Cloning Mammoths, Cultivating Organs + Giant Beavers

Really now, really.

Really now, really.

Hello and welcome to Really Know Really with Peter Tilden and Jason Alexander on today's episode, Are we really about to bring back a long extinct species? Will we soon be doing organ transplants with synthetic organs? What's the deal with cryogenic freezing? What are the ethical challenges of genetic editing? And will woolly mammoth meatballs soon be on the menu?

No Really, Well, yes, this is either we're gonna talk today about something that's either the greatest thing ever or a nightmare.

I don't understand it. I don't understand the why of it.

Correct.

That's the big question is are correct the why? And we'll hopefully we'll find that out. And what are we talking about?

Well, here's what we discovered that there is.

A company, There are companies, but certainly a company that has been tasked with bringing back to bring back to de extinctualize, among other things, the wooly mammoth and the Dodo bird. We're going to bring them back, Peter, We're going to take them from extinct to back a hero to real life Jurassic Park. There is a company that's gonna do it, and we.

Really really no, no, really, And it also brings up we're fascinated with bringing stuff, bringing our lives back. Sure like their techniques to bring people back from the dead, new techniques for that.

New definitions, the definition.

There may be a definition for death, which is amazing and playing with the genetic code. There was a scientist in China who got arrested for changing the genetics of a baby who had an illness, and he went in and was able to manipulate. Our guest is involved in that. Not that kind of stuff.

How are we going to create Captain America's if we're not allowed to genetically manipulate thinking and cryogenically freeze and preserve.

It's happening.

It's happening, and our guest today, doctor George Church.

Is one of the people that's making it happen.

Doctor Church is a geneticist, a molecular engineer, a chemist, an entrepreneur, a pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. He is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and at MIT, and a founding member I'm going to say this wrong the wiss or the Weis's Institute for Biologically

That's all of human history. That's our guest.

You know what, you know what what? Time just found out he's on our show. He went down to he went down eleven. That's why we off the list.

You're off the story to doctor George, good to see you.

It's great to be here.

Can I ask you one question before we get into the topic, because this depresses me. I hear your bio. In one hundred years, I couldn't do all of that stuff. Classes, a night's school and this and then my team and you're going to here. I get a pizza, I lie down, I take a nap, I get up, I really wonder what kind of person to you that you did all that? Do you have like unlimited energy? Do not sleep? Are you taking uppers down?

At?

What are you doing? How do you do all of that?

Yeah?

No, I actually I'm just like you. I take a lot of nabs. I'm narcoleptic, which means I fall asleep. He'll particularly want to.

Yeah, boy, we got to work hard. We have to be very to put people asleep, by the way, so we will be cognizant of your north. But it is, it is. I got to tell you, I've not often do I see a bio that has that much. It really has that much accomplishment. So congratulations.

It just makes us feel worse about us I did for harmorn't even get past it. And so bring the big issue.

We saw the article about bringing back the Wooly Mammoth, and I guess Jason and I both had We went really, no, really, and both of us went.

Why why why? Why?

Now you're first of all, can you explain to us what your participation in that program is, specifically.

Almost every aspect of it.

Uh.

We we didn't really have much.

Ability to do it for a decade, partly because technology and partly because of funding. Didn't really seek that much funding. But now, as of about a year and a half ago, we have adequate funding. And yeah, so I came up with the idea partly prompted by people like you asking questions. A journalist from the New York Times asked the right question, and I started thinking about it and decided we could do it. But it was only recently that we could

To the cold. As a starting point for this adventure.

Wow.

First of all, I want to know at the end of this the name of every funder he has, because he went to them and said, Hey, I'm going to bring back the mammoth, and they went, I'm in. We can get funding for almost anything.

We wanted to.

Doctor Church very very very close. We're very close.

So why so Peter's right, that begs the question why do this?

What?

What? What? What?

What's the guiding light for you on this project?

Well, so we wanted to both deal with endangered species, developed technologies that could help endangered species and also endangered environments uh in to some extent, including the global environment. And so that it's a little complicated answer.

I'm sorry.

Answers will be will be simple, but this one is that the elephant is endangered. All species of elephant are endangered because they coexist with humans that either uh, they're a nuisance to them by destroying their farms, or they are a target for coaching for their ivory. It would be nice if they could have a homeland. They used to be spread all over almost the entire globe, and one of those prominent places were close relatives to the

The Arctics in big.

Trouble because it's melting, and it's melting it twice the rate of the temperatures going up twice the rate of most other parts of the Earth. And what's its risk is in the art there's a lot of methane they can be released, and then methane is eighty times worse than carbon dioxide. Then the question is, well, how can hold resistant elephants help keep the permafrost frozen? And in the three ways, and then I'm done with this long hand.

Before a lot of.

Herbivores were driven to extinction in the Arctic. They were it was mostly grasslands. It was very rich, much richer, more species rich than it is today. And the grasslands were easy to maintain, and they chomped around them the snow, and then the cold winter wind which minus forty degrees would get down and freeze the permafrost every year after the summer thaw.

So that's one thing. Is is that the.

Changing trees the grass allows the herbivores to trump it down and dig around and let the wind penetry. The second thing is that grass is more uh better photosynthesis and carbon sess trace sequestration, pulling the carbon outside out of the air. And the third thing is it's better at reflecting uh you know, the heat and the light

One is amazing because that I got to tell you that answer alone, just spun my head around on this entire thing, because it really to me at first glance, and and I would imagine then to a lot of people, this seemed like a sort of ego driven project about we can do it, so we will do it in a sort of Jurassic parky.

In kind of a way.

But the notion that it actually preserves a species that is endangered currently and allows them to inhabit a different part of an impact, and an impact that is that my head is.

Thinking outside of the box, outside of that box, and outside of that box, because one of the questions I was going to ask you is how does this apply to all the extinction? Because they see the rate of extinction is just so rapid. But the other question, man, is you know when you bring back an animal, is

Who did this?

There's a company, the ones that that that is going to produce cultured meat, which again is to help save the environment ostensibly, so they did the woly mammoths to get attention for this. Do you what do you think about? Is that a realistic thing? Is cultured meat and bringing back animals for that reason a thing?

Well, ironically, I work both on the.

Ancient and endangered species that we were just talking about and also on cultured meat. So with a company called upside Yes, and that was not the company that did the stunt. I guess they felt they didn't need to because they could easily credit with my cooperation, I think it is realistic. I'm a vegan myself, have been, I

So I don't know what the answer is.

I'm kind of putting a little bit of scientific advice into each of these solutions. I think the vegan one is probably the most cost effective and long term.

So I now have clarity on the specifics of the mammoth project. But we've also discovered, you know, and perhaps you're working on this, the Dodo. There's a project where they're trying to bring the Dodo back, the Christmas rat, the Tasmanian tiger, And I guess my head goes to again, why why we're bringing back the Dodo? Do we need more rats? Are we running low on the rat population

Right, So a lot of this is being done by a single company called Colossal, which which I'm a co founder of along with Ben Lamb. They're they're responsible at least for the Dodo, the Thilocene, and the mammoth. They have not announced any others and I think the rat was just something where people studying the rat wanted attention and they claimed that they couldn't be extincted. Oh, but I don't think anybody is actively interested in doing that.

But so specifically, why the dodo. Is there a reason allah the mammoth for bringing the dodo?

So both the Thilocene and the Dodo have to do with national interest, that there's a national pride. It would be like if the American eagle went extinct tomorrow, would you say, well that's done, you know, forget about it, or would you you know, molt an effort. I don't think there's the same strong ecological argument that we have for the cold resistant elephant for the mammoth elephant hybrids.

There, but there might be.

But I think that the countries that where they went extinct recently, much more recently than the mammoths, still feel that their spirit is still there and should be given it another chance to give.

The them their DODO. So when we talked about these issues, you've mentioned the permafrage and we've talked about it another show. Permafrost is melting at a at a rate that's really dangerous, and once in the permafras are viruses that we're going to have to deal with from hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago that we don't know if we're resistant to. Animals are being uncovered. All kinds of ramifications of that, and the permafrost covers a good part part

I think this is.

Most of my experience in science and engineering has been one of sharing reciprocated all over the world. There are a few examples where there's some kind of race for a particular monetary or goal or nationalistic goal. But I think this is definitely one where as far as I know, the whole world world wants to do what it can to stop climate that to have climate change be under control or reversed. I think the debate there is more about how do we do it without going broke, more

Now, considering the ecological impact that you're talking about, is it dip I would imagine it should be easier to get funding for something like this, But is it difficult to get funding for these projects?

I think the difficulty in this case I have to lay all the blame at my own feet. That is to say, I just assumed it was difficult, and so I didn't actually try. In my defense, I was working on the technology that would be useful for a variety of different things, including this, and so I didn't feel like there was a giant rush to go out and raise money. And quite frankly, I don't like making a lot of noise. I have to say. I do get attention occasionally, but it's not the it's not my jas.

I'm going to write your check. By the way, Jason, you write a check for the mammage project.

Yeah, absolutely, No, I'm doing the DODO. I'm gonna do Yeah, I'm doing the dodo.

Wow, all right, because it just it seems you judging it appears to like the dot whatever animal, by the way, you should do that. They do it to zoo adopt a de extinct animal. Yes, did they do it to zoo?

Well it works.

Come on, you're sparading at the fifty degrees. I think you show the picture and you say you do sad music, and would you like to see the Dodo back? He deserves to be back. Send your check to and in your LIFETIMEE. We couldn't have it.

Now, I'd probably do you know what, I get one of the little frogs that disappeared. I'd probably get one of those you like. No, I'm just saying that would be if it was a lottery and they drew my name in an animal, I'd get the little frog.

Your voice because you went there, let me ask the doctor. Yeah, I'm hearing my mother's voice right now, going they're extinct because they're supposed to be. Letting go, let it go, bring it. But why are you playing with that? Keep what's here here and let that go it? It was meant to be gone. Resonate with you, my mother.

I mean I can, I can, I can see it.

Uh.

But to some extent we're mainly we're not really not.

Initially bringing back the mammoth. We're making the endangered elephants. So it's not extinct yet, got it, don't let it go, and now we may get around to the mammoth pretty quickly. The technology is improving the point where we could make all the changes rather than just the cold resistant ones.

If I understand this correctly, I could be I'm about to be my ignorance is thrown on my face. But because you are using non extinct animals as part of this regeneration process, you're not literally recreating a wooly mammoth. You're creating a hybrid using the genetics of a wooly mammoth. In all these projects, right, you're not literally bringing back a species from the dead.

You are creating a new hybrid species.

That is correct, But there's nothing we haven't ruled out the possibily we could get it one percent mammoth. So that's just not our initial priority. And I can say that not only is it not our initial priority, but it might. But there's there are things that we can do that are neither mammoth nor modern elephants that would be beneficial.

Are there medical applications that we can see today presently that are offshoots of all the work you're doing where they're because people listening to just going bringing back a mammoths is something that's great and it's kind of sci fi. And I hear that the permafarce and mouthing whatever. But does this yield medical results continuously? Where you go, Wow, this can be applied to ms or whatever.

Yes, it's not that far off in the future either. I think we have done a very similar set of experiments in a way de risks the elephant project on pigs. So in pigs, we've made sixty nine changes in their genomes. So think of each edit. We call them editing the genome. Each edit is difficult. It would be like editing Mount Rosmore or something to change one of the phases.

That's a lot of work to do.

One.

We did sixty nine of them, and those pigs are healthy and their impact on medicine is that their organs are being transplanted now into non human primates and into humans. The clinical trials phase is just beginning, so that not only addresses the shortage of organs worldwide, but also it allows us to make organs that are in a certain stance healthier on demand, resistant to certain human paths.

It's amazing and so on.

It is so clear.

That the work you're doing seems massively beneficial to everyone and everything. But do you have any feelings about personally or do you respond in some way to the people that would look at the work you're doing and say you're playing god, that you are you know, changing the ethics of it exactly? I mean, I know, I totally get that it is beneficial work and that the intent

Like I said, I I am a vegan, and I wouldn't that the number of pigs that you need for organs is is a tiny compared to the number of pigs we use for bacon, So it's on the order of billions of pigs are given up for bacon, while it would be you know, hundreds of thousands, and you could harve us many organs at once for many different

So not so it's just like.

The the meat that was humane that's grown without animals. We can we want to grow organs. Now that's much harder, but there are possible exponential there is it is possible. So in the meantime, we don't want millions of people to die, and I think that's the that's the trade off. But you know what i'd mentioned, I certainly wouldn't kill

A Chinese doctor did gene editing in an embryo of children, three children, to eliminate the possibility of a certain disease that they could identify, and he's in jail right now. That's that's taking it to the next level. How do you get to that point where you can identify that somebody that the genetics we have, we have the capability to do that, and this person looks like they have a certain gene that's going to give them this, How do we decide and when and how does that even plausible?

Well, so this is is this person is jk Uh and he's not in jail anymore. He was in jail for three years. He was creating a technology that really wasn't necessary, isn't and is and is ethically problematic for a huge fraction of the of the population of the Earth. And that's why he was put in jail. And he was well aware of the ethical concerns and he thought he was addressing them maybe, but he was basically ignoring them.

I got to ask you before you go, because you look so dignified you got the beard, you got the cort Wory racket. Is there a memo that you guys get about how to do something like that? Is there a Jurassic big and Tall store in Indiana? Jones? The line of clothing that we don't know about it because you are is that look. I couldn't carry it off, but you look.

You look like a guy. You look some artifacts back there, But I whip.

No memo that I got.

I got.

Well, thank you kind of you kind of blended.

Okay. He was fascinating.

That was one of those guys that you go in the room, you meet him, and you go his.

Brain is better than mine.

He's got things going on that I no way my brain could function at that level.

It's so far, it's so far into me that I can't even wrap. That's why I said to him, I don't know how you have time in a day to do all the stuff you do because it involves so much genius work. Right, It's not like I'm going to do a puzzle and a crossword puzzle or a word excuse me. It's like so interesting bringing back stuff, bringing back to dead is really interesting. It used to be if you perished a couple hundred years ago, they might have tickled you with feathers, tied you to horses for

Going to if you died from you know, you swallow.

Oh, it's something wrong that might dislige the original Himlett's, which, by the.

Way, is the only time I saw my parents touch. And at the Saffer Institute in the University of Pennsylvania, they're doing stuff now where they're stopping gunshot victims' hearts. They're replacing it with a saline solution and cooling them down their place and keeping alive the blood with a sailing solution injected in their veins, replacing the patient's blood, which allows them to give them ample time in another

Bringing to television series that we're cancer.

No, our series is dead. Okay, there's nothing. And then we got cloning. Barber Streuising cloned her animals. I don't know how I feel longed the dog, her dog, Yeah, yeah, her dog, And I don't know that. I think the new dog went barbar Streis And I don't know who you were.

You know that that's the thing, you know, I have to say doctor Church. Really he turned my head around about all this because I came into this episode thinking this is an ego thing.

But I absolutely see.

All that is positive and perhaps glorious about this work. But I also a part of me goes, does it make us more cavalier?

Oh?

Yeah, the species is dying. If I don't worry, we'll bring it back. We'll bring it back. Instead of looking at why is it done?

Well?

He actually is though.

He's looking at the end of us, and he's and he's going, you know, he's going their resistance to call.

But a lot of us are cavalier. But thank god, there are guys like that that exist, that are digging down. Thank god, I mean, because us, what are we? What are we doing? If this Ted Williams is cryogenically frozen, that kind of just his head, just his head, He's gonna be pissed if they do bring him. Well, that's the thing. So the first thing I'm singing, if I'm Ted Williams, I go. I had a career, I made money. You guys couldn't spring for the other fifteen.

Month known for my head. I was, yeah, everything else?

Would you now? Is that a thing you would do? Are you if? I? If you God forbid, God forbid? You had a disease that we cannot cure, and they said you're gonna You're gonna go, And they gave you the opportunity, right, wouldn't cost you anything.

They gave you the opportunity.

They said, we can cryogenically freeze you, either full body or just your head. When we can cure this disease, we will build you either an android body, or we can clone the rest of your body, or grow your organs and yourselves back cure your disease and bring you back.

But it'll be two hundred years from that you in.

That is the most absurd pitch. You know. You listen to pitch at sales pitchers and I go, so you're gonna hold mind money now on the bet in two hundred years, Well, somebody's going to keep you frozen, and that's going to that's going to that you're going to keep me frozen number one.

Uh yeah, that's the freezer of the He's But let's assume that they could keep you frozen. Let's even assume that two hundred years from now they can do this.

You're doing it though, Why would I want to come back? I don't know anybody. I'll be the dumbest person in the room, whatever room I going through because the technology, I'll be going, what's that you got? What do you eating? I never saw it? No, I don't. I want to be here with my family and when it's the end, it's stand. How about you?

I think I'm the same way. I mean, like anybody else, I am curious to see what the future would look like. I'm curious to see what my grandson's grandson might be a grandchild.

I should say but I don't know that I would.

I would be a stranger in a stranger I mean, so I would have no frame of reference. I already feel, at the age of sixty, like the world is changing to a place where I can't keep up with it. I can't keep pace with it. The technology has changed. You're already playing with chat chat, gip. I'm afraid to go near it. I don't want to get involved with it. I don't want to. It feels alien to me, you know, And and it feels like a different reality to me, not one that I grew up in, not one that

You tell me first, who do you bring back?

Well, jokingly, I said to the other day, we miss.

I bring back you know who?

I would?

Okay, honestly, I would bring back my dad.

And I was going to say the same exact thing. And because we didn't have enough time.

I now I know the things I should have asked and the things I should have maybe done. You know, he was of that generation where he didn't talk about what was going on with him, you know, And I feel like now as an elderly man myself an older man, you could discuss with him and the stuff. I could get him to talk about stuff. But Google, I'll tell you one other thing, let me ask him one other thing. I'm not sure about talking about being preserved. So I

He's literally on the stage performing as a hologram Tupac right Abba.

They got all these things where they've preserved these guys and now they can present them, you know, in nearly total realistic form.

Do I want that done? Do I want somebody?

Here's the deal? May I tell you? And then we can move on to go go on. You don't have to worry about it because your heirs, no matter what you tell him, will sell. Jason Alexander and he's not even a question about it. Lez you're gonna say to them on your deathbed. You know what, whatever you do, don't make me hologram. You're gonna pass away, and they're gonna come to your kids. They're gonna say, would you make your down a hologram? And they say, they're gonna say,

I'm just saying, I know you, I know you deal with it.

You will live. Yeah, ye, hologram, google him? What do we have?

Yeah, well, I just can't wait till the post mortem.

Jason Alexander cameo appearance.

So that he's gonna be selling.

He's gonna be selling sheath white, nurse hair grows.

Yeah, don't everything anything they bring, the kids are gonna say, check it out.

We're good. No, we're good, and we're good.

Yeah.

All right, So we were learning about you, obviously the the wooly mammoth that existed during the Ice Age, and of course there were other things like deanerthals you know, that were back then, back there and then, and the Ice Age of course was approximately two point four million years ago and last up until just eleven hundred years ago, So it wasn't that.

Far along off. It feels like yesterday.

I wanted to see if you guys know, because we all know about dinosaurs, right, but do you know which animals were existing in the ice.

Age, in the ice age? In the ice age? So here's a it's a quiz for you, yes or no? True or false? The saber toothed tiger. No, I'm not sure.

So here's They're gonna be the basis for many of my answers. I'm going to go to my inside base. I live near the Librea tar pits. Wow, so any of the animals that are in that tar pit are probably ice age ish, and I believe they have a saber tooth tiger.

So I'm gonna say say it. No, they couldn't died off in the ice age. No, no, on the saber.

Tooth tag correct, because the sabertooth tiger doesn't exist.

It's actually the saber toothed cat that was. That was we were taught. We were taught incorrectly.

They were actually more similar to African lions and they're most closely related to the clouded leopard.

I've always said that.

How about the master don mastadon I believe was the ice age.

You'll say no, just to be contrary.

Yes, that's done. Correct.

That was an ice age creature. The wooly rhinoceros.

That's a thing.

Maybe maybe not. Oh, I've never heard of the world.

I've never heard of it.

I think I think I think you are making that up.

The wooly rhinoceros was covered with long, thick air that allowed it to survive the extreme cold, harsh mammoth steps. Wow, all right, Next animal, the cranium rat.

The cranium rat around in the ice age.

Yes, just to say yes, the only rat that was forging in the ice age was the cranium rot.

So, Peter, you say trum rat was no?

Know that?

No, the cranium route, that's a it's a Dungeons and Dragons monster.

So no, that's not a real thing.

And I should get points from not knowing that. Okay. As far as.

Dungeons, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens.

The ice age, Nope, we are post ice age creatures.

Almost Sapiens emerged about three hundred thousand years ago, So yes, we were through the ice.

It gives one last one because I'm going to strangle myself.

The giant beaver.

Giants beef.

The giant beaver.

Not only did you not only did it live during the ice age, but it was worshiped as the animal. It was actually the animal of the year one year and on.

All the you know if you squeeze.

That, a calendar was ever with different beaver every month. They had the January.

Uh what was it? The name of it, the giant the beaver.

If it did, remember, if it exists, and I'm not saying it, it had to be post, I said. Growing up to two meters long and weighing up to one hundred kilograms, the giant beaver is the largest rodent known from the eyes age of North America.

That's exactly right.

Yeah, it was where the statue we learned as I was right on em as as you see the permafroge, nothing, you'll see statues of.

The giant beaver that the other animals worship used their their teeth to shoes all out because they just worshiped the.

Giant beaver, they said, of all animals. Everybody see it. And that's the kind of factory information. Really really, you've got.

It now, really.

Really now, really, As this episode of really No really comes to an end, you may be wondering what other animals have scientists already cloned. Well, i'll tell you right after I think our guest doctor George Church. You can follow doctor Church on the x app formerly Twitter, where his handle is at Geo Church. You can reach us at reallynoreally dot com. We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threats, where we are at really No Really podcast.

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If you have a really no really something that amazes you, let us know and if we use it, we'll send you something nothing useful or expensive, obviously, but something laying around that we don't really need anymore. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts now. Other cloned animals include a ferret, a mooflawn, a carp a gower, and a common fruitfly. That's right, we're cloning fruitflies because someone decided we need more of them.