November 4, 2025 • 18 mins
What if scientists could re-create the Neanderthal?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Come see the caveman.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Boy.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This sucks. It's one more thing I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the What in the world was this one man
play you unleashed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
For the team, a somewhat lighthearted portrayal of what it
would be like if scientists actually produced a Neanderthal in
the modern world. There are so many scientific and ethical
questions connected to this, but one of them would be
what kind of life would that being have?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Can I make it do my laundry and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Oh my god, this sucks again, So we'll get there.
We mentioned this during the Ang Show, the radio show,
but didn't have time to deal with all of it.
This is probably not gonna happen. The same crack pots
who claim to clone a dire wolf and a wooly
(01:01):
mammoth but just produced like a slightly hairier elephant that
was slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Rt the dire wolf in particular. That was a giant
news story that day.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Everybody reported that, Yeah, yeah, But so these people, in
a desperate attempt for more more publicity, are talking about
cloning or not cloning, but producing a Neanderthal. If you
are not familiar with the history of pre human humans
and human human humans during that period, Neanderthals were one
(01:32):
of several very closely related sorts of human beings on Earth,
and indeed, modern people these days share up to have
four percent of their DNA with Neanderthals. I have mentioned
that I Joe Getty at one point was in the
ninety ninth percentile of modern people in terms of how
(01:53):
much Neanderthal DNA I have, which explains my fits of
rage and my enormous head really doesn't. As far as
we knew, Neanderthals were smart as smart as or smarter
than Homo sapiens back in the day.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, definitely, And as.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
We mentioned, the perception that Neanderthals were just stupid lunkens
was one racist scientist a brit right in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Correct, But yeah, Neanderthals were every bit as smart as
Homo sapiens, if not smarter, And it could be a
disease that for whatever reason genetically they couldn't and wipe
them out and has nothing to do with anything else
or who knows.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
What right, and so now they're making noises. The head guy,
who was a Harvard researcher a decade ago, he said
he was confident in Neanderthal resurrection was a near term possibility.
Others have told Live science dot Com that doing so
is currently an insurmountably difficult task. But even if we
(02:50):
could bring them back, there are many reasons we shouldn't,
they argue. Here's one guy from the University of Kansas said,
I'm sorry, it's a woman. I've misgendered her now twice
while talking about her. That is one of the most
unethical things I can possibly think of to attempt.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ethical stop unethical.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So not.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
A practically bad idea, but unethical. Why is it not ethical? Well, first,
the technical stuff. You can't just put a Neanderthal genome
in a human egg.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
It just wouldn't work. But one issue with the process
is potential immune system incompatibility. And just you know, I'm
going to jump to the end here. Our point is
not discussing whether they're going to unleash Neanderthals in the world.
If you have any interest in science, A lot of
this stuff is just interesting on its own. So one
(03:42):
issue is potential immune system incompatibility, which often dooms cross
species pregnancies as the host uterus rejects the fetus.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I think I'm seeing the unethical part coming produce a
like deformed human or somebody an actual human being neanderthalo's
opposed to Homo sapien, but a human being that dies
very early.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Right. Oh yeah, yeah, all these experiments have that. Oh
that reminds me. I meant to bring this up on
the show. But China is now working on gene editing
higher IQ into kids. Oh, of course, you develop a smarter,
more hearty super soldier.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's a race between that and AI for what's gonna
do mankind?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Maybe also maybe they team up.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You start unleashing all kinds of extraordinarily high IQ human
beings into the world. What's your experience with people with
super high IQ that they're all just reasonable, wonderful humans
that are great at everything in life.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And happy and relaxed.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah. Yeah. It's still debated, by the way, and I
don't know much about this debate. I could click on
the link, but who has the time Whether modern humans
and neanderthal can be called separate species or not. Anyway,
although humans and Neanderthals did successfully interbreed in the past,
today there's at most four percent Neanderthal DNA in some
human groups, and they think it might not have been beneficial,
(05:14):
so it was slowly purged out of the genome through
the eons. Anyway, mention this on the show, I found
it fascinating. Experts have discovered that humans y chromosomes. That's
your you're a fellow chromosome, no matter how you identify,
because you gantens your sex. Anyway, the humans y chromosome
lacks Neanderthal DNA, and there ought to be tiny bits
(05:37):
at least, but it completely lacks it, which may point
to a fundamental immune system incompatibility between male Neanderthal fetuses
and the female Homo sapiens carrying them, even in the
distant past. In other words, Homo sapiens girl gets with hot,
hot Neanderthal dude like myself. If they produce a girl,
(06:00):
it may well survive. But there's a much much smaller
chance that a boy Neanderthal would survive. And obviously, you
know through the years, you just a birth rate that
fixed and low. Your your genetic material would die out.
And they say a genetic variant red blood cells and
Neanderthal human hybrid mothers might have resulted in high rates
(06:22):
of miscarriage. So those girls produced by the aforementioned for
really hot looking Homo sapien girl and the manly manly
Neanderthal might not have been able to reproduce successfully in
the same numbers.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Neanderthal has had bigger brains. Your brain takes a ton
of your energy in your body, which I didn't realize.
And they just couldn't feed themselves is one of the theories.
They just couldn't possibly get themselves enough calories every day
to feed their big brain.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh wow, yeah, I read that the other day. How
much of your your energy your metabolized.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Energy or something.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's amazing, right, yeah, yeah, that is crazy. Oh, Papa Bah.
Another root would be cloning, but in order to clone
one of her extinct cousins, you'd need a live Neanderthal cell.
That ain't happening. So with crisper technology, it is possible
to modify a human cell genome to make it more
similar to Neanderthal. And that's what this business, this guy
(07:20):
firm Colossals modify.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Why why other than to charge people to look at
it in a cage. I can't come up with any
reason why you would do this.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Hence my fascinating one man play. Come see the Caveman Boy.
This sucks exactly what is the kid just destined for
a sideshow, right, Otherwise, what's the point. So with Crisper,
it wouldn't be a Neanderthal, it'd be a human with
a lot of Neanderthal characteristics.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Now, maybe what we don't really know. One thing I've
learned about from reading Homo Sapiens and then my son
is superint evolution stuff for whatever reason, humans and dinosaurs
and all that sort of stuff. There's almost nothing that's
agreed upon. Practically everything you hear is like a fifteen
(08:11):
percent of people believe this. So if you hear you
know things, and you if you hear anything about dinosaurs
or humans or anything, and you think that's not what
I heard, Yeah, it's probably not because there are lots
of different theories and are constantly changing.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Right. Yeah, So they think in maybe twenty years crisper
technology you could probably maybe have a baby with holy
neanderthal genome. Yah. Wouldn't that be great? So we can want,
says this scientist. But I don't think we will do it,
even if it's plausible, for both ethical and legal reasons.
(08:45):
Legal de extincting, de extincting.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You can't give me a ticket. I'm not a human,
I'm not a Homo sapien. There's no last Neanderthal's driving
this fast? Is that what the legal reasons?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Wow, that would cause the Supreme Court to dig deep
into the law books. Wasn't it, Uh, de extincting Neanderthals
is ethically repugnant, experts told Live Science. It's morally abhorrent
even conceive of trying to create another kind of human
based on DNA using uncertain technologies to which they could
not consent. Raff said, Ah, I don't know if I
(09:19):
buy that. So they're not even looking into the You're
gonna have a whole bunch of deformed kid's awfulness there.
They just in general think it's unethical to bring another
human species onto the planet.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I don't know, because it is. I don't know if
I quite get what's the ethics around that.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Well, okay, they do get a little bit into these
experiments like Dolly the sheep famously, the clone sheep that
was after dozens wasn't it of deformed horrible poor creatures
that never could survive?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, doing that that were still born or born.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Alive and rapidly died and the rest of it. It
took him a lot of hacks to get an actual sheep.
But here we go. Even if the Neanderthal embryos could
develop into an otherwise healthy Neanderthal, the life they would
face once in our world would be unbearably.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Bleak, like try to get hired.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Being the only Neanderthal raised in the twenty first century
world of humans would likely to be lonely and isolating,
possibly like the lives of the last Neanderthals in Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You don't know that. Chicks might dig it. You might
be a rock star.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
This is all seems very speculative to me.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It might be the thing you're going on all the
talk shows. Big guest tonight, the world's only Neanderthal comes out?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Who what brings you? So the k Man outfit? Ooga
ooga booga. Just kidding, Jimmy, it's great to be with
you tonight. What an honor this is. I love your work, right.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Chicks wanting to get with the Neanderthal man on Earth?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Oh yeah? The rumors, would you know, circulate rappity? Oh yeah,
like the bat.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But you know I need I needed a four will
drive rugged enough for Minyan with all background you know,
endorsing Ford or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, but Gus, you'd have to, you'd become globally known,
so you'd be like a super celebrity and have to
more or less hide out with.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
The be the biggest celebrity on planet Earth that planet
Earth has probably ever.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Seen, right right, Yeah, But I mean like the Bill
Gates is of the world and the world's biggest movie stars.
That's the only people you could hang out with, because
you know they're cool around other celebrities. But you got
there a gift and Harry by the pool and the
say shells with Brad Pitt in a squeeze.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You got to give him or her a name also,
which is be a big deal.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, but they would they might, you know, choose
their own name anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well one day. That's that's where you do get into
the ethics. Who who does this person belong to? Well,
who's the person belonged to? So did they get belong to? Well,
that's what I'm getting in it belongs to all of us?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Well, what an idiotic thing, Saint Michael and it was perfect.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Who doesn't belong to? Maybe it does belong to all
of us. It's mankind. It's like space exploration or something
like that. Is it a human start?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
There? Does she have the rights of the fact that
you even asked, who would it belong to? Who? Do
I belong to? Nobody?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But you're a homot sapien, This is not so. Does
it like dogs belong to individual? Yeah, pet belongs to someone.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Maybe like America's mascot, basically.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
America's mask. What if he can run really really fast?
Does he get to compete for Team USA in the Olympics?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Oh wow wow? So yeah, this part's really speculative. It
would likely be lonely and isolating. They wouldn't have prior
generations or peers to learn from. That's that's begging the question.
It's it's leaping past. The question is is it just
a a different sort of human but so similar that
the age almost god? Or would it be more like
(13:09):
racial differences between a Han Chinese and a black person
from Africa and like a Swede.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
We'd have to choose their name from when they're a
little kid, we got to call them something. We can't
just say hey to you to the only Neanderthal on earth,
and then like at eighteen, do they get to do
whatever they want?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
The darker possibility is that we would keep any de
extincted Neanderthals in zoos like animals.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yes, if they throw the feces at us or anything humans,
I'm I'm not going to throw my pieces. You can
stand here all day long. I'm not throwing my feces.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Look, you want me to check my feces, it's going
to cost you extra give me right. Humans don't have
a good track record over the centuries of treating other people, well,
said this ethicist. So I have no confidence that we
wouldn't be nasty to Neanderthals. I don't think we would
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
No, absolutely, not China will. Yeah they will. They will
breed whatever until they get the strongest, fastest, whatever, and
kill off or enslave the other ones.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right right, Another ethical problem, and I'm quoting scientists again,
a Neanderthal being constructed in this way wouldn't be living
in the past. They would be living in the present
and in an environment that's neither appropriate nor safe for them. Yeah,
probably because we don't know anything about how their genes
reacted with their environment.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
From a from a like disease standpoint, I get that,
But from a like it's not like they're going to
like at the age of ten, say where are the
dinosaurs or something like that. They don't have any of
the cultural baggage that comes with, right having died out
two hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, yeah, what electric?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Where are these flying machines?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That's not the way it would work right, right, And
it's not like they could teach you their Neanderthal language.
I mean, yeah, is it legal to bring back a neanderthal?
While it's wildly unethical, the legality of making one is unclear.
According to Greeley, one of the scientists, Now, human embryo
editing of this nature is illegal in the US and
(15:13):
the EU. It's unlikely that every country in the world
has relevant laws on their books.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Unlikely underpate, Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
No kidding, huh, Yeah, that's proascinating.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
That's a problem with all of this stuff around Crisper,
around AI, around everything. We have these conversations for Europe
and the United States, doesn't matter at all to North Korea, Russia, China,
any of those places. We're to do whatever the hell
they want.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
All right, finally, here is your neanderthal quiz. Are you ready?
How are we going to do this? Is everybody going
to try to answer? Or I'll try all right, or Michael,
do you want to take the Neanderthal quiz?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Who's gonna get with the Neanderthal? What was your saying
from earlier in the show.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Once you go Neanderthal, you never go back at all.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
That's right. Yeah, some chick's gonna want to get with
the just you can brag or become like a Kardashian
sort of have a sex tape, you know, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Wow, wow, you you you you Homo Sapien slots.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Neanderthal would make a killing on only fans. Oh yeah,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Watch all right, hang on a second. This thing freaked
out on me. I hate when that happens. All right,
So I can't do the whole quiz fans? All right, Michael, Okay,
where did the name Neanderthal come from? A mountain in Italy,
(16:44):
a valley in Germany, a fjord in Sweden, or a
desert in Ethiopia. I'm gonna go with Germany. Jav All
the Neanderthal valley in Germany.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
That's where they found the first owes.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Does this have a year, uh, nineteen eighty eight? No,
I don't know, No, they don't. Eh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Well, so we haven't known this stuff for very long
at all though.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Right, right, And you say there are other species that
were probably kicking around. I think they were well known
as six.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Different human beings types of human beings existing on Earth
at the same time, which they didn't know up until
a few years ago. We remember that, you've seen the
poster of you got a monkey, and then the monkey
stands up a little straighter, then you got a caveman.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And the various hilarious variations of that.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's the way we believed it happened for a long time,
but it didn't happen anything like that at all.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Yeah, So no Neanderthal zoos anytime soon. That's disappointing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
That'd be weird to go look at a human being
in a cage.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Look at that so much? Have it looking back at you?
What do you look it at?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
He's just flipping everybody off.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Wow, that's grim. This sounds sounds like a heartbreakingly sad
science fiction movie.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yes it does.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Or who's a hilarious comedy.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Who's it belonged to is a real question?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And Sino Man starring poly Shore.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, here's my idea.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Put him in the NBA as like maybe a backup
center and you can get in during garbage time and
entertain the fans. What the hell, Well, I guess that's it.
Come see the caveman.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Boy.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This sucks. It's one more thing I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the What in the world was this one man
play you unleashed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
For the team, a somewhat lighthearted portrayal of what it
would be like if scientists actually produced a Neanderthal in
the modern world. There are so many scientific and ethical
questions connected to this, but one of them would be
what kind of life would that being have?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Can I make it do my laundry and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Oh my god, this sucks again, So we'll get there.
We mentioned this during the Ang Show, the radio show,
but didn't have time to deal with all of it.
This is probably not gonna happen. The same crack pots
who claim to clone a dire wolf and a wooly
(01:01):
mammoth but just produced like a slightly hairier elephant that
was slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Rt the dire wolf in particular. That was a giant
news story that day.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Everybody reported that, Yeah, yeah, But so these people, in
a desperate attempt for more more publicity, are talking about
cloning or not cloning, but producing a Neanderthal. If you
are not familiar with the history of pre human humans
and human human humans during that period, Neanderthals were one
(01:32):
of several very closely related sorts of human beings on Earth,
and indeed, modern people these days share up to have
four percent of their DNA with Neanderthals. I have mentioned
that I Joe Getty at one point was in the
ninety ninth percentile of modern people in terms of how
(01:53):
much Neanderthal DNA I have, which explains my fits of
rage and my enormous head really doesn't. As far as
we knew, Neanderthals were smart as smart as or smarter
than Homo sapiens back in the day.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, definitely, And as.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
We mentioned, the perception that Neanderthals were just stupid lunkens
was one racist scientist a brit right in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Correct, But yeah, Neanderthals were every bit as smart as
Homo sapiens, if not smarter, And it could be a
disease that for whatever reason genetically they couldn't and wipe
them out and has nothing to do with anything else
or who knows.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
What right, and so now they're making noises. The head guy,
who was a Harvard researcher a decade ago, he said
he was confident in Neanderthal resurrection was a near term possibility.
Others have told Live science dot Com that doing so
is currently an insurmountably difficult task. But even if we
(02:50):
could bring them back, there are many reasons we shouldn't,
they argue. Here's one guy from the University of Kansas said,
I'm sorry, it's a woman. I've misgendered her now twice
while talking about her. That is one of the most
unethical things I can possibly think of to attempt.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ethical stop unethical.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So not.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
A practically bad idea, but unethical. Why is it not ethical? Well, first,
the technical stuff. You can't just put a Neanderthal genome
in a human egg.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
It just wouldn't work. But one issue with the process
is potential immune system incompatibility. And just you know, I'm
going to jump to the end here. Our point is
not discussing whether they're going to unleash Neanderthals in the world.
If you have any interest in science, A lot of
this stuff is just interesting on its own. So one
(03:42):
issue is potential immune system incompatibility, which often dooms cross
species pregnancies as the host uterus rejects the fetus.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I think I'm seeing the unethical part coming produce a
like deformed human or somebody an actual human being neanderthalo's
opposed to Homo sapien, but a human being that dies
very early.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Right. Oh yeah, yeah, all these experiments have that. Oh
that reminds me. I meant to bring this up on
the show. But China is now working on gene editing
higher IQ into kids. Oh, of course, you develop a smarter,
more hearty super soldier.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's a race between that and AI for what's gonna
do mankind?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Maybe also maybe they team up.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You start unleashing all kinds of extraordinarily high IQ human
beings into the world. What's your experience with people with
super high IQ that they're all just reasonable, wonderful humans
that are great at everything in life.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And happy and relaxed.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah. Yeah. It's still debated, by the way, and I
don't know much about this debate. I could click on
the link, but who has the time Whether modern humans
and neanderthal can be called separate species or not. Anyway,
although humans and Neanderthals did successfully interbreed in the past,
today there's at most four percent Neanderthal DNA in some
human groups, and they think it might not have been beneficial,
(05:14):
so it was slowly purged out of the genome through
the eons. Anyway, mention this on the show, I found
it fascinating. Experts have discovered that humans y chromosomes. That's
your you're a fellow chromosome, no matter how you identify,
because you gantens your sex. Anyway, the humans y chromosome
lacks Neanderthal DNA, and there ought to be tiny bits
(05:37):
at least, but it completely lacks it, which may point
to a fundamental immune system incompatibility between male Neanderthal fetuses
and the female Homo sapiens carrying them, even in the
distant past. In other words, Homo sapiens girl gets with hot,
hot Neanderthal dude like myself. If they produce a girl,
(06:00):
it may well survive. But there's a much much smaller
chance that a boy Neanderthal would survive. And obviously, you
know through the years, you just a birth rate that
fixed and low. Your your genetic material would die out.
And they say a genetic variant red blood cells and
Neanderthal human hybrid mothers might have resulted in high rates
(06:22):
of miscarriage. So those girls produced by the aforementioned for
really hot looking Homo sapien girl and the manly manly
Neanderthal might not have been able to reproduce successfully in
the same numbers.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Neanderthal has had bigger brains. Your brain takes a ton
of your energy in your body, which I didn't realize.
And they just couldn't feed themselves is one of the theories.
They just couldn't possibly get themselves enough calories every day
to feed their big brain.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Oh wow, yeah, I read that the other day. How
much of your your energy your metabolized.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Energy or something.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's amazing, right, yeah, yeah, that is crazy. Oh, Papa Bah.
Another root would be cloning, but in order to clone
one of her extinct cousins, you'd need a live Neanderthal cell.
That ain't happening. So with crisper technology, it is possible
to modify a human cell genome to make it more
similar to Neanderthal. And that's what this business, this guy
(07:20):
firm Colossals modify.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Why why other than to charge people to look at
it in a cage. I can't come up with any
reason why you would do this.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Hence my fascinating one man play. Come see the Caveman Boy.
This sucks exactly what is the kid just destined for
a sideshow, right, Otherwise, what's the point. So with Crisper,
it wouldn't be a Neanderthal, it'd be a human with
a lot of Neanderthal characteristics.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Now, maybe what we don't really know. One thing I've
learned about from reading Homo Sapiens and then my son
is superint evolution stuff for whatever reason, humans and dinosaurs
and all that sort of stuff. There's almost nothing that's
agreed upon. Practically everything you hear is like a fifteen
(08:11):
percent of people believe this. So if you hear you
know things, and you if you hear anything about dinosaurs
or humans or anything, and you think that's not what
I heard, Yeah, it's probably not because there are lots
of different theories and are constantly changing.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Right. Yeah, So they think in maybe twenty years crisper
technology you could probably maybe have a baby with holy
neanderthal genome. Yah. Wouldn't that be great? So we can want,
says this scientist. But I don't think we will do it,
even if it's plausible, for both ethical and legal reasons.
(08:45):
Legal de extincting, de extincting.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You can't give me a ticket. I'm not a human,
I'm not a Homo sapien. There's no last Neanderthal's driving
this fast? Is that what the legal reasons?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Wow, that would cause the Supreme Court to dig deep
into the law books. Wasn't it, Uh, de extincting Neanderthals
is ethically repugnant, experts told Live Science. It's morally abhorrent
even conceive of trying to create another kind of human
based on DNA using uncertain technologies to which they could
not consent. Raff said, Ah, I don't know if I
(09:19):
buy that. So they're not even looking into the You're
gonna have a whole bunch of deformed kid's awfulness there.
They just in general think it's unethical to bring another
human species onto the planet.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I don't know, because it is. I don't know if
I quite get what's the ethics around that.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Well, okay, they do get a little bit into these
experiments like Dolly the sheep famously, the clone sheep that
was after dozens wasn't it of deformed horrible poor creatures
that never could survive?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, doing that that were still born or born.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Alive and rapidly died and the rest of it. It
took him a lot of hacks to get an actual sheep.
But here we go. Even if the Neanderthal embryos could
develop into an otherwise healthy Neanderthal, the life they would
face once in our world would be unbearably.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Bleak, like try to get hired.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Being the only Neanderthal raised in the twenty first century
world of humans would likely to be lonely and isolating,
possibly like the lives of the last Neanderthals in Europe.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You don't know that. Chicks might dig it. You might
be a rock star.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
This is all seems very speculative to me.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It might be the thing you're going on all the
talk shows. Big guest tonight, the world's only Neanderthal comes out?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Who what brings you? So the k Man outfit? Ooga
ooga booga. Just kidding, Jimmy, it's great to be with
you tonight. What an honor this is. I love your work, right.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Chicks wanting to get with the Neanderthal man on Earth?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Oh yeah? The rumors, would you know, circulate rappity? Oh yeah,
like the bat.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But you know I need I needed a four will
drive rugged enough for Minyan with all background you know,
endorsing Ford or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, but Gus, you'd have to, you'd become globally known,
so you'd be like a super celebrity and have to
more or less hide out with.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
The be the biggest celebrity on planet Earth that planet
Earth has probably ever.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Seen, right right, Yeah, But I mean like the Bill
Gates is of the world and the world's biggest movie stars.
That's the only people you could hang out with, because
you know they're cool around other celebrities. But you got
there a gift and Harry by the pool and the
say shells with Brad Pitt in a squeeze.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You got to give him or her a name also,
which is be a big deal.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, but they would they might, you know, choose
their own name anyway.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well one day. That's that's where you do get into
the ethics. Who who does this person belong to? Well,
who's the person belonged to? So did they get belong to? Well,
that's what I'm getting in it belongs to all of us?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Well, what an idiotic thing, Saint Michael and it was perfect.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Who doesn't belong to? Maybe it does belong to all
of us. It's mankind. It's like space exploration or something
like that. Is it a human start?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
There? Does she have the rights of the fact that
you even asked, who would it belong to? Who? Do
I belong to? Nobody?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But you're a homot sapien, This is not so. Does
it like dogs belong to individual? Yeah, pet belongs to someone.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Maybe like America's mascot, basically.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
America's mask. What if he can run really really fast?
Does he get to compete for Team USA in the Olympics?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Oh wow wow? So yeah, this part's really speculative. It
would likely be lonely and isolating. They wouldn't have prior
generations or peers to learn from. That's that's begging the question.
It's it's leaping past. The question is is it just
a a different sort of human but so similar that
the age almost god? Or would it be more like
(13:09):
racial differences between a Han Chinese and a black person
from Africa and like a Swede.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
We'd have to choose their name from when they're a
little kid, we got to call them something. We can't
just say hey to you to the only Neanderthal on earth,
and then like at eighteen, do they get to do
whatever they want?
Speaker 1 (13:26):
The darker possibility is that we would keep any de
extincted Neanderthals in zoos like animals.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yes, if they throw the feces at us or anything humans,
I'm I'm not going to throw my pieces. You can
stand here all day long. I'm not throwing my feces.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Look, you want me to check my feces, it's going
to cost you extra give me right. Humans don't have
a good track record over the centuries of treating other people, well,
said this ethicist. So I have no confidence that we
wouldn't be nasty to Neanderthals. I don't think we would
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
No, absolutely, not China will. Yeah they will. They will
breed whatever until they get the strongest, fastest, whatever, and
kill off or enslave the other ones.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Right right, Another ethical problem, and I'm quoting scientists again,
a Neanderthal being constructed in this way wouldn't be living
in the past. They would be living in the present
and in an environment that's neither appropriate nor safe for them. Yeah,
probably because we don't know anything about how their genes
reacted with their environment.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
From a from a like disease standpoint, I get that,
But from a like it's not like they're going to
like at the age of ten, say where are the
dinosaurs or something like that. They don't have any of
the cultural baggage that comes with, right having died out
two hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, yeah, what electric?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Where are these flying machines?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That's not the way it would work right, right, And
it's not like they could teach you their Neanderthal language.
I mean, yeah, is it legal to bring back a neanderthal?
While it's wildly unethical, the legality of making one is unclear.
According to Greeley, one of the scientists, Now, human embryo
editing of this nature is illegal in the US and
(15:13):
the EU. It's unlikely that every country in the world
has relevant laws on their books.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Unlikely underpate, Yes.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
No kidding, huh, Yeah, that's proascinating.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
That's a problem with all of this stuff around Crisper,
around AI, around everything. We have these conversations for Europe
and the United States, doesn't matter at all to North Korea, Russia, China,
any of those places. We're to do whatever the hell
they want.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
All right, finally, here is your neanderthal quiz. Are you ready?
How are we going to do this? Is everybody going
to try to answer? Or I'll try all right, or Michael,
do you want to take the Neanderthal quiz?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Who's gonna get with the Neanderthal? What was your saying
from earlier in the show.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Once you go Neanderthal, you never go back at all.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
That's right. Yeah, some chick's gonna want to get with
the just you can brag or become like a Kardashian
sort of have a sex tape, you know, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Wow, wow, you you you you Homo Sapien slots.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Neanderthal would make a killing on only fans. Oh yeah,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Watch all right, hang on a second. This thing freaked
out on me. I hate when that happens. All right,
So I can't do the whole quiz fans? All right, Michael, Okay,
where did the name Neanderthal come from? A mountain in Italy,
(16:44):
a valley in Germany, a fjord in Sweden, or a
desert in Ethiopia. I'm gonna go with Germany. Jav All
the Neanderthal valley in Germany.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
That's where they found the first owes.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Does this have a year, uh, nineteen eighty eight? No,
I don't know, No, they don't. Eh.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Well, so we haven't known this stuff for very long
at all though.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Right, right, And you say there are other species that
were probably kicking around. I think they were well known
as six.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Different human beings types of human beings existing on Earth
at the same time, which they didn't know up until
a few years ago. We remember that, you've seen the
poster of you got a monkey, and then the monkey
stands up a little straighter, then you got a caveman.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And the various hilarious variations of that.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's the way we believed it happened for a long time,
but it didn't happen anything like that at all.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Yeah, So no Neanderthal zoos anytime soon. That's disappointing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
That'd be weird to go look at a human being
in a cage.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Look at that so much? Have it looking back at you?
What do you look it at?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
He's just flipping everybody off.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Wow, that's grim. This sounds sounds like a heartbreakingly sad
science fiction movie.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yes it does.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Or who's a hilarious comedy.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Who's it belonged to is a real question?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And Sino Man starring poly Shore.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, here's my idea.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Put him in the NBA as like maybe a backup
center and you can get in during garbage time and
entertain the fans. What the hell, Well, I guess that's it.
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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