1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:07,040 On Duster Cornell, and this is curiously all life on Earth has 2 00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:11,240 about 4 billion years left. That's the time before the sun 3 00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:14,560 expands, heats the planet to unimaginable temperatures, 4 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:19,520 engulfs it, and then explodes. We need to leave this rock. 5 00:00:20,280 --> 00:00:23,280 But that, as you can imagine, will take some doing. 6 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:27,440 Humans aren't exactly built for space travel, and new planets 7 00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:30,600 will offer environments not suited for our biology. 8 00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:33,880 Doctor Christopher E Mason has a plan. 9 00:00:34,560 --> 00:00:38,040 In his book The Next 500 Years Engineering Life to Reach New 10 00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:41,160 Worlds, he lays out an ambitious road map for humanity's 11 00:00:41,160 --> 00:00:45,560 survival, arguing that we not only can, but must re engineer 12 00:00:45,560 --> 00:00:48,800 ourselves to thrive in space and safeguard life beyond Earth. 13 00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:52,840 From using CRISPR technology to re engineer our genes to 14 00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:56,760 colonizing exoplanets, his book explores the science, ethics, 15 00:00:56,760 --> 00:01:00,160 and awe inspiring impossibilities of humanity's 16 00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:04,280 next great chapter. Doctor Mason is a geneticist, A 17 00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:07,480 computational biologist, and a professor at Weill Cornell 18 00:01:07,480 --> 00:01:10,520 Medicine who has been a principal investigator and Co 19 00:01:10,520 --> 00:01:13,800 investigator of 11 NASA missions and projects. 20 00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:19,080 In Doctor Mason's vision of year 2151, here's what our world 21 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:21,960 could look like. We'll edit our genes safely and 22 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:26,080 easily, selecting for desirable traits and erasing diseases that 23 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:28,240 have haunted humanity for millennia. 24 00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:31,920 We'll travel routinely between space stations orbiting the 25 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:35,880 Moon, Mars and beyond. And we may even create 26 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:40,080 artificial wombs, so-called exo wombs, to make reproduction 27 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:43,880 possible on distant worlds. And before you dismiss this as 28 00:01:43,880 --> 00:01:47,120 mere science fiction, think about the strides we've already 29 00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:50,760 made as a species, from landing on the moon to splitting the 30 00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:53,040 atom. Considering Doctor Mason's 31 00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:57,080 ambitious ideas for our future requires imagination. 32 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:01,120 It reminds me of a scene from the movie Contact where Jodie 33 00:02:01,120 --> 00:02:04,120 Foster's character and astronomer are seeking funding 34 00:02:04,120 --> 00:02:08,160 for a telescope project is turned down by an unimaginative 35 00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:10,919 executive. This is a unique time in our 36 00:02:10,919 --> 00:02:12,760 history, in the history of any civilization. 37 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,120 It's the moment of the acquisition of technology. 38 00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:18,520 That's the moment where contact becomes possible. 39 00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:23,880 The Very Large Array in New Mexico is the key to our chances 40 00:02:23,880 --> 00:02:26,440 for success. With its 27 linked radio 41 00:02:26,440 --> 00:02:29,640 telescopes, we can search more accurately than at any other 42 00:02:29,640 --> 00:02:32,080 conventional facility. Now, we've already gotten the 43 00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:34,680 preliminary approval to buy the telescope time from the 44 00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:38,200 government. Now all we really need is the 45 00:02:38,200 --> 00:02:42,360 money. A nice presentation, doctor, but 46 00:02:42,360 --> 00:02:46,000 while our foundation arm does a mandate to support experimental 47 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,760 programs, we must confess that your proposal seems less like 48 00:02:49,760 --> 00:02:52,480 science and more like science fiction. 49 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:55,600 What I love about this scene is that she doesn't give up. 50 00:02:56,160 --> 00:02:58,960 She's been in too many rooms with too many people like this 51 00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:03,240 before, so she makes a passionate play urging this man 52 00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:06,880 to expand his vision of what's possible by reminding him of 53 00:03:06,880 --> 00:03:09,640 what we're capable of and have already accomplished. 54 00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:15,760 Science fiction. Oh, you're right. 55 00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:20,640 It's, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than 56 00:03:20,640 --> 00:03:25,000 that than nuts. You want to hear something 57 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:26,920 really nutty? I heard of a couple guys that 58 00:03:26,920 --> 00:03:28,640 want to build something called an airplane. 59 00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:30,600 You know, you get people to go in it and then fly around like 60 00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:31,800 birds. It's ridiculous, right? 61 00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:34,120 Or what about what about breaking the sound barrier? 62 00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:37,080 Or rockets to the moon? Or Atomic Energy or our mission 63 00:03:37,080 --> 00:03:39,040 to Mars? Science fiction, right? 64 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:44,960 Look, all I'm asking is, is for you to just have the tiniest bit 65 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:47,920 of vision, you know, to step back for one minute and look at 66 00:03:47,920 --> 00:03:51,240 the big picture, to take a chance on something that might 67 00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:55,160 end up being the most profound, profoundly impactful moment for 68 00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:58,520 humanity, for for the history of history. 69 00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:06,080 I'm sorry. I just, I just spent the last 13 70 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:09,120 months coming into rooms like this and talking to people like 71 00:04:09,120 --> 00:04:12,040 you. And the truth is you're my last 72 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:15,080 chance. So I'm sorry I wasted your time. 73 00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:20,040 But it's still a no until the executive gets a phone call. 74 00:04:20,399 --> 00:04:22,160 Doctor. Yes, Sir. 75 00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:31,960 Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir. 76 00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:36,480 Watching on a security feed is the company's founder, a highly 77 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:39,760 accomplished engineer and entrepreneur whose career has 78 00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:42,800 been defined by bold action and innovative thinking. 79 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:47,480 He recognizes the genius in her work, sees its potential and 80 00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:49,680 green lights the project. You have your money. 81 00:04:50,880 --> 00:04:53,880 Before she leaves, she looks up to the camera and thanks the man 82 00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:55,640 who saw and believed in her vision. 83 00:04:56,160 --> 00:04:58,040 Thank you. Thank you. 84 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:01,480 Now let's dive into my conversation with Christopher 85 00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:04,800 Mason as we explore his bold vision for. 86 00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:08,840 The future Christopher Mason, welcome to Curiously. 87 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:10,640 A pleasure to be here, thanks for having me. 88 00:05:11,240 --> 00:05:16,320 Today we're going to talk about your 2022 book, The Next 500 89 00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:19,520 Years, Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds. 90 00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:25,120 And I really enjoyed the read. It very concretely games out how 91 00:05:25,760 --> 00:05:29,720 our species life in general might be able to relocate and 92 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:31,920 get off planet Earth if we need to. 93 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:34,920 And you made it abundantly clear that we will need to eventually. 94 00:05:35,080 --> 00:05:36,520 Yeah, it's not. It's not an if, it's good. 95 00:05:36,520 --> 00:05:38,680 It's got to be a win. Mostly just because of 96 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:42,400 cosmological constants and the fact the sun will at some point 97 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:44,360 engulf the earth, which I think about almost every morning. 98 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:46,440 Not in a panic way, but just in a factual way. 99 00:05:46,440 --> 00:05:47,720 And it's very motivating, I'd say. 100 00:05:48,120 --> 00:05:50,000 Yeah. Does that get you motivated, 101 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:53,560 knowing it's the mortality of our home in a way? 102 00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:55,440 Yes, Yeah. Well, it's the only home we've 103 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:57,360 ever known, and it's very precious and beautiful and 104 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:00,800 wonderful and extraordinary. But if it's the only one we ever 105 00:06:00,800 --> 00:06:03,520 stay at, it'll be at the last home that we ever know as a 106 00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:06,440 species and really any species on on this planet. 107 00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:08,520 So we're part of the argument of the book is which, you know, 108 00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:10,080 maybe we'll get into a little bit, is that we're the only 109 00:06:10,080 --> 00:06:12,400 species with an awareness of extinction. 110 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:16,560 And I think that that awareness itself becomes a self motivating 111 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:20,120 duties because you know that you are, you know, beholden to act 112 00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:21,640 upon that. And so obviously you can do it 113 00:06:21,640 --> 00:06:23,040 selfishly. You can have your own your own 114 00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:25,360 body survive. We can then think about having 115 00:06:25,400 --> 00:06:29,240 our species survive, but the duty I argue for is really, you 116 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:32,960 know, across all life and even potentially someday AI talk 117 00:06:32,960 --> 00:06:35,200 about in the book, like if AI really become sentient to the 118 00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:38,080 Super intelligence, maybe they would be good stewards of life 119 00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:40,000 and complexity. At that point, it would have 120 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:43,320 effectively be life as well. So I think I like to say that I 121 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:46,440 am matter agnostic towards intelligence. 122 00:06:46,440 --> 00:06:48,760 So if it's carbon, if it's silicon, if it's some other 123 00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:52,400 entity, that's fine. But the need and and duty 124 00:06:52,400 --> 00:06:56,280 towards shepherding life and that's complexity applies to all 125 00:06:56,280 --> 00:06:59,560 of those substrates. So yeah, so that's some of the 126 00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:01,800 philosophical parts of the book, but then it gets into the the 127 00:07:01,800 --> 00:07:04,280 fun genomics technical parts of our how do you build new 128 00:07:04,280 --> 00:07:07,080 creatures from scratch? How do you modify radiation 129 00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:08,520 resistance? How do you survive on other 130 00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:10,040 planets? And then what have we learned 131 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:11,640 from other astronauts basically so far? 132 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:15,040 Yeah, Yeah. And I think as far as the 133 00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:18,200 questions I have laid out, we'll touch on all of that. 134 00:07:19,160 --> 00:07:22,240 And I particularly want to talk about kind of like the moral 135 00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:26,840 duty you think, you know, humanity has to our own species, 136 00:07:26,840 --> 00:07:31,000 but life in general to, you know, help us continue on in the 137 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:34,680 event of some catastrophe or inevitable extinction event or 138 00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:37,400 something. But I think it might be useful 139 00:07:37,400 --> 00:07:41,360 if you could kind of briefly tell listeners about your 140 00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:44,920 background real quick as a geneticist, as a computational 141 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:49,520 biologist, and then also the scientific work you've done as 142 00:07:49,520 --> 00:07:52,880 an investigator for national missions and projects. 143 00:07:53,320 --> 00:07:55,520 Yeah, my background, so I, you know, started as a single celled 144 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:57,640 embryo a long time ago in Racine, WI. 145 00:07:57,880 --> 00:08:01,480 I have since divided many times and picked up some microbes 146 00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:03,440 along the way at some epigenetic changes. 147 00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:07,080 So, you know, Ben, originally from Wisconsin, did my 148 00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:10,640 undergraduate degree in genetics at Madison, APHD in genetics at 149 00:08:10,640 --> 00:08:13,560 Yale, did a clinical genetics post doc at Yale, the medical 150 00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:16,640 school, also a fellowship in genomics, ethics and law at Yale 151 00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:19,120 Law School. And so a lot of time, you know, 152 00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:21,720 Midwest, East Coast and I've been in New York City since 2009 153 00:08:22,040 --> 00:08:25,040 and laboratory here at Wild Cornell Medicine, you know, at 154 00:08:25,040 --> 00:08:28,520 the medical school for Cornell, where we focus on three main 155 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:31,680 areas and that's clinical genetics, which is cancer 156 00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:34,679 dynamics and evolution, infectious disease and space 157 00:08:34,679 --> 00:08:37,360 medicine. So broad interdisciplinary 158 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:40,520 clinical genetics profiles. The second area is in 159 00:08:40,520 --> 00:08:43,799 computational methods and this includes AI tools and machine 160 00:08:43,799 --> 00:08:47,600 learning, various base calling and, and computational new 161 00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:51,240 methods basically to integrate processor or, or merge kinds of 162 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,800 data sets and generate them. And the third area is synthetic 163 00:08:54,800 --> 00:08:56,720 biology. So this I think is what is today 164 00:08:56,720 --> 00:08:59,160 the smallest part of the lab, but over the course of the next 165 00:08:59,160 --> 00:09:02,480 several decades will be by far the largest part of a lot of our 166 00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:05,000 work because we'll have mapped enough genetic code. 167 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,560 We'll have understood enough genetic code and, and 168 00:09:07,560 --> 00:09:10,400 characterized it that we can then begin the process of 169 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,640 tweezing, tweaking, modifying, slightly adjusting or merging 170 00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:17,400 components of, of creatures. We've done this with tardigrade 171 00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:19,720 genes and human genes. We've done this with different 172 00:09:19,720 --> 00:09:22,400 microbial species. You can you reach an era, I 173 00:09:22,400 --> 00:09:26,280 think relatively soon where you could synthesize entire genomes 174 00:09:26,280 --> 00:09:28,320 from scratch and then try and predict what you'll get at the 175 00:09:28,320 --> 00:09:30,520 end. And you know, this applies to 176 00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:33,800 everything from better microbes that can make you products or 177 00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:38,600 absorb toxins to cyanobacteria that could absorb carbon to, you 178 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:40,520 know, more interesting things recently like bringing back the 179 00:09:40,520 --> 00:09:43,440 direwolf or de extinction process, which when I was 180 00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:45,040 writing the book was very hypothetical. 181 00:09:45,280 --> 00:09:47,960 But in the past year we have done, we've contributed to the 182 00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:51,720 project to get the first direwolf born actually or D 183 00:09:51,720 --> 00:09:53,120 extinct species born. Wow. 184 00:09:53,120 --> 00:09:55,440 How's it doing? Great so far actually. 185 00:09:55,520 --> 00:09:57,840 There's actually three of them born and they're undisclosed 186 00:09:57,840 --> 00:10:00,480 location, but they're healthy and they seem happy and they're 187 00:10:00,480 --> 00:10:04,040 doing, doing great actually. OK, very interesting. 188 00:10:04,640 --> 00:10:08,000 Like a big theme in your book. It's in the subtitle Engineering 189 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:11,560 Life to Reach New Worlds. It is using engineering to 190 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:15,920 change our own biology, maybe engineering to change our own 191 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:19,120 planet. And I think one place I want to 192 00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:24,560 start with is things you learned from one of your studies that 193 00:10:24,560 --> 00:10:26,600 you talked about at the beginning of the book where you 194 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:31,400 you studied Scott Kelly, the astronaut, and he spent a year 195 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:35,400 on the International Space Station and you compared the 196 00:10:35,400 --> 00:10:39,400 physiological changes that happened to his body with his 197 00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:42,720 twin brother. It's called NASA's twin study. 198 00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:48,440 And I wanted to see if I can get you to kind of summarize what 199 00:10:48,440 --> 00:10:52,720 you found and why it mattered. Yeah, we've found many things 200 00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:55,120 that change. So I think, you know, the goal 201 00:10:55,120 --> 00:10:58,520 was to look at what happens to the human body in a full, you 202 00:10:58,520 --> 00:11:01,480 know, it was 340 days, so almost a full year in space. 203 00:11:01,920 --> 00:11:05,600 And we looked at a lot of six month missions, few weeks in 204 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:08,240 space, a few days in space. But this gave us a unique 205 00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:10,640 opportunity to look at a really long mission, which is one of 206 00:11:10,640 --> 00:11:12,240 the longest. Well, at the time it was the 207 00:11:12,240 --> 00:11:15,800 longest contiguous mission for an American and one of the 208 00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:18,320 longest orbits ever. And also we had an identical 209 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:22,120 twin, so very unique series of circumstances and compared them 210 00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:24,560 at a genetic level, molecular level, a cellular level. 211 00:11:24,560 --> 00:11:27,480 So look at many layers and modalities of biology to 212 00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:30,160 discern, you know, what happens to the body in space for that 213 00:11:30,160 --> 00:11:33,280 long. So many things change. 214 00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:36,760 We saw, you know, thousands of genes would turn on and turn off 215 00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:40,360 and be up or down regulated. We saw a lot of activity in the 216 00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:42,720 immune system. We saw like changes in the blood 217 00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:46,280 profiles we had the telomeres actually got longer, which these 218 00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:49,360 are regions of your chromosomes, you know, that store your DNA 219 00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:53,520 normally as you age, telomeres get shorter, but ironically they 220 00:11:53,520 --> 00:11:55,720 got longer in space. So this wasn't a really 221 00:11:55,720 --> 00:11:58,640 surprising result. We worked with Susan Bailey on 222 00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:02,360 that particular project where we confirmed it with different 223 00:12:02,360 --> 00:12:04,720 methods. One's called qPCR, 1 is nanopore 224 00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:07,240 sequencing. We also did other versions of 225 00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:09,600 sequencing. So we confirmed it was real and 226 00:12:09,600 --> 00:12:10,880 then really thought, well, that's interesting. 227 00:12:10,880 --> 00:12:13,440 And, and we've seen it now. I've seen almost every astronaut 228 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:15,560 crew we've looked at the telomeres seem to get longer in 229 00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:19,040 space and we, we now know mechanistically what's driving 230 00:12:19,040 --> 00:12:19,960 that. It turns out it's a bit of the 231 00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:23,960 response to radiation and the microgravity and, and we can see 232 00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:26,720 that there's a, a non coding RNA, it's called Terra, 233 00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:30,440 basically a guiding function that helps the telomeres get 234 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:31,960 longer. We can see that activated in the 235 00:12:31,960 --> 00:12:35,520 blood for the astronauts. So, so mostly it seems to be the 236 00:12:35,520 --> 00:12:38,440 radiation response, but but we can see that as a really 237 00:12:38,440 --> 00:12:41,040 surprising result. And then the other big take home 238 00:12:41,040 --> 00:12:43,160 is that, you know, we saw again thousands and thousands of 239 00:12:43,160 --> 00:12:46,240 changes at many layers of proteins and RNAs and DNA 240 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:48,920 changes, but that they did revert back to normal within a 241 00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:51,480 few months. You know, more than 90% of 242 00:12:51,480 --> 00:12:53,960 everything had reverted back to what was a pre flight level. 243 00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:56,680 And so it seems to be the human body is extraordinarily 244 00:12:56,680 --> 00:12:59,840 resilient in terms of how it can adapt to these changes. 245 00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:06,160 So if we go into space, go to Mars, go to a different solar 246 00:13:06,160 --> 00:13:11,480 system, it's pretty treacherous territory for humans. 247 00:13:11,600 --> 00:13:15,080 There's a lot of insults, radiation and the like. 248 00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:18,360 Is there anything you learned from Scott Kelly's body from 249 00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:21,960 your twin study that conforms like what we'll need to do in 250 00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:24,320 order to survive in tough conditions? 251 00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:25,680 Yeah, we looked at a lot of them. 252 00:13:26,120 --> 00:13:28,840 So we all a lot of the changes we have published a follow up 253 00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:31,160 paper that looked at all the drugs that target some of these 254 00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:34,680 cytokine differences and you know we now know what to target. 255 00:13:34,680 --> 00:13:37,040 So I think the first phase of OK, what's changing, what's 256 00:13:37,040 --> 00:13:40,520 adapting, we know what is perturbed by being in space. 257 00:13:40,960 --> 00:13:43,680 And we're just though at the very beginning of knowing, OK, 258 00:13:43,680 --> 00:13:45,120 well, should we target that with a drug? 259 00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:48,400 Should we turn that gene off if it, if it's going on? 260 00:13:48,760 --> 00:13:51,840 And, and we don't know enough yet to I think to turn down 261 00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:54,680 something that's being turned up in space because we don't know 262 00:13:54,680 --> 00:13:57,520 the difference really that much between maladaptive and adaptive 263 00:13:57,520 --> 00:13:59,440 for space life because we just don't have enough data. 264 00:13:59,440 --> 00:14:02,520 So we have basically, I'd say, the first draft of the map of 265 00:14:02,520 --> 00:14:06,280 the body to know what changes, but we don't yet know which 266 00:14:06,280 --> 00:14:09,880 parts we should, you know, modify or, or change in terms of 267 00:14:09,880 --> 00:14:11,360 what we should target. But at least we know what's 268 00:14:11,360 --> 00:14:13,560 changing. And so we'll keep looking over 269 00:14:13,560 --> 00:14:15,440 each mission. We've done some work now with 270 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:18,560 SpaceX and other commercial providers and look at, you know, 271 00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:21,000 again and again at each mission and see what is consistently 272 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:24,200 changing and then what seems to be something we can start to 273 00:14:24,200 --> 00:14:26,400 have a countermeasure. It's called some intervention, 274 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:29,920 basically to stop any of the negative effects basically. 275 00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:33,160 OK, one of the. Things I wanted to ask is how 276 00:14:33,160 --> 00:14:38,920 the book idea came to you. It's a 500 year plan and I 277 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:40,840 understand. Did it begin with a Wikipedia 278 00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:44,600 post you wrote in 2011? Is that how it started and how 279 00:14:44,600 --> 00:14:46,400 did it evolve from there? Yeah, it did. 280 00:14:46,400 --> 00:14:47,400 It was. So I started first. 281 00:14:47,400 --> 00:14:49,520 We had a just big on the lab at Cornell. 282 00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:53,680 We had a A-Team that's called the igem, the International 283 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:55,920 Genetically Engineered Machines competition. 284 00:14:56,280 --> 00:14:59,800 So we had a team trying to get as many radiation resistant 285 00:14:59,800 --> 00:15:03,000 organisms together, get their genome sequence, get the genes 286 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:06,400 that confer the resistance and put them into one big Organism. 287 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:10,040 So it was a wildly ambitious summer project with a team of 288 00:15:10,040 --> 00:15:12,720 undergrads with very few resources and a handful of 289 00:15:12,720 --> 00:15:15,880 people. So but our ambitions were big, 290 00:15:15,880 --> 00:15:20,120 but we also were talking about structures, the technical data, 291 00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:22,600 the philosophy behind it. And at 1.1 of the meetings we 292 00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:25,880 said, why are we doing this? Why are we looking at radiation 293 00:15:25,880 --> 00:15:28,360 resistance and what's the long term use of this data? 294 00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:30,480 So I wrote a little blog post for the project. 295 00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:34,280 I just said, OK, the purpose of this is to understand where life 296 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:36,720 can exist. And if we find all the genes 297 00:15:36,720 --> 00:15:38,480 that confer radiation resistance, maybe that could 298 00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:39,960 help us survive in space long term. 299 00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:42,400 And then if we can do that, we could look at other ways to 300 00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:46,400 modify eukaryotic cells or human cells and help us survive in 301 00:15:46,400 --> 00:15:49,160 faraway planets. And then if someday get to other 302 00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:51,280 solar systems and like look at the end of the universe. 303 00:15:51,280 --> 00:15:55,120 So it was just a blog post of ideas, but then it was in 10 304 00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:57,440 parts. And then an editor at MIT Press 305 00:15:57,440 --> 00:15:59,760 saw it, Bob Pryor. And he said, oh, Chris, you 306 00:15:59,760 --> 00:16:01,400 know, this looks kind of like an outline for a book. 307 00:16:01,400 --> 00:16:02,920 Have you ever considered writing a book? 308 00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:06,280 And I said, yes, but I don't have a lot of extra time and I 309 00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:07,640 wonder what I write. He said, well, let's meet. 310 00:16:07,640 --> 00:16:10,320 And we had coffee and just chatted about making it into a 311 00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,080 book. And so, you know, normally for a 312 00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:13,920 book proposal, you, you shopping around. 313 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:16,880 I was, I was very fortunate he found me and said, Hey, I think 314 00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:19,160 you should just write a book about this and, and we'll help, 315 00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:21,000 you know, give you an advance and get going. 316 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,760 I was like, all right, great. So I've been thinking about it 317 00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:25,360 for years, of course. So it was very easy. 318 00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:27,640 It was actually a pleasure to write because it's a collection 319 00:16:27,640 --> 00:16:30,680 of most of the things I think we can do and should do 320 00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:34,240 technologically, philosophically, and you know, 321 00:16:34,240 --> 00:16:36,840 genetically even. And then so wrote that, you 322 00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:39,520 know, actually just before the pandemic, it got the full first 323 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,840 draft done and then. Well, one of your core ideas 324 00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:48,200 like I mentioned is that to save life we need to like engineer it 325 00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:51,320 basically. And for hundreds of thousands of 326 00:16:51,320 --> 00:16:53,840 years evolution has been self-directed. 327 00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:57,920 But you argue that now we must take control, like reshape our 328 00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:02,000 biology and environment to survive space travel in new 329 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:03,280 worlds. I was wondering if you can kind 330 00:17:03,280 --> 00:17:07,119 of expand on that idea. Yeah, it's not a necessity 331 00:17:07,119 --> 00:17:11,200 because there's a chance that, for example, Mars has some 332 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:14,839 gravity, a little bit of atmosphere, less than 1%, but 333 00:17:14,839 --> 00:17:16,920 something. And you could maybe just go in a 334 00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:19,560 lava tube like which is where, you know, lava flow creates 335 00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:22,280 these big caverns. And you can go underground and 336 00:17:22,280 --> 00:17:25,480 maybe be protected from the radiation and maybe be OK. 337 00:17:25,480 --> 00:17:27,280 You still need, you know, air, you need food, you need to 338 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:29,360 survive. But but the radiation risk I 339 00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:32,480 talk a lot about in the book, you know, we may be pleasantly 340 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:35,160 surprised that the human body is resilient enough to, to survive 341 00:17:35,160 --> 00:17:37,400 it. But but I, I describe other 342 00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:40,120 modifications you need to say to live on Titan or Jupiter or 343 00:17:40,120 --> 00:17:43,360 other places where, you know, there's no way we'd remotely 344 00:17:43,360 --> 00:17:45,400 survive unless we had significant changes either to 345 00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:48,760 our body or, or systems that keep us alive or both. 346 00:17:49,400 --> 00:17:53,080 And so I, I propose it is, is, you know, something that you'd 347 00:17:53,080 --> 00:17:56,800 be ethically bound to do these kinds of modifications if the 348 00:17:56,800 --> 00:17:59,960 alternative is death, you know, but if we know that a human body 349 00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:02,720 can survive and maybe it's more adaptive than we even imagine, 350 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:04,680 great, then it's easier, frankly. 351 00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:06,840 So. But I have a feeling from what 352 00:18:06,840 --> 00:18:09,120 we've seen, a human body is fairly fragile. 353 00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:12,080 We'll need some of these modifications just to survive. 354 00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:15,600 And so that's where I, I propose that this is something that's 355 00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:18,640 required to do, otherwise you won't make it at all. 356 00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:21,240 So that's, that's the proposal basically, Yeah, Yeah. 357 00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:24,000 And especially when it comes to space. 358 00:18:24,040 --> 00:18:26,440 Where? Just incredibly fragile. 359 00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:30,000 And I was kind of wondering if you could describe, broadly 360 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:34,760 speaking, what are the major conditions we're most unsuited 361 00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:37,400 for when we're leaving Earth or living elsewhere? 362 00:18:37,440 --> 00:18:38,680 Like what do we have to worry about? 363 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,160 Yeah, the radiation we discussed a little bit already, and that's 364 00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:43,000 a big one. But there's other, other 365 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:45,480 features. The dust from the moon, dust on 366 00:18:45,480 --> 00:18:48,600 Mars are really big concerns for NASA and other space agencies 367 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:50,880 because we know it's probably going to be rough on the body. 368 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:52,880 We don't know how bad, but they're just a particulate 369 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:54,840 matter. The grain granularity of it. 370 00:18:55,520 --> 00:18:59,880 There is, you know, also just fluid shifts, the nutrition. 371 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:02,360 There's a psychosocial dynamic. What's going to happen when 372 00:19:02,360 --> 00:19:05,360 you're in a very, you know, marooned basically far away, you 373 00:19:05,360 --> 00:19:06,960 know, from Earth? It's one thing if you're on the 374 00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:09,560 moon, you can get back pretty quickly, but on Mars, you know, 375 00:19:09,560 --> 00:19:12,960 you're months away from being able to get help or to get back. 376 00:19:12,960 --> 00:19:16,680 So you're really truly alone in a way that no humans have ever 377 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:18,280 been before. So there is a psychosocial 378 00:19:18,280 --> 00:19:21,360 dynamic and cognitive feature that we'll have to, you know, 379 00:19:21,360 --> 00:19:26,040 keep an eye on for sure. Yeah, and you learned a lot from 380 00:19:26,040 --> 00:19:30,280 like, Scott Kelly's body and his reaction to space conditions 0 381 00:19:30,280 --> 00:19:35,720 gravity, but you also learn from other organisms that have 382 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:38,600 figured out a way to survive in extreme environments. 383 00:19:38,640 --> 00:19:41,640 And you already mentioned one of them, which is the tardigrades, 384 00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:46,320 the the water bear creature that can that's like almost 385 00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:48,480 indestructible. It can live in the vacuum of 386 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:50,560 space. And somehow it's figured out how 387 00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:52,840 to do that. And I understand you have 388 00:19:52,840 --> 00:19:57,000 learned things about it's genetics, it's Physiology that 389 00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:01,080 may inform our ability to withstand extreme environments 390 00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:03,120 as well. Yep, Yeah, they have. 391 00:20:03,120 --> 00:20:05,440 You know, we've been looking at them in a range of contexts that 392 00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:08,320 they, we can take a gene from tardigrades, one that was 393 00:20:08,320 --> 00:20:12,920 identified in 2016 called desupp or damage suppressor protein, 394 00:20:13,360 --> 00:20:16,520 and you can take that gene, optimize it and put it into a 395 00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:19,200 human cell. So take a tardigrade gene, human 396 00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:23,560 genome, and it confers about 80% of the radiation resistance that 397 00:20:23,560 --> 00:20:26,200 we've seen in tardigrade. So it gives you a really easy 398 00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:31,680 way to take a evolutionary tool or lesson from one creature and 399 00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:34,600 transplant it into a human cell. So, you know, that's one 400 00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:36,360 example. We're also taking proteins from 401 00:20:36,360 --> 00:20:39,480 Dinococcus radiodurons, which is another extremophile that 402 00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:42,280 survived radiation and doing transplants of some of their 403 00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:45,600 proteins into human cells. So we're it's very early stages. 404 00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:47,840 We're not doing clinical trials on people or anything like that 405 00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:50,720 yet, but we're showing that it's technologically possible that 406 00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:55,200 the human cells can tolerate these effectively alien proteins 407 00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:59,080 or very divergent species. Take those proteins from those 408 00:20:59,080 --> 00:21:01,040 species and put them in human cells and they actually function 409 00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:03,720 and they work and they give you the the result you want, the 410 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:05,480 phenotype of radiation resistance, so. 411 00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:09,600 Wow, not to get too in the weeds, but like mechanistically, 412 00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:15,120 how does transferring like a tardigrades genes that confers 413 00:21:15,120 --> 00:21:19,560 resistance to radiation, how does that give a human cell 414 00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:22,280 radiation resistance? So what we've seen is actually 415 00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:26,320 the the protein itself is actually going to places DNA and 416 00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:28,280 it seems to be protecting some of these sensitive. 417 00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:32,200 So it's actually serving we think a bit of a physical 418 00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:35,640 shield, but also helping to activate DNA repair a little bit 419 00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:37,600 as well. So it's both a, we think 420 00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,440 structural like physical and also potentially, you know, 421 00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:42,920 biochemical or regulatory that it's activating some of these 422 00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:46,360 DNA repair pathways or at least helping to, you know, make them 423 00:21:46,360 --> 00:21:49,000 stronger, it looks like. So, yeah, so very, very 424 00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:52,520 fascinating, you know, kind of hybrid entity in this regard. 425 00:21:52,960 --> 00:21:55,560 And like you said, we're it's not happening in humans. 426 00:21:55,560 --> 00:22:00,720 So we are quite far away from putting these tardigrade genes 427 00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:04,440 in human cells and and then having like a human being more 428 00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:06,360 resistant to radiation. Yeah. 429 00:22:06,360 --> 00:22:10,920 And we are, you know, we're probably at least a decade away 430 00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:13,960 from that, I'd say. But also we would need to make 431 00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:17,800 sure there's a need to do it real clear, you know, unmet 432 00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:21,000 medical need that is, that necessitates this kind of an 433 00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:23,240 intervention. And we'd have to do it slowly, 434 00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:25,080 carefully. You know, we'd have to make sure 435 00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:28,400 that we are not doing, you know, something that's creating a lot 436 00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:30,600 of problems in the genome or secondary effects. 437 00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:32,880 So it's like most clinical trials where we do it very 438 00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:36,440 slowly, methodically, start with something akin to a phase one 439 00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,440 clinical trial, then do phase two, then phase 3. 440 00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:42,800 So we would go slowly through applications into human 441 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:46,160 subjects. And so you imagine years from 442 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:52,560 now, maybe astronauts will be in a in space, and before they go 443 00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:56,040 on their mission, they'll maybe have like a certain amount of 444 00:22:56,040 --> 00:23:00,840 genetic tinkering happening in order to confer resistance to 445 00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:03,680 these extreme conditions. Yeah, we would see. 446 00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:05,920 You can even imagine a couple of directions. 447 00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:07,920 You could say what's your genetic profile? 448 00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:10,440 Are you high risk or low risk? And maybe you're already pretty 449 00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:11,560 low risk, so you're probably fine. 450 00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,320 But if you're high risk, could you take pharmacological agents? 451 00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:16,640 Could you do, you don't have to even do genome modifications, 452 00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:18,360 you can do epigenome reprogramming. 453 00:23:18,360 --> 00:23:19,840 So you turn on genes temporarily. 454 00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:22,760 You can imagine doing that. And you know, also just building 455 00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,280 a molecular profile of the of the risk profile for the 456 00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:28,520 individual before they go is something that we could do. 457 00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:30,680 But it's the way down the road. But it's something we can 458 00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:32,120 definitely, you know, have set up for them. 459 00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:35,560 OK, elephants. What if we learn from elephants 460 00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:40,640 and their cancer resistance? Yeah, they're, you know, they're 461 00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:44,360 pretty extraordinary creatures, also very social creatures. 462 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:48,440 They when there's a friend, if you will, you know, they're very 463 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:50,000 friendly. They have friends basically. 464 00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:53,120 And when a friend dies, they mourn. 465 00:23:53,120 --> 00:23:54,600 You know, they have these big social groups. 466 00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,240 They're very emotive. They're extraordinary creatures. 467 00:23:57,240 --> 00:23:59,560 And so, but one of the interesting fact about them is 468 00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,800 they don't get a lot. They get very rarely do they get 469 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:06,840 cancer and so when the idea is that it seems to be they have 470 00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,760 all these extra copies of P5320 extra copies. 471 00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:13,840 So compared to humans that have two copies and so it's indicated 472 00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:18,040 that maybe there is something to to their feature of having these 473 00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:20,720 other proteins that are often called the guardian of the 474 00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:24,240 genome is the term for P53. It's going around and scavenging 475 00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:27,080 and making sure that if you have damage, it helps, you know, 476 00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:28,400 bring proteins to help prepare it. 477 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:30,840 It maintains A monitoring across the genome. 478 00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,800 So it's very powerful in terms of its ability to keep you safe 479 00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:37,600 basically at a genetic level. And so we, you know, we could 480 00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,000 see that actually one thing we did actually recently with 481 00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,880 elephants for the IPS CS to make wielding mammoths, we showed 482 00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:46,280 that you need to, you know, they're not, they're not all 483 00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:49,160 active, but you do have to make sure that they're dosage 484 00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,800 regulated correctly or otherwise it's hard to do reprogramming 485 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:55,400 because if you think about CRISPR, you often break DNA to 486 00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:58,360 then do modified DNA. But if your DNA is, if your cell 487 00:24:58,360 --> 00:25:01,400 is really good at repairing broken DNA, it makes it harder 488 00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:04,000 to modify that DNA. So you have to actually do a bit 489 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,480 of attenuation for what P53 normally does just so you can do 490 00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,040 genome editing for like the woolly mammoth, for example. 491 00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,800 So, so we've learned a lot from about them and still learning a 492 00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:16,280 lot more, but they're very fascinating creatures for sure. 493 00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:26,120 Does anybody is, is there ever been a criticism on some of this 494 00:25:26,120 --> 00:25:28,840 work of genome modification of like playing God? 495 00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,400 Have you ever gotten that reaction and and what would you 496 00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:34,920 say to it? Yeah, of course the people often 497 00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,320 say, you know, what gives you the right? 498 00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:39,120 Who are you to do it? What you know, that's something 499 00:25:39,120 --> 00:25:41,880 that sounds a bit like making life or recoding life or playing 500 00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,760 God. And in that regard, I, I think 501 00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,800 there's two specific responses. 1 is that this is a, a molecular 502 00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:51,520 level of playing God that we're already doing at a macroscopic 503 00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:53,520 level and have been doing for centuries. 504 00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,520 So there's not that much. It's only a difference, I think 505 00:25:56,520 --> 00:25:59,920 of specificity and scope. It's not a difference of kind. 506 00:25:59,920 --> 00:26:01,720 It's a different, you know, degree. 507 00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,000 If anything, it's a more accurate version of what we've 508 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:06,000 been doing for a long time. We can get down to the single 509 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,480 base and single molecule resolution of a change versus a 510 00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:13,160 pretty uncertain hybrid mixture or a breeding experiment. 511 00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:15,720 You know, we're actually doing things very specific and can 512 00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:18,560 finally you have a counterbalance to have something 513 00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,200 if you're doing breeding and you're getting something that's 514 00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,600 too low in genetic diversity, you can monitor and ensure that 515 00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:25,400 that doesn't happen. So that these new methods and 516 00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:29,040 tools let you do what we've already been doing, but do it 517 00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,000 better in the sense that so it's so 11 argument, I would say is 518 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:34,720 that we're not really doing anything that different from 519 00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:36,440 what we've already done. But even if they're someone 520 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,080 would say, well, I don't think we should play God in any 521 00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:40,800 context. So I don't think it should be 522 00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:44,000 done at all. To which I say possibly. 523 00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,280 But if we're still here in a billion years and the oceans 524 00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:48,320 start to boil and genome engineering is the only way we 525 00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:51,040 can survive and get off the planet, then it becomes much 526 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:53,000 more not only palatable, but essential. 527 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,800 And so I think it is one of the likely necessary tools for us to 528 00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:00,840 survive elsewhere and and certainly worth considering. 529 00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,800 Again, we maybe we're wrong. Maybe we can evolve and somehow 530 00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:07,280 live in the vacuum of space or survive long flights, but I 531 00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:08,680 don't think that will happen anytime soon. 532 00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:15,360 Do you ever hear criticism like we have enough problems here on 533 00:27:15,360 --> 00:27:19,360 Earth, Like, why should we be spending resources on other 534 00:27:19,360 --> 00:27:22,920 planets and, you know, these grand visions that are hundreds 535 00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,680 of years out? Yeah, that's actually also, I 536 00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:29,600 think a pretty common critique if you would people say, well, 537 00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:30,760 you know, why? Why do this at all? 538 00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,240 We poverty, there's diseases, there's cancers, there's, you 539 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:37,680 know, and and even there I had to have often a very three 540 00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:39,800 specific responses to that. One is that you can walk and 541 00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,640 chew gum at the same time. We can cure diseases on Earth 542 00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:44,560 and address poverty and go to space. 543 00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:47,440 That was shown in the 60s when we passed civil rights 544 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:49,760 legislation, but then also got a person on the moon. 545 00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:53,040 So we know it's possible to do really good in society and 546 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,760 structure and fight things like poverty and racism and and, you 547 00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:58,240 know, go farther than humans ever gone before. 548 00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,000 The second reason is, is hope. I think it's very hopeful to 549 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,120 have, you know, the younger generation imagine their future 550 00:28:04,120 --> 00:28:06,120 is brighter than their present. And I think Space Flight is a 551 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:09,200 very inspiring future forward look that brings everyone 552 00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,440 together and is extraordinary. And then the third is, is the 553 00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:14,720 duty I mentioned at the beginning, like if we don't do 554 00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,640 this, we run the risk of everyone, you know, frankly, 555 00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,040 dying on Earth and all of life. And as far as we know, life in 556 00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:22,720 the universe is only on this planet. 557 00:28:23,120 --> 00:28:25,200 Now, maybe we're wrong, maybe it's elsewhere, but so far it's 558 00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:27,640 just us. And so no, by definition, no one 559 00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,920 else even knows there's life or has a capacity to protect it and 560 00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:32,760 preserve it. So I think those are the three 561 00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:34,600 big reasons why. And someone says why do this at 562 00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,880 all? That I think not only can we, 563 00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:39,560 but that very much should we, and that we have to. 564 00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:44,440 This may sound like a kind of a dark thought, but one of the 565 00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:48,560 things I wanted to think about in counterpointing, like, such a 566 00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:53,440 grand vision is this idea of saving humanity and whether 567 00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:56,760 we're maybe, like, worth saving. That's a good question. 568 00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,320 Yeah. And you say it's our moral duty 569 00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,960 to prevent human extension. And I think I would agree with 570 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:05,880 that. I'm not opposed to that. 571 00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:11,360 But there are philosophers, This guy, David Benatar, he's a anti 572 00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:15,640 natalist, but he kind of argues the opposite, that life is too 573 00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,920 painful and humanity shouldn't be preserved. 574 00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:22,960 It reminds me of a scene in the TV show True Detective where 575 00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,160 Matthew Mcconaughey's character was actually inspired by 576 00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,360 Benatar's philosophy of anti natalism. 577 00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:33,000 And he's basically just saying he thinks that humanity was this 578 00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,600 kind of failed experiment because self-awareness came 579 00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,560 online and created a bunch of us who just have these individual 580 00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:42,560 selves. And he thinks we should just 581 00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,320 deny our programming and, you know, go extinct, essentially. 582 00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:49,120 But you're arguing the opposite. It's our moral duty to prevent 583 00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:50,680 human extinction. And I was wondering if you'd 584 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:51,920 kind of sell me on humanity. Why? 585 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,240 Why should we do it? Yeah, sure, that and I'm happy 586 00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,480 to do so. I think the it's a fascinating. 587 00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:01,240 There's also a book right behind me is Derek Perfect wrote a book 588 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,360 called Reasons in Persons, which is a really great philosophy 589 00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:08,080 book that is similar ideas and questions, which is just came 590 00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:11,560 from the 80s where he imagined an experiment, which he called 591 00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,880 the Republican conclusion, which is imagine you have, you know, 592 00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:17,760 hundreds of billions or trillions of people and you try 593 00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,680 to quantify happiness much like was done with John Stuart Mill. 594 00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,120 But you say they're all happy, but they're barely alive and 595 00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:26,520 they're technically better than dead, but suffering a lot. 596 00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,360 And if your goal for the universe was to maximize 597 00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:33,520 happiness and you would say that this is still good effectively, 598 00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:36,800 but but you look at what the structure of the universe is and 599 00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:40,160 it's this widespread suffering everywhere that is, you know, 600 00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:43,680 you might say on the on the numbers, yes, they should live 601 00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,160 and it's quote ethical. But if they're all barely 602 00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,560 surviving and barely, you know, have the smallest possible 603 00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,360 capacity for happiness, only like 1 day a year of barely at 604 00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:55,640 all that, yes, that's better than 0. 605 00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:57,800 But it's a Republican conclusion to, to reach. 606 00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:00,760 And so the argument there. And there's also, as you 607 00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,360 mentioned, other philosophers who've looked at this. 608 00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,720 And so I think the, the challenge there is it, it is, 609 00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:09,720 it's analogous to, you know, when people say, you know, if 610 00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,880 we're 10 feet away and you keep cutting the distance in half and 611 00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:14,920 you keep going in half and half and half, eventually reached to 612 00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,160 Infinity. And then we would never be able 613 00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:19,640 to reach each other. If you keep doing a, you know, 614 00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,880 it's just progression towards Infinity, which sounds cool for 615 00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,320 like if you're at a bar and you've got nothing else to talk 616 00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:27,960 about, but then the reality is someone can just like slap you 617 00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:29,680 in the face, right? So like, we know it's possible 618 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:33,240 to touch each other and to move across a room and to exist in 619 00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:34,960 the universe. And so I think some of the 620 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:37,560 arguments I think are too abstract to be useful. 621 00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,480 Frankly, I'd say that that's one critique, but the, but that 622 00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:42,040 doesn't address the, the meat of their question. 623 00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:44,480 I think that's that's more of a technical critique of a 624 00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,000 philosophical argument to get the heart of the matter, though, 625 00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:50,760 you know, it's an important question like, are humans doing 626 00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:53,280 good in the universe? Are we the best iteration of 627 00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:56,880 life that could or should exist to be here? 628 00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:01,520 Like is in would the universe be better off if we just went away, 629 00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,200 either because something better might come along or that you 630 00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:06,520 just nothing would be better? It's also those are both 631 00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:09,080 variations of that same question and a conclusion. 632 00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:13,400 But I think it is a it's a Descartes kind of response 633 00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,720 where, you know, I think therefore I am or cogito or go 634 00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,600 soon, you know, just being able to ask that question, you know, 635 00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:24,240 is is itself a way to show value that they like for that value to 636 00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:26,240 have question, you have to exist in the 1st place. 637 00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:29,400 And so we don't know what value would look like in the absence 638 00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:31,320 of existence because no one would exist. 639 00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,560 So I would argue that actually the ability to exist and ask 640 00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,880 that question is better than non existence because that question 641 00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,080 only has value because someone can ask it, right. 642 00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:43,160 So if everything and everyone was dead, then by definition 643 00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,640 there'd be no values, right? So I think having some ability 644 00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:49,840 to have value, even a value system, even if your value today 645 00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:54,200 is that we are not good, That doesn't mean it will be forever 646 00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:55,480 though. But like you can't have any 647 00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,120 value if everyone's dead. So I think the critique of it 648 00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:00,600 would be in the substance would be that that may be true, that 649 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:03,520 what if like you could make a number of metrics, any number of 650 00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,080 ways and say we've done all the math and it looks like humans 651 00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:08,120 are causing suffering or there's problems. 652 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,440 There's all these issues, but that presumes that it will 653 00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:14,240 always stay this way, which we know is not at all true based on 654 00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:16,720 just, you know, knowledge of history, of human history that, 655 00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:19,800 you know, slavery is mostly eradicated in the world, but 656 00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:22,640 used to be predominant in the world and poverty used to be 657 00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:24,400 awful. Infant mortality literacy was 658 00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:26,960 though there were all these issues where humanity 659 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:29,720 quantifiably was much worse than it is today. 660 00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:33,360 And and it's no one can really argue any. 661 00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,480 And I think, you know, just pick any, almost any metric and it's 662 00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:38,520 gotten, no, it's gotten a little bit, It hasn't always gotten 663 00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:40,320 good in the past few years. It's starting to dip back down 664 00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,560 again on some of these metrics. But at least relative to say, 665 00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:47,080 3000 years ago, it's wildly better than than it ever used to 666 00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:48,360 be. And so that indicates that it's 667 00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:50,840 possible to change that. Even if you could say, well, 668 00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,400 I've done the math and I still think it's not like, yeah, it's 669 00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:56,000 better than 3000 years ago, but I still think humans are an 670 00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,280 awful existence. I would point to just the 671 00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:02,680 empiricism of the past that we can and do get better, and I 672 00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,200 think we can reach a point that is better, that is, you know, a 673 00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,040 grander existence that is happier or whichever metric 674 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:09,159 they'd want to use that's better. 675 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:12,120 I really like that idea. It's just will stick with me the 676 00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:17,520 idea that we will most likely improve and and maybe be helped 677 00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:20,960 by our technology. My last episode I was talking 678 00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,840 with an astronomer at Danco, and he's hopeful that AI might be 679 00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:30,440 able to help us solve issues that are too complicated for us, 680 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:36,520 like solving famines or genocide or, you know, or large scale 681 00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,719 complex things that we just can't. 682 00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:41,159 We don't have the computational power, and we can't even do it 683 00:34:41,159 --> 00:34:43,600 with institutions like. Maybe that'll help us get 684 00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:44,639 better. It could. 685 00:34:44,639 --> 00:34:48,159 I mean, I even ascribed AI as being candidate for what can be 686 00:34:48,159 --> 00:34:51,159 called life in the universe and they made me better than I'll 687 00:34:51,159 --> 00:34:52,719 said many things. And I think that's fine. 688 00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,239 I'm also not afraid of the AI, you know, coming and telling us 689 00:34:56,239 --> 00:34:58,560 all because I think it's wonderful for a movie script. 690 00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,960 But a good analogy, I think is when we look at say, you know, 691 00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,240 cockroaches that are annoying. If they're in your house and 692 00:35:04,240 --> 00:35:06,520 you're in your way, you might kill them, but you don't think, 693 00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:09,560 oh, The thing is annoying me, I will go and kill all cockroaches 694 00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:12,320 in the world because it's energetically expensive. 695 00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:16,000 It's unnecessary and just doesn't make that much sense if 696 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,520 you're just trying to you know, if good management of resources 697 00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:21,240 because they're not a threat, right. 698 00:35:21,240 --> 00:35:23,520 So if we're if something is really a super intelligence, it 699 00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:25,880 can beat us and be better than us at everything. 700 00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,080 By definition, we're not a threat at that point. 701 00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:29,920 So why would it care? So so I'm not too worried about 702 00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,720 a super intelligence, but I agree AI could help in general. 703 00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:35,600 It could be a buddy it I don't think it'll be too threatening. 704 00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,600 And yeah, it's this time is the big question. 705 00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:41,440 I think you, you, if you think that, you know, humans innately 706 00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:46,000 have no capacity to ever be of value to the universe, you know, 707 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,240 then you're just a misinterpret, almost a nihilist at that point. 708 00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:50,320 So that it's hard to get a nihilist to see value in 709 00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,440 anything. So which makes it a bit self 710 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:55,120 defeating. So I, I think you've got to give 711 00:35:55,120 --> 00:35:56,840 us a chance. And you could argue, I don't 712 00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:58,480 want to give humans a chance. I think we're doomed. 713 00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:01,080 We could have that discussion, but I, I think history shows 714 00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,120 otherwise. And it's worth saying maybe 715 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:05,680 we'll, we've seemed to have gotten better and maybe we'll 716 00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:07,120 keep getting better, right? I would argue. 717 00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:13,280 If we want to reach some of the exoplanets that we've identified 718 00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:17,160 habitable ones with conditions that might be good enough for 719 00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,040 our species. We'll have to. 720 00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,200 Overcome enormous challenges, which you outlined in the book 721 00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:27,400 and you've talked about here already, to radiation dust, but 722 00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:29,880 also we'll need propulsion technology. 723 00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,080 They'll be cosmic debris. The psychological stress of 724 00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:36,520 confined living. So many sci-fi movies just 725 00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:40,400 showing colonies tearing themselves apart because 726 00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,040 everyone's stressed and fighting for resources and you just pick 727 00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:46,640 your political, economic conflict. 728 00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:48,400 We'll have to figure those things out. 729 00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:50,400 But there's also. And like The Expanse, The 730 00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:53,080 Expanse is a great, you know, we're, it's amazing technology 731 00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:55,760 and we're we've, you know, we're all over the solar system and 732 00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:59,320 amazing tools, but still petty and backstabbing and mean and 733 00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:01,640 jealous and vicious and, you know, awful to each other. 734 00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,000 So yeah, that series in those books we're really kind of 735 00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:07,160 depressing to read because you have this hope that Oh well, 736 00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:10,000 we'll be amazing and great creatures once we've reached 737 00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:12,640 this interplanetary exploration phase. 738 00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,760 But maybe not, might just be still mean to each other. 739 00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,080 It's possible. It will probably bring our 740 00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:24,040 problems with us and we'll we'll still have envy, greed, lust. 741 00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:26,680 Seven deadly sins, yeah. Yeah, they'll come with us. 742 00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:29,240 Maybe we'll get better, but we'll see. 743 00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:31,760 Actually, I'm just remembering a movie. 744 00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:36,120 I can't remember the title, but everybody, all the, the people 745 00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:40,280 on the spaceship took a, took a drug of some kind to kind of 746 00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:43,240 dull their emotions. And that that's like a 747 00:37:43,240 --> 00:37:47,800 pharmacological intervention to get people to kind of maybe if 748 00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,600 you don't feel, maybe if you dull one's mood, that can help 749 00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:53,680 us not be in conflict with each other. 750 00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:54,560 Yep. Yep, Yep. 751 00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:57,720 It could be a way to yeah, just make it so people are a bit more 752 00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:00,120 palatable. Or there's even some discussion 753 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:02,920 in my more recent book I talk about, you know, what, if you 754 00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:04,720 get genetic engineering gone crazy and you're like, we're 755 00:38:04,720 --> 00:38:07,560 going to make it so you have the perfect genome for the job and, 756 00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:09,920 and decrease violence tendencies. 757 00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:12,320 Or, you know, because you get a lot of Ethiopian futures of 758 00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:14,720 genome engineering, which I don't think will happen, but you 759 00:38:14,720 --> 00:38:16,600 know, it gets like the movie Galica potentially. 760 00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:19,840 So there's also ways you could imagine taking away people's 761 00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,800 rights because you're you're too focused on the genetics of it, 762 00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:24,920 which is not perfect, of course, as a science right now. 763 00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:27,800 So it's hard to be that predictive and prescriptive 764 00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,840 towards what people with their GM is relative to what they're 765 00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:32,400 going to do. How do you think? 766 00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:37,280 One of the barriers to space travel I wanted to get your take 767 00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:41,840 on is dealing with like just a long term space travel, like the 768 00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:44,600 distances we'll have to cover and we'll have to probably 769 00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:46,200 hibernate. We'll have to go into some sort 770 00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:49,080 of sleep. You know, it's so many movies 771 00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:54,320 from Alien to Interstellar, all like very cool depictions, takes 772 00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:56,680 on how that could happen. How do you think realistically, 773 00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:58,760 scientifically, we could pull that off well? 774 00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,040 We know, I guess we, I have some hopes because a little bit about 775 00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:04,080 in the book and I actually just came from the applied Physiology 776 00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:07,760 lab that's in, in Pittsburgh yesterday where Kate Frisinger 777 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:11,120 and Efsheem Baheshti and others are working on ways to mimic 778 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:13,600 hibernation that we see in bears because bears are extraordinary. 779 00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,240 They have, they're really, you know, really decrease insulin 780 00:39:16,240 --> 00:39:17,920 levels. Their blood becomes as thick as 781 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:20,560 BBQ sauce. And they they don't go to the 782 00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:23,000 bathroom either. And it's extraordinary, right? 783 00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:26,280 So they can we know in a mammalian system, it's possible 784 00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:29,640 to do this for, you know, at least months on end and to have 785 00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:31,760 this exquisite level of regulation. 786 00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,880 It's not impossible. So that, that, that there means 787 00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,080 that there's a possible path forward. 788 00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:39,680 Now, we don't know how to do it yet, of course, but there's, you 789 00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,160 know, a lot of groups looking at this and, and even the few 790 00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:46,920 companies looking at ways to try and, you know, assimilate this. 791 00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,160 Because you could also imagine if you can induce hibernation, 792 00:39:49,160 --> 00:39:50,680 that could help you if you have a trauma victim. 793 00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:54,320 So you could pause sort of the damage of the body before on the 794 00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,160 way to a hospital. So there's other medical 795 00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,080 applications that are that are relevant and very interesting to 796 00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:00,680 the same question. Yeah. 797 00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,960 So if we could figure out how bears do it, yeah, we might be 798 00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:06,520 able to to do it in US as well. Yeah. 799 00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:08,920 Yeah, exactly. But hopefully we don't have to 800 00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:09,680 be that hairy. I don't know. 801 00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:11,440 Maybe we'd be that hairy. Maybe. 802 00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:13,720 It might be just kind of something we'll have to accept, 803 00:40:13,720 --> 00:40:17,240 you know, just excess hair in order to be able to, you know, 804 00:40:17,240 --> 00:40:18,560 not go to the bathroom for nine months. 805 00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:24,680 So if we would say we survive space travel, we get to a new 806 00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:29,000 system and we reach another planet, its conditions are 807 00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:33,400 different than Earths. How realistic is it that the 808 00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:36,320 idea of engineering the planet itself to make it more 809 00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:39,400 habitable? Like how could be change of a 810 00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:44,200 planet in terms of UV, in terms of the resources we'll need? 811 00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:46,560 You've talked a little bit about that in the book. 812 00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:48,360 It's actually changing the new home. 813 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:52,560 Yeah, that match what we need, which would be, you know, in 814 00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:56,080 that sense you'd need a, well, terraforming plan, which is a 815 00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,960 many generational plan. You'd need basically, you know, 816 00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,280 centuries, if not millennia to accomplish a feat of a real 817 00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:05,440 terraforming, but not impossible either. 818 00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,560 The example you can quickly point to, and I do in the book 819 00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,040 of it, is you look at the ozone hole in the ozone layer. 820 00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,120 We recognize as a global community a problem that we 821 00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,800 wanted to address. We did so and got rid of 822 00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:20,920 chlorofluorocarbons, fixed it, did it, you know, already 823 00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,640 successfully completed one geoengineering project on Earth 824 00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:26,560 in a matter of a few decades, which actually even less, which 825 00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:28,480 was pretty impressive. So we know it's possible. 826 00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,680 The challenge is can you get as widespread agreement, you know, 827 00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:34,720 CO2 levels we're trying to regulate now and that's very 828 00:41:34,720 --> 00:41:37,360 difficult. But as long as there's a view 829 00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:41,120 and a sense of duty again towards a multi generational 830 00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:43,440 stewardship of a planet, it's definitely possible. 831 00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:46,200 But but it's also, you know, the closest thing we have for an 832 00:41:46,240 --> 00:41:50,080 analogy would be in medieval Europe where people would it 833 00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:53,600 would take 15 or 20 generations of people working on a cathedral 834 00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:55,000 to build it. I know that was an 835 00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,920 intergenerational plan, but they can, you know, see it every day 836 00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,360 and work on it and have the sense of pride and and local 837 00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,080 response. But engineering atmosphere would 838 00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,040 probably take much longer and probably be much less gratifying 839 00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,640 in the short term. It reminds me of a question I 840 00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:13,120 had later. It's interesting on multi 841 00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,120 generational project and you know, building a cathedral. 842 00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:22,080 How is it that you keep individual generations motivated 843 00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:26,120 to work on a project that will finish after they pass? 844 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:31,480 Because if you're working on a 500 year plan or longer, you'll 845 00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:36,200 have people working on something that will basically benefit 846 00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:39,280 generations, many, many generations down the line. 847 00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:43,800 I think it requires a real shift of perspective for everyone, 848 00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:46,760 really. Ideally where you look at what 849 00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:48,640 can you do for people you'll never meet and how do you get 850 00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:51,760 them to care. Yeah, the closest iteration I've 851 00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,120 seen of that in modern day is Boy Scouts. 852 00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:56,840 And when you go camping, there's an old adage that you always 853 00:42:56,840 --> 00:42:58,680 leave the campsite better than you found it. 854 00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,840 And so the simplest thing is if there were five sticks of wood, 855 00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:04,680 by the fire pit way, when you use the fire and you leave the 856 00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:06,720 next day, make it so that there's six there so that you 857 00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:09,680 leave it at least as good, if not better than how you found a 858 00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:11,120 campsite. You know, if it's a little, if 859 00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:12,480 there was garbage, you get rid of the garbage. 860 00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:13,720 You know, things, small things like that. 861 00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:17,360 But even though it can sometimes be for very small degrees of 862 00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,400 change, it means there's continual improvement at a spot 863 00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:22,600 that benefits people you never meet. 864 00:43:23,240 --> 00:43:26,360 It means that you know the there's always progress and 865 00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,640 there, there is no gratification other than just the knowledge 866 00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,880 that someday that would be you. And so I think with just enough 867 00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:36,680 self reflection, you'll think, oh, that I exist in the world 868 00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:38,760 with certain benefits because someone else did something for 869 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:41,080 me that I I'll never meet them and never be able to thank them. 870 00:43:41,720 --> 00:43:43,480 And wouldn't it be nice to pay it forward? 871 00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,240 But they how do we generate that instinct to pay it forward? 872 00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,400 It's hard because the cathedrals, it was for a deity. 873 00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:50,880 It was like they were doing it for good works. 874 00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:51,880 They were hoping to get into heaven. 875 00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,080 They had a clear motivation. Some of them just did it because 876 00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,720 they liked beautiful things. Some of them did it as a job. 877 00:43:56,720 --> 00:43:59,200 You know, they they were building things for a variety of 878 00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:01,320 reasons that were either short or very long term. 879 00:44:01,720 --> 00:44:04,120 But we won't have that in the case of probably a terraforming 880 00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:07,120 you, you would do it just for the sake of of good of humanity, 881 00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,000 but we would not likely see that readily. 882 00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,280 So we'd have to really have a sea change of how do people view 883 00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,560 their place in the world and in in the world's they'll never 884 00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:18,520 meet. And so I talk a lot about duty 885 00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:22,000 towards species and duty towards life itself is my proposed 886 00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,400 method in the book of how do we get if everyone had the sense of 887 00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,520 duty towards life and towards the humans and towards all of 888 00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:32,400 life itself, I think that would help engender such activity. 889 00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:37,320 But without either a deity or a sense of duty or, you know, 890 00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:39,440 sense that I think close gratification. 891 00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,720 Those are you want to have some, at least all one of those, if 892 00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:44,720 not all those on some level to get to get people to be 893 00:44:44,720 --> 00:44:47,640 motivated. Yeah, I wonder if the vision, if 894 00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:50,680 the vision becomes more concrete, like we identify a 895 00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:54,080 habitable planet and it becomes like a planetary. 896 00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:55,360 Like a goal. Yeah. 897 00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:58,760 And we that would sort of bring us together almost like the moon 898 00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,120 missions, yeah. That's a great point. 899 00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:03,080 And that's, I think, very much, yeah. 900 00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:04,720 So because of the moon, obviously it's visible. 901 00:45:04,720 --> 00:45:06,800 You can see it in the night sky. You can see let's go there. 902 00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:09,600 And if we had enough in the media, we've zoomed in, say, 903 00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:12,200 with the new telescope, and we can see this looks like it's a 904 00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:13,600 habitable planet. We want to go there. 905 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,200 We can see exactly where it is. We know what we want to do. 906 00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:19,640 I think that could be an example where people they, they feel 907 00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,600 like they can see something and they know there's a goal. 908 00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,240 And yet, you know, let's say it's a 5000 year goal. 909 00:45:26,240 --> 00:45:29,080 Now we've never had one, but we could have one, right? 910 00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:31,560 So I think people, part of it was you have to give people 911 00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,840 credit, You know, that were in the 1600s, average life 912 00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:37,040 expectancy was in the in the mid 20s, right? 913 00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:40,320 So maybe you know, to be 30, but it's hard to imagine something 914 00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:43,200 taking centuries when you barely live to be two decades, you 915 00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:45,960 know. So it, it, it would be, I think 916 00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:48,560 that's helped a bit that just people have a sense of I can 917 00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,200 have AI can have a career that's 50 years, or I can have three 918 00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:54,320 careers that are each 20 years, or I can have this people's view 919 00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:58,360 of, of time has gotten, I think longer or more appreciative of 920 00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:00,720 longer time frames and that's helped. 921 00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:07,320 I'm always curious how scientists are inspired by 922 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:12,520 science fiction and you know, which books are movies help 923 00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:15,480 shape their imagination. I always like to ask a 924 00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:19,760 scientist, you know, what they read or or watched it and as 925 00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:22,360 they were growing up and what made a big impression on them. 926 00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,320 And feel free to answer however you'd like. 927 00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:28,120 But I did see that I think in the acknowledgements you said 928 00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:32,480 your aunt and uncle gave you Isaac Asma's foundation series 929 00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:35,240 on your 15th birthday. So what influence did that book, 930 00:46:35,240 --> 00:46:37,800 and maybe other sci-fi in general, have on you being a 931 00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:39,560 scientist? That was a big one. 932 00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,480 Just in the sense of several ways. 933 00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:44,360 There's a bit of a humanism that was in there. 934 00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:46,400 And I'd never heard the word humanist. 935 00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:49,000 Asthma of was a humanist. I didn't even know what that 936 00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:49,920 was. And what is it? 937 00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,720 Just someone who believes in the value of humans and that being 938 00:46:53,720 --> 00:46:57,240 just a humanist is, you know, often focused on peace and 939 00:46:57,240 --> 00:47:00,120 preserving humanity and appreciating humanity. 940 00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:03,000 Just being a humanist as as a thing you could be. 941 00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,080 I didn't even know that was a thing that you can see the value 942 00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,200 of humans. So I, I, you know, that humans 943 00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:12,440 make poetry and art and music and science and appreciate and 944 00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:15,760 have, you know, good, you know, have, you know, joys and sadness 945 00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,520 and have, you know, this rich diversity and tapestry of 946 00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,080 emotions and ambitions and dreams and inventions and all 947 00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,520 these things that come from being human is something you 948 00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:25,560 appreciate and you want to preserve, which I didn't know 949 00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,240 was a thing you could be. But Asimov was very much a 950 00:47:28,240 --> 00:47:31,120 humanist and wrote about this and talked a lot about it. 951 00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:34,560 And then also this, the science in the books that he, you know, 952 00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:39,040 imagined with such ease, the this idea of an intergalactic 953 00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:43,400 empire and people having many, many planets feed one planet, 954 00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:46,600 the capital in the book or people traveling across the 955 00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,600 Galaxy. And it seems so effortless in 956 00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:53,240 the book that I, I was taken with that, that vision of what 957 00:47:53,240 --> 00:47:56,720 could the future be for humanity and wanted to help make that 958 00:47:56,720 --> 00:47:59,000 possible. And that the senses of duty and 959 00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,520 genetics came later. But that I think that that sense 960 00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:06,240 of the awe of the Galaxy, the ease of travel, the the beauty 961 00:48:06,240 --> 00:48:08,360 of what's ahead, what was really captivating. 962 00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,760 And so that was one good book. Kim Stanley Robinson's books 963 00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,120 were really good book Red Mars, Green bars Mars, Blue Mars and 964 00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:18,920 other books he's written. And I'd say, you know, so the 965 00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,160 Expanse series, Star Trek, of course, Star Wars, interesting 966 00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:25,080 like sci-fi. So always enjoyable, of course, 967 00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,000 to, to when you look up at the night sky to imagine what if I 968 00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:29,920 could be up there? And I think many people have 969 00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:31,600 done that for thousands of years. 970 00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:36,320 We met at the Boston space. Week, I think it was. 971 00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,320 At the like space career fair and you were at the MIT press 972 00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,200 table and that's how we how we met. 973 00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,120 And I got your book. And one of the things I was very 974 00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:53,480 interested in that week was hearing scientists and 975 00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:57,720 astronomers and, and the like, talk about life elsewhere. 976 00:48:58,240 --> 00:49:03,040 And, you know, thinking about the Drake equation and how like 977 00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:10,200 mathematically life must exist. And I wanted to ask you what you 978 00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:15,160 think about the possibility for life elsewhere and also like 979 00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:21,040 what form you think it may be in Could be like microbial or I 980 00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:23,120 think it might be fun to like speculate as well. 981 00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,360 Like maybe it's something if it's a life form, we can't even 982 00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:29,600 imagine because the conditions of which it arose are so 983 00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:32,040 different from Mars. So I'm wondering, do you think 984 00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:35,920 life exists elsewhere, and if so, in what form? 985 00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:40,840 I think it, you know, we don't know, of course. 986 00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:42,760 So by empiricism the answer's no. 987 00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:45,680 But what do I believe and what do I hope or even think? 988 00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:51,200 The conditions for life, as far as we know it are, seem to be 989 00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:53,400 relatively common. Almost every star probably has 990 00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:56,000 at least several planets. There seems to be a lot of those 991 00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:59,240 planets that are, you know, inhabitable zones, but at least 992 00:49:59,240 --> 00:50:02,360 of the ones we've discovered so far, maybe 1010 percent, 5%, you 993 00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:04,520 know, a good number. And if there's billions and 994 00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:07,800 billions of of stars, there's trillions and then each one of 995 00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,960 them has planets and it's some, you know, good percent of the 996 00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:11,480 habitable zones. So you could update the direct 997 00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:15,720 equation to indicate that I think there's probably microbial 998 00:50:15,720 --> 00:50:19,040 life somewhere in the universe, not that we know of, but just 999 00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:23,320 on, on the odds it, it seems like raw materials are there in 1000 00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:25,720 enough places in the universe. Stars have been around long 1001 00:50:25,720 --> 00:50:29,440 enough to make life, you know, And so I think microbial life 1002 00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:31,640 very likely. But if you look on our own 1003 00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:34,120 planet, there was microbial life several billion years ago, but 1004 00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:37,520 it took you billions of years to reach a stage of complexity that 1005 00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:41,400 lets us have this conversation. And so you might be many plans 1006 00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:44,000 for life just got going 1 billion years ago, right? 1007 00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:46,280 And it's still in the early stages of building complexity. 1008 00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:51,160 So I would say, you know, to our knowledge complex life is an 1009 00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:54,280 only one planet in the whole universe is here so far in 1010 00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:56,600 microbial life. I think probably, but we don't 1011 00:50:56,600 --> 00:51:00,320 know, of course, but I, I, I just think it's also early in 1012 00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:02,160 the universe. Yeah, it's only been here 13 1013 00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:04,400 point, you know, 8 billion years, 13.7. 1014 00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,520 And you know, a lot of stars took a few billion years to get 1015 00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,000 formed. There was a time period there 1016 00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:11,840 weren't enough heavy elements. So we've only had probably a 1017 00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:16,560 good so 9 or 10 billion years of, of a, of a, you know, a 1018 00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:20,520 runway to start to build life. And so we have another, you 1019 00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:22,880 know, several hundreds of billions or trillions ahead of 1020 00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:23,960 us, right? So I think we've got a lot more 1021 00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,280 time now. Some of what some point we were 1022 00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:29,880 in our stars, though actually one weirdly depressing fact or 1023 00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,840 just depressing fact of me at least, is the majority of stars 1024 00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,480 that ever will form in the universe have probably already 1025 00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:38,160 formed. So we're probably past the 50% 1026 00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:42,080 mark of all the stars that ever will exist in the, in the future 1027 00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:44,240 of the universe, history and future, at least of this 1028 00:51:44,240 --> 00:51:46,680 universe. So that means we, we don't have, 1029 00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:49,040 you know, hundreds of billions of years to keep making new 1030 00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:50,440 stars. The universe is expanding. 1031 00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,200 And that might mean we're, we only have another good 10 to 20 1032 00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:56,880 billion years where we really get good shots at making life. 1033 00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:58,880 You could argue so. Unless we figure out a way to 1034 00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:01,720 maybe engineer exactly the birth of stars, yeah. 1035 00:52:01,720 --> 00:52:04,080 Different kinds of nuclear bases, different structures of 1036 00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:04,960 matter. Exactly. 1037 00:52:04,960 --> 00:52:07,000 Yeah. That would then really open it 1038 00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,440 up so that life is starting to make life itself. 1039 00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,920 Speaking of that, I was curious, you know, you're obviously a 1040 00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:16,960 very strong believer in engineering solutions. 1041 00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:20,440 I'm wondering, is there an engineering challenge you think 1042 00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:23,640 might be unsolvable? And one that comes to mind is 1043 00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:28,640 potentially like reversing aging or stopping death altogether. 1044 00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:31,600 So radical life extension comes to mind. 1045 00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:34,760 You know, if we're thinking about being able to hibernate 1046 00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:40,240 and resist radiation, I wonder what can we do on life 1047 00:52:40,240 --> 00:52:42,200 extension. We can do so that's where I 1048 00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:44,720 think some of these really aggressive genome and epigenome 1049 00:52:44,720 --> 00:52:47,600 engineering tools could be deployed to get you people to 1050 00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:52,800 live to be 100 to 30140150I even think it's likely they will for 1051 00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,800 sure be needed to do to get there. 1052 00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,000 Because you know, if you look at the maximum life age for humans, 1053 00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,760 it's not moved really at all in decades. 1054 00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:02,840 Even though the average has gone up, we're still are hitting a 1055 00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:04,440 wall. And so I think to get past that 1056 00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,200 point, you can think about, you know, reprogram chromatin and 1057 00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:10,600 epigenetics in cells, you know, maybe some more aggressive 1058 00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:13,280 cellular therapies, but I, but we haven't tried a lot of them 1059 00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:14,840 yet. But I, I think they maybe needed 1060 00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:17,840 to get to the stage where people want to live to be say 200 1061 00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:19,520 years. I'm personally fine. 1062 00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,400 And for my 500 year plan, I'll be dead for the vast majority of 1063 00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:23,760 that plan. That was always the plan. 1064 00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:27,320 So it's, it's OK to, you know, know you're going to die, not 1065 00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:29,240 fear you're going to die. And if I happen to be wrong in 1066 00:53:29,240 --> 00:53:32,000 30 years, they find some amazing way to keep me alive. 1067 00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:33,720 Great. But I'm going to plan with what 1068 00:53:33,720 --> 00:53:38,000 is the very likely results from what we know so far. 1069 00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:41,960 In your lifetime, in that approximately 80 years or so 1070 00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:46,440 that we have, where do you hope humanity will will be? 1071 00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:51,960 And then if you want looking 100 or even 500 years out, if all 1072 00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:54,600 goes to plan, what does the human future? 1073 00:53:54,800 --> 00:53:56,440 Look like to you? Yeah. 1074 00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,320 I think I would love to reach a stage where when we talked about 1075 00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:00,840 earlier that there is people have a sense of 1076 00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:03,960 intergenerational duty and how do we really embed that into 1077 00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:06,920 culture or society, into people's, you know, I think 1078 00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,440 day-to-day operations. Now to get there, I think you 1079 00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:12,000 have to solve a lot of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for example, 1080 00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:16,280 like food, water, shelter, a lot of sociological stability, which 1081 00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:18,680 many people do not have. Billions of people do not have, 1082 00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:19,800 you know, enough to eat enough food. 1083 00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:22,760 So we have the luxury of having the ability to have this 1084 00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:26,200 conversation in hypotheticals and dream of a future because we 1085 00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:27,920 don't have to worry where our next meal is going to come from. 1086 00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,600 So I think solving some of those short term problems is still on 1087 00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,680 top of the list, but eventually we'd have people really have a 1088 00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:36,520 sense of ownership and duty between generations and to each 1089 00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:39,640 other and to help each other, which which we don't, you know, 1090 00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:43,760 have yet embedded in many cultures or really certainly not 1091 00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:45,960 globally. So I think it's, I'd love to see 1092 00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:49,360 that and I'd love to see, you know, more of the trials of 1093 00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:53,240 these kinds of modifications in human systems where we're, we're 1094 00:54:53,240 --> 00:54:56,160 doing a lot of CRISPR therapies now for treating diseases, which 1095 00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,680 is extraordinary, but perfecting that technology, making it so 1096 00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:03,760 genome modification and genome synthesis is, is safe, effective 1097 00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:07,760 and routine is, is a world that we're getting a glimpse into, 1098 00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:09,520 But I would love to see it become ubiquitous. 1099 00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:11,840 And, you know, we, we don't think anything now about using 1100 00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:14,560 electricity, which is an awesome force of the universe. 1101 00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,240 We use it everywhere all the time and, and don't think twice 1102 00:55:17,240 --> 00:55:19,480 about it. So at some point, could genomics 1103 00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,440 and genetic modifications and, and optimization become as 1104 00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:23,960 ubiquitous? So you've got, you know, your 1105 00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,800 cyanobacteria processing, your waste in your house, making your 1106 00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:29,440 food, you're protected from radiation. 1107 00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:31,480 If you get too much damage, you do a quick burst of an 1108 00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:33,760 epigenetic modification. And you can imagine futures like 1109 00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:35,440 that. That would be, you know, I think 1110 00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:38,200 wondrous and safe and people would live longer, healthier 1111 00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:39,800 lives and, and have plenty to eat. 1112 00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:43,040 So, you know, I'm a technologist and a biologist, of course, I 1113 00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:47,640 like biotechnology as one source of salvation, if you will. 1114 00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:50,360 But it could come from robotics, AI, other tools. 1115 00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:52,800 There's definitely other technologies that could help us 1116 00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:55,120 and even just social constructs that could help us. 1117 00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:57,120 So that's the future I'd love to see. 1118 00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:01,200 Well, we'll leave it at that. You know, it was a pleasure 1119 00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:02,760 meeting you at Space Week, really. 1120 00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:06,040 Thanks so much for coming on and talking about your book, and I 1121 00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:06,760 hope we stay in touch. Yeah. 1122 00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:09,200 Definitely, It was really great to meet you there and thanks for 1123 00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:11,160 this podcast. You got a lot of great material 1124 00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:13,400 out there online. So very happy and honored to 1125 00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:15,360 contribute to it. And I look forward to staying in 1126 00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:16,840 touch. And if you're ever in New York 1127 00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:19,400 City, let me know. I can swing on by the lab. 1128 00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:21,040 We'll do it. Thank you. 1129 00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:23,800 Thanks. Thanks for listening to this 1130 00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:25,920 episode of Curiously. I hope you enjoyed my 1131 00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:28,120 conversation with Christopher E Mason. 1132 00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:31,400 If this episode challenged you or helped expand your 1133 00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:34,360 perspective or satisfy your curiosity about the world, 1134 00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:37,560 please consider sharing it with your friends and family and use 1135 00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:39,000 it to have a conversation of your own. 1136 00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:41,640 If you want to support Curiously, please consider 1137 00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:44,280 leaving a review. They encourage people to listen 1138 00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,720 and help attract great guests. Thanks again for listening, and 1139 00:56:47,720 --> 00:56:50,280 stay tuned for more conversations with people I meet 1140 00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:50,800 along the way.