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Beth Shapiro (2025) - De-Extinction and Ancient DNA · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap, and before we get going, you can
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  now access the full Google Notebook with a mind map,
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  timeline and briefing document by clicking the link in the
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  description. Today, we're diving into a
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  really fascinating conversation from a recent Joe Rogan
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  interview with a leading scientist in ancient DNA.
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  Our mission here is to unpack some truly groundbreaking
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  discoveries in paleogenomics. You know, explore the complex
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  ethics of de extinction and uncover some surprising insights
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  into animal behavior, human history, and, well, our
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  relationship with the natural world.
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  Yeah, it's quite a journey. We're looking at the work of
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  someone who's really a modern day explorer in ancient DNA.
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  She's the chief scientist officer at Colossal, which is,
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  you know, right at the forefront of this de extinction work.
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  What's really striking is how it blends this cutting edge science
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  with these really bold, sometimes frankly controversial
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  projects. And you'll see that blend woven
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  through our discussion today. It raises some big questions.
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  OK, so let's unpack that. The core of this work is ancient
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  DNA, or paleogenomics. Basically, scientists go out,
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  they dig up old stuff, bones, teeth, whatever, from thousands,
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  maybe millions of years ago, and pull DNA out of it.
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  And this field, it just keeps like rewriting what we thought
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  we knew. It's constantly overturning old
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  ideas. It really is.
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  And, you know, one interesting angle is the personal
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  motivation. There's this palpable
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  frustration with academia sometimes the scarcity mindset,
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  the gatekeeping. You can really slow things down,
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  stifle innovation. Yeah, I can imagine.
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  So moving from that world to a private venture like Colossal,
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  it's partly about defending scientific integrity, pushing
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  boundaries even if it challenges the old ways, making sure the
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  science moves forward. And the actual field work sounds
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  absolutely wild, like something out of an adventure story.
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  There's this story about looking for mammoth bones on the ick pic
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  Puck River in northern Alaska. Imagine being out there, the
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  winds howling for days, keeping the mosquitoes away, and you
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  start thinking people exaggerate.
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  Then the wind stops and bam, the air is just thick with them.
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  Super aggressive right? Apparently they saw a moose just
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  plunging into freezing water every few steps to escape.
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  These aren't normal mosquitoes. No, they're adapted.
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  They can reproduce without blood, but they do way better
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  with it so. They're relentless.
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  Makes Texas mosquitoes seem kind of tame.
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  Definitely. And Speaking of harrowing field
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  work, there's another story about a Russian helicopter trip
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  in Siberia and MI 8 from Hatanga.
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  Oh boy. Pictures sitting on the gas
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  tanks, missing windows, and the thing barely gets off the
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  ground. The expedition dog Pasha
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  apparently refused to get in. Smart dog.
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  They called him the smartest person in our expedition.
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  Wow, that's that's intense. It really highlights the risks
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  they take and it makes you think, doesn't it, about past
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  humans in those environments? How did they cope?
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  You hear about reindeer domestication not just for meat
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  but as like a a storage mechanism for nutrition, a
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  walking pantry. A living larger.
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  It's incredible, the ingenuity of the first people figuring out
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  how to herd and milk them in those conditions.
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  Amazing resourcefulness. Absolutely.
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  It completely challenges the idea that these were just
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  desolate lambs. These people had sophisticated
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  ecological knowledge, real engineers of survival.
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  And beyond the field work, ancient DNA is just rewriting
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  huge chunks of human history, like the Amazon we used to
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  think. Untouched rainforest, maybe
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  small tribes. Right.
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  The pristine myth. But now evidence of
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  sophisticated grids, millions of people, huge settlements, all
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  wiped out probably by European diseases, and the jungle just
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  swallowed it all up. Yeah, Lidar imaging combined
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  with the DNA tells an incredible story.
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  You only see faint traces from the air now.
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  You see hints of that even flying over Europe, old field
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  patterns and things. And this connects to that common
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  misconception about Jurassic Park.
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  People think the movie started the field.
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  Right, like science fiction came first.
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  But it's the other way around. Michael Creighton was inspired
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  by real work already happening, like Alan Wilson's group at
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  Berkeley. They got ancient DNA from a
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  quagga, an extinct zebra, back in 84.
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  Wow, OK. The early claims about dinosaur
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  DNA turned out to be contamination.
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  Modern DNA getting in. Which brings us to how careful
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  they have to be. These labs sound intense, like
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  virus labs pushing air out, full suits, constant bleaching.
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  Exactly. It's not the ancient stuff
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  that's dangerous. It's us, our DNA.
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  A single skin cell, a breath can ruin everything.
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  Precisely. And that's where PCR, the
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  plumber's chain reaction, was such a game changer.
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  It lets you amplify tiny, tiny DNA fragments.
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  And the bat, well, the crowning achievement was sequencing whole
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  Neanderthal genomes. My husband was actually involved
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  in that effort with this Fante Paibos team, who won the Nobel
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  for it. I'm incredible getting the whole
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  blueprint. And then Denisovans, a whole new
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  type of ancient human found from just a tiny finger bone,
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  completely redrew the family tree.
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  Just amazing. And now there's Giuliani or the
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  big head people from China. 300,000 to 50,000 years ago
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  suggests even more interbreeding, more complexity.
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  But. Then you still have mysteries
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  like The Hobbit, people on Flores Island, Homo
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  floresiensis. All right, the DNA there is just
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  too degraded. Hot, humid climates are terrible
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  for preservation. It makes you think about island
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  evolution, right? Dwarfism.
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  Gigantism. Like the mini elephants on
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  Flores, but also the giant Komodo Dragons.
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  Terrifying creatures. Yeah, remember that bizarre
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  story about Sharon Stone's ex-husband at the zoo?
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  Vaguely like somebody about shoes.
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  Yeah, they told him to take off his white tennis shoes, worried
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  the Dragons would think they were rats or something.
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  But then his barefoot looked tasty and bam got.
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  Bitten. Oh my goodness.
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  Yeah, that's memorable. Shows you can't predict
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  everything. Exactly.
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  And, it reminds me, we also touched on other animal quirks,
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  like giraffes apparently considered sort of dumb in
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  captivity. Really.
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  Yeah, but in the wild, incredibly ecologically
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  intelligent, perfectly adapted are definitions of smart or just
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  so human centric, you know, that's.
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  A great point which leads us perfectly into Colossal's work.
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  I actually got to see their direwolves, Romulus, Remus and
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  Klezy. Yeah, it was extraordinary.
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  They look different, bigger, more muscular and this unique
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  light coat. Seeing Klezy's birth, it was
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  just genuine wonder, seeing something extinct brought back.
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  It must have been powerful, and it absolutely forces you to
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  confront the ethical side, doesn't it?
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  Like, are we playing God here? Are humans really the ones to
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  decide who lives and dies? There's a potential arrogance
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  there. A huge question, and it ties
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  right into the whole invasive species nightmare.
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  I mean, look at Florida, half a million Burmese pythons wiping
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  out 90% of the mammals in the Everglades total disaster.
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  Or Hawaii introducing rosy wolf snails to eat other invasive
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  snails, but they just ate all the native ones instead.
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  Catastrophe. Right.
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  Good intentions, terrible outcomes.
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  Even had people seriously suggesting bringing honey
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  Badgers to Florida or that crazy early 20th century idea of
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  hippos in the US for lake cow bacon.
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  It's almost comical the mistakes we've made.
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  And that history is exactly why caution is paramount.
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  But it's also why these new technologies are potentially so
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  valuable if used right. Colossal's work isn't just about
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  bringing things back for novelty.
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  It's tied to conservation. Think genetic rescue.
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  OK. I like with the Florida
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  Panthers. Exactly, they were critically
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  inbred down to maybe 30 animals, bringing in a few Texas
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  Panthers. Save them by boosting genetic
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  diversity. Colossal hopes to use similar
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  techniques refined through the direwolf work for things like
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  the Red Wolf Project, using DNA editing to make endangered
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  species more resilient. But it's.
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  Still complicated. Look at the wolf reintroduction
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  in Colorado. Very contentious.
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  Yeah, ballot box biology City folks voting for wolves that
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  ranchers have to live with, and they brought in wolves known to
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  prey on cattle from Oregon. Seems like asking for trouble.
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  It's. A classic conflict.
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  Yellowstone was different, more of a success story for that
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  specific ecosystem. But you can't just copy and
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  paste these things. Absolutely not, which is why
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  Colossal is being so careful with the direwolves.
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  They aren't being released into the wild, they're on a secure,
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  monitored preserve. Cameras everywhere.
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  Hormonal contraception, Constant study.
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  So no rogue direwolves running around.
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  Definitely not. And for the critics saying they
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  aren't real direwolves, well, they're engineered using ancient
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  genomes from 72,000 to 13,000 years ago.
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  The goal is to replicate key traits like that light coat
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  color that came directly from the ancient DNA.
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  Nobody expected that from just bones.
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  It's about creating an ecological proxy based on the
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  best data we have. So what else is on the list
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  besides Dire Wolves? Well, the ones they've announced
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  are the woolly mammoth, the Thylacine, Tasmanian tiger and
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  the dodo. But they have DNA data for lots
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  more. American cheetah, the huge short
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  faced bear, 12 feet tall. Longhorn bison, Irish elk, North
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  American camels, even a giant 5 foot Beaver.
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  Imagine that. A library of lost life.
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  It really messes with your timeline of extinction, doesn't
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  it? Mammoths living just 4000 years
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  ago on an island, right? Much later than we used to
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  think. And maybe horses surviving in
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  North America longer than presumed.
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  Like Native American traditions always said, environmental DNA
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  is finding traces. It really highlights how much we
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  don't know. Requires real humility.
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  The fossil record is so sparse. Think about Gigantopithecus the
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  giant ape, the Bigfoot ancestor mostly known from teeth found in
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  Chinese apothecary shops sold as dragon bones.
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  Or those strange Peruvian alien mummies with three fingers and
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  toes. Ancient DNA might tell us what
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  they really were. So much mystery still.
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  And this all inevitably circles back to the ethics of human gene
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  editing, too. You have the Hijiang Kui case in
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  China. Editing babies for HIV
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  resistance. Huge controversy.
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  Germline editing very different. Right, different from
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  therapeutic somatic editing like baby KJ being cured of a
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  metabolic disease that feels more like medicine, but the
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  lines get blurry. They do and engineering complex
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  traits like smartness. What does that even mean?
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  Intelligence isn't one thing and evolution isn't a straight line.
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  And the playing God argument? Well, humans have been shaping
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  life for millennia through domestication, farming, even
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  conservation choices. Deciding not to use powerful new
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  tools also has ethical weight, especially with extinction rates
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  soaring. What if we can save a species or
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  cure disease and choose not to? Could AI help maybe analyze the
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  consequences of rewilding without our human biases and
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  financial motives getting in the way?
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  That's a fascinating thought. The hope is certainly to use
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  these tools responsibly for real conservation challenges.
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  Making Hawaiian honey creepers resistant to avian malaria or
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  corals resistant to bleaching. Building a future that's
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  biodiverse and includes thriving human populations.
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  Coexistence and repair. So for you listening, it leaves
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  us with some big questions, right?
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  Given how little we know about the past and how powerful these
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  new tools are, what are our responsibilities?
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  And thinking ahead, could genetic interventions become so
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  common that regular children become novel?
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  Or could a future crisis make today's unethical choices seem
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  necessary? Lots to ponder.
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  Yeah. How?
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  Does this all change your definition of life?
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  Of extinction? What does it mean to be human as
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  we gain this level of control over biology?
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  That conversation is just getting started.