balance of predator and prey is a healthier ecosystem, including for those prey species. And all data that we've seen on the thylacine suggests that they actually ate kind of that mezzanine level of marsupials. And so many people believe that the facial tumor disease would not. If you've seen. I don't know if you saw it, it's disgusting.

[A]

It's really gross.

[B]

But that facial.

[A]

What are we looking at here? Oh, feeding frenzy. Give me some volume. It's doing it right in front of people, too, which is crazy. Crazy. They might be talking all the time.

[B]

Yeah, I fed them like this. It's crazy.

[A]

They're just not scared.

[B]

You just. They're like piranhas. These are Tasmanian devils, the only carnivorous marsupial that we have ever featured on camera.

[A]

And next to Tasmania, it's so cool that they're not exactly scared of people.

[B]

Yeah, they don't even notice you're there. It's crazy. So if you feed them like this, you can put a. A piece of.

[A]

Whose video is this?

[B]

Jammy Coyote Peterson, Brave Wilderness Channel look at these little. And then they just make these sounds. But they often get into fights. And that fighting is when they. That's when they do the transmission. Oh, right in the middle.

[A]

Fight. No, I mean, like, wow.

[B]

But they literally scratch and bite each other and then they. They transmit this. It's the only transmissible cancer that. That we know of. So then it latches onto the next face through biting. And if you see an animal with a Tasmanian devil with the facial tumor disease and you see them, they can't walk well. They can't really see well. Those are the animals that would be picked up by predators first. And so there's a big movement within Tasmania in lower southern Australia that if we could reintroduce a predator being the thylacine, it would eat. I can't look.

[A]

Oh, God. We're looking for people listening. We're looking at tumors on Tasmanian devil's faces.

[B]

Yeah, they're just terrible.

[A]

What? That was a perfect inspiration for a comic book character or for a cartoon character, rather. The Tasmanian.

[B]

Tasmanian devil.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, they're, they're like. They'll be sitting there not making those sounds. They start eating or they get threatened and they make those death sounds. You are, you are. It is a terrible because if you've never heard it before in person, it just catches you by surprise and. And it like blows you away. So I was. It was a pretty weird experience first time I did.

[A]

Yeah, I'd imagine that's such a cool little animal. So the idea of ultimately eventually releasing thylacines, how would that be done and what kind of study would have to be done? Because you're talking about all these animals that come out. Look at all the animals that probably won't be the case. If you reintroduce, they'll start.

[B]

They will start thinning it out and they'll separate.

[A]

Achieve a balance.

[B]

Yeah, it'll achieve a balance.

[A]

So they've done a lot. Let's just like keep people update on Australia. You. Most people don't know that they've introduced cats. So house cats. You want some water?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They introduce house cats, like just feral house cats in Australia to combat certain species and they start decimating all the other species.

[B]

It's literally the worst. It's literally the number one mammalian extinction rate is in Australia and it's because.

[A]

It'S an invasive species. Would that be a problem? That would be. Would there be a similar problem if you reintroduce the Tasmanian tiger? Would there be? Potentially. Would you have to reintroduce other species if they make them extinct?

[B]

So the good news about the Tasmanian in the southern Australia ecosystems is they're mostly intact. Right. Hopefully they'd eat the cats. If you talk to most people in Australia, they hate cats. Outside of the cats that they actually own. Yeah, they actually hate cats because of what they're doing to small marsupials. They're actually looking at technologies like gene drives and others to get rid of. To fully eradicate cats. Cats that are. That are wild, non domestic cats.

[A]

Yeah, people hunt them.

[B]

Yeah, people hunt them.

[A]

Like you have. I have a good buddy of mine, Adam Green tree and they have this magazine, it's like a bow hunter magazine in Australia. And he gave me a copy of it. I was reading on a plane and this guy's holding up a dead cat he shot with a bow. And I'm like, hey man, what the.

[B]

You know, they, they, it is.

[A]

They hold them up like trophies.

[B]

Well, because it's, it's a huge problem, right? It goes back to the invasive species. One of the projects that we're working on with the thylacine because we like to pair every de extinction with a species preservation observation is have you ever seen a northern quoll?

[A]

No. What is that?

[B]

Northern coal. It kind of looks like a mink or like a ferret, but way prettier. It's amazing. How do you spell it? Q U, O, L, L. Yeah, I mean they're absolutely beautiful. They're absolutely, I mean their coats are beautiful but they're another type of carnivorous marsupial. But you know, a hundred years ago or so they got. We as humanity introduced cannot cane toads. Have you ever seen a cane toad? It's like the job of the hut. I mean it looks evil, right?

[A]

They're monsters.

[B]

And so we introduced, we as humanity introduced cane toads into Australia and they have a neurotoxin. Well, guess what? Most quolls and small marsupials love to eat frogs and toads. And so this is actually I think about our work. This actually is about our work. And so no, this may be actually I think this is part of our, our work. And what we've done is if you go back to your point about co evolving and evolution, if you go back to South America where cane toads evolved along snakes and mice and other small mammals, they cane toads all day long and they don't die of the neurotoxin, they don't completely stroke out and die, which is what happens in northern Australia. And so the cane toads, they reproduce, produce in an insane rate. They're having like thousands of babies. They're making more and more of them. So guess what? More and more cane or more and more coles and others are eating these cane toads and dying. So what we did is we actually did a study where we understood what are the genes in the mammals and snakes even in South America that make them cane toad toxin resistant. And here's what we found. This is amazing. One letter in three and a half billion babies. So one letter a one letter change conferred had no other, you know, deterioration had no other effects that were negative. And it created a 5,000 times resistance to cane toad. Wow. So we so because you know quolls are endangered and we don't want to work in endangered species first you want to start with a more model species. We worked in the fat tailed dunnart which is our model species for the thylacine and we engineered dunn dunnarts that in dunnart cells and dunnarts that can eat cane toad tissues and have zero effect, has zero effect on them where it would typically kill them. And so now we're in the next phase of trials showing that we want to enter. We like to engineer in this, this one edit into quals because if coles would have would have most likely through this concept of convergent evolution, if you would have put the quoll next to the cane toad they would have co evolved together. They probably would have had that resistance already built into them through nature.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so that's showing the power of this concept of genetic engineering in biotech, in conservation. And so then you could like make these super quolls that eat the cane toads and then not only does that help the population, lower the population of cane toads, it has this and help the population of the coals but it also has a halo effect to all these other marsupials that we don't know how many are dying from eating cane toads.

[A]

I hope you don't have to bring this episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Tax season is always stressful. You have to worry about filing on time, making sure you have all the right documents and getting all the deductions you possibly can. It's overwhelming and by now I know we're all sick of looking at numbers. But here's an important one that you should hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flat for possible identity fraud last year. Here's another 20%. That's the overall increase in identity theft related tax fraud in 2024 alone. So luckily it isn't all bad news. Here's the good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's US based restoration specialist will fix it. That's backed by another good number, the million dollar protection package. In fact, restoration is guaranteed or your money back. Don't face identity theft and financial losses alone. There's strength in numbers with Lifelock identity theft protection for tax season and beyond. Join now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use the promo code JRE or go to lifelock.com jre for 40% off. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Visible Now. You know, I tend to go down a lot of rabbit holes. I want to know everything about everything. And if you're like that, you need wireless that can keep up. Visible is wireless that lets you live in the know. It's the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited data and hotspot so you're connected on the go. Plus, Visible is powered by Verizon's 5G network, meaning fast speeds and great coverage coverage. And with the new Visible plus Pro plan, you get premium wireless without the premium cost. And the best part, it's all digital. No stores. You can switch to visible right from your phone. It only takes about 15 minutes. And then you manage your plan in the app. Ready for wireless that lets you live in the know. Make the [e-mail] Rogan plans start at 25amonth for the best features. Get the new Visible Plus Pro plan for $45 dollars a month. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Big toads to eat the coals. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

Have you seen those? Those. Those toads and frogs that, like, latch out and, like, they'll eat anything in front of them?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, they're terrified. There was. There was a giant. There was a giant one of those toads back in, like, I don't know, thousands of years ago.

[A]

How big was it?

[B]

I don't know. I've seen a pic, a 3D race fender of it, and it, like, grabs, like, you know, deers and stuff. It's crazy. Whoa.

[A]

We've played videos of toads eating mice. I had no idea.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Before I saw those videos only a few years ago, I had no idea toads would just eat mice.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[A]

So they put them in this bin with a bunch of mice, and this toad is just going, ham. Just snatching myself and swallowing, and it'll just.

[B]

And you'd think that they're just sitting there, docile, and then they just. Absolutely. They throw their whole body.

[A]

Sit there. They have the creepiest dead eyes. They're just machines to eat. You ever seen them fight with each other? That's pretty wild, too. They bite each other's heads and they throw each other through the air.

[B]

Yeah, I've seen. I've seen them toss each other.

[A]

Imagine you're fighting with a dude, and he literally bites half your torso and throws you through the air. And they. And they don't even look like it bothered Them?

[B]

Yeah, that's just part of the fight. That's totally, like, within the rules.

[A]

That's what creeps me out about reptiles. There's this lack of emotions. Like, at least a wolf has emotions. You know, it's like there's something going on there. There's an intelligence. Intelligence. There's something really creepy about getting eaten by something stupid.

[B]

Like a crocodile.

[A]

Yeah, like. Like a crocodile or like a toad. There's a thing about crocodiles that people were suspecting but it turns out to not be true, that they would lie on their back and put their arms in the. Oh, yeah, drowning.

[B]

Yeah, I saw that video.

[A]

Apparently that's not what they're doing. Apparently that's a normal characteristic that they do.

[B]

But stupid. But stupid from an natural selection perspective. Stupid people were like, I have to.

[A]

Say, I gotta go save that dude.

[B]

And then we credit the crocodile for being super smart, but in reality just got a free meal.

[A]

Yeah. Well, you would think, though, if they have gotten those meals before that that would be a learned behavior. I mean, just. Yeah, they do have some learned behavior. I have a friend, his name is Jim Shockey. He's a professional hunter. And he was actually hired to go into Africa and hunt crocodiles that were killing all these people in this village. Like they're actively killing. Targeting people in this village. When he went to the village, everybody was like missing a foot, a chunk taken out of their leg. And while he was there, a crocodile took a woman who was washing clothes. So what they had done was they'd set up this area by the water where they had driven these stakes in the ground that would prevent the crocodiles from getting in the water and getting really close to the edge, you know, because you can't see them in the water. And then they just explode out and snake snatch you up. These fucking crocodiles went around the fence. They walked around the fence and slid into the water. So they figured out that these people are in this area that they can't get to. So they. They hunt people.

[B]

Yeah, they. They absolutely do. And it's. It's weird how some of those. It's very strange as we start to study because, like, one of the things that Colossal is doing is we're studying a lot of what's called non model species. So we're learning a lot about weird things that we just didn't know. There's some things that are known like in. Like elephants get cancer a fraction of what they should due to an overexpression of a gene called p53 so there's this thing called Petto's paradox, where based on age and body weight, both blue whales and elephants get cancer a fraction of what they probably should based on how old they get and what their body size is. And that actually makes our lives very difficult. And that's why we had to create stem cells for elephants. Because anytime we try to. We had to figure out how to regulate P53. Because anytime you go to edit that one, one cell, it just says, looks like a mutation, could be cancer kill cell. Right. It's like programmed in. So we have to be able to. We have to be able to turn that down because we're in the editing phase on the math project. Right. So there's about 85 genes, but if.

[A]

You turn that down, does that make them more susceptible to cancer?

[B]

And so you got to turn it back up after you make the edits.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah. So these are the things that you just. That we are learning.

[A]

I'm with that lady doctor, that lady scientist. You guys are doing something you shouldn't be doing.

[B]

No, we're learning about things. Right. We're learning about things. Right.

[A]

I'm kidding, but I'm not kidding. If I was her, I would probably have the same opinion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'd probably say, especially if I found out you guys weren't really scientists. Like, what are you doing?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why are you doing this?

[B]

Well, I. I mean, the good news is about Colossal is that, you know, outside of our 17 academic partners and. And our 95 scientific advisors, 90% of the company scientists, there's very few. Like, I like. I fall in the very few.

[A]

I'm kind of kidding about. You're not scientists, but I'm definitely. I'm not kidding about the technology getting into someone else's hands.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is where it gets weird. Like China, Russia, and it is getting weird.

[B]

Like crispr and these genome engineering tools are outside of the bottle. It's like the genie out of the bottle. Right. It's like, it's out there. You can't put it back in. I think that more and more people in other countries are going to be doing things with these two, these technologies for humans. That's why Colossal just said, we will never do anything for humans. If someone else wants to use our technologies for humans, we'll evaluate.

[A]

That gets so weird, right? Like the China story. You can't explain to people what they did. They said they were inoculating them from hiv, which is.

[B]

Yeah, they actually were engineering. They were engineering babies in editing their embryos to Confer a resistance to HIV now still to this day. So they were cloning them and then they were genetically modifying them. And so they're doing lots of things that are. There's a general moratorium in the world on some of these things around humans. Anything that's considered a germline edit. So any, anything that could be passed on to the next generation. If you engineer something into the genome, the fear is from a germ line. So all your cells in your body are somatic cells, except for your egg or sperm, those are germ cells. So anything that could be affected into the germ line so that you pass it on to the next generation, that could be like Umbrella Corporation type moment, right? We don't want want that.

[A]

Well, the scary thing was they didn't just do that. They also edited something that would allow the child to have much higher intelligence.

[B]

Well, so that part's like. That part's quoted under debate. There's people that say that happened. There's people that say it doesn't happen. If you look at BGI or Beijing Genomics Institute, right? They did this thing that from an affairs perspective was brilliant unit from an affairs perspective is also terrifying. During COVID they're like, we'll do all the COVID testing for you free. We'll do all this COVID testing for you for free. No worries. Just send us your data. We'll do it all for free. You just want to help the world, right? We'll work with the World Health Organization. Just send us all your samples from all your countries, everything. And publicly, the CEO of BGI has said, which is funded by the ccp has said that they are looking at genes which with humans, they are looking at what makes humans more intelligent. They don't shy away from this. This is not like some conspiracy theory. Like is it a Sasquatch or is it just a man in an ape suit? This is something that is very real. They are openly saying we are sequencing as much as we can of the world population looking for genes for intelligence and we will act on that. That's not a hidden thing.

[A]

So that is supposedly did with these, supposedly of these kids now.

[B]

I mean that would have. When did that happen? Yeah. So they've been like six or seven.

[A]

Are they already winning chess championships?

[B]

Yes. I'm not.

[A]

Find out.

[B]

Yeah, we should find out.

[A]

Probably in a lab somewhere with a headset on. Yeah, I. I teach them how to be psychic.

[B]

What? I don't know how public. It's like. It was also one of those weird things that was like, he's in trouble. He's going to jail.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then he's like, got out and then he's out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Always forgot. Yeah.

[A]

But meanwhile, if you go to jail in China, you vanish forever. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Except for this guy.

[A]

You're making iPhones until you drop dead of starvation.

[B]

Yeah, it is, it is. It's 100 true. And.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it is weird that, like, he got in trouble for a few months.

[A]

Right. And he got in trouble for something they probably told him to do in the first place.

[B]

Well, they funded his lab. His lab was. His lab was. Was funded by the.

[A]

And this is what we found out about. I guarantee you there's some that they're doing somewhere that we haven't found out about yet. And if you were going to do something with human beings and create a super soldier, you know, we know that.

[B]

Well, that's what separates us.

[A]

What Russia was attempting to do during. Was it World War I or World War II? They were trying to make a chimpanzee human hybrid for.

[B]

Oh, I saw that.

[A]

I read about that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

A chimp human hybrid for war.

[B]

Well, there's been a recent publication out of Japan where they're allowed allowing Japanese scientists to edit human cells in embryos with mammalian genes. With other mammalian genes.

[A]

Like what kind of genes? Like woolly mammoth genes in a person.

[B]

No, we are not doing that. People ask us if we could solve hair loss with woolly mammoths.

[A]

That would be the first thing people want. Hair loss, next thing, bigger dicks.

[B]

Those are consistent.

[A]

Well, you can't engineer once a person's already born. Well, you can't with the current technology.

[B]

With the current technology, like, so being able to send stuff to specific gene therapies and targeting and being able to deliver specifically to cells is an area that we're getting better at. Like, I think one of the. Probably the most. I think that one of the projects that's the furthest along is around like sickle cell anemia. It's a single crispr knockout. Right. So it's a single knockout. It's not multiplex editing. And now it's about can you target that in all of the tissue types that are the most affected? And then over time, how do you gene therapy to everything and you could.

[A]

Do that to a person who's already.

[B]

Born to someone that's already born. It's obviously much easier to do it at the embryo stage.

[A]

Could you envision a world where the gene editing technology becomes so powerful that you could do it to A person who is already fully formed.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is what I predicted. Everyone's going to look like Thor. It'll be a bunch of Chris Hemsworth and Jason Momoas, and no more people look like you and me.

[B]

Yeah. Wait, so Chris is one of our investors, and I always think we look just like each other. So he invited. Luke, invited me to go to.

[A]

I was from another planet. I think he. Different species is.

[B]

Yeah, they. They invited me to go up to Byron Bay and go surfing with them. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go take my shirt off next to you nerds. That's exactly what's never gonna happen. And I just made up an excuse of why I couldn't go, because they were like, we want to go surfing. And I was like, sure you do.

[A]

You want to.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not going surfing with you to measure cocks, too. Yeah. I'm going as far away from you with my shirt off as possible.

[A]

But you got to imagine if that becomes a reality, like what we're doing today just with plastic surgery.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Like, let's take, for example. Yeah. GLP1. But that's. That's achievable. Right. What they're. What GLP1s are doing is achievable through hard work. Yeah, but. But like, what they're doing in South Korea with eye surgery, like, it's ubiquitous. Like, so many people are getting this weird surgery where they have these K pop eyes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it's just.

[B]

It's a strange thing.

[A]

It's a strange thing. And if that's just primitive cutting and sewing tissue artistically. Right. But if people can decide what they're going to look like, what their intelligence.

[B]

Is going to be, like, it's a. Eugenics.

[A]

Now we're really playing.

[B]

No, no, no, no. That's playing God to another level. Right. And that's like. That's this eugenics world where we know. Right. Like, I just had a child. And, you know, typically, I'd say if you go through the IVF process, which we want went through, you typically can test for certain types of issues, like along the pregnancy. Right. And when they put the embryo in, they look at kind of the morphological grade. Well, now there's new tests, new companies out there, one of which I use, which after I used it, I was so impressed, I invested in it, called Orchid Health. And they actually take cells from the developing neuro on the very outer derm. Right. On this thing that doesn't affect the embryo development. They culture those Cells and then they're doing full genome sequencing. Right. And so we had a handful of embryos. And so not selecting. They don't let you just select for like eye color or height or anything. But outside of the kind of the core, you know, is there a mental issue or is it compatible with life, which is what most people test for? You can now ethically and transparently go figure out does it have any predispositions to certain things. Right. So like if diabetes or certain types of cancers or Alzheimer's in your family, you can now get a lot of that's environmental, but you can still get a distribution score. So you can understand what are the genetic factors in that. So that's today. So that's not like 20 years in the future. That's not Gattaca. That's today. Wow. And I mean we did that. We did that because I found out during that sick period that I have a gene mutation which affects the Titan gene and I create a truncated protein. So I am more susceptible to diseases including. Including the first true round of COVID That was a lab leak that attacked my heart.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so I didn't want to be able to pass that on. So we screened for that. Right. But that's not standard thing. But that's a today thing. Like two years ago that technology existed and is now prevalent and people are using it.

[A]

So you understand the technology better than most. Conceivably, what could be done that would in the future allow people to change their very shape and literally change everything about them, change their intelligence, change everything.

[B]

I think it starts with neuro enhancers. And I think this is the biological perspective. This is not even the computer brain interfaces merging with AI. That whole world, which I think that world has a lot of traction and is scarily getting a lot of traction pretty quickly. But I think it starts with things like healthspan where it's like the very vain stuff. So like skin, skin elasticity, hair, all of that eye color, I think all of that is changeable. There's a company right now, I forgot the name of it, that spun out of Harvard that is making patches using microneedling patches that you can't even feel the needles. Right. And delivering a custom stem cell for you that can help replace your melanocytes for hair, for skin. So you can have 30 year old looking skin when you're 85 years old.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yes. And the same thing for hair. Right. The reason why our hair grows, that's.

[A]

Going to be real soon.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, the speed of which I think the biggest. I think the two biggest barriers for healthcare around genetics and longevity is going to be the FDA process and not the technology. I think it'll be a process problem. We saw that with Operation Warp Drive. We saw how fast things could move if people really wanted them to. I think that's number one. And I think that you're going to have the ethical pushbacks on this.

[A]

So regulatory and ethical, those are the two hurdles. But right now, the technology exists.

[B]

Yeah. Well, the other biggest thing, and this is kind of for the folks that are deep in longevity, they'll tell you the biggest issue with longevity is that it's not currently classified as a disease. Disease state. And so they're not getting NIH funding. They're getting all that funding is going to other random stuff. But people aren't focusing on longevity. That's why you've got, like. If you've seen anything that, like, Bob Nelson's done. Bob started Arch Ventures, and he's like, arguably the number one biotech in the world. And he's working on epigenetic resets or resetting your clocks at a cellular level. That's what Jeff Bezos and them have. They're doing it. Altos Labs. George Church has another company called Rejuvenate Bio. They're doing the same things, and they're smart. They did it in dogs first, because people have dogs, and they can also collect a lot of data that then they can then apply to clinical trials.

[A]

Yeah, I know there's a lot of people cloning their dogs now.

[B]

Yeah, there's people that are cloning their dogs. They can do it even easier now with. With this.

[A]

Yeah. I didn't bring Marshall to the studio. We did.

[B]

We did clone one person's dog.

[A]

I couldn't do it. I love him too much. I couldn't do it. I would. I would feel so weird around this fake Marshall. Yeah, I wouldn't want to do that.

[B]

Yeah. And that's how people feel about it.

[A]

Some people are unique little creatures. They have their own little personalities.

[B]

I know I've got two, and they're amazing. And, you know, I did. My wife is closer to one. And so I did. I did. Full disclosure. I did. We did do a blood sample on that one. Just because I don't. I just don't know what the meltdown could look like. So. But. But. But the other one, we haven't. And so because you're right, that you have. You have environmental factors, you have personalities. We don't understand all of that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But I won't say who it is, but someone that's very well known in the world. When I was showing him some of our direwolf and Red Wolf tech, his kids were devastated because his dog was dying. And they didn't want to, they didn't want to put her in any harm. They didn't want to go to one of these dog cloning companies and do like ear. They want to put it to sleep. They didn't think she'd wake back up. So we did a dread, a blood draw. He called me over Christmas or before Christmas last year and told me that, you know, that they think the dog's got weeks, days to weeks to live. Could we, could we do it for. And we, and we, and we did it for him. We're not in that business. That's not our business. But he was just happy because his choice wasn't. He didn't want this other dog or his family didn't want another dog. His biggest issue was they want, they, they, they couldn't let go of that dog, number one and number two, but they didn't want that dog to suffer. They didn't want to say for our selfish means means.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You're already suffering. We want you to go be put to sleep and have pieces taken like Frankenstein pieces of you. And so the fact that we could just take a blood draw. The dog didn't even notice we took the blood draw. I was like totally awake just sitting right there while we did it. And you know, he was happy with that. So I think these things, what if.

[A]

That dog is going to be reincarnated into a higher level of existence? You stop it and put it on this, like.

[B]

Yeah, so that's not exactly our business.

[A]

You know what I'm saying?

[B]

I do.

[A]

We don't really exactly know what life is.

[B]

No, we don't. We definitely don't know life. And here's one thing that his, his assistant told my chief of staff. He said to her, he's like, you know, it's weird. I didn't think it was the same dog at all. And I. It's definitely not the same dog. But he's like, it goes and sits in the same place, which isn't like, it's not like in front of a window on its bed. Right. I, I don't know the exact place, but it would always go sit in the exact same place the other dog said. So there's weird stuff. We, we don't understand this.

[A]

That would creep me out because Mom, Marshall has very specific places where he sleeps.

[B]

And if that happens. Yeah.

[A]

It would creep me out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I've had other dogs stay at my house and my older daughter's dog stay at my house, and that dog didn't go to that same spot. It's not like this is one spot that's warmer or cooler.

[B]

Yeah. Like, it's the same thing. It's like, my dog Ken, if he, like, gets on, like, he only wants to sleep on my feet. If I fall asleep on the couch, he's cool. He won't sleep on my feet. He just wants to sleep on me. And that's not comfortable for him because I'm, like, kicking him and everything. But that's just where he wants to sleep.

[A]

They want to be in contact with you. My dog watches TV with me. Yeah.

[B]

That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I.

[A]

We're the best.

[B]

Yeah. And we didn't even teach it this, but. But when we say security at our house, our dogs just lose it. Like, can just lose his mind. And he just runs to the door. He runs the front door, runs the back door to the side doors. Yeah.

[A]

What kind of dog?

[B]

They're just mutts. So I have Barbie and Ken. They're just two little weird mutts, but we named them before the movie.

[A]

It's just a weird thing to take that dog. And I think also for kids, like, the thing is, like, kids, the loss is so devastating.

[B]

Yeah. But it's also good to teach them those things.

[A]

Yeah. I think loss is important. Yeah, I think loss is important.

[B]

I don't want to. You know, I only. I'm new to this whole father thing. But, you know, I think it's important that they understand, like, there's real. There's real things, and there's consequences to decisions, and we're going to age and we've got a limited time. I think that in his lifetime, it will be massively accelerated. But I think that's important. And, you know, that is one of the things, though, I think having a. A kid and also all of these kids and parents that have been sending us pictures of mammoths and thylacines and dodos and hopefully now direwolves is something that's exciting because we get these handwritten notes from kids. So on our shittiest day at Colossal, when someone says whatever or whatever or an experiment doesn't work or whatever bad happens. And you look at this pile of kids photos and teachers, we have this. There was a teacher named Katie from Florida who sent us a letter and literally 40 pictures of mammoths. And in that letter she goes, my kids won't be quiet. We're in this attention war with everything. My kids won't be quiet. I start talking about colossal. I show the woolly mouse stuff. They all want to just talk about it. They just zone in. It's interesting. I think this is a time that we can use technologies for human healthcare for good. We can use technologies for conservation for good and we can help ecosystem with bringing back extinct species. But I think that we can also inspire the next generation. Don't we want to preach hope? We're on this 24, 7 psycho news cycle that wasn't around when I was a kid.

[A]

Or do you know, CS Lewis first started talking about this. What year was CS Lewis alive? But he had a quote about. I might have saved it. He had a quote about. About the just getting all the dire information of the world all the time sent to you all the time. Which at his time back then, that was very new. That was a completely new thing.

[B]

And this idea of these 24 hour news cycles. Right. You know, like, there's actually a law in the uk. This blew my mind. There's a law in the UK that they cannot tell. They cannot report on a piece if it has any degree of social impact, that they don't tell. The negative side. I was like, so what happens if it's like, so if someone saves a kitten from a tree, you have to get a dog's perspective. And they're like, yes. And they're dead serious.

[A]

Oh, that's so ridiculous.

[B]

So there can be stories that are just negative and there can be stories that are just positive. That's okay.

[A]

Yeah. I think you're gonna have very lively debate. That's always going to happen with something that's so groundbreaking, like what you're doing. But I also think it's inevitable. I think human beings have this inescapable desire for innovation.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And it's going to apply to biology just like it applies to electronics. And you can't do anything about it. You can have debates about it. And we should, we should have. You should. You know, what you guys are doing is great. You've got the direwolves fenced off. You're very careful, you're monitoring ring them. It's so great. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. And at least you're transparent about it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, at least this is not happening in Russia where they're making super wolves that only eat Americans.

[B]

Yeah. And they, and they train and they. And they Train them with DNA to only eat.

[A]

That's probably gonna happen too. This is just. We're going to face unique problems no matter what we do. Because technology is allowing people to do things that are unprecedented, including change what it means to be an actual person.

[B]

Yeah, it's synthetic biology and really kind of the intersection between compute AI and synthetic biology. Being able to engineer genes, engineer life. I think that we are at the doorstep of, you know, everyone's very, very worried about AI. But I do think that synthetic biology is in that camp. I think it's, it's like discovering fire.

[A]

It's the God camp. It's all, it's all falling into the same thing. And then when you add to that incredible computing power that's going to be available with quantum computing. Computing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you have new technologies that are going to emerge from AI using quantum computing.

[B]

And then the, and then the interface at all, like the neuralink stuff and everything, it's just going to get, you.

[A]

Know, the interfaces are crazy because we had that gentleman, Noah, the first guy who got it and he said he has an aim bot in his head. So like when he plays games he's like, got a crazy advantage because where he looks is where the cursor goes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like instantaneously. So he could shoot things. Like he's not gonna miss.

[B]

Yeah. I mean we are living in a weird time.

[A]

Yeah, it's the weirdest time. It's the weirdest time that people have ever been through and we're at the door. We haven't even gone into the.

[B]

No, no. That's what I say.

[A]

Wild.

[B]

That's what I say about synthetic biology. Right. So like the ability to like engineer drought resistant crops or a vaccine or grow regrow our hair or you know, make mammoths. That's. Today we can't even think about what's tomorrow. We spun out a couple company from Colossal called Breaking last year and this incredible group at the Wyss Institute discovered an enzyme from the Amazon that actually breaks down any type of plastic you give it to. And not making smaller plastics, not making microplastics, which are fucking terrible. But actually breaks the chemical, that's why I named it Breaking. It actually breaks the chemical bonds of plastic and just produces biomass as a thing. We'll get. So it takes things that have broken down never and has got it down into years. We have used now computational biology and synthetic biology to engineer it. So now that it's in 22 months and I think that we can get it down to two weeks and so that will be huge for the plastic problem because we can all say that we're going to change hearts and minds and use different types of plastics, but we still have the existing plastics here. We have to do something about it. So I do think there's even industrial use cases coming out of synthetic biology that like 10 years ago, if someone said we can give you a magic microbe that can, you can put in a vat and you can just throw any of your plastics in there and you can throw, you know, salads and other stuff there and it won't even touch it, you know, that would have sounded like science fiction 10 years ago.

[A]

That's so crazy. And so now it's. You said it's down to a couple months.

[B]

Yeah, it's 22 months right now. So. And we're talking about like, not just, just like your water bottle. Your water bottle, but you're also talking about things that are like industrial defense plastics that are like, you know, radiation hardened and whatnot for space. Like, we're throwing some pretty hard stuff at it.

[A]

What about those stupid windmills that they have to change every.

[B]

They actually have a landfill for windmills. And they also have a bigger negative carbon impact than they make. Yeah.

[A]

And they don't barely make any electricity.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. They kill livestock or they kill, they kill animals, kill birds, they, they disrupt whales. They also disrupt migratory patterns of birds.

[A]

Of course they do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. You can't fly into that.

[B]

Yeah. And they're all. And they're all made with plastic and.

[A]

Plastic polymers and then they have to get rid of them and then the only place to put them is in a landfill.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So break. So that's why we started breaking. So. Wow.

[A]

So these microbes would be able to break that down.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, we haven't tested on that specific. But like, one of the biggest ones that we tested on was nylon. Just because there's so much. If you look, look at like what's in the ocean, a vast majority of it is nylon from just discarded fishing nets.

[A]

Oh, that makes sense.

[B]

So we looked at nylon as one of our first use cases, and then we're doing water treatment plants and a few others. So if we could, if we get to the point that we could do filtration on microplastics at the treatment level. Right. Because all that's passing through right now, like in our drinking water and everything. That's why you have to have these massive. You have to have like the three layer osmosis devices and whatnot for Water you've to do. Gary, you got me a new water machine. So but you have to do those types of things because the microplastics and then the chlorine and other stuff still passes through a lot of the existing materials.

[A]

So when you're doing this, is this something that you could release like in the ocean itself or would you have to worry then about the effect like bringing the house cats to Australia?

[B]

No, it dies. It only eats this like this is.

[A]

This is what they always say right before it fucks up.

[B]

We're not worried about we. But with, but with a distribution in the wild of something like that, you have to go through epa, there's a lot of testing that you have to do. Right.

[A]

But you could do that testing and then conceivably dump it on the great Pacific garbage patch.

[B]

So I don't know, based on heat and salinity and whatnot. Right now it's working in bioreactors. So I don't want to over promise and say we just go sprinkle it and call it a day. But that's a long term goal. Right, but that's the power of. You know, we used AI in computer computational analysis of this microbe that's found in nature. And then we said let's supercharge it, just like supercharging the coals. Right. And so but that's, but the process of using it outside of contained systems like a bioreactor has to be done very thoughtfully and measured just like rewilding. Right. Like this is where sometimes people get confused about like the yels and stuff. They didn't just open the gate and throw some wolves in there. I mean sounds like they did more of that in Colorado. But there's typically a very thoughtful and measured process that you have to go through. Right. Because there's intended consequences which you get excited about, but then there's a ton of unintended consequences if you're not careful. Yeah, but synthetic biology is, is that, is that it's, it's an AI level thing that we need to be worried.

[A]

About and how many different nations are working on this stuff.

[B]

So I think that the US is by far the most advanced from a synthetic biology perspective. It is a major directive of China, you know, not just sequencing and biobanking, because they're biobanking. We do not have a nationalized biobanking process here. That's one of the things I was meeting in Washington about. But China does. China is going like we see them in Africa where they'll make donations to a university or school and say, oh, but we're going to take blood samples from all of your animals around here. You guys are cool, right? So they are doing this. Right? So they're looking for insights in animals. They're looking for that data. They're also trying to build today's Noah's Ark. And so China is for sure. There's some countries it's harder, like the European Union's harder to do anything because they've kind of put a moratorium on GMOs or genetically modified organisms. But we've been making GMOs for a long time. Have you ever seen a pug? We've just done it pretty inefficiently. We can be smarter and actually have a better understanding of those intended consequences. Now, through AI and software, probably we're.

[A]

Going to have direwolves guard in their house.

[B]

No.

[A]

In 100 years, they're not open to 100%. They're going to get your technology and they're going to sell it. And people are going to be eating woolly mammoth steaks while the dire wolves guard their house.

[B]

Yeah, that's not the future that I, That I hope for. I'm more of an optimist, so I kind of believe in the general good of humanity.

[A]

Of course, it's your company. Your company. Is the whole world up. You have to think that way. I'm just kidding.

[B]

I know.

[A]

But it is a weird. It's a. It's a weird venture. I mean, you're going down a very bizarre path, but it's so fascinating. I'm so glad you're doing it because it's. It's so interesting and we're learning a lot.

[B]

Right. And the application of that learning could allow us to save many species. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think that.

[A]

Do you think there could ever be a time. Well, there's no DNA from the dinosaurs. Right. So would it be possible that with future technology there would be some way to get around that?

[B]

So. So they're the closest you get from a dino DNA perspective is that there is ways that you can do demineralization of bones and get amino acids. So, like the smallest building blocks possible. You don't know where they go. Right. I think that it's not possible to de. Extinct a dinosaur. I do think at some point you could use AI and software to do an ancestral state reconstruction, looking at kind of what we know about birds, what we know about reptiles, and kind of.

[A]

Where they branch so you can make one.

[B]

I think.

[A]

Wasn't that one of the things they did in Jurassic park, that's what they made a dinosaur that didn't exist before.

[B]

The big giant one, the Indominus rex.

[A]

Yeah, right. That was something they created.

[B]

That's something they created. Right. And so I think from a genome engineer, from a technology and genome engineering perspective, that is eventually possible.

[A]

So they could easily make a T. Rex, I would say.

[B]

Easily, yeah, but, but they could potentially some future state. At some future state, I think we'll have like, you know, the CAD software biology where you can engineer almost anything.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

I mean that's just where the technologies go, right? The better. And you said it best when you brought up Quantum. You know, Quantum's only two years away every two years, I hear. But eventually when it works and works at scale and you have that coupled with, you know, where some of these companies like X AI and others are taking it, I think the merger of that plus synthetic biology will allow us to do all kinds of stuff. And it will be in, and look, it will be in nefarious hands. Like let's, let's just be real, be real. Nuclear weapons are in nefarious hands, right? Yeah, nuclear weapons are in good guys hands. Right. And so this is nuclear weapons. And I think that you have to be. Just because it exists, we can't put our head in the sand and say, oh, we just can't let it be because it does exist. And I don't know if you saw this, but this was like, it's like five years, no, no longer that. It's like seven years ago, people in CHOP companies in China and the government in China were using facial recognition technology to profile people of a certain subset of race. Right. And they were doing bad things with facial rec. Well, the San Francisco government, where a lot of the funding came from Silicon Valley for a lot of tech startups, they said not at a nationwide level, but in Silicon Valley. San Francisco says we will not at all support any technology. Technology. We're going to ban investing in facial rec technology. Well that's just dumb, right? Because we now know there's things like deep fakes and all this stuff, but it's like that's setting American innovation back because someone's doing something bad with it. Right? That's like saying oh my gosh, they have guns, we should never develop guns. Right? Like it's just, it's a, it's a bad philosophy when it comes to technology. And so, you know, I think the same way about synthetic biology. The world is currently the United States is the leader in synthetic biology. And we've got national treasures like George Church, my co founder and others. And I hope that we continue to be the world's leader. But I do think other countries have different ethical boundaries than we do and they will experiment on kids.

[A]

But it's interesting also that you're a company, this isn't the government. This is just a group of people and investors that have decided to do this and you've been able to do it here in America. But do you know what is going on in other countries or is this a tightly guarded secret? So I mean we know obviously you're. You have people. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no, you have people in your company as well and I'm sure there's an understanding of what they're doing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's good, it's. You must be being studied by other countries.

[B]

Yeah, we definitely. And we have investment by. In Q. Tel. Right. So I'm sure that makes us more of a target. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I mean we do work closely with the DOD and IC frequently.

[A]

It's just when you think about it, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, when you scale this out, there's no limit to what could be done with life. That's so strange.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's so strange to think that for four plus billion years life has evolved.

[B]

In a very specific pattern on rails.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then one day, and now we.

[B]

Say we can take the rail all.

[A]

The way we went who? Boy. And you know, that's the. The grandest of all conspiracy theories is that that's. That's how humans were created.

[B]

Yeah. That the Panspermia.

[A]

Well, either pansp.

[B]

Or that we were engineered in places.

[A]

The great one is the Anunnaki, Right? Oh yeah, I will, I will.

[B]

Yeah. But I will say that if you look at, you know, not to get too weird, but if you do look at the. It's like cuckoo con. And folks in, in. If you look at some of the carvings from all over the world world resembling their sky gods, there's a lot of weird similar. I mean you can't objectively, it's like the guy with the Sphinx, right? Yep. That's water. I'm an expert on erosion. That is water. And then they're like head of the Sphinx. Like that's not water. Right. It's the same thing as this. You cannot look at some of this stuff and say that's not weird. Right. You can't look at like, you know, the incredible pyramids we have all over the world world that seem to now there's like more and more discoveries and then they get silenced out of you. It's like you can't see all that stuff and not wonder more, especially the stuff around. If you look at Mayans and then you look at, you know, stuff in the Middle east and how it looks exactly the same.

[A]

It's very weird.

[B]

It looks exactly the same. Have you been to Peru?

[A]

No.

[B]

So that I would put, you know, because I don't. I do not want to take you away from going and visiting the boneyard. She's totally do that. But you should also go to Peru. Peru. If you like, you can see Peru and you can. It's like standing in the Grand Canyon versus seeing on Google Maps, right? If you go to like Al Andam. Al and Tombo or whatever it's called and you see these blocks that you can't like put a piece of paper between, you know, you can't see and you see it and they're all put together in a perfect jigsaw. Oh, and by the way, they came from a type of rock in a quarry that's 2,000 miles from here or whatever. However many thousand thousands of miles per hour. You can't sit there and say, well, that's weird. If you don't say that's weird, then it's like, like you're like one of those, like, you know, people that are just like, huh, you're a denier. Like, you can't say it's not weird.

[A]

Yeah, just did not say. To say it's not weird is actually denying science.

[B]

Yeah, it's the weird. So you should put Peru on your. Because when you see it, there's nothing like it. I've been fortunate to be able to travel over the world. You see it and you're just like that. That, that just doesn't make sense.

[A]

The coolest thing I've ever seen is Chichen Itza.

[B]

Yeah, I've been to Chichen Itza. Yeah.

[A]

And you go there and you're like, what did you do? What did you do? How'd you do this? Yeah, how did you guys do this?

[B]

You know what's crazy about Chichen Itza? They don't let you go there anymore. But I don't know where. But you know, you've got all those paths with all the vendors and you see Chichen Itza. Well, there's in the jungles there on the Yucatan Peninsula. There's actually other older pyramids, but the carvings that they have on Chichen Itza and the carvings they have. Have there. They're actually. The older ones have more precise carvings. But now, guess what, it's not over. The public. I've seen that. I've been there.

[A]

Oh, it's so frustrating.

[B]

But also, it is such a weird world, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I mean, I'm talking to you about like hardcore genetic science, but then when you start to look at all the craziness in archeology, it is. We don't know a lot.

[A]

A lot. Yeah. And there's no way you can know a lot.

[B]

And anytime you suggest something new, you get shit for it.

[A]

Yeah, you get a rash of shit. And people try to connect you with the worst people in the world. Hence Graham Hancock.

[B]

Yeah, but I think Graham Hancock, in the end, I don't know if they're kind of this advanced civilization or whatnot, but I think really smart people said things like Plato and others that were probably real. I don't think they were just playing around and like, oh, we're going to write something that's going to be in history as a joke forever.

[A]

You've seen the Reichardt structure. You ever seen that? This is what there's a lot of people like Jimmy Corsetti, who's this famous YouTube, I guess you'd call him. I guess he'd be like, can we.

[B]

Pull up the structure?

[A]

Sure. He'd be like an ancient history enthusiast. He's a guy who studies these Things and does YouTube videos on them. But the Reichardt structure is essentially Atlantis.

[B]

Oh, this is in the desert?

[A]

Yeah, it looks like Atlantis.

[B]

There's salt all around, has the rings that Plato described.

[A]

And at one point in time it was connected to the ocean. I mean, it literally looks like Atlantis and people dispute it. A lot of people.

[B]

Have people gone and studied it there?

[A]

Well, it's a very difficult place to get to and it's also very dangerous. So people have studied it, but there hasn't been like large scale archaeological digs there or any. The whole sub Saharan Africa thing is so fascinating. They find whales there, you know, I mean, they know that there it was lush rainforest while human beings were alive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there hasn't been like large scale exploration of what's in that ground and there. And it's immense.

[B]

I do think that the Younger Dryas stuff is also a combination of. I think generally speaking, if you break down the Younger Dryas period into that rapid cooling, I think the vast majority of people will say some of it, some of the destruction or some of the Destruction around megafauna was anthropologic, which I'll give it some probably percentage. Then I think a lot of people agree on this flood theory.

[A]

Anthropologic, meaning human beings killed them.

[B]

Yes. That humans had some impact on it. Right. I think that even more people agree that there was this massive flood that occurred and that could have been a global level flood with rushing waters and sea rising whatnot. And then you've got what caused that, that flood. Most likely meteor, you know, astrological, meteorological.

[A]

And then they combine that with core samples that show large levels of iridium.

[B]

Yeah. Which. Which only exists when you have certain levels of heat at certain impacts. It's like that. It's like that nuclear glass or whatever.

[A]

Iridium is actually different. Iridium is actually very common in space, but. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's this.

[B]

And there's a layer. Yeah, there's a silt of it. That's right.

[A]

The micro diamonds is what they're talking about.

[B]

But they have those too as well.

[A]

Trinitite.

[B]

Yeah, Trinity trinitite. That's what it is.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That's stuff from the Trinity explosion. They discovered it there. They find these little micro. There's 100% there was impacts. Yeah, that's a fact. And they also know like when the meteor shower. And this is the thing that they study, like when we go through this comet shower and that, that's.

[B]

But you remember, like probably 10, 20 years ago, people, if you brought up the idea of a worldwide flood, they would just be like, oh, you're a fundamentalist Christian, can't talk to you ever again.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Oh, water canopy. You're weird. Don't talk to me again.

[A]

I know.

[B]

And then, and now it's like, well, maybe there was a giant flood. Maybe it wasn't just a regional flood. Right. Maybe it was done by impacts of comments. Right.

[A]

That's what brings me to the weird ones. When you go back to like the, the Vedic texts and you're like, what was the vimanas? What were these flying vehicles that they had? What was Ezekiel talking about the Bible did?

[B]

Have you seen that stuff? When have you seen those videos in the last. That have come out in the last year when there was the, the most recent UAP craze? And they'd show it and it looked like crazy ball lightning. It almost looked like those things that used to put your. You'd put your hands on your hair and stand up. Right. And then they compare some of those to paintings from like, you know, from like 500700 years ago.

[A]

It may not be there because a lot of those crazy balls of light, we're all fake. No. You can just zoom in on Venus.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's what you get.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

You zoom in on stars and you get this sort of bizarre distorted image. Have you seen those? Find zoomed in stars? I think they did it with the North Star. They've done it with several stars. But if you zoom in with the highest level of these telephoto lenses from Earth, you can get that sort of distorted, weird effect.

[B]

But. So you're looking through the. I've always seen this stuff on the Internet until I was in Wellington, New Zealand, when I was with Peter. Peter. His house on Wellington's. Like on a body of water, ones I wear. And we were talking, of course, like, the conversation went to ghosts and UFOs because, like.

[A]

Oh, you've seen.

[B]

Why not? No, I haven't seen them in person. I've seen them on his iPhone. Like, these are. This wasn't like a telescopic lens. This is an iPhone. And it looks exactly like what you see, I guess, on the. The zoom ends.

[A]

But that's the thing about zooming in. See is the thing is, like, these are planets that people have zoomed in on. But there's weirder ones where, like, there's video of it and so it looks like it's moving. Yeah, Here we go. Like, look at that.

[B]

Okay, I'll have to see, but you.

[A]

See what I'm saying?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, this is a perfect example. So this is a star in the night sky with a Nikon P9.900. So is that 900X, Jamie?

[B]

No.

[A]

What is that? Can you talk in the mic?

[B]

It's just the model number.

[A]

I have no idea what that means. So what would you think that the amount of, I don't know, 100x?

[B]

I have no idea.

[A]

Okay, so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. But do you see how they're having a hard time zooming in on it? Because it's a handheld, I think. But look how weird it is.

[B]

Looks so weird.

[A]

It's how it's moving around. Like you say, oh, my God, you found a ufo, but it's not.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So a star.

[B]

Well, I do. I do hate that every UFO video is. Is blurry. Well, or star.

[A]

You know, I mean, that could be if you want to get into the whole HAL put off perspective. Who's this brilliant physicist?

[B]

Yeah, he's on a lot of papers.

[A]

Yeah, he explained it to me. He thinks there's some sort of gravity distortion that's around it. So this isn't that.

[B]

Isn't that.

[A]

This is that particular camera. So this is. Is this not a very.

[B]

What is it that.

[A]

So that's a 770749 camera on Amazon 83X.

[B]

So I'll see if Peter will give me that his. I'm sure he would. And I'll send it to you because it's just weird to see.

[A]

Oh, they're weird.

[B]

No, I'm not saying this was like not zoomed in. His wife's next to him.

[A]

I am not denying people are seeing things, but I'm not saying that they're real. What I'm saying is that kind of evidence of that. That star. If you didn't know any better and someone sent it to you. Oh my God. They found a uniform ufo. He'd be like, holy, it's real. Look at that. It's undeniable. Look at the energy around it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With how put off believes is that there's some sort of distortion around these things that's allowing them to be trans. Medium to go through the ocean.

[B]

That's all the. Yeah, that's. That's all. They're like zero point energy and.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And moving and in gravitational wave type stuff.

[A]

Do you go deep on this?

[B]

I get. I get a little bored.

[A]

It gets boring because there's no real resolution.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You could lose your mind. But I had dinner with Jacques Vallee and Hal put off once and a couple other gentlemen and they were explaining the state of the technology, like what they think is currently available and what they think these things are using. These guys.

[B]

I did a call. I did a call with. I got into that crowd for a while before I started colossal and you know, I knew a bunch of those folks. So I talked to Lou, I talked to Hal, did zoom with how or whatever.

[A]

Can you imagine what we are now, where we are, what you're describing in terms of technology that's emerging right now.

[B]

And we have direwolves today in 2025.

[A]

Yes. And now imagine this. 5,000 years advanced and you're probably looking at that if we are being visited. That's what you're probably looking at.

[B]

Yeah. It's not. If you look at the exponential rate of our technology curve, it's. It's not that far.

[A]

Now imagine the monkeying that you guys have done with dire wolves.

[B]

I wouldn't say it's monkey. The selective precision genome engineering.

[A]

Amazing stuff you've done with dire wolves. I'm just being silly. But imagine doing that to primitive Hominids. Now, if you were an insanely advanced species from another dimension, another planet, whatever it is, and you're a million years more advanced than human beings, and you come down here and you see Australia Pythecus, you know, trying to figure out how to make a spear.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you say, listen, let's put a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

[B]

I told you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One edit makes 5,000, you know, confers 5,000 resistance to neurotoxin. So it's like a couple little edits here. Does a lot.

[A]

And then there's the other theory that what we're looking at is human beings from the future. And if you think about what's happening to human beings, we're becoming less and less stout and muscular, and we're becoming more and more. Less and less reliant on. Yeah. And our heads are getting bigger. That's them.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I read that. I read that theory, too.

[A]

It's a bizarre archetype.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's a very strange thing that people keep seeing over and over and over again. It's very weird that there's a bunch of different versions of life that they allegedly see.

[B]

I go down those rabbit holes because, I mean, I just think, once again, going back to like, the stuff of, like, Cuckoocon and. And Anunnaki and all like this. All this stuff.

[A]

It's the Anunnaki stuff. The most interesting.

[B]

It's just so strange. And how. And how you have certain things that are aligned to celestial. You're like, yeah, but they could have picked a lot of constellations. Why do they all pick the Pleiades or whatever it is? Right. Like, why did they do that?

[A]

And also, how did the fucking ancient Sumerians have a detailed map of the solar system?

[B]

Insanely detailed from 6,000 years. Yeah.

[A]

How.

[B]

Yeah. And also be able to predict well enough of where it was going, knowing that we were moving through space.

[A]

Yeah. Also have these giant things with little monkey people on their laps. Like, what are you saying?

[B]

Yeah. There's weird. The cool thing about this, but take a step back. Even though a lot of times people like Graham Hancock and others are ridiculed about it, and we get ridiculed even for the actual signs that we're doing improving every day, at the end of the day, it is still cool and it's interesting. I don't want to live in a society or a universe where everything's figured out. Every day is amazing and we're figuring out amazing things.

[A]

Well, unlike you, I don't have the burden of being taken seriously. And that's great for discussing ridiculous. It is great.

[B]

It's super interesting. But I think that's why so many people subscribe to your podcast, is because one minute you'll talk to a comedian in a UFC fighter, and the next time, you're talking to someone that knows more about, like, the ancient flood than anyone in the world. And that's cool.

[A]

It is cool.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's very fascinating. And we should.

[B]

All the conversations.

[A]

Yes. And the world is filled with so many fascinating things that are all happening at the same time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's almost impo. I mean, and you can get lost. Like we were talking about with the CS Lewis quote. Did you ever find that you talked about getting the news. What. What year was C.S. lewis alive?

[B]

1898.

[A]

Like, I started tracking down, like, there's.

[B]

A bunch of misquoted C.S.

[A]

Lewis quotes. It could be one of those. It could be one of those. But we're being inundated by the worst news of the day, because that's the news that's going to ensure that you watch it. And there's so many cool things that are happening at the same time. And I think it gives people a distorted perception of the hope that we have for mankind. You hear about wars, like, oh, my God, but most people aren't going to war. Most people are cool with each other. Most interactions between humans.

[B]

Positive.

[A]

Are positive, and they're fascinating, and human beings are a fascinating creature. And we're so lucky to be alive at this time where the innovation is reaching this bizarre tipping point where we're.

[B]

You know, I mean, I love it. I'm having. I'm working more hours than I've ever worked in my life. And I've been fortunate before this business. And I will just tell you, I just love it. Every day I wake up, it's awesome.

[A]

That's so cool.

[B]

It's the coolest thing in the world.

[A]

Well, I'm glad you're doing it, man. I really appreciate you. And thank you so much for coming in here and. And showing people the direwolves and. And the Red Wolves, and I hope. I hope more.

[B]

More. We'll keep you updated on fun stuff.

[A]

And I want to go see him. I want to see him.

[B]

All right, we'll talk offline.

[A]

Okay. We'll talk offline. Thank you very much. Oh. If people want to find more information, find more about you.

[B]

It's just.

[A]

We're colossal dot com.

[B]

We're Colossal time, and we're. It is colossal on you YouTube and X and every. And we're at Colossal on X.

[A]

So cool seeing that CGI one walking through the snow. Yeah, I can't wait to see that one day.

[B]

Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. And, I mean, look, the cool thing about Colossal is it's. We have so many people that, you know, we have 170 people over 135 scientists just that wake up and they work 24 7. Like, we've got four labs. People are just, you know, in love with it. That's.

[A]

It's amazing. Thank you very much.

[B]

You got to go see the lab.

[A]

I will. Thank you. Thank you. All right, bye.