March 19th, 2018, marked the death of a Northern White Rhino named Sudan.

He had been the last surviving male Northern White Rhino.

Today, there were only two Northern White Rhino's alive,

Nijean and her daughter, Fattu.

My guest today, Thomas Hildebrandt,

is part of a team of veterinarians and researchers using state-of-the-art signs to try to keep the northern white rhino from extinction.

So we have 30 of these embryos when we recently could show that these embryos

when we bring them back in a surrogate then they can grow to babies.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

The conversation you're about to hear, at least for me, was incredibly fascinating, but it did get quite detailed, so let me provide a little bit of background before we jump in.

Now Jean and Fattu, the two living northern white rhinos, live in a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya

protected 24 hours a day by armed guards. Although there are no longer any male northern

white rhinos, researches do have sperm samples from four males who've died.

Unfortunately, neither of the two living rhinos are able to give birth.

I'll hope it's not lost however because Thomas and his

colleagues have pioneered an IVF technique for these animals which involves a

patented device used for OASite and Oven pickup. As a little biology lesson in OASite and OASite. It has a little biology lesson.

An OASite is a cell in an ovary.

It's a precursor to an ovum.

An ovum is a mature female reproductive cell

that can create an embryo once it's fertilized by male cell.

Where things did really crazy though is that a researcher named Shinya Yamanaka shared the

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