Latest / Armstrong & Getty One More Thing / Come See the Cavemanboy!
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Come see the caveman.
- 0:02Speaker 2: Boy.
- 0:03Speaker 1: This sucks. It's one more thing I'm.
- 0:10Speaker 2: In the What in the world was this one man
- 0:12Speaker 2: play you unleashed.
- 0:13Speaker 1: For the team, a somewhat lighthearted portrayal of what it
- 0:18Speaker 1: would be like if scientists actually produced a Neanderthal in
- 0:25Speaker 1: the modern world. There are so many scientific and ethical
- 0:29Speaker 1: questions connected to this, but one of them would be
- 0:32Speaker 1: what kind of life would that being have?
- 0:35Speaker 2: Can I make it do my laundry and stuff like that?
- 0:38Speaker 1: Oh my god, this sucks again, So we'll get there.
- 0:47Speaker 1: We mentioned this during the Ang Show, the radio show,
- 0:52Speaker 1: but didn't have time to deal with all of it.
- 0:54Speaker 1: This is probably not gonna happen. The same crack pots
- 0:57Speaker 1: who claim to clone a dire wolf and a wooly
- 1:01Speaker 1: mammoth but just produced like a slightly hairier elephant that
- 1:04Speaker 1: was slightly.
- 1:05Speaker 2: Rt the dire wolf in particular. That was a giant
- 1:09Speaker 2: news story that day.
- 1:11Speaker 1: Everybody reported that, Yeah, yeah, But so these people, in
- 1:15Speaker 1: a desperate attempt for more more publicity, are talking about
- 1:19Speaker 1: cloning or not cloning, but producing a Neanderthal. If you
- 1:25Speaker 1: are not familiar with the history of pre human humans
- 1:28Speaker 1: and human human humans during that period, Neanderthals were one
- 1:32Speaker 1: of several very closely related sorts of human beings on Earth,
- 1:39Speaker 1: and indeed, modern people these days share up to have
- 1:43Speaker 1: four percent of their DNA with Neanderthals. I have mentioned
- 1:46Speaker 1: that I Joe Getty at one point was in the
- 1:49Speaker 1: ninety ninth percentile of modern people in terms of how
- 1:53Speaker 1: much Neanderthal DNA I have, which explains my fits of
- 1:58Speaker 1: rage and my enormous head really doesn't. As far as
- 2:01Speaker 1: we knew, Neanderthals were smart as smart as or smarter
- 2:04Speaker 1: than Homo sapiens back in the day.
- 2:06Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, And as.
- 2:08Speaker 1: We mentioned, the perception that Neanderthals were just stupid lunkens
- 2:11Speaker 1: was one racist scientist a brit right in the eighteen hundreds.
- 2:15Speaker 2: Correct, But yeah, Neanderthals were every bit as smart as
- 2:18Speaker 2: Homo sapiens, if not smarter, And it could be a
- 2:21Speaker 2: disease that for whatever reason genetically they couldn't and wipe
- 2:25Speaker 2: them out and has nothing to do with anything else
- 2:28Speaker 2: or who knows.
- 2:29Speaker 1: What right, and so now they're making noises. The head guy,
- 2:34Speaker 1: who was a Harvard researcher a decade ago, he said
- 2:38Speaker 1: he was confident in Neanderthal resurrection was a near term possibility.
- 2:42Speaker 1: Others have told Live science dot Com that doing so
- 2:46Speaker 1: is currently an insurmountably difficult task. But even if we
- 2:50Speaker 1: could bring them back, there are many reasons we shouldn't,
- 2:53Speaker 1: they argue. Here's one guy from the University of Kansas said,
- 2:56Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's a woman. I've misgendered her now twice
- 3:00Speaker 1: while talking about her. That is one of the most
- 3:02Speaker 1: unethical things I can possibly think of to attempt.
- 3:05Speaker 2: Ethical stop unethical.
- 3:07Speaker 1: So not.
- 3:09Speaker 2: A practically bad idea, but unethical. Why is it not ethical? Well, first,
- 3:16Speaker 2: the technical stuff. You can't just put a Neanderthal genome
- 3:20Speaker 2: in a human egg.
- 3:21Speaker 1: It just wouldn't work. But one issue with the process
- 3:26Speaker 1: is potential immune system incompatibility. And just you know, I'm
- 3:30Speaker 1: going to jump to the end here. Our point is
- 3:32Speaker 1: not discussing whether they're going to unleash Neanderthals in the world.
- 3:35Speaker 1: If you have any interest in science, A lot of
- 3:37Speaker 1: this stuff is just interesting on its own. So one
- 3:42Speaker 1: issue is potential immune system incompatibility, which often dooms cross
- 3:47Speaker 1: species pregnancies as the host uterus rejects the fetus.
- 3:51Speaker 2: I think I'm seeing the unethical part coming produce a
- 3:56Speaker 2: like deformed human or somebody an actual human being neanderthalo's
- 4:03Speaker 2: opposed to Homo sapien, but a human being that dies
- 4:08Speaker 2: very early.
- 4:09Speaker 1: Right. Oh yeah, yeah, all these experiments have that. Oh
- 4:12Speaker 1: that reminds me. I meant to bring this up on
- 4:14Speaker 1: the show. But China is now working on gene editing
- 4:21Speaker 1: higher IQ into kids. Oh, of course, you develop a smarter,
- 4:29Speaker 1: more hearty super soldier.
- 4:31Speaker 2: It's a race between that and AI for what's gonna
- 4:34Speaker 2: do mankind?
- 4:35Speaker 1: Maybe also maybe they team up.
- 4:37Speaker 2: You start unleashing all kinds of extraordinarily high IQ human
- 4:40Speaker 2: beings into the world. What's your experience with people with
- 4:44Speaker 2: super high IQ that they're all just reasonable, wonderful humans
- 4:47Speaker 2: that are great at everything in life.
- 4:49Speaker 1: And happy and relaxed.
- 4:51Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
- 4:52Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's still debated, by the way, and I
- 4:55Speaker 1: don't know much about this debate. I could click on
- 4:57Speaker 1: the link, but who has the time Whether modern humans
- 4:59Speaker 1: and neanderthal can be called separate species or not. Anyway,
- 5:04Speaker 1: although humans and Neanderthals did successfully interbreed in the past,
- 5:07Speaker 1: today there's at most four percent Neanderthal DNA in some
- 5:10Speaker 1: human groups, and they think it might not have been beneficial,
- 5:14Speaker 1: so it was slowly purged out of the genome through
- 5:16Speaker 1: the eons. Anyway, mention this on the show, I found
- 5:20Speaker 1: it fascinating. Experts have discovered that humans y chromosomes. That's
- 5:24Speaker 1: your you're a fellow chromosome, no matter how you identify,
- 5:28Speaker 1: because you gantens your sex. Anyway, the humans y chromosome
- 5:32Speaker 1: lacks Neanderthal DNA, and there ought to be tiny bits
- 5:37Speaker 1: at least, but it completely lacks it, which may point
- 5:40Speaker 1: to a fundamental immune system incompatibility between male Neanderthal fetuses
- 5:45Speaker 1: and the female Homo sapiens carrying them, even in the
- 5:48Speaker 1: distant past. In other words, Homo sapiens girl gets with hot,
- 5:54Speaker 1: hot Neanderthal dude like myself. If they produce a girl,
- 6:00Speaker 1: it may well survive. But there's a much much smaller
- 6:04Speaker 1: chance that a boy Neanderthal would survive. And obviously, you
- 6:10Speaker 1: know through the years, you just a birth rate that
- 6:13Speaker 1: fixed and low. Your your genetic material would die out.
- 6:17Speaker 1: And they say a genetic variant red blood cells and
- 6:19Speaker 1: Neanderthal human hybrid mothers might have resulted in high rates
- 6:22Speaker 1: of miscarriage. So those girls produced by the aforementioned for
- 6:28Speaker 1: really hot looking Homo sapien girl and the manly manly
- 6:31Speaker 1: Neanderthal might not have been able to reproduce successfully in
- 6:35Speaker 1: the same numbers.
- 6:37Speaker 2: Neanderthal has had bigger brains. Your brain takes a ton
- 6:39Speaker 2: of your energy in your body, which I didn't realize.
- 6:41Speaker 2: And they just couldn't feed themselves is one of the theories.
- 6:44Speaker 2: They just couldn't possibly get themselves enough calories every day
- 6:49Speaker 2: to feed their big brain.
- 6:50Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I read that the other day. How
- 6:53Speaker 1: much of your your energy your metabolized.
- 6:56Speaker 2: Energy or something.
- 6:57Speaker 1: It's amazing, right, yeah, yeah, that is crazy. Oh, Papa Bah.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Another root would be cloning, but in order to clone
- 7:04Speaker 1: one of her extinct cousins, you'd need a live Neanderthal cell.
- 7:07Speaker 1: That ain't happening. So with crisper technology, it is possible
- 7:12Speaker 1: to modify a human cell genome to make it more
- 7:15Speaker 1: similar to Neanderthal. And that's what this business, this guy
- 7:20Speaker 1: firm Colossals modify.
- 7:22Speaker 2: Why why other than to charge people to look at
- 7:27Speaker 2: it in a cage. I can't come up with any
- 7:29Speaker 2: reason why you would do this.
- 7:31Speaker 1: Hence my fascinating one man play. Come see the Caveman Boy.
- 7:36Speaker 1: This sucks exactly what is the kid just destined for
- 7:40Speaker 1: a sideshow, right, Otherwise, what's the point. So with Crisper,
- 7:45Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a Neanderthal, it'd be a human with
- 7:48Speaker 1: a lot of Neanderthal characteristics.
- 7:51Speaker 2: Now, maybe what we don't really know. One thing I've
- 7:55Speaker 2: learned about from reading Homo Sapiens and then my son
- 8:01Speaker 2: is superint evolution stuff for whatever reason, humans and dinosaurs
- 8:04Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff. There's almost nothing that's
- 8:06Speaker 2: agreed upon. Practically everything you hear is like a fifteen
- 8:11Speaker 2: percent of people believe this. So if you hear you
- 8:14Speaker 2: know things, and you if you hear anything about dinosaurs
- 8:17Speaker 2: or humans or anything, and you think that's not what
- 8:19Speaker 2: I heard, Yeah, it's probably not because there are lots
- 8:21Speaker 2: of different theories and are constantly changing.
- 8:24Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So they think in maybe twenty years crisper
- 8:30Speaker 1: technology you could probably maybe have a baby with holy
- 8:34Speaker 1: neanderthal genome. Yah. Wouldn't that be great? So we can want,
- 8:40Speaker 1: says this scientist. But I don't think we will do it,
- 8:42Speaker 1: even if it's plausible, for both ethical and legal reasons.
- 8:45Speaker 1: Legal de extincting, de extincting.
- 8:49Speaker 2: You can't give me a ticket. I'm not a human,
- 8:51Speaker 2: I'm not a Homo sapien. There's no last Neanderthal's driving
- 8:55Speaker 2: this fast? Is that what the legal reasons?
- 8:58Speaker 1: Wow, that would cause the Supreme Court to dig deep
- 9:01Speaker 1: into the law books. Wasn't it, Uh, de extincting Neanderthals
- 9:05Speaker 1: is ethically repugnant, experts told Live Science. It's morally abhorrent
- 9:10Speaker 1: even conceive of trying to create another kind of human
- 9:12Speaker 1: based on DNA using uncertain technologies to which they could
- 9:15Speaker 1: not consent. Raff said, Ah, I don't know if I
- 9:19Speaker 1: buy that. So they're not even looking into the You're
- 9:23Speaker 1: gonna have a whole bunch of deformed kid's awfulness there.
- 9:27Speaker 1: They just in general think it's unethical to bring another
- 9:30Speaker 1: human species onto the planet.
- 9:33Speaker 2: I don't know, because it is. I don't know if
- 9:35Speaker 2: I quite get what's the ethics around that.
- 9:38Speaker 1: Well, okay, they do get a little bit into these
- 9:41Speaker 1: experiments like Dolly the sheep famously, the clone sheep that
- 9:45Speaker 1: was after dozens wasn't it of deformed horrible poor creatures
- 9:52Speaker 1: that never could survive?
- 9:54Speaker 2: Yeah, doing that that were still born or born.
- 9:56Speaker 1: Alive and rapidly died and the rest of it. It
- 9:59Speaker 1: took him a lot of hacks to get an actual sheep.
- 10:02Speaker 1: But here we go. Even if the Neanderthal embryos could
- 10:05Speaker 1: develop into an otherwise healthy Neanderthal, the life they would
- 10:07Speaker 1: face once in our world would be unbearably.
- 10:09Speaker 2: Bleak, like try to get hired.
- 10:12Speaker 1: Being the only Neanderthal raised in the twenty first century
- 10:14Speaker 1: world of humans would likely to be lonely and isolating,
- 10:17Speaker 1: possibly like the lives of the last Neanderthals in Europe.
- 10:20Speaker 2: You don't know that. Chicks might dig it. You might
- 10:25Speaker 2: be a rock star.
- 10:26Speaker 1: This is all seems very speculative to me.
- 10:29Speaker 2: It might be the thing you're going on all the
- 10:31Speaker 2: talk shows. Big guest tonight, the world's only Neanderthal comes out?
- 10:36Speaker 1: Who what brings you? So the k Man outfit? Ooga
- 10:41Speaker 1: ooga booga. Just kidding, Jimmy, it's great to be with
- 10:45Speaker 1: you tonight. What an honor this is. I love your work, right.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Chicks wanting to get with the Neanderthal man on Earth?
- 10:52Speaker 1: Oh yeah? The rumors, would you know, circulate rappity? Oh yeah,
- 10:59Speaker 1: like the bat.
- 11:00Speaker 2: But you know I need I needed a four will
- 11:03Speaker 2: drive rugged enough for Minyan with all background you know,
- 11:06Speaker 2: endorsing Ford or whatever.
- 11:09Speaker 1: Yeah, but Gus, you'd have to, you'd become globally known,
- 11:15Speaker 1: so you'd be like a super celebrity and have to
- 11:19Speaker 1: more or less hide out with.
- 11:20Speaker 2: The be the biggest celebrity on planet Earth that planet
- 11:23Speaker 2: Earth has probably ever.
- 11:24Speaker 1: Seen, right right, Yeah, But I mean like the Bill
- 11:29Speaker 1: Gates is of the world and the world's biggest movie stars.
- 11:31Speaker 1: That's the only people you could hang out with, because
- 11:34Speaker 1: you know they're cool around other celebrities. But you got
- 11:36Speaker 1: there a gift and Harry by the pool and the
- 11:39Speaker 1: say shells with Brad Pitt in a squeeze.
- 11:42Speaker 2: You got to give him or her a name also,
- 11:44Speaker 2: which is be a big deal.
- 11:46Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but they would they might, you know, choose
- 11:49Speaker 1: their own name anyway.
- 11:52Speaker 2: Well one day. That's that's where you do get into
- 11:54Speaker 2: the ethics. Who who does this person belong to? Well,
- 11:59Speaker 2: who's the person belonged to? So did they get belong to? Well,
- 12:03Speaker 2: that's what I'm getting in it belongs to all of us?
- 12:05Speaker 1: Well, what an idiotic thing, Saint Michael and it was perfect.
- 12:11Speaker 2: Who doesn't belong to? Maybe it does belong to all
- 12:13Speaker 2: of us. It's mankind. It's like space exploration or something
- 12:16Speaker 2: like that. Is it a human start?
- 12:21Speaker 1: There? Does she have the rights of the fact that
- 12:24Speaker 1: you even asked, who would it belong to? Who? Do
- 12:26Speaker 1: I belong to? Nobody?
- 12:28Speaker 2: But you're a homot sapien, This is not so. Does
- 12:31Speaker 2: it like dogs belong to individual? Yeah, pet belongs to someone.
- 12:35Speaker 1: Maybe like America's mascot, basically.
- 12:39Speaker 2: America's mask. What if he can run really really fast?
- 12:42Speaker 2: Does he get to compete for Team USA in the Olympics?
- 12:44Speaker 1: Oh wow wow? So yeah, this part's really speculative. It
- 12:49Speaker 1: would likely be lonely and isolating. They wouldn't have prior
- 12:52Speaker 1: generations or peers to learn from. That's that's begging the question.
- 12:56Speaker 1: It's it's leaping past. The question is is it just
- 12:59Speaker 1: a a different sort of human but so similar that
- 13:03Speaker 1: the age almost god? Or would it be more like
- 13:09Speaker 1: racial differences between a Han Chinese and a black person
- 13:12Speaker 1: from Africa and like a Swede.
- 13:15Speaker 2: We'd have to choose their name from when they're a
- 13:17Speaker 2: little kid, we got to call them something. We can't
- 13:19Speaker 2: just say hey to you to the only Neanderthal on earth,
- 13:22Speaker 2: and then like at eighteen, do they get to do
- 13:24Speaker 2: whatever they want?
- 13:26Speaker 1: The darker possibility is that we would keep any de
- 13:28Speaker 1: extincted Neanderthals in zoos like animals.
- 13:31Speaker 2: Yes, if they throw the feces at us or anything humans,
- 13:37Speaker 2: I'm I'm not going to throw my pieces. You can
- 13:39Speaker 2: stand here all day long. I'm not throwing my feces.
- 13:42Speaker 1: Look, you want me to check my feces, it's going
- 13:45Speaker 1: to cost you extra give me right. Humans don't have
- 13:50Speaker 1: a good track record over the centuries of treating other people, well,
- 13:53Speaker 1: said this ethicist. So I have no confidence that we
- 13:56Speaker 1: wouldn't be nasty to Neanderthals. I don't think we would
- 13:58Speaker 1: in the United States.
- 14:00Speaker 2: No, absolutely, not China will. Yeah they will. They will
- 14:03Speaker 2: breed whatever until they get the strongest, fastest, whatever, and
- 14:08Speaker 2: kill off or enslave the other ones.
- 14:11Speaker 1: Right right, Another ethical problem, and I'm quoting scientists again,
- 14:16Speaker 1: a Neanderthal being constructed in this way wouldn't be living
- 14:18Speaker 1: in the past. They would be living in the present
- 14:20Speaker 1: and in an environment that's neither appropriate nor safe for them. Yeah,
- 14:24Speaker 1: probably because we don't know anything about how their genes
- 14:27Speaker 1: reacted with their environment.
- 14:29Speaker 2: From a from a like disease standpoint, I get that,
- 14:32Speaker 2: But from a like it's not like they're going to
- 14:35Speaker 2: like at the age of ten, say where are the
- 14:37Speaker 2: dinosaurs or something like that. They don't have any of
- 14:40Speaker 2: the cultural baggage that comes with, right having died out
- 14:45Speaker 2: two hundred thousand years ago.
- 14:47Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what electric?
- 14:50Speaker 2: Where are these flying machines?
- 14:51Speaker 1: That's not the way it would work right, right, And
- 14:54Speaker 1: it's not like they could teach you their Neanderthal language.
- 14:57Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, is it legal to bring back a neanderthal?
- 15:03Speaker 1: While it's wildly unethical, the legality of making one is unclear.
- 15:07Speaker 1: According to Greeley, one of the scientists, Now, human embryo
- 15:11Speaker 1: editing of this nature is illegal in the US and
- 15:13Speaker 1: the EU. It's unlikely that every country in the world
- 15:15Speaker 1: has relevant laws on their books.
- 15:16Speaker 2: Unlikely underpate, Yes.
- 15:19Speaker 1: No kidding, huh, Yeah, that's proascinating.
- 15:25Speaker 2: That's a problem with all of this stuff around Crisper,
- 15:30Speaker 2: around AI, around everything. We have these conversations for Europe
- 15:33Speaker 2: and the United States, doesn't matter at all to North Korea, Russia, China,
- 15:37Speaker 2: any of those places. We're to do whatever the hell
- 15:39Speaker 2: they want.
- 15:41Speaker 1: All right, finally, here is your neanderthal quiz. Are you ready?
- 15:47Speaker 1: How are we going to do this? Is everybody going
- 15:49Speaker 1: to try to answer? Or I'll try all right, or Michael,
- 15:53Speaker 1: do you want to take the Neanderthal quiz?
- 15:55Speaker 2: Who's gonna get with the Neanderthal? What was your saying
- 15:57Speaker 2: from earlier in the show.
- 15:59Speaker 1: Once you go Neanderthal, you never go back at all.
- 16:03Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, some chick's gonna want to get with
- 16:05Speaker 2: the just you can brag or become like a Kardashian
- 16:08Speaker 2: sort of have a sex tape, you know, the whole thing.
- 16:10Speaker 1: Wow, wow, you you you you Homo Sapien slots.
- 16:17Speaker 2: Neanderthal would make a killing on only fans. Oh yeah,
- 16:20Speaker 2: oh my god.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Watch all right, hang on a second. This thing freaked
- 16:27Speaker 1: out on me. I hate when that happens. All right,
- 16:29Speaker 1: So I can't do the whole quiz fans? All right, Michael, Okay,
- 16:39Speaker 1: where did the name Neanderthal come from? A mountain in Italy,
- 16:44Speaker 1: a valley in Germany, a fjord in Sweden, or a
- 16:48Speaker 1: desert in Ethiopia. I'm gonna go with Germany. Jav All
- 16:55Speaker 1: the Neanderthal valley in Germany.
- 16:59Speaker 2: That's where they found the first owes.
- 17:00Speaker 1: Does this have a year, uh, nineteen eighty eight? No,
- 17:05Speaker 1: I don't know, No, they don't. Eh.
- 17:12Speaker 2: Well, so we haven't known this stuff for very long
- 17:14Speaker 2: at all though.
- 17:16Speaker 1: Right, right, And you say there are other species that
- 17:19Speaker 1: were probably kicking around. I think they were well known
- 17:21Speaker 1: as six.
- 17:22Speaker 2: Different human beings types of human beings existing on Earth
- 17:25Speaker 2: at the same time, which they didn't know up until
- 17:28Speaker 2: a few years ago. We remember that, you've seen the
- 17:30Speaker 2: poster of you got a monkey, and then the monkey
- 17:32Speaker 2: stands up a little straighter, then you got a caveman.
- 17:34Speaker 1: And the various hilarious variations of that.
- 17:37Speaker 2: That's the way we believed it happened for a long time,
- 17:40Speaker 2: but it didn't happen anything like that at all.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So no Neanderthal zoos anytime soon. That's disappointing.
- 17:49Speaker 2: That'd be weird to go look at a human being
- 17:51Speaker 2: in a cage.
- 17:52Speaker 1: Look at that so much? Have it looking back at you?
- 17:55Speaker 1: What do you look it at?
- 17:56Speaker 2: He's just flipping everybody off.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Wow, that's grim. This sounds sounds like a heartbreakingly sad
- 18:06Speaker 1: science fiction movie.
- 18:07Speaker 2: Yes it does.
- 18:10Speaker 1: Or who's a hilarious comedy.
- 18:12Speaker 2: Who's it belonged to is a real question?
- 18:14Speaker 1: And Sino Man starring poly Shore.
- 18:17Speaker 2: Yeah, here's my idea.
- 18:20Speaker 1: Put him in the NBA as like maybe a backup
- 18:22Speaker 1: center and you can get in during garbage time and
- 18:26Speaker 1: entertain the fans. What the hell, Well, I guess that's it.