The Case For De-Extinction

Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal

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4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scientists around the world are trying to figure out how to mitigate the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change.

Among the innovative ideas? De-extinction.

“De-extinction is a scientific movement that’s aiming to recreate close versions of extinct species,” said Britt Wray, the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction.

Wray says the idea is to create close facsimiles of “keystone species,” or animals that had a profound impact on their ecosystems.

As you can imagine, de-extinction brings up a lot of questions, including:

How on earth do you replicate an ancient zebra-horse?
What happens when countries can create patents for lab-grown animals?
And why would we want woolly mammoths to roam the arctic again?

Wray tackles all those questions, and more, on the latest episode of Nerdette.

Click the “play” button to listen to the entire conversation, which was produced and adapted for the web by Justin Bull.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen wherever you get your podcast.
0:35.6	From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette.
0:39.8	I am Greta Johnson, and I'm here to tell you, humanity is at the forefront of so many insane scientific discoveries that seem like they could just be science fiction.
0:46.9	Designer babies, computers in your clothes, hyper-specific targeted ads delivered straight to your brain.
0:53.3	But hey, did you know scientists right now are
0:56.7	trying to figure out how to bring back animals that haven't existed on this planet for thousands
1:02.1	of years. That is what we are talking about today on Nourdet. It's called de-extinction. And it turns out that animals that
1:12.5	lived hundreds of thousands of years ago could help save the future of the planet. As I'm sure you
1:21.6	can imagine, the idea of de-extinction goes really quickly from potentially awesome discovery to maybe super villain dark
1:29.3	magic. So here to talk to us about all the hows and the whys and the upsides and the potential
1:34.7	pitfalls is Britt Ray. Britt is the author of a book called Rise of the Necrofauna, the
1:40.6	science, ethics, and risks of de-extinction.
1:48.5	Britt, welcome to Nurdat.
1:49.8	Hey, thanks for having me.
1:52.5	Okay, so let's start with the super basic question.
1:55.0	What actually is de-extinction?
1:56.5	Good place to start.
	...

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