QAA - De-Extinction Nightmare Part 2: Colossal Lies (E369)
Aired: 2026-04-22
Duration: 01:14:08


=== Water Policy and Tiny Fish (05:17) ===

[00:00:02]  Well done.
[00:00:34]  You found a way to connect to the internet.
[00:00:36]  Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 369, De-Extinction Nightmare Part 2, Colossal Lies.
[00:00:45]  As always, we are your hosts, Julian Field, Liv Agar, Jack LaRoche, and Travis View.
[00:00:51]  In 2024, Donald Trump found himself talking about California's water policy.
[00:00:57]  That he was discussing water policy wasn't that surprising.
[00:01:01]  As climate change worsens and data centers grow, the state has found its water table increasingly taxed.
[00:01:07]  It wasn't even shocking that Donald Trump interrupted himself during a particularly vitriolic tirade against Biden's admittedly ailing health to complain about a far more insidious foe.
[00:01:19]  What was surprising was that the enemy in question was, in his words, a tiny, tiny fish.
[00:01:26]  You know, water?
[00:01:27]  I had a deal for water to come down from the north.
[00:01:30]  They have so much water.
[00:01:31]  They don't do it because they're trying to protect a tiny, tiny little fish that hasn't made it.
[00:01:37]  He's a small fish.
[00:01:38]  And why would you protect small fish?
[00:01:40]  They're lame.
[00:01:41]  No longer hot.
[00:01:43]  The tiny little fish is the critically endangered Delta smelt, found only in the northeastern part of San Francisco Bay.
[00:01:51]  These fish are indeed tiny, just two to three inches long, and only live about a year in the wild.
[00:01:57]  This was also not the first time they had found themselves as firmly lodged in Trump's urethra as the worm in RFK Jr.'s brain.
[00:02:06]  In 2016, Trump argued that California could not possibly be experiencing the worst mega drought in 1,200 years because, quote, A certain kind of three inch fish was still enjoying protections.
[00:02:20]  In 2020, he complained to Sean Hannity about California having to ration water due to dumping all of its supply into the sea, quote, to take care of a certain little tiny fish.
[00:02:31]  Hannity went on to dedicate an entire episode of his own show to complaining about the fish and the government elevating it over the people of California.
[00:02:40]  This belief was held so strongly that on January 20th, 2025, Trump announced his, quote, Putting people over fish, stopping radical environmentalism to provide water to Southern California, presidential action.
[00:02:55]  Sarah Palin also weighed in on the Delta smelt in her own unique voice.
[00:02:59]  Where I come from, a three inch fish, we call that bait.
[00:03:02]  There is no need to destroy people's lives over bait.
[00:03:05]  Hydrologic studies show that conserving the Delta smelt is not a zero sum game.
[00:03:10]  The effect of, as Trump put it, dumping water into the ocean to save this tiny fish does not meaningfully impact the people of California in any way.
[00:03:20]  Why then, if the science shows it to be a non issue, is this such a strong talking point?
[00:03:25]  It has to do more with what the fish represents than what it is in reality.
[00:03:30]  Yeah, I find this is often the case with how the right represents conservation stuff.
[00:03:35]  It's with virtue signaling as well as a concept the belief that these people are also super cynical, but they're just hiding their cynicism.
[00:03:43]  So it is a war of all against all, but the liberals are siding with not humanity or not the in group in that war of all against all.
[00:03:53]  In this case, they're siding with the fish.
[00:03:55]  The fish are invading.
[00:03:56]  It's us or them, and obviously we're going to choose them.
[00:03:59]  Yeah.
[00:03:59]  I remember in the 90s, the sort of representative of silly conservation efforts among conservatives was the spotted owl.
[00:04:08]  People constantly made fun of Al Gore or whatever for wanting to preserve the spotted owl.
[00:04:14]  Of course.
[00:04:14]  I mean, why would we save animals?
[00:04:16]  Oh, the cuckowl and the pussyfish, huh?
[00:04:19]  That's who you care about, freaking Californians.
[00:04:22]  The Delta smelt represents every tree hugging, peace loving, pot smoking Californian.
[00:04:27]  Everything wrong with environmental policy and liberal rhetoric can be fit into its three inch body.
[00:04:33]  The fish was small enough to have a starring role in almost every article about abortion and LGBTQ rights.
[00:04:41]  Interestingly, very few of these articles talked about the other species of endangered fish that was diverting water during the droughts the Chinook salmon.
[00:04:50]  I'm sure there's no reason that they're avoiding going after this large, majestic, fishable fish rather than the beta spawn that is the Delta smelt.
[00:04:59]  I mean, the Delta smelt is just the funniest.
[00:05:02]  The Delta smelt it.
[00:05:03]  Yeah.
[00:05:04]  He who dealt it smelt it.
[00:05:05]  Yeah.
[00:05:06]  Makes you think of farts.
[00:05:07]  Yeah.
[00:05:09]  This is what we bring you.
[00:05:10]  Half hearted jokes because they're too childish, but I can't help myself.
[00:05:15]  That's the subheading of the QA podcast.
[00:05:17]  I can't help myself.
[00:05:19]  I can't help myself.

=== Revolutionizing History with Clones (07:48) ===

[00:05:20]  Methods of de extinction.
[00:05:23]  When Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, it generated a lot of intense scientific discussion.
[00:05:31]  Many were interested in the idea of the advent of designer babies.
[00:05:35]  Others wanted to know what other animals could be cloned next.
[00:05:40]  Dolly was important, not just because she was a cloned animal, other animals were cloned before her, but because she was an animal cloned from adult somatic cells, mammary tissue to be exact, hence her being named after Dolly Parton.
[00:05:54]  If we could clone this sheep from adult somatic cells, a scientist theorized, couldn't we clone a thylacine?
[00:06:01]  What about a woolly mammoth?
[00:06:03]  These ideas were very fresh in George Church's mind, and ones that he spoke very openly about, both in interviews throughout the aughts and into the 2010s.
[00:06:13]  After the publication of his book, Regenesis How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, in 2012, the very concept of de extinction began to be talked about in earnest outside of speculative biology and rewilding spaces.
[00:06:28]  De extinction as a concept is pretty much what it says on the tin.
[00:06:33]  Extinction doesn't necessarily need to be forever, according to this philosophy.
[00:06:38]  Resurrection could be achieved in a number of ways.
[00:06:41]  To put it into the most basic terms, if you took two dogs, for instance, Liv's tiny little dog and my husky, and bred them together, each time choosing the breeding partner with the most atavistic traits, my husky has more atavistic traits than most tiny little dogs, you would, over time, end up with the wolf that the dog species came from.
[00:07:02]  This is what the Heck brothers attempted to do to recreate the aurochs from modern cattle.
[00:07:07]  Alternatively, you could speed run this process by, say, taking a chicken embryo and choosing to edit the genes so that the tail would remain intact, the fingers would never fuse into a wing, and the teeth would remain in the beak.
[00:07:20]  This is what Jeffrey Epstein associate and overall creep Jack Horner has been trying to do with his Chicanosaurus project for over a decade now.
[00:07:28]  Although, with his recent firing, I imagine that project might now be extinct.
[00:07:32]  Damn, get his ass.
[00:07:34]  Finally, you could take the genome of an extinct animal and, through CRISPR, edit it in some of the sequences into a living surrogate embryo to create a hybrid creature that shows the traits of the extinct ancestor.
[00:07:47]  This is what George Church was most interested in, and this is what the company Colossal Biosciences was formed to do.
[00:07:54]  This is also how the direwolves that have been dominating the news cycle were made.
[00:07:59]  Colossal Origins.
[00:08:02]  In 2019, mobile game creator and AI enthusiast Ben Lamb approached George Church about de extinction.
[00:08:11]  By 2021, they launched their company, Colossal Biosciences, the de extinction company.
[00:08:18]  Colossal's stated mission is.
[00:08:20]  Through technological and engineering breakthroughs in bioscience and genetics, Colossal is accepting humanity's duty to restore Earth to a healthier state, while also solving for the future economies and biological necessities of the human condition.
[00:08:32]  What do y'all think about that?
[00:08:34]  Um.
[00:08:36]  You know, it reminds me of that line from the Silicon Valley series in which the tech billionaire says, I don't want to live in a world where people make the world a better place than we do.
[00:08:45]  It's like, it reminds me, it's like, yeah, it has this common tech arrogance of like, it's like, okay, everyone else before me, including conversations, had no idea what we're doing.
[00:08:55]  We're going to use our big brains, our many dollars, and our Stanford grads to really actually do what you've been trying to do.
[00:09:02]  And of course, it usually ends in like, you know, a horrifying disaster.
[00:09:05]  Yeah.
[00:09:06]  Yeah, the idea is that all these other people are actually just too stupid.
[00:09:10]  And now that I've come along, thank God I can apply my enormous brain to this issue.
[00:09:16]  This is very Elon Musk way of thinking.
[00:09:18]  I mean, just all these guys, just the hubris.
[00:09:20]  I've said this many times, but it's incredible.
[00:09:22]  Well, since you said the keyword hubris, this is what Colossal Bioscience' stated goal is Colossal will revolutionize history and be the first company to use CRISPR technology successfully in the de extinction of previously lost species.
[00:09:36]  On the journey, we will build radical new software tools and technologies to advance the science of genomics overall.
[00:09:42]  Okay, yeah.
[00:09:43]  So we're going to revolutionize the dang world.
[00:09:45]  We're going to make a freaking before and after.
[00:09:49]  We're going to really be the best.
[00:09:51]  We're going to revolutionize history.
[00:09:53]  Yeah.
[00:09:53]  Revolutionize history is so stupid.
[00:09:56]  Yeah.
[00:09:57]  So to launch the De Extinction Company in 2019, they received $15 million in seed funding from some pretty interesting people, each without a single modicum of scientific background.
[00:10:10]  First, we have Thomas Tull, arguably best known as the founder of Legendary Entertainment and the person to finally bring Watchmen in 300 to the big screen.
[00:10:19]  He's the co chairman of TWG Global, an investment group that specializes in integrating AI into financial services and is partnered with QAA favorites Palantir and XAI.
[00:10:31]  Sorry, you said is partnered with QAA.
[00:10:34]  I was like, wait, which world?
[00:10:36]  We're partnering with them.
[00:10:37]  What's going on?
[00:10:39]  In 2022, around the same time as Colossal was getting established, Tull became head of the United States Innovative Technology Fund, which focused on building startups incorporating AI, quantum computing, biotech, satellites, etc.
[00:10:54]  One of their largest investments was in Andrel Industries.
[00:10:59]  Next on the list here is Tim Draper, third generation venture capitalist, which I guess would make him a Nepo grandchild.
[00:11:06]  He was one of the first investors in the totally legit company Theranos.
[00:11:11]  Smart person.
[00:11:11]  Awesome, yeah.
[00:11:12]  Revolutionized history, they did.
[00:11:14]  In 2014 and again in 2018, he filed a petition to divide California into either six or three smaller states, since it has become increasingly ungovernable, in his words, as a single state.
[00:11:29]  Neither petition made it very far.
[00:11:31]  Yeah, I'm going to disrupt the United States voting by gerrymandering, but we're calling it something new.
[00:11:38]  Tony Robbins, motivational speaker, alleged sex pest, and neuro linguistic programming advocate, was eager to put his money on the line as well.
[00:11:47]  I was going to say, like, that's an entirely new sentence, but it absolutely isn't.
[00:11:50]  That's like so, that's probably a lot of type of guys, those three things.
[00:11:55]  So, too, were the cryptocurrency obsessive Winklevist twins.
[00:11:59]  Jim Breyer, formerly the second largest shareholder in Facebook behind Zuckerberg himself, threw his money at the De Extinction Company.
[00:12:07]  Interestingly, post 2016, Breyer began focusing primarily on investing in artificial intelligence specialized for use in healthcare spaces.
[00:12:16]  The last of the public seed funding investors was Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima video game series and the failed.
[00:12:24]  No!
[00:12:25]  Not you!
[00:12:26]  And the failed 2022 NFT technology based video game.
[00:12:32]  No, no, not the creator of Ultima Online, my most beloved game of all time.
[00:12:37]  Mr. Garriott, you are hereby cancelled.
[00:12:41]  Once again, your faves are implicated.
[00:12:43]  Yeah.
[00:12:44]  Fuck!
[00:12:44]  Well, I mean, he has sucked horribly at making games, like for a while now.
[00:12:49]  To Julian's dismay, Garriott was also the inspiration behind James Halliday and Ready Player One, and is currently on the advisory board of Colossal Biosciences.
[00:12:59]  Yeah, well, you know, I mean, one of the funniest parts of Ultima Online was when someone exploited a bug to kill Richard Garriott's king character in the middle of a big ceremony.

=== Invasive Cloning and Blood Draws (06:17) ===

[00:13:09]  It was amazing.
[00:13:10]  That is pretty great.
[00:13:11]  So maybe we have to do that to him, but in less of an Ultima and less of an Online.
[00:13:16]  Although Garriott is an accomplished adventurer, he also is not a scientist.
[00:13:22]  Notably, even George Church himself has no background in conservation.
[00:13:26]  Great.
[00:13:27]  By 2024, the roster of donators had expanded to include Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Peter Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, and enthusiastic explorer and ex highly lauded intelligence officer, Victor Vescovo.
[00:13:45]  All the stars are here.
[00:13:46]  Just lining up all their mugshots on the investor's page.
[00:13:52]  Tom Brady had the following to say about all that Colossal had done for him.
[00:13:56]  I kiss my boy on the mouth.
[00:13:58]  I love kissing him on the mouth.
[00:13:59]  I make him come back and kiss me on the mouth while I'm getting massaged.
[00:14:03]  Now, the real quote I love my animals.
[00:14:07]  They mean the world to me, my family, the former NFL star said.
[00:14:11]  I kiss him on the mouth too!
[00:14:14]  A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family's elderly dog before she passed.
[00:14:22]  The company, quote, gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog, Brady continued, adding that he is, quote, excited at how Colossal and Viagen's tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species.
[00:14:37]  Viagen sounds kind of like a company that, like, helps make your dick harder through nanobots.
[00:14:43]  Yeah, the way that he put it, like simple blood draw, makes it sound like it wasn't so simple and maybe painful for the poor dying dog.
[00:14:51]  Yeah.
[00:14:52]  It was a simple, totally uneventful blood draw that did not kill our dog and replace it with a Kubrick stare version of our dog.
[00:15:00]  Yeah, specifying non invasive, it's like, does that imply that people usually think you have to, like, kill an animal to clone them?
[00:15:06]  Yep.
[00:15:07]  Yep, we drew that blood not through the asshole, definitely not through the eyeball.
[00:15:12]  And not through the ear.
[00:15:13]  Does that require a lobotomy?
[00:15:16]  The dog was fine, although dying.
[00:15:18]  Yeah, it's interesting that the words non invasive are used because a blood draw is invasive.
[00:15:23]  Yeah.
[00:15:24]  As is the use of a surrogate, which you have to use in order to get a clone.
[00:15:29]  Well, I mean, non invasive cloning technology.
[00:15:33]  I mean, as opposed to what the hell would invasive cloning technology be, anyways?
[00:15:38]  Like, we take a part of you and it has to grow the second half?
[00:15:41]  Yeah.
[00:15:42]  Like, yeah, we chop off the back half of the dog and it grows the front half.
[00:15:46]  I think invasive cloning is alien.
[00:15:48]  Yeah, it's the substance.
[00:15:49]  No, the alternative is that we liquidate you.
[00:15:52]  We turn you into a goo.
[00:15:54]  We make a bunch of you from the goo.
[00:15:57]  My beloved dog was liquidated.
[00:15:59]  We put it in a jello mold in the shape of a fucking Labrador.
[00:16:03]  Cloning stuff is always so insane, though, because it's like, that's not your dog.
[00:16:07]  People aren't just determined by their genetics.
[00:16:11]  Unless you do the fucking Nathan Fielder experiment.
[00:16:15]  Identical environment.
[00:16:17]  I was thinking about that.
[00:16:18]  Yeah.
[00:16:19]  So, Paris Hilton and Tom Brady are just two of Viagen's customers.
[00:16:23]  This company is one of two in the world, the others located in South Korea, that leverages the somatic cell cloning technology that was used in creating Dolly the Sheep to replicate more than just livestock.
[00:16:35]  Since 2015, according to a recent Vice article, they have cloned more than 1,000 cats and dogs for happy customers.
[00:16:42]  Viagen even says that their cloning has an impressive 80% success rate.
[00:16:48]  So, what does the 20% look like?
[00:16:51]  You're real fucked up.
[00:16:52]  I was under the impression that it would have been 100% success rate, sort of thing.
[00:16:56]  Like, do we have a, again, is it like a substance at the end of the movie, sort of?
[00:17:02]  Yeah.
[00:17:03]  You know, some of these animals, they're aging incredibly fast and getting depressed and trying to kill everything and everyone around them.
[00:17:10]  It's the last episode of Chernobyl for 20%.
[00:17:12]  Yeah.
[00:17:15]  $50,000 for a dog or cat, or $85,000 for a horse, with no guarantee of success, this is a lucrative endeavor to be sure, especially since they alone hold the patent for this style of cloning.
[00:17:29]  They even assert that it isn't ethically questionable, since each surrogate only goes through two pregnancies.
[00:17:36]  What happens after the surrogate is retired?
[00:17:39]  Don't worry about it.
[00:17:41]  The FDA last heard comments from the public on animal cloning in 2006.
[00:17:46]  But have done nothing to regulate the industry since hearing those comments.
[00:17:50]  Colossal Biosciences acquired Viagen in 2025.
[00:17:54]  This is one of those things where it's like, where is the Bush style, Christian paranoia about stem cells?
[00:18:02]  Because you'd think they'd be pretty not fond of this, presumably.
[00:18:06]  I guess the Trump admin is too busy doing evil things.
[00:18:10]  I mean, I guess we'll see.
[00:18:12]  There's an involvement, I guess, is the twist there.
[00:18:15]  But you would think that that torp of Christian.
[00:18:17]  Evangelical would not be especially fond of the concept of cloning.
[00:18:20]  I mean, you would think.
[00:18:21]  Yeah.
[00:18:22]  You would think a lot of things about these incredibly inconsistent ghouls.
[00:18:25]  Yeah.
[00:18:26]  Marketing is not an art form.
[00:18:29]  If you know the name Colossal Biosciences, it's likely because you've been exposed to their frankly excellent marketing.
[00:18:38]  Run wild and free through fields and forests.
[00:18:43]  I'm a hunt in the cold.
[00:18:49]  Stalk your pain, find a way.

=== Fake Direwolves and Bullshit Science (15:09) ===

[00:19:26]  I do just love it just displaying something that's like obviously not a direwolf Like, obviously, not what a direwolf looked like.
[00:19:34]  The musician that you were hearing is Stan Bush, who is best known for the song The Touch from the Transformers movie.
[00:19:41]  I don't know.
[00:19:42]  It's very, the fact that it's being celebrated with, you know, an ironic 80s hair metal style song makes me feel a little less serious, you know?
[00:19:53]  Yeah.
[00:19:54]  Die a wolf.
[00:19:55]  We're going to feed ourselves to die a wolves.
[00:19:59]  Put us in a pit with all the wolves we show.
[00:20:02]  Let us get torn apart.
[00:20:05]  We deserve death every day.
[00:20:08]  Their videos are often viral sensations on YouTube and Facebook, or at least they were until relatively recently.
[00:20:16]  Even if you wisely are not on social media, you've probably heard about the Direwolves.
[00:20:21]  Time magazine's cover on April 7th, 2025, announced their triumphant return.
[00:20:27]  Extinct, crossed out.
[00:20:29]  This is Remus.
[00:20:30]  He's a Direwolf, the first to exist in over 10,000 years.
[00:20:33]  Endangered Species Could Be Changed Forever by Jeffrey Kluger.
[00:20:37]  I will admit, I saw this like briefly when it happened, and I was like, cool, like it got me.
[00:20:42]  Cool, I'm gonna ride one into battle when my Serbian ancestors finally take over all of that region.
[00:20:47]  Exactly, that was exactly what I thought.
[00:20:49]  In exactly that voice, how did you know that that's my internal monologue?
[00:20:53]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:20:54]  Well, you did say once that you walk around your apartment being like, I'm a fucking chud, I'm a fat fucking chud.
[00:21:02]  So, I gave you the fat fucking chud internal voice.
[00:21:06]  I do say that sometimes.
[00:21:10]  Liv, do you think it's even cooler since Remus's brother is Romulus and his sister is named Khaleesi?
[00:21:16]  Oh, okay.
[00:21:19]  Oh, okay.
[00:21:21]  Fuck!
[00:21:22]  Oh, my God.
[00:21:25]  Shortly before the actual birth of the pups in October 2024, Colossal unceremoniously replaced its marketing team.
[00:21:33]  The new hires were interesting picks.
[00:21:35]  Also, sorry, why wouldn't you not lead with Romulus?
[00:21:39]  Like, who thinks who cares about Remus?
[00:21:41]  There's no Reeve.
[00:21:42]  Like, what the fuck?
[00:21:43]  Well, Romulus looked like an absolute freak.
[00:21:47]  Yeah, Romulus is one of the 20%.
[00:21:49]  He has eight legs.
[00:21:51]  Yeah, right.
[00:21:51]  Romulus looks more like a spider with fur.
[00:21:54]  Romulus looks like one of the wolves that swims in, like, the Simpsons, like, polluted radioactive lake.
[00:22:00]  I like the idea that, like, the new team is still doing the same kind of shit, but, like, has changed completely.
[00:22:04]  It's like, and now, Joanna Newsome's cover of Dire Wolf.
[00:22:09]  Dire Wolf, you are coming back.
[00:22:13]  10,000 years.
[00:22:15]  You guys didn't hear, but one of my favorite lyrics from the Happy Birthday Direwolf song is that he says, It's just one year you're alive, which I think is supposed to be like you just turned one, but being phrased, It's just one year you're alive makes it sound like they have an expiration date.
[00:22:30]  Yeah.
[00:22:30]  Yeah.
[00:22:31]  It's like the inbred white tigers, whatever.
[00:22:35]  It's like, Congrats.
[00:22:36]  Enjoy the year.
[00:22:37]  They named the Direwolf after their fate.
[00:22:39]  Yeah.
[00:22:41]  The new marketing team is led by Chris Klee, who goes by Klee.
[00:22:45]  Klee was formerly employed by Ben Lamb's previous startup, Hypergiant, a military affiliated company that specializes in AI decision making software for space, defense, and critical infrastructure sectors.
[00:22:59]  So, sponsored by the guy who built the Iron Dome.
[00:23:03]  The new chief marketing officer was Emily Castell, whose previous credits include Legendary Entertainment as well as her own marketing company.
[00:23:11]  She famously spearheaded global marketing campaigns for J.J. Abrams' 2013 Star Trek movie and developed the Monsterverse franchise mythology for the current Godzilla and Kong franchises.
[00:23:23]  Michael Doherty, regrettably, is also part of this esteemed team.
[00:23:28]  All of this is to say, if you can't help but think of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, and Jurassic World when you're watching Colossal Biosciences videos online, That's no coincidence.
[00:23:38]  They literally hired the mastermind behind those blockbusters campaigns.
[00:23:42]  By some accounts, the bulk of their budget goes straight into marketing, and it shows.
[00:23:47]  Again, I feel like the Jurassic Park movies have themes of the hubris of scientific overambition and how you can't plan for everything, and then life finds a way, and how it can end in disaster.
[00:24:01]  Yet this is what they're taking inspiration from.
[00:24:04]  I wouldn't be upset if the direwolves got them.
[00:24:07]  Somehow, a dumber version of the ChatGPT trying to recreate the her robot.
[00:24:12]  We got even stupider, even less accurate to the kind of image that they're trying to copy in science fiction.
[00:24:19]  Preprint panic.
[00:24:22]  In February 2026, a leaker posted inside knowledge to a very small subreddit regarding what was happening at Colossal Biosciences.
[00:24:31]  They offered only a little by way of proof, but part of it was the following text exchange showing that they knew about the direwolves prior to the announcement.
[00:24:40]  But it's amazing.
[00:24:41]  Even this has a secret insider anon.
[00:24:44]  Yeah, it's like QAnon, but real.
[00:24:48]  Okay, so the messages read.
[00:24:49]  But this is the thing.
[00:24:50]  If they make a hairy elephant, big if, there's intention to actually release it in the wild.
[00:24:55]  With the dire wolf they tried to make, should note, so different from the real thing, they wanted to call it the colossal wolf.
[00:25:01]  They wanted a slightly bigger wolf to drift off of Game of Thrones hype and put on some fenced off land owned by a billionaire and charge people to see it.
[00:25:08]  Problem was, they couldn't figure out how to make a wolf a bit bigger.
[00:25:12]  This is literally why the company exists to find a cosmetic win and sell.
[00:25:16]  CEO has done exactly multiple times.
[00:25:18]  Someone answers, fuck's sake.
[00:25:20]  Yeah, the wolf situation really shows up the bullshit.
[00:25:23]  BTW, that's between us for now.
[00:25:26]  Sorry.
[00:25:26]  And the date of this exchange was March 4th, 2025.
[00:25:30]  Jesus Christ.
[00:25:31]  Yeah, I mean, this is not surprising.
[00:25:33]  Again, like, you could go back to the first part of this two part episode and see that, like, it was always just cosmetic win bullshit that was really going on behind the scene, like trying to recreate something that looked enough like something that people would believe it.
[00:25:47]  According to this leaker, whose Reddit account is now deleted, during an introductory meeting, someone had the nerve to ask Ben Lamb how exactly Colossal Biosciences plans to make money, seeing how the company is not a nonprofit.
[00:26:03]  Ben Lamb was said to have replied Jurassic Park is a multi billion dollar franchise.
[00:26:08]  They don't have any real animals.
[00:26:13]  All they need to do is pump an animal out and plaster it all over lunchboxes, t shirts, etc.
[00:26:18]  Fuck, this is your monetization strategy.
[00:26:20]  Merch.
[00:26:22]  It's not, it doesn't even make sense.
[00:26:24]  Jurassic Park doesn't exist, dumbass.
[00:26:27]  It's not a company.
[00:26:28]  It's a fucking entertainment.
[00:26:30]  Like, you gotta start a good, you have to make a first good movie.
[00:26:35]  You can't even do that.
[00:26:36]  Make Dire Wolf the movie and then call me when it becomes as big as the first Jurassic Park.
[00:26:40]  Good luck getting fucking sexy Jeff Goldblum in it, too.
[00:26:44]  Yeah, because the analogy is like Game of Thrones, but it's like, it wouldn't be like Game of Thrones.
[00:26:49]  Jurassic Park making money, it'd be like another company selling Jurassic Park merch.
[00:26:53]  Yes.
[00:26:53]  You don't have the main product that's making all the money, which is Game of Thrones.
[00:26:57]  Yeah.
[00:26:57]  A company promising to bring back a dinosaur, never doing it, and then selling merch anyways.
[00:27:03]  It also does make sense.
[00:27:05]  Like, Jurassic Park is like a trademarked intellectual property.
[00:27:09]  You can't have a trademark on the direwolf.
[00:27:11]  It's just an animal.
[00:27:12]  Anyone could put the direwolf on a t shirt.
[00:27:15]  Even in the most charitable interpretation of what he's saying, which is that.
[00:27:19]  In the Jurassic Park movies, there is Jurassic Park merch, and they bring back an animal and then they plaster that everywhere and sell the merch.
[00:27:27]  Even that doesn't make sense because it's a fucking fictional movie written by people.
[00:27:32]  They don't have to fucking do any actual business.
[00:27:35]  Plus, we all know how that turned out really well.
[00:27:37]  The company did great.
[00:27:38]  Jurassic Park, nothing wrong with it.
[00:27:40]  It's great that they put stuff on lunchboxes.
[00:27:42]  God, just the levels of stupidity here.
[00:27:44]  More like Ben Lame.
[00:27:46]  Counterpoint, though, they could just sell copies of the Happy Birthday Direwolf song.
[00:27:51]  Yeah, it's so true, dude.
[00:27:52]  It was so epic what they did there.
[00:27:54]  Oh my god, it was so cool.
[00:27:55]  You know, more interesting than all of this was another revelation that the leaker shared.
[00:28:03]  They're almost certainly lying about how they made the direwolves.
[00:28:05]  The direwolf DNA that was synthesized had its expression patterns changed into something non functional as soon as the grey wolf epigenome kicked in.
[00:28:13]  The head of the direwolf team was a guy named Sven Bockland.
[00:28:16]  He was fired, and I do not know what happened after he was fired.
[00:28:19]  But then four weeks later, the puppies were born.
[00:28:22]  There's no way they figured out how to overcome the messed up expression patterns in that time.
[00:28:26]  What's even more suspicious is the reason they said internally the edits weren't working is because they were editing a wolf and not, according to what I heard prior to announcement, a jackal, who they said was its closest relative.
[00:28:37]  So not only did they have four weeks to work out the bugs, but the animal's entire taxonomy.
[00:28:41]  This makes me think their preprint is also bullshit.
[00:28:44]  So that's interesting that the direwolf is more closely related to a jackal, so they, at least ostensibly at some point, were trying to make this a bit more real, and then they were like, fuck, okay, let's just.
[00:28:55]  Let's just get a white wolf.
[00:28:57]  Yep, let's just throw that in.
[00:28:58]  Jack, I think you have a good shot at becoming part of this company just based on your name.
[00:29:04]  I think that you have a long future.
[00:29:06]  I'd recommend just a slight rename to Jackal LaRoche.
[00:29:09]  Well, as this episode goes on, you might see that you have a really good point since I'm criticizing them.
[00:29:16]  A preprint is essentially a draft of a research paper made publicly available prior to undergoing peer review.
[00:29:24]  The preprint in question.
[00:29:26]  On the ancestry and evolution of the extinct direwolf, notably includes fan favorite George R. R. Martin among its nearly 40 authors, with his author contribution listed as writing, reviewing, and editing.
[00:29:40]  What the fuck does George R. Martin know about any of this?
[00:29:43]  It's all aesthetics and pop culture and PR anyway.
[00:29:47]  So it's like, oh, here's the author of a very popular franchise and intellectual property.
[00:29:53]  Let's get him on board.
[00:29:54]  Travis is currently losing his mind.
[00:29:57]  That's what I think.
[00:29:58]  He is holding the sides of his brain as if to keep the brain in place.
[00:30:02]  In 2021, a study done by Nature revealed that the dire wolf occupied their own lineage in the canid family tree, separate from wolves, jackals, African wild dogs, and coyotes.
[00:30:14]  This study was long contested by Colossal, as they claimed that their own DNA analysis of two additional dire wolf skulls revealed that the gray wolf was the closest living relative to the dire wolf, and vice versa.
[00:30:28]  Actually, I did my own study, and it turns out that they're genetically identical.
[00:30:32]  To the gray wolf.
[00:30:34]  It's exactly the same.
[00:30:35]  They're literally disrupting science.
[00:30:37]  They're literally disrupting in the negative sense.
[00:30:42]  So, why else would the gray wolf and not a jackal be chosen as the surrogate for the dire wolf?
[00:30:49]  Interestingly, the preprint did not support these claims.
[00:30:53]  Yeah.
[00:30:54]  Science covered the publication of the preprint, and Colossal offered the following explanation Our results support the results of the 2021 paper, says Greg Gedman.
[00:31:05]  A computational biologist at Colossal and co lead author of the new preprint, with some important distinctions.
[00:31:11]  The original study found, for example, that dire wolves diverged from other wolf life canids nearly 6 million years ago.
[00:31:17]  The new data places the split more recently, with dire wolves, gray wolves, jackals, and dogs sharing a common ancestor roughly 4.5 million years ago.
[00:31:27]  So, in short, Colossal's own preprint is showing that gray wolves, coyotes, doles, and jackals could all equally lay claim to being the most closely related relative to the dire wolf.
[00:31:40]  Considering the degree to which the preprint claims hybridization took place, even the maned wolf might try and take a shot at the throne.
[00:31:48]  Notably, this preprint barely touched upon the direwolves that Colossal produced at all.
[00:31:55]  So little, in fact, was said about them that their white coat color was not even addressed.
[00:32:00]  This problem of pigmentation is one that has raised a lot of eyebrows among the scientific community, since other studies have argued that direwolves likely had pale reddish fur.
[00:32:10]  Colossal has argued that the white coats are due to the direwolves they sampled having lived in the north near ice.
[00:32:17]  But wolves, when white coated, are born with a dark brown or dark gray coat.
[00:32:22]  That only later lightens to white, and the dire wolves were born pure white.
[00:32:26]  Scientists and lay people alike speculate that the white pigmentation the colossal dire wolf sport came from literal dog genes.
[00:32:34]  Did they choose this?
[00:32:35]  Feels like it might be a stupid question.
[00:32:37]  Did they choose white because of ghosts, slung of ice and fire?
[00:32:40]  It is widely believed that yes, that is why they chose white.
[00:32:45]  The way Liv mumbled slung of ice and fire, like to get it out of the way to not sound like a huge fucking nerd.
[00:32:51]  I don't want to.
[00:32:53]  It's funny that, like, Earlier, the sort of the Nazi dream of reviving animals was based upon legends and earlier myths and understanding.
[00:33:03]  And now the modern one is based on like HBO shows.
[00:33:07]  The other point that refutes the idea that they are white because they lived near ice is that all dogs that are evolved for a northerly climate have fluff in their ears, and that's to keep the ears warm.
[00:33:21]  All animals there have fur in their ears.
[00:33:23]  My husky has fur in his ears.
[00:33:25]  If you look at pictures of the direwolves that Colossal made, you can see the pink skin of their ears because they have so little fur there.
[00:33:34]  You know, I think they should clone Tony Soprano.
[00:33:37]  If we're doing HBO stuff, let's bring Tony back.
[00:33:41]  Beyond all of this, the leaker also claimed that Colossal had partially plagiarized some of their findings.
[00:33:47]  A lot of the research they brag about producing, whether it be conservation or for human health, is stolen.
[00:33:53]  Look at the second screenshot.
[00:33:54]  Color image comes from a paper that is written by Vincent Lynch, one of the people they led a smear campaign against.
[00:34:00]  The black and white comes from a patent Colossal filed.
[00:34:02]  They stole the figure and research.
[00:34:04]  Pretty much everything they pump out is like that.
[00:34:07]  So it's a reasonably compelling argument.
[00:34:11]  Enough about the fucking direwolves, though.
[00:34:13]  Thank you.
[00:34:14]  Let's stop talking about.
[00:34:15]  Sorry, I said fire in this way.
[00:34:17]  I don't.
[00:34:18]  We can move on.
[00:34:19]  My precious little ghost.
[00:34:21]  Others, such as Scientific American, the BBC, and the IUCN, have gone into much more depth about the lies and misinformation that Colossal is spreading with them.
[00:34:31]  It's more important to pay attention to some of the less talked about claims.

=== Red Wolves and Coyote Genes (07:32) ===

[00:34:36]  With that, I'd like to introduce you to the so called ghost wolves and the far more destructive lies that Colossal is peddling regarding them.
[00:34:45]  Ghost wolves.
[00:34:46]  The red wolf, Canis rufus, is the only wolf endemic to North America and the rarest canine in the world.
[00:34:53]  There are only 17 living in the wild.
[00:34:56]  In 2024, Colossal cloned four canines that they claimed to be red wolves one female and three males.
[00:35:03]  They claimed this to be an amazing technological breakthrough, the likes of which would save the red wolf from a genetic bottleneck and help the species thrive in the wild.
[00:35:13]  None of this is true.
[00:35:14]  These animals will never be allowed to breed with red wolves, either in captivity.
[00:35:19]  Or in the wild for a very simple reason.
[00:35:22]  The animals that Colossal Bioscience has cloned are not red wolves.
[00:35:26]  Listen, I don't see the problem.
[00:35:28]  They are wolves that are red.
[00:35:30]  That's the species name.
[00:35:31]  Yeah, this is the same logic again.
[00:35:33]  Goring's like, the horse looked kind of like other horses.
[00:35:38]  It's not even modern de extinction stuff.
[00:35:40]  We're going back to the Heck Brothers.
[00:35:42]  That's right.
[00:35:43]  The Red Wolf's historic range stretched from as far as New Jersey down across the bulk of Texas and Oklahoma.
[00:35:49]  Now, the only remaining population of red wolves is a closely monitored one in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, and as of 2025 consists of 16 named individuals.
[00:36:02]  This alligator river population was founded by individuals captured along the Gulf Coast of Texas in Louisiana, the last refuge of the species.
[00:36:11]  The last known red wolves were captured seven years after this initial capture program in 1980, the same year that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service declared the species.
[00:36:23]  Formally extinct in the wild.
[00:36:25]  Now, red wolves look an awful lot like coyotes.
[00:36:29]  To the untrained eye, the species is nearly indistinguishable to them.
[00:36:34]  In 2021, a study was published titled Reviving Ghost Alleles Genetically Admixed Coyotes Along the American Gulf Coast Are Critical for Saving the Endangered Red Wolf.
[00:36:45]  This study assessed the genomic ancestry and morphology, or physical appearance, of coyotes in southwestern Louisiana.
[00:36:53]  Remember how I said red wolves are the only wolf species endemic to the United States?
[00:36:58]  Well, just because they are endemic doesn't mean that other canines didn't exist in the United States.
[00:37:05]  Over the tens of thousands of years that red wolves lived here, they mixed with other canids we know and love, like gray wolves, coyotes, and later dogs.
[00:37:15]  According to the 2021 study, 38 to 62 percent of the coyote genomes contained red wolf ancestry acquired in the past 30 years and have an admixture profile similar to that of canids.
[00:37:28]  Captured before the extirpation of red wolves.
[00:37:30]  We further documented a positive correlation between ancestry and weight.
[00:37:35]  Which is to say, in spite of the species' extinction in the wild, the ghost of the red wolf's genetic material has persisted within the coyote population.
[00:37:44]  Also notable is that the highest percentages of red wolf genes persisted in land preserves where hunting is illegal.
[00:37:52]  More on that later.
[00:37:54]  So, red wolves and coyotes look similar, and the southwestern Louisiana coyotes have a high percentage of red wolf DNA.
[00:38:01]  How can we tell the difference between the two?
[00:38:03]  Red wolves are larger and heavier than coyotes.
[00:38:07]  Male red wolves reach 70 to 80 pounds, whereas male coyotes weigh 30 to 40 pounds.
[00:38:13]  This size difference affects both prey preferences and mating habits, with red wolves taking larger prey than coyotes and thus inhabiting an entirely different ecological niche.
[00:38:23]  They will even displace coyotes within their territorial ranges.
[00:38:27]  Red wolves also have a different multi generational family structure, whereas coyotes are a lot more fluid within their social structure.
[00:38:35]  Which is to say, they may look similar at a glance, but the deeper you look, the more stark the differences become.
[00:38:41]  See, the problem is we just have to find the gene that makes, you know, a red wolf have a multi generational family structure and just edit in that for the coyote.
[00:38:49]  It's very easy.
[00:38:50]  It's quite simple.
[00:38:51]  Well, yeah, then you'll have multi generational structures within coyotes.
[00:38:54]  Just make them a little bit bigger, kind of like the dire wolf.
[00:38:58]  Make them white, too.
[00:38:58]  That's perfect.
[00:38:59]  Of course, because they're.
[00:39:00]  Yeah, they need to be white.
[00:39:01]  Because it goes hard.
[00:39:02]  It looks cool.
[00:39:03]  That's, you know.
[00:39:04]  The dire coyote.
[00:39:07]  Meet LA52F, the creature that Colossal Biosciences, the de extinction company, cloned.
[00:39:14]  Yeah, not too impressive.
[00:39:16]  I mean, he's lying down, he's got big old ears.
[00:39:19]  Reminds me of some of the coyotes I see around here.
[00:39:21]  Yeah, you know, big old airplane ears.
[00:39:24]  Yeah.
[00:39:24]  Joseph Hinton, research scientist at the Wolf Conservation Center and the man who captured LA 52F for the original 2021 project, wrote this The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relied on seven metrics to determine if a cannon was a red wolf.
[00:39:39]  LA 52F met one of these requirements that was total body length.
[00:39:44]  LA 52's head length and width, shoulder height, hind foot length, Ear length and body mass were too small to classify her as a red wolf.
[00:39:51]  She was two years old and weighed 17.5 kilograms at the time of her capture.
[00:39:56]  So, yeah, literally their skull measurements were off the snuff.
[00:40:00]  Yeah.
[00:40:00]  Yeah.
[00:40:00]  I thought that horse phrenology wasn't enough.
[00:40:02]  You guys needed some canine phrenology.
[00:40:05]  No amount of phrenology is enough for this podcast.
[00:40:08]  Don't worry.
[00:40:09]  Never.
[00:40:10]  Colossal is more than happy to boast about the birth of their first pup derived from LA 52F.
[00:40:17]  Nikkei Keda, according to Colossal, translates to ghost daughter.
[00:40:22]  The bulk of the writing that Colossal does in regard to the Red Wolf is couched in how the work Colossal is doing is helping Native Americans retain their heritage.
[00:40:31]  Putting that aside, here's what they have to say regarding Nikkei Akeda.
[00:40:36]  This pup is the clone product of a ghost wolf female from Cameron Parish, Louisiana, selected based on her high Red Wolf and ghost genetic content, 70.8%, and 610 ghost alleles, the maximum recorded to date.
[00:40:50]  Her cells were collected when she was captured and collared at two years old, weighing 17.5 kilograms.
[00:40:55]  And within the red wolf morphospace, hind foot length equals 22 centimeters.
[00:40:59]  See figure below.
[00:41:00]  The 17.5 kilogram weight and the hind foot length of 22 centimeters are both below the accepted range for an animal to be considered a red wolf.
[00:41:10]  Great, so just we're wrong and we're so confident.
[00:41:12]  Awesome.
[00:41:13]  Colossal, along with science and conservation influencers such as Hank Green, Forrest Glante, and Coyote Peterson, have all used this so called ghost wolf, LA 52F, and the clones from her.
[00:41:26]  And a few other Gulf Coast canids as evidence that genetic rescue is the only way to save the genetic diversity of the remaining Alligator River red wolves, who are going extinct due to inbreeding.
[00:41:38]  Except, inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity was never the problem for these animals.
[00:41:45]  Remember how more red wolf DNA was present in the Gulf Coast canids and land preserves where hunting was illegal?
[00:41:51]  Joseph Hinton says this The leading threat to red wolf survival is human caused mortality, vehicle collisions, and shooting deaths.
[00:41:59]  Cloning and other biotechnology cannot protect red wolves from cars or bullets, nor do they increase human empathy for red wolves.
[00:42:05]  They reproduce naturally, in captivity and in the wild.

=== Fundraising for Living Species (12:25) ===

[00:42:08]  We don't need to clone them.
[00:42:09]  It is limited captive space that prevents the population from increasing and improving genetic diversity.
[00:42:14]  Resolving this requires a community to care for these animals, and the Wolf Conservation Center works to identify new partners to join the red wolf community.
[00:42:21]  The cloned, quote unquote, red wolves are not red wolves.
[00:42:25]  They were derived from coyotes captured in southwest Louisiana for the Gulf Coast Cannon Project.
[00:42:30]  I know these were coyotes because I served as field supervisor and captured 44 coyotes for the project during 2021 to 2022.
[00:42:37]  Several of the coyotes that I captured in 2022 may have served as donors for cloning.
[00:42:41]  I also continue to conduct field research in the region independent of that group.
[00:42:45]  I have yet to capture anything that approaches a red wolf from that area.
[00:42:48]  Regardless, we need to focus on our wild and captive red wolf populations.
[00:42:52]  We now know that at least one of the coyotes that he captured did serve as a donor for the cloning, LA 52F.
[00:42:59]  Colossal Biosciences is actively harming red wolf conservation efforts.
[00:43:03]  By spreading misinformation about the species, stock options and stolen ideas.
[00:43:09]  One of the most interesting advances made in the realm of de extinction started with the birth of Elizabeth Ann, a black footed ferret, in 2020.
[00:43:18]  Elizabeth Ann was born from a cell sampled from Willa in 1998, stored in the San Diego Frozen Zoo.
[00:43:25]  Over the next two years, two more clones were made of Willa.
[00:43:28]  By 2025, these three clones had produced multiple litters, helping 15 new ferrets enter the breeding population of this critically endangered species.
[00:43:37]  The group behind the Blackfooted Ferret Initiative Was Revive Restore, a de extinction company affiliated with the Long Now Foundation?
[00:43:45]  Revive Restore was founded by former Mary Prankster Stort Brander, author of the Whole Earth Catalog.
[00:43:51]  The other co founder of this nonprofit is Ryan Fellin, a serial entrepreneur who primarily worked in patient oriented healthcare.
[00:43:59]  Also instrumental in Revive Restore's success for a decade or two was ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro.
[00:44:05]  Remember the somatic cell cloning technology that made Dolly the sheep?
[00:44:10]  Viagen, the company that cloned Tom Brady's dog, holds the patents for it.
[00:44:14]  They were the company that cloned Elizabeth Ann, being the only company allowed access to that technology in the United States.
[00:44:21]  Well, Colossal Biosciences bought Viagen just last year.
[00:44:25]  They announced the purchase with the following video.
[00:45:10]  I thoroughly blame millennials for all of this now.
[00:45:14]  I think it's all millennials' fault.
[00:45:16]  The only thing they're missing is like the, you know, the Red Wolf Conservation making a post about like, it's a cute hecking pupper and the pupper is red and there's more of them now.
[00:45:25]  Yeah, this is our L.
[00:45:26]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:45:28]  Any big thoughts about the content of that video?
[00:45:31]  Just, yeah, millennials must be stopped.
[00:45:34]  Just s with a c.
[00:45:35]  And then after that, s, whoever made that with a c.
[00:45:38]  In that order.
[00:45:39]  Yeah, fact.
[00:45:40]  Colossal really enjoys mentioning the black footed ferrets a lot.
[00:45:44]  But they always attribute the success of the project to Viagen, not to revive and restore the company that actually spearheaded the project.
[00:45:52]  And San Diego's Frozen Zoo, which has been freezing samples since 1975.
[00:45:57]  Well, Colossal is starting a bio vault in Dubai and framing it as if this has never been done before, naturally.
[00:46:05]  Oh, and Dubai, sure.
[00:46:07]  In Dubai, where else were we digging the bio vault?
[00:46:10]  Let's say in the Petro slave state.
[00:46:12]  Yeah, that's much.
[00:46:13]  America, this wasn't evil enough.
[00:46:16]  Sponsored by Mohammed bin Salman as well.
[00:46:18]  Yeah, Mohammed bin Salman.
[00:46:20]  Chinook Salman.
[00:46:22]  There is a video of this announcement.
[00:46:24]  This idea of a bio vault and doing it here in Dubai is something that we're incredibly passionate about, right?
[00:46:30]  To do it in a way where we can actually wrap educational content around it, make it a living lab, right?
[00:46:36]  We'll have a permanent bio vault at the museum.
[00:46:39]  It's the first of its kind bio vault in the world.
[00:46:42]  Our focus is to get as much endangered species from the region, biobank.
[00:46:49]  At the museum.
[00:46:49]  One of the reasons why we thought that announcing it here at the World Government Summit was because all of you can play a very valuable role in working with your governments and we can help train and support and build capabilities for species protection and BioVault and then leverage this shared resource that the UAE was so gracious in investing in and starting to build with us.
[00:47:11]  When can we have it in the museum?
[00:47:13]  So I want to have it in 2027 or sooner.
[00:47:16]  So the BioVault would be part of Dubai's Museum of the Future.
[00:47:21]  Just no comment, honestly, at this point.
[00:47:22]  The Dubai Museum of the Future, there's no depiction of gay people at all.
[00:47:27]  Well, we've bred it out.
[00:47:29]  Yeah, we can just CRISPR that out.
[00:47:31]  Yeah.
[00:47:32]  Even the elephant herpes vaccine, created to halt the spread of the disease ravaging captive Asian elephants' populations, has been more widely reported as a win for colossal biosciences rather than the product of the work of Baylor Medical College and Houston Zoo, who had been initially working on it since the early aughts.
[00:47:50]  So, where are the scientists in all of this?
[00:47:53]  Well, Colossal has a habit of buying off the bulk of them through the offering of either stock options, cozy positions within the company, or both.
[00:48:02]  When Revive and Restore sold their woolly mammoth de extinction project and its research to George Church and Colossal Biosciences, Colossal was quick to begin courting the head scientist on the project as well.
[00:48:14]  Beth Shapiro now holds a comfortable position within the company where she seems contractually obligated to never say a bad word about them.
[00:48:22]  Help, she even appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience recently.
[00:48:25]  All of this was extremely surprising given her hardline views against Colossal prior to working for them, nearly all of which seemed to have been erased from the internet.
[00:48:34]  Money, In a second Colossal Biosciences leak on the same small subreddit I mentioned before, correspondence between a journalist called quote unquote Nate and evolutionary biologist Tom Gilbert surfaced.
[00:48:49]  The leaker summarized the information Outside of Gilbert flat out admitting to Nate that if Colossal makes a hairy elephant, it won't be used for rewilding, just publicity.
[00:48:58]  Nate suspects that Gilbert isn't being 100% honest in spite of this admission.
[00:49:02]  Nate found out through a CIO that Gilbert holds stock options, something he neglected to mention.
[00:49:07]  To me, this confirms what I heard that the advisory board is just critics bribed into silence with stock options.
[00:49:12]  Gilbert clearly has a broader role than he let on, as he's an author on the Direwolf paper.
[00:49:17]  Oh my god.
[00:49:18]  Sure, yeah.
[00:49:19]  This is just like the scientist version of the comics who did the Riyadh festival, basically.
[00:49:24]  It's like, how big is the number?
[00:49:25]  Okay.
[00:49:26]  It's almost like criticizing colossal biosciences is a great way to just get them on your radar so that you can get paid off.
[00:49:32]  Yeah.
[00:49:32]  I wonder what their slush fund to pay off critics is.
[00:49:35]  I mean, it's like just how big of the budget exactly are we talking?
[00:49:38]  Yeah, I do wonder who took a bigger check to sell out here, whether it is scientists or comedians.
[00:49:44]  I wonder who they paid more.
[00:49:46]  Like whose number is higher?
[00:49:47]  Well, it's got to be the comedians because they have a better chance of making a good living.
[00:49:51]  Scientists, I say, yeah, it's like even well respected scientists don't get paid very well.
[00:49:56]  That's true.
[00:49:57]  That's true.
[00:49:58]  Every hard hitting scientist who substantially criticizes what Colossal is doing on a large scale somehow seems to end up on their advisory board.
[00:50:06]  And I'm wondering if any of us will get an offer after this episode airs.
[00:50:11]  Please, yes.
[00:50:12]  It's the next season.
[00:50:13]  Yes, if anyone be on the record against this company and what they're doing, just in general, my expert opinion.
[00:50:20]  In fact, you know, I think this will make a regular feature.
[00:50:22]  We should criticize Colossal every month on this program, which is listened to many people all over the world.
[00:50:29]  Would you just paste the segment at the bottom of every episode, like right after the curse media plug?
[00:50:34]  That tiny, tiny fish.
[00:50:37]  Remember how much people hate the Delta smelt, but never had a bad word to say about the chat of a fish, the Chinook salmon?
[00:50:44]  There's actually a term for this phenomenon in conservation spaces.
[00:50:48]  On a small forum for zookeepers, ZooChat, user JVM explained it this way.
[00:50:53]  In conservation, we often have the concept of an umbrella species.
[00:50:56]  Part of this idea that if we can convince people tigers are worth protecting, and they donate for tigers, we can use that money to protect all of the many species in the same ecosystem as tigers.
[00:51:04]  I would argue U.S. zoos lean towards a similar system, where many donors are donating to build exhibits for elephants or gorillas or polar bears.
[00:51:11]  And the zoo may use some of the funding to include or improve other exhibits for smaller species.
[00:51:15]  I think to some degree, though, these strategies are also an admission that people are more likely to donate for charismatic megafauna than wildlife conservation for its own sake, and that we need to be strategic.
[00:51:25]  It would be great if that was what Colossal Biosciences was doing.
[00:51:30]  Bully mammoths and direwolves are an easy way to generate a lot of fundraising, after all, and some of that funding would then get diverted towards conservation for still living species, such as increasing red wolf diversity or finding a vaccine for HIV in elephants.
[00:51:46]  Unfortunately, the ghost wolf debacle has demonstrated that this is not the case.
[00:51:50]  And likewise, the elephant vaccine was simply a project that Colossal poured money into rather than contributing to meaningfully themselves.
[00:51:58]  Plus, Colossal's track record with elephants is not something that is supporting ethical conservation.
[00:52:06]  The leaker continued in the second leak.
[00:52:18]  That will probably not carry the fake baby mammoth to term.
[00:52:21]  To me, this suggests they are planning to get sold soonish.
[00:52:24]  I really hope I'm not wrong.
[00:52:26]  What is also concerning about this is Nate found out Colossal has retrieved elephant materials from a guy named Charles Gray at a place called African Lion Safari.
[00:52:34]  This park is widely regarded as one of the worst in terms of animal abuse, especially elephants.
[00:52:40]  So, if there was anywhere they could go for this, ethics be damned, this is it.
[00:52:44]  Then again, the herd mammoth team was fired for a lack of results, so fingers crossed the impregnation is just another lie.
[00:52:50]  So, we're getting a sneak peek into maybe the 20% of failures on these clonings, a little bit, what they look like.
[00:52:56]  Yeah.
[00:52:57]  Horrifying deaths in birth.
[00:53:00]  Just stabbed by a mammoth tusk.
[00:53:03]  The link provided included a breakdown of the litany of animal abuses documented at Canada's original safari adventure, African Lion Safari, including the use of bull hooks to control the elephants, in spite of them being banned in the United States in 2023, and most zoos in Canada no longer using them.
[00:53:23]  I don't like that that implies that they could if they wanted to.
[00:53:26]  I'm sure that's what that means.
[00:53:27]  It is what it means.
[00:53:29]  They have not yet been banned in Canada.
[00:53:32]  Even among zookeepers, African Lion Safari has a terrible reputation, with multiple trainers having been attacked by elephants who were never then removed from the herd.
[00:53:42]  Even one was killed.
[00:53:44]  Charlie Gray, that's what he's primarily known as instead of Charles, who has a glowing description on the Colossal website, has also been known to allow free contact between visitors with elephants. as well as forcing them to give birth alone and chained rather than with the herd despite evidence showing that that results in poorer outcomes for both the cow and the calf.
[00:54:05]  Oh my god, this guy is a monster.
[00:54:08]  A zookeeper replied to the news from the leak with this wry comment.
[00:54:12]  I've long wondered where Colossal intended to source a breeding age female Asian elephant to act as a surrogate for their mammoth plans since viable breeders of that species outside of the association of zoos and aquariums jurisdiction, which refuses to work with Colossal, Are quite rare.
[00:54:27]  Guess I finally found my answer.
[00:54:29]  I think that really sums up how zookeepers feel about Charlie Gray.

=== Burgum, Innovation, and Human Beings (15:01) ===

[00:54:33]  Now, skirting the AZA's jurisdiction might be a little bit easier when you have friends in high places.
[00:54:41]  Remember all of that initial seed funding from various AI oriented venture capitalists?
[00:54:46]  The earliest donor who gave $100,000 directly to George Church himself was none other than Palantir founder and end times obsessive Peter Thiel.
[00:54:55]  He was like, this money is going to be used towards facilitating some form of suffering, right?
[00:54:59]  Like, you can guarantee that.
[00:55:02]  Of course, he was like, yes.
[00:55:04]  Speaking of the military, a startling amount of their executive advisory board has high level military backing.
[00:55:11]  David Spurk was the DoD's first chief data officer and senior counselor for Palantir.
[00:55:18]  Andrew Titus was principal director for biotechnology at the DoD and worked for NQTEL.
[00:55:23]  Rear Admiral Hugh W. Howard III was commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command and former director of operations for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and director for counterterrorism policy.
[00:55:37]  In the office of the Secretary of Defense.
[00:55:40]  Victor Vescovo, an early investor I mentioned before, spent 20 years supporting quote, counterterrorism efforts overseas.
[00:55:48]  Finally, Laura Nausberger was Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Air Force as well as Space Force.
[00:55:57]  Mammoths in space!
[00:56:01]  A new video making it seem like millennials need to be culled.
[00:56:07]  To add to all of this, their quote unquote, sustainability expert, Is McKinsey and Company, who are deeply in bed with the biggest polluters on the planet, including Exxon and BP.
[00:56:19]  They even had to shell out 600 million for their role in the opioid crisis.
[00:56:23]  It really just seems like the main appeal here is can we do the horrifying science fiction stuff in real life?
[00:56:28]  Like, if we can do that, okay, awesome.
[00:56:29]  Yeah, no, I'll spend money.
[00:56:31]  If we can fundamentally try to alter nature in a way that we don't think about the consequences before we do it, then yes, absolutely.
[00:56:37]  I'm happy to dominate nature and control it, possibly for my own gain in the future.
[00:56:43]  In QTEL, in case you don't know, is an extension of the CIA.
[00:56:47]  They pour funds into tech companies to keep abreast of the latest scientific findings and reportedly sit in on every Colossal Biosciences board meeting.
[00:56:56]  They also lavished Colossal Biosciences with around $460 million, stating that, it's less about the mammoths and more about the technology.
[00:57:05]  There you go.
[00:57:06]  Yeah.
[00:57:06]  Why aren't people asking more questions about this?
[00:57:10]  Questions like, what are these people's addresses so that I can give them a visit?
[00:57:15]  That's good.
[00:57:15]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:16]  Definitely threaten the CIA.
[00:57:18]  You're going to be fine, Liv.
[00:57:19]  They can't reach Canada.
[00:57:21]  No, it's fine.
[00:57:23]  It's fine.
[00:57:24]  Don't worry about it.
[00:57:25]  I mean, if you think about the people who are involved here, it's pretty disturbing considering the deep focus on genes that Maha has as well.
[00:57:37]  And the fact that so many of these people are data brokers.
[00:57:40]  Yeah.
[00:57:41]  It's about purity.
[00:57:43]  To bring it back to the original bit of part one, it's an extension of these people's beliefs about humankind and what they want to do to it.
[00:57:49]  In this case, it's much more based upon scientific manipulation of human beings, less about sociological, herding them into a certain area.
[00:57:59]  Yeah, it's not good.
[00:58:00]  It's somehow even worse than the Dossi attitude to it, somehow even more frightening.
[00:58:06]  And also just as simpatico with the CIA.
[00:58:10]  One of the big reasons that this might not be covered as much as it should be. Is because at least one of Colossal's ties to the current administration became much more explicit recently.
[00:58:22]  On the heels of the direwolf announcement, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum posted this to X, the Everything app, which I quote here in full The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to work with others to, quote, conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
[00:58:41]  The Department of the Interior is excited about the potential of de extinction technology and how it may serve broader purposes.
[00:58:47]  Beyond the recovery of lost species, including strengthening biodiversity protection efforts and helping endangered or at risk species.
[00:58:54]  The endangered species list has become like the Hotel California.
[00:58:57]  Once a species enters, they never leave.
[00:58:59]  In fact, 97% of species that are added to the endangered list remain there.
[00:59:03]  This is because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation.
[00:59:07]  It's time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation.
[00:59:10]  Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list, not additions.
[00:59:14]  The only thing we'd like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist.
[00:59:19]  We need to continue improving recovery efforts to make that a reality, and the marvel of de extinction technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.
[00:59:27]  I'm pretty sure no one celebrated the addition of a species to the list.
[00:59:31]  I had a party when the wolves went back on it.
[00:59:33]  Fuck them.
[00:59:34]  Yeah.
[00:59:36]  And continuing.
[00:59:42]  Wrong!
[00:59:42]  The revival of the dire wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of de extinction can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.
[00:59:52]  Also wrong.
[00:59:53]  The Dire Wolf Revival carries profound cultural significance as it embodies strength and courage that is deeply encoded within the DNA of American identity and tribal heritage.
[01:00:03]  What the fuck?
[01:00:05]  Holy shit.
[01:00:07]  Breakthroughs of this nature will inspire leading minds and future generations of innovators to chase the impossible, capture it, and unleash its potential.
[01:00:15]  Okay, so yeah, capture, maybe kill!
[01:00:20]  The Department of the Interior looks forward to a vibrant future full of innovation that advances core missions such as wildlife conservation.
[01:00:27]  Yeah, such as, holy shit, does this suck.
[01:00:30]  Burgum, well, I won't say what I'd like to do to Doug Burgum.
[01:00:34]  Give him a hug and kiss.
[01:00:35]  That's what Julian was going to say.
[01:00:37]  Kiss on the cheek, hug on the butt.
[01:00:39]  I mean, I think that you can say you want to feed him to the dire wolves.
[01:00:43]  Yeah.
[01:00:44]  I can say that I agree with you.
[01:00:46]  I can't believe the fact that tribal heritage got pulled out again in this shit.
[01:00:52]  That's insane.
[01:00:52]  Yeah, Jesus Christ.
[01:00:55]  Wheeling that out is like, yeah, like Chuck Norris pretending to be part Cherokee.
[01:01:00]  It's just a fucking adding insult to injury.
[01:01:03]  This starry eyed support of Colossal Biosciences and Ben Lamb and deep distaste for the Endangered Species Act did not come out of nowhere.
[01:01:14]  Two years prior, when Doug Burgum was the governor of North Dakota, He awarded Colossal Biosciences a $3 million equity investment.
[01:01:23]  In fact, he was seen on multiple occasions hobnobbing with Ben Lamb at black tie events, and one of Burgum's cabinet members has even gone on to join Colossal in an unpaid advisory role.
[01:01:34]  Public Domain acquired a series of emails between Lamb and Burgum's Commerce Commissioner, Josh Teigen, from March 2023, leading up to the acquisition of the equity investment, in which Ben Lamb misspells the species of extinct bison that they were previously investigating de extincting.
[01:01:52]  The public domain wrote this on the matter.
[01:01:54]  At the time that North Dakota partnered with Colossal, Lamb told the Forum newspaper that the company was attracted to the state because of its business friendly environment, that it was exploring building a laboratory there.
[01:02:05]  Thank you to Josh Teagan and the North Dakota Department of Commerce for taking an interest in our work as we expand our footprint to the northern region.
[01:02:12]  Our woolies will certainly appreciate the cooler climate.
[01:02:16]  Colossal wrote in a LinkedIn post about the Forum article, referring to its ongoing effort to bring back the woolly mammoth.
[01:02:22]  After leaving state government, Tegan took a role as an unpaid advisor to Colossal.
[01:02:26]  Aurelia Skip with Giacometto, who served as a director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during the first Trump administration, is listed on Colossal's website as a member of the company's conservation advisory board.
[01:02:37]  It's great.
[01:02:38]  Sure.
[01:02:38]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's really bad.
[01:02:41]  There is no future for humanity in which the United States exists.
[01:02:48]  Yeah, I mean, these people's image of what conservation means, which is like cutting funding to national parks.
[01:02:55]  Pollution, destruction, do Supreme Court things that just allow you to throw whatever you want into rivers whenever you feel like it.
[01:03:01]  It's like, well, we're compensated by that for funding an evil corporation that is going to do gene splicing to make, you know, Chinook salmon have pure genetics, pure Aryan genes.
[01:03:12]  Like, that compensates for it.
[01:03:14]  Replace NASA with SpaceX.
[01:03:16]  Replace everything that's good with a private company that does the opposite of what it's supposed to.
[01:03:22]  The initial email exchange was only the beginning.
[01:03:26]  Following it have been virtual meetings, gift basket exchanges, and joint dinners at the explorers club.
[01:03:32]  Colossal spokespeople have protested and said that these meetings are perfectly normal business behavior, which is understandable.
[01:03:40]  Still, the frequency of these meetings and close camaraderie shown between Lamb and Burgum should give the public a bit of pause.
[01:03:48]  Consider how strongly Burgum has praised Colossal throughout his time in D.C., and how this advocacy for Colossal coincides with his goal of neutering the Endangered Species Act.
[01:04:00]  The following are two quotes from an all hands meeting that he held.
[01:04:06]  There are now direwolves that are now living for real that were created through the same kind of technology with DNA and CRISPR, Burgum said in his speech.
[01:04:14]  If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, then now we have an opportunity to bring them back.
[01:04:18]  I mean, pick your favorite species and call up Colossal instead of raising money to get animals on the endangered species list.
[01:04:23]  Let's figure out a way to get them off.
[01:04:25]  And this is one tool.
[01:04:27]  I think we have to think about that as an innovation opportunity to transform the way we've been thinking about it for the past 15 years.
[01:04:32]  50 years and the possibility to bring back species, he added.
[01:04:35]  You want carrier pigeons?
[01:04:36]  Let's bring them back.
[01:04:38]  You want dodos?
[01:04:39]  Bring them back.
[01:04:40]  So, this is the fantasy that, like, in order to preserve the continued existence of a species, doesn't involve actually caring for their environment, figuring out a way to sustainably coexist with the animals on Earth.
[01:04:53]  Instead, like, just fuck all that.
[01:04:55]  Don't do any sort of like, you know, federally protected measures to ensure that they continue to survive alongside of us.
[01:05:02]  Instead, just let them go extinct, call up colossal, and they'll make a new one.
[01:05:06]  It's like, you know, it's like they go extinct, they come back.
[01:05:08]  Well, it's all the same.
[01:05:10]  So, like, all the stuff about federal protection, not necessary.
[01:05:13]  Yeah, instead of these damn, you know, alarm bells going off, we could start a publicly traded Ponzi scheme.
[01:05:22]  People might wish to categorize this as just talk.
[01:05:25]  Sweeping cuts, however, have already been made to fish and wildlife staff.
[01:05:29]  NOAA has long been hobbled.
[01:05:31]  Burgum has developed a strategic plan that cites, quote, species delisted from endangered list as a literal benchmark for Trump over the next four years.
[01:05:42]  All of this is happening with regular meetings still occurring between Burgum and colossal representatives, mostly lamb.
[01:05:49]  So just fucking juke the stats if it looks bad.
[01:05:52]  Colossal recently added a picture of Bergam and a snippet of his statement about how it is, innovation, not regulation, that has spawned American greatness.
[01:06:01]  And, the concept of de extinction can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.
[01:06:08]  Listen, who ever said bedrock had to be rock or in the bed?
[01:06:12]  It could be squishy and it could be, you know, above sea level.
[01:06:16]  In late April of 2025, the Trump administration moved to redefine the definition of harm within the Endangered Species Act as a first move towards dismantling it entirely.
[01:06:27]  While so far not much movement has come of this move, enough has succeeded to allow for ultra deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, regardless of the endangered species that inhabit the protected area, including one of the most endangered whales in the world.
[01:06:42]  Similarly, protected land in Alaska has been opened up to allow for logging and drilling, and the Forest Service itself has been dismantled.
[01:06:50]  On April 9th, 2025, on the Zookeeper forum, Dillo Testo replied to a post that Panthera man made that said, Extinction is forever.
[01:07:00]  But to put it bluntly, some people are too stupid to realize that.
[01:07:04]  With this short summary that I feel really sums up the whole damn mess.
[01:07:08]  This was always my biggest concern with the whole de extinction idea.
[01:07:12]  I recall at some point on this forum I posted, I think there is one element to de extinction not fully appreciated by its pariahs.
[01:07:19]  Generations have grown up knowing of the woolly mammoth and dodo and how they are no longer alive.
[01:07:24]  They represent, semiotically, something that was but is no more.
[01:07:28]  They hold us in humiliation, but in accountability also.
[01:07:31]  If the day ever comes where that neo-dodo takes its first steps onto the forest floor of Mauritius, what effect would that have on the minds of lawmakers and politicians?
[01:07:40]  That what was is again.
[01:07:43]  Would they feel the same way about species on the highway to hell as they did before?
[01:07:47]  Or would they convince them that this can be done with everything?
[01:07:50]  As in, it's not a big deal that an animal goes extinct, we can just bring it back.
[01:07:55]  And now, within just four months of posting that, I'm seeing with my own eyes the politicians cozying up to the idea that we don't need to put in the effort of making things better for our planet.
[01:08:04]  We can just bring it back anyways.
[01:08:06]  Ever since January 20th, the inauguration, I've had a certain feeling that the fight against big companies who, in the path toward the fantasy of exponential growth, trample all that lives in their troll has been lost, and the thing that we are hurtling towards will be hellish in many respects.
[01:08:21]  I try to hold hope that whatever we are living through right now will come to an end.
[01:08:25]  And one day, the children of this generation will read about this time and think, was he really the president?
[01:08:31]  Were people that naive?
[01:08:32]  How weird.
[01:08:33]  That's a thought I'd like to cling to, but sometimes it's difficult.
[01:08:37]  Yeah, that's horrifying.
[01:08:40]  Truly.
[01:08:40]  Wow.
[01:08:41]  Just a great end to the episode.
[01:08:43]  Thank you, Jack.
[01:08:45]  I mean, you know, yeah, it's put bluntly, but it's put correctly.
[01:08:49]  Yeah.
[01:08:50]  I think fascists have to understand nature as a thing that they can control.
[01:08:53]  It's one of the reasons why a lot of conspiracy theorists will deny climate change and be like, oh, the reason why the weather is weird is because there's some weather control facility out there altering things to harm you.
[01:09:04]  It's always human beings who are at the helm, even when the human beings are the enemy.
[01:09:08]  It's impossible to understand the idea of thinking of humanity in general as this really small part of the biosphere.
[01:09:14]  That is still fundamentally at its mercy is like far more terrifying to them, far more inconceivable than just that, like, you know, whatever ridiculous QAnon conspiracy about a global cabal poisoning their donuts is.
[01:09:25]  There always has to be like some way for science, some way for like heavy handed state, economic, you know, corporate involvement to fix a problem.

=== Weather Underground and Conspiracy Theories (04:32) ===

[01:09:35]  Well, that's nice, Liv.
[01:09:37]  Welcome back to the new show on the History Channel Pimp a Dodo.
[01:09:43]  This week we're going to be injecting it with CRISPR stuff and trying to make it glow in the dark.
[01:09:48]  You thought the dodo was back, but now the dodo's glowing.
[01:09:52]  I'm going to.
[01:09:53]  We need the weather underground.
[01:09:56]  We simply need eco terrorists to come back.
[01:10:00]  Yeah, it's really horrifying that they would just do everything in their power to avoid the conclusion that preserving the world and preventing it turning into a wasteland takes care and effort and giving a shit about even a three inch.
[01:10:20]  Smelt fish.
[01:10:20]  Yeah, the idea that we have to care about our co organisms in order to keep living on this planet in a healthy way is horrifying to them.
[01:10:30]  Well, it's the same thing that's happening right now with Maha and autism, where autism is such a heinous thing because you can't enter the workforce.
[01:10:41]  The Delta smelt is terrible because it's not a fishable fish.
[01:10:45]  Everything has to have a use, a use in some way to capitalism.
[01:10:50]  In order for it to have worth.
[01:10:52]  So, what's the use of a national park unless we can also drill into it?
[01:10:56]  Yeah.
[01:10:57]  And of course, that doesn't apply to all autistic people.
[01:11:01]  But there are some forms of autism that are debilitating in terms of being able to be productive, quote unquote, members of capitalist society and continue to generate ever increasing rates of profit.
[01:11:13]  It's really such a good feeling to have listened to all of this and to realize.
[01:11:21]  That we're close to having a dire wolf again.
[01:11:23]  Yay!
[01:11:25]  It's like from my favorite TV show, Game of Thrones.
[01:11:29]  Ah, woo!
[01:11:30]  Game on Thrones.
[01:11:31]  Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast.
[01:11:36]  You can support us for five bucks a month and get a second episode for every main one.
[01:11:40]  That's patreon.com/slash QAA.
[01:11:43]  We also have cursedmedia.net, which is our mini-series network on which you can listen to the ongoing episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 Time Slip Radio.
[01:11:53]  As well as all of our past and future miniseries.
[01:11:56]  Jack, where can people find you?
[01:11:58]  They can find me on jacklaroche.com.
[01:12:01]  Amazing.
[01:12:01]  Liv?
[01:12:02]  Liveagar.com for my newsletter.
[01:12:04]  I stream on Twitch sometimes, twitch.tv slash liveagar.
[01:12:07]  Great.
[01:12:07]  And I'll plug my Instagram, Julian Fields, as well as my Twitter, Julian Fields.
[01:12:12]  Travis, you want to plug anything?
[01:12:14]  Yeah.
[01:12:14]  Yeah.
[01:12:15]  Go to Logan Strain Photography on Instagram.
[01:12:19]  I have not updated it in over a year, but there are some photos I did take on there.
[01:12:23]  Nice.
[01:12:24]  Well, we hope you take more photos of beautiful.
[01:12:26]  Birds, as they all go extinct.
[01:12:29]  Ah, listener, until next week.
[01:12:32]  May the Delta smelter fish bless you and keep you.
[01:12:40]  you Hey everyone, it's your Inner Earth correspondent Brad, coming to you from the Time Cave.
[01:12:50]  My new documentary, Gimme Truth, co directed with Simon Ennis, is world premiering in Toronto this Friday, the 25th at 7 30 pm, and Saturday, the 26th at 2 30 pm, as part of the Hot Docs Film Festival.
[01:13:02]  I've been working on this film for as long as I've been a part of the pod, and you'll definitely recognize a few of our subjects from past episodes.
[01:13:08]  So if you're in the city, please join us.
[01:13:10]  We'd love to get melted with you in person.
[01:13:13]  We have auto keyed content based on your preferences.
[01:13:17]  But before they can bring a woolly mammoth back to life, first they mix its DNA with that of a mouse and create it a woolly mouse.
[01:13:24]  In just a few years, Colossal will use this same technology to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction.
[01:13:30]  All right, crazy question.
[01:13:33]  Can I touch it?
[01:13:34]  Yes, you will be the first person ever outside of our animal operations team to touch the woolly mice.
[01:13:39]  Like, I actually have never even pet the woolly mice.
[01:13:41]  I'm literally going to hold an animal that until recently never existed in history.
[01:13:45]  This is Dale.
[01:13:46]  Dale is so soft.
[01:13:47]  I now have woolly mammoth DNA.
[01:13:49]  Anyone want to buy it?
[01:13:49]  I'm sorry.
[01:13:50]  No, no, no, no.
[01:13:50]  Someone wash his hands, please.
[01:13:51]  Now, Glossow has spent over $400 million not just bringing back animals, but also saving them from extinction.
[01:13:57]  We have over a thousand species already in this bio vault alone.
[01:14:02]  There are over a thousand species in here that could one day go endangered, and you're just holding on to their DNA in case you need to.