The Man Bringing Extinct Creatures Back To Life - Ben Lamm

Just as a headline here, you're trying to fix global warming by bringing woolly mammoths back to life amongst a number of other extinct creatures. Right? Well, I I don't think that one company can fix global warming. I I think that we are at the, you know, brink of a major biodiversity crisis, which will lead to ecosystem collapse. And restoring ecosystems like the Arctic tundra is something that, you know, we're very focused on. So, I hope that we are one of many people working on biodiversity loss and combating climate change, but I think it's maybe a little bold to say that we are we are solving it ourselves. I understand. Okay, so somebody comes up to you at a cocktail party and says, "What do you do?" What is your answer for your day-to-day work? So, my my general answer is I say I'm in technology. If they dive deeper, I'm like, "Well, I'm in biotechnology." If they dive deeper, I I tell them that we're working to bring back extinct species and preserve all life on Earth. And then it and then it kind of unravels from there. Right. Okay. Talk Talk to me about de-extinction then. Like, what what even is that? Yeah, so de-extinction is not necessarily not necessarily a new concept. Other everything from books and movies and in some other movements through in the world have talked about the concept of de-extinction. And the way we view de-extinction is the de-extinction of core genes to build proxy species for genetics that have been lost to time, whether that was, you know, due to solely, you know, climate change events or towards or due to the fact of man's implications, right? And so, fundamentally, we are de-extincting the core genes that make all of these species those unique species. And so, recently, I was on on podcast where someone wanted to debate semantics over the dodo and they and they're like, "But your dodo is just going to be a silly looking pigeon." And I hated to inform them that a dodo was a silly looking pigeon. Dodos were pigeons. And so the things that made it a different flightless pigeon were the genes that were de-extincting. And so it it it definitely brings out, you know, different groups have different perspectives on on the work that we're doing, but but fundamentally we're bringing back these lost species uh to to increase biodiversity and then we're using all those technologies for conservation, which is pretty cool. Okay. Nuts and bolts, how the [ __ ] do you bring a dead animal back to life? So you can't you can't clone a a a a a dead animal. Uh you don't have living cells. So what you have to do if is you have to look for its closest living relative. So in the case of the mammoth, that's the Asian elephant. Mammoths are actually closer related to Asian elephants than Asian elephants are to African elephants, which is like like that blew my mind when when I learned that cuz I I I was also the first to de-extinction when I was working on this. And what was interesting is you actually have to then go look at the DNA sequences. And so we actually had to assemble 54 mammoth genomes to build out kind of a reference genome that we could do all the comparative genomics to that of the Asian elephant and they're about 99.6% the same genetically. And so then and then in that difference of 0.4% it's still a lot of genes. We then started to isolate what are the genes that really made a mammoth a mammoth, you know, the dome cranium, the curved tusks, the shaggy coat, these extra fat layer, how they produce oxygen at sub-freezing temperatures. And so we we then have to spend a lot of time doing computational analysis to really understand that. And then we take and engineer those genes into that of an Asian elephant then we go through the cloning process kind of like what they did with Dolly the sheep back in the '90s, only it's way more efficient now and it uses like lasers and stuff like that versus back in the '90s they were kind of just jamming stuff together, which is weird. Uh but it kind of worked then. Now actually really works because it's it's way more precise. Uh and then you and then you actually implant that embryo into the closest living relative, being the Asian elephant uh from a surrogacy perspective. Where do you get the genomics of a animal that's not When did they When was the last woolly mammoth alive? So So the last ones actually were about 3,500 uh BC. So they were up in Wrangel Island. So they've been extinct for for quite some time. Ironically though, during the the building of the pyramids, the last mammoths were still alive. So it's kind of kind of weird It kind of blows people's minds. A lot of people think that that mammoth um uh were were like around the time of the dinosaurs and so they're like that's 65 million years old. It's not. And a lot of the DNA comes from the permafrost cuz animals will die up there. Uh they will instantly start to freeze. Uh layers of snow and ice, layers of snow and ice. And so there's tons of preserved species up in the permafrost. And so, you know, over the last 15 years there's been incredible researchers like George Church and Lou Vadal and Beth Shapiro and and and teams that we work with these teams that we work with that have actually gone on expeditions to the permafrost to extract ancient DNA. So it's a little bit of science fiction and Jurassic Parky. It's a little bit of Indiana Jones. It's It's really interesting how it kind of all comes together uh in in de-extinction science today. So you have Is it entire animals? Or is it Is it bones of animal What's preserved? Cuz you know, lots of [ __ ] can get preserved in in frost, right? Yeah, lots of [ __ ] can be preserved in frost. Um but but it depends. So in the case of the uh dodo bird, some of those some of it is just in uh some of the DNA is actually just taken from the bone or the inner beak that they've actually drilled into. In the case of the thylacine, you know, which went extinct only in 1936, uh hunters actually preserved one of the pups that they killed in uh in alcohol uh that ended up being in the museum. And so, that was a really well-preserved. In the case of the permafrost with mammoth, you know, sometimes you get actual flesh. Sometimes you get actual, you know, uh hairs. Sometimes you get actual meat. Uh it's very old, it's very disgusting, it's got lots of bacteria, so I wouldn't recommend eating it. Some people have, which is crazy. Uh but a great place to get ancient DNA is you mentioned it, is teeth. So, some teeth do a great job of preserving it. And there's an inner ear bone called the petrous bone where you actually get great DNA from uh species that are 10,000 years or older. What do you mean when you say great DNA? Is this a a an area where it's but it's not it's not degraded over time. There it there's a high density of it. It it's there's a high density of it. There's massive There's There is, you know, things like heat and sun and radiation are all very very bad for DNA. And so, DNA starts to degrade the minute it's outside of your body. So, it is definitely degraded uh DNA, but you can get more and more of it if it's in these well-preserved spots like teeth, like the petrous bone, or really well frozen. And we And we got none of it over in time. And we're actually doing a project right now with the University of Alaska um and and this group uh this this program that we put together called uh Adopt a Mammoth where we're actually taking teeth as samples and we're giving them from the from universities uh or or from the museums in Alaska, giving them and loaning them to uh school kids, showing them how you extract ancient DNA, and we're doing a whole both radio carbon dating and uh population genomic study and sequencing all of these Alaskan mammoths. So, it's a way to bring kids into it. It's a way to promote education, you know, cuz dating is pretty [ __ ] cool, right? But then also it's it's an incredible way for us to get tons of data that we can use to understand populations of American mammoths, cuz a lot of the mammoths that we have are actually from Siberia. So, they're Russian mammoths. Oh, interesting. And you mentioned 53 different samples that was taken and all of those are combined. Presumably, the goal here is if we have you know, like 98% degradation of the genome but we get tons of them, like 50 of them, we can build that up over time and hopefully we get somewhere close to actually seeing a full sequence. never get to fully 100%. I mean, you just won't, right? And so, when some of this stuff happens in the regulatory regions, some of this happens in the non-regulatory regions. So, you don't even really need as as much as as you may think. There's an area that I learned about when we started working on this about kind of DNA coverage and the number of reads that the system does, cuz even these sequencers aren't perfect, right? So, they're they're basically giving you a probabilistic probability score of what that letter is on in terms of the the individual nucleotides in the in the in the DNA sequence. And so, what's interesting is the more DNA you get, then and then the more reads you can do, the higher probability, right? Cuz if you can go to 20 to 50x coverage, that means that they've gone through the whole genome 20 to 50 times. So, that means that that there's a higher likelihood they're going to be correct, the machine's going to be correct in telling you what that specific letter is. And so, anytime you get 25 x up, sometimes as low as, you know, teens up, you typically get enough of the genome that you can get pretty precise. Okay. So, let's say that you now have compared the African elephant Asian Asian elephant. Asian elephant. You've compared the Asian elephant to these 53 AI-enhanced sequenced differences. There's this 0.4% or 0.6%, which is the difference. We've got this. Yeah. Now what? Now what like what do you what do you what do you you're going to 3D print a mammoth? Like what are we doing here? You just guess. No, you actually do molecular and functional assays and tests to understand what do those genes do. And what's interesting from both a convergent evolution and a general evolution perspective, you can start to see in different species how certain hair, for example, grows. So, we we know this about mammoths, which is really interesting. I always thought that mammoths just had long hair, right? They actually have five different types of hair. And so, different genes and different pathways do that. And so, one of the things that we're doing with with Colossal, which we find interesting, is we're not only looking at what were the genes in in the single gene and and additional genes that work together to produce that phenotype or physical attribute of that species. But, we're also We have an entire genotype-to-phenotype team, our GTP team, that looks and leverages AI and some of the great new neurotechnologies to actually under try to understand how do things like size, how do things like hair, how does that work cross the million species, right? Even with different genes. Like, what are the different stages of development? So, we're doing a lot of work in in kind of general genotype-to-phenotype around big core things like, you know, everything from size to craniofacial shapes, you know, to fat patterns, to to patterns of the actual kind of fur, and then as well as, you know, looking at things like hair and fur length and and different regulatory regions like that. So, it's really interesting cuz for from for our perspective, because we're working on multiple species, we have our individual teams that's trying to solve the individual challenges of each species and then we've got this cross-functional team that's trying to look for trends that can be applied to other animals, right? And that can be really helpful for like, you know, drought-resistant cattle and and and other species. Okay. Moving forward, how do we make a mammoth? Yeah, so um the the way you do it is you do that computational analysis. First you get the DNA, then you assemble the DNA, then you actually uh uh do that computational analysis. And once you have your targeted gene list, you then go through the actual process of editing Asian elephant cells, right? Cuz they're the closest living. So, we did, you mentioned African elephants, we did a uh work with the Vertebrate Genome Project to do a full reference genome of the African elephant more for conservation than really for our project. We did find some interesting differences between mammoths, Asian elephants, and African elephants that that uh we are starting to explore. Um but once you do that, you go through the process of understanding what that gene list is, you then start making edits and you start with looking for the edits that you think are going to be the highest impact. You then do a bunch of tests to make sure that those edits actually took. Uh and then once you get to a point that you feel like you've got a cell with the edits that you feel comfortable with, you do sequencing just like we did at the beginning on those cells to make sure that the edits are there and they didn't create what's called off-target effects, meaning things that you didn't mean to break in the genome. Uh and so once you feel like you're comfortable there, you then go into a use a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer or cloning. And that's where we take the nucleus of a somatic cell and we put it into that of a germ cell or What's what's what's a somatic cell for the people that don't know? So so so somatic cells are basically all the cells in your body that are or in animals' body that are not sperm and egg. So those are those are like skin cells, different types of tissue cells. So we take the nucleus or that brain out of a somatic cell and we put it into that of a germ cell or an egg cell. And then effectively you've got, you know, the basis of an embryo. You then use a process of slight electrification and in some some other media, and then it starts to divide. And once you get to the right stage of of division, you then implant that into a a surrogate. In the case of the woolly mammoth, that's the Asian elephant. Um so so that's how it works in mammals. How it works uh in in birds is is is slightly uh different. Um it it it's a little bit different of a process, but it's a much easier gestation process. So uh if that's interesting for Jodo's, I can talk about that, or Yeah, yeah, I want to know how a I I I want to know how a bird So for birds are even like what's interesting to me about birds is the gestational side, because we're not going through uh the somatic cell nuclear transfer or that cloning step in birds. Uh birds are harder on the front end, but they're so much easier currently on the back end, right? Cuz we don't have to work we don't have to go work on the surrogacy side. You don't have to do embryo transfer, you don't have to uh the nucleus transfer. So what's great about birds is you you while we can't clone birds currently in the world, meaning that we can't find the the uh nucleus at the right time of development to move it. So you can't clone birds yet. Maybe one day can. There's debate on whether it's possible, but you know, everything was impossible till it's not, right? And so um but what's interesting is what we are doing is is we're actually using chickens as our host. And so this blew my mind kind of like how close mammoths and and Asian elephants are. When you take if you can cultivate what's called primordial germ cells, so the precursors to egg and sperm, right? And then you edit those, you can then use that and build a an an edited chicken with these edited primordial germ cells. So this is where it gets crazy. Uh I mean, at least for me being into de-extinction. Um you can then have edited primordial germ cells chicken A and edited primordial germ cell chicken B. Those chickens can fall in love and depending on her world views, they can get married or whatever, and then they have a baby and they have an egg. When that egg hatches, it is based on what you put into the primordial germ cells. So, they've done this and created transgenic transgenic ducks, where they they put edited duck cells in PGCs, primordial germ cells, in a chicken one. They've done it in chicken two. Those chickens grow up, those chickens fall in love, they get married or whatever. They have a they have a baby, an egg, the egg hatches and it's a duck. And so, what's amazing is that chickens will actually be the surrogates for our first dodos, which as we talked about briefly earlier, are pigeons. So, our our our our statement is that Yeah, so it's an interesting it's an interesting world and and now we're even exploring, I don't know if it's possible, but I'm having a show of you. We aren't exploring bird cloning, right? Cuz we were told this is how you have to do it using these using these types of primordial germ cells. So, that was the process that we followed. But then, you know, we're like, "But why doesn't bird cloning work?" And we got lots of feedback. They're like, "Huh, maybe we'll try that." So, we are working on bird cloning, not sure if it's going to work, but if not, we'll go down this PGC route that seems pretty plausible. Okay, so getting back to the mammoth, there's an closed there's an closed loop about that one. We have this Asian elephant, this unsuspecting mother Asian elephant who is going to give birth to what? What will what will ultimately come out of this elephant? Yeah, so so it's a great question. It will it will be our kind of mammoth 1.0s, right? So, we take it's an Asian elephant that has been edited. So, I come from software, so I think of things like software. So, our 1.0s will produce all the core phenotypes that we know and love in a woolly mammoth. So we're de-extincting all the core hair genes, the cranial facial shape that don't cranium, the tusk morphology in terms of the the curved tusk, as well as like shorter tails, smaller ears. And then there's some stuff that's kind of under the hood, like how, you know, how the the mammoths are more cold tolerant with certain fat layers, with the ability for their nerve endings not to fry at sub-freezing temperatures, the ability to produce hemoglobin and oxygen, laser eyes Yeah, yeah. There are no laser eyes, but that's that's a that's a We got asked if we could make a thylacine with laser eyes. So we get a lot of interesting requests, believe it or not. Right. So I Is it accurate to say that it's a mammoth, or is it accurate to say that it's an entirely new species? It's it's really not So so the IUCN and and the species survival commission, which is kind of like the UN species, which is amazing, we work very closely with them, defines a new species as something that gave rise in nature. So it's not really a new species, at least how it's how it's defined. also not a mammoth, right? Because it doesn't I mean, it has all the core So so this this goes into I mentioned this earlier, right? You know, whether you think a dodo is a silly-looking pigeon or a mammoth is is an elephant, a mammoth was an elephant. Like that's just what they were. They're pachyderms. That that's what they were. And so I don't know, like my dogs are mutts, right? And I would argue that most species are hybrids, and that hybridization gives rise to newer species, right? And so, you know, if some people aren't happy unless we clone a 100% of a mammoth, then then I would argue that, you know, it's a cold-adjusted genetically modified elephant with extinct mammoth alleles from a series of biodiversity gaps of, you know, 3 to 5 or 10,000 years, right? So Much less sexy as a name. Yeah, I mean if that's what you want to call it, that's what you want to call it. But I mean for you and me, or at least for me, when I see it and well if we are successful, you know, it has all the core phenotypes if it's cold adapted. If we de-extincted the core genes that made a mammoth a mammoth, then then to me that's a mammoth, right? You know, our our our goal is not to create uh there there's a lot of infrastructure uh in the genome that's just it it doesn't produce uh any real effects. So I mean you you we could add thousands of thou upon thousands of of edits to our our mammoths that don't have any tr- you know, true meaningful effects. But from a purist perspective, you someone could say, "Oh, well, that's closer to a mammoth." Right. you know, that that that's at least how we view it. Functionally, it's a mammoth, right? functional mammoth. It's a mammoth a mammoth. It drives like a mammoth. Yeah. Right. At least that's that's how we how we think about it. We There is a small percentage of folks that disagree with us, but you know, Oh, you mean the mammoth purists out there? If the mammoth purists want to go a step further, they can. And and and we and we welcome them to. Okay. Uh what about like gestation and stuff? Because I I there's going to be differences and and and in utero [ __ ] There's there's definitely in utero [ __ ] Um the uh uh so it's about 22 months of gestation. So it's a very long uh gestational cycle, right? Uh which you know, I come I try to think of things from a systems design perspective, right? And so for me, that's one of the reasons why I love the thylacine. So if I can dumb down the process and What's the what's the thylacine? Tasmanian tiger. It's a it's a large car it was the largest carnivorous marsupial. Wow. Yeah, it's all it kind of looks like a wolf from a it's not genetically related to a wolf, but it but from a convergent evolution perspective meaning that in the isolated population it kind of looks like a wolf. Like if you look at a thylacine and a wolf skull, I'd say 99 out of 100 times people would say oh they're the same. There's only one small difference uh on the inside. Uh but what's really interesting is that through current convergent evolution almost looks like a wolf. But but going back to your question, uh from a gestational perspective you've got 22 months with a mammoth. With the thylacine you have 13 and 1/2 days. Now so that that's the end of the process. The beginning of the process computational biology, right? Like assembling the reference genome. With the mammoth we had 54 mammoth genomes, you have to do a lot of work to your point it's very degraded. You have to do so much work on it. On the thylacine we got over a 92% complete read on the first read, right? So that's easier. But then in the middle on the editing lots of more edits that are required in the thylacine than in the mammoth. So it's it's like hard easier hard uh and then this one was easy harder easy. So what's interesting from a systems perspective looking at this is you can look at the entire kind of like system in mammalian de-extinction and build a system that kind of has to work for both. And so that's where we're spending a lot of time. I will say that it is a lot easier to gestate the the thylacine than the mammoth. Yeah, I guess that one Asian elephant is looked at very very carefully for 22 months. It's like do not let it out of your sight. If it goes missing uh you're you're in trouble. All right, so what um what about what could go wrong during this this process? Are there any Well any anything. I mean there's a I mean anytime we're doing something that's hard from a science perspective, things can go wrong, right? Like you you could uh not fully get all of the right edits made. You could Not only that, you I mean we we can test for you know, whether we made them right, but do all of the edits produce the phenotypes or or core physical attributes that we're looking for, right? Um how does the somatic cell transfer process work in elephant versus bovine versus pig versus dog versus mouse, right? And so you There's still nuances to that, right? And then gestationally, you know, the the the thing that's really interesting is that I don't think there's been an This whole concept of xeno transfer, right? Of like you know, xeno transplantation of taking something from one species to another, you know, sounds like crazy, but we see it all the time. People get xeno transplantation pieces of pigs in their hearts and go live normal lives, right? We also see that um you know, uh We also see that that species like a mammoth, which is closely related to an Asian elephant uh than it is to a than an Asian elephant is to an African elephant, African elephants and Asian elephants can actually interbreed and produce viable offspring. And so, these are two genetically distant species that are further apart than these two. And remember, to your point earlier, we're not making exactly this, we're making somewhere in between, right? So, we're even closer to an Asian elephant. So, we believe there's a high degree of confidence in uh in that interspecies uh uh transfer and in that in that surrogacy. Um but people ask me all the time, will the mammoth be the first species? Due to the 22-month gestation, I I I think it's highly likely there will be another species. No, it's going to get pipped at the post. It's going to start off on the race first and it's going to end up coming in last. It's got 22 months of gestation. I mean, that's just that's that's hard to you know, Takes time to grow a mammoth. Yeah, there there people there's other species that could do a victory lap before. Yeah, you've got an entire army of those things that look like wolves. Uh all right, what else? Actually, here's a question. So, it seems to me with my extensive knowledge of how genomic sequencing works that the main limiting factor is the quality of the DNA that you can get from whatever the sample is of the animal. Is that right? I think that that's overcome. I I don't think that's that's the the limiting thing. I think that that the I'll get to the limiting. I think that what you just said is overcome with more samples, right? And so, we've got incredible partners like Love Dalén in Stockholm that's, you know, Love Dalén's arguably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world of the genes that make a mammoth a mammoth, and he's constantly just finding and sequencing more mammoths. So, I think that we can probabilistically get through what you just suggested. Um I think that the biggest issue, and I think they're different for species, but you know, it's just editing, right? What's what's amazing is that we have a lot of incredible editing technologies. People kind of just clump all genome editing as one thing, but there's a lot of different technologies. There's editing individual letters in kind of that twisted ladder, right? Each one of those rungs, you can edit individual ones. You can knock out pieces of it. Uh you can edit multiple things at the same time all over the genome. That's called multiplex editing. That's where we are spending a lot of time, and we're trying to be the most innovative company in the world in able to edit a lot of the parts of the genome at one time, so you don't have to be so precise. You can edit that same level of precision all over. And we've had, you know, over 90% uh efficacy already proven internally, which is amazing uh for our edits, and we're trying to stack those. And then you come to the to DNA synthesis, where it's like to your if you can get to your point earlier, if you can get that that that right amount of, you know, letters in the right order, and you you a high degree of con- uh of confidence in it, you can synthesize a a big piece of that and then just swap it in. So, in areas where there's lots of edits, instead of doing lots of edits, you know, either using kind of some of these individual editing tools or even editing multiplex or even synthesizing pieces of full pieces of DNA and swapping in because that may have, you know, 20 different edits that we didn't have to make cuz we really only had to synthesize it and then swap in one. So, so I think that that depending on how far we want to push editing, I think that and and the the rate at which editing the rate at which editing technologies progress will probably be the limiting factor not on our success, but on the number of edits that can be made. When it comes to other animals, if we were to try and get more exotic, the I mean, the Jurassic Park memes write themselves with this, right? we've we've heard that before. Yeah, it it doesn't surprise me. Um with those, what's the limiting factor there? Why is it the case that you maybe you can, but why is it the why is it the case that you can't do something which is a little bit more exotic? Um well, I mean, I I would argue that no one, to my knowledge, has seen a mammoth, so that's pretty exotic. More exotic, you know, older older. Let's go not not call it more exotic. I'm not going to make a value judgment on your mammoth. Older. Yeah, so I mean, cuz I'll just pretty exotic. Um Mauritius is very exotic place, beautiful photos. Um so, you know, rate limiting, you know, you can't, you know, harvest DNA from bone. You know, Kenneth Lacovara, who's incredible, he's one of the top paleontologists in the world, he just he discovered Dreadnoughtus. He's also one of the most interesting people in the world, the largest dinosaur ever, Dreadnoughtus. He's actually been able to demineralize bones, dinosaur bones, and get pieces amino acids, right? But amino acids and even some proteins and some collagens, but that does not that's not a big chunk of DNA, right? So, we get the amber question, we get the dino DNA question. So, I guess there is technically dinosaur collagen and dinosaur amino acids and maybe some proteins here and there, but that is so so the pieces of confetti you're now making pieces of confetti of pieces of DNA confetti of confetti to try and do it. So, A dinosaur it does not make-eth. It it it does not. And so so right now we can go back about a a million years. I haven't seen the latest in terms of what what's been sequenced, but I know we've been able to sequence 700,000 to to a million years and and get viable DNA, but at some point, you know, and so so that that there's a lot of exotic stuff between then and now. Also, you know, cold dry environments are great for DNA. You know, hot A lot of people love to talk about the La Brea Tar Pits. We get a lot of questions about the La Brea Tar Pits. And you know, hot acid-filled places are not great for DNA. There's been some really cool animals that have gone extinct in warm, wet and climates that, you know, aren't great for DNA. So, you can't make those. We A big fan favorite is the giant sloth. People would There were There used to be a giant sloth that was the size of a tree, a giant ground sloth that would literally And there's like some I've read some stories about how they loved avocados and how they propagated avocados. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it's one of the recent things I've read about. So so there are lots of kind of different species that, you know, are interesting. I think that a lot of the Pleistocene species, late Pleistocene species, make a lot of sense because there is great preser- or there is as great as preservation as you can could get because, you know, early early humans weren't sticking them in, you know, sub-freezing temperature or freezers at the time. Right. Okay. What else from the last million years, if you were to have a a hit list, a top of the pops, aside from your mammoth and your dodo, what else what else is in there for I would like to bring this back? Well, I mean, I think you have to have a reason, you know, why. Um No, no, no, no, no, no, Ben, this is we are completely liberated from resources, ethics, or a service of humanity. What do you want to bring back? I think it's hard to to fully liberate ourselves from service of humanity or or ethics. There there's a couple species that I find very interesting. Um I think the great auk is really interesting. It was like the American penguin. It's super cool. I think that it's served a purpose. Um I think that there is a whale-sized uh manatee or dugong called uh the Stellar's sea cow. We we can't bring it back. We actually have DNA for it, but there's nothing to gestate it. It's just too too big unless we get extra extra uterine development devices to work, uh which which we do have a 17-person team working on. Um uh you know, a fan favorite is uh saber-tooth cat, uh which there were there were there were several, but there were two that were um pretty prominent. One being Homotherium and one being Smilodon. Smilodon had the bigger us that, you know, the big canines that we think of. Um so, I I think all of those are pretty interesting candidates. Uh you know, I don't we can't do the Stellar's sea cow, but I think that'd be incredible to see like a you know, blue whale-sized, you know, manatee. Like you'd be like, "What?" And apparently, they were like incredibly helpful to the kelp forests of the Pacific Northwest. And so, um there are there are also big carbon sinks like like elephants. So, um those are all really cool uh species. We're not working on any of them currently. All right. So, what's aside from aside from the mammoth the mammoth being a very useful one, and I want to get on to why it's particularly useful, and aside from these other ones that are like the sexy ones, um what else would you consider to be a mammoth is sexy. I think a mammoth is pretty sexy. Well, I'm not I'm not a a hairy hair hair that much hair is too much for me. Um what else is particularly useful from the last 1 million years that I I like I said we have these very specific use cases for certain animals. So, I'll hit the use cases of of the non the the two non-mammoth species in the in the kind of I guess probably then the other species. But, so specifically with the dodo, bringing back the dodo doesn't like fix the ecosystem of Mauritius. But, bringing back the dodo, which is a symbol of of of man-caused extinction, will force us and the Mauritian government, who we're working very closely with, on uh removing the invasive species that actually led to the dodo's extinction. So, a lot of people love to just say that dodos were dumb, and uh people just ate them. Uh you know, there's actually not as much data suggesting that as that because they were a ground-dwelling species of flightless bird, and they laid their eggs on the ground one time a year, long longer gestation cycles, uh when you bring in, you know, invasive species like pigs and rats and other things, they eat the stuff that's on the ground cuz they can't climb trees, right? Uh for the most part. And so, um and so, the process of bringing back the dodo in collaboration with, you know, local people and governments and indigenous people groups and whatnot, uh will will if we do want to successfully rewild them in Mauritius and in the neighboring islands then we actually have to do a process of ecosystem restoration. So, it's forcing us to undo some of the sins of the past in introducing these invasive species, right? So, so a lot of times people ask us about the dodo, it doesn't really solve a pure ecological impact besides forcing us to undo that which also could help other species that are native to to to these islands. Um in the case of the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, some people also call it Tasmanian wolf but more commonly Tasmanian tiger. Um you know, it was the largest apex predator in Tasmania and lower Australia. And what what people don't realize is people just think, "Oh, predators, easy life, top of the food chain." It's like, "No, those are actually the big herbivores. Those have easier lives, you know, because they're eating grass." There's a lot of energy expenditure that happens in carnivores to go make a kill, right? And so, if you're a carnivore and you're and you're if you're an animal carnivore, I should say, and you're out in the field and you have to go actually like make a kill versus just get it from your local Whole Whole Foods. Uh you actually have to go do the work, you're going to be very strategic, you're going to expend that energy that that energy expenditure very wisely, you're going to look for either the small, old, weak, or sick animals to to pick them off. And so, what people don't realize is that that a lot of these carnivores have tremendous help in in in in in kind of securing the balance of the ecosystem not just cuz they're thinning herds because they're also eating a lot of the stuff that that, you know, and killing off the weak, the young, or the sick. And so, one of the animals that that Tasmanian tigers probably preyed on was the Tasmanian devil, the smaller in the in in in the stock. And now, due to this whole facial tumor disease and they don't have any natural predators anymore. They are actually spreading this terrible facial tumor cancer to each other when they eat. I've been with Tasmanian devils in the wild and it's it's very interesting. They're very aggressive. And so when they're doing that they're fighting each other, clawing each other and whatnot and they actually get pretty beat up during that kind of feeding frenzy process and they actually pass that disease. Well, if the thylacine is around or a larger animal that preyed on them, they would most likely thin out a lot of those animals that can't walk very well or see very well due to the facial tumor disease, right? So then there's less that can actually produce that. So that whole effect is called trophic downgrading when you when you have predator that actually can remove that from the wild and and that helps balance the ecosystem, right? And so you know, Dr. Andrew Pask is one of our partners on the thylacine rewilding restoration and rewilding project has been very adamant on on their demise has led to the potential demise of the devils which is which is terrible. So so those are those are the non-mammoth species impacts that we're hoping why why the like the mammoth is kind of a it holds a particularly good cultural position. And the dodo, I really like that thing about the dodo that it's not about what it does functionally but what it does symbolically. That look guys, we we went through all of this effort to bring this thing back because of how topsy-turvy ecology of this particular location went. You got to fix this. I think that's it's just a really really smart way of playing with human psychology. The mammoth also kind of is symbolic in some regards. I I don't know if we actually do know why it went extinct. Was it hunted to extinction? Was it whatever whatever? Yeah, there's a lot of different it depends on who you ask, right? Like there's there's scientific peer-reviewed papers that say early man uh hunted them to extinction. There's other papers that show in in other research that shows that, you know, it was it was climate and in the evolving climate that pushed them further north. And then there's genetic bottleneck in Wrangel Island that the last mammoths died of inbreeding. But most likely what what most people don't realize and and and so I think there I think the answer is somewhere in between cuz I think there's data I mean we have, you know, proof of early man hunting mammoths. We we have, you know, there's there's spear marks and stuff like that in some mammoths. There's actually mammoth tools that have been used, right? And so so I do think that that were that were designed and built at that time. I think more than likely, you know, with with elephants specifically, you have 22 months gestation. Then you have about six years to get to the point that they are truly adult elephants elephants. And then there's about a 12 to 13-year sexual maturity process. So if you want to kill all of it, you actually don't have to eradicate elephants, you don't have to eradicate all of them. You just have to eradicate enough of them because of that cycle, you know, you know, whether it's the environment or predators, someone will thin them off over time to to get to extinction. From a reproduction perspective and from a fertility perspective, elephants generally are a fragile creature. Long gestation, long time as a relatively useless unprotected infant, still relatively useless sexually. Finally, we can you know, it's just there's a lot of opportunity to be dead in that room. you get to the point to to to pass on your genes. One thing about elephants though and we aren't we are working on this as it relates to mammoth the extinction. We're not we're not looking at it from a cancer perspective. But one of the things that's interesting about elephants and I believe also blue whales is they have an over expression of this protein called P53. You you and I and mice, we have about one expression of it. Uh they have seven. And what's interesting is if you look at elephants for both body weight and uh both both body weight and size uh and and and and and and longevity of life, they get cancer a fraction of what they should quote-unquote should based on like cancer and mutation curves of most mammals. And it is believed that a lot of that is due to P53, right? Um and it's just something that's not as well studied as it probably should be cuz most people work in mice and then pigs. So, one of the things that's interesting about what we're doing with Colossal outside of the extinction or species preservation uh efforts, which I'd love to talk to you at at some point if if it's uh if it's if it's an option, but uh but finding because we are working in so many non-model organisms, we're starting to see really interesting things and learning a lot about species that there's just not been enough research into at least at the genetic level. And so, I'm not saying that P53 or elephants have the cure to cancer, but they may. And so, we are working like what for us to do our editing, think about that for us. For us to create what's called induced pluripotent stem cells, the most naive state of stem cells that then you can reprogram into any type of tissue, uh which is very helpful for us, right, with what we're trying to do. Um you know, we've achieved that in our marsupial species, the fat-tailed Dunnart that that works that's our model organism for for a thylacine. But in in the case of the mammoth uh and the Asian elephants, we're very very close, but we haven't got there quite yet. We we've gotten to iPSCs, but we want to get to further differentiation of them so that we can really characterize them as as the most purest form of iPSCs, it's kind of like a grading scale. Um and we've achieved that kind of first step, and now we're kind of progressing. But we actually had to isolate and build a construct around P53 and learn how to regulate it because think about what do mutations look like? They look like cancer, right? And so when you're introducing mutations into the genome, it looks like it looks like a form of cancer. So so we're learning a lot about about, you know, how cellular regulation works around P53, which is really really fascinating. One of our advisors Fritz Volrath is is one of the top P53 researchers who's been very helpful to us. But but fundamentally that's an area where some of these species, while not massively reproductively viable as you said as you as you so stated, could be really helpful if we understand more about their genetics. Okay, so dodo bird, symbolic, useful, not been gone for that long. Uh Tasmanian tiger would be good to stop the Tasmanian devils from getting this face tumor. Also symbolic because they're they're only extinct because in that because the the Australian government put a bounty on their heads and paid people to eradicate them. So also very symbolic. 100% man-caused extinction or extinction. All of that being said, woolly mammoths functionally do some cool stuff. What cool stuff do they do? How do they help the planet? Yeah, so so may I so there there's a group called Pleistocene Park that George has been working with for the last 10 years in northern Siberia. And what they found, and they've done this in I think they published in eight different peer-reviewed papers, that if you can build the if you can do two things, if you can remove these the the these coniferous trees, this taiga forest that is not the best carbon sink, they're also very dark bark, they almost are like heat lightning rods that have permeate that permeate the heat down into the ground. If you remove those and if you get to the right level of of cold tolerant dense cold tolerant dense species, the right level of density, you can actually lower ground temperatures by up to 8°. Now, why and I'll talk about that here in a second, but why is that important? We always talk about this 1.5° tipping point. Well, there's more carbon and more methane, and methane's about 30 times worse in the atmosphere, like that's what kind of uh Venus is actually predominantly made of. Um there's more carbon and more methane stored in the permafrost in that in that tundra area than anywhere else on the planet. It's more than double what's been released in the atmosphere. It's over a trillion metric tons of carbon and methane, which is which is terrible. It's more than even in the Amazon rainforest, right? Cuz the Amazon and the rainforest have a carbon-oxygen cycle that that just repeats. Not in the Arctic. It freezes, something dies, freezes, dies, freezes, and just piles up, right? So, there's this all this condensed biomass there, and you know, if it really if it releases, it could be pretty bad. I was actually with the Army Corps of Engineers up there outside of Fairbanks in the permafrost research tunnels, and it it it it's just it's it's it's absolutely amazing, but also kind of terrifying if it does melt. And so, what's interesting is there's been studies shown about how effective elephants are, specifically forest elephants in Africa, at doing a couple of things. They actually make the ground temperatures cooler cuz they pack the ground and they let the wind actually come down and and hit the ground during the cooler months. So, it actually makes the the ground cooler. Number one. Number two, elephants love knocking down trees, and I know that sounds like, wait, but I thought trees were good. Is does Colossal have a war on trees? We do not have a war on trees. We just don't love the non-efficient coniferous dark-barked trees in the Arctic that are that aren't aren't helpful. The the grasslands of the Arctic grasslands of that time were about two to three times more efficient at what's called the albedo effect at at light reflection. So, anything that wasn't absorbed for for those absorbed in those gra- grasses is not only uh reflective is reflected back to space about two to three times more efficient than trees and as well as they're about six times more efficient at storing carbon down into their root structures. And so, there's been a lot of really great modeling done that if you could return the Arctic back to a more biodiverse with these like Pleistocene creatures uh area where you have these natural herding animals. During the winter, they'll pack the snow down deeper or or pack the snow down so that the winter months can actually like lower the temperatures and we've seen that work in Siberia already. Mammoths, like elephants, are natural they love knocking down trees, right? So, then you don't have to use uh tractors and other uh equipment like they're doing in Siberia to knock down those trees. And then, just building up that biodiversity in that area will lead to a better oxygen-nitrogen cycle so that they will you know with their defecation and whatnot, they'll plant more uh of the of the grasses that are more efficient in the summer months, right? So, so it's really interesting when you put the whole puzzles together outside of mammoths, it's about 8° lower, which is pretty important when we're looking at probably surpassing that 1.5° that we talked about in in the in the Paris Agreement, right? It's pretty important to keep all that that trapped in and the the model is is that mammoths can be in a massive accelerate and can push those numbers even higher. Little hairy farmers, big hairy farmers walking over the place. So, I I volunteered when I went to Thailand seven years ago. I volunteered at a conservation center that was reclaiming land from monocrop monoculture stuff. I want to say soybeans maybe. Do they do kind of grass there? I feel like Anyway, it was somewhere that had been just one thing and uh this guy that had bought tons and tons of hectares of land had also bought two elephants. He'd saved two elephants that had been carrying mother and daughter that had been carrying tourists up hills. One of those like classic like mistreated animal stories. Uh, and then brought them in. And I remember asking at the time I was like, "Why would like is the is it just for fun or whatever?" And they were like, "Oh, no. The elephants they keep the trees to a certain level. They help to rotate the crops and the different uh, ensure that manure from one side goes to another side and then there's fertilizer and they do all this other stuff as well." And uh, yeah, dude. I I realized that elephants are basically nature's farmers in a way. Yeah. You're you're 100% spot on and there was a study that came out that uh, we can get and just send to you if you find it interesting to read. I I think you probably will. Where I I think that they defined the in just forest elephants in Africa and Asia uh, uh, uh, preserve the equivalent of half a trillion dollars of carbon credits. Like that's amazing. Um, and so people are just like uh, elephants. Breed more elephants. Yeah, and we want to we we we want to do that, right? Like this is part of our goals. How do you Have you considered I know that you haven't got one yet. What is the game plan upon right, we can now produce elephants or we can produce mammoths at the pace of about one every 22 months uh, and then we can like scale it. Yeah. What do you do? Fly them in? Fly them in on a on a big a big big one of those C-130 airplane? C-130, yeah. No, no. Um, we work closely with the US government but not I don't know if they'll give us C-130s for elephant transports. Um, so so the idea is uh, kind of twofold. One let me talk about scaling briefly and then we'll talk about rewilding. So on the scaling function, you know, uh, to your point breeding elephants is a long tedious process, right? You're not going to make thousands of mammoths the old fashioned way. It's just going to take a long time, right? But fundamentally, so we have a group and and and once again, what what's so weird about my day-to-day life today is is that de-extinction no longer seems like science fiction to me cuz I'm so close to it, right? It's like I see where I see a lot more than the world sees um and we try to talk about everything we're doing as much as we can um but I see I see how close some things are and stuff how far other things are. And so de-extinction to me doesn't seem like science fiction anymore. Uh the science fiction part of my job is we have an ex-utero development or artificial womb team uh that we're really, you know, investing heavily in and and I do think that there's no major science gates there. It's just engineering challenges, right? You have to know enough about the species, you have to build the right environment, you have to ensure that you have the right placental interface for the placenta. Um but but you can really build out a ex-utero development and that's where you can get scale, right? And this is before we talk about where do you how do you put them back? But you know, our long-term goal is to be able to produce many many mammoths in, you know, a facility, right? Like where you're not even using surrogates. And and I think that interestingly enough, some of the work that we're doing for conservation is a game changer as we're building this de-extinction toolkit, but then separately, I think this artificial womb, if we are to be successful in it, it will have more an impact even than than all this other work we're doing on species preservation cuz if you could think about it, if you could grow, you know, we talk about the northern white rhinos, there's only two left or functionally extinct cuz there are only two females, but if you could grow 100 northern white rhinos with different engineered in genetic diversity and then work with free wilding teams to put them back into the wild, then you change conservation forever, right? And so so I do think there's some things that that we're working on that are more science fiction uh but if we are successful, have kind of that scale functions that you're talking about. But long-term, it's to actually have uh those breeding centers uh in the Arctic, in Alaska, in our allied nations in in the Arctic Circle, and and actually, you know, do that work there and then work to rewild them there. You can do that in heated barns. Slap them slap them on the ass. Yeah. Send them out into the world. them a give them a treat and and hope for the best. go. Can mammoths produced by you are you just allowed to let them have sex and and proliferate and then do you get mammoths out the other side or does something weird happen? You do get, uh, mammoths out the other side and there there's actually, uh, data to suggest that mammoths and Asian elephants did interbreed, which is interesting. Um, uh, but but separate conversation. The, um, uh, so we work very closely with every nation, every state has slightly different rules. We work very closely with the US government. We're working with the Australian government. We're working with the Russian government. And, uh, and then we're working with a couple of state governments. The US government's actually an investor in in one of the groups is an investor in Colossal. Um, and so for us, uh, you know, it's really important to be inclusive not when we get mammoths and slap them on the butt and and and hope for the best. It it's important to do it now, right? So we spend a lot of time with the government. We spend a lot of time with different regulatory agencies. We spend a lot of time with indigenous people groups, private land owners. Um, and that's important, right? Because it's not just about government regulation and support like the EPA and and and other equivalents, but you also have indigenous people groups, you have private land owners. So we've been we've taken the the, uh, stance that the rewilding process is going to be as long as the engineering process. Uh, so why don't we start that now? And so just because we we don't want approval, we want true collaboration. And and so that's that's one thing that I think that we've done really right. Um, we have a a team that that works with with these governments and indigenous people groups and and held public town hall forums that have conversations with local with the local public both from an education and a feedback perspective. You know, you can you can actually learn a lot from a critic if you listen. Um and so I think I think we've done a good job of taking a wide range of feedback that we've been given um you know, more so on the critical side less so on the please make a dinosaur side. Understood. Rolling the clock forward, the next question evidently is what does this mean for humans? Does this mean that we can change our DNA to survive space flight? Can we give us the strength of Neanderthals? Can we Can we do do I know you work with Chris Mason. He had that thought experiment in his book about if you were able to make humans uh do photosynthesis and you'd only need three tennis fields worth of skin and you'd be able to survive just on the sun like some crazy butterfly of space. Yeah, plants are the original solar power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um Yeah, photosynthesis. Roll the clock forward for me. What can we do for humans? So So I think so so just to be transparent, we are not working in humans. Um we are working in mammals. I think a lot of the technologies that we're developing will have applications uh to to humans. In the case that that occurs, we spin that out as a technology company. We did that last year with Form Bio our first uh AI base computational biology platform. But I think as we get better at computational biology and as we get better at editing, uh I think the sky's the limit, right? and that's where you need to spend a lot of time on the ethics side of it. So um you know, uh I I do believe that from a technology perspective, you know, it's not possible or it's not allowed to do germline editing. So the editing that we are doing in currently in with with uh man with it Colossal, you can't do that in humans. So, it's not allowed. Um, but I do think that as uh, that changes cuz I do think that'll be a societal change over time with more and more strict policies and in in not not quite strict, but better regulation around genetic editing cuz right now it's like sounds scary. We shouldn't we should only do it in these limited cases, but but it's incredible. So, so let me give you let me give you a real world example today and then I'll tell you about tomorrow. So, uh, there there and I'm probably going to screw it up because I'm not a biologist, but uh, they found that like I I you know, I don't know what your cholesterol is, right? But uh, my my cholesterol is pretty great, but part of it is it's because I've I've actually I actually use a drug that limit that that that stops and blocks one of the genes in my body called PCSK9. And so, what's interesting is there's these these PCSK9 inhibitors um, uh, PCSK9 inhibitors that um, that literally block how your body produces LDL. So, some people genetically, even if you're vegan, do everything right, run 1,000 mi a day, you will produce too much LDL, right? It will build up in your system. And um, this lowers it by, you know, 40 to 70%. It's incredible and it's not where I'm not I've not edited my genome, but I take a drug that uh, blocks that. So, what about a world where we can edit out that gene where no one, you know, like like I I believe that diabetes and heart disease right now are 100% curable. They're they're they're curable and I'm not just talking about through lifestyle. I mean through medications that exist today, right? And so, from from a human perspective, we are I I take a shot twice a month in order to achieve that, right? To to to block that. But fundamentally, I do believe that that that's something that could be gene edited at some point, right? And so, I think in the near term, there will be applications of gene editing and gene therapies that that cure that. I think in the long term, I don't think Chris Mason's wrong. I I think that we can become more radiation tolerant. And with more radiation tolerant, that people think about, oh, that allows us to be a face space bearing species. It also allows less breakdown of our DNA and lets us probably live longer on Earth. Um and so, um you know, the sun is not always our best friend in that, right? And so, um So, I do think that that from, you know, I we already know about genes like myostatin. Myostatin, if you've seen the Belgian Blue cows, you know, uh we can double muscle mass. We we can That's one edit. All right? It's one knockout. Like, I'm not saying we should do it. Uh Some bodybuilders might believe we should do it. But But uh But fundamentally to to to your point, you know, I think that, you know, uh we we live at a really interesting time and, you know, from an ethical framework perspective and a regulation perspective, I think that we just have to be mindful of ethics, regulation. Um but I but I do think from a technology perspective, we are surpassing uh uh the rate limits of of regulation and and and ethics in terms of what's possible. More is possible today than we as humans are allowed to do. Yeah. Yeah, I had a a really interesting conversation with Jonathan Anomaly, who is out here in Austin, and he is about to release, at some point, uh a company that has been ready for a long time, which does uh embryo selection. It does embryo selection based on risk for all manner of different things. But it also can select It can also select for IQ. Uh and it doesn't select for IQ, but it gives you a risk profile Yeah, and so, where where does where does eugenics start and stop, right? It's a Well, not only that, not only not only that, but with I I asked him this question. I think it's very interesting is what's the difference between embryo selection, which you could do right now. Like you just be like if you don't have the actual samples, you're like closing your eyes and going IVF number five or whatever, right? Yes. Um what's the is there a difference? Is there a fundamental ethical difference between embryo selection and genetic enhancement? Is there? And his argument is no. I would argue I would argue that the answer is no because people are like, "But we can't create like GMOs or genetically modified organisms are bad." I'm like, "We've been creating GMOs with crops for thousands of years. We've just been doing it very inefficiently. We've been crossbreeding [ __ ] and crossing our fingers, right?" And like that we've been doing that with dogs. We have dogs that are all different shapes and sizes that aren't even very Some of them are genetically disposed to cancer because of we have the decisions that we have made through selective breeding. But selective breeding is a form of genetic engineering. And so I would argue no, it's really not at its core. And And so before I I don't know what exactly his tech is, but another company I'm not affiliated with, but it's called Orchid Health, George Church also co-founded it. And they actually, you know, in when couples have have a baby, they'll get a they'll get genetic testing to see if they're compatible. Some people do compatible some tests, you know, for Down syndrome and other stuff in womb, right? Sometimes people feel like that's controversial, but people do it. And then what's interesting though now to your IVF point is once you have those embryos to your point, you can cross your you know, close your eyes and pick one. But what's really interesting is now they're doing a risk score where they're saying, "This you know, this may be like the absolute best looking uh gene or best looking embryo, but you know, we do full genome sequencing on it. Now we can tell you that, you know, it this has a predisposition to late stage Alzheimer's, right? So Yeah. Do Do you even though even in though everything else about it's healthy, do you want to insert that one or do you want to take the gamble that and we're going to Dude, I mean this is this this ultimately is the most interesting part of what I learned from Jonathan, um which is at the moment what we do is we roll the dice, right? We roll the dice with whichever whichever is the fastest sperm, whichever is the egg that was timed at the right time of the month or what it whatever whatever with the right particular month. That is rolling. And there it seems like there are a number of defense mechanisms. I learned that um around about 50% of all fertilized eggs are cast out of a woman's body without her realizing within the first fortnight. But it's just you wouldn't you you you don't even miss anything at all, and there is, you know, you you could imagine why that would be adaptive that there's something that's not gone quite right here. Perhaps this is an early warning system that just ejects this particular egg. Is that a mis- Is that a miscarriage? Yeah, well, if you want to wear of it, kind of. And so they So I I I I I don't know if this stat's right, but I I believe this is in the ballpark. I I think George Whit told me this, but uh natural birth is about an 8% success rate, which is kind of crazy because there's so many of these early stage uh ejections that you don't even know about that that that that or that the woman does know that the female does know about. And so it's really interesting, um you know, cuz like even IVF only gets you up to 50/50, right? And so like you're it's crazy to me. And part of the reason why I think some of those are only 50/50 is because they are not doing full genome sequencing of the embryos. So you can have a a developing embryo that that that looks great in in microscope, but it has a genetic defect that at a certain point will not work. The body just says, "Nope." Yeah, and so so you so you're starting to your point it's it takes like you're if you have this many embryos, you then go through a freezing process and you to this, it keeps going down and down and down until you do it, but I think that what what Jonathan's doing and what Fork and Humer are doing are really really important and you know, but I also believe that you know, personalized health care everyone needs to take responsibility for that. They should get full genome sequencing. They should know what's you know, fundamentally not active to I I had mine done the other a couple of months ago. I got one copy of the C677T mutation not associated as a major driver of homocysteine levels. It's not as bad as this other one. Blah blah blah. Just make sure that you supplement supplement with B vitamins and some methylated some other [ __ ] Anyway, I had that done. I also went and had a full body MRI, brain angiogram, heart angiogram, DEXA scan. Yeah, yeah. Did you go to Fountain of Life Peter Diamandis's place? No, I did not. No, no, so Peter's a good friend. He's an advisor and investor in also. No, I've done I've just done a lot of that individually. I've I've even done a CT cardiac angiogram scan which gets you which then uses this clearly analysis this AI tool where they can tell more. Think about this like few years ago they were like still doing I think people still do. They do angiograms by sticking like a cath into your body and going into your heart and looking at it, right? Like that all can be now done with imaging and AI. So, you can see like pre-plaque build up. It's incredible. And so did you have the I I got an image of the whatever the left ventricle first first thing out and they were like we've got like 0.5% whatever. Did you do the thing where they IV you with that [ __ ] that makes your torso go really really hot? Yeah, yeah, yeah and it it makes you feel like you're going to pee. Yeah. Dude. That is the craziest feeling. Yeah, that's the that's the contrast and makes you feel like you're going to it makes me feel like I'm a tape. And so I was like It was insane. It's what It's what I imagine being a dragon feels like. Oh. Oh, yeah, 100%. I I know exactly the feeling. But But interestingly enough, like this kind of goes to I don't know what exactly the results were, but going back to like LDL, right? They've now shown that if you can get LDL down to 50 to 75, not only Well, sub 100, it doesn't continue to accumulate, but but 50 to 75, it actually reverses. And Dr. Osborne in Dallas, he's he's incredible. Um He's one of the pioneers in this field. And what what's what's what's really crazy about it is, you know, if you can start to not just like you can stop and prevent any build up, but you can reverse any damage that's there. I mean, you're not going to die of a heart attack stroke. Like you That is a mitigatable thing. And you may have to not just change lifestyle, you may have to take a cocktail of drugs to rest of your life. Yeah. Like Yeah, it's it's so it's interesting. Um I I understand why people get icky. And I maybe would have done it if Jonathan I'll send you the the episode. You should check it out with him. I think you'll really enjoy it. I'd love to. Yeah, yeah. He He really just very slowly walked me through step by step um all of the different ways that we make adjustments to ourselves and that we have done to other animals. We've done it through selective breeding. We've done it to get rid of the pips out of bananas. Also to make them bigger and sweeter and all this sort of [ __ ] And then we do it to ourselves. We modify ourselves with I'm going to take this antibiotic. I'm going to take this particular type of painkiller. I'm going to take this particular statin. I'm going to take this whatever. He goes, "Okay, so let's take this one step further. You are a person who has a predisposition to anxiety or depression. And you go through um embryo selection and we can see on there we could maybe do some sort of polygenic score and say, "It seems based on our data, based on the AI, this particular embryo would have a predisposition towards a depression. Would it not? Like if you found, as you were the person that lived in your life with to have kids. You're going to put your kids in the best school, right? So, why not start them off the best they can be? Correct. And then you said, well, you as a person who has depression figuratively, hypothetically had depression if you found out that your parents had the opportunity to step in and not give you depression, either through embryo selection, which actually technically would mean that you weren't here, so it kind of doesn't work. But uh but we forget that bit. Uh or through uh gene enhancement and say what? You you cursed me with this thing and as soon as you concede, or let's say that it was something really extreme, right? Like a you're going to be born with like one foot or like some sort of deformity or you were going to you whatever, whatever. It's like you could have given me you could have taken this away from me. As soon as you concede that that is a I I and I think he's right a moral thing to do to allow that to occur it's off to the races all the way down to maximizing IQ. Like it's the And And and and of the things that that isn't talked enough about is like, you know, you know, other countries have different ethical views, right? Like, you know, BGI in China is Beijing Genomics Institute has said, we're sequencing everyone we can and we're trying to find the smartest humans and we're going to use it, right? And so Assortative mating, baby. Just done by done by computer. Yeah, and so it just it is one of those things that, you know, you know, there needs to be more work in effort in thoughtful regulation of these technologies because we can make the world better through genetic. Like we we we can do that. And I'm I'm obviously I mean I I work at Colossal, so I do fundamentally believe that. Um but, you know, I I I do think that that a a deeper lens on healthcare because I think that we could we have the tools and technologies to make humanity better, um, today. Ben Lam, ladies and gentlemen. Ben, I appreciate the hell out of you. Your work's fascinating. Uh, I'm glad that it's not me having to turn up with this pressure on my shoulders every day, but I think they've chosen the right guy for the job. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff you're getting up to? colossal.com. Oh, yeah. Ben, I appreciate you. Thank you, man. Awesome. Thank you. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe.