The Joe Rogan Experience - #2301 - Ben Lamm

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Ben Lamm is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, a company dedicated to genetic engineering and de-extinction projects. Colossal’s mission includes bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth and advancing conservation efforts through cutting-edge biotechnology.  www.colossal.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's up, Ben? Hey, thanks so much for having me. My pleasure. Very nice to meet you, man. So why don't you, instead of me, explain to people what you do?

So I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Colossal Biosciences. We're the world's first de-extinction and species preservation company. Yeah, and that is a wild thing. I mean, this is essentially, literally wild. This is essentially real life Jurassic Park. Yeah, we get to Jurassic Park occasionally.

Believe it or not, we get that. Of course. I mean, I gotta drop my hydrogen tablet in here. Oh, you do those, the Gary Breckle ones, right? I'm all in. Those are great. Yeah, so. Yeah, I love those.

I just didn't want you to think it was, we're going a different direction now. How did you get started even thinking about doing something like this? So, I kind of fell into it. I didn't plan, I didn't wake up and say, I saw Jurassic Park, I'm super stoked, I love animals, I wanna go work on 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 biologies at Harvard University. He's six foot seven 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 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 can apply to like 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? And I was like, if you had one project, is it this mammoth project? And then he went down this whole path

about how he'd bring back mammoths, reintroduce them in 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 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 it was in 60 Minutes or Stephen Colbert, whatever he was in, there was this weird mammoth through line, whether it was in 60 Minutes or, you know, Stephen Colbert, whatever he was in, there was this weird mammoth through line, where he was just obsessed with these mammoths, and 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 gonna try to go build a company to bring back sing species. So how do you decide what to start with? 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 that shows that the reintroduction of mammoths back into the wild could actually have a net benefit to the ecosystem. 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 ship here with the Dodo, everyone just started calling us, and then we just started expanding our entire set.

So how does one do this? It's like, 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. 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 3000 years old to 1.2 million years old,

which is awesome. But it's also fragment. 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.

Really? Yeah, which always blows people's mind. That and the fact that mammoths were alive when we were building the pyramids or aliens or whoever was building pyramids. Like literally, like humans were building the pyramids while mammoths existed. And sometimes that blows people's minds because they always think of them as in this like weird,

like prehistoric, like 65 million years old dinosaur. When did they go extinct? So the last one went extinct about 4,000 years ago. Really? On Wrangel Island, yeah. Wow. So they've been a while, they were around for a long time. 4,000 years ago.

I know they weren't, I mean, now they appeared about two and a half million years ago as far as we understand, and 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 Wrangell Island. Wow, and where's Wrangell Island? It's northeast of Siberia. Whoa. And they just, was it a small island? They just ran out of resources there? Like what happened? Well, there's a couple different theories, right?

One of the theories with Wrangell 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. How large is Wrangell Island? I'm not quite sure. Can you give me a photo again, Jamie? Okay.

And so essentially though, Wrangell Island and then there's another island called St. Paul Island, which is also between Alaska and Russia, also is where they were. Those are kind of the last two places that we know mammoths existed today. And they died out 4,000 years ago. 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. Oh wow. So some combination of genetic bottleneck and that occurred. Wow, 4,000 years is so recent. I know, it's crazy recent, right? Jamie, can you please pull up a photo of an Asian elephant versus a African elephant?

And they're actually mammoths, because there's, you know, mammoths themselves, yeah. Mammoths themselves are closely 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 have 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. Wow. So are those the ones that you would find like in Thailand? Yes, and Thailand and then different parts of India and the Indian subcontinent. I actually rode one of those once with my family.

I don't recommend it. Did you go to one of those places that you take care of them? Yeah. You have to get a relationship with them. So you feed them sugar cane and you wash them. And you play nice with them for a while, a couple hours. It was like at least an hour.

You're just hanging out with them, petting them. And then once they decide you're cool, they let you ride them. But my whole family rode them and I was like totally opposed to it. I was like, I'm doing it just cause you guys wanna do it. I just wanna feed them. I just wanna hang out with them.

It just felt weird. My daughter fell off, I think twice. One of, my youngest daughter fell off once at least. And I was like, do we know that this elephant wants us riding? You know what I mean? It's kind of a weird thing. It's a weird thing, right?

And then afterwards you get in the water and you wash them and everything and I just kind of hung out with them. I'd be cool with them. They're very sweet. I don't think I'd want to ride one. I like being around them, feeding them. I think there's a video on my Instagram of it.

Yeah, there definitely is, because she was eating a log. I was like, why are you eating a log? Yeah. It's just weird. They're so enormous, but they're really peaceful and chill. And incredibly smart,

and 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. I don't know if you've seen any of these videos. Oh yeah, so here it is. So this is a few years ago in Thailand. And this is an Asian elephant

just chilling with this elephant. Yeah, 2018. Okay, there it is. It was really cool. Now it's all it's just it's, it's just cool to be around them. They're just a fascinating animal. Just the biodiversity of earth effect that that thing exists. Yeah, there's this enormous thing with this like, robotic potential. Yeah, it's great. As long as you're cool to them.

They're cool to you. Yeah, they sense it, right? Yeah. I mean, we see that in 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 gonna be around that. So some of our animals have 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. Yeah, so let's though, you're still kind of like, they are wild animals, so you have to maintain some level of healthy distance. Yeah, so let's just get right to it. Wait, wait, do you want to finish the process?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. So, okay, so we have the ancient genome, so you have to collect and assemble. Right. 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've had, you know, John Reeves on here, it's disgusting. It smells like death. It literally, I mean, I guess it is death. It's just over time piled up death. Have you visited John? Yeah, yeah, I visited John. You went to the Boneyard?

Yeah, I went to the Boneyard. What's it like there? It's crazy. It's exactly what you'd expect. I didn't know John, so I'm on the board of trustees of the Explorers Club. So we'd 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? Because this is 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. And I was like, OK, great. I'm excited.

So we 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, OK. And he's a big dude. He's enormous.

I'm not that big of a dude, right? No, John's a giant. Especially after Gary Breck has been working on him. I'm a smaller dude, right? And so I literally get in, I get in the car. There's a bunch of stickers, and there's one that has 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 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- What kind of gun was it? It was just some type of rifle. So it was just Grizzlies. I assume it was for Grizzlies, yeah.

Or Bears or something large. Yeah. 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. Yeah. So it's cool. You should go, it's cool. I do wanna go. He's an amazing guy.

I love that guy. Yeah, and he's a cool guy 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 of your sandwich Can we take him he's like no he was very honest and he told us and that's like before your podcast with him We kind of learned that story right? It's a that's what sucks is how like some people can ruin it for everybody. No, because he's you know, outside of Fairbanks It's not the easiest place to build a you know, biocontainment level three lab But he's like but he is over he's like you build a lab here you use whatever you want But he's like the bones stay here. So he's very consistent with his messaging

Well, you know the whole deal with the Museum of Natural History, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I totally believe it. I totally believe it. Well, it's a fact now. Yeah. They found these bones in the East River, exactly where they told them to drop it off. They have step bison fragments. Yeah, I've seen it. And woolly mammoth fragments,

so they know that they're there. Yeah, and well, I mean, you've built a relationship with John. He's just a normal, no bullshit kind of guy. Yeah. He's like, you stole this stuff, give it back. Yeah. Or he's also like, hey, if you wanna come work on it, come on, he's very collaborative.

It's also, it's like, what do you guys have? Why are you keeping that shit in a basement? What is that? I mean, when we do work, outside of the expeditions of collecting ancient DNA, when we do work, we also work with museums, right? And so we go to the catacombs of the museums, and it's exactly what you think of also work with museums, right? And so we go to like the catacombs of the museums. And it's exactly what you think of

like the Vatican archives, right? You go down to like sub basement four of the Smithsonian and it's just rows and rows and rows of taxidermy animals that you've never seen. It's got like the 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 poop. They're like, yes, and we think there's DNA.

And I was like, well, this is like, the card catalog of all dead species, but it's not on display for the public. It's just in a basement. And is it extensively archived? They know where everything is? Or is there some stuff down there that you don't know what it is?

I wouldn't say that they are the, at least any museum, 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 lists and you know, like what's the shopping list? It's been over a hundred years they've been doing this. So people have come and gone.

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 called 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 pup.

Wow. 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. It was the mom's head, so we could actually look at the genetic relation between the two. They actually didn't know they had the head in the bucket. They just had a head in a bucket. They opened it up as marked thylacine.

They opened it up, and there was a full thylacine skull in there. There's pictures of it online and everything. We used that to get to a 99.9% complete genome because we also had the ancestry of the two, of the pup and mother. Wow. Yeah. So there's probably treasure troves in some of these museums that aren't being fully utilized.

So if you have 98% or you have 99%, what's the process of going from that? So here it is. Yeah, there's the head in the bucket. So Andrew Pasch, who leads our, in partnership with the University of Melbourne, leads our thylacine work. And yeah, that's the head in the bucket.

I mean, there's soft tissue, there's teeth, there's petrous bones, which we'll talk about at some point. Do you buy into any of these sightings? No, I did. So Andrew Paschask for years, he's been working on it for 15 years. He's amazing, he's awesome. He's been working on it like a shoestring budget.

And that's part of the problem with The Extinction is no one's put real capital into it until now. And he's been working on it for 15 years and he's had people send him poop, clippings from hair, and all this stuff over the years, so you 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, 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 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? I start reading all the books on the theosine. 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 Pascals like, hey, I've been watching these YouTube videos, and I kind of think they're still there. And Pascals like, hey, I've been watching these YouTube videos and I kind of think they're still there. And Pascals like, no, no, stop it. Don't go down that rabbit hole. So I don't believe.

But why did he say that? 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, stuff like that. Just everything using camera traps. And nobody's, I think 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 for us. Forrest really believes in it. He does, he thinks they're in Papua New Guinea. And because of sightings. Yeah, he thinks in the they're in Papua New Guinea. Hmm, and because of sightings. Yeah, he thinks in the western part of Papua New Guinea

in the mountains. And also incredibly remote. Yeah, yeah. Very difficult. 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.

What's a singing dog? It's just another large canid that has a unique howl. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it still exists. I'm sure Jamie can find a video. I want to hear that. I've never heard of this.

Yeah. Singing dog. Yeah. Wow. Popping to get any singing dogs. By the way, folks, we're teasing you because this is not just theoretical. Yeah. And this is what's gonna get crazy Yeah, it's gonna get weird. This podcast is gonna blow your fucking mind. Go ahead, Jimmy

Opera singers That's what these rare animals have a knack for holding a tune even to an exact key Opera singers love these oh, they're so cute. Aw, they're so cute. Yeah. They're so cute. Do people keep them as pets? That looks like a dog dog. Yeah, it looks like a dog dog.

That looks like a dog that would be in the park. They're wild dogs in Papua New Guinea, but I'm sure people have domesticated them. Wow. Pretty fucking cool dogs. And hanging out with a fox. 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. Like 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. That doesn't exist. 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. That doesn't exist. Wow. 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 were actually petitioning the US government to help put a massive project together to help biobank, it's starting with just American megafauna and keystone species. So that doesn't exist at all. And so then Colossi 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. 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 create? 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 you've heard of CRISPR, all these other things, genetics, you know, which is, it knocks out, it breaks the DNA. It's not 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, like that's how precise we can be. We can say at spot, you know, four million eight, 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 like protein coding regions in all these different regions of the genome that drive phenotypes or physical attributes, like, you know, curved tusks, dome cranium, small ears, the subcutaneous fat layer, and then hair and coat color, you can actually then engineer that into the Asian elephant, right?

Because you're only really looking at that 0.4% difference, right? 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, right? Because you're really just trying

to target those core phenotypes. Right. Are there specific genes that regulate size? Cause they're larger than- 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

cause it's a stupid concept that humans made, not nature made. And so there were 11 different types of mammoths out there that evolved 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. 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? We made wooly mice. See if you can find that. And the only unintended consequences was they were cute as fuck. People lost their minds, right? I was on the phone recently with a moderately aggressive journalist and it was going quite poorly

as some calls go. Moderately aggressive? They were being aggressive in what way? Like why are you doing this? Some people, yeah, everyone likes to try it. Look how cute. My daughter actually found this online and wants one. Yeah, so we get that a lot from kids.

So every week, every week, I don't have my laptop actually right now. Look how cute. But every week. Oh my God, they're adorable. 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 mammoth from an Asian elephant to a mammoth? And then because we wanna 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 wanna 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, 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 it. The woolly mice went insane. There's people that are making T-shirts as 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. Wow, look at the difference. One of them, if it was in a trap, you'd be so sad.

Yeah, exactly. Like the little guy on the left, if he was in a trap, he'd be like, oh, what could we do? Isn't that funny? Just a little bit of fur. Yeah. Makes you love them. And that's the color that we think most mammoths were. Really?

They were like a blonde. 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. Oh. 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 well-preserved mammoths. They actually have kind of a dirty blonde meat, gold meats, brown fur. Wow. 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 wooly mice. I'm like, they're not illegal.

And then there's a meme account for the guy that did the like the crisper babies, you know, that went in trouble for, you know, making edited babies in China. Yeah, a meme account. Oh, wow. So that's mammoth fur. Yeah, a meme account though, actually said on X that these are a bio weapon

and that Colossal's made a bio weapon. So the weirdness of the wooly 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 of 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. Mm. And so we try to spend a lot of time, you know, 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 harmed in the making of this film, that's those guys. Right. 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 wooly 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. Is there any plans to sell those? No, everyone keeps asking us that. But you know what? Museums actually are now calling us saying, and zoos are calling us saying, can we display the woolly mice?

They're like, it'll drive so much value. It'll teach people about genetics and whatnot. So it's not our business model to sell our animals or to sell woolly mice, but it's kind of gone crazy. Is it dangerous though to leave these mice in the hands of someone even at a zoo who decides I want more of these Yeah If we ever if we ever put them I think more likely to put them in a museum For 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 do you plan on keeping this batch alive? Yeah, they're gonna live out their normal lives. But you're not gonna make new ones? We may make new ones with new, these won't, 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 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. Cool little house.

Yeah, and they're big and we, you know, we put fun stuff in them to play with like this. And what's been crazy is we only named two of them and We need them chip and Dale People were asking what the names were and I was like Chip it is the only thing that I could think of at the moment and now even on next 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. So get involved. Yeah, so we've just, yeah.

Don't get involved with those people. We've not leaned in, yeah. You cannot. We're excited, they're excited, but we just can't. Yeah, we're busy. So this is a new thing. The wooly mouse is a new thing. Is there any talk about doing other kind of new things?

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 woolly wonka toro, 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 dunnart, 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. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. So how did you make the decision to do what you ultimately did, what you showed me before the show? 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 bio-baking a little bit. So we want to understand from the Bison that are still here in America, what's genetic diversity?

What's been lost? 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 we're curious.

So we said, what other projects would you work on that we could do that's helpful outside of helping bison? And they said that we needed help with wolf conservation, and they brought up that. They said that we needed 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, you know, 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 that it could have even been a dire wolf. And I was like, from Game of Thrones, that's cool.

I love the show, that's interesting. So we did that, we talked about that. And then, you know, 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 Yeah, you know, 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 it with massive loss of Genetic diversity massive bottleneck and and I was, 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're 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 sent in teachers, and parents sending us pictures of wooly mammoths or dodos or tiles. And it's like, we get like boxes of this every single week, which is pretty cool. So we're going to make a colossal kids corner at our new labs. And in that we've had all this, some Hollywood talent, like, you know, 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 wooly 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 dire wolves were only found in the US, a little 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. Is there dead dire wolves that were trapped in permafrost?

No, most of the dire wolf skulls out there, there's thousands of them in La Brea tarp red. So if you go there, they have this beautiful wall, but because of heat and acidification, there 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.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. Is this done by AI? Is this done by programs? 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 FormBio, and we actually spun it out of the business. So you have this tooth, you have 1.5. Yeah, 1.5, so 15% of the genome. Okay. 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 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 lucked out and that too is 13,000 years old. The skull itself is 72, 73,000 years old.

Not exactly sure, but it was found in a river bed and it wasn't found in a river bed at the mouth of a cave. So it wasn't found like in the permafrost, it also wasn't found in like heatbed at the mouth of a cave. So it wasn't found like in in the permafrost, it also wasn't found in like 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 on the 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 wolves. And then what'd you do? Well, and then, then we got a knock on the door,

and it was, yeah. No, so we took that DNA. Can I ask you before we even started with this? Yeah. The aggressive reporters are, is it you're playing God? We get that. How do you have the right to do this? 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 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 ha.

So that was phase one. And then we're like, oh, well, as an entrepreneur, my job is to hire much smarter people than me. You smoke cigars? I do not. Gary's got me on quite a kick. So health kick. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm bringing that for you. Well, I'm not saying they're bad for him, saying that I allegedly. Yeah, I don't care.

This is the last of the things that I partake in that are probably bad for you. Yeah, but you got to do what you got to do. Everyone's got their vice so My question if I was gonna grill you if I was a reporter be like what what right do you have to invade? the natural process of nature and to inject your curiosity and your ability to create new life I think that we've become the apex part around this planet and we inject our curiosity and choices every day

that we overpitch the ocean, we overhunt something. In the case of the thylacine, the Australian government put a bounty on its head and killed it off, right? And every time we cut down the rainforest, every time we drink hydrogenated water, we are playing God on some level, right? We are, 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.

And looking at how the ecology of the system completely changed, it changed the shape of rivers, because the elk population were just, they were getting fat, they were getting lazy, they weren't migrating, the sick and the old and the weak weren't getting killed off, they were spreading disease, they were't migrating. The sick and the old and the weak 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. That documentary is fascinating. It's so fascinating. How 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, but most of them are elk hunters that were used

to something that's just outrageously overpopulated. That's the reality of it. But they were telling me that 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 the snow. So in the middle of the winter where they can't move good, you can just pick them off in the snow because they were just trying to cull the population. They were trying to diminish them.

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

Oh, yeah And he didn't know it was gonna happen before it happened and all the people around there are ranchers Yeah, so already these five wolves that they've reintroduintroduced he said killed over a dozen cows and calves So the problem is they've killed elk as well Yeah, in fact, I took a photo of an elk leg that we found on the ground. Yeah, the wolves had killed 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 is you're essentially asking a wolf that doesn't know the territory to start killing things in that territory. Yeah, or to stop at an imaginary border it doesn't exist. There's no borders. They go hundreds and hundreds of miles. But 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. So they moved them from Oregon to Colorado where they were killing wildlife. So they moved them from Oregon to Colorado, where they started killing wildlife. Yeah, but they're killing, excuse me, I'm saying wildlife. What I really meant to say was animals, agriculture. They're killing domesticated cows. They're killing these calves,

and they're having a real fucking problem with that. And 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? We just can't let people vote on that. Too many people live in these high population areas. 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? Like 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, you know, 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 are lost, but have already been changed for a different reason. And we can say that. Yes, and they've achieved homostasis, homeostasis. They've achieved a balance, right? 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. Well, the Colorado, so the Colorado stuff is completely gonna 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. You mean humans? Humans, humans. Right, and are most of them in Alaska? Most of them are in Alaska or in Canada. And then it's before Colorado, so I'm not saying,

I don't know if the data has, I don't think it has the latest from Colorado, but it represents It represents.02% of deaths associated with wolves and cattle and livestock, right? And all livestock, not just cattle. And 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 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 a 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 gonna go crazy. And when the stats goes crazy, then you're gonna 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. 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. Exactly. You can't vote on that if you live in Denver. That's crazy. Yeah, if it doesn't affect your livelihood, if it doesn't affect the risk to your animals or your family, yeah, you have to be mindful of that. There's also the 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 like fuck it Yeah, it's just not it's just it's you have in it the a lot of that So the project that will probably eventually talk about is

We brought in a lot of the teams So many people that have been on your show that know how to do the rewilding the right way over time, okay? So this is what we'll just get to it. You made a fucking dire wolf. I didn't. Our team, our incredible team made three dire wolves so far. 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. Yeah, so this is, so that's actually Romulus as, so we have two boys, Romulus and Remus, founders from, 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. He goes, this is the first time I've heard of Dire Wolf or anyone's heard of Direwolf in 10,000 years. Well, he like physically, emotionally got chills and started crying. And then 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 black sawdummies or someone. And 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, what you don't see in this photo is you don't see the fact that we have

American Humane Society there with three veterinary people. We had six people from our animal care team. When you say checkup, you don't vaccinate these little guys, do you? They do get, because of viruses that they can get from the soil, at eight weeks they do get basic vaccines. Are we concerned about that?

I mean, you have this animal that you just... Yeah, so these are staying on, these are not going back into the wild, right? Not yet. Right now they're on a 2,000 acre secure expansive ecological preserve with 24 or seven 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 spin it on the labs

You have to spin it on the animal care the facilities Yeah, let's see the photo of the actual grown ones because they're fucking nuts Yeah, so so this is a Ramis and remis in playing in the snow on the preserve when they are three months old. So three months, how big are they? Three months, they were north of 45 pounds. Wow. Look at that face.

God, they're so beautiful. They just get, as they've aged, they've just got more and more beautiful. So let's go to the adults, because the adults have crazy characteristics that you were saying that you didn't even know that they were gonna have. We didn't know, right? And so we ended up taking, getting a...

Is this a full grown one? No, 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, and how big is it already? 80 pounds, about five and a half feet. And the mane.

Yeah, and so a couple of things about the wolves, Jamie, if you go back, yeah. So we didn't know this, right? We knew that they were a Pleistocene wolf. We knew that they existed and went extinct about 12,000 years ago when a lot of megafauna went extinct like during kind of that younger dry, 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're white. Because there's like this misconception for a while that they were red because some scientists wanted to make a paper and assume that they were red so they get their papers. Doesn't it make sense for natural selection? I mean, they're an Arctic hunting animal. 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. Wow. It's so- Is it like polar bears and it's hollow or is it not? It's not, it's like typical wolves, but it's incredibly thick, it not? It's not, it's like typical wolves, but it's incredibly thick. It grows in kind of these clumps, but then as they've grown in,

they've started to get this kind of like mane to them, which is incredible. The females as well? Well, the female, she's only six weeks old, so it's two, two years old. So if you keep going through a couple other photos, yeah, I mean, they're just beautiful. And I mean, it's funny, someone actually said they on our two was like,

they almost look like Shetland pony wolves at some point, right? Right. There's something there's so stocky. They're stocky. They're thicker. They are. I mean, they're absolutely beautiful. So this is Khaleesi. So who looks like a baby and we nailed it. We we we named her. Can we nailed it. We named her. Can we hear it? Let me hear. We named Khaleesi for George R.R. Martin, obviously.

Obviously. Who's an investor in Colossal. Oh wow. Oh. Nature's cute little murderers Well everything in nature murder something right yeah, like we were well cows murder grass Yeah, and people are now saying you can hear grass and other plants like scream. Yeah, yeah, they scream We all are bad life eats life. This is this is I mean, that's the reason why plants

Have chemicals to dissuade us from eating them. What are they eating there? So they love to chew on horns and in this state So we have a different phases of we we built a hundred and forty five page animal guide. These are actually Different horns from different elk and other species that we're putting out there and they chew on like you they just love like a dog Does like a dog does right? So are you letting these animals kill things or you feed? So they're so we're feeding them still so they had a combination of bison meat Horse meat and you plan on letting them kill things or 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 they are starting to exhibit some hunting behavior. Are you going to let them hunt? I mean, they are on a seemingly wild 2000 acre preserve with just them. So they do have the ability to hunt on that preserve, but they're not doing it yet. They're starting to exhibit the original, kind of the first inklings that it will trend toward that. But we want them to live. We want them and we're going to probably that 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 solid little social pack that we can monitor that can live a seemingly wild life that we can understand more about them

Wow, that's cool. But the other thing that's that's equally cool to it going back to the Red Bull story Can you which is crazy to me that you have reignited these 10,000 year old hunting genes. Yeah. That they're starting to exhibit. Including size, including size. We understand more about like, 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 what truly was fixed and conserved in the direwolf genome and what wasn't just population genomics. If you and I are 50,000 years apart, there's a lot of different mutations in that time

period. But if we can then really say, okay, what made Ben and what made Jojo? Oh, here's the overlaps. It allowed us to really understand that, which would be awesome. And it's just fascinating that the behavior characteristics are kind of baked into those genes. And they just were dormant for 10,000 years.

And now these things are waking up. And so I was like, so I was in, cause I bottle fed Romulus. And Romulus was partly raised with me. I could go out to the preserve. I'd check on him quite frequently. It's in the northern United States where 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 wooly mouse, we've had very excited people just show up at our, 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 want to ensure that no one can pick it out because we assume people

will be moderately excited. Oh yeah. Oh, the internet sleuths will try to find you. Yeah. So we've done, I'm not trying to challenge them, but we've been we've done everything we can to protect it Yeah, I understand. I mean you have to Some dude from Saudi Arabia wants a wolf. Yeah We already get a lot of weird calls

But the other thing though someone with deep pockets. Oh, we get we make me a dire wolf my friend We have everything they have every collection We get a lot of weird calls. Yeah. Yeah from people that are like those people that have private zoos Oh, yeah. Yeah, like enormous in like in India. Yeah. Yeah, they have that family has like the largest private zoo and preserve So wild it's so crazy. Yeah, well, you know Texas's history with animals, right? Yeah. There's more tigers in captivity and private collections in Texas.

In Texas than in the wild. Than in the wild of the world, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. But I was in the, I was in, so we, of the 2,000 acres, we have a subsection of it that's about six and a half acres where 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 so that 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, I had our animal. Yeah, I have animal care teams there and everything. 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, I don't, 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, driest period and the change, the massive, I don't know,

it's some of the stuff that there's like several different in kind of this younger, driest period. And the change, the massive, I don't know, it's some of the stuff that there's several different prevailing theories, one of which is human predation, right? That the rise of humans led to the extinction of the megafauna. That's kind of, I think the answer's probably a combination. Could have there been an astrological event? There's starting to be more and more data around that.

I'm sure you've seen Randall Carlson talk about this. I've seen Randall Carlson talk about it, Graham Hancock talk about it, and they just got the shit beat out of them. Yeah, but not anymore. Yeah, now it's starting to come. The Younger of Atreus Impact Theory is well-respected now.

Yeah, and it happened. 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, 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 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 patterns. So you went from a period in that kind of transition from Pleistocene to Holocene, there was this period of insanely accelerated cooling. 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 earth. He was on acid. He was on acid and this idea came to him. 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 you see on sandy beaches when the tide rolls in and out. And it's like, this is great, and it all tracks. It tracks all over the world. It's like, 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. It's Dr. Robert Chock from Boston University. I've interviewed him. He was the first guy to propose 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 2,500 BC, that that's it forever?

And no one wants to let that go. 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, right? And what's crazy to me is the academic system, once again, non-academic, I'm sure I'll get crucified

for this, but I don't read the comments. It doesn't really matter. Don't read the comments. I don't read the comments. Trust me, I don't read the comments. Good for you. I sleep quite well. Nice.

But the academics, we have 95 of the top scientific advisors in the world, Nobel laureates and whatnot. We fund 17 academic universities, right? advisors in the world, Nobel laureates and whatnot. We've got, we fund 17 academic universities, right? All over the world. We fund 40 post-docs, 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 academic 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 prepare.

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, we're not an academic university. We're not a lot, 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 allowed, I don't have to write a paper on anything ever. We do a couple here and there because we wanna 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 3000 scientific papers and no mammoths ever, right? Because we'd just be sitting around writing fucking papers all day long.

This is interesting because they wanna impose their idea of what you're supposed to and not supposed to do. Well, they wanna impose their idea of what you're supposed to and not supposed to do. Well, they want to impose their idea that they've already established and any change to that establishment. So, in addition, the public 95 scientific advisors, and these are some of the top women 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, they're gonna 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-docs. 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 like philosophical perspective of these like, 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. Well, the problem is not the scientific community. The problem is weak men. What you see in these squabbles, these like ultra personal squabbles, where like horrible vitriolic statements made about people.

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 their 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. And that is why we don't have flying cars, we don't have mammoths, and until Elon, we're not gonna live on Mars, right? And that is why we don't have flying cars, we don't have mammoths, and until Elon, we're not gonna live on Mars, right? And so, like we didn't have, like I think-

Well, it takes time. Yeah, but it doesn't come, but also academia is really focused on point solutions, not full systems, right? So if you wanna go to Mars or you wanna bring back a mammoth, you have to design the entire system and you have to innovate across everything.

Whereas in academia, you're only incentivized to get that piece of paper and get that approved. 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 gotta 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. You should just follow the scientific method. I'm not a scientist, but we should just, and guess what? When new data shows up that changes your old data, you shouldn't get mad about that. You should celebrate it.

Exactly. Well, also you have to look at all data. I don't want to get into this, but if 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 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. I just wish we could get philosophy. We separate philosophical perspectives from science. Yes. One of the things that we fight about all the time,

because it's like, once we got the scientists, once we got the money, and once we proved that we are the most advanced synthetic biology company in the world, once Inqutel, which is the funding arm of the CIA and other governments started investing in colossal because of our technologies. 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 direwolf. 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. And there's like-

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 a good sample of DNA, how do you turn that into a wolf? 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 dire wolves weren't closer related to wolves. They were closer related to jackals. And that's because at the 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 the difference is.

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 so, 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. And is this a 100% dire wolf or is this a new thing? So this goes into the philosophical thing.

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 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's its own species.

Then you have other people, you have the paleontologists and some of them love us, like Kenneth Lacovara, who's arguably the number one paleontologist in the world that loves us. But then you have other paleontologists that just hate us. And they do it based solely on tooth morphology because they argue that's the only thing that is gonna be persistent over time.

And I asked a paleontologist recently, that hates us. I said, if I made a mammoth that was giant with like 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, it's okay. So why does she hate you guys? We 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. This is heavily bold I wouldn't say this is moderately bold. You made three fucking dire wolves. That's not moderately bold. It's really kind of one of the craziest things that a human being's ever done. It's definitely in the realm. This is right up there with inventing the internet. Yeah, so when you see, well, and we have more stuff to come

that I think would be equally interesting. Yeah, I know. I feel like so. There's people out there, did you worry that someone is gonna get, you know, because this falls into religious realms. There's philosophical and religious, and so like back on speciation, you know,

polar bears and brown bears are two different species. But they may produce five offspring all the time. And a bear expert will tell you that a polar bear is just a cold aquatic adapted, cold adapted bear, right? And so I always ask people that- They're offspring or they can have children, right? Yes, yes.

So it's not like a donkey. Yeah, exactly. So there's different ways to characterize it. Making a mule. Yeah, but there's different ways to say is something is 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 really. But that's a good point though, because Neanderthal, if you wanna talk about different species, just because they could breed with us,

God, they're so different. 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 toad just because there's a road It just because because we as humans

Changed it's called geographic isolation of speciation So it's just crazy. And 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. I asked people, I was like, did you see Jurassic Park? And they're like, yeah. I was like, what was Jurassic Park,

what was Jurassic, to your question, what do you think, what was Jurassic Park about to you? When you- To me? Yeah, if you're like, if you're gonna take your kids to see Jurassic Park, what is the movie about? Dinosaurs. Is it? Because they took ancient DNA and they mix it with a bunch of other stuff Are they dinosaurs or they or they genetically modified animals GMOs? Genetically modified organisms that have inserted genes from lots of different things or 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, 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 they go to. So what was the argument? How did they present it? Oh, it's just like, by their own definition, they're like, well, it doesn't have enough DNA. So I was like, so I said, but the second dire wolf that we have,

or the second genome that we have from the tooth has less of the same DNA than the skull. Does that mean that it wasn't a dire wolf? And then it just turns into an, you're missing the point conversation. It's like, I'm just asking questions. I would like to know the point though. What is her point?

What is her overall argument? The general point of the people is that they wanna 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 the, based on the argument that they wanna make. Interesting. So species is just something that- It's a human construct. It's not- And it's just a thing if it can breed with another thing. Well, I mean, 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? It just gets into this dumb philosophical perspective because we made up this construct. Right, but as a person who studies biology,

which this person is, right, I kind of understand her perspective where she's like, what are you doing? 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 dire wolf?

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 that we should definitely show is the red. This is just like the guy in Jurassic Park. But we should- This is basically the same conversation.

But the reality- Yeah, but John Hammond- Don't worry. But John Hammond, I don't think that they were really focused on conservation unless there was a subplot that didn't make it to final cut. No, they just wanted to make an attraction. 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. Well, will this explain the red wolf to people? Because you were saying before, I didn't even know how few of them there are. 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. Are you just releasing these fuckers? No, no, they're in an ecological preserve as well. And so, but 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 elephants in Kenya. So anybody can use our technologies for free, right? We're working on kitchen, terrible fungus in Australia.

And so, if that's not enough, I found out that, you know, that there's only 15 of those red wolves back in the wild in North Carolina. So I met with the upcoming governor. Are they in other states as well? No, no, we'll get to that, we'll get to that. So they're only recognized by US Fish and Wildlife there. But this incredible woman from Princeton, top of her field, she's one of the top wolf

genesis in the world, Bridget Von Holt, identified a population of wolves in Louisiana that have red wolf-like characteristics. So she started darting 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 North Carolina. And is it part of the problem they're in breeding with coyotes? Yeah, but they've all been, like these guys,

like the ones in North Carolina have all inbred with coyotes. All the red wolves have some coyote in them. Because- They look like coyotes. Well, because every, well, the ones in North Carolina even look more like coyotes. Really yeah, because the reality is every single species is what's called an admixture. They're all weird. Everything is inbreeding with everything on some level.

Right? And so everything in life is an admixture. Nothing goes back to the Neanderthal. So this binary idea that we have is silly. It's no, it's a human cause construct, right? And it's insane. So I went to some folks-caused 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 perspective, a lot of times you have to anesthetize the animal, you have to take ear punches, skin biopsies.

It's actually 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 about as non-invasive as you can get, right? And so we found a way,

which we're open sourcing on Tuesday, is open sourcing this model of how you go 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. I showed 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 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 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. You have signed an NDA, but you fly with me to the preserve. And they're like, we need to spend five to six years and 20 plus million dollars to go understand this. To understand this, but I was like, we'll give you all of the technology.

And if you tell me you want 100 wolves, I'll just make you 100 wolves. And 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 flew there, I just got back from a meeting with the Department of Interior,

which Fish and Wildlife rolls up to, and they're very, very focused on innovation, not regulation, which has been pretty amazing. That's great. And immediately they said, we celebrate, Doug Burgum, 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 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 be in a task, five years and 20 million that they were going to spend internally. They weren't going to be as 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. So when will you start reintroducing these? So we just had that meeting last week. Solus red wolves from hell. You've created a lab, they're gonna start eating people. And so we're gonna, we just met with them last week. Well, they're beautiful.

God, they're so beautiful. Well, it's just like why, we shouldn't be afraid of innovation, right? No, but you know the real question is, where do you stop? Because 90 what percent of all animals that have ever existed, where do you stop? Yeah. Because 90 what percent of all animals that have ever existed, all species are extinct? Yeah. Are we gonna?

I think you focus on the species that are critically endangered and our keystone species mean the environment needs them. Right, but you're bringing them back. But the ones that we drove to extinction, right? Okay. So that's where I think you start. So it's debatable whether or not

we drove dire wolves to extinction. We don't really know what to extinction, right? OK. So that's where it gets hard. 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. Really quickly. Yeah, I'm inclined to think that these scientists that

believe it was an asteroid or a common impact are correct. I think it's a con. I think it's most likely it's a combination. We do know that when early, that anthropologic effects from humans, that 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. This is a different thing. Yeah. Are you gonna bring back saber-toothed tigers? So we get, everyone seems to have their favorite animal up for us to save, right? Like the Vakita.

Dire wolves would be my favorite. Yeah, that would be my favorite. Yeah, dire wolves, you gotta come maybe at some point you see them, but they're amazing. I mean, they're just beautiful animals. Yeah. So, saber-toothed 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. Oh, I didn't know there was more than one type of saber-tooth. How many are there? They classify them differently based on it. Obviously, you've been studying this, so you're thinking about doing it.

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 a hundred percent right is people say there were no saber tooth tigers in Alaska. That's just an incorrect statement. There were probably no smilodons there, but there are homotheriums which are a saber-toothed cat. Yeah, he's found things that were not supposed to be there.

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. Yeah, I think he's talked about that. But they found cave bears, short-faced bears. Wow Homotherium is still a saber-toothed cat, but what happens is this goes back to that philosophical Whoa that philosophical perspective. They think that only so if you look up Smilodon in comparison 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 fucking cool. Yeah, and I don't think I CGI image of it again Jamie the left that's so fucking cool Yeah, and and I don't think 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 one of the things down a bite. Look at this pause There was a I mean wait you see the Darrell Paul row, but that would be so crazy now I'm sure 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 smile dawns the one has the largest teeth. It has the largest known teeth But when people think of saber-toothed tiger, this is what right that's a crazy is what they think of those are crazy

I wonder how why nature wanted to have that I mean probably having to pierce things like mammoth hides Oh, it has to be right something where you there's a genetic Anges look at that one on the right lower right Jamie below that to blow that to the right to the right there Yeah, right there click on that look at that man So 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 Right, which you can see here. I'd say it's got a short down. So long toes got leopard. It's got stripes, right? Right. We don't even know if they had long tail over there. They could have been white Wow

That would be wild. So we do have there there have been some really well-preserved pups and others of in the permafrost of Home aetherium Whoa in the permafrost of homotherium. Whoa. And homotherium we know has that kind of coloration to it? We don't, I don't want to say we do or don't. We have not done the analysis on that, on the homotherium. Look at that little guy. We do have the genome of it though.

Not that we're gonna work on it. Okay, so that has brown hair. Have you seen the American short face bear? Yeah That's the thing. I'm probably the most scared 17 or 18 foot giant bear we're not working on I'm just saying but somebody might that's the problem There might be some fucking crackhead out there. That's got 40 billion dollars. It's out of his mind well, I also think that like some crazy dude who's Just got the resources that's that's you know

That is that to me is Megalodon scary. There's a lot of money man. Yeah, land Megalodon Well, it's 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 I read that yeah, yeah, it's a theory, but it's a prop pretty good one 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 is essentially a super polar bear Yeah, which is really scary because polar bears are terrifying and completely carnivorous and they don't care They'll just walk right up to you and kill you. Oh, yeah, there's a great video of these guys that are

Behind a fence. Yeah, that. Somebody sent it to me yesterday. Oh, fuck. 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's 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. And it's just calmly walking towards like, I'm gonna get in there. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, polar bears scare here. Hey fella. It's just calmly walking towards like I'm gonna get in there exactly. Yeah Yeah, it's it's a poor risk area very spooky well They're spooky because they don't eat anything but meat so we're on the menu

Yeah, all humans are on the menu anything that walks and breathes is on the menu Shit it'll take me a few minutes Sorry, Jamie pause for a second. Let me find this cuz it's good. Okay. I just sent it to you So, um, I looks like they're in I don't know where they are. Well, I think it'll say in the 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's sound yeah So it's probably Canada. Look at these guys. That sound. Yeah.

They're just trying to eat you. Look at this. Two more behind it. Yep. Hey, go on. Go on. Go on. Probably not gonna to work. They're just trying to figure out how to get in to eat you. Hey sweetheart. Sweetheart. Sweetheart wants to rip your liver out. Hey. Go on.

They're so beautiful. They are beautiful. It's interesting that they're the most dangerous ones because they're the ones we use for Coca-Cola and Klondike bars. Yeah. Isn't that wild though? You have them just like playing around in the snow but they're the most dangerous ones because other ones we use for Coca-Cola and Klondike bars. Yeah, and that wild though Yeah, I'm just like playing around in the snow, but they're actually terrifying. Yeah, you were saying the younger Jars 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 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 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 15,000 years ago? Yeah, like what was it like? You know there's a extinct bison species that is the bison latifrons. Have you seen those guys? Yeah, yeah what was it like? You know there's a extinct bison species

that is the bison latifrons. Have you seen those guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're like eight foot long, Texas longhorns. Crazy. On like, you know, super HGH, like bison. Yeah, our bison are small compared to the extinct bison. Yeah. Right?

Were they the largest of the North American bison? Yeah, the bison lot of France was. See if you can get a photo of that, yeah. I didn't know about them until a few years ago. I didn't even know that was a thing. I mean, there were so many different things, giant sloths, there's the saber-toothed tiger, the American lion, which is-

There's an American cheetah. Yes. The American cheetah, we actually have a full genome of it. And then 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-tooth tigers. Have you seen the stellar sea cow?

No, what is that? Think of like a manatee or dugong, right? That's the size of like a large whale. What? Yeah, but the sad thing is it died, it actually died off before it died off and yeah Within a hundred years of its discovery. When was that? We killed them all huh? Yeah, we probably turned them into candles or something. Yeah. Yeah, they're stick burn their fat

Yeah, yeah, so but it was actually really large is this Serenian To ever exist is hunted extinction only 30 years after being to 30 years arrived in the 18th century Wow, yeah, and it was and we actually have a fuck. We have a full genome of this too Which is pretty cool gonna bring it back. We can't just I would bring this back in heartbeat It was hugely important to the kelp forests of the Pacific Northwest. It was great. It's a great. It's not scary. It's huge It's like great, but then now the reason that back huge. It's like, it's another remnant. Right, but then if you bring that back,

why wouldn't you bring back a Megalodon? There is no Megalodon DNA. There's none? 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 the Megalodon. But he's like, I can never say it publicly. I think he just outed him.

Yeah, but there's a lot of museums. I could be wrong on the size. Yeah, whatever, he's great though. But there is no DNA. He would have to eat a lot. And we've already killed everything in the ocean. So one of the things that's weird and interesting that we're also working on is artificial wombs at Colossal.

Because if you wanna get to this world where you could productionize endangered species, One of the things that's weird, 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, 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 we're 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 are really just kind of focused on the kind of the core science that supports their initiatives But if if we are successful with our artificial wombs and 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 works. Have you 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? No, I think I think that if you look at the birthing crisis that that we're in and kind of population decline prices crisis I think that you 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, right? And we also know that globally, sperm and fertility and others is going down to the right, 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 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 an 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 were trying to gestate ex utero So I do think that some of those technologies could make it eventually into the human population That's where it gets really weird, right?

You could create a child with no mother or father. 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 did not grow up in an artificial womb. Yeah, but I mean, the people that are skeptical about this stuff, this is what they point to. It's like, 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 life. But if you could just make life without any of that, like what is that?

That's, where is that? You know what I'm saying? No, it's a great philosophy. How much of the child's development is taking place while it's in the mother and sharing that shared experience, the hormonal cues and whatnot? I wouldn't have a child that way.

Right, what if you're making a sociopath? What if you're making a completely unempathetic, no empathy, no connection to people, they come out out of the gate, Ted Kaczynski, all fucked up, like really. No, it's a fair point. We don't know what the process is while a baby is inside of a woman's body.

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. The question was, when this scales out, when you scale out 100 years from now, like what did you just do? Well, I think I mean my biggest thing that I think would be helpful is if if we had a world where we like that

If Colossal gets ultimate success, I would say that we've successfully rewilded animals back into their natural habitat We've revived revitalizes these mosaic ecosystems that you know Including you know your picture of what did the Arctic look like back in the day. How do we have that? Because that was actually a crazy... If you look at the work that's been done in Pleistine Park by Sergey Nikita Zimov, they've actually shown that rewilding northern Siberia with coal tolerant megafauna actually can revitalize the ecosystem.

It can add more biodiversity. It can actually keep the ground temperatures colder in the winter so it sequesters more carbon. So I think this idea of nature-based and living with nature in an ecological model is something that I hope that we are successful at. And I hope that Colossal's also successful at removing animals

from the endangered species list. So what you were talking about, you were talking about mammoths specifically, the study that showed that it would help. But 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.

And there was some talk about Eventually doing this with mammoths and then releasing those mammoths into Siberia. Yeah, that was one of that was something that that Larry or that that Sergey Nikita Zimov wanted to do how long from some Russian oligarch hunts a mammoth Yeah, I mean look given the geopolitics, you know, we see Going back to your wolf example, we see boundaries in geopolitical lines, right? The animals don't, right? And so we will probably not rewild our first mammoths

in Siberia for many reasons. But you think you will rewild a mammoth? Yeah, I think, you know, our goal, like, not to, if you, like, if, Jamie, if you look at colossal.com forward slash Tasmania, for example, we actually build working groups with folks around like everyone from academia to private landowners, to indigenous people groups, governments,

to understand 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 dunnard, which is like a mouse-sized marsupial, and a wolf and this, right?

But we actually, if you just kind of scroll through into the people- So it's a wolf-like marsupial. Yeah. Does it actually have a pouch that it- It does. It actually also has a backward pouch. So most pouches, other than like the wombat,

are forward-facing. It has a backwards pouch because they think because it was a burrowing animal. So that way you weren't like just- So to protect the babies. Yeah, like absolutely suffocate them. God, nature's fascinating. 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 Tasmania around rewilding the thylacine with... 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 gonna reintroduce an animal back without them or their lobbyists having a, and into the forest without them having a perspective, then I think that's just a naive way to look at the world. And so we going back, like the thylacine and Mammoth 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, dramatically think through what our rewilding strategies are. 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 put?

You haven't done any rewilding, let's be clear to everybody. Yes. They're not releasing dire wolves. And the woolly mice are not getting released. Right, right, right? Yeah, yes, so this is all theoretically yes, but if you do have one what would be the what would you look at specifically? How do you take into 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 right 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. So on the evolve part, this is actually kind of weird. So you do ecological field studies. So you work with ecologists, conservationists, predator experts, 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 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 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've reviewed the data, you'll have like a coal 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 cutout and they'll kind of look at it.

When they see, and remember to your point, this is hundreds, for them is multiple generations, right? Cause 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 and they absolutely freak out. Wow. Yeah, so we have, we've been collecting this data

for 18 months and we're publishing a paper on it. That is so cool. There's like generational trauma that is baked in to their DNA to avoid a thylacine. That's the only way they survive. I mean, without a language to pass down information. How would, you know, it makes you wonder like how much of that is in us?

Like when people have a phideophobia, you know, or arachnophobia, fear of snakes and spiders, like what is that from? Like, cause it's crippling. I've seen arachnophobia, fear of snakes and spiders. What is that from? 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.

Those genes passed on, and then you see a spider. They freak out, man. When I was doing Fear Factor, if we found out that someone had a fear of spiders or fears snakes Guess what that was on the for show that's on the show. Yeah, that's like me in Heights It's like every every episode you get back to the day of heights. That's cuz you're smart. Yeah, it's a fucking terrifying like Whatever I'm in a fucking hotel and I'm on like the 50th floor. Yeah, why why yeah? Why I don't have like the road noise. I like it's gonna be really hard to get out of here. So sketchy. Yeah, it why yeah, why I don't have like the road noise. I'm like, but it's gonna be really hard to get out of here So sketch. Yeah, it's so scary. It's just like the building moves a little bit when it's windy. Yeah, fuck all this

Here yeah, yeah, he lives way up high Jamie sends me pictures from his house I freak out like no no, I can't No, no, no, I'm not I wouldn't I just I like to be on the ground I like to be on the ground well I hate flying too which sucks cuz I fly I Fly all the time just counting on these fucking screws bolts Yeah Cuz 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 you don't want to see that Yeah, I want like I get mad if I get on a plane and the people don't shut the window size like was like, I don't need I'm in the bowl. I'm in the tube. It's lit on fire

I just yeah, I get just think about that 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 10,000 feet, you know 3,000 feet below me 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. A Delta Airlines flight. Yeah. It wasn't like crazy airline you've never heard of.

It was a person who was not that good at flying and kind of recent. Yeah. Like, hey, hire someone better. Yeah, and I go to DC a decent amount. And so like the whole DC thing, like absolutely freaked me out Oh, yeah

Yeah Cuz I 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 that the DC one look how much the water is shaking at this pool Oh, yeah, do you see the one in Thailand? This is this is where was oh, did you see the water? That's flying off the roofs. Yeah in the in the flying off the roofs where you see like from the ground It looks like it's raining It's crazy Yeah, well doesn't that is that would be the last day. I would spend in that fucking room. Yeah, you're out like that's it

It's like if I saw bye bye if I saw a ghost. I'm like all right moving. Yeah, bye bye Maybe maybe the ghost is cool. I'm not totally scared of ghosts because I don't think girls have ever killed anybody You know I'm scared of thylacines I'm not scared of thylacines. They start off the size of a grain of rice. I'm not gonna be really nice to them So does everything it's kind of like AI you gotta be really nice to it. Yes I I saw a great gift. I saw this great image on 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.

Oh boy. So I was like, I'm gonna be very nice on all of my requests on Croc. 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, but they're cute. I'm like, hey girls, what's up ladies?

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 drive I have to be very slow and let her cross and But I eat chicken. Did you see that study that that came out a couple weeks ago that having two eggs? Oh, I'm gonna 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 about like 47 percent. Yeah It turns out Alzheimer's connected to a lot of stuff that's around information. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they'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 three. Yes. Yeah, I've heard that. Which is really weird to think of it that way. But it's just so much. I mean, obviously you know this now because you're on a health path. Yeah. And you feel much better.

I feel incredible. Isn't it nuts? How many people are just running around out there feeling like shit? 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 electronic show in Shanghai. So I came back, I went to CES, the big consumer electronic 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 were 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 strategy officer. He was coughing, he wasn't feeling well. We both were kind of feeling like shit. I 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 were going back on Slack, talking about aliens and shit. And then the next day, I got a call from his wife that he had a sudden cardiac event. Oh, Jesus. 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 don't care what anyone tells you. There's definitely multiple things that came out of that thing. So I got super, super sick. I now rarely drink. I rarely have caffeine. I've kind of tried to cut out stuff, exercise regularly. Looking at all these things that people think are weird or that used to be weird or alternative, like a dry sauna, a cold plunge, red light. I do that every day now. Every day. Every day.

Yeah, that's beautiful. That's awesome, man. You're lifting weights too? Yeah, lifting weights on a regiment, everything. That's so important. Yeah. 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. Well, I don't want to be like, I now have a nine month old son, right? And he like wants to hang out and he's gonna get bigger. And if I can't pick him up, that's a sad day.

And I've kind of gotten this mindset of like, 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. It is. So like, why would I squander that blessing? Why would I not lean into it and make sure that when I'm 90, I can walk? Yeah, it's a blessing to be healthy.

It's a blessing. I mean, we're so concerned about our day-to-day existence that we lose track of this big picture. 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, 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 friends that I have that are my age and they look like they're my dad yeah and that's that's cuz they've been drinking and smoking and and sleeping late and fucking off their whole life and no exercise at all and your body deteriorates yeah and I'm not like I'm on the journey I'm not at

the end right it is a constant journey I'm on the journey. I'm not at the end, right? It is a constant journey. I'm on the journey. We're all on the journey. There's no end. Since I started working with Gary, like I did, have you seen this function test? Have you done the function test? What is the function test? 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 just a massively all encompassing test of blood. It's like two tests twice a year. 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.

That's amazing. 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, right? Like if you go to a store and get a steak or chicken, and 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 terrible at a store. But when you order from some of these like true, like Amish places and 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. And you only want to eat it. Have you had a lot of wild game? Yeah, so that's what I order now. So I order a bunch. So I do elk steaks. I do a lot of steaks from this farm that Gary recommended to me.

It's just great. Is it bison? Do they have bison as well? They do have bison too, yeah. It's Parker Pastures. Bison's fantastic. They're just, like when I have a steak from these guys, like it's been, like you can taste it.

And I've had like my brother-in-law and my father-in-law, I had friends, I was like, no, no, we're gonna try these steaks out of the freezer. And I was like, we're not just gonna buy something. Well, it looks different. It looks different, yeah, it looks like the coloration. You get a pink steak from the grocery store,

which is fine, you cook it, it tastes great. But if you get a grass-fed, grass-finished steak, like this little- Grass-finished, 100%. A lot of ranches out here, you know, 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.

Yeah, it looks completely different, but the taste- Yeah, it tastes different. 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 been getting.

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 you have so much energy? I'm like, yeah, welcome to my world. 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 too. Mostly like some people at large, at different locations, they're like, can we eat them? Can we eat a mama? What's it taste like that was like that question came up faster than we thought And this is enough. I know those in the first weird

Like they just don't it were my I don't want to eat something that's been extinct for 10,000 years You just bring it back. That's not even yet. Yeah, and that was the first question. Can I eat this? Yeah, I won't the first question. Can I eat this? Yeah I won't wooly mammoth steak my friend. It was also domestic thing the question happened domestic. Oh domestic Yeah, like people people in very big states. Yeah, I know too much money. Yeah fucking psychos. Yeah, it's it's been it's it's By a car you retards It's been one to eat a mammoth. That's so crazy We get the done we get that we get we get so many weird questions

well, if the dinosaur question, but the probably the number one question we get is Is the dinosaur do you think if they brought if Jurassic Park if Spielberg did it today, they'd have feathers We know that some dinosaurs had feathers We know some had hair like hair like kind of precursor to feathers and we know some had hair, like hair, like kind of precursor to feathers, and we know some that were just scaling. We have preserves of them. We can see in the fossil record whether they had it, right? 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 a museum. But when I was visiting there a few years back, they have like a raptor, and one side of the Raptor is feathered and the other side is like Jurassic Park. Yeah, scaly and You know you look at you. Oh It's just like oh, that's how fucking it's a bird Yeah, like now it makes sense like makes more sense. Yeah, it's a little stupid arms. It makes more sense I mean, have you seen the Watson? No.

Can we pull up a Watson? So this is a bird that lives today in the Amazon. And it is- Watson. It's called a, or Hotson. I think it's called a, 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 Hotson. And then if you click in if you type in, oh yeah, it's the Hotsin, and then if you click in and find a baby picture, it's got these little creepy hands. It looks like kind of like a bird-like dinosaur. We did the Geno on this for fun.

So, oh yeah, you can see it, it climbs. So before it ever climbs, it actually climbs up everything. Well, when you look at an eagle's talon, you're like, what the hell is that? And then it evolves, like if you, the first kind of like quote unquote dinosaur bird up there, it actually, yeah, it crawls. It crawls like it doesn't fly. Most birds just sit there with their little wing nubs and just don't do anything.

These guys actually climb. What about terror birds? Oh yeah, those are scary. That's a crazy animal. Like what the hell was that thing? Yeah. And that was, what was that? How many years ago did those things go extinct?

Oh, those were millions. Millions, right? Yeah, so the oldest DNA that we have is about 1.5 million years old. That's it? Yeah. So dinosaurs are out of the picture. So you can, a guy I should talk to about, about not that but that's interesting is Kenneth Lacovara

He discovered the four largest dinosaurs of all time including dreadnought as which is just it's the it's the craziest thing ever And going red not dread not us and going back to the issues that what is dread not us. Oh, it's amazing So I don't know Dreadnought is oh dreadnought is amazing. So I don't know What cool colors yeah, it was so it's a plan. Yes. Yeah, it's a plan Going back to this crazy notion of museums he found in Argentina And he like he's a mate Kenneth Lacovar. He's amazing. He found it in Argentina. And he, like, he's a, Kenneth Lacovar, he's amazing. He found it in Argentina, discovered the species, named the species, and he brought it,

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 goes back to some of these governments

and these museums. It's literally like not on, it's in a bunch of crates in Western Argentina. Really? Yeah. And it's like the coolest thing ever. This is, yeah. So yeah, that's Lacovara's lab.

And so, but it's truly, truly amazing. 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. Fill in a lot of blanks. Sometimes they'll get like a jawbone and they're like, and here's the reconstruction.

Right, it's weird because you go to see it and you think you're going to see a dinosaur bone. When it's only a percentage complete. Yeah, and sometimes they're real clever and sometimes they're not. Like sometimes it'll be different colors for the real bone versus, and you're like, how much of this do you have? And they're like 4%.

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 if you're seeing like what like rabbits look like if you take away there's yeah They did this with like whales and stuff They look absolutely if you look at they look like the scariest things ever and then you put it on whale in there And you're like, oh, that's not the worst thing Yeah for whales you see them and you look at them and you're like, oh, they're sweet. Yeah.

Woo, just chilling in the water. But if you see them with the teeth and everything and just the skeleton. And the skeleton, it looks like an alien monster. Yeah, like an alien monster. So I wonder what we were looking at. 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 when did that thing die off I don't know I'd probably have to be It it would probably be in the late Pleistocene one of the things that I learned through Ronella is that At the founding of this country in the early days the richest man in the world was selling beaver pelts Oh really it was the richest man in the world was selling beaver pelts Oh really it was the richest guy in the world yeah here the Pleistocene well on the dinosaur bones this beaver giant beaver 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? So about 13,000 years ago.

Could have been the same thing. 12,000 years ago. Wow, so it probably died off with American lion and all that other stuff. You know the pronghorn, you know the whole story about that. That's why they're so fast. Oh, because of the American lion? No, American cheetah.

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

Yeah, I've seen the pictures and they can run 55 miles an hour. That's amazing. And the reason why they can run so fast is because they were getting chased by cheetahs that don't exist anymore. So the cheetahs died off in the younger dry ice impact or whatever happened, but these pronghorn antelopes remain

and they are, there's nothing like them in terms of speed. That's awesome. Like it's really bizarre because they're a remnant of an older past where they had to be that fast to avoid the predators but the predators are gone they remain. Yes, can you catch them now? Nothing! Once they're done, like once they're grown, good fucking 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 horse backs like that dog has zero chance but the cheetah, the cheetahs were chasing these

motherfuckers 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. It's awesome. But the vision that these things have, give me a photo of one of their heads, pronghorn's eyes. They're so weird looking. They look archaic. Like if you if you see their face, they don't look like, it looks like they're from another time. It looks like they're from a Star Wars movie. Yeah, they look like they're from another time. Yeah, and they are. They're literally on the side there. Yeah, they, this is what would have been so amazing to like look at what the earth looked like, you know

12,000 years it is it is cool like America like to your point when you travel and you go to these different places Where you have they're truly more remote, right? And I'm not just talking about like Yellowstone But you know like when you've said you 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 at dusk, you've got like echidnas running around and you've got wallabies 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 and like everything fucking comes to him. And I remember the first, I was like, this isn't real. Like are these animatronics? There's no way there's this much life in biodiversity. And it was all just like, you know, the echidnas are running, the wallabies are jumping.

You've got like wombat's 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. There's just so many, it's crazy.

Well, I wonder what would be different had the thylacine survived. So they say that- Because that was kind of the only thing that was- It was the only apex predator for Tasmania in lower Australia. And have you seen a Tasmanian devil in person? Not in person.

They're awesome. They look cool as shit. They're cool as shit. They're awesome. They're eating 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 the sounds that they make, if you're out in the woods, you hear that sound, you're like, this is a sasquatch, this is crazy. They're crazy. See, we can hear some. They're referred to Tzy's as their devils Superficial is a little cute face. You find them eating. They just sound terrible find a Tasmanian tiger noises How do you know what they make or turks excuse me Tasmanian devil noises, sorry

Sorry, not have you seen this video though? I have yeah, we can go to that in a second. I just want to hear Look at that fucker So and cool and so they so they're they're part of the reason why they're but that that isn't terrifying You know, they give each other cancer. Yeah, that's what I'm saying Yeah, and many of the researchers in Tasmania 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 some. So they kill the young, so they're thinning out the weakest. They kill the old, then they kill the sick. An environment that has the right balance of predator and prey is a healthier ecosystem, including for those prey species. All data that we've seen on the thylacine suggests that they actually ate kind of that

mezzanine level of marsupials. Many people believe that the facial tumor disease would not if you've seen it It's I don't show it's disgusting. It's really gross. Yeah, but that What are we looking out here? Oh feeding frenzy? Oh, yeah, give me some volume. It's doing it right in front of people too It's crazy. They might be talking at times. Yeah, I fed them like this crazy. They just not scared You just Tasmanian devils the only Fed them like this. It's crazy. Here they go. They're just not scared. No. Watch how fast they are capable of consuming this meat. They're like piranhas in the world. These are Tasmanian devils,

the only carnivorous marsupial that we have ever featured on camera. And next to the Tasmanian- It's so cool that they're not- Is that a coyote? They're remotely scared of people. Yeah, they don't even notice you're there. It's crazy.

So if you feed them like this, you can put a piece whose video is this Jimmy Coyote Peterson Brave Wilderness, okay Look at these little fuckers, and then they just make these sounds but they often get into fights and that fighting is when they trade that's when they do the transmission Oh, right in the middle of the devil fight. No, I mean like, wow. But they literally scratch and bite each other

and then they transmit this, it's the only transmissible cancer 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, like they can't walk well, they can't really see well, those are the animals that would be picked up at predators first and so they so there's a big movement within Tasmanian in lower

Australia southern Australia that if we could reintroduce a predator being the thylacine it would eat well I came like it oh god we're looking for people listening we're looking at tumors on Tasmanian Devil's faces. Yeah, which was terrible. Well, that was a perfect inspiration for a comic book character, or for a cartoon character, rather, the Tasmanian Devil. Yeah, Tasmanian Devil, yeah. He was a man.

I mean, 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 were at, it is a terrible, because if you've never heard it before in person, it just catches you by surprise and it like blows you away. So I was, it was a pretty weird experience first time I did it.

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? Cause 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 them.

No, they will start thinning it out and it will achieve a balance. Yeah, it will achieve a balance. So they've done a lot. Let's just keep people up to date on Australia. Most people don't know that they've introduced cats. So house cats. You want some water? Yeah, you're sitting there.

They introduce house cats, like just feral house cats in Australia to combat certain species. And they start decimating all the other species. Ground nesting birds. It's literally the worst, it's literally the number one mammalian extinction rate in Australia to the cats. And it's because 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? the good news about the Tasmanian in the southern Australia ecosystems is they're mostly intact, right? Hopefully they'd eat the cats the LST if you talk to most people in Australia They hate cats outside of the cats that they actually own. 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, fully eradicate cats that are wild, non-domestic cats. Yeah, people hunt them. Yeah, people hunt them. 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 this guy's holding up a dead cat. Yeah with a bow and I'm like, hey Yeah, man. Yeah, what the fuck? You know they they hold them up like trophies 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 a species preservation, is have you ever seen a northern quoll? No, what is that? Northern quoll.

It kind of looks like a manker, like a ferret, but way prettier. It's amazing. How do you spell it? Q-U-O-L-L. Oh. I mean, they're absolutely beautiful. Their coats are beautiful, but they're another type of carnivorous marsupial. But a hundred years ago or so, they got, we as humanity introduced cane toads. Have you ever seen a cane toad?

It's like the job of the hunt. I mean, it looks fucking evil, right? They're monsters. 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 is maybe no actually I

think this is part of our work and what what we've done is if you go back to to your point about co-evolving and evolution if you go back to southern Australia to South America where cane toads evolved along snakes and mice and other small mammals, they eat 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 in an insane rate. They're having like thousands of babies. There's making more and more of them. So guess what?

More and more cane, or more and more coals 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 base pairs.

So one letter, a one letter change, conferred, had no other, you know, deteriorated, had no other effects that were negative. And it created a 5,000 times resistance to cane-toed. Wow. So because, you know, quails are endangered and we don't want to work in endangered species first, we want to start with a more model species. We worked in the fat-tailed dunnard, which is our model species for the thylacine, and

we engineered dunnards and dunnard cells and dunnards that can eat cane toad tissues and have zero effect on them, where it would typically kill them. And so now we're in the next phase of trials showing that we'd like to engineer in this one edit into quolls, because if quolls would have most likely, through this concept of convergent evolution, if you would have put the quoll next to the kanto, they would have co-evolved together, they probably would have had that resistance already built into them through nature. Wow. And so that's showing the power of this concept of genetic engineering and biotech in conservation.

And so then you could 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 quolls, 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, it has this, and helped 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. I hope you don't have to bring in big toads to eat the coals. Have you ever seen, you know what I'm saying?

Have you seen those toads and frogs that like latch out and like they'll eat anything in front of them? Yes. Yeah, they're terrifying. I've seen the ones that eat. There was a giant one of those toads back in like I don't know thousands of years ago. How big was I don't know you if I've seen a pick a ma 3d render of it And it like grabs like, you know deers and stuff. It's crazy. Whoa. Yeah, we've played videos of toads eating mice

I had no idea. Yeah, but before I saw those videos are only a few years ago I had no idea toads would just eat mice. Yeah, it's crazy So they put them in this bin with a bunch of mice and this toad is just going ham, just snatching mice up and swallowing. And you'd think that they're just sitting there docile and then they just absolutely, they throw their whole bodies at them.

Well, they 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. Yeah, I've seen them toss each other. Imagine you're fighting with a dude and he literally bites half your torso and throws

you through the air and they don't even look like it bothered them. Yeah, that's just part of the fight. That's totally within the rules. That's what creeps me out about reptiles. There's this lack of emotions. At least a wolf has emotions. There's something going on there. There's this lack of emotions. Like at least a wolf has emotions. It's like there's something going on there. There's an intelligence.

There's something really creepy about getting eaten by something stupid. Like a crocodile? Yeah, 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 air to simulate drowning. Yeah, I saw that video. Apparently, that's not what they're doing. Apparently, that's a normal characteristic that they do.

But from a natural selection perspective, stupid people were like, I have to save them. Yeah, I got to save that dude. And then we credit the crocodile for being super smart, but in reality, just got a free meal. Yeah. Well, you would think though, if they have gotten those meals before, that that would be a learned behavior. I mean, just make sense.

They do have some learned behavior. I have a friend, his name is Jim Schocke. 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 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, because you can't see them in the water and then they close to the edge, you know, because you can't see them in the water and then they just explode out and 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 hunt people.

Yeah, they absolutely do. And it's weird how some of those, it's very strange as we start to study, because one of the things that Colossal's 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 elephants get cancer a fraction of what they should due to an overexpression of a gene called P53. So there's this thing called Peddo'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 we had to figure out how to regulate P53. Because anytime you go to edit that one cell, it just says looks like a mutation, could be cancer, kill cell. It's programmed in. So we had to be able to turn that down because we're in the editing phase on the Mayhoff Project. So there's about 85 genes. But if you turn that down, does that make them more susceptible to cancer?

So you got to turn it back up after you make the edits. So these are the things that we are learning about. I'm with that lady doctor, that lady scientist. You guys are doing something you shouldn't be doing. No, we're learning about things, right? We're learning about things, right? I'm kidding, but I'm not kidding. If I was her, I would probably have the same opinion.

I'd probably say, especially if I found out you guys weren't really scientists, I'd be like, what are you doing? Yeah. Why are you doing this? Well, I mean, the good news is aboutal is that you know outside of our 17 academic partners and our 95 scientific advisors 90% of the company scientists there's very few like I like I fall in the very few I'm kind of kidding about you're not scientists, but I'm definitely not a scientist

I'm not kidding about the technology getting into someone else's hands. Yeah, and this is where it gets weird like China Russia It is it is getting weird 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, if it's out there, you can't put it back in. I think that more and more people in other countries are gonna be doing things with 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 it. But that gets so weird, right? Like the China story. Can you explain to people what they did?

They said they were inoculating them from HIV, which is... Yeah. They actually were engineering babies and editing their embryos to confer our 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 anything that could be passed on to the next generation, right? So things, so if you engineer something into the genome, the fear is, you know, 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 of moment, right? So we don't want that. The scary thing was they didn't just do that. They also edited something that would allow the child to have much higher intelligence. 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 that from an affairs perspective was brilliant. 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 you. You just want to help the world. 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 with humans.

They are looking at what makes humans more intelligent. They don't shy away from this. This is not 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.

Like that's not a hidden thing. So that is the problem. But they supposedly did with these children. How old are these kids now? I mean, when did that happen? It was, yeah, so they were in like six or seven. Oh, and are they already winning chess championships? Yeah, so I'm not- We should find out.

We should find out where these kids are probably in a lab somewhere with a headset on. Yeah. Teaching them how to be psychic. I don't know how public it's like, cause it was also one of those weird things that was like, he's in trouble. He's going to jail Yeah, and then he's like got out and these out. Yeah, all is good guy

Yeah, but meanwhile if you go to jail in China you fucking vanish forever. Yeah. Yeah, except for this guy They're making iPhones until you drop dead of starvation Yeah, it is it is it's 100% true And yeah, and so it is weird that like he got in trouble for a few months, right? And he got in trouble for something they probably told him to do in the first place They funded his lab his lab was his lab was a was funded by the and this is what we found out about I guarantee you there's shit that they're doing somewhere that we haven't found out about yet And if you were gonna do something with human beings and create a super soldier, you know, we know that Russia.

Well, that's what separates us. That separates us. You know 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 war. Oh, I saw that. I read about that. For war. Yeah.

Yeah. A chimp-human hybrid for war. Well, there's been a recent publication out of Japan where they're allowing Japanese soldiers or Japanese scientists to edit human cells in embryos with mammalian genes with other mammalian genes like what kind of genes like will am a chance in a person no we are not doing that people ask us if we could solve ball hair loss with woolly mammoths that would be the first thing people want.

Hair loss, next thing, bigger dicks. Yeah, those are consistent questions. Well, you can't engineer once a person's already born, right? Well, you can't. With the current technology. With the current technology. So being able to send stuff to gene therapies and targeting it, being able to deliver specifically

to cells is an area that we're getting better at. Like I think 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 deliver that gene therapy to everything? And you could do that to a person who's already born? To someone that's already born. It's obviously much easier to do it at the embryo stage. 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?

Yes. Whoa. Yeah. This is what I predicted. Everyone's gonna look like Thor. It's gonna be much a Chris Hemsworth and Jason Momoa's and no more people look like you and me. Yeah Wait Chris is one of our investors and I always think we look just like each other. Yeah, so he invited

Luke invited me to go to Vows from another planet. I think you different species is yeah 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 cuz they're like we want to go surfing I was like Yeah, I'm not going sir with you to measure cocks to yeah I'm going as far away from you with my shirt off as possible

You got to imagine if that becomes a reality like what we're doing today just with Plastic surgery. Yeah, right. Like let's take for example. Yeah GLP one, but that's That's achievable right what they're with GLP ones are doing is achievable through hard work Yeah, but but like what they're doing in South Korea with eye surgery like yes ubiquitous Like so many people are getting this weird surgery where they have these K-pop eyes. Yeah, it's a strange thing. 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 is going to be like, now we're really playing God. 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 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, you know, ethically and transparently go figure out, does it have any predispositions to certain things, right? So like, you know, if diabetes or diabetes or certain types of cancers or Alzheimer's or oldness in your family, you can now get a lot of that's environmental, but you can still get a distribution score to it so you can understand what are the genetic factors in that. So that's today.

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 the first true round of COVID that was a lab leak that attacked my heart. Wow. And so I didn't want to be able to pass that on. So we screened for that, right? But that's not a standard thing. So, but that's a today thing. Like, you know, two years ago,

that technology existed and is now prevalent and people are using it. 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 it literally, like, change everything about them, change their intelligence, change everything. I think it starts with, you know, neuro enhancers, and I think it...

And this is the biological perspective. This is not even the, you know, 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 HellSpan, where it's like the very vain stuff. So like, you know, skin, skin elasticity, hair,

all of that, eye color, I think all of that is changeable. And not, like there's a company right now, I forgot the name of it, that spun out of Harvard, that is making patches, using micro-needling 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 and for skin. And so you can have 30-year-old-looking skin

when you're 85 years old. What? Yes. And the same thing for hair, right? The reason why our hair is great. So you can have 30-year-old-looking skin when you're 85 years old. What? Yes. So, and the same thing for hair, right? The reason why our hair is great. That's going to be real soon? Yes.

I mean, the speed of which... 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, right? We saw how fast things could move if people really wanted them to. So I think that's number one.

And I think that you're gonna have the ethical pushbacks on this. So regulatory and ethical, those are the two hurdles, but right now the technology exists. 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 state. Right. Right. So they're not getting NIH funding. Right. They're getting all that funding is one of the other random stuff. But people aren't focusing on longevity. That's why you've got, like 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 are resetting your clocks at a cellular level. That's what Jeff Bezos and them have they're doing it all those labs George Church is another company called rejuvenate bio They're doing the same things and they're smart They did it in dogs first because people love dogs and they can also collect a lot of data that they can then apply to Clinical trials. Yeah, I know there's a lot of people cloning their dogs Yeah, there's people that are cloning their dogs and they can do it even easier now with it with this Yeah, I didn't bring Marshall to the studio

We did we did clone one person's dog. 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 marshal. Yeah, I wouldn't want to do that Yeah, yeah, and that's how people feel about some people are unique little creatures. They are their own little personalities 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 just full disclosure I did we did do a blood sample on that one just cuz I don't 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, right? 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 dire wolf and red wolf tech his kids were devastated because his dog was dying and 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 didn't want to put it to sleep. They didn't think she'd wake back up. So we did a blood draw. He called me over Christmas or before Christmas last year and told me that they think the dogs got weeks, days to weeks to live, could we do it for him?

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 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 it to say, for our selfish means, you're already suffering, we want you to go be put to sleep and have pieces taken out, 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 he was happy with that. So I think these- What if that dog is gonna be reincarnated into a higher level of existence? You stop it and put it on this like- Yeah, so that's not exactly our business. You know what I'm saying? I do, it's all weird.

We don't really exactly know what life is. No, we don't, we definitely don't know life. And here's one thing that 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 it's definitely not the same dog But he's like he 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 don't know the exact place, but he would always go sit in the exact same place the other dog said

So there's weird stuff. We don't understand that would creep me out Because Marshall has very specific places where he sleeps and if that happens, yeah. That would creep me out. It would creep me out too. Because Marshall has very specific places where he sleeps. And if that happens, yeah. It would creep me out. Yeah, so- I have 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. Yeah, same thing. I was like, my dog, Ken, if he gets on, 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. They want to be in contact with you. My dog watches TV with me. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. I tell you, we- They're the best.

Yeah, and we didn't even teach it this, but when we say security at our house, our dog just loses, like Ken just loses his mind. And he just uses his rabbit, just runs to the door. He runs to the front door, runs to the back door back door for the side doors. Yeah, what kind dog? They're just mights so I have Barbie and Ken. They're just two little weird mutts We named them before the movie 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 yeah, but it's also good to teach them those things. Yeah, I think loss is important. Yeah. I think loss is important. I don't wanna, 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 things, and there's consequences to decisions,

and we're gonna 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 kid, and also all of these kids and parents that have been sending us pictures of mammoths

and thylacines and dodos, and hopefully now dire wolves, is something that's exciting. Because we get these handwritten notes from kids, right? So like on our shittiest day at Colossal, when someone says whatever, or whatever 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.

There's a teacher named Katie from Florida who sent us a letter in literally like 40 pictures of Mamas. 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. We're in this like attention war with everything. My kids won't be quiet. I start talking about colossal. I showed the wooly mouse stuff. They all want to just talk about it.

They just zone in, right? Because it's interesting. It's interesting. And kids, and so I think this is a time that we can use technologies for human health care 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 like inspire

the next generation. Like, don't we want to preach hope? We're on this 24 seven psycho news cycle, right? Like that wasn't around when I was a kid or when I- Do you know C.S. Lewis first started talking about this? Like what year was C.S. Lewis alive? But he had a quote about, I might have saved it, he had a quote 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. In this idea of these 24 hour news cycles,, 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 the dog's perspective? Like, and they're like, yes, and they're dead serious So it's like as like there can be stories that are just negative and there can be stories that are just positive That's okay. 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.

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. What you guys are doing is great. You've got the dire wolves fenced off, and you're very careful, and you're monitoring them. It's great. It's going to happen. Itenced off. You're very careful. You're monitoring them. It's great It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen and at least you're transparent about it Yeah, like at least this is not happening in Russia where they're making super wolves that only eat Americans

Yeah, and they and they train and they train them with DNA to only eat, but 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. Yeah. 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 everyone's very, very worried about AI. But I do think that synthetic biology is in that camp. I think it's like discovering fire. It's the God Camp. 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, and then you have new technologies that are gonna emerge from AI using quantum computing And then the interface at all like the rolling stuff and everything It's just gonna get you know we interfaces are crazy because we had that gentleman

Noah the first guy got it and he said he has an aimbot in his head So like when he plays games he's he's like got a crazy advantage because where he looks is where the cursor goes Yeah, like instantaneously so he could shoot things like he's not going to miss. Yeah. I mean, we are living in a weird time. 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 great wild. That's what I say about synthetic biology, right? So the ability to engineer drought-resistant crops or a vaccine or regrow our hair or make mammoths, that's today. We can't even think about what's tomorrow. We spun out a 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 need it breaking, it actually breaks the chemical bonds of plastic and just produces biomass as a thing. Well guess, you know, 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. I think that we can get it down to two weeks. 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 and we have to do something about it. I do think there's even industrial use cases coming out of synthetic biology that

like 10 years ago, if someone said, we give you a magic microbe that you can put in a vat and you can just throw any of your plastics in there and you can throw salads and other stuff there and it won't even touch it, that would have sounded like science fiction 10 years ago. That's so crazy. And so now you said it's down to a couple of months? Yeah, it's so crazy. And so now it's you said it's down to a couple months. Yes, 20 It's 22 months right now

So and we're talking about like not just like your water bottle your water ball But you're also talking about things are like industrial defense plastics that are like, you know Radiation hardened and whatnot for space like we're throwing some pretty hard stuff What about those stupid fucking windmills that they have to change? Yeah, they actually have a landfills for windmills and they have to change every few years? They actually have a bigger. Landfills for windmills. And they also have a bigger negative carbon impact than they make yet.

And they don't barely make any electricity. Yeah, yeah, they kill livestock, or they kill animals, kill birds. They disrupt. Whales. They also disrupt migratory patterns of birds. Of course they do. Yeah.

You can't fly into that. Yeah, and they're all made with plastic and plastic Polymers and then they have to get rid of them and then the only place to put them is in a landfill Yeah, exactly. So break. So that's why we started breaking. So wow, so these microbes would be able to break that down Yeah, I mean we haven't tested on that specific But like one of the biggest ones that we tested on was like it was nylon Just because there's so much if you look at like's in the ocean, a vast majority of it is nylon from just discarded fishing nets.

Oh, that makes sense. 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 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 got to do, Gary, you got me a new water machine. 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. So when you're doing this, is this something that you could release in the ocean itself? Or would you have to worry then about the effect, like bringing the house cats to Australia? No, it dies.

It only eats this like this. This is what they always say right before it fucks up. I don't worry about it. 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. But you could do that testing and then conceivably dump it on the Great Pacific garbage patch? 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 can just go sprinkler and call it a day. But that's the long-term goal, right? Wow. So, but that's the power of, you know, we used AI and 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 good, but the the process of using it outside of contained Systems like a bioreactor has to be done Very thoughtfully and measure just like rewilding right? It's like this is where sometimes people get confused about like the Yeltsin stuff.

They didn't just open the gate and throw some wolves in there. I mean, it 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 shit ton of unintended consequences

if you're not careful. Yeah. But synthetic biology is that, it's an AI level thing that we need to be worried about. And how many different nations are working on this stuff? So I think that the US is by far the most advanced from a synthetic biology perspective. It is a major directive of China,

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, 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 right here.

You guys are cool, right? So they are doing this, right? So they are looking for insights in animals. They are looking for that data. They're also trying to build like today's Noah's Ark. And so China is for sure. Some countries it's harder, like the European Union's harder to do anything because they have kind of put a moratorium on GMOs, 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, right? We can be smarter and actually have a better understanding of those intended consequences now through AI and software. Bro, people are gonna have a dire wolves guard in their house. No.

In a hundred years? They're not open to the public. 100%. They're gonna get your technology and they're gonna sell it. And people are gonna be eating wooly mammoth steaks while the dire wolves guard their house. Yeah, that's not the future that I hope for.

I'm more of an optimist, so I kind of believe in the general good of humanity. Of course, it's your company. Your company is fucking the whole world up. You have to think that way, I'm just kidding. But it is a weird, 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 so interesting. And we're learning a lot, right? And the application of that learning could allow us to save many species, right? Yeah. And I think that- 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? So the closest you could get from a dino DNA perspective is that there is ways that you can do demineralization of bones and get amino acids to 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 what we know about birds, what we know about reptiles, and where they branch. So 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 where they branch. So you could make one. I think you could. Wasn't that one of the things they did in Jurassic Park? That's what they all did. They made a dinosaur that didn't exist before, the big giant one?

The Adominus Rex, yeah. Right. That was something they created, correct? That's something they created, right? And so I think from a technology and genome engineering perspective that is eventually possible So they could easily make a t-rex without half. I would say easily yeah, but but they could 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 Oh my god

I mean that's just where the technologies go right right? The better, and you said it best when you brought up quantum. If, 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 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 five years ago. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no 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. We're gonna ban investing in facial rec technology. Well, that's just dumb, right? Because we now know there's things like deepfakes and all this stuff, but it's like, that's setting American innovation back because someone's doing something'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, um, 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 and I hope that we continue to be the the world's You know leader, but I do think other countries have different ethical boundaries than we do and they will experiment on kids But it's interesting also that you're a company. You're 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 it's- Obviously, you have people, I'm sorry to interrupt you. No, no, no, go for it. You have people in your company as well. And I'm sure there's an understanding of what they're doing.

So you must be being studied by other countries. Yeah, we definitely, and we have investment by In-Q-Tel, right? So I'm sure that makes us more of a target. So I mean, we do work closely with the DOD and IC frequently. When you think about it 100 years from now, 1,000 years from now, when you scale this out, there's no limit to what could be done with life. That's so strange. It's so strange to think that for four plus billion years,

life has evolved in a very specific pattern. Just on rails. Yeah, yeah. And then one day. And now we say we can take the rail where we want. Ooh, boy. And you know, that the the grandest of all conspiracy theories is that that's that's how humans were created Yeah, that we were in here. Yeah Well either pants or that we were engineered in plays right one is the Anunnaki, right? Oh, yeah

Samara I will I will 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 and and If you look at some of the carvings from all over the world Resembling their sky gods. There's a lot of weird similar I mean you can't you you can't objectively it's like the guy with the parrot with the with the sphinx right was it? That's like yep. That's water. I'm an expert on erosion That is water and then they're like head of thex, 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 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 stuff in the Middle East and how it looks exactly the same. It's very weird. It looks exactly the same. Have you been to Peru? No. So that I would put, you know, cause I don't want to take you away from going

and visiting the boneyard. So you totally do that, but you should also go to Peru. Peru, if you, like you can see Peru and you can see, it's like standing in the Grand Canyon versus seeing it on Google Maps, right? If you go to like Alian Tombaugh 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 it, 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 and a quarry that's 2,000 miles from here Whatever how many thousands of miles where 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 liar. You think you can't say it's not weird. Yeah, just did not say to say it's not weird is actually denying science Yeah, it's not weird. Yeah, to say it's not weird is actually denying science. Yeah, so you should put Peru on your, because when you see it, there's nothing like it.

I've been fortunate enough to travel the world. You see it and you're just like, that just doesn't make sense. The coolest thing I've ever seen is Chichen Itza. Yeah, I've been to Chichen Itza. And you go there and you're like, what did you do? What did you do? How'd you do this? Yeah. How'd you guys do this? You know what's crazy about Chichen Itza, they don't let you go there anymore.'re like, what did you do? Yeah. What did you do? How did you do this? Yeah. How did you guys do this?

You know what's crazy about Chitinita? 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 Chitinita. Well, there's in the jungles there on the Yucatan Peninsula, there's actually other older pyramids. But the carvings that they have on Chitinita

and the carvings they have there, they're actually the older ones have more precise carvings But they but now guess what it's not open to public I've seen that I've been there. Oh, it's so frustrating But all it is just it is such a weird world, right? Yeah. Yeah I mean I'm talking to you about like hardcore genetic science But then when you start to look at all the craziness in the archaeology is we don't know a lot A lot. Yeah, and there's no way you can know a lot and anytime you suggest something new you get you know shit for it

Yeah, you get a rash of shit and people try to connect you with the worst people in the world. Hence Graham Hancock Yeah, but think grandma him. I think Graham Hancock in the end. I don't know if they're You know kind of this advanced civilization or whatnot But I think really smart people said things like Plato and others that were probably real Yeah, I don't think they were just like playing around and like oh we're gonna write something that's gonna be in history as a joke forever You've seen the Reich art structure. Uh-uh. You ever seen that? Oh, this is what there's a lot of people like Jimmy Corzetti. Who's this famous YouTube? I guess you'd call him I? Guess he'd be like an we pull up the structure sure he'd be like an ancient history

Enthusiast he's a guy who's like studies these things it does YouTube videos on them, but the right chart structure is essentially Atlantis Oh, this is in the desert. Yeah, it looks like Atlantis There's salt all around it it has the it has the rings at Plato described and at one point in time. It was connected to the ocean I mean it literally looks like Atlantis and people disputed a lot of people gone and studied it there Like well, it's a very difficult place to get to and it's also very dangerous So people have studied it, but there's there hasn't been like large-scale Archaeological digs there or any the-Saharan Africa thing is so fascinating. They find whales there.

I mean, they know that it was lush rainforest while human beings were alive. And there hasn't been like large scale exploration of what's in that ground. And it's immense. I do think that the younger dry stuff is also a combination of, I think, generally speaking, if you break down the younger dryest period into that rapid cooling, I think the vast

majority of people will say some of it, some of the destruction around megafauna was anthropologic, which I'll give it some percentage. Then I think a lot of people agree on this flood theory. Anthropologic meaning human beings killed them. Yes, 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 sea rising, with rushing waters and sea rising whatnot. And then you've got, you know, what caused that flood, most likely meteorological, you know,

astrological or meteorological. And then they combine that with core samples that show large levels of iridium. Yeah, which only exists when you have certain levels of heat at certain, at index. It's like that, it's like that nuclear glass or whatever you find in the desert. No, that's, iridium is actually different. Iridium is actually very common in space, but rare on Earth. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's this that a nuclear glass or whatever. That's iridium is actually different iridium is actually very common in space

But oh, yeah, that's this and there's a layer. Yeah, there's a silt of right the micro diamonds But they have those two as well. Yeah, that's what yes From the Trinity explosion they discovered it there. Yeah, they find these little micro. There's 100% there was impacts Yeah, that's a fact andglades. There's 100% there was impacts. Yeah. That's a fact. And they also know like when the meteor shower, and this is a thing that they study, like when we go through this comet shower, and that that's-

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. Exactly. Right? Oh, water canopy, you're weird.

Don't talk to me again. I know. And then, and now it's be your weird. Don't talk to me again. I know. 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? That's what brings me to the weird ones when you go back to like the Vedic texts and you're like, what was the Vimanas?

What were these flying vehicles that they had? What was Ezekiel talking about in the Bible? 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 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 head and stand up, right? And then they compare some of those to paintings from like 500, 700 years ago. Let me stop you there, because a lot of those crazy balls of light. We're all fake. No, you can just zoom in on Venus. And that's what you get.

Cool. You zoom in on stars and you get this sort of bizarre distorted image. Have you seen those? Uh-uh. 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. Because you're looking through the atmosphere. I've always seen this stuff on the internet until I was in Wellington, New Zealand, when I was with Peter. Peter, his house in Wellington is like on a body of water, everyone's aware.

And we were talking, of course, like the conversation went to ghosts and UFOs, because like, why not? No, I haven't seen them in person. I've seen them on his iPhone. Like this wasn't like Telescopic lens. This is an iPhone and it looks exactly like what you see I guess on the zoom ends That's the thing about zooming in see is the thing is Like these are planets that people have zoomed in on yeah, 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 I'll have to see you see what I'm saying yeah like this is a perfect example so this is a star in the night sky with a Nikon p900 so is that 900 X Jamie what is that can you talk in the mic just the model number I have no idea what that means. So what would you think that the amount of... I don't know, 10x, 100x, I have no idea. Okay, 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. It looks so weird. It's how it's moving around like you say, oh my God, you found a UFO. But it's not. It's just a star. Well, I do hate that every UFO video is is blurry well or a star You know I mean that could be if you want to get into the whole how put off

Perspective who's just brilliant physicists. Yeah, he's on a lot of papers. Yeah, he explained it to me He thinks there's some sort of gravity distortion. Yeah, that's around it, so this is isn't that this is that particular camera? So this is is this not a very? But is it that so that's a seven hundred seventy seven hundred and forty nine dollar camera on Amazon So I'll see if Peter will give me that his I'm sure it would and I'll send to you because it's just weird to see Oh, they're weird. No, I'm not saying this is like not zoomed in his wife's I am not denying. I have never 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 so we send to you

Oh my god, they found a UFO. He'd be like, holy fucking shit. It's real. Look at that. It's undeniable Look at the energy around it Yeah with how put off believes is that there's some sort of distortion around these things that's allowing them to be transmedium, to go through the ocean. That's all their zero point energy and moving and in gravitational wave type stuff. Do you go deep on this?

I get a little bored. It gets boring because there's no real resolution. 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.

I did these guys. I did a call with Hal. I got into that crowd for a while, and before I started Colossal, and I knew a bunch of those folks. So I talked to Lou, I talked to Hal, I did a Zoom with Hal, or whatever the Google needs to be. If you imagine what we are now,

where we are, what you're describing in terms of technology that's emerging right now. And we have dire wolves today in 2025. 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. Yeah. It's not. And if you look at the exponential rate of our technology curve, it's not that far. Now imagine the monkeying that you guys have done with dire wolves. I wouldn't say it's monkeying. It's a little monkeying around. The selective precision genome engineering.

Amazing stuff you've done with dire wolves. I'm just being silly, but Imagined doing that to primitive hominids now if you were an insanely advanced species from another dimension of the planet Whatever it is and you're a million years more advanced than human beings and you come down here and you see Australia Pythicus You know, yeah trying to figure out how to make a spear. And you say, listen, let's put a little bit of this, put a little bit of that. I told you one edit makes 5,000, you know, confers 5,000 resistance to neurotoxins. So it's like a couple of edits here does a lot. 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 muscle. Yeah, and our heads are getting bigger. That's them. I read that theory too.

It's a bizarre archetype, right? 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. No, that one. I go down those rabbit holes, because I mean, I just think, once again,

going back to like the stuff of like Cuckoo Con and Anunnaki and all this stuff, it's just so strange. And how you have certain things that are aligned to Celestial, and you're like, yeah, but they could have picked a lot of constellations. The most interesting. It's just so strange. And how you have certain things that are aligned to celestial, and you're like, yeah, but they could have picked a lot of constellations. Why did they all pick the Pleiades or whatever it is, right? Why did they do that?

And also, how did the fucking ancient Sumerians have a detailed map of the solar system? Insanely detailed. From 6,000 years ago. How? Yeah, and also be able to predict well enough of where it was going, knowing that we were moving through space.

Yeah. Also have these giant things with little monkey people on their laps. Yeah. Like, what are you saying? Yeah. There's weird, the cool thing about this,

but think, take a step back. Even though a lot of times people like Graham Hancock and others are ridiculed about it, like, and we get ridiculed even for the actual science that we're doing improving every day They at the end of the day it is still cool And it's interesting like I want I don't want to live in a society or a universe where everything's figured out every day Yes, is amazing and we're figuring out amazing things well unlike you. I don't have the burden of being taken seriously Well, unlike you, I don't have the burden of being taken seriously. And that's great for discussing ridiculous things.

You can go explore. That's awesome. It is great. I love it. It's super interesting. I love it. 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 the ancient flood than anyone in the world. And that's cool. It is cool Yeah, it's very fascinating and we should have conversations Yes, and the world is filled with so many fascinating things that are all happening at the same time Yeah, and it's almost impossible. I mean and you can get lost like we're talking about with the CS Lewis quote Did you ever find that? He talked about getting the news what year was CS Lewis alive 1898 yeah, I started tracking down like there's a bunch of misquoted CS Lewis quote

I could be one of those like 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 gonna 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 human beings 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, you know. I mean, I love it. 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. That's so cool. It's the coolest thing in the world.

Well, I'm glad you're doing it, man. I really love it. Every day I wake up, it's awesome. It's just- That's so cool. It's the coolest thing in the world. Well, I'm glad you're doing it, man. I really appreciate you. And thank you so much for coming in here and showing people the dire wolves and the red wolves. And I hope more. Yeah, we'll keep you up to date on fun stuff. I wanna go see them. I wanna see them.

All right, we'll talk offline. Okay, we'll talk offline. Thank you very much. Oh, if people want to find more information, find more about you, colossal.com. We're colossal.com and we're, it is colossal on YouTube and X and everything.

And we're at Colossal on X. So fucking cool. Seeing that CGI one walking through the snow. Yeah. I can't wait to see that one day. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. And I mean, look, the cool thing about Colossal is,

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

You gotta come see the lab. I will. Thank you. Thank you. All right, bye everybody.