The Infinite Monkey Cage - Is Extinction the End?

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Brian Cox and Robin Ince dig into de-extinction asking, could we and should we resurrect creatures of the past? They are joined by geneticist Adam Rutherford, palaeontologist Susannah Maidment and comedian/virologist Ria Lina.Extinction has played a significant role in shaping the life we see on Earth today. It is estimated around 95% of species to have ever existed are already extinct - but could any of these extinctions be reversed? Our panel explore the different methods being pursued in these resurrection quests, including back-breeding, cloning and genetic engineering. They take a close look at the case of the woolly mammoth and the suggestion they could be returned to the Arctic tundra. Some claim the mammoth is the key to ecosystem restoration, but our panel have some punchy opinions on whether this Jurassic Park fantasy is even ethical.Producer: Melanie Brown Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem Researcher: Olivia JaniBBC Studios Audio Production

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts. I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince. And this is the Infinite Monkey Cage. Now, look out of your window if you're sat at home listening to this. And, you know, what can you see? Perhaps a song thrush. Maybe you can see an urban fox near your bins, a magpie or if you're lucky, too.

But imagine instead You saw a roaming Tyrannosaurus Rex that was eating your cats Well, that's the kind of world that the boffins are trying to create Why? Adopting that tone. Well, I was told to adopt that tone because apparently we're not getting enough of the Jeremy Vine phonin audience. And this was the kind of thing that would draw them in. Boffins.

So... You might wonder what Robin is on about. But today we're looking at the subject of de-extinction, bringing extinct creatures back into the biosphere. Basically Jurassic Park. We know how that ended with a sequel. Another sequel. Now is it possible to bring species like the woolly mammoth or the dodo back from the dead? If so, how would we do it? And even if we have the technology, should we do it?

So today we're joined by a paleontologist, a biologist, and a comedian who has degrees in pathology, virology, and forensic science, which is the best kind of episode of Columbo, because you would definitely get away with it. And they are... Hi, I'm Susie Maidman. I'm a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum. And the animal I would not bring back is the giant carboniferous arthropod arthropelura. There will be further questions shortly. I'm Adam Rutherford and I'm a geneticist and broadcaster.

You may be aware of my work on Radio 4 from programs like Start of the Week. Nope. A bit early for me. The organism I would not like to see, but the first choice I was going to say the mammoth, and we'll probably talk about that, so I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say Hitler. I mean, he's extinct. Is he technically a species?

Because I'm beginning to think that might be why one of your books didn't have the sales you were expecting. Hi, I'm Ria Leana. I'm a comedian and ex-phorologist, and I would not bring back the concept of women as property. Oh, this is our panel. Yeah. Woo!

Applause Susie, we have to ask you just for a second. Can you tell us the name of that beast again? Yeah, it's Arthropleura, and it it was a two meter long 50 centimeter wide millipede. Now I don't really like things with more than four legs so a giant two meter long millipede. I don't know. No. Oh that is beautiful though isn't it? No it's not. So what size millipede do you prefer? I prefer no millipedes. Really? You're anti millipede?? I'm anti-millipede, yeah. Yeah, all together. Well, no, I'm fine with snakes.

Don't mind snakes. It's the legs. Yeah, don't mind the legs. That's the thing, isn't it? A fear of legs. Is it? Is it actually? Maybe I've got it. Evolutionally, we're designed to not like spiders and things that can move like that. It's also, I know we're not meant to be doing them among cage-on legs, but do you think it's also the spindliness of legs? Because we did do a show all about spiders,

and Brian got all scared because there were some live spiders It was brilliant. It's the smallness of the leg Like if a spider had fleshy legs and knees and little shoes, it might be better That's an interesting idea I'm just trying to think would I be more scared of an elephant if it had six legs? Because what you're saying is is if there's sturdy legs that they're not as scary Yeah, but it would probably kill me faster than a spider with shoes on yeah I only turned up to the wrong record I do agree with that though you

write is it cuz now at least how many legs does this huge millipede thing have them loads loads of money a thousand-legged elephant I wouldn't be scared of that particularly would you what Do they have elephant legs or do they have millipedes? No, elephant legs, obviously. Are you paying attention, Adam? You have turned up to the wrong show if you're not going to listen to some of these very important philosophical points. But also if the elephant would be like a kilometre long to have that many legs.

Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. That's a terrible animal. But I think part of the thing that makes spiders scary is because of their leg formation, they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they can move around and they many legs. Yeah! Well that sounds like a good idea! That's a terrible animal! But I think part of the thing that makes spiders scary is

because of their leg formation they can move in all directions. Elephants pretty much move forward. I can move in all directions. You can't, you nearly fell over when you came up. It could be a spherical elephant. A spherical elephant? With legs all around it. But where's its trunk? You haven't thought this through at all! As you know, to a theoretical physicist, all cows are spherical. Yeah, and all people are spherical as well, and that's why physicists should be kept well away from real science like biology. I have come to the wrong recording! Why don't I ask a question that's related to the subject of the problem?

It is hard though, isn't it? Because I think people listening at home will be going, I would like to know more about this, the girth of a leg, the fear of a leg, the number, what's the perfect number of legs for an elephant? Four. Four. Is that perfect? Well actually, to be perfectly honest, male elephants also use their penis as a leg in certain situations so they can prop themselves up. So maybe the perfect number of elephant legs is actually five.

Can I ask a question? And this actually is going to be relevant for later in the discussion about mammoth in IVF. I guarantee this. I can't wait for the mammoth penis conversation. I'll be honest. I'm excited. Weirdly, I had this conversation on live radio in Ireland one time and the person

arguing against me was a priest. What conversation about that? About why the elephant penis is prehensile. There's a specific reason for it which is relevant to the topic for today. That's creepy. Can I just say that is creepy, a prehensile penis. Like don't come near, if your penis is prehensile, do not come near me. I mean, I didn't choose the seating plan. Before we get to the extinction, let's talk about extinction. So what role has extinction played in the evolution of life on Earth?

It is the defining feature of evolution of life on Earth. We estimate that something like 95% to 97% of all species that have ever existed are already extinct. There have been five major extinction events in the history of life on Earth. We're probably in the sixth, and this is the one that's happening at the greatest speed. So that's the one we should be most concerned with.

Susie's a better person to talk about the individual extinctions, but the one that you know the one that killed all the dinosaurs, the giant asteroid that landed just off the coast of what is now Mexico and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, that was the third biggest and the two that came before it, Susie, were much worse. The N Permian and the N Triassic. The N Permian, probably 95% of life on Earth went extinct. And actually those extinctions are very useful

and very informative because we can look back at them and look back at what happened and the effects and how quickly ecosystems recovered to try to understand a little bit more about what's going on today. So I think that's why paleontology has never been more important than it is today, folks. So when it was at its peak before the end Permian, what would the world have looked like?

And then when it was at its lowest, when you're talking about just 5% left, then what are we seeing? What's the kind of image? Yeah, so this was a time before the dinosaurs evolved. There were lots of things like mammal-like reptiles. Mammals hadn't quite evolved yet, but there were lots of things that if you looked at, you'd probably think were dinosaurs,

but were actually more closely related to us than they were to the dinosaurs. So, big reptiles and very diverse. After the mass extinction, as I said, about 95% of life went extinct, potentially up to 95% of life. And what we see then is things called disaster faunas, and these are very, very widespread animals, but very, very low biodiversity.

So we don't have loads of animals, but the ones that we do have seem to have been incredibly successful. So they seem to have been able to thrive in this kind of post-apocalyptic sort of world. So I guess they're the kind of things that, you know, people always say, oh, the Beatles will still be there after nuclear war. I just pictured this sort of nuclear wasteland with just a couple of men and guitars. So, Anna, in terms of the final bit of extinction, basically without extinction, how much progress is it possible for the, you know, for a living planet like ours, and you've said 95 to 97% of all living things have gone extinct, is that a requirement to

get to the stage of the multi-legged elephants and ourselves? The pattern of life on Earth requires extinction to have happened in order for the next thing to have happened as it already played out. So it's a funny sort of question, yes, things are the way they are because extinction has happened, but there's no sense of direction within that. The mammals wouldn't have evolved in the same way that they have done and ended up with us and monkeys and rats and other mammals that I can't think of right now. Bats? Cats? Yeah, do you want me to just name them?

Right, yeah, bats, cats, otters, yeah. A thousand bats. What was I talking about? I don't know. Suzie! It's a good idea to move to Suzie now. So the subject of this programme is de-extinction. So in terms, it sounds like science fiction. I suppose everybody thinks of Jurassic Park. Scientifically speaking, as we are now, is it a possibility that we can bring species back that were extinct?

Well, there's different ways that people have tried to do it and some of those result, or the ones that are sort of successful, don't really bring back an extinct thing. They bring back something similar to the thing that was extinct, but it's not genetically the same. So there's sort of three different ways that people have thought about this. The first one is back breeding and people have people have been doing this selectively breeding traits for millennia, right? It's how we domesticated everything. And so you can backbreed. The idea is that you take something

that's quite similar to the animal that you're interested in, and you kind of backbreed to try to produce something that is basically the same. So an example of this is the aurochs, which was the thing that the cattle were domesticated from and is now extinct. It was part of the Pleistocene megafauna. So in the ice age, it was one of the big animals and they're no longer in the wild. They're extinct in the wild. So people took cows, their genetic lineage continues in living cows. So they took cows and

tried to selectively breed the features that aurochs had, so big curly horns and shaggy coats. So you're essentially breeding out the things that we bred into them. It wasn't just people who did that though, it was the Nazis. Oh really? I didn't know that. Yeah the Nazis had an aurochs breeding program to bring back. Why did they have that? They did all sorts of weird shit.

You seem too obsessed, Adam. So in terms of that backbreeding, would it be possible if you had two people who seem to have, in terms of, say, Europeans who had a reasonably high percentage of Neanderthal gene, for instance, could we start working towards creating Neanderthal human being how long would it take and should we? Robin I'm afraid I've dated a few already. They were amongst us all the time. They never left. There's a nugget of a reasonable question in there

somewhere I think from Robin because I suppose the question would be you could phrase it so is there still in all these bits of the Neanderthal genome that are around today in principle is there enough is there a way of going back? Not really is the simple answer so there's's about 50% of Neanderthal, of a total Neanderthal genome is present in mostly European people today in total. So on average, most white European people have around about between 1% and 2% Neanderthal descended DNA.

And if you total all that up, you get to about half a genome of a Neanderthal. We've also got, from ancient samples, we've got a full Neanderthal genome. So we actually know the Neanderthal. We've also got, from ancient samples, we've got a full Neanderthal genome. So we actually know the Neanderthal genome. Now there's a big language issue here, which is that when we talk about this kind of stuff in the popular science,

we're not really telling the full truth about what it means to have a full genome sequence. There is a lot of genome, in fact the vast majority of the human genome is not genes. So less than 3% of the total amount of genetic code is genes itself. And those are the bits that we focus on when we are looking at DNA that has been in species that

have been dead for tens of thousands of years, such as the Neanderthals. So yeah, we do have most of the genome sequence for genes in Neanderthals, but almost none of the rest of it. Some of that stuff is not that important, probably. But we don't really know what that stuff does in homo sapiens. We don't have it for Neanderthals. So in principle, it's doing a lot of heavy lifting, but in

practice, it's just reasonably, it's reasonable to say that, no, it's not. It's not a reasonable prospect. We have picked the wrong subject for this show, haven't we? It seems to be a very negative one. And they also, sorry, they also probably had a larger Y chromosome because we've learned that the Y chromosome's been shrinking over time. Sorry, guys. also probably had a larger Y chromosome because we've learned that the Y chromosomes been shrinking over time. Sorry guys but It's been shrinking over time. So there's probably actually genetic material that's been lost that we can't recover and isn't it's not long ago

So we wanted that Neanderthals become extinct as a species thousand years ago Yes, it's not a great stretch of time to lose track essentially, to lose that information completely. Yeah, Adam, what were you doing to lose track? I was thinking about elephants with too many legs. And cell penises. So one method, as you said, of essentially bringing certain traits back or accentuating them is through breeding. But then I suppose the other technology that people most think of is genetic engineering.

So CRISPR technology and so on. So this idea that we can, we now have the technology to select particular gene sequences and then insert them into the DNA of living organisms. So is that in any sense a route? Or a more efficient route or a possible route to bringing traits back. So we've accepted we're not going to bring the whole species back but certain traits.

Robin's given me a really serious stare. He's given me his best Darwin stare there. Look at that. That's why I grew this beard my friend. Because I'm going to give the same answer. In principle, doing a lot of heavy lifting, yeah, but actually really no. Now in the future, quite possibly, but the fact of the matter is that we don't really understand how the human genome works. But we don't understand how the simplest traits and diseases really work at a genetic level. So when we start talking about engineering them and tweaking them in order to reintroduce, I don't know, characteristics from dead animals or extinct animals or from other species, it's just fantasy. We talked about this, I would just say we talked about this technology, CRISPR.

It's easy to say, isn't it, as you said, and I've said in principle many times, but this is in practice, that we can take a sequence of genes and we can insert them into a living organism's DNA. How do we do that? Do you want me to do it on you now is that no no I want to turn him into one of those goat spiders Brian had not heard about these goats that now you can milk them for basically spiders where I know I think you did a horizon on my this far as I remember actually milk to

go yeah I'm taking the spider silk out of it a few years ago it's basically what led you to biology because you were always high on a hill with a lonely goat and so and people used to watch you there milking that goat and they said that guy's got a future. I mean that's not how I remember the story happening. Oh it's definitely the pop-up book of your life I've just made. There was a film crew there in my memory. I remember a big sort of theatre in a living room and you were singing and dancing with seven Have I come to the wrong recording?

Come to the end of your nightmare my friend with your weedy white chromosome What if they make the white chromosomes what if it what if it is possible to make it stronger again or whatever how we wish to define it what how will that affect the male population let's boldness de-extinction de-extinction the subjects of the recorded look listen Ryan said about 15 minutes ago it's impossible what is the body also said all biology was rubbish. It's not impossible. And Susie was going to get to the third way we do this, which is via cloning, right?

Yes. And the reason this is important is because one species, the Pyrenean ibex, has successfully been resurrected. But the tragedy of this story is it also means it's the only species that has ever existed that went extinct twice. So, Suzy, this cloning. Right, so how is that working in terms of us creating this de-extinction scenario?

OK, so at the beginning of the show, you asked the geneticist about extinctions in the past. and now you're asking the paleontologist about cloning. It leads to far more inventive answers. In that specific instance. Okay, so the way that cloning works, I think, is that basically you take a somatic cell and you put it in an egg cell from a surrogate animal. So you can take genetic material from one animal and you basically put the nucleus in the egg cell of a surrogate animal.

But again, you still don't get the exact genetic replica because they're still the organelles of the surrogate animal, DNA, mitochondria, and things like that, that are there. So I think you still get a kind of mixture, is that right? Yeah, I mean it's pretty much as close as you can get to an actual clone as possible. And you know, of course everyone knows about Dolly the sheep, the first, it wasn't actually the first cloned, it wasn't in fact the first cloned sheep. There was an unnamed cloned sheep from about 15 years earlier but Dolly was the most famous

one for this particular technique and this is the same technique used for the Pyrenean ibex. The animal that we hear most about probably bringing back to to life, the species we're bringing back is the woolly mammoth, the woolly mammoth is kind of iconic in a way isn't it? So why would people see that that was an interesting thing to do and do you envisage that it will be done? Well, I think why is a really, really good question here. I mean, so it has been argued, I believe, that if you brought back the mammoths,

that the mammoths actually, they were ecosystem engineers. So they made what is today kind of tundra and taiga forest, open grasslands, and so this increases biodiversity or at least changes biodiversity allows you know different sorts of plant life and other animals to live in those sorts of environments. But the last population of mammoths was about 4 000 years ago but most of them about 10 000 years ago. Yeah but you know the climate was fundamentally different then. So these are animals that were living in the Pleistocene in the Ice Age, the last Ice Age.

And they went extinct because of climate change. So why? Well, I think I don't really understand is why you would want to bring back something that lived in a fundamentally different environment and stick it in an environment today and then try to produce an environment from a time when the climate was fundamentally different.

How would that work? The argument is, I think, isn't it, that you would be able to, I suppose, engineer the tundra, as you say, these regions, these vast regions of the Arctic. You'd be able to re-engineer them back to something that's more productive, I think is the argument. I think, and also a good carbon sink. I think it's been argued that these actually,

these grasslands are very good carbon sinks. Plants draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then store it, lock it away. And apparently the idea is that these grasslands, these huge areas of step would actually kind of draw down more carbon dioxide than other, the equivalent environments that are there today, the tundra today. So the mammoth would be, if you could reintroduce that species,

the guess, and I think Adam is looking skeptical here, but the idea is that you could re-engineer that whole environment into something that was more useful. I mean, because we've seen it before, haven't we? We've seen the re, haven't we? We've seen the reintroduction of beavers has been able to change the paths of rivers in order to redistribute water. We've seen reintroduction of species in various places quite successfully, but it feels farfetched

to go, okay, what can we do with this land? Well first, we're going to bring back something that hasn't been around for four to 10,000 years. I mean, it doesn't seem budgetable. Do you know what I mean? Like as a project manager, I'd go, hmm, maybe we try something different. See, I've already got... Right, the elephant thing, let's not bother so much with the number of legs, right? We were talking about that.

But one that's got a really, really big trunk and can just suck in all the carbon and use that as a kind of carbon capture. Except for the fact that elephants are animals and it's the plants that are doing the carbon sucking. Two different kingdoms. No, but I'm thinking that if you could do something like in that movie The Mutations where Donald Pleasence is an evil scientist and splices circus performers with plants, then we're beginning to get somewhere. Which is about as plausible as the real, supposedly scientific project. So you're saying I should go ahead with this?

Yeah, go for it. You're saying it's good science? I will fund that. What is the process by which it is proposed that we could reintroduce the woolly mammoth? Okay, so one of the reasons the mammoth is this iconic species for being a resurrection target is that it's, well, apart from it being a very charismatic megafauna, so a big attractive animal, the thing that Susie was saying is that, you know, the last ones weren't extinct in the last 10,000 years and quite often we dig out mammoth carcasses from the tundra that have been frozen for that time,

which means that they still have soft tissue. And because they have soft tissue, there's a greater likelihood that there is going to be well-preserved DNA in there. So the first mammoth genome was cloned in about, I think it was 2010, which means that you can sequence the mammoth genome, which means that we've got a good genetic readout of this organism that's been extinct for the last 5,000 years or 10,000 years or so. So there are various methods that you could propose at this point, one of which is you synthesise the entire genome and then insert it into a surrogate cell and implant that cell, that fertilised egg that is from probably an African elephant which is probably the nearest living relative

to the extinct mammoth. And you implant that into a surrogate mother and grow that to term and an African elephant gives birth to a mammoth. Now this is where the prehensile penis bit is relevant because IVF in elephants is a particularly difficult thing to do. And the reason for this is because the African elephant vaginal tract is about seven feet long and has a two foot right angled bend in it. Which means that if you can angle your penis so it goes around this corner then you've got a better chance of impregnating that elephant. Elephants are really good at like balancing balls and stuff you know what I mean? So you could just put the mammoth embryo on the end of the male

penis and I'm sure he could balance it all the way in and through. You know what I mean? Well, again, that's about as plausible as the real scientific techniques being proposed. I think we've come up with a good schema here. So you've got many, many sort of scientific barriers to this actually being a reality. And then the next stage is, well, we don't actually

know how many chromosomes a mammoth has, because that's not preserved when creatures die. You can only establish the number of chromosomes an organism has when they are alive. So we don't know that, and that's essential for reproduction. Second thing is, when we sequence the thing I mentioned earlier, when we sequence genomes from creatures that have been dead for a long time, you're not actually getting the whole genome at all. You're getting tiny, tiny fragments of it.

Less than 5% of the total amount of genetic information. Don't know what the rest of it's doing. Can't get hold of it. That's problem two. Problem three is we don't know term for a mammoth. We've got no idea how long mammoth pregnancies lasted. We do know how long African elephant pregnancies lasted. But we seriously are proposing that we impregnate

a social intelligent animal, such as an African elephant, with a different species that we don't know whether it's going to survive. We don't know how many genes it's got. We don't know whether it's compatible at all. We don't know how long pregnancy is going to get. And if it survives that process, this African elephant mom is going to give birth to an entirely different species,

which is going to be birth to an entirely different species, which is going to be at best confusing for all parties concerned. And then you've got to remember that both mammoths and elephants are highly intelligent social beings. They do not exist in isolation. And you'll bring back one baby into a social strata that it doesn't belong to a social organisation that it has no connection with, in an evolutionary time frame that it has not evolved to survive in. This baby, whatever it is, hy, hybrids, de-extinctified mammoth, is to be both confused and very dead very quickly. So the question of why that Susie raised a minute ago, to my mind, is the only question

worth asking. Because if you can give me an answer to the question of why we bring back mammoths, and all that stuff about tundra is absolute nonsense. Can I ask a question? Because one thing that confuses me about this is that, as you alluded to, there's one baby mammoth. So you've got to do this lots and lots and lots of times to make a viable population.

But surely they're all going to be genetically identical to each other because they're clones. Even if we were able to bring back all these little baby mammoths and they actually got on quite well with their elephant mummies and everything was fine, and they bred with each other, they're just going to be... We're just going to have a very, very, very small genetic gene pool and they're just going to go extinct again, aren't they?

Do you know what the word we used to describe what you've just described is? Functionally extinct. It's just folly. And isn't it also the case if they're clones clones then won't they all be the same sex and so we would have a problem in creating a breeding population It's so interesting that when you begin to pick apart this story, which seems to never happen in the popular press Journalists or whoever's talking about this sure you can print your copy But the fact of the matter is this is a house of cards built on scientific illiteracy

and actual lies. I feel quite strongly about it. It turns out. Is there any chance, despite Adam's negativity, in terms of trying, like for instance, going to dinosaurs, thinking of dinosaurs, that dinosaurs that would certain traits you could you know de-extinct them is that that possibility so I find it's Rhinoxorosaurus Rex in some amber or something Did you see the films?

No, not really my thing I mean again it's just why I just don't know why we would want to do that. So I mean, yeah, sure. Like there's a, there's a, a, a team led by a paleontologist who apparently is trying to do things like genetically engineer, like switch genes on in birds to make them express like teeth and claws and things. Why? Well, exactly. Why? Like why? What's the point? I mean, could you, could you make an argument? Just for the sake of argument. For example, a dodo.

Or perhaps something that we made extinct. What about the passenger pigeon? There may be a moral case. If we caused the extinction of a species, would there not be a moral case for trying to reintroduce it? Or should we just spend more time trying to keep the things that are alive, alive as opposed to destroying them? I mean, that's another crazy angle.

I'm trying to... That broadens my position. Yeah. But people have also suggested that actually, you know, that we can do both of those things. Like it's not, they're not mutually exclusive. The funding that goes into conservation isn't the same funding that is currently being used in these De-extinction efforts as various companies and various groups And at the moment all of those groups are funded apparently by sort of private money that wouldn't be

Going into conservation, but couldn't we sway that isn't that the thing we need to do then persuade people It's to me. It feels a little bit like you know when we have these fantasies about going to live on Mars why try and terraform somewhere else where we've got a place called Terra which we just need to try and keep the form of you know you look at what is out there the giraffe the rhinoceros the shrew whatever it might be the pygmy shrew one of my favorite shrews I go through the whole list but you know that seems to me to be is that really what we're talking about with de-extinction? Can I, I will make a case for de-extinction of one thing. We've been focusing on fauna

the entire time, but I think there's a flora that we need to focus on bringing back. And that is, so I'm a massive fan of anything banana flavored. But anything that's banana flavored like your banana milkshake from fast food places or banana sweets, is actually designed off the original banana, which now no longer exists. The banana that we know and love, which is all one species, is a different banana to the one we used to have, and then that one got killed off. I want that one back. I want to taste the original banana, the banana sweets are based on, because it's not banana... I'm not actually...

I'm not fussed... If we lost the current banana, I'm like, meh, but I want to taste the original banana. And I feel like that's what we should be focusing on. Please, I don't know if you've yet used it as your regular catchphrase on the tour, but if you can end every routine with, you see what I'm saying is, I want to taste the original banana. That would be, that is a great catchphrase.

I think it's a really good point actually because what I think that the de-extinction projects, the high profile ones are doing is really sort of a bit what Susie was saying, but they're really massive distractions from the ecological crises that could, we should be spending money on. And we do, in all conservation projects, we tend to focus on what we refer to as charismatic megafauna. All the animals that Robin just listed, the nice ones, the pretty ones, and the shrews. Hey!

Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just not that fussed about shrews. Have you ever seen a pigman shrew? Yeah. But the serious point is that when other species that are less charismatic You know the one I always use as an example is like Indonesian seagrass Which is going to go extinct in 30 years time as a result of climate change when that happens Entire ecosystems will collapse, but where is the project to save? But where is the project to save insects or seagrasses? And that's where we should be focusing because nothing will change if mammoths come back. Nothing will change if we resurrect the Tasmanian tiger.

Maybe the American passenger pigeon might do something, but everything is going to change when seagrass goes. But on the flip side of that, just saying, you know, we're obviously heading massive, because we're in the fastest extinction event that we've known. But don't we all agree? Because we think of it so human-centrically. We're always just like, oh my, you know, we think of it in terms of our survival and our effect on the planet. But once we go, something will, life will survive us. Susie?

Did we say that it was bad when things went extinct? I think so. Haven't we been arguing that it's not a good thing? There's been a lot of opinions. I think that it should be considered a black mark in our ledger if creatures go extinct as a direct result of our actions. And that is the extinction event that we

are going through right now. I disagree with your premise that we should be devoting massive resources to bringing back organisms that have gone extinct as a result of our actions, because it costs a lot and it's a lot of effort and I think that we should register that we screwed up and did bad things and correct our behaviour in the future. I don't think we should dedicate massive resources to pursuing scientific follies in order to forgive ourselves for being terrible. God, I sound really misanthropic!

I'm the president of Humanists UK! So another devil's advocate point of view for you then, you talking about seagrass earlier and the potential that could go extinct or that it will even go extinct based on current trends. If we develop this technology now, if this money has gone into developing this technology, can we then apply it to stop things going extinct in the future? And then to reintroduce them? Yeah.

Well, okay, so I'm going to say one thing to counter all of the future. And then to reintroduce them. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm going to say one thing to counter all of the negativity I've brought to this discussion today, which is this. Science sometimes needs big boosts from public support in order to generate interest, excitement, and money. And the real story is that these are technologies that are being used to develop new techniques and new understanding of genetics and cloning

and all of these things in general. And actually the hubristic we're going to bring back the mammoth is just a sideshow to get people interested. And I do accept that as a bit of an argument that actually we need to get the public involved, we need to get the public involved, we need to excite people with science fiction Jurassic Park type stories and actually what the scientists are doing at these places is just doing basic research. I'm pretty sure, I know some of them, pretty sure they also know that we're never ever going to see mammoths, we're never, ever going to see cold-adapted elephants.

These are things that are never going to exist at all. I think they know this, but I think this is actually a way of generating funds so they can actually do some interesting research in related areas. And that's the only defensive line I will concede. Well, we're going to cut out the rest of the things you said. LAUGHS Susie, as a paleontologist, and I know you've been in Mongolia and Utah just a few weeks ago, so when you are looking at the kind of...

When you strike on something and you're seeing a little bit of the history of life, how does that change your framing of the understanding of what went before, the extinction, all of that extinction, you know, when you hit upon something you think oh my goodness here was something that might have dominated the planet and it is gone. How does that change you philosophically? Well I think you know the point that we made earlier about after our extinction there will be something else and the planet will go on. I think when you have the perspective of kind of time,

of deep time, you see how the climate has changed through time, the environment has changed, how animals have changed and plants, of course, in response to that and how humans have just been here for a fraction of a second in the context of geologic time. And that probably, you know, exactly what you said, that we will go extinct, but there will be life, there will be something, the planet will carry on

with or without us. And I think, you know, when you go and you're looking at something that's 135 million years old or whatever, you get that sense and that perspective of time. Do you ever wake up in a cold sweat seeing a future earth where a sentient giant millipede has just found the fossil of you? Well, I hadn't yet, but now I might. And it goes, eww, imagine having so few legs.

No, and then it'd de-extinct you and then you wouldn't be whinging imagine how quickly it would dig you up as well now we ask the audience a question the extinct creature I would most like to see roaming the world again is you got one? Anne Whiddicombe. I'm not going to tell you the story again. You do know about the time that she cured my diarrhoea, but I'll tell you another time about that.

I've got someone who wants to either bring back the Loch Ness Monster, I'm not sure they're gone, or David Bowie. Or if we could combine both. What a beautiful thing to every now and again just see a laddy insane bobbing in the water and then disappearing. But elaborate. Schrodinger's cat. So I would know for sure if it was dead or alive. The Inci-saurus made extinct by the predatory coxysaur. It says here. There we are. Freudian. The predatory coxysaur Says yeah

I've got the pterodactyl because wings can only get better That was so worrying because last night we had nine different puns based around Brian's big pop hit and I thought that was it wasn't gonna happen today so well done whoever that was and they wonder what it would taste like so that's a good reason for bringing back dinosaurs so you can eat them yeah pterodactyl sandwiches and that's a big bit of bread. Yeah, brilliant. You don't have to eat the whole thing Just a bit of the fillet Actually, I would probably do the wing in a wrap. How big are they? When you have a chicken sandwich, you don't put a chicken

Someone doesn't know how to protein load had a protein load. I like this one from Sophie, mitochondrial Eve so we can meet humanity's mum. I think that's a really nice... That is nice, except that mitochondrial Eve never existed. I am not so happy today. You are not coming on this show again. You are the most miserable biologist I've met and I have met some miserable biologists. I am so sorry. This is my tenth time and I think my final time on this programme. I remember the first time you came on you'd just done that TV documentary Will There Be Snow this winter do you remember and you were all happy had your little red hat on with all the bell ringing and now you're just dressed in black going there's not really any point we're all gonna die, nobody's bringing everything back either.

The universe is a pointless place, I'm not gonna get involved. I'm going through my emo science communicator phase, right? Leave me alone, you're not my real dad. And apparently you don't have a real mum, can you explain yourself? Explain why there's no mitochondrial leave. Oh, it's a concept that was made popular in the 90s, and it doesn't really work in any significant way.

We're a little bit like D'Arim's album. Oh! I know, it's better than that. Thank you so much to our guests, who have been Susie Maidment, Anna Rutherford and Rhea Leena. Next week is the final episode of this series so because it's the end of term we are allowed to have toys and for some reason that means it's gonna be toys a tobacco enema, a fork that's stuck in a bottom, and an x-ray machine that has

been taking photographs of a professor's poo. So, well, basically we're going to be rummaging through... Rummaging through what? The archives of the Royal Society, because we're going to be exploring the unexpected history of the human body. There is a 16th century lift the flat book which involves Satan. Anyway, they've got some good stuff there, haven't they? So look forward to that everybody. Goodbye. Bye. In the infinite monkey cage Without you crowded In the infinite monkey cage

Turned out nice again. Hello, Russell Kane here. I used to love British history, be proud of it. Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians, obviously. Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor. That has become much more challenging, for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius.

Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed. But if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sounds and have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sound and have your world destroyed. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by.

And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing. But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough

gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't even understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice.

The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice. And for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on. And take back the power. World of Secrets Season 6 The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.