StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Sports Genetics

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Will genetically-modified humans be the athletes of tomorrow? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice answer your Cosmic Queries on sports and genetics alongside geneticist Stuart Kim, PhD, founder and CEO of AxGen. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-sports-genetics/ Photo Credit: Christopher Johnson / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And for this installment, we're doing cosmic queries, sports and genetics. Ooh. Ooh. Oh, so evil.

We're going to go there in this episode. Oh, my God. I've got with me Chuck Nice. Chuck, good to have you. Hey, for this episode, you can call me Jimmy the Greek. For anyone over 50, they might remember comments Jimmy the Greek made who sets betting odds on sports teams, and he just couldn't shake it the day he just put his foot in his mouth. Yeah, boy. But anyhow, we also have Gary O'Reilly. Gary.

Hey, Neil. You are the only person that gives authenticity to the Sports Edition, having been once a professional athlete yourself. I just feel compelled to make that point every single time. So today, we're taking our solicited Cosmic Queries, okay, from our fan base, and we're going to hand them to our expert, Dr. Stuart Kim. Stuart, welcome to StarTalk. Thank you.

Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so you are CEO of Axgen, a company that looks at athletes' genes to help them prevent injuries. That sounds like the top story, but there's – So tell us the truth, doctor. What super athlete are you building in your basement right now? And did you create LeBron James in a lab? Can I finish with the guy's CV here?

So he's a retired professor at, guess where, Stanford University. If you're on the video version of this call, he's proudly wearing a Stanford sweatshirt. So, Dr. Kim, if I may call you Stuart, welcome to StarTalk. Yeah, thanks. That makes me your may call you Stuart, welcome to StarTalk. Yeah, thanks. That makes me your personal geneticist for this. Okay. So, Chuck, Gary, take it from here if you've got questions for him. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, just to sort of add to Dr. Kim's bio, the specialization in XGen, which he's CEO and co-founder of, is sports injury. And I think if you were to discuss with elite athletes, do you want to know if you have genes that make you run faster or more powerful? They'd say, nah, I already know this stuff. But if you can tell me if I am predisposed to a weakness in a certain maybe bone density, maybe collagen, maybe some other aspect of my genetic makeup, then you're going to grab my attention. So this is a really interesting field that the doctor has gone into or professor, whichever title he prefers best. All right, let's hear the question. All right, first one up is from Leslie Goodwill from Patreon. Do you think that genetically modified humans will be banned from sports

because they will be competing against people who do not have an altered benefit? Oh, yeah, for sure that has to be banned from sports. You know, if you could genetically modify humans, think of what you could do. You could give everybody an activated EPO receptor, for example. So EPO is a growth hormone that makes you make red blood cells. And that's the thing that all the Tour de France cyclists love to inject so that they have more red blood cells. And you could just bypass all the injections and directly activate the

EPO receptor so your stem cells crank out red blood cells. And then there's no reason to stop there. You might as well just start modifying all of the genes that we know will make you a slightly, slightly better athlete. And then why stop there? Because I wouldn't stop with human genes. I would start putting in animal genes so that you could gain the abilities

of your favorite animal for your favorite sport, you know, within reason. But there's obvious things you could put in to make you, you know, stronger than a human could be. So, you know, they have to ban, could put in to make you stronger than a human could be. They have to ban all genetic modifications from... If you can't even dope, then you definitely

can't screw around with your genome. Wow. So Stuart, we have to devote an entire episode to seeing what is in your basement. We have to do that. Chuck, what's your animal gene? Which animal gene are you going to go for?

For me, I'm going with cheetah because it's an animal that can run at 70 miles an hour. And when they found out that I did it, they'll be like, well, he's a cheetah because we found some cheetah in him. And your play is going to be go long, right? That's right.

Every single play is the same play. Chuck, go long. Exactly. Just go long, wait in the end zone, and catch it. So, I think that's going to really screw up. So, Chuck, you already have your joke lined up for when you do this, right? Exactly. So Stuart, just to be clear, when you described this red blood cell production, are you saying that the more red blood cells you have in your body,

I don't know if I'm oversimplifying this, the more capacity you have to deliver oxygen to where it's needed in the performance of your muscles. Is that a fair characterization? Of that? No, that's right on. And the problem is that you want more than is healthy for you, because if you have so many red blood cells,

then they could clot. And then if they clot, then you get a stroke and you die. And so that's the downside of having so much red blood cells. You may win the Tour de France, but you could also die from a stroke. That's a fair trade-off. I won the Tour de France and then I dropped dead of a stroke, you know, but I died a happy man. It's sort of genetic doping in the same way as with using drugs, performance enhancing drugs.

Not every athlete reacts the same way. Would that be the same if you were to genetically modify an athlete, but it may or may not have the same effect on every athlete? Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know, because everything's so multifactorial, it wouldn't have the same effect. And then you could just keep on dialing it in.

If it didn't have the effect you want, just keep on modifying. And so you do get the result. So now with that in mind, so right now there's research underway with stem cells that actually address problems that are in a fully developed person. And is there a way to do the same thing with athletes? So you would deliver a specific desired effect genetically, but after development is already done.

Right. So you could do this. I think you could do this depo-receptor activation in the stem cells of an athlete. And I don't know, I think a couple of months later, they're going to be,

they're going to have a lot more red blood cells. Wow. Their stem cells. So I think that would work, you know, at least conceivably. Okay. But let me, let me, let's, let's back this up a bit. Okay. In baseball, there's something called Tommy John surgery, where they take a tendon, you know, a pitcher overuses their arm and they get injured. If they take a tendon, I don't know the details,

but they stitch it through a hole in the bone and reattach it, and then they come back. And some of them were better than they were before. No, it's not genetics. It's carpentry. But who is the ethicist who is drawing the line between what is allowed and what is not, if one is carpentry and one is genetics? between what is allowed and what is not, if one is carpentry and one is genetics? Well, this is an, I'm not an athlete, and I don't know. You know, that's got to be the baseball guys,

you know, just decide what's allowed in baseball and when it's cheating. You know, in, there's something called the World Anti-Doping Association where they try to figure out what you can and can't do. But I hear what you're saying because these guys that come back from Tommy John's surgery throw faster than they try to figure out what you can and can't do. But I hear what you're saying because these guys that come back from Tommy John's surgery throw faster than they used to. And it just takes two years

and then they come back and throw faster. So... I mean, is that the surgery or is it the fact that you have two years where you're not throwing the ball at 100 miles an hour? Yeah. I mean, that could be it too. It could be it too. The funny thing is, it's probably a combination

of both, but to take two years out for an athlete is mentally destructive. You've got to be able to physically retain everything you had before you had the surgery. And quite often you can, using through surgical processes, strengthen ligaments. They used to through a term called reefing, where they kind of strip off filaments and then wind it around like you do, you see on cable rope, hold chips to the more. So they're kind of wrapped around to give it extra strength. So that they can actually perform that sort of procedure, or they used to they do now i'm not sure to help strengthen the ligaments and then allow you to then progress forward with uh with your sport so it seems to me that this distinction is highly artificial in the following sense uh stewart the um yeah to go in and restitch your ligaments and tendons, that sounds very

cheating, all right? To go in and dope your blood genetically, that sounds like it's cheating. But suppose I go to the gym and I lift weights and you don't. I make my muscles bigger, faster, stronger because I'm doing things to me. I'm eating high protein because I know about proteins. All right? It's not just carbs. I need protein to rebuild the muscle. That's biochemistry.

So why is that not cheating? But all of a sudden, to manipulate genes, that is. Okay. You know, I think you're right. This testosterone coping that you're not allowed to do

in the Tour de France is not that obvious that that's a bad thing. If you're kind of middle-aged and you would just like to be able to exercise like you were young and so just a mild increase in your testosterone so my my testosterone level is going down wait before i continue you got to remember i'm a geneticist like i'm talking about stuff that i have basically layperson knowledge of, so you don't have to believe me. But testosterone level goes down as you get older,

and, you know, I could bump that up just to my young level. Not dangerous level, just the young level. That clearly gives me better workouts. And I don't race. Nobody's going to test my blood. But I would get better workouts, and I wouldn't feel so, you know. Tired and old. Tired and old.

Is that what you're trying to say, Doc? Yeah. I get humiliated by these young guys and their sandals passing me on my bicycle. That's not fun. So if I had just a little bit of testosterone, you know, maybe I would get the old energy back. And, you know, if I just get a little bit, it's safe. You know, it's just, you know, I'm not going to endanger my heart if I get normal but useful levels of testosterone. So there's lots of things that people do that would benefit your amateur

athlete. You're just not in a competitive edge. So that's why I can't really claim that I'm better than anyone if I'm doping with testosterone. It's just that my personal rides would get a little bit more extreme. So Stuart, let me be devil's advocate here before we get to our next question and just pose that people pay a lot of money and athletes are paid a lot of money to perform at levels that are basically superhuman. That's what we pay to see. We don't want to see your neighbor perform. We want to see people who have talents that leave you stupefied. Can you imagine a day where all bets are off and all genetic modification is possible and it's the genetically modified Olympics? People would pay big money for that. Like, what do you care? We're trying to put forth a

better version of humans in the sports arena. You don't foresee a day where that would be embraced? Well, why wait for genetics? Why not just do that today? No, tomorrow genetics will come into the picture. Let's make it clear. You can't, at least I don't know of anybody where you can modify an athlete to improve their performance. There's no way the U.S. will let you do that.

But today, why don't you just have the doped-up Major League Baseball league? It's all doped up and stewarded up, and it's like Roger Clemens against Barry Vaughn. And all of them are doped up to the gills and they're flinging home runs and throwing 110 mile an hour fastballs at each other and there's no rules then you could just see what's the best that doping can make you know in a sport where there's clearly advantages of doping and you have all of these you know so there's a honest league that we have and you're not allowed to cheat and then you could have the cheaters league and just say, yeah, I'm really going for it.

This is, you know, just look at these muscles. And if you hit it, it goes a mile. And if you pitch it, it goes past the end. And you just have these guys playing against each other. See who wins out. I love it. So we're just honest about the cheating, rather than cheating and not trying to...

Who would win if Clemens Patch touched against Barry Bond? What's the deal there? Well, thank you for that predictive future. That sounds more like whacked out races. Gary, let's get to the next question. All right. This is from Josh V on Patreon. We've had so

many questions. So all of our listeners, thank you so much. And we apologize for not being able to get through them because there's about six or seven shows worth of questions here. Do professional sports teams study a player's genetics when evaluating their roster acquisitions, for example, in the NFL draft? And that's from Josh V from Patreon. And we will get to that answer after this break. See what I did there?

You did. You did it again. That was a great question. Right when StarTalk Cosmic Queries returns on sports, performance, and genetics. We'll be right back. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition Cosmic Queries. We have Dr. Stuart Kim with us, who is an expert in sports genetics.

So, Stuart, welcome. Of course, we have Gary and Chuck. Mm-hmm. So, so... Hello. Gary, you had some, a little bit of extra bio that we had left out of Stuart early on. What did you have there? Well, apart from AxGen being co-founded by Dr. Stuart Kim, on it are some elite athletes,

and they're delving into the area of sports injury. But part of one of the reasons why Dr. Kim is with us today on this Cosmic Queries is we are going to be running a series of shows on the athletic phenom. Now, we'll go through the nature, the nurture, and the technology. We'll be exploring what it is that makes the physicality of a phenom. So this is a delightful first introduction to Dr. Kim again. Thanks for being on. So why don't you reread that question that we just left off, Gary? For sure.

Right. Just before the break, we hit on a question from Josh V from Patreon. Do professional sports teams study a player's genetics when evaluating their roster acquisitions? And I think with just the recent NFL draft, that is probably what is in this contributor's mind. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that no NFL teams are doing this type of thing because there's a collective bargaining agreement

for all the professional sports in the United States. And so the first thing that would happen is the lawyers for the collective bargaining agreement would veto it and just say, it's not in our collective bargaining agreement. We're not going to give you the genetic information. But I'm also sure that European teams do that because they don't have the collective bargaining agreement and they're allowed to test their players for

certain genetic markers wow so so very important what you just said there stewart because your ax gen specializes in in predictive information about whether an athlete will become injured and the value of a player in the draft to me as owner of the team is not just are you a good player, but can you avoid injury? You're no good to me on the bench. So clearly that's going to be really important going down the line. So I agree. So let me describe like the upside of this.

It should be a win-win-win situation, right? So the owner should like this because their players don't get hurt. They have more guys playing in the championship. They win more Super Bowls. Coaches should like this because their players don't get hurt. Players should like this because they don't get hurt. They get more sacks in their career. They win more Super Bowls. So everybody should have an incentive to do this. And the reason it gets shut down is because of, you know, you could have negative contract negotiations. If you have risk for injury, then you're not a $100 million quarterback, you're an $80 million quarterback,

right? Yeah. And even though you may, just because you have a marker for a risk for injury doesn't mean you're going to be injured. So you're penalized for something that may not happen. It might not happen. And these markers are, you know, they're statistics. So it doesn't mean you're going to get hurt. And first off, you know, from all of the people we've talked to, coaches, players, they care about performance and risk of injury, that's there. It's important, but it's not what they're really making decisions on. So the solution is to have everybody agree that, well, if a team, Dallas Cowboys comes to

action and say, we want to test our players, then the first thing that's going to happen is that the players unit is going to shut that down and the Dallas Cowboys would not be allowed to do that. And Axgen would have, we have our privacy thing and then if players don't allow it, the Dallas Cowboys can know the information, then they're not going to know the information. So that's all secure. The solution could be that the Dallas Cowboys say, it's a win-win-win situation. We're going to let our players get tested. We're going to let the players

know what they're in, and the players all have a personal trainer. Not a Dallas Cowboys trainer, but a personal trainer they use, like LeBron has his own personal trainer. So the player and his own personal trainer could get together and do the extra training to prevent the injury. Now the player doesn't get hurt. The contract doesn't get changed. The team wins. So this could be a good investment for the Dallas Cowboys and preserve the confidentiality for the players.

the confidentiality for the player. So that looks like a way forward until the collective bargaining agreement gets renegotiated. And then we'll see what those guys decide, you know, they want to do with genetic testing in sports. Interesting. I want to emphasize something you just said, because it seemed to me to be the most important fact. So it's not that you're damaged goods if you have risk of injury.

It's that knowing you have risk of a particular kind of injury if you have risk of injury, is that knowing you have risk of a particular kind of injury enables you to mitigate against being susceptible to that when you engage in the sports. Exactly. So action stands for actionable. Right.

Even then though, you have to make sure that you have the right training regimen because people can overtrain and they can train to prevent injury, which leads to another type of injury. So, you know, by strengthening an area of your body in such a way that you're trying to prevent injury,

you may weaken another area of your body and actually cause injury to happen there. So there's so many ways that this has to be balanced that if I were a player and if I were an elite player, I would say, I'm already an elite player. I'm not giving you any more information than you already have on me. If I were a Midland player, I would say, okay, maybe we can do this because I might be able to bump something up. If I improve my performance or if I find a way to be better,

then I might end up making more money. I think it's going to be more individualistic if I'm the player. I'm going to be a little bit more reticent to give up information depending on what kind of player I am.

Elite athletes will go for this if they know they're protected. Yeah, that's the answer. I have nothing. Listen, if I'm not protected, all I can do is lose. If I'm an elite athlete. Absolutely. If I'm an elite athlete and you don't have safety valves in this situation for me, all I can do is lose.

I mean, it doesn't, you know, because I'm already winning. Doctor, when you say about there are certain markers you can test for, can you sort of expand on what those markers might be? I think things like bone density and stuff like that I might see as a bit of a given, but there must be some other ones that you would go to to see. Well, there are lots some other ones that you would go to to see. Well, there are lots of other ones, and there are more coming down the pike. Bone density is our strongest test because it's crazy strong. And bone density, like low bone density, is the biggest risk factor for stress fracture. Stress fracture is the biggest risk injury for endurance runners. They work out, they run twice a day,

and they don't fully heal in between workouts, so eventually they get a stress fracture. And it's preventable because it's a repetitive use injury. So just something simple like biomechanics, running on softer turf, it can prevent a stress fracture. It's a perfect storm. It's preventable, and it happens a lot fracture. It's a perfect storm. It's preventable and it happens

a lot and there's strong genetic information about risk for stress fracture. So that's a really good one. It's so good that it's not only going to be used for athletes, but soon it should be used for osteoporosis because low bone mineral density is also called osteoporosis. So not athletes, but old guys, old people are worried about osteoporosis. So Gary, let's go to another question. I'm going to go to this one.

You both got questions. That's how we normally do this show, believe it or not. They never give me any questions. I never have anything. Okay. Now, I want to follow up on what we just talked about

because there's a really interesting question from JC. He's also a Patreon patron. And he says, Hi, guys. In an evolutionary perspective, how can you explain the great athleticism

that black people have? Is there something in their genes that makes them more athletic by default? I am a big NBA fan, and it's always fascinating to me to athletic genetic performance or genetic athletic performance? You know, I don't know, because it's easy to come to the wrong conclusion about this, all things about races. Because you could also say, like, Asians can't swim or what else, can't do skiing. You know, that they don't win gold medals in skiing. Except they do now, right? So all of a sudden, Asians decided to train for these aerial flips. And now a bunch of Asians are doing well

because they just decided to do it. And so, you know, you don't see, you didn't see many blacks play tennis player back in the day. And now you read tons of African-Americans playing. And it was just because they didn't have tennis courts in their neighborhood. They had basketball courts in their neighborhood.

So I don't know. You know, I don't know, you know, I don't know if it's, if it's nature or nurture and that sort of thing. And, and, uh, you can, you know, Africans are taller than Asians. Just look at the average height. So there's gotta be something to it. Basketball is better to be tall. So there's probably something, but it's just, it's something as simple as that. But I'd say, you know, training is a really big effect too. I think one of Chris Rock's more famous observations, which was completely hilarious, he says, something's wrong with the world. This was maybe 15 years ago. He was able to say this. He said, something's wrong with the world. How is it that the best rapper is white,

the best basketball player is Chinese, and the best golfer is black? That's funny. Yeah, that was funny. That's a funny joke. Damn. Of course, Tiger Woods, and we had... Yao Ming.

Yao Ming, and you had the guy from Detroit. Eminem. Eminem. Eminem. Yeah, yeah. So to your point, Dr. Kim. Yeah. We had another question.

All right. This from Eric Varger on StarTalk Facebook. Is there availability of genetic testing for professional athletes that could predict the possible susceptibility of concussions for athletes? What a great question. That's a great question.

This week. Cranial fitness. That's what your father always told you. Get your thick head. There's a second part to this question, please. Also, if it involves a frying pan, I'll laugh my head off. Also, how close are scientists to developing a genetic therapeutic for healing and possibly reversing concussions?

Right. So there you go. That's an interesting dimension to that question. This was not staged. This is True Blue. But this week, we developed our first genetic test for concussion. Let me tell you about it. There are two markers for concussion that are crazy strong.

And, you know, the statistics are really out of this world that if you have either of these two markers your risk for concussion goes up something like threefold and so this one and there's there's they call it prevention is called prehabilitation in this field so neck strengthening exercises seem to prevent your risk of concussion so now you're you now you're playing soccer as a 15-year-old. If you had this risk for concussion, you could do neck strengthening exercises a few extra a week on top of all these other things. And then now when you hit the ball, you're less likely to get concussion. And so you could mitigate your risk and get closer back to the normal level

so that you get to have the career that you did have. So that's the good news. Other thing is that there are helmets for bicyclists and football players that are kind of special helmets. And you could start to think about the special helmet. And in soccer, you can wear a headband or something like that

to reduce the impact from hitting the ball. So there are all sorts of prehabilitation things to prevent concussion if you're at increased risk. And we're the only people that know about these genetic markers for concussion. It's really good.

Congratulations. How do I invest in your company now? Because, I mean, let's be honest. The, the NFL is going to need this information. Yeah.

Well, no, there's the two weeks, right? It's like the parents of the kids are going to want to know this so that their kids, yeah, the NFL players,

yeah, they get concussions. That's for sure. It makes a lot more sense for, you know, 14-year-olds so that, you know, they can get into college with a scholarship or the college athletes so that they can get drafted. It works all the way up. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I mean, ultimately, the NFL benefits, like, for instance, a guy who can either eliminate or greatly mitigate, you know, the head injury.

That's a guy who's going to have a longer career. I mean, there's some there's some guys who get to the NFL and their careers cut short because of not what happened in the NFL, but because of all the damage that was incurred on their way to the NFL. That's right. Yeah. Plus all the guys that you never heard of. You know, that because they got injured and then they just didn't get drafted. And, you know, they could have been the next Tom Brady. Tom Brady wouldn't have been Tom Brady if he got hurt.

So that's what we're talking about. Nah, I'm pretty sure Tom Brady would have still been Tom Brady. I don't know what it is. They'd have changed the whole game. They'd have been like, everybody has to have a concussion now. Quarantine has not affected your hatred for Brady, has it, Chuck? So let's see if we get another question in before the break. Go ahead, Gary. You want to go? All right, let's... if we get another question in before the break. Go ahead, Gary. You want to go? No, you go ahead.

All right, let's... Okay, this is Disin on Instagram. Will humanity ever reach a point where in sports especially, they will just peak and cannot get any better? Ooh. And we don't have time to answer that. See, I did it again. We're going to take a break,

and we're going to come back for our last segment of StarTalk Sports Edition, Cosmic Queries on Sports Performance and Genetics with Dr. Stuart Kim. We'll be right back. StarTalk. We're in the middle of some good shit. Sorry. No, just genetics and sports performance. And we just left off, Gary, with the question, what was it?

This from DeSin on Instagram. DeSin322, in case there's more DeSinners out there. Will humanity ever reach a point where in sports especially, that we just peak and cannot get any better? Because you know that's come up. You go back with the history of the mile.

Will anyone ever break the four-minute mile? And people were asymptotic. That must be some physical limit. And everybody jumped in to opine on that. And then once it broke, in fact, I think the race that broke the four-minute mile, two or three people broke the four-minute mile in that same race.

Damn. Sir Roger Bannister was back in the way back then. I think it was in Oxford. There was a racetrack, and it took him six weeks of preparation for a training regime to attack the four-minute mile record, and he did so, yeah.

So, Stuart, what do you know about the limits of human performance? The limits in principle, right? That would just be like the physics of our human body, right? Otherwise, bones start breaking and muscles detach. Well, I'm going to give you a layperson's answer because I'm a geneticist. I'm not an athlete. But I'll give you a layperson's answer. Well, I guess I won't.

The answer is I don't know. Maybe somebody, let's just say kids, somebody, let's put a number up there. Can somebody run a three-minute mile? Something crazy, right? What is the, you could say it's possible, it's not possible. When I was a professor, there was a similar question being asked about longevity. Because I used to study aging before I studied sports. And the question is, can you live to be 200? And the most serious and the smartest aging guys

had a bet, a million dollar bet, that there is somebody alive that's going to live 200 years. Because longevity keeps on going up 0.8 years per year. And so you just extrapolate and you just say, somebody's alive today that will live 200 years. So you could say somebody's alive today that's going to run a three-minute mile, and you just could plot out how much low. Or is there a speed limit for the mile? And you can't get faster than something, and that this is the fastest that human tendons

and human muscles can go. And I don't know anything about this because I'm a geneticist, but those are the two options. There's a speed limit, or there is no speed limit. We'll eventually get there. Here's how I would address that question.

I love your candor and insights. Speed of light, speed of light. What is this? question? I love your candor. Speed of light. Speed of light. What if it's speed? That tells you how much I know about this topic. You're not running the mile at the speed of light. That will not happen. But I do think you can ask, we can ask ourselves, particularly since you're into genetics, and earlier in the program, we talked about what is your spirit animal whose genes you might want.

I don't think it's out of the question to ask, can I be at least as fast as the fastest mammal? Can I have reflexes as fast as the fastest reflexed other animal? We're all part of the animal kingdom and the tree of life. Except the cheetah has two extra legs than I do. Damn those ten nine lives. And the ability to elongate its spine to stretch its gait. It coils the spine so it can spring back. Yeah, yeah.

So for just in a more serious example, right, we have veterans who have dismembered legs, you know, with prostheses. A newt can regenerate limbs, right? We like to think of ourselves as all up and high and mighty on the tree of life, and you go to a newt that can do things we can't and it is a vertebrate animal as are we so you stewart the geneticist can you just go in and get the gene for reflexes and the gene for speed and the gene for this and just graft it into the human to then give us that ability. Yeah, we can. So really, really good scientists are studying newts and how they regenerate. And that's leading to lots of ideas about why human neurons don't regenerate,

but new neurons can completely regenerate. And so there are really serious molecular studies that are going to eventually start to work and be used therapeutically for human, like spinal cord injury. Especially. Yeah. So I think that would work. And while you were talking, I just thought, why would you do genetics? I mean, Blade Runner, those guys that, those guys can run really fast if they have these

different types of blades on their feet instead of feet. And so those guys can run very, very fast. Yeah, I mean, at some point, it might be a combination of your own genetics but then some type of augmentation.

So, you know. And just to be clear, just to be clear, because we have a very geeky audience, your reference to Blade Runner was not for film. It was to the sprinters. They outfit them with basically a flexible blade. Oscar Prestorius. Yeah.

Among them. Exactly. So when you run, your downward momentum gets stored. The energy of that gets stored in the blade and then recoils. So it's still all of your own energy. It's just more efficient than your own feet, than your biological feet. So, yeah, so you're right, Chuck. That's kind of an augmentation of what that would be. Okay, so what you're saying, Stuart, is that there's still a chance we will have a three-minute mile.

It'd just be run by somebody who doesn't look anything human at all. That's cool. All right, next question. This is Radim Zadik. Radim Zadik from Facebook says this. If you could choose one sport to excel in through genetic enhancement, what would it be? And I think a better, or just to stretch that out, what sport would benefit most from genetic enhancement? Because, I mean, that would be the sport you want to play, you know, would be the one that would benefit most from genetic enhancement.

play, you know, would be the one that would benefit most from genetic enhancement. And genetic enhancement, this is sometime in the future where I can CRISPR in genetic changes. Yes. And even these animal genes, like I could be a cheetah. Well, so I think all

four of us should think about this. You could be... I got my answer. What will make me the richest? Then I'll just try, try like a cheetah gene well i'd want to be uh i'd want to reflex gene so i could hit a fastball because baseball yeah well that's a good one another answer would be what would just be the funnest thing to do and you could say i want you know some sort of a gene that lets me climb to the top of Everest with no face mask, with no gas mask. Or I could just hold my breath like a seal.

And then, you know, they understand pretty well why a seal can go down and not breathe for whatever, 30 minutes. And, you know, I would just put in the myoglobin, seal myoglobin, so my muscles don't need any oxygen for 30 minutes. And, you know, I would just put in the myoglobin, feel myoglobin so my muscles don't need any oxygen for 30 minutes. Then I would just go scuba diving, not scuba diving, snorkeling, except I could go down for 30 minutes and look at all the coral. So, you know, that would be the funnest thing to do. It'd be, you know, for me, it'd be funner than being a baseball player, but I wouldn't make any money about it.

Those are my two, the funnest thing to do, you just pick something that's going to cost you money. What would you choose? For me, I'm a sports purist, and so I'm a very deep – I deeply embrace the Olympic motto, faster, higher, stronger. In each of those categories, you can set a world record. So if the Olympics were as pure as its motto, you would have no team sports, and you would have no sports that were involved judges, where they score you at the end.

So if you have genetic enhancements, you would run faster, jump higher, you know, faster, higher, stronger. You'd be stronger. And then you can have objective measures of how far humans have come in those realms. Interesting. See, I'm going with something that, like

a gazelle, like reflex, so that I can stop and move, and I'd just be the greatest tennis player of all time. Oh. Because it's an individual sport and the endorsements are amazing. So, 15! All right, Gary, how about you? Enhanced vision.

Oh. Yeah. So, I can, my field of vision, my my peripheral vision my foveal vision my ability to read every single stitch on a fastball yeah curveball slider whatever you got i'm seeing it and then i can see during a game i see movement i have i mean i'm gonna upgrade my improved vision with pattern recognition software of some kind except the problem is you're going to upgrade my improved vision with pattern recognition software of some kind. Except the problem is you're going to be walking around like with giant eyes because all the animals that have that kind of vision, they all have big giant eyes. Gary, I try this from time to time.

So our vision is limited by the number of cones and photoreceptor cells we have in our eyes. So think of it like a camera chip and we're at like 400K or something like that. And Eagle has more receptors per unit area than we do. They can see much better. So their resolution is higher because they have more pixels at the back of their eyes. All we have to do is figure out why does an eagle have more pixels than a human? And then your eyesight, there's no physical limit why your eyesight has to max out at 20 pence. And why couldn't you just get eagle eyesight?

Hence the phrase, you've got eagle eyes. Eagle eyes, yeah. It's biologically justified to make that such a claim. We've got time for one more question. Who's got it? Okay. So this, yeah, I'll grab this one. This is from Cockrum, I think it's Richard on Instagram, directed to Stuart. I work out hypertropathy and I'm also a certified personal trainer. My question to you, is there any way to surpass or alter someone's genetic potential when it comes to physical strength and or endurance without the use of hormones? Well, let's think about this. So you want to genetically alter, what could you do?

You could gain muscle. When you gain muscle... You could do CRISPR. You're not allowed to do CRISPR. So that answer is no. You could do a transplant. You know, you could transplant in somebody else's organ or cells. That's sort of like genetically altering your potential, I guess.

I mean, I think the answer is no. If it's genetic alteration, there's no way now. It's theoretically possible, but it's not available yet. Well, let me offer a corollary to this. So let's take, who's the guy that won a gazillion gold medals in swimming in the Olympics? Michael Phelps? Yeah, Phel Olympics. Michael Phelps? Yeah, Phelps. Michael Phelps.

Okay. So let's take Michael Phelps for an example. You can have people study his body and they'll say he's a physical specimen for swimming. You could say all of that. But at the end of the day, he's in the pool for 16 hours a day. Okay.

So he has motivation to train. Yeah. And so you can have whatever genetic potential to perform that your profile tells you. Yeah. But if you're a deadbeat on the couch, none of that will get realized. So in your world,

is anyone talking about motivation? Exactly. Is there a gene for that? Exactly. Exactly. So we talk about this all the time. If you could figure out all the elite athletes versus all the normal guys and figure out what's the genetic difference between those two guys, Are you going to find a muscle gene or a brain gene? Most of my brain genes, my guys, you know,

I've got guys that are world class volleyball players and NFL players and, and, and national record holders and endurance runner. They all come back and say it's the brain. You know, they, they had the drive and the determination and knowing them, I can get it. Cause they, these guys have drive to get up every morning and exercise and keep on going even when it hurts. And that's not something that I would do. So they all say it's the brain that got them where they are.

Anybody with a normal muscle could get there as long as you had the crazy kind of drive to be an elite athlete. So we'll see. You know, maybe this world-class athlete is up here, and you've got to have the drive to just want it or not care if it hurts, something like that. And that's on a whole other level from whether or not you get nervous at high-profile competitions. That's a whole other thing, right?

That's how steady you are and how focused you are, separate from whether you're waking up every morning at 6 a.m. Yeah, we also talk about doing the sports choking experiment, right? You take all the guys that think the free throw, and all the guys who can't hit a free throw in a fourth quarter come back, not come back and try to figure out they're about the same athletically, but one wins

and the other one usually loses. What's that? It's cheating. And we talk about doing that experiment someday. We did explore that, didn't we? Where there's a certain part of the brain, the only one I've got coming up is hippocampus, we did explore that didn't we where there's a certain part of the brain is it that i'm the only one i've got coming up is hippocampus and you dial you can dial up and dial down

the activity within there and it's that allows you to just go routine oh free for all yeah and it's and the psychologists work with athletes, elite athletes, to train exactly these things within their own brains to get this performance level up. So, Chuck, you and I did something similar to this on set in another show where I forgot the theme, but we had to stick our hand in a bucket of ice and see how long. It was about pain. It was about pain tolerance.

Pain tolerance. I just knew that I could just do that, right? I just knew based on pains that i've experienced this would be nothing based on the stuff that i've been through in my life i used to wrestle um intercollegiate wrestling and there's a lot of pain and so i think i i beat you in that i think was i don't think i know you beat me in it because guess what? My life is not based on how much pain I am able to withstand. That is not one of the criteria or criterion that I use to measure my life. As a matter of fact, my life is actually predicated upon how much leisure I'm able to withstand. predicated upon how much leisure I'm able to withstand. That's a whole other, that's a different genetic company.

All about a gene, baby. Neil, do you remember just recently we did a show with the NFL legend Tony Gonzalez? Yeah. And he was talking to you about how the fact that he missed only a handful of games in his 17-year career. And one time he had a bone or something sticking out of his shoulder and it never bothered him. Doctor, doctor. I mean, there must be markers for that.

Can we have some, please? Let me just say, Gary wants some. I'll stay as I am. I don't want to walk around and have somebody go, hi, did you know your leg was broken? I don't need that in my life. I don't need that. So we're running out of time. So Dr. Stuart Kim, leave us with some thoughts and some wisdom on where you are and where you think this will all land in the coming years.

Well, the first thought is what Gary just asked me, because all I can tell you is we have a secret project at Oxygen. I can't reveal it to your listeners right now. We won't tell anybody. We won't tell anybody. We won't tell anybody. We won't tell anybody. And so I'm dying to tell you about our secret. It's so cool.

Once we get a little bit further on with it. And today we talked about a lot of stuff that's really not possible. You're listening to Scott to understand that. You know, like putting in cheetah genes. I mean, nobody thinks that's possible, but it's fun to think about. But there really is new scientific data that we have. We're providing an edge to elite athletes that, you know, should be able to benefit them by helping them not get injured so that they can progress to become elite athletes and stay in their sport.

Cool. Well, that's an important dimension in the future of athletic competition. And good to see that you're on top of that. And one day we will take a tour of your basement, whether you like it or not. Where we will get to see the first prototype of LeBron James. That's right. All right, we got to end it there.

Dr. Kim, thank you for sharing your time with us. And we'll definitely come back to you. Gary, as always. Dude. Thank you. Definitely. Chuck, nice comic, as always. As always.

I tweeted Neil Tyson. And, of course, that's who I am. I'm your personal astrophysicist. Thanks for joining us. As always, I bid you to keep looking.