Resurrecting dire wolves is just the beginning for Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/0023affa8e51b2df

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Hi, everyone. As we head toward the end of 2026, we're delighted to share one of our favorite rapid response episodes of the year recorded back in the spring, but as timely and forward focused as ever. It's about the storybook like resurrection of the long extinct dire wolf.
With the CO of Colossal Biosciences Ben Lamb.
Enjoy it.
If people don't know what a Darw was, it wasn't just in Game of Thrones.
They're a wolf that existed in North America and they went extinct about twelve thousand five hundred years ago until recently.
We took a
thirteen thousand year old tooth in a seventy two thousand year old skull and in
Through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, aka cloning. Uh, you get an embryo, you put it into a domestic dog, sixty days later.
We had our first hour wolf puppets.
What do you say to people who say like ah it's wrong to mess with nature? It's plain God.
I think that you know
Given that we're gonna lose up to fifty percent of biodiversity between now and twenty fifty, we have a moral obligation to do something.
That's Ben Lamb, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, the startup behind the recent viral return of the formerly extinct dire wolf.
The story has garnered a lot of excitement, but equally sparked a debate about whether these dire wolves are the real thing.
and whether it's ethical to birth and re-wild extinct animals.
I asked Ben about all of this, plus how the startup attracted a roster of celebrity investors, and what other animals Colossal is working on bringing back next.
Whether it's lessons from Jurassic
Cutting edge genetic science, or the need to build your own ethical framework, Ben is provocative and compelling.
So let's get to it.
I'm Bob Safian, and this
Із рапід респонс.

I'm Bob Safe, and I'm here with uh Ben Lamb, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences. Ben, thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. So Colossal First
Uh came onto my radar through news about trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
Uh Colossal managed to produce some woolly mammoth traits in a mouse that was dubbed the woolly mouse, but nothing has gotten attention like the announcement that you've brought back the long extinct.
Dire wolf.
Now
For people who aren't fans of
Game of Thrones or Dungeons and Dragons, or thought direwolves only existed in fantasy. What what is a direw? And of all the creatures that have disappeared.
Why did you focus on this one?
So we started the Direwf just kinda happened. You know, most people know us about the woolly mammoth, the Tasmania Tiger, and the Dodo, and we still are pursuing those. We give updates every, you know, probably every half a year, we give a big update on on what we're doing on those projects. But if people don't know what a Direwf was, it wasn't just in Game of Thrones. They weren't the size of cars.
They're a wolf that existed in North America, only in North America, with like 90% of the fossil record being found here in the continental United States. They were about 20 to 25% bigger than existing gray wolves. They had a
thicker jaw, they had a stronger kind of uh cranial facial structure. They were also heavier from a weight perspective, at least from what we expect from the bone density. And they went extinct about twelve thousand five hundred years ago until recently.
You
obtained, found sort of ancient
Twelve thousand year old.
DNA
That that you bred these
creatures from can can you walk me through how you undertook this
Yeah, so uh colossal focus is on what we call functional de extinction, right? It's not possible to clone an extinct species. There's no living cells. It's not possible to completely just like take a cell like you do with Dolly the Sheep.
And just cloned that is part of the process, but you actually have to start with something, right? And so we've actually identified that Direw's closest living relatives.
We're gray wolves. And so the process of functional de extinction is you do a lot of AI and computer analysis of the ancient genomes. And we took a
13,000 year old tooth in a 72,000 year old skull. And we took that, we took all the ancient DNA that we could find out of that. And a lot of times it comes up empty. We put it into a machine, it gives us a genome, and we compare it to that closest living relative.
being the grey wolf. And with that we can actually identify
what genes really made a direw a direwolf in terms of the physical attributes for
phenotypes that existed. And with that, we then use a combination of genome engineering tools to take those genes.
Engineer that DNA and
into the closest living uh cells which are grey wolves and then
Through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Aka cloning. Uh you get an embryo, you put it into a domestic dog.
Sixty days later.
We had our first hourwolf poppings.
So it's it's not that everything comes from
the DNA of that you found in these bones. It's that you're sort of
Tweaking
the DNA of existing grey wolves to more
closely mimic.
Or mirror.
The DNA that you found in these
In these ancient.
Bones. Is that am I explaining that the right way?
Yeah, I mean it's pretty close, right? It it it gets super nuanced, right?'Cause like
Grey Wolves are ninety nine point five percent
Darwolves already. So you don't mess with any of that, right? It's same body plan, same caneage lineage, same reproductive, same placental types. All of that is the exact same, right? So you just kind of leave that alone, right? Because you know it produces a wolf. Very much like Jurassic Park, a lot of people have seen Jurassic Park, right?
When people see Jurassic Park, it's very similar. Like they took ancient DNA, they took bird DNA, they took in some movies frog DNA. And some them the later movies, they put everything in the kitchen sink in it, uh to to essentially bring uh bring back these phenotypes, right? But it just like in the movie, it's not possible to clone a dinosaur. Those were genetically modified.
birds with dinosaur alleles. That's the same thing with our direwolves. That's the same thing with the mammoths we're working on and everything. And so it it it is the closest approximation, but it isn't just engineered to look like a diarwolf. It is actually using the direwolf specific genes that drove those traits, right? And so
One of the things that's pretty cool is that we had no idea that Darwin Wolves were white until we got all this ancient DNA. People thought that they were red or you know orange or some kind of khaki color because they've seen paleo art that depicts them of that color. But in reality
Uh, based on the data that we got from the genome.
They were white. And so that was pretty cool. So that you so we learned a lot of stuff from the genome that, you know, people didn't even know about uh Darwolves to begin with.
There's been some controversy, right, about whether these are truly dire wolves rather than
Grey Wolves that have been sort of
genetically engineered to share some dire like traits. Are those criticisms reasonable? Cause it is does sound a little bit like it's a new species, right?
It's not really a new species, right? And part of that so so I'm a big believer in personal choice and freedom, right? And so people are like, doesn't it bother you that like some of the scientific community is pushed back? And I was like
No, I said that's the beauty of science, right? And and some people though are quite mad about it. Um but the reality is is that we've done things in this project that no one's ever done. No one's ever taken
You know, in edited.
15 genes with ancient genomes that have been lost to time for twelve thousand years. No one's ever done that.
And so the problem with the argument isn't one it doesn't bother me, but my issue with it is I think it overshadows the incredible science of the women and men that have done this, right? Like they took
twelve thousand year old DNA and made puppies.
That's incredible. That is that's the moon landing of genetics, right? And so my argument is that if people want to call them diewolves, call them direwolves. If they want to call them colossal direwolves, call them colossal. If they want to call them genetically modified wolves, call them that. But it's still amazing. It's like if you go to Jurassic Park and you believe that movie is about dinosaurs.
Then our Darwols are direwels. If you go to Jurassic Park and say
Those are genetically modified birds with dinosaur alleles and frog DNA.
Well, then ours are genetically modified wolves with dire wolf alleles to it, right? And so it's really a semantics issue, but but what's crazy, and I didn't know this because I'm not a biologist or a scientist, is that there's actually over 30 ways to classify a species.
And you know, while some of the scientific community push back
We have over 95 of some of the top scientific, you know, minds in the world, right? We've got people like George Church and Lou Vidalin and Tom Gilbert and, you know, uh Andrew Pask and Bess Shapiro, who's arguably the number one ancient DNA expert in the world who wrote a book saying how to clone a mammoth, and it is with you can't.
Because you cannot clone an extinct species, but you can engineer one. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're current we're trying to rebuild extinct species uh for today.
using data from the past. And you know, I my only the only thing that annoyed me about the
Argument was it's a semantic argument, and it's a semantic argument that overshadow shadowed a lot of the great scientists that people put their blood, sweat, and tears in. And you know, I think over time that'll die down and people will just like look at the science, which is truly amazing and what it can do uh for not just human healthcare, but also for
You know, endangered species.
You mentioned that you're not a scientist. Your background is not in bioscience. You've been a a tech entrepreneur. And you got excited about this idea.
Because of the business opportunities, like I I mean Colossal is a
For profit business, right?
Yes. We are a for profit uh business. You know, the reality is I had uh built a handful of
software companies. I liked building technology businesses. I didn't mean to start this business. I reached out to George Church. He's the number one geneticist in the world, may argue maybe ball time at Harvard. And he's definitely the father of synthetic biology. And I reached out to him and I just asked him, you know, uh with the
Proliferation of access to compute.
AI, automation, synthetic biology, like
What are the opportunities there opportunity to build software for synthetic biology and directed evolution? What what are the opportunities? And I asked him if he had one project with unlimited capital that he thought could change the world, what would it be? And it was this one. I'm not a biologist, but I like to learn new things and I know how to build teams of women and men much smarter than me.
And I thought this would be something that's cool. And uh now that I have a nine month old son, I'm pretty stoked that like we're working on something that could have a huge application to conservation as well as advanced science.
And it's also something that can inspire generations. And we don't get a lot of credit for this. And I think it's our fault. We don't do a good job. But like every single week we get like
pictures from like kids talking about like their favorite animals and and in in like we have whole classrooms that send us like thank you videos and stuff.
And so
It's it it it's cool, right? Like yes, there's a conservation element.
Yes, there's a deep science element, but there's this kind of cool inspiration element to it. And so
I can just go build another software company, but to one end, right? To make a little bit better of a chat platform, to make a little bit better of a defense software, to make more money. Like at some point, I think there's there's got to be more to it. And this is something that, you know, I was really passionate about.
And and this this de extinction, there's the idea that like
bringing back these species what puts puts our environment into better balance
Or is it just like
They're cool to have these creatures around.
Well it's kind of it's kinda threefold, right?
It is cool.
If a kid sees
That using genetics
You could make a woolly mammoth. I do think that inspires kids. Like I know a lot of scientists that don't want to make dinosaurs, but they saw Jurassic Park.
And they became geneticists because they thought it was cool. So there is a cool factor to your point. Uh secondly, is conservation. Like it's forecasted that we're gonna lose up to 50% of all biodiversity between now and 2050 if we don't do anything about it. We know conservation works. This is not a substitute for conservation.
It just doesn't work at the speed at which we're eradicating species and and changing our planet, right? So we need new tools in all of the technology that Colossal makes.
On the path to de extinction that has an application to conservation, we make available for free to our conservation partners, right? And if that wasn't enough, we then went and raised$50 million separate of our business to start the Colossal Foundation to fund even other academics working on technologies uh that could help conservation. And then the third thing is.
And this will take time is
Once you get enough species.
Our goal is to work with
Indigenous people groups, private landowners, governments, ecologists to rewild those species
Because certain species
can have a tremendous impact on the environment.
You mentioned sort of sharing your your research and your software with others. Like Colossal's only been around a few years. It is a private company. Three years. It's it's
Valued at like
Ten billion dollars.
I mean you don't sell a product, do you? Or do you? Like do you have revenue? No, we just we just we have no revenue and we're and we're really good at losing money um because science is hard and expensive, right? Most people don't realize this, but for research and development, it's a giant R, but a little, but very little of it makes it into development. So it's a little D, right? And so
Um, uh we've spun out three companies.
One is called Form Bio, which is a computational biology platform. Surprise, a bunch of software people built a software platform that could be used uh uh specifically for manufacturability of drugs, understanding where different um uh products fail in the drug discovery market, uh using CRISPR and AI.
Um, and so we spun that company out. It's worth over a hundred million dollars today. We spun out a second company, which is called Breaking, and the reason we named it Breaking is it's actually breaking the chemical bonds.
Of
plastic and just producing biomass, right? And so even if we change hearts and minds tomorrow about plastic use or single plastic use, we still have a lot of plastic. We still have to figure out how we do with this, right? So we're very interested in that. And then we have a third one that we have not announced publicly that's that uh is is worth over a hundred million dollars as well.
So the i is the business model that like the research that you're doing is gonna throw off ideas that will then
You know, be able to be used for things that you don't even know what they are yet.
Well, that's one, right? The second one is actually uh in long term rewilding. And so you've probably heard about carbon credits. You've probably heard about there's a newer thing called biodiversity credits. It's much more valuable to keep an elephant alive than to sell its location to poachers.
Right, because of of the application of what it does to the environment and the carbon store. So now you actually have entire markets. And you know, like a lot of these newer markets like crypto, everything, it takes a while for them to mature. We do believe that the long term rewilding impacts of species back into their natural habitats.
We'll create a combination of government subsidies, carbon credits, biodiversity credits.
But think about that, you know, making species
putting them back, helping them in the environment, and then getting long term annuities for them.
is also pretty interesting when you think about the long scale. So you kind of have short term technology development in longer term applications to rewilding.
And a ten million dollar valuation. Wow. I mean
Pretty in three years pretty good.
I think we're massively undervalued. I think, you know, we're a hundred billion dollar company, but we are where we are today.

Whether or not Colossal is really undervalued at$10 billion, it's impressive how Ben has managed to reach substantive results in just a few years, including Colossal spun-out businesses. So might Colossal's tech be used one day to revolutionize human health?
We'll talk about that, plus Colossal's roster of celebrity investors, and more after the break. Stay with us.
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Before the break, Colossal Biosciences Ben Lamb shared the story behind the company's highly publicized resurrection of dire wolves. Now he talks about helping extinct species versus endangered species, how new genetic tools could impact human reproduction, and why he wishes Colossal had a thousand more competitors.
Plus, he shares details on the company's roster of celebrity investors and more.
Let's dive back in.
So you've got a few of these direwolves. I I understand you spent some time with these creatures. Were you scared when you met them? You know?
Well, I mean I I met Romulus, you know, when he was this big, so I wasn't
very scared, right? And I bottle fed Romulus as a as a pop, right? We have them in a two thousand acre secure uh expansive ecological preserve and then a subset of that's about six and a half acres where we have uh a advanced storm shelter in case something were bad to happen we can put them in uh we've got an animal hospital on site that we built.
And we have an animal husbandry thing where we can feed them to check up with them and stuff like that. Right. Um, and so I was actually in that six acre preserve with them.
I guess some three or four weeks ago, four weeks ago. And Remus came out to me and I saw and I and I actually uh Pat Remus, uh, because remember, they're not dogs, they're wolves. And you know, uh and they they're starting to become more and more like wolves every day. I thought
Yeah, this is probably the last time I will be in I'm gonna put myself in the preserve.
Where we go from here is
We're certified by American Humane Society. So we constantly give them updates to do bet checks. We we I think the the goal from here is to monitor them, take care of them. We'll probably make uh another three to five more because we want to get the right pack dynamics. We're not gonna breed them.
Now, I will say that we do have really close indigenous partners that they have a connection to the Diar Wolf and several of them think it could have been the great wolf in some of their um uh you know oral traditions. And so there could be a season where or a time when we actually rewild them back.

on indigenous land in collaboration with them, right? But that'll take a long time.
So what creatures
Are we likely to see next from Colossus? Willie Mammoth, as I understand, there's a lot of science still to be done, long gestation periods.
Yeah, long gestation. So twenty two months gestation, but we're in the editing phase, right? So we think it's about eighty five genes. So more edits than obviously the the the diarwolves. We've edited about twenty five of those. We're doing quite well. I will say though that
one of the things that we care a lot about is the system.
And so we try to parallel pat these things. So we are working on elephant IDF, we're working on Rhino IDF, we're we're the exclusive genetic rescue partner.
for uh uh the Northern White Rhino project, which is pretty cool. And so we're trying to develop new what's called assisted reproductive that anyone can use to help save species. That's pretty awesome. Um, you know, I I think that what's next, uh, it's hard to hard to guess, but mammoth, thoseine and dodo are all, you know, chugging along. They're kind of all
generally on track somewhere a little ahead of schedule. And then I think you'll also be able to see big conservation wins. Like many people aren't talking about this, but the most endangered wolf in the world is the red wolf. It's an American wolf. There's only 15 left in the wild from 12 founder lines. And we actually made four, we actually made
More red wolves than we did dial.
They're not in Game of Thrones and mov movie stars. They are not getting as much uh feedback. But we use we actually developed a new technique.
to clone from blood. And so typical cloning, you have to sometimes anesthetized the animal. You've got to take
skin biopsy, ear punches, gotta do a lot of stuff, right? And uh from an animal welfare perspective, this is now just simply a blood draw. And you can isolate these specific cells in the blood and then clon from them. They're and they're pretty cloning efficient. And so you know I think most likely what you'll see is more endangered species being worked on from Colossal.
Probably before you see the next uh extinct species. I see. So so not necessarily de extinction, but maintaining species that are that are dwindling.
Yeah, we think de extinction goes hand in hand with species preservation.
Hm.
It sounds a little bit like the animals you choose to focus on for de extinction. It's sort of it's in part science and in part on
on cultural appeal. Like you want attention.
Right. I mean, you've got celebrity investors, Tom Brady, Peter Jackson, so on. Like is all that a
A strategic plan to try to make the science more
More sexy, more glamorous, more accessible. Why I don't I don't know how the science could be more sexy in like we didn't reach out to Tom Brady.
We didn't reach out to Peter Jackson. These people reach out to us, right? And so we aren't out there pursuing Hollywood. Hollywood's been pursuing us. Peter Jackson about it. When he was a kid, he read comic books and sci-fi novels, and he thought we'd be like vacationing on Venus and we got flying cars. And he's like, None of that happened. He said
He literally says that the reason why investing in Colossal was it was the first time you saw a company trying to do something that like
as a kid, like sparked his imagination and and whatnot in sci-fi. And so so I uh you know we don't we don't look for attention. You know, every time we announce a sell at it, we get a lot of attention. We believe in that science is for everyone. I think that the celebrity partners that we have and investors we have
Definitely
gets more people excited about it. My hope is that there's one less influencer and there's one more scientist in the world. And so
You know, we do put content out on TikTok and Instagram and everywhere else because
We think it's cool and you know, we're not asking people to think it's cool, but it's not our job to persuade anyone. It's just our job to be transparent and edu educate people. I mean
With any work like this
There's always gonna be ethical debate. I'm sure you expect that. Yeah. What do you what do you say to people who say, like, oh, it's wrong to mess with nature. It's playing God. What you're doing is playing God.
Well, so first of all, what people don't remember about Colossal is that like one of our biggest critics when we launched was Best Shapiro.
She's our chief science officer, right? We have this history of running towards critics, not away from critics. We want to hear from them. What can we be doing better? What can we be doing differently? But you know, ethics is something that, you know, we take very, very seriously and we wanna have these conversations. But you know, I I think that, you know.
Given that we're gonna lose up to fifty percent of biodiversity between now and twenty fifty, we have a moral obligation to do something.
What we're doing is not gonna solve
the extinction crisis. We need a thousand companies like Colossal, maybe some in de extinction, some in cryo preservation, some in uh, you know, advanced gametogenesis to create egg and sperms from tissues. Like
We need a thousand companies like this. Like this is a huge existential crisis. So I think that we have a moral obligation to do it personally. And I also think that we play God every day that we overfish the ocean or eradicate a species. We're deforesting the the planet at a massive rate. And so I think that if if
We are the Apex Fritter on this planet and we have
technology is our beacon of humanity, then we should use it for good, right? And so this is what we're doing.
We're not asking people to subscribe to it, but go do something. You know, it's funny, some of our biggest critics and uh around the MAMP project have actually spent zero money on elephant conservation. If you feel so passionately about elephant conservation,
Quit your job.
move to Africa and I can give you the top we fund the top ten uh conservation groups in elephants.
We will happily get you a placement there and fund you to leave your job and go help elephants if that's what you really want to do. But the reality is a lot of people want to just talk about these things. They don't want to put their money where their mouth is. And we're trying to put substantial money towards what we're saying. And and do you worry that people will
like care less about protecting endangered animals if any species can be resurrected.
Man, resurrecting species is hard. And you're not direct clones, right? They're expensive. They're hard. We make that very, very clear to everyone. Some of the work that we're doing, like EEHV and elephants, the general public didn't know that the vast majority of elephant deaths is not from poaching. It's from a disease called EEHV, a herpes virus.
And we are working with uh AZA partner zoos as well as
uh Dr. Paul Ling at Bailey College of Medicine to uh advance this research. And we actually have those uh uh vaccines being tested right now in elephants to save elephants if they continues to work and it confers resistance to all this.
We will save more elephants than all of human elephant conservation combined, right?
You have a lot of different things going on. I mean, when you talk about, you know, vaccines for elephants, that's
far afield from trying to create a a dire wolf.
Yeah, but if a if a mammoth
Which is ninety nine point six percent the same genetically as an Asian elephant. Mammoths are closer to Asian elephants and Asian elephants are to African elephants. That's kinda crazy. And uh it's crazy to think about, but that's just
genetically and phylogenetically true. But what's interesting about that is
They are susceptible to EEH V.
So we spent all this time to bring back this herd of elephants, right, that we reintroduced into the Arctic and then
They could eat HB and die, that seems like a bad idea, right? And so we always try to talk about that functional de extinction.
Should be about
Engineering
uh in rebuilding extinct species for today. Right. And so if we know that we can cure
This EEH V
Or prevent it from causing death.
We should engineer that.
Into our mammoth species as well.
Mm.
So you're uh you're um you're also working on
An artificial womb, what you call exodeath. Exogenous development. So you you don't need a surrogate animal to basically grow and carry a developing creature.
That's the goal, right? We're not there yet. If things go well in the next two years, maybe we'll be able to birth a small mammal like a mouse fully ex utero. We have a 17 person team on it. You know, I mentioned the Northern White Rhino project, right? There's two females left, they're functionally extinct. But imagine a world where we engineer in genetic diversity into
two hundred northern white rhinos. We grow them all in a lab, fully X Euro. It never has to bother a uh an existing rhino. And then we work with teams on the ground to rewild that species back into the environment.
Mm and this
ExoDev development. I mean, I realize it's a long way from here, but
Could it have implications?
For human uses?
So we don't do it's a great question. The answer is yes. I think all the vast majority of our technologies can. We don't do anything with humans, uh, or even non-human primates. So we don't want to get anywhere near that world. We really want to stay focused on conservation and species preservation and extinction. And so if there are applications to it, we can spin those out.
And let other teams with different capital and different mandates go go pursue that. We've actually been able to make
healthier embryos and grow them longer. And you know, so that piece could be something that could be used to replace morphological grading in like human ID.
clinics, right? I just went through IVS. So I you know looking at embryos through just a grading scale seems
moderately archaic to me compared to the technologies we have today. And so I think even just some of the pieces to these larger systems that are like exogenous development systems could have application to IBF today, which is pretty cool.
No, I mean as I as I hear you like the the science fiction say that a future where we can custom make
Creatures.
Family members, I don't know, like it it doesn't sound like you think the science
Із
Far away.
I don't think the science is far. I think that you need to be really thoughtful on the regulation, on the ethics, right? I think it's much harder to grow
An elephant.
fully X Gro physiologically than a human.
I do. I think it's it would be much easier for a human fully extreme than an elephant. But I think you have
moral
Ethical.
religious and regulatory hurdles that that
Someone if they want to do that should go do that. You know, we don't want
to to do that for many, many reasons. But I do think that
From a science to your question, the science is there. We are at the doorstep of a lot of these breakthroughs.
The area of AI where where your your background is, and obviously you're passionate about also, there's conversation.
about like what are the rules, what are the guardrails that we should put up around AI one way or the other? Do you
See yourself playing a role like that for synthetic biology? Like what what and where do the guardrails come from?
for a technology like this that's out that's out there.
Yeah, technol I mean, I I think synthetic biology, especially paired with AI, is is one of the most powerful things that humanity's ever discovered or invented. I think
over time, you know, probably certain disease states that are inherited diseases could be eradicated, which I don't and be passed on, which I don't think's a bad thing. It's just that's not going to be us that
that that does that, right? We're very focused on species. We've kind of drawn our
own framework, right? We've said
We're not gonna work on animals that are in the non human primate category.
We're not gonna work on things like Neanderthal. We're not gonna work on anything like that.
Every species that we work on has to have a tie back to saving an existing endangered species. So we built our own kind of ethical framework.
I don't know if I'm qualified to to be uh at the table of much smarter scientists and uh I'm not a scientist, so much smarter s people than me that are scientists around synthetic biology and what we should be doing with it. If there ever is a consortium of people, you know, they should have people like Beth and George and really smart people to set those guidelines.
So what's at stake right now for you in in the choices you make, the science you develop for colossal
But but also for the rest of us, for for the future.
Yeah, I think the biggest
stake biggest thing at stake is conservation, right? It's like we are losing species at an all at an alarming rate. And I think part of that is
I think it's less on the science, honestly. I think that's more on adoption.
on federal funding in support of of incredible partners in the conservation field. I encourage people, people ask how they can help Colossal.
Donate to conservation. Donate to people that are in in the field actually doing the work. And then um and then trying to get these technologies
More well known, like I said, the sadest.
part of of the last week for me is that people
Didn't
Focus at all.
on the Red Wolves and
That to me is a bigger story than the Dierewolves.
But you know, that's that's on us, right? Like we're doing big stuff.
those things are exciting. If it at least a percentage of those people trickle down into conservation, then hopefully we've done something right.

Well, Ben, this was great. Thanks so much for talking with me.
Yeah, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

There are so many things from Ben's talk running through my head. Can synthetic biology solve our conservation problems? Are we close to being able to grow humans ex utero?
Are we ignoring crucial lessons from Jurassic Park?
Whether you believe Colossal's wolf pups are really dire wolves, the advances in gene editing are just flat out amazing. And yes, a little scary too.
It's clear that the buzz around Colossus breakthroughs is inspiring more than sci-fi fans and celebrities. Hopefully that will include ethicists as well.
Am I personally gonna rush to pet the next direw pop or woolly mouse?
Probably not, but the fact that scientists are unlocking so much possibility, it does get my heart racing.
I'm bad Safian.
Thanks for listening.
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