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The John Batchelor Show

SHAPE-CHANGERS OF TOMORROW: 4/4: The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds by Christopher E. Mason

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Books, Society & Culture, Arts

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

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SHAPE-CHANGERS OF TOMORROW: 4/4: The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds by Christopher E. Mason

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086SCVGS5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, or by cataclysmic war, or when the sun runs out of fuel in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, will we have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit? In this provocative and fascinating book, Christopher Mason argues that we have a moral duty to do just that. Because we are the only species aware that life on Earth has an expiration date, we have a responsibility to act as the shepherd of lifeforms--not only for our species but for all species on which we depend and for those still to come (by accidental or designed evolution). Mason argues that the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life in other worlds

Transcript

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0:00.0

At TFL, we're making journeys safer for everyone, and that includes improving safety on London's roads.

0:07.4

That's why we and London boroughs are lowering more speed limits to 20 miles per hour,

0:12.3

because 20 miles per hour roads have already reduced collisions resulting in deaths

0:16.6

or serious injuries by 24%. That is how we're making journeys in London safer and brighter for everyone.

0:24.8

Such TFL improvement plan to the Mayor of London and TFL every journey matters.

0:33.7

This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Dr. Christopher Mason, a geneticist,

0:38.5

computational biologist. He's a professor at the Wild Cornel Medicine School. However,

0:43.5

the author of the next 500 years, in the 23rd century, we have engineered life. There's

0:51.4

homo sapiens and his or her allies, friends, companions, including AI. We're on a generational

0:59.6

ship and we're headed to another sun. There are challenges. We're not going to engineer this.

1:05.0

We're on going to talk about some aspects of Chris's presentation that are exciting.

1:09.8

Chris onboard this generational ship are exo-wombs. Why and what does that do for creating the

1:17.4

possibility of life throughout the galaxy? This technology that underlies

1:24.4

exo-wombs, artificial uterus, has not really exploded in the past a couple of decades,

1:29.7

where now you can grow almost to term at these some goats that have been done as well as some

1:35.0

mice from embryogenesis almost all the way to adulthood or to birth, I should say.

1:40.6

The entire process of development, embryogenesis becoming a fetus and then making your way into

1:45.4

the world to live on your own. This kind of exo-wombs technology could, in theory, give you the

1:51.0

greatest possible cellular liberty we talk about. You should have physical liberty with your

1:57.1

body and your cellular liberty with your cells. This lets you say, well, if I would like to have

2:02.0

a system that can grow the human embryos, you could even have a robot watching over them while

2:06.7

they grow and they get to the new planet and then you get human caretakers because it's hard to

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