Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:19:04 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:19:04] S1: You're a little fearless at diving into your curiosity and, smart enough to know, where you need to put people to get things done. I wanna transition to Colossal just because I'm truly deeply interested and curious about what you are up to. And I just... For for everybody listening, in 2021, you cofounded Colossal Biosciences with the renowned Harvard geneticist you just mentioned, doctor George Church. I mean, Ben, even for you as somebody who's touched all these crazy industries, like, diving into de extinction is just candidly wild. Like, it's wild. I, like, can't wait to tell my children that I spent the day with you, because it's wild. Were you not a little nervous being like, now I'm gonna go and, like, de extinct animals and being like, okay. I'm over my skis even for you, Ben.
00:20:02 · Ben Lamm
[00:20:02] S2: I... So I thought, so a couple things. One is, on the naive side, I think I was naive about parts of it. Right? I was like, oh, all you gotta do is... Like George convinced me very early that all the technologies fundamentally exist in some form or fashion. Right? So there's opportunities for invention, but it's really also just a lot of innovation. Right? Like like the iPhone. Right? Like the iPhone is an incredible innovation. Not really an invention. Like, we had kinda 99% of the parts. Right? And so my my view was George got me very comfortable, and I'm a Trust but Verify guy. So even though I had meetings with George, I went and talked to a bunch of other external scientists, spent some of my own money, like, hiring some consultants and kinda thinking through this whole problem. And and I got to the point where it's like, yes, we have all the tools and technologies. Now the naive part, what came in was I thought that, you know, there's so much more than the lab work here. Right? And so if we only had to raise capital, do it in a lab and then be like, here's a dire wolf, Here's a woolly mammoth. Here's a thylacine. That that... And that's kinda what I thought, the naiveness, then then I think that's hard. But what most people don't realize is for as much as the insane science that there is that we have to to build in in the system, not sure we'll talk about that we had to... That we we... We've been very successful at building. We... There's just as much policy work working with indigenous people groups, working with, like, answering hard ethical questions. How does it apply to conservation? And we're very split with conservation crowd. Like half the conservation crowd is like, we are doomed and what we're doing in conserving land, which is something I still believe we should do, only gets us so far because we have human, know, human advancement, you know, right on the heels of it. Right? And we're losing species at such a crazy rate that we need alternatives. Sometimes people embrace those alternatives, but change is new and scary. And sometimes people are like, we know what we're doing isn't gonna work long term, but but this seems like you're distracting what we should be doing. And so so there's a lot more nuanced to the business.
00:22:21 · Ben Lamm, Alexa von Tobel
And then eventually even the economic models outside of just like, if the business was just raise money, make these animals, build technologies that you can monetize, that is kind of I think where we thought. And and I have no problem admitting that there's so much more to the company that that really had to be developed and that we learned. Right? And we just... One of the things I think we did really good at is like the the... You've got two types of critics. Right? You've got you've got just the absolute asshole critics. Right? That are like... Are those are your your couch ex blue sky folks that are like, we hate you because it's Tuesday. And then and then you've got like the other people that are like, we don't like what you're doing because of this. And you're like, oh, shit. That's a really that's that's a really good point. And so we, we have found in our one of the things that I think the number one thing we did right with Colossal is we were able to bifurcate that audience. And then the, the people that we, that we designated as informed critics that were like, oh, you're the top of your field in like mammoth research. What what what do you mean we're using the wrong genomes? Right? So calling that person, it was a... Like, that... That's just a good business. [00:23:39] S1: Totally get it. Yeah. You're like, that's actually just helpful. You're like Yeah.
00:23:39 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm
[00:23:39] S1: Totally get it. Yeah. You're like, that's actually just helpful. You're like Yeah. [00:23:43] S2: But but but what we're curious is that category of critics has actually like leaned into us. And and I think it's because we we went to them and we're like, wait, wait, what do you mean? What can we what can we do? Right? And then we would implement what they'd say. And then we go back to them and be like, what else you got? And then they'd be like, this is confusing me. Like, we we said terrible things about you. Why are you talking to us? [00:24:05] S1: By the way, I always call it LITTP, lean into the pain. Lean into the critics. Yeah. Really, really LITTP. Ben, just in plain crazy English, what the hell is de extinction? Like, what are you doing [00:24:19] S2: Yeah. For [00:24:20] S1: all of us who are who who are not geneticists? [00:24:24] S2: Yeah. So it... It's not possible to say... Like, sometimes it turns into a philosophical debate, but it's it's... And and it's funny because at the beginning of the company... I'll tell you this one quick story. At beginning of the company, we did all this, like, we're gonna announce the company. We're gonna... And and and for some reason at the time, we were like, whatever we do, do not mention Jurassic Park. That's gonna scare people. Do not mention Jurassic Park. And so we spent like... Did media training and all these... [00:24:50] S1: Were you like, Jurassic Park? Oh, I wasn't supposed to
00:24:52 · Ben Lamm
[00:24:52] S2: say that. Well, George did. So on the second interview, George is like, well, it's very much like Jurassic Park only fluffier. And and everyone was like... It was like, could hear a pin drop. And then the journalist was like, oh, I totally get it. So it was like what mister DNA talked about. And George like, yes. And then then we... So we... It's funny. We kinda prepped for, like, three months to, like, never say Jurassic Park and how to avoid, getting away from Jurassic Park. But but in a weird way, it is just kinda like Jurassic Park except not with dinosaurs. Right? And so what you do is you you have to take a, as a de extinction and species preservation company, you have to take a bunch of... Find a bunch of ancient DNA, which there's work in that. You've just simple the ancient DNA, which there's work in that. You have to compare it to the closest living relatives. And then and then once you identify these edits, you then start editing it in those closest living relative cells. Right? So... But like Jurassic Park that's trying to, like, fill all the gaps, we we we do all the computational analysis, then we just make edits to the closest living relative for the lost genes or lineage. And then there's a couple of different ways that you can use somatic cell nuclear transfer or editing in micro injections in the embryo. You can do a couple of different things in order to get to the point that you then have something you can put into a surrogate. And then hopefully long term, we're working on... We have 17 person working on artificial wounds. Hopefully long term we do artificial wounds, but the naiveness comes into play even in that system because I just thought, well, we'll just compare all... We'll... We can solve all these problems, but we'll just go compare it to like the, you know, GCP of species. And then I was like, wait, what do you mean? Because I've seen 23 me and all this stuff. Was like, what do you mean there's not a cloud like access to all DNA of all life. There's... We have not sequenced everything on like why? Like that's also an insane proposition to me that like we're losing We these should protect them, but why haven't we sequenced everything and bio banked it? And people are like, we don't... And the answer is just kinda like, no one's really wanting to put money into it.
00:27:00 · Alexa von Tobel, Ben Lamm
[00:27:00] S1: That's so... That... First of that is fascinating, and you're like, we clearly should be doing that. Okay. Ben, I wanna go down to, like, nuts and bolts of, like... You know, first of what was the first animal that you guys de extincted? Was it the dire wolf? [00:27:16] S2: It was the dire wolf. So so the first animal... The first, extinct species back is the dire wolf. We did produce a woolly mouse before that, but that was not Chip and [00:27:25] S1: Dale. That's Chip and Dale. [00:27:27] S2: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Chip and Dale. Okay. [00:27:30] S1: Well, so let... Well, let's start with the direwolf. We're gonna come back to the woolly mouse. Okay. So in plain English, how did you guys do that?