Part One: Dire Wolves, Dr. George Church & The De-Extinction Grift

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Media. Oh, wow, Sophie, I don't know. I don't know
if we can put that on the air. I mean,
that's actionable threats against a sitting.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I mean, just Sophie, that's it's just dangerous to be
saying stuff like that in this day and age. I know,
let's distract the audience and the federal agents listening in
by bringing on our guests today who definitely doesn't say
stuff like that. Langston Kerman, Langston, do you condemn Sophie's statements,
assuming they ever get out in unedited form?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I was. I was tempted to hang up the zone
right away. It was so inflammatory that I said, I
can't be a part of this.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
No. No, it's time to bring peace to the country.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's that's what we all need to be focusing on.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Is peace. We got to get back to what we were,
which was normal and peace.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Was normal and good. Everyone knows things used to be
good in this country for everybody, right, that's chilling for all. Yeah,
things were so great, And I think what'll get us
back to that is talking about puppies. Right. Everybody loves
a good puppy, right, puppies. Puppies are wonderful, and there's
been some really what is he talking about? God, we're

(01:18):
gonna talk about puppy mills. No, don't worry, this is
a fun one, everybody. We're gonna have a good time
this week. Like it is a guy I think is
a piece of shit, but it's gonna be fun.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
YEA.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I will say before you even go, one of the
only taboos that exists in film and television is murdering dogs. Yes,
and I'm getting so scared before we even start.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
I know nothing, No dogs are provably harmed yet and
in the making of this story, although I do have
to specify yet, but there is like a dog like
creature involved. Because if you if you spend any time online,
have you been on social media or just been watching
the news. I think probably close to one hundred percent
of our audience caught this. There was a big story
a couple of weeks back about how this company brought

(01:59):
back the dire wolf, right, which is an extinct kind
of wolf, and they did it using some I think
we can call it Jurassic Park style machinations, right, Like
that's what everyone thought of, And this is all the
work of a of an actual like science like bioscience
startup called Colossal Biosciences, which is just by name, a

(02:20):
company that could not sound more like it belonged than
a Michael Crichton novel if they just called it engine right,
like it's it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
It really feels like a fourth grader was, like.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I got it, like when I was in fourth grade
trying to rewrite Jurassic Park.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yes, okay, okay, we'll get sue.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
That's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Michael Crichton's not going
to sue a four year old Colossal Science original. Yeah,
so it'll publish this. So most news coverage of this
whole Dire Wolf thing kinda casually accepted the pr claims

(03:04):
being made by Colossal and it's co founder, slash Scientific spokesman,
doctor George Church. Time published an article with the title
the Return of the Dire Wolf, and it's it's as
hype an article as it could possibly be, And on
the front of it, there's a photo of a very
charismatic looking wolf as that I mean, that's a beautiful wolf, right,

(03:25):
that charm that that is a screen ready wolf.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You can tell you can tell that wolf knows how
the business works. That's not a wolf that you gotta like,
uh put a caretaker on, you.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Know, you gotta. They said that they put some dire
wolf jeans into this wolf. I think they might have
stuck one or two Tom Cruise jeans in there, because
that wolf knows where the camera is, right.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That wolf, That wolf does its own stunts.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Wolf does its own stunts, right. Obviously it's a good
looking wolf. No one's throwing shade against these animals here.
They're gorgeous, but they're not wolves, right. That's kind of
where we're starting here. It gets much more fucked up
than that. Dire Wolves were a very real species of
wolf which roamed the Americas. They were found in parts
of both North and South America from the late police

(04:13):
Decene to the early Holocene period, which is a span
of somewhere over one hundred thousand years. It's bite force like.
When these animals lived, they had a stronger bite force
than any known modern wolves, so they were pretty formidable.
But the reputation for them being like the size of
horses is something they largely accrued via Game of Thrones

(04:33):
because dire wolves were around the same size as the
largest modern wolves, a little bigger but we're talking like
ten or twenty pounds heavier than like a Yukon wolf
on average.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
And there was a sub Right, there's a pretty extensive
collection of dire wolf bones in the Librea Tarpits Museum.
Oh right, and boy was I disappointed when I saw
how little those.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Bones were, right, he gave a throat shit.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, man, I walked in there and I said, I'm
gonna see the biggest wolf that's that ever was. And
those wolves look like snauzers. They're tiny little dogs as
far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, because you I mean, like, the average size of
a dire wolf was like one hundred and fifty pounds,
which is like a good sized caneid. But like, I've
known dogs bigger than that. I've known some two hundred
pound mastiffs, right like, and they're not that big on average. Yeah. No,
so yeah, again, these are they're bite in terms of
bite force, very formidable animals, but they're not huge.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Like.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
That's stuff that George R. Martin put in his book,
because George R. And Martin knows how to make a
book cool. Right, Yeah, you gotta judge up reality a
little bit, you know, especially if it's a fantasy novel.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
He knows how to make a book cool, and he
knows how to make a hat cool. He's got cool hats,
cool books and scarves.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Cool hats, cool books, and he's he's achieved. I've have
a lot of respect for George. He's achieved every writer's dream,
which is to never have to write again, right like that,
that's what we're all shooting for. So just live in
all lighthouse that never finished your series, I say, as
I'm two years overdue with my novel. But the name

(06:13):
of the species is presumably the major thing that inspired
George R.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Martin.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
It's just a cool name, dire Wolf, Like there's it's
dire wolves have been in D and D before George
put him in his books, right because it's just a
cool thing to call a wolf. It's like, yeah, that
sounds like a scarier wolf to me. And Colossal Biosciences
knowing and being primarily this is a company that describes
themselves as being in gene sciences. They're in the pr

(06:37):
business as much as anything else, and they made the
wise decision to rely heavily on the popularity of the
Game of Thrones books and TV shows to act as
advertising for their quote unquote dire wolf right. And in
fact this is even written into that Fawning Time coverage.
And here's a quote from that article. Relying on deft

(06:57):
genetic engineering an ancient preserved DNA, colossal scientists deciphered the
dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common
gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as
surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus and their sister, two month
old Kalisi into the world during three separate births last
fall in this winter, effectively for the first time, de

(07:18):
extincting a line of beasts whose live geenpool vanished long ago.
Ti met the mates. Kalisi was not present due to
her young age, at a fenced field in a US
wildlife facility on March twenty fourth, on the condition that
their location remain a secret to protect the animals from
prying eyes. Now, naming a dire wolf after a character
in the books who had nothing to do with dire

(07:39):
wolves was by far the fringiest possible.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Choice here opportunity.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
There were dire wolves with names.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
There were a lot of Starks. They could have just
gone down the Stark lineage they didn't have to go
to Kali.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Literally, she had nothing to do with the wolves. Did
she even meet any of those?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
A dragon lady?

Speaker 5 (07:58):
She met the Yes, that.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
She met Okay, she met jobs maybe okay, ghost right, Okay,
so maybe one we.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
Don't talk about that.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Last season, we don't talk about that. I got really
sad for a second.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
But it's the bummer, folks, should you should do that
season as one of the bestards from Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
What we're working on a sixth parter, but having the animals.
They also had the animals pose with George R. Martin
as part of like the press tour, and that was
a particular choice. First off, look at this which again
no shade on George. I want to hold a wolf
pup right, absolutely, yeah, Like it looks cuddly as hell.
But that's also kind of part of the problem because

(08:39):
like that wolf is actively yawning, right, Like, it seems
pretty chill to be there. And it's interesting to me
because if the information given to the team at time
by Colossal Biosciences was accurate, there's no way this photo
should exist. Here's what Time claimed right at the start
of their article. The angelic Exuberance puppies exhibit in the
presence of humans, trotting up for hugs, belly Rob's kisses

(09:02):
is completely absent. They keep their distance, retreating if a
person approaches, even if one of the handlers who raised
them from birth can only get so close before Romulus
and Remas flinch and retreat. This isn't domestic canine behavior.
This is wild lupine behavior. The pups are wolves. Not
only that they're dire wolves, which means they have cause
to be lonely, and again just genetically they're not dire wolves.

(09:23):
But also, why is George cuddling that animal? Then if
you can't, are you you're either forcing the animal into
a situation that makes it distinctly uncomfortable. But the animal
looks like it's yawning, so maybe they're just not as
wolfy as you're pretending.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, you're really trying to weave a story here. And
that's that's a nice dog. That seems like a really polite,
U sweet dog.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Shill it looks like a husky. Yeah, I don't know man.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
And frankly, George, why are you not finishing the books?

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Well, he's got a lot of looks.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
I'm not going to give him shit for that. Again,
I also haven't, And if I have the chance to
cuddle a wolf rather than spend another day working on
my novel, I would be a added to that wolf.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
So fucking fast.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
The man owns a lighthouse, how you expect him to
finish a book? He's finished other books. I'll give him
shit for his involvement in this company, though.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
That's cool to make that much money and be like,
I'm a buy a lighthouse.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
I'm gonna get a lighthouse.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, of course I'm not sleeping where normal people sleep anymore.
I've got a different thing going on.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
No, I'm going to recreate that great Robert Pattinson movie.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Where everybody was fine at the end everyone No.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
No, really good movie with a good ending. So the
fact that there's this photo of George R. R. Martin with
one of these dire wolves makes a lot more sense
when you learn a few things about both the company
behind these animals and the actual science behind the project itself.
For one thing, George R. R. Martin is an investor in
Colossal Biosciences and also an advisor to the company, which

(10:54):
advisor and what George R. Martin's a number of things
he's not a scientist, he's not a geneticist. He's not
an expert in real dire.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Wolves because of sunglasses.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
He sunglasses, like he invented fake dire wolves for his novels.
I don't understand, Like, under what circumstances would he be
an advisor to this company doing genetics work. That's like
if they hired the guy who played doctor Alan Grant
to advise a company cloning dinosaurs. It's like, well, but
he doesn't really know anything about dinosaurs.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Ye, he's actually he doesn't even speak with that accent.
He's pretending.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, Like it's like bringing Jeff Goldblum onto the project. Well,
you know, if you if you're trying to like, I
just don't think he has the expertise. Nothing against Jeff.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
If you want to flirt with the dinosaur.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
People, yes, bring Jeff in.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah you want them dinosaurs horny a al get Jeff.
But otherwise you gotta yeah, he could do that ship
you gotta talk to a scientist you might.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Want to bring in, like Robert Backer or someone if
he's still alive. But anyway, An article by Michael hills
It for the Los Angeles Times explains how Martin is
being credited as an advisor.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Here.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
He's named as a co author on a technical paper
the company published as a non peer reviewed preprint describing
its de extinction effort. The text credits him with the
review and editing of the paper's text, among thirty six
other credited co authors in that category. So he's one
of thirty six people who helped copy edit an article.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, this is okay to your point, this is just pr.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
This is just PR. First off, there's everything else thirty
six people to edit an article.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
And they didn't let those other thirty five people hold
that dog. And that's no fucked up, no, no, just George.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
They just pressed George in there for that. Yeah, anyway,
to kind of enforce the point I made earlier, these wolves,
well very cute, are not dire wolves. There's some genes
that they found while sequencing direwolf genetics that have been
put into a normal wolf. But that doesn't It's kind
of like how like some people have some Neanderthal DNA

(13:03):
in there, but they're not themselves Neanderthals, right, They're just
they're people.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
You know, that's gotta be a tough thing to figure
out for yourself. Though that I got a little bit
of that in there, because yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
You get some DNA from a species we wiped out.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah you can kind of see it. And then then
that bumps you out where you're like.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Oh sure, like John Hamm, I assume right. Yeah, So
Colossal Biosciences is not actually in the de extinction business.
They are in the modifying animals genetically in ways that
in some cases hadn't been done before business, and that

(13:43):
is interesting, but it's not the extinction. And so they
are doing stuff. They are doing something new and something
that is in some ways very interesting, but it's not
what they're claiming they're doing. So I can't call this
a straight up con right, because they did make an
animal that didn't exist before, but it's also not a

(14:04):
dire wolf, and they're not de extincting anything. And I
think the evidence shows they are massively inflating what they
and their technology can do in order to win VC funding.
The whole explanation as to why we'll take a while,
but I'm going to start by talking about the claims
that first brought the company public attention back in September
of twenty twenty one. A whole spate of almost identical

(14:26):
articles dropped announcing the creation of Colossal Biosciences, and they're
planned to clone a wooly mammoth by twenty twenty seven,
so we got two more years before to be mammoths, right.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Megan, Wooly mammos back, y'all, this is exciting.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Very soon, like probably right around the same time we
get Severn season three. You know, we're lucky.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
You know what its about the same year talks about
wooly mammos two is they also are not bigger than elephants.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
No.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
No, I thought this whole time that wooly mammoths were
like these giant beasts that we would never be able
to see again. And they're like smaller than the average
no African elephant.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
No.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
And again, it's one of those things whatever people start
to think about, Oh, it's it's a bum. We've missed
all the cool, coolest animals that existed. The largest thing
to ever exist on Earth is still around swims in
the sea and we're currently killing them.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
Okay, something something you missed in this story now that
you've brought up the wooly mammoth is uh. Part of
the investors for this company are like a I'm.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Getting to it. I'm getting to that, So don't show
where I was, Like it was a guy know this?
Why do I know this?

Speaker 4 (15:32):
Shit?

Speaker 1 (15:33):
We're getting to the other investors in this fucking company.
Don't worry God. But here's a here's a representative example
from like the press that explosion around this wooly mammoth claim.
So this is a CNBC article lab grown wooly mammoths
could walk the earth in six years of geneticists, new
startup succeeds. This is published in twenty twenty one. And

(15:54):
the geneticist that they're discussing, and the guy the article
is based around interviewing is co founder of Claw Biosciences,
doctor George Church, who claimed that he'd had the idea
kicking around for years and research supports this fact. He's
been pushing this idea in one form or another for
like a decade or more, but that he'd just been
given fifteen million dollars in seed funding and a company

(16:15):
had been established with serial entrepreneur Ben Lamb as CEO.
And we will talk about Ben Lambs Moore in part two. Church,
though doctor George Church is a real doctor and his
credentials are impeccable on paper. And just to state, this
guy's kind of a weird case where he's exaggerating a
lot and I think you could even argue lying about

(16:35):
some things. But he's a real scientist with some very
impressive achievements behind him.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
And I think it's important for us to say that
scientists can be both legitimate and liars. Oh with shit, right, yeah, yes,
we often I think conflate it somehow, where scientists are
like these moral beings that exist above us all and no,
they can be liars and also really smart and capable people.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's like you could be a great science fiction author
and racist as fuck, right, like those two things have existed,
or like Isaac Asimov where you're like, wow, what a
genius and also sex pest, right, like those things do
not conflict whatsoever. You know, it might have helped him,
I have helped him. Who knows. So George Church's credentious.

(17:23):
I'm not calling Church's sex pest. Although he has some
shady involvement with people that we'll talk about, none of
it involves the accusations of his specific behavior, just his
choice of company anyway, his academic credentials anyway, He is
the oh we're this this episode ends. Uh, you know,
I'm not going to give you a hint, but you're
you're going to be psyched. You're not gonna be psyched,

(17:43):
You're gonna be bummed. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor
of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member
at the Weiss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, also at Harvard.
So you know that alone pretty bigical achievement.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Right, and he still holds those positions.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yes, yes, as far as I'm aware. Yes, Church has
his name on more than one hundred patents. And you know,
some of those are things where like maybe he got
on there because he helped someone else, but a lot
of them are because he contributed really significant work to
those patents. He started the Personal Genome project. And he
has also helped found more than twenty companies. Now, that

(18:23):
last claim was the first thing I read about him
that made me wonder, like, Okay, is there something like
shady here, because twenty companies is too many? No, honest,
man has found more than twenty companies. You're doing some
fucked up shit, right.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
You gotta focus, big man. That's a few too many companies.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
That's too many companies. And then what I read about
the actual claims colossal through Church was making about why
cloning mammoths was not just like a cool thing to do,
but like necessary for conservation. I went fully over the edge.
This is when I was like, Okay, I got to
dig more into this guy. There's gotta be something fucked
up here. And he has made claims like this quote.

(18:58):
This is a quote from the article proponents of the project,
and they're talking about Church say rewilding the Arctic with
wooly mammoths could slow global warming by slowing the melting
of the permafrost where methane is currently trapped. That's not true.
How it has something to do with them stomping down
the ground to stop like trees from growing up so

(19:18):
the permafrost days. But like that's if theoretically there were
a massive, healthy mammoth population, it might do that. We're
not talking about number one, they're not talking about making mammoths.
They're talking about modifying African elephants as a spoiler for
what will be in part two. But also, like that's
just not a feasible place for this project to end with,
like massive herds of mammoths clumbing across the top say

(19:41):
to fix. Also, no amount of mammoths is going to
fix global warming, and it's current, Like, the problem is
not just there's too many trees in Siberia. There's other
shit going off.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
If that's the approach you're taking, you're missing the mark
quite a bit. Yeah, I think mammoth mammoths can't be
our first start at fixing the problem, for sure.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
I think a lack of mammoth says the primary reason
this is a problem. Yeah. Further shady factoids about the
business include the fact that it is a for profit enterprise. Now.
Ben Lamb, who's his co founder in the CEO, was
quick to tel CNBC none of our investors are focused
on monetizing right now, which is great, But then you

(20:21):
read about who those investors are, and you wonder, I
don't know if I believe that, because investors in Colossal
outside of George R. Martin include self help grifter, Tony
Robbins and winkle Boss Capital. Oh we got winkle By
the Winklebostuins.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Wow, Winkleby, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
They'd only be involved in a real project.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
This is like when a bunch of celebrities open up
an ice cream story, right, Eli, Why do y'all know
each other?

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Oh, one of you's moving coke and you guys need
it away? Alounder shity, What.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Is this relationship that somehow foster naturally.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Between uh huh, this is something's wrong here and missing something.
And yes there are some famous TikTokers involved as well,
and some other celebrities who should not be involved in
a biosciencest company we'll talk about later. So by the
time I read about the Winklevoss twins being involved, I
was fully on team fuck these people winkleby the Winkles V.

(21:17):
But that's not enough to actually like justify accusing a
person and their company of being bastards, right, just like
even I wouldn't do that. So I looked deeper, and boy, howdy,
did I find some shit. Before we get into everything
that's fucked up about this company, a lot of what's
fucked up here is actually taught doctor George Church and
talking about what this guy's done and where he's come from,

(21:39):
Because this is a story of like a great scientist
who makes some choices that I would argue puts him
into a series of very unethical situations because there's money
in it. Right, That's what I think is going on here.
But I'm just gonna read you his bio. George McDonald
Church was born on August twenty eighth, nineteen fifty four,

(21:59):
on McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. He grew
up in Clearwater with the capitalist scientology. But I can't
hold that against him. He's got no ties that I
found to the organization. He just grew up there.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
He just got lucky.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
He just got lucky, thank God. Yeah, he's near Blue Base.
I think that's the big base in Clearwater. His family
life was somewhat chaotic by most people's standards, as he
laid out in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, I
had three fathers as my mother remarried. The first one
lasted about eight months post birth, and he was an
Air Force pilot, a pretty colorful character. I knew him

(22:32):
off and on through the years up until his death.
He was the sort of father that a young boy
would admire because he wasn't tied down by actual responsibilities.
That was Stu MacDonald. He was called barefoot stew He
was inducted into the Water Ski Hall of Fame. He
wasn't a terrific athlete. I mean, obviously he was a
pretty good one, but his real contribution to the sport,
which was relevant to me, was that he was a
good communicator. He was the first ABC wide World of

(22:54):
Sports color commentator. He was also just generally charismatic. He
was a male model. He worked on film television as well.
Right right, So, and this guy he's also primarily a
communicator now, right, And he's like, he's very old now,
but he's like a handsome kind of old Like he's
the you would cast him to be like the old
king in like a fucking new Robin Hood movie, like

(23:16):
comes Back at the Air, right, Like, he is that
kind of old guy. He was my birth dad, but
I don't think he really influenced me that much intellectually.
My second father was a lawyer and had the least influence.
Third dad was a physician who had two pretty important roles.
He sent me away to school, to an awesome high school.
Both my stepbrother and I went away at roughly the
same time. It might have just been to get the

(23:36):
young teenage boys out of the house, but in my
case it was very good. It was a liberal East
Coast school, and over which is where the Bushes went.
I don't know if i'd call that liberal, but and
Harvard chemistry professor George Whiteside and a bunch of other
interesting people. And the other thing he did was just
being a physician. I could look at his medical technology
and somehow be enthralled by it. And doctor Dad is

(23:58):
where he gets the last name Church, So that definitely
seems to be the guy he primarily considers to have
been his father. And that summary of events does kind
of smooth over a couple of things, including what seems
to have been a difficult start for George at school.
He's always very bright, but he has learning disabilities. He
had to repeat the ninth grade as a result. George
has claimed in recent years to have dyslexia and narcolepsy

(24:19):
OCD and add all of which he says it's a
lot of stuff. He says, they were all mild, but
it made me feel different, right, and so he became
kind of desperate in grade school not to stand out
or get attention, right, Like, he doesn't want to seem weird,
which is a pretty normal way for kids to feel
in school.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
So far, it's the thing I've related to him most
on Right, I get that, Yeah, I get it that
I connect to Saying you reinvented wolves is a different conversation.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
But the whole thing trouble with you very rarely claimed
that Langston.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
It's almost never come up in our conversations at least.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, seldom. Prior to going to Andover Church, attended both
public and Catholic schools, but had bad experiences in both systems.
He just says the schools in Florida weren't very good. Again,
I don't have trouble seeing that. Despite his difficulty with academics,
he was a voracious reader and good at self directed
learning when he was interested in something. He built an

(25:19):
analog computer when he was ten, and when he started
at Andover they had a time share computing program with
nearby Dartmouth College, so he was able to spend time
on a computer before most people his age did, which
is like you see similar stories with like a lot
of the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, a lot of
the guys who were like around this age and also
wound up being major tech players.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Right, Yeah, it was such rare technology, Yeah, to access
at that age.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
That.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
I bet if you really were able to invest in
the time and energy, you advanced a chess piece. So far, yes,
for yourself.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
And you were generally kind of a rich kid, right,
which is you know the case with even though he's
got you know, he goes through a couple of dads,
this this last one is very comfortable financially and as
a result, he gets this opportunity and as a result,
then his story sounds less like a lot of big
science guys and more like a lot of tech startup dudes, right,
Like that's the kind of background this dude has.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
They always talk about how like Bill Gates started Microsoft
in his garage, but it's like, oh, you had an
entire garage. Most people have to store things and park
ours in there. You were just like Noah, the garage
is a workspace.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, that's right, speaking of garages, if you want to
afford a garage, I don't know. I can't help you,
but you can buy these products.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Oh nice, this is a beautiful segue.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah we're back. Okay, So so far it's been a
pretty similar story to a lot of tech guys. And
George has a story about what how we knew was
like ten or so, he goes to the New York
World's Fair and that has a huge impact on him.
He gets to see very early touch screens, which are

(27:03):
obviously a precursor to a real technology, and also a
lot of fake future technology, like personal jet packs and
stuff that, like, I mean, there's technically some jet packs,
but it's not what we thought it would be, right,
We're not flying around in those things.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
You and be like, I thought it was gonna be
rocketman shit, and it's not that at all.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
No. No, I thought right up to the fact that
I thought we'd all be shooting Nazis, And it turns
out we shose other things to do with Nazis, which
some of us think.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
It's they're a better hang than we anticipated.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Certainly the better hang than the rocketman for the rocket
to your thought. So, but yeah, a lot of the
tech he sees is also just stuff that like never happened, right,
And George would later say, quote, it didn't take too
long for me to become disillusioned. Not only was it
not like that in Florida, it probably wasn't even like
that in New York once they shut down the World's Fair,

(27:54):
And it might not ever be like that if I
didn't do something about it. So I sort of felt
like if I want that, I have to it. And
you can take two things out of this either he
realizes the World's fair is largely like a pr thing
and most of this stuff isn't coming or at least
not coming anytime soon, and like, well, then I'm going
to get into I'm going to become a cutting edge
scientist to try to make this future real. Or maybe

(28:16):
what he learns is like, wow, it's really easy to
lie to a lot of people about what you can
do and like get money, and maybe that's maybe that's
a lot easier than inventing the future.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
I think spotting a grift is real, profitable, real fast.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
It can be. Yeah. Now, maybe to be fair, maybe
both of those things hit him, because he does get
into some real making the future shit. At first, Church
wound up attending summer courses in quantum physics. At MIT,
he gets into crystallography, which I don't really understand but
is important science. And he describes this as showing him,

(28:52):
quote the intersection of computers and biology, which is going
to be like a constant source of fascination for him.
Now he does still have issues in SCO he has
to repeat his first year of graduate school, and depending
on where you find him interviewed, this is explained differently.
I found one article that just said, well, he was
just taking so many classes, too many classes, so that
he couldn't graduate, and he was just like too interested

(29:14):
in doing too many different things, and it just like
graduating kind of slipped by him. And that's not really accurate.
The way he explained it in this Harvard student paper
is different from that, but it's also kind of weird.
Sometimes I could get away with barely going to classes.
Other times, like in organic chemistry. I loved it so much.
I did every single problem set in the back of
each chapter. They didn't even assign any of them. I

(29:35):
did them all. It was a full year course, and
I think I finished the book, including all the problems
in it, by halfway through the fall semester. That was
pretty typical. But I guess the reason I did it
in two years was that it was I was cheap
money wise, like a lot of teenagers, I didn't want
to keep being a burden on my parents. Steve Jobs
dropped out of college because he was worried about his parents' finances.
He did not. I didn't draw it out. I just

(29:56):
finished early. I also think I had this feeling that
if I took four years to do it, I would
probably flunk out, so it would be better to finish fast.
That turned out to be true at about the three
and a half year point. I did flunk out, but
out of graduate school. And you see that doesn't make
sense how He's like, well, I graduated early so I
wouldn't be a burden to my parents. But actually I
flunked out after three and a half years. I was like, well,
I don't understand what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
And I think if we're going back, that really speaks
to both the passionate learner and the grifter working in
in sort of synchronicity.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Right, if you'll forgive me likes and he has two
wolves inside him.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
The man contains two wolves. Oh yeah, one DIYer one
pretty much a regular.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
One trying to sell you a way.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
I don't I don't.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Forgive it now. The way he describes this other times
is that he didn't even realize he'd flunked out of
graduate school because he was so excited about the crystallography work.
His advisor had him doing and his advisor was like, hey, man,
you're you're actually flunking. You know you're going to You've
got to like you're getting kicked out, and how hired
him as a technician, but was like, you can't just

(31:02):
keep doing this, you have to reapply to graduate school
somewhere else. And Church eventually reapplies to Harvard and describes
himself as being shocked at getting in because he'd flunked
out of Duke, but he had also gotten accepted to
Harvard before he went to Duke. And anyway, whatever he
gets accepted, did some stuff happen behind the scenes with
his dad and Harvard? I don't know. It may just
been that he'd been accepted before.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
As I was. I bet having rich parents and a
nice little parachute probably helped him figure that out.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
And he's got this professor who's probably going to bat
for him too, because he is good at some things.
But anyway, it's how he dropped out, and exactly why
is like a little bit different every time I read it,
which always kind of like raises my grifter hackles just
to scoch. But maybe I'm missing some things. At any rate,
he gets into Harvard, and he does better here. He
gets into chemistry and genomics sequencing, which is what he does.

(31:53):
His thesis on his nineteen eighty five PhD from Harvard
PERI write up on edge dot org quote included the
first methods for direct genome sequencing, molecular multiplexing, and bar coding.
These led to the first genome sequence pathogen Helicobacter pylori
in nineteen ninety four. His innovations have continued to nearly

(32:13):
all next generation DNA sequencing methods and companies and as
far as I can tell, and I even like reached
out to a friend of a friend who's in this field,
that is accurate. He is a legitimately like foundational mind
in modern genome sequencing. His work has been massively influential
in like specifically personal genome of people. He didn't invent
genome sequencing, right, but when we've like first started sequencing,

(32:35):
it costs billions of dollars to that the first time,
And he's a major reason why individuals can do it
and why you can do it for I think it's
like seven hundred and fifty bucks to get your genome
sequence now, right, Like, he is a big part of
that process, right, not even not to just write it
down to just him either. But his role is substantial
and this is meaningful, important science, right, and I don't

(32:56):
I'm not going to try to take that away from
him or pretend like this does not seem to be exaggerated.
Other aspects of his achievements will be this does not
seem to be right. A write up on him in
Popular Science by Janine Interlandi summarizes scientists are now using
it personal genome sequencing to identify intractable diseases such as

(33:16):
cancer and schizophrenia, and doctors are beginning to use it
to it enough by genetic mutations that cause rare and
until now undiagnosable illnesses. So Church becomes a PhD. Seems
like you're in that doing some good work, doing some
good work. He initiates the Personal Genome Project at Harvard
in two thousand and five, with the goal of sequencing
and publicizing the complete genomes and medical records of one

(33:38):
hundred thousand volunteers to further research into personalized medicine. And
all this is great, but there's also even in just
this you could be like, well, these people are volunteering
so maybe it's cool, but like there is some potential
troubling privacy stuff about publicizing everybody's genomes. You know. I
think we've all thought about that more in the last

(34:00):
couple of years about before.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Maybe my genome's pretty private to me.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
I know a lot of people who use those twenty
three and me companies that are like, actually, I kind
of wish I hadn't done that now, knowing what they
do with the data.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Right, Yeah, they can like they can refuse a mortgage
because you've published this and now they're like, oh, we
think you're going to have diabetes, and diabetes means you
won't be able to pay thirty years worth of right mortgage,
So naw again.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
And it's one of those things you're not necessarily a
bastard for, like being in a science that is used
by corporations and that isn't fundamentally evil but gets used
in some shady ways. But kind of what this does
show is I don't really think he often thinks about
the negative applications of what he's involved in. That is
going to be kind of a through line with George Church,
as we'll talk about later. But that article in Popular

(34:50):
Science continues more so than any other scientist in his field.
He is helping to forge a new kind of biology,
one less geared towards studying DNA than harnessing it for
our own aims. This is where the fucked up shit
starts to kind of come in. Is like, he is,
a DNA is no different from you know, a computer chip, right,
And we shouldn't think of it as different than that

(35:10):
in terms of allowing us to build new technologies. And
I can understand on some extent that attitude, but it
is also different. It's not it's not a computer chip.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Like, I really get nervous whenever the language starts dehumanizing
human experiences, like, right, that there has to be some
attachment to what it means to be a person for
this to remain healthy, normal, applicable in a way that
isn't just you scamming us into something much more scary evil.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Right, Yeah. And that's the thing, is, like, there's a
degree to which, if you're just talking purely logically, right,
there's a degree to which you can be like, well,
I guess it makes sense to say, like, you know,
if I'm open to the idea of like genetically editing
people to make them, you know, more resilient to diseases
or something. Maybe it makes a little sense to think

(36:05):
of it as a technology in that way, but the
line from that to thinking about the people and other
living beings you create as just smartphones that how do
you what stops you? What guard rails are you building
in to stop that? If this is how you're looking
at it, where are the guard rails?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, people turn into mind sweeper real fast. Exactly, it's
not exactly You're not dealing with bodies anymore in that skin.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, and that's not great. And that is kind of
where we're headed here. So Church's success led to Harvard
funding the establishment of his lab. He has like a
lab that is funded by Harvard that has been for
quite some time, and he brings in, you know, minds
that excite him and hires them and basically pays them
to like fuck around and try to figure shit out.
And he uses this like this is both a valid

(36:56):
thing to do in terms of science, but it's also
he uses it as like an incubator for startup ideas.
Like once people do stuff that shows promise, he'll often
spin what they're doing off into a company. Per an
article in popular science. The result is that his lab
manages to be both one of Harvard's top producers and
a well known receiving center for science's misfit toys. There's

(37:17):
an artist encoding Wikipedia entries into apple genomes to create
a literal tree of knowledge, and an insurance industry refugee
who fled his office job over a decade ago, worked
several months for free while teaching himself biochemistry, and now
serves as co head of the lab. So again, that
sounds kind of cool potentially.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
You know, ah, yes, what's the true knowledge?

Speaker 1 (37:38):
What is that supposed to that do?

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, that's cool, I get I don't know, it sounds awesome.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
It sounds like an art project.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
The article we'll talk a little bit about like DNA coding.
That's actually there's some science there. But the article quotes
a former student of Churches who found it a genetic
engineering screening company that looks for inherited diseases. And he said,
we always joke that the only thing you need to
do to in George's lavish show up there is zero organization.
His style is just to let things happen. Mostly, you
have the constant sense that exciting things are happening. We're

(38:08):
about to happen, and if you miss out on it,
you have only yourself to blame.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, and yeah, that's kind of the tech industry fomo,
you know, PR thing in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
That's also just not a good thing to to sort of,
I guess have is like what people know about you
that like, yeah, we show up, he'll give you a job.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
He'll give you a job he didn't give Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
he's looking for bodies who were fucking around now. In
the mid aughts, Church participated in kind of his first
noteworthy project after the genome sequencing stuff that we'll talk about,
which is a project to actually encode digital data made
of text into binary code and then transfer that into

(38:49):
genetic code, thus using DNA to store digital data. In
his case, this was also a marketing stunt because the
thing that he stored in DNA was like seventy billion
copies of the book that he had written with another
guy that was just about to come out, Right, So
he does this as a PR move, right, and it's

(39:11):
a brilliant PR move. The book ReGenesis was about to
hit shelves and suddenly there's all these articles about how
he stored seventy billion copies into like a dot of
DNA no longer than like a fucking period on a
piece of paper, that he was able to store so
many copies, Like, isn't that amazing?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Right?

Speaker 1 (39:28):
And it is? It is pretty interesting, right, like that
he synthesized a strand of DNA, replicated it, and like
put it onto a scrap of paper and it contained
real data, right, This, in fact was so interesting that
it got him an appearance on the Colbert Report, right
where he pulled out the paper scrap which was like
the size and shape of a Foresten cookie slip and

(39:48):
showed it off to everybody. And this got representatives of
different companies who like archive films and other stuff reaching
out to him because they were like, oh shit, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Maybe this is a paper.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yes, yes, yes it is. We should work with him, yeah,
he's it is funny. Like again, I don't know that
this is exactly how a scientist should be putting out
a discovery of this magnitude apparently, but it's also it's
one of those things that's both like really cool and
interesting and somewhat less impressive than it sounds. When you
drill into what's actually happening here, right, because like the

(40:25):
like that article by INTERLANDI like makes it seem like
and this is obviously like a proof of concept for
something that could be potentially a huge deal for like
data storage. And that's not entirely untrue, but it's it's
not totally accurate either. The article goes on to summarize
the book that he co wrote with Ed Regis, who
It's weird to me that his co author's name is

(40:46):
ed Regis because Ed Regis is also a character in
the book Jurassic Park. He was the public relations manager
for engine in the novel. He doesn't wind up in
the fell. It's just really weird to me that his
co author on this book has that.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, but I bet he gets eaten. He sounds like
he got eaten.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Oh yeah, man, that motherfucker gets the hell eaten out
of him. Yes, yeah, if I am remembering right, he's
one of the ones who gets eaten like a son
of a bitch. I think he gets replaced with the
lawyer in the movie. So the book ReGenesis that Church
writes with Ed Regis quote envisioned this the future, This
new biology could bring one in which bacteria fuels cars

(41:24):
and commercial jets, and humans are immune to cancer. It
may sound like science fiction, or at least like a
litany of over hyped pipe dreams that science so often sells,
But George Church's pipe dreams have an uncanny record of
becoming reality. And I'd say this is the fundamental lie
about George that keeps getting repeated and spread by a
too credulous media. The man makes constant, wild and almost

(41:46):
impossible claims about what's going to happen in the future,
and then people will be like, yeah, it sounds nuts,
but his crazy dreams have become reality before, so we
should take him seriously. And we shouldn't because while Church
contributed massively to the science of gene c and saying
at no point were his ambitions in that field a
pipe dream, no one was ever like, no one can

(42:06):
do what you're trying to do, George. You can't personally
sequence the human genome. Scientists had been doing that right.
There were teams of people who had figured out aspects
of this before he got into the field. And while
what he discovered to do was really meaningful, nobody was like,
this will never get done. It was more like well,
someone's got to figure out, and he was the one
who figured it out. I'm not saying this is not impressive,

(42:27):
but it's not. It was never a pipe dream, right,
He's not by the time he got into it. And
the stuff he's talking about in this book, like altering
human biology to make us immune to cancer, that is
a pipe dream. There's no evidence that will ever be possible,
in part because cancers a bunch of different diseases. There's
never going to be a single thing that renders you

(42:48):
immune to cancer unless you start uploading people to the cloud,
which is also probably not possible.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I also get really nervous when the science includes both
car technology and answer elimination. That feels like, wait a minute,
you got to focus, big dog. Both of those things
can't be true from your single discovery.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah. It's like if you, like, you know, you're a
Hollywood actor who's like starting to go bald, and you
go in for like Turkish hair transplants and the doctor's like,
hey man, you want a new liver, Like I haven't
I got one. I'd be like, wait, wait, wait, I don't.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
I actually don't know. I prefer to keep the one
I have. I know it sucks, but I'll keep it.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
I just came in here to get the Joel McHale man.
I really was not interested in a new organ. Never
have hair transplants worked out better for a man? My god?

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Oh yeah his are? His are low and they're strong.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I really respect it, the Mona Lisa of hair. So
even when it comes to the cool things, doctor Church
actually did like store his book in DNA, and I
do think that's a cool idea, the practical reality behind
it is a lot less exciting than the hype. Now,
before we bust that, I want to show you a
video of Church presenting the exciting promise of DNA storage

(44:03):
in a video that was part of the promotional campaign
for his books. And he's being interviewed here with one
of his colleagues for this encoding project.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
And yes, he does look exactly like I thought he would.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Yeah, no, he does.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
The density is remarkably high, as little as one bit
per base one base per cubic nanometer, and so we
can store on the order of almost a zetabyte and
a gram of DNA a millileter volume.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
The theoretical density of a DNA is that you could
store the total world information, which is one point in
setabtes at least in twenty eleven, and about four grams
of DNA.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
And it leverages rapidly, improving next generation reading and writing
of DNA.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
He looks like he'd be friends with Stocked in Rush.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
He does look like he'd be friends with Stocked and Rush.
I think he's a lot smart than Stockton, though, although
that is a very low bar because Stockton was really
dumb all stocked at it turned into paste. Rush. He
does have the vibes of a guy that gets eaten
by his own dinosaurs. But I don't think that's going
to happen to him either, which is really tragic. That

(45:16):
actually does bum me out.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
It definitely felt like late stage James Cameron, you know
what I mean, Like it felt like you're telling me
about the Avatar technology. This movie still sucks.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
So yeah, yeah, So what he says here isn't technically wrong,
Like that's all technically accurate about what you could do
with DNA, but it doesn't mean that DNA is currently
or will be in any kind of timeframe a good
way to store data now, obviously there's a need for
a much better way to store data. Digital data storage
is not forever and has a lot of problems, and like,

(45:51):
is it just a really bad way to long term
protect human knowledge? And obviously, like paper is actually in
some ways better if you're storing it in like the
right conditions, like it will degrade less than digital data
overall long enough timeframe. But there's obvious problems with paper,
right Like are other things like if you've got like
a climate sealed place to store books versus some hard drives,

(46:14):
those hard drives will break on a faster timeframe, assuming
you managed to keep that place, you know, properly stored
and whatnot. But so we do need ways that are
much more space efficient because also the amount of data
humanity is producing, you know, especially since we have projects
like the Hadron Collider going, there's so much data being
made and storing it is a problem, right, like, because

(46:36):
you need these massive facilities in order to even store
a lot of this stuff. So these are issues that
we have, right and DNA and the fact that you
could store data with such density in it could be
a solution to aspects of it, but it's kind of
framed a lot is like and this is in the future,
Netflix will keep all its data in like DNA drive
yet to get like everyone like everything will be stored

(46:57):
and that probably is never going to have I can't
say definitely, but there's because there's a lot we don't
know about this, how this technology would work. But there's
the shit we haven't figured out yet is really significant.
For example, there's a high error rate when you write
data to DNA currently, and since it's really easy to
fuck up writing the data, the current best practices is

(47:18):
to store multiple redundant copies of each piece of information
so you have some that are right, which is like
he puts seventy billion copies of that book on like
a dot, right, Like that's that's kind of what we're
talking about here. You store a shitload of copies of
something because you know, and scientists don't even know how
many redundant backups we need yet.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
I found a study where they're just trying to figure
that out, like, Okay, what is the actual best practice
for the actual number of different redundant copies to store
because we really hadn't locked that down yet.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
So all of those all of those books, there's like
six of those books that are right, and then seventy
billion others that are like just mid likely shit books.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
I don't know if it's that, but we like the
I think the problem is like we don't actually know
how many we should be doing, right, We're still figuring
that part of it out. And then there's a separate
app asue of like, Okay, well you've got that on
this dot, but you can't like that dot's not connected
to a computer, Like, sure, the data is there, but
how would you access and store it and use it
if you wanted to write? Like, could you get that

(48:21):
on a kindle easily? And the answer is no. Right.
I found an article on DNA data storage written by
Nithil Krishnaj that lays out some of the other practical
issues inherent to doing this for any practical reason. Quote,
DNA has horrendously slow read and write speeds, so it
is an ideal for real time storage, and activities like
streaming video and gaming definitely won't be viable at this time.

(48:44):
As a result, DNA data storage loses some of its
versatility and as of now, it would only work best
for long term storage. It's also not rewriteable. Once you
encode data into DNA, there's no way of making changes
to your data without redoing the encoding process. There's also
no random access functionality, which means you can't access a
certain part of the data without decoding all of it.
And this is still like interesting and potentially away. Again,

(49:07):
you could have a bunch of different places where all
of the data we've you know, made up to a
certain point is stored on DNA somewhere, and that would
potentially allow future people to access a lossless version of it,
and in a way that might be really helpful. But
we're not talking about something that's going to alter daily
life in its current form, and maybe not ever on
any timeframe any of us will see because it's just

(49:28):
not practical, right.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yeah, Netflix isn't going to exist when this is actually a.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Thing, right yes, yes, Like at some point in the future,
maybe they'll figure out all this stuff, but that is
not any kind of time frame anybody should be like
waiting for. Right Again, not to say this is an
interesting or as a potential use, it's just it's just prectice,
like this is the future of data storage, and it's like,
well maybe in like a couple hundred years. Side up. Yeah, Now,

(49:57):
there's also something in that video that I find creepy.
As an side which is that doctor Church proposes one
use of this technology would be to create permanent records
of the brain activity of a human being, and I
just don't like the way he says this.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Or you could imagine other huge data sources, like all
the neuronal flowerings in the brain, which could be encoded
into the d NA, and again you could do selective
reading of that as needed.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yikes, I don't love that. Now he's saying like, well,
you could do some really groundbreaking medical studies if you
had access to this much data. And sure, but when
you talk about making perfect records of a human brain activity,
you're also getting into the kind of territory where I'm like,
I want to immediately hear what you think about the
potential for surveillance and violation of privacy right ex. You

(50:45):
kind of have to bring that up right away. You
can't just be interested in the technology here.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
It seems like you want to download some information from
people that maybe they didn't want to give you. That's
some nasty work there, doctor Jege.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
I'm a little and I promise you we're so far
getting into all this. Well, theoretically, there's stuff about this
that could be wrong or he's exaggerating. The actual fucked
up stuff starts right about now, right, because when we're
talking about like this is a technology that could be
good or could have some major problematic ethical you know, implications,
you want to know the scientist working on the technology

(51:21):
that could have fucked up ethical implications has a strong
history of personal ethics. Right, And this brings me to
doctor Church's history with our old friend of the pod,
Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein, that's the monster at the end
of this book. Okay, at the end of this episode,

(51:43):
Church to Jeffrey Epstein, Yes.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
In need money.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Surprise emerges literally he is the thin white duke of
evil scientists. That's Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
That's really cool. Oh that's like a really exciting plot
twist that you don't see coming. I love this.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
It's like the end of the second or third Kingsman
movie when Hitler comes out of nowhere, like, oh, there
we go, there we go.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Oh, you guys really built that a long.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Way great, dropping him like thanos. So some sources I
have said say that Church in Epstein's relationship started in
two thousand and five. I've heard Church claim two thousand
and six, but people have said that he was receiving

(52:35):
funding from Epstein as far back as two thousand and five.
It may just be that his labs started receiving unrestricted
funding from Epstein before they met, and I will remind
you here they were receiving funding from two thousd and
five to two thousand and seven. Epstein was convicted in
two thousand and eight of sex trafficking. Although that's not
the end of their relationship. But let's talk about those
first couple of years. Now. At that point in his

(52:56):
career two thousand and five, right, he is, He's just
started the personal gene known project. His primary focus and
the thing that he's most famous for is his work
on like gene sequencing and gene editing. You know, he's
into both of these things. An article for The New
York Times that discusses Churches and other scientists associations with
Epstein described doctor Church in this period as quote a

(53:17):
molecular engineer who has worked to identify genes that could
be altered to create superior humans. Oh oh uh oh oh, boy,
don't like that.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Superior humans. That's a trigger word for me.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Yeah, yeah, boy has anyone ever said those two words
and not been doing something horrifying.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yikes.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
So, doctor Church was an early pioneer for the use
of Crisper to edit human genes, and one of his
ambitions was and is, to create a method of gene
therapy to, in his words, knock out both copies of
your CCR five gene, which is the AIDS receptor, and
then put them back in your body. Then you can't
get AIDS anymore because the virus can't enter yourselves. And hey,

(54:01):
that sounds fine. AIDS is bad stopping people from being
able to get it, lovely. The issue is that Church's
ambitions don't stop here, and Epstein was not drawn to
Church's life work for anything as humanitarian as stopping a virus.
I have found a couple stories of how Church and
Epstein actually met for the first time. Church has claimed

(54:22):
that he was connected to Epstein first either, and he says,
I don't know which, either through the chairman of Harvard's
psych department or through his literary agent, John Brockman. Sure, buddy,
I feel like I remember how I first met Jeffrey Epstein,
but maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
But that speaks to his multitude.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Man right.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
It could either be a money man or it could
be an academic man. But one of them, yeah, introduced.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Me, and both of them are implicated in some sketchy
Epstein stuff. To be clear, we were all there. But
in another interview, Church seemed to suggest that Epstein probably
reached out to him because Epstein was friendly and working
with a biologist and mathematician named Martin Noack. Church and
Noac had worked together on various applications of Crisper too

(55:10):
edit genes Per an article in stat by Karen Begley.
At the get togethers with Noak, Church said Epstein seemed
interested in the science of life's origins and mathematically modeling
the evolution of viruses, cancer cells, and life itself. Epstein
did not leave much of an imperson impression on him.
Church said the meetings weren't really about Jeffrey. They were
about the scientists who were talking with each other. Normally,

(55:32):
expectations are low for people who sit in on meetings
far outside their field of expertise, so he's kind of like, well,
it was mostly just as scientist talking, and Jeffrey didn't
really know much and when he talked, it didn't really
make an impression as a result.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
And if that's the truth, which I have trouble believing
because their relationship goes on after this. But if that's
the truth, then all Church did was take this guy's
money who was not convicted of a crime yet, and
show up at some dinners to talk about science. And
that wouldn't be so bad, right. And in fact, there
are some people who got some funding from Epstein and

(56:05):
were not involved in the sketchy stuff because he funded
a lot of guys and they didn't all go to
his parties or have sex with teenagers.

Speaker 5 (56:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
And I'm not saying Church did.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
He made enough money to buy an island. You can't
do that with only sex pests some people. Right, he
had to be on some version of and up and up.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
There's some people who were involved with him who have
been tarnished unfairly.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I'm also not saying that Church is tartished unfairly here,
because I don't think he is. However, I would be
remiss if I did not read a different description of
the dinner parties and events that Epstein held for scientists
around this time. Maybe these are a different set of
parties than the ones Church attended, although they include people
he's listed as his friends. So I'm gonna quote from
the New York Times here. The Harvard cognitive psychologist Stephen

(56:50):
Pinker said he was invited by colleagues, including Martin Noack,
a Charvard professor of mathematics and biology, and the theoretical
physicist Lawrence Krauss, to salons and coffee cloud at which
mister Epstein would hold court on multiple occasions, starting in
the early two thousands, mister Epstein told scientists and businessmen
about his ambitions to use his new Mexico ranch as
a base where women would be inciminated with his sperm

(57:12):
and would give birth to his babies. According to two
award winning scientists and an advisor to large companies and
wealthy individuals, all of whom mister Epstein told about it,
it was not a secret. The advisor, for example, said
he was told about the plants not only by mister
Epstein at a gathering at his Manhattan townhouse, but also
by at least one prominent member of the business community.
One of the scientists said mister Epstein divulged his idea

(57:34):
in two thousand and one at a dinner at the
same townhouse. The other recalled mister Epstein discussing it with
him at a two thousand and six conference that he
hosted in Saint Thomas and the Virgin Islands. Once, at
a dinner at mister Epstein's mansion in Manhattan's uper East Side,
mister Janeer and he's talking about Jeron Lanier said that
he talked to a scientist who told him that mister
Epstein's goal was to have twenty women at a time
impregnated at his thirty three thousand square foot Zoro ranch

(57:55):
in a tiny town outside of Santa Fe. Whoa cool.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
It is pretty impressive to find out that Jeffrey Epstein
is somehow more of a piece of shit than I thought.
I was like, Ah, he's just a monster. I don't
think he's like a super monster god.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
No, no, no, I don't think he's got a baby ranch.
Oh yeah, he's got a baby ranch. Yeah, or he
tried to have a baby ranch.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Stat News, to their credit, did ask doctor Church after
Epstein's death about Epstein's eugenics baby ranch, being like, you're
working in like gene editing people and Epstein wanted to
do this. Did he talk to you about this because
you guys knew each other when he was talking about this.
Right now, I have no proof either way. For his part,
doctor Church said I never heard anything about it, although

(58:45):
he went on to say, and I find this curious.
I'd have thought that I would have been involved in
that kind of conversation. But it didn't tend to go
in that direction. But also, I think people tend to
behave themselves around me. That's a weird thing to say.

Speaker 4 (58:59):
After want to want a strange little guy.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Honestly, bro, if someone asks you whether or not you're
involved in Jeffrey Epstein's baby Ranch, you end the statement
with I never heard anything about Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
You don't have to be like I would have liked
to talk to him about it.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah, I would have. I'm kind of offended he didn't
bring me.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
In, but also sounds awesome. I just not didn't talk
to him.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
But also, then, when you say it didn't tend to
go in that direction, well, tend doesn't mean never? Does
that mean sometimes it kind of did? Like what are
you saying? You seem like a man who's precise with
his language. I don't know why you're phrasing it this way.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Yeah, Jeffrey is like, you know, I want to start
a baby ranch, and he's like huh, He's huh nothing nothing.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I thought he was going to bring it up again,
but he didn't.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
You know, never mind, never mind. I thought you'd be
cool about it.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
I thought you were cool. Yeah. It's like Jeffrey being
like he wants a coke? What nothing. I didn't say anything. Nothing.
I don't do coke.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Sober sober Jeffrey Epstein, that's what they call me. I'm
gonna go to the bathroom like fifteen minutes. I'm gonna
come out really excited. I love pen.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
We're gonna talk a business like it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
I'm gonna look like Robin Williams in nineteen eighty five
when I step out of that thing. It's nothing weird.
So perhaps that is the truth, that he had nothing
to do with this. Friends and colleagues of doctor Church
express surprise when, after Epstein's death, the years of close
connections between Epstein and Church were made public. When associate
pointed out that Church even brought a philosopher into his

(01:00:25):
Harvard lab to flag potential bioethics issues and experiments, and
that he teaches a research ethics class, which is uncommon
for a scientist in his field working at his level,
and so they're like, well, it's weird to me that
he would have any relationship with Epstein because I have
always considered him one of the most concerned with ethics
people in our field. And again, to emphasize for legal
and moral reasons, there is no evidence that Church was

(01:00:47):
working on any kind of eugenics baby project for Epstein,
not that there would be because Jeffrey Epstein didn't publish
all the details about everyone he was involved with with everything.
We just know he talked about this plan during several
coffee clatches and other events with his pet scientists, and
that Church was at similar events. Doctor Church claims that
working with Epstein at all was an ethical lapse, but

(01:01:10):
not entirely his fault. He points out that universities are
supposed to vet donors before they meet with faculty, and
he told Stack, my understanding is this vetting is the
responsibility of the development office, which is yet another reason
why scientists are a little more relaxed. They feel they
have administrators who, in theory do the difficult job of
figuring out who's legit. So sah, I'm just a little guy.

(01:01:31):
How could I be expected to think about this sort
of thing that's someone else's job.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
And now and now he's picking who introduced him. Right,
Previously he didn't know who introduced him, Hurn, it was
hard the whole time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
It was Harvard. Yeah. Now, he added that scientists, quote
myself included, are not very good at screening or judging
human beings. Right that just like, ah, we're all just
kind of, you know, bad at people. You know, it's
not really our strong suit. And to be fair to also, first,
I just don't believe that for Church, because he's an
incredibly skilled public relations expert. I think he's very good

(01:02:05):
with people, right, and he's probably very good at judging
people because that's what he does. Anyway, to be fair
to Church, he went on to make a good point
in that stat interview that almost does sound like a
Mia Kolpa. He states that a lot of scientists working
on cutting edge projects with important applications feeled what he
described as an exceptionalism, which is a sense that anything

(01:02:27):
they do is okay if the work is important enough.
This is almost like a precursor to like effective altruism
type feelings.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
He predates that, but I don't think he's wrong here.
I do think that's a thing that a lot of
scientists working in important fields feel, which is that like, well,
if I have to do something a little fucked up
to further this research with incredibly important like implications, it's
worth it. And he cited the case of a Nobel laureate,
a biologist named Sidney Brinner, who took fifteen million dollars

(01:02:56):
from Philip Morris to fund a biology institute, and Sydney's
argument was that, like, look, if big Tobacco keeps this money,
they'll use it for something worse than I will using
it for science, which is like an arguable point, but
also like, well, big Tobacco's put give you that money
because it's right off, and like they're gonna they're expecting something.
They're expecting something from it, right, aren't they, Sidney? Are

(01:03:18):
you giving them anything? Are you sure?

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
And also there you picked the worst guy, you know
what I mean, Like, it's not like you got a
comparable uh space to be putting this money into.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
It's when they like Walmart needed at tax right off,
so they funded this like medical thing I was doing,
and like you know, Walmart's a sketchy corporation, but also
like the science is good. It's like, no, this is
the tobacco industry. Yeah, their product is literally killing more
people every year than World War Two.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
They win, they win the murder game.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
You did it. It's just a little different, yeah, you know.
But anyway, there is an argument about like, well, how
and obviously I'm in the advertising busines. There's always an
argument how many moral compromises should you make to fund
something valuable?

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
And the answer isn't none. You know, this is capitalism.
I would say big tobaccos, maybe like fifteen million dollars
a Philip Morris money is maybe a step beyond that.
But you know, people feel differently, you know, like to
you should is it fine to advertise vaping? I don't
know whatever. What's less arguable is that after Epstein was charged, convicted,

(01:04:27):
and sentenced in two thousand and eight, doctor Church continued
his association with the by this point known sex criminal. Right,
So two and five and seven we don't know if
he was involved in the weird eugenic stuff. We know
he's taking Epstein's money, but Epstein's not a known criminal, right,
he could have been, you know, kind of innocent. He
continues associating with Epstein repeatedly after he is convicted as

(01:04:52):
a sex criminal in two thousand and eight, and that's
crossing a line for me. Yeah. At one point it's.

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
Like, I fear this man just lacks common sense. Nope, No,
you should have known was an active decision to associate
with one of the world's biggest monsters.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
You're you're making a choice here, brother.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
He was like, Nah, Jeffrey's awesome to me, and I'm
gonna keep gett I'm gonna keep hanging.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Yeah. So, when Church's book ReGenesis came out in twenty twelve,
it elevated his profile, and Epstein seems to have gotten
back in touch with him soon after. And this would
have been, you know, after Epstein finished doing his quote
unquote time, which doesn't really not by that was not
time by normal people's standards, right like his slap on
the wrist didn't even get a slap on the wrist, right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
And it's not clear to me when they got back
in touch or if they ever got out of touch
after two thousand and seven. I don't even know that.
Whatever the case, Doctor Church has posted a public online
calendar every year since nineteen ninety nine, and it shows
that he had six separate phone calls or meetings with
Epstein in twenty fourteen. Stant News writes sample entry June

(01:05:57):
twenty first, twenty fourteen, Lunch with Jeffrey Epstein twelve to
one thirty Martin Noak's Institute. And that's a lot of
times to talk to Jeffrey Epstein, Right, that's a lot
of that's a long lunch too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Twelve to one. You guys were chatting, You were pushing it, huh.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
When interviewed after Epstein's death, doctor Church admitted to meeting
Epstein several times each year since twenty fourteen, and stat
was like, didn't you hear that he'd been convicted of
all those sex crimes? And like, you're a father and
a grandfather. Did it not skiv you out to be
involved with this guy? And Church replied, I did read
a couple of news articles like ten years back quote,

(01:06:38):
but they weren't clear enough for me to know if
there was a serious problem. Now. I should note here
that reporting in two thousand and eight alleged that Epstein
had received massages from teenage girls. You didn't know you
didn't know. Huh, you're a researcher.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Like that's a real arch when we say teenage, how
are we talking?

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Yeah, well we're talking right now. When he asked if
he felt Epstein had paid his debt to society, stats like,
city you think he'd like paid his debt to society
after two thousand and eight and deserved a second chance?
And I kind of I really respect stat for sitting
down with this guy and kind of drilling him on this.
Church responded with what I would call a non answer.
So they like, hey, so is it that you thought,

(01:07:24):
you know, he'd made good, that everything was okay now?
And he said, as far as I know, people just
didn't have that conversation, but it should have. So, ok,
let's break that down. He's asked, do you think that
after two thousand and eight Epstein had paid his debt
to society? And he said, as far as I know,

(01:07:45):
people not me, didn't have that conversation, but it should have.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
It's it, I guess the people.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Your grammar should be better than that man, But like,
what do you what do you mean?

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
He's like, I'm not going to answer for myself. Yeah
you yeah, you the single body of people that exist
around me should have had the conversation with Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Webs okay man. Now, he went on to add in
that interview, I would think I would think to like
that people's reputation is multi dimensional and multi year. It
takes a long time to build up but also to
tear down and stat notes. He was speaking generally and
about himself, as in like, this shouldn't destroy my reputation
because like, I've done other things. But it's kind of

(01:08:31):
hard not to read that as I'm talking about Epstein too, like, well,
he's a complicated guy. He's got other stuff that he's
done besides the sex crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Great, love an answer like that from our ethics man
working on brain reading. For what it's worth, George Church
did ultimately apologize for taking Epstein's money in a twenty
nineteen interview, although you want to guess what he blamed
his lapse in judgment on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, just tell us there's
no way nerd tunnel vision. There we go.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
I'm just too much of a nerd to have a
problem with sex crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
WHOA, I don't even notice.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Plus you know, you know how it goes you're watching
Star Wars Friends trafficking teenage girls around the world. It
just happens.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Yeah, No, there is this this, there's again. It's just
this this want to like cutify themselves out of like
the human experience. It's like, I'm just a nerdy, little
cutie boy. I I didn't even notice that bad things
were happening. Like, you know, you're a grown man who's
trying to manipulate genes. This isn't You're not a sweetheart

(01:09:42):
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's just very it's it's great stuff.
Good work, good work, doctor Church. Now that's pretty bad
ending on Epstein and part one not ideal. It gets
so much worse than part two. There's so much eugenics coming.
There's so much fucked up shit on the way. I
am so excited to tell you the rest of this story, Langston.

(01:10:06):
But first let's talk about you. You know, what's your
favorite color?

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Favorite color is coral?

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
Coral. I honestly didn't call that, Okay, I didn't actually
call anything. I had no idea what your favorite color
would be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Yeah, I think for years I used to say blue
to protect myself from yeah, from my own insecurities. But
then as the same I had to be honest and say.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Not a safe place.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
My favorite color is nuanced and slightly effeminated.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
I guess I have been looking for a pair of
coral shorts for the summer. It does seem like a nice,
nice short color, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my brother
wears a lot of coral. It's a good color. We're
all getting over our insecurities here, you know, just like
George Church got over his insecurities about his friend Jeffrey Epsto.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
He's like, you know what, no, not like, I can
get past this.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Yeah, we can get past this, and we can get
past the part where we talk about George Church to
talk about your pluckables? What are they? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
You can listen to my podcast. It's called Ma Mama
told me. I do it with my friend David Borie,
who is also alumnus of this gorgeous podcast. And yeah,
we talk about conspiracy theories, specifically black conspiracy theories, and
it's really fun and silly, and we do not nearly
as effective research as you do, Robert.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
My only hope is that George Church gets integrated into
a series of conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein because everyone
else who was tied to him has been And look,
you know, are the all of those accurate?

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Are they all fun? Yes? And George miss out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
You know, I will say there was that era on
what is now X but formerly Twitter where they were
just making up lists of the people who were on
the flight logs, and it was always a funny list.
It never failed, no matter who wrote it, the right,
the left, the sickos, the imagineers, they were always funny

(01:12:00):
lists of people.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Oh yeah. One of my favorite things about that is
just like, you know, maybe that's sketchy that uh fucking
Eddie Murphy wound up in there, But I could also
like it's a perfect thing for an Eddie Murphy movie
where he just finds out he's been on this sex
criminals plan a bunch of time, Like I'll watch that
ninety minute comedy.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Like there were a few people on some of those
flight lines where I was like, I don't think they
knew what they got on the plane for.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
Yeah, you might have just been going to a thing
with him, right, you go into some sort of conference.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Somebody said get on the PJ.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Yeah, yeah, yea, I'll get in a private jet share. Yeah,
it has. I will say one thing that I have
learned as a result of this, because previously, before I
knew any about Jeffrey Epstein, if some richka had been like, Hey,
we're going to pay you to go to a conference.
You want to ride my private jet, I probably would
have been like, yeah, fuck man, that sounds dope. You know,
fucking twenty five year old mate probably wouldn't have had

(01:12:54):
the wherewithal to be like and don't know, but now
absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Someone asked me the other day if I would get
on that Trump plane, the one that the Qatar gave him.
It's like, for the story alone, I kind of think.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
I have to. Yeah, I know that one. Yes, yes, yes,
that's justifiable for journalism.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Yeah, I just got to ride this wave and deal
with the fallout later.

Speaker 4 (01:13:19):
Yeah, I'm good, I'm staying home.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
You would stay at home, You wouldn't touch it.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
No, I'm good, I'm staying home.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
But no, folks, the lesson here is that if a
rich guy wants to fly you and pay you to
speak at some sort of weird conference, tell him first
class from a real airline, right, you know, it's nice enough,
and no one can be like, what if that was
that Delta flight like implicating you in crime? The only
thing that Delta flight implicates you in is crashing at Newark. Right, Sorry,

(01:13:48):
that's that's bad.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
That was They said they'll do better. They said they'll
do better.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
I said they'll do better. Everyone's got to do better,
all right.

Speaker 4 (01:13:58):
That's the episode.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
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Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
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Robert Evans

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.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Dire Wolves, Dr. George Church & The De-Extinction Grift