Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we take a look at the recent Artemis II mission as well as the upcoming Artemis missions. And also we'll consider whether the US really has the money to spend on space travel like this. And later on, we react to recent research involving the cloning of a mouse over multiple generations, which led to catastrophic end results. And we'll discuss what went wrong and also what you can take from it as far as went right.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man who, when he gets going, has been known to hit you with some country grammar. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to show how your takes get hot in here?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, man, it's like some country fried steak. Let's do it.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: All right. All right.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Biscuits and gravy, brother.
Let's go.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Meat and potatoes, man. Give people what they need.
So before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on April 14, 2026. And Tunde, a few days ago, the NASA led Artemis 2 mission was completed. You know, it ended with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, not too far off of San Diego.
Now the mission was a pretty spectacular 10 day journey that saw them leave the Earth, fly beyond, fly past the moon and loop back around the moon and then come back to Earth, you know, which. And then the leaving of the Earth and then coming back to Earth is usually the most perilous parts. But the rest of it, you know, it's a magical journey as far as the things you can see out there.
What did you make though, Tunde, on, you know, about this recently completed mission and you know, just the fact, just the general fact that these guys went, or these guys and lady, you know, the lady went further than anybody had ever gone before into space.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was great. I say this with all the kind of feelings of anxiety and negativity that we have in our nation as a culture, all that. I think it was great. I think it's a positive thing that's happened for us as Americans. And so my general first take is I think it was a great event. However, it's kind of sad that with the fracturing of just our media spaces and all that, this isn't something I feel like when you and I were kids, let's say in the 1980s or prior, this would have been a big national deal and we would have been all excited and all this about this new milestone and like you're saying getting back into space for the first time in over 50 years. And so, you know, that to me is a bit notable that something as, I guess drastic and important as this has happened, but it's not really hitting our radar due to understandable other distractions we have as a society. But my initial feeling is that I really think this is great. It's positive, it's good news in a kind of sea of headlines which have been anxious and kind of negative for, you know, our recent period in our culture. So I'm happy to see it.
I've got some other comments, but we'll save them for the rest of the discussion.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, then you mean like when you say first time back to space in 50 plus years, it's like deep space, you know, like the distinction there is like people have been up and down like the space station and you know, different things like that. But that's like low Earth orbit. That's not really far, you know. And so going to deep space, like where you go out and you're just going, we, you know, people haven't been doing that for a while.
And yes, there's, I think it is to see us, this is the power of collaboration at work. And people need to see the power of collaboration that we can accomplish because no one person can do something like this. No, no collection of, you know, billionaires that two or three guys or whatever can do this. You know, you need a lot of people working together, doing a lot of things in order to put, pull something like this off. And so I think it's good to reinforce from time to time the, that hey, if we work together on things, we can accomplish things that people never dreamed of, you know, or maybe they dreamed of more in a religious context, but we can actually do it, you know. And so the idea of these Artemis missions and, you know, right now they're planning to put somebody on the moon, you know, in the next few years as well. Like this was a test run. There was a previous, you know, Artemis mission which was, you know, they have this new ship that they're working on and the launch system and all that. They're not doing the stuff like the Apollo stuff from, from 50 years ago. They got a new stuff thing. So it's cool to see that in action as well.
And so to me, yeah, it's really just, it's expanding on and it's just good. It's expanding on what's possible in absolute terms. And Then also what's possible if we work together? So I think that's just a positive reinforcement for society. And I mean, honestly, this is one of those type of things where you shouldn't be. If people get up here and have a bunch of negative things to say about it, that really says more about them, know, like that says that they want to take a negative mindset and negative approach to whatever's happening. Because this is a positive. This is a positive. Like they went up there, they went further than anybody went, and then they came back safely in a lot, you know, so it's like, well, hey, that's a win. You know, so if somebody, like sometimes people see the negative in anything, if people are out here making negative about this or wanting to lean into the negative, that's just a person that wants to, to see the negative and everything, or conceivably someone who's motivated by the incentives of an algorithm that has given negativity will make, you know, make it go further.
But, you know, overall, this is an absolute unequivocal win for humanity, which, you know, I cheer for humanity.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So now you're going to make me go negative so we get more views?
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Oh, no, I just, I just rolled out a little bit on the negative. People that want to go negative.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So then you're going to ride out on me. So.
No, but no, it's interesting. I appreciate the word you used, the term the power of collaboration. I think that's very important.
I think again, like I said, some of. I think our cultural anxiety today as Americans stems from the fact that we don't feel that we're kind of collaborating together as a country. I mean, you had a. Interesting term in our private conversation we had about another topic and you said democracy is a conversation.
And so I'm just giving that example to say, yeah, I mean, this whole big society, 300 plus million people we have in a country, we do have to collaborate at some level. And I think that you're right. I didn't think of that word. But the word collaboration is very important.
And I'll say this, I'm old enough to remember and you are too, but I won't date you like I never do on our shows.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: You always pull me down with you, man.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
I'm a crab in a bucket, bro. You ain't getting out. So middle age is real.
And so. And so is. I remember watching the Challenger blow up in my third grade cafeteria because, you know, they brought the whole school in to lunch, they wheeled a big TV in back when the TVs were like a big deal. Yeah, it was supposed to be a positive event for all of us. And a bunch of us third graders watched the shuttle explode while it was on its way to space. So you know that, that is my memory early in life about what it meant to go to space, that it could be dangerous. And I watched this thing explode and all that. And I think it's a great point you make that, you know, that's a big tragedy. And then we had, I believe it was the Columbia in 2003 explode. So it hasn't been all roses, you know, this space exploration thing. But to your point, you know, the collaboration, the coming together of minds, and I'll say this, the collaboration also internationally, you know, we had specifically the countries of Saudi Arabia, Argentina, South Korea and Germany had scientific like measuring instruments and things on there. And it was a big deal that those countries specifically invested and they put their own scientific stuff in our space shuttle.
Sorry, spatial. In our, in our.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Dating yourself again, man. Spacecraft. Spacecraft, yes.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah, and there was a Canadian in there.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: It was a machine of some sort apparently. Right.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: One of the people in there was a Canadian, you know, so it's also multinational fruit.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: You're going to mess up my joke, which I guess I'll just say now because I was going to joke and say the detractors of this kind of event would tell you that, and I'm surprised we haven't heard it yet, that this was the most woke mission ever because I realized that we got a gentleman named Wiseman who I think he's Jewish, we had a black astronaut which apparently to some people would only be a DEI hire. And that was a handout to shoot someone into space.
A woman, which God forbid a woman ever does anything except not be a trad wife. And the last thing, like you said, a Canadian, oh my God, a socialist. So, you know,
[00:09:12] Speaker A: I'm concerned about you, man. I think you've been conditioned by these people to hear their arguments.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: It's a knee jerk reaction without them even saying anything. You hear them talking, I know it's amazing. But here's what I'll say is that to me was beautiful because it's a reflection of humanity. I'm glad that that eclectic group and diverse group of people actually made it the furthest in space.
So to me that is very, in a positive symbolic way I will say that. So maybe I made up myself for that last 30 seconds.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Well, one, one thing I wanted to put on this as Well, I want to keep us moving, but also, like, I think that it's good. One of the things that I think has been a little bit of a hole in our scientific exploration, at least from a space standpoint, is that I think there's a psychological loss that happens when you're concerned that the people who came before you were more technologically advanced than you are. And so we've lived this whole time, looking back to 1969 and in the 70s, when there's people on the moon, you know what I'm saying? And now forget about the people that say that that was staged. I don't know that they had the tech to stage it back then. And then 69 wasn't the only time. There were several times that they put boots on the ground on the moon, but the last one was in the 70s, and they haven't done it since then. So for generations that have been around since then, it's like, well, hold up. Why were they able to do that and we aren't able to do that? Or why is the furthest we've ever been in space in the 1970s, everybody in the 80s, 90s, and then in the 80s, we blew up a spacecraft with people on board, and it's like, okay, were they.
Why were they able to accomplish more? So it's not that, like, you want, I think, as future generations, to be able to stand on the shoulders of what came before you. So I think it's a little reassuring, I think back to, you know, like, the. Some people have common, you know, had commentary on Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, and you got like a thousand years where people are doing nothing, but they see the ruins of the Roman Empire, which was, you know, like, it was immaculate. You know, these aqueducts and all this other stuff, and these guys, you know, carrying buckets from lakes, you know, to try to just farm and that's it. But they could clearly see that a society before them was much more advanced and had things doing much bigger things than they were. So I think it's also good for kind of our psychological benefit here to be like, oh, okay, yeah, we can still do cool stuff. In fact, we can go further than they did, which, with the way science progresses, hopefully that is the way it works, is that we can do more and we can build on what has been done and then do a little bit more, do a little bit better.
But everything has a cost, though. And we hear all the time about United States is running in the red pretty significantly on an annual basis. And Then has tons and tons of debt. So I've just kind of gone out and said how important I think this is. But I still gotta ask the question of, do you think this kind of thing is important enough that we spend this kind of money on it? There's this Artemis program. We're up at like 90 billion. Each launch is 4 billion. But, you know, there's a lot that goes into each launch and so forth. You know, do we have the money to spend on this? These missions cost a lot. And the US Government rents annual deficits in the trillions and a total debt that's coming up on 40 trillion. Like, is this a good way for us to spend this money that we spend our grandkids money, you know, I don't know.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Based on the fact you say we've got already a big deficit, we've already spent our grandkids money.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: So great grandkids.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Now let's throw in a little bit more on a credit card and when the registers open.
I don't know, man. That's an interesting question. I think that that was the same question when I read about what was going on during the first attempts at this in the late 60s through the early 70s, the Apollo missions, the same argument was being had. Remember, we were at the height of the Vietnam War. You had the drama of the late 60s, 1968, a big inflection year in this country with assassinations of famous people like Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.
Yeah. And so a lot of people were asking these same questions. We have wars, deficit at the time, all this stuff, recessions, and why aren't we spending money?
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Real quick, this is great that you said this. Cause I wanted to connect it. It was Harari, the author of Sapiens, remember, that brought up democracy as a conversation and that you had referenced a little bit earlier. And the thing about that is asking the question in a democratic society is correct. People should question this. You know, this is the conversation we should have on, okay, how should we be spending this money? How much of this money should we be borrowing? Things like that. So having the conversation, asking the question in itself isn't the problem, you know, and it's good that they did. It's good that we do.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I think so. That's why I lead off with. I'm not sure how to answer the question, because this is a, I guess, historic question in modern societies where we've had this Keynesian economics where a government can produce its own money through the fiat currency. So what do we have Money for. I'll tell you what I know we have money for, because this is something that we're just living through now. Like you said at the beginning of the show, it's April 14th. So since February 28th, we've spent over $250 billion on a war in Iran that wasn't planned for. That's not something that was part of the budget. That was additional money.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: We could do a couple of Artemis programs for that.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: That's my point, and that's what I'm saying. And we had $40 billion to give to the nation of Argentina. That wasn't part of the planned budget we had. You know, it's just. We've got money to do these things, obviously, if we have the conviction to do them. That's why, you know, I believe a nation with a $30 trillion GDP has the money to do, you know, universal health care without calling itself socialist. But other people disagree with me. So that's where this is a national conversation. Like you said, if it's $90 billion to send people as far as they ever been in space, I think I like the endeavor part of it. I think there's a lot of scientific research and things that'll come out of this that'll probably be good for humanity and society. I do think you're right. Collectively, the collaboration, watching us as a nation do something together with our resources that's positive is very important. I don't know if there's a value on that. So to me, I promote continuing to go to space, hypothetically. But I do think it's a great conversation. And I do find it interesting that Americans seem to be very selective about what we have money for and what we do. We don't. And that's, you know, to probably a broader conversation that's not part of this discussion, but I think it was. Yeah.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and it's. It's something. It is a conversation that just should be had, though, and should be had. The problem a lot of times is if we don't have the conversation, then people with agendas just make decisions without consulting anyone. And it's like. And then. So you end up spending $250 billion in a conflict that you have no clear objective. And, in fact, you seem to be backtracking on where you were previously. And it's like, well, hold on. Like, no conversation was had about this. We just spent all this money, and now we're stuck spending a bunch of money to try to even get back to where we were before. And so I think it's two separate questions, though. One question is, do we have the money? And the other question is, how should the money be allocated?
How the money that we do have should be allocated? I don't think we have the money. I think the fact that we run deficits in the trillions and can't get a handle on that, it's one thing if that is like part of the plan and we're doing this in a way that we can get a handle on it. We, we can slow it down if we want to, we can speed it up if we need to. Whatever.
We are doing this as a matter of course, just every year. There's no thought of, okay, maybe we should bring it down this year, or anything like that, at least in our general political conversation.
And so we don't have it, have the money now. Some things, even if you don't have the money, are worth extending for. So the question then becomes, with whatever we do have, which is credit, should we be spending this kind of money? And this is where I'm with you on that. I think this is the kind of thing you would extend yourself for. You know, some of the things I don't think are the kind of things you should extend yourself on, like maybe just, you know, handing money out to other countries, you know, because so help their political leader win an election in Argentina, like, that doesn't seem to be the kind of thing we should spend money on. Hopefully we can have conversations about these things and not just have them done by decree, but if we're going to have a functioning democracy. But I think the bigger question, and this is a question that goes well beyond just the space piece, is what should we be spending money on and what should we not? And like you said, we can put.
Doing the space stuff has a lot of benefit from a psychological standpoint on the people of the United States and the people of the world in terms of understanding how people can work together as far as the scientific benefits that can come from it and so forth.
And then you just use something you said in particular, the healthcare thing, spending money on that may be worthwhile in terms of making people more productive in society, eliminating things that kind of, you know, bankruptcies and stuff like that for people because they get sick, like just being able to do stuff like that. You, you take that off the table, you might have more people starting businesses and things like that. So there are, that those are ways to build the society, that maybe those are things, the kind of things that we look at, okay, maybe we should extend for. And then. But we need to be honest with ourselves about the things we shouldn't be extending for. And if we don't have money just rolling around in, maybe we shouldn't be spending on this or spending on that. And so that to me, that's the greater conversation. And I worry a lot of times that that conversation isn't being had.
And that's unfortunate because as you cited already from Harari to author Harari, democracy is a conversation. So I know we want to rap, man, but any last thoughts before we close it up?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to say with your comment, I was going to say God forbid that the American laborer is freed from the yoke of their employer through universal health care. How many people stay on the job because they just need their benefits and their healthcare? So there could be other motivation as to why we don't have from the moneyed class. But that might be a different show and a different.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: That's definitely a different show.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: So here's a couple of things I'll finish off with. One was just the article did mention that one of our motivations is China.
Oh yeah.
Have already announced that they want to land people on the moon. A Chinese crew on the moon in 2030. And you know, reading the article to your point, James, about, you know, we've done this more than one time.
Fifteen human beings have set foot on the moon in human history and they've all been Americans. So that's one thing that I could see. We want to maintain that this American dominance. Clearly there's a chance for us like we will do if we have the technology to continue this meaning nation states and empires exploiting the moon for its commercial value. You know, all the minerals and.
Yeah, yeah, metals and things like that.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: They're looking at claiming land up there.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. So this will become like what humans do, right? Start start fighting over this. Stu.
And then I just thought about the reason I want to bring that up about China is it was the same thing. When you look back now as to the early 60s, John Kennedy started, President Kennedy, the space race.
He said he wanted to put a man on the moon for us and science and all that. But the reality now that all this stuff's been declassified was our anxiety about the Soviets because they had put the satellite in space first and Sputnik and all that.
So I think it's interesting that this is usually this kind of innovation happens due to human competition, which I just find interest. Interesting. That's a Interesting discussion point. And then the last thing I'll say again, another quick joke, is because it's interesting, you alluded to the idea that in Europe, maybe 500 years after the fall of the Roman Empire, you had kind of European peasants growing up doing their farming. And in the backdrop, they would see these aqueducts and these.
The Pantheon and these huge structures.
And what's interesting, if you read history, it's kind of like how people do today.
They don't assume that the people before them were actually really sophisticated and could have built all this stuff. So back then, a lot of the Europeans assigned that to the gods. And they're like, no, no, no, the gods did this and the God did that. You know, And I said, I was thinking today, it's like ancient aliens. You know, we think that, you know, we want to tell ourselves stories that aliens built the pyramids of the Incas or the pyramids in Egypt. And I just think that, you know, this all is kind of connected in this idea of humans were very curious.
We make up stories for things we don't understand, like the examples I just gave. But we also want to continue to explore and look for new things. So I guess maybe that's my way to wrap it up, that that's, you know, tying a bow from my first comment, which is that's, to me, why this is special and to your point about collaboration, that this is, you know, big, big kind of national moment.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So. And I mean. And yeah, there's something in there, you know, just the idea that this is something. Another reason why this may be worth something that we extend for is that the exploration piece is something deep inside us. You know, that's an itch that we need to scratch.
And if we don't, then, you know, then our imaginations may go really wild as far as all the, you know, the fantasy stuff, you know, and that sometimes leads to the consequences that we don't want, but everything can as well. So I'm not saying this couldn't. But nonetheless, the competition piece also was a good piece. I mean, and that's kind of the idea of markets that humans tend to with ordered and structured competition, or markets that are not. That don't happen in nature. They have to be created by a government. But when these markets are created, then it spurs humans to strive to find better versions of themselves, at least in that aspect. And why markets need to be protected in the same way that, yeah, we're back into space now that China's taking an interest in it so competition can spur. Spur you to strive. So, yeah, so I think we can wrap this part from there. We'll have a second part of our discussion today as well. So please stick around for that and we'll talk to you then.
All right. For our second part of our discussion today, Toonday. We recently saw a piece in Popular Mechanics about researchers that cloned a mouse successfully over 58 generations, which at that point, the clone was no longer really viable.
Now, I want to ask you what stands out to you in this piece about the problems that arose after the repeated cloning of the mouse over all these generations and ultimately ending up with something that lives a matter of minutes.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's good, man. A couple things stood out.
One, actually, just a discussion we just finished having. This reminds me of a different version of human exploration.
We just got done talking about the Artemis 2 space mission. So that was obviously a big exploration far away galaxy brain, literally. And this is now an exploration of kind of microscopic stuff, genes, things like that. Yeah.
So it's still an exploration for humanity and us trying to explore the limits of nature and how we can push on those limits.
So to me, it's very interesting from that standpoint in number one. But number two, I'd say there's also something I feel, I don't want to say concerning, because I think this is part of the human experience as well, part of this exploration, trying to always get outside the envelope, so to speak.
But there's something I noticed. This, to me is kind of like this transhumanism, the term that I've heard more recently, where there are some people that, whether it was Ponce de Leon looking for the elixir of life to live forever, or stuff like this cloning, this idea that some people just don't seem happy with the regular life that we have been given as humans. And they either want to replicate themselves, replicate something else like a pet, or they want to live forever. And there's something, to me, I feel, that's a bit narcissistic about that.
So I don't know where to go with that thought, but that's what stands out to me.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: You're looking at the other shoe here that will drop, particularly not necessarily on this study, but where this kind of, where we've seen these kind of impulses or this type of science be taken, or where we could reasonably see it be taken. I mean, for me, just looking back at the study, what really stands out to me is how successful this was.
It's presented like, oh, they did 58 generations and then there's a hard stop, so to speak. 58 generations is a long time.
That's a lot of generations.
And you know, so they had clones that were viable that they were able to reproduce with non clone mice, you know, over tens of generations. And you know, so ultimately they couldn't do it indefinitely. But if you look at even human reproduction, you know, just, I guess it's the easiest way or any pet, you know, you have to. Generally speaking, we feel like if there's not a spread, if the gene pool's not wide enough, things kind of get kind of crazy in a couple of generations, you know. And I think like the things you hear about, like with the royals and royal courts in the past, hundreds of years ago or whatever, where they would have close breeding, like people breeding with cousins to try to keep the bloodline pure or whatever, and how the kids after a couple of generations would start having real problems. And so it's like that they were able to take the same gene, the same organism, mammal, a complex organism, and clone it over so many generations successfully to me seemed to be like a departure. If they would have just done that with, you know, first cousins over 58 generations, it would have stopped well before that, you know, so that, that seemed pretty successful to me. Particularly, you know, as, you know, the, the built in constraint that you have with something like this is that mammals are sexual organisms, which means you, sexual organisms by definition have a male counterpart part and a female counterpart. And the, the reproduction, the sexual reproduction takes genetic matter from both. That's why you have both of them. So they can both contribute genetic matter, which creates a much more dynamic evolutionary construct and also protecting against, excuse me, mutations that are harmful. Mutations that are helpful is evolution. Mutations that are harmful. You have a guard against that because you're taking genetic material from both. So and this is versus like some, a lot of plants which will produce asexually and it's just one producing something that then becomes much more similar to cloning actually. But they're evolved to do that and mammals have evolved to not do that. And so that they're only taking genetic material from one organism and being able to replicate that, to do it that many times, to do it 57 times, I guess successfully was a pretty substantial accomplishment in my view.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I think from other things that I read in support of this article because I wanted to really try and get in the meat of it, they said that it was going well to about the 25th generation and then it started Breaking down. And you're right that clearly they referenced that mammals being much more complex than let's say an earthworm or like you're saying an amoeba or something like that, that there's just differences that happen. And these mutations, I think to your point, you need the genetic diversity to try and avoid the mutations from piling up and creating these issues. Because one of them, like in the later generations, like by the, in the 50s generation, you know, closer to the end, they were saying that one of the mice that its X chromosomes just kind of dissolved. Like they just kind of, just kind of the way I understood it was like they just kind of like they couldn't even stay together. And I'm just thinking like, what does that mean to a cellular organism if one of the two chromosomes is not even working properly? So those are all things that again, I think you're right that nature has developed the idea that diversity is key for.
At a genetic level. Like at a genetic level, positive Darwinistic type of evolution where you can deal with the environmental pressures and all that kind of stuff and you have enough mutations where you might be able to have some long term evolution to deal with environmental factors, but not enough mutation to cause the ending of the species, which would be this clone example where over time there's too many mutations for it to continue.
And so, but I found it interesting, man, because I feel like as humans, for example, we're into this thing like hierarchy. Because you mentioned the royal courts of a few hundred years ago. And immediately my brain thought of the story we've learned about King Tut when they've done the genetic studies on his bones or whatever, and the fact that the stories tell us he was married to his sister as a teenager. And what that tells me is even in ancient Egypt they had their own form of eugenics, right? Maybe they didn't call it the same thing. They didn't look at the same groups of people as being at the hierarchy. But clearly that tells you that even in the Egyptian cultures of thousands of years ago, they were trying to exclude some people from this family's bloodline. And they felt that, hey, if, if we keep this thing a bit closer, we'll, you know, our good genes will, will continue. And all these, all these riff raffs out here, you know, the rabble, I don't know, man.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: I think you're putting our modern sensibility on that. I don't know that they were thinking about our good genes and well, I think that you're onto something. But I would Say that I think they were more so thinking that they were divine and everybody else well, but
[00:30:38] Speaker B: is that different than a form of eugenics? Right? You're, you're a top cat versus everyone else.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: The context, the context that you're putting it in, I'm saying is more of the modern framework. They definitely were trying to be exclusive in terms of how they were reproducing but I think it probably had to do with them because remember they were God kings, so to speak and which I guess there are people like that nowadays that kind of like to themselves.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: I guess my bigger point is it's interesting that that impulse of exclusivity that we have as humans, you know this, that to your point, right. Maybe we have some people today that think like that and it's probably just the fact that once you become a certain level of wealth in your society, whether you are a pharaoh or a billionaire today, you are able to then live out some of these fantasies. And I think that there's this thing about this exclusivity in eugenics like oh my group is better and all this. But it's interesting that every time the science comes in and does fact based evidence checking on this stuff, the lack of genetic diversity creates more negativity in the long run.
And I would say this, we have a chocolate lab that's a pure breed and he has the allergies and certain skin issues and all that. It's funny, recently my wife and I were talking like two weeks ago because he's getting old. We're starting to talk about what kind of dog we might want next. And the first thing my wife said is listen, I want a mutt, I want at least a half lab have something else. And her thing was because he's just going to have less health issues. And I thought she's right based on the breed and all that stuff. So again that's what I mean by it. It's interesting that we want this exclusivity in a hierarchy as humans, but yet the evidence shows us that's probably not best for our survival long term.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: We see that with animals that have life cycles much shorter than ours, much more quickly, which is, that's part of the reason why they did mice here. But with dogs, yeah, I've had pure breed boxer before. Now I have a boxer mix. And yeah, it's a completely different experience from the standpoint of hardiness. You know, like it's just the boxer mix is hardier, you know, and that's. Yeah, it has an additional, it has More genetic diversity in its body. And so mutations weren't. That may have been there with one parent, weren't able to double down because the other parent introduced a whole new set. So yes, it, it really does push in favor of. And that's just that that is something, there's evolutionary basis for that. Even in terms of when you look at animals in terms of how they select for mates and stuff like that. And human beings are animals, you know, they're looking for certain characteristics. Now human beings, though I think one of your points here that could be extrapolated is that human beings because, because we're not operating on instinct, because we're operating, you know, we're all in our heads and thinking about God kings or, you know, like, like race and all these other things that, you know, maybe genetically aren't supported. We may be selecting for the wrong things consciously, whereas our unconscious, you know, kind of might push us in another direction. But I do want to get back to, you know, like kind of what we were talking about. One of the things I wanted to address also.
And it kind of leads into where your second point when I first kicked it to you, and that's just like obviously absent some significant intervention, scientists aren't going to try or aren't going to stop trying to do stuff like this. Like they're trying to learn more about the cloning and do better, do it better and things like that and get the kinks out. Maybe you can go 150 generations if they get a few kinks out, learn a few more things, understand it, because that's kind of what experiments teach you, is how things went wrong.
But what about. Do you think there's an important moral conversation that society should be having at this time?
What these guys are doing as it stands now, as you mentioned, and I sent you something about this just in preparing for the dough put it today, people are cloning their pets pretty regularly now, at least, you know, celebrities and stuff like that. We hear about it often and then I know other beyond just celebrities. But you know, like, so this is, this is a train that seems to have left the station and is heading somewhere. But I don't know that we're having a conversation on what morally we should be doing with this that matches how quickly science is advancing. So what's your thought on that?
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's, that's, I mean, I don't want to start saying all these things like narcissism or insecurities and all because I, you know, I don't really Know what?
[00:34:52] Speaker A: What? What? Tell you, man, it's for that. Because you already did.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, no, I said it on purpose just to say that I don't want to use these kind of terms when I'm describing other people who I don't know personally. Right. Like, I'm not here to try and diagnose everybody and. But you make a point about celebrities cloning pets, and it reminds me of the people that want to live forever or clone themselves and all that. It's like this insecurity about the cycle of life. Like I'm. It's funny. My dog's right here sleeping at my feet. He'll be nine years old. He's got a gray snout. He's awesome. I love this dog. You know what? I don't want to clone him and have another like that, same dog, but not him. Right. I'm fine with the idea that he's going to die, I'm going to lose my buddy, and I'll have to emotionally heal from that and get another dog. And that'll be a new experience and a new dog. And so that's all I'm saying is that I don't understand the motivation of people that want to keep this same thing all the time and not appreciate that these things are fleeting and we need to appreciate them in the moment. That might be a different philosophical way of looking at life, but what I will say, James, is the moral part. That's why I was saying I don't know how to answer directly the moral question because there is obviously a lot of morality around it. There's religious beliefs that they're going to run up against some of these things and all that. That might not be the conversation for me, but what I will say is where I see this kind of in parallel with other parts of our lives is I look at this as another attempt at a shortcut.
And the shortcut being like aspartame to replace sugar, GLP1, drugs to replace healthy lifestyles, exercise and eating right, vaping to replace old school, smoking tobacco, meaning every time we as humanity has tried to find some sort of shortcut that we think is gonna somehow either make our life easier or get us to something quicker and all that, usually there's a lot of side effects that tend to be a little bit less attractive actually than just doing the thing. Even margarine and butterfly.
So reading what I read about this mice thing and how the genetic, like I said, the chromosomes deteriorating after enough cloning is like another example of this. Like, yeah, that seems cool. I can clone myself in a thousand years, I'll still be around and blah, blah, blah.
But yeah, now when you really look at the details, it doesn't look like it's going to be that cool. And it looks like there's going to be some side effects that probably will be horrific. And it's like, to me, it's like, why even keep experimenting down this road? I just don't understand it.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Well, but you answered that question.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: That's why I don't run the world.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: You answered that question.
Is that exploration? People are going to want to explore.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: And as president, could I write an executive order saying you can't do this? Would that be like ruling by decree?
[00:37:34] Speaker A: I would be ruling by decree increase, sir. That would be what we would not want a president to do. We would want to have a lawmaking body that would make laws and then have the president enforce the laws that are made by the lawmaking body.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Well, who would want to be president?
[00:37:46] Speaker A: I don't know if anybody could ever come up with a system like that though, or actually put it in.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Who would want to be president with all those guardrails?
Come on, man.
It definitely wouldn't be from the grand guilt.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: But, but no, I, I think, I think you skirted the, the answer because, yes, the moral conversation needs to happen in the same way that the moral conversation around AI needs to happen in the same way that the moral conversation, when we come up with amazing and inventive technologies, there needs to be a moral conversation that happens around it. When we start blowing up nuclear bombs and detonating entire cities, then we start to have, we need to have a moral conversation. And we did. At that time, the societies had a moral conversation. And fortunately, nobody's been blowing up cities with nuclear bombs since then. And so that's not to say it has to be an outright prohibition. But the answers that science gives, generally speaking, aren't the answers in terms of, of whether we should or should not do something or the extent of what's the stopping point. Science doesn't give us stopping points. Science will just keep going. There needs to be an accompanying. And whether this is religion for some people, whether this is the ability to work rule of law for some people, or ability to work in groups and not be antisocial and always just want to break stuff just because it's there, whatever that is, that's a system that needs to be in place in addition to the systems that give us scientific exploration. And so right now, I think the bigger problem is that we just don't have the capability.
This is the experiment of self governance.
In the United States, at least, we're struggling with right now, a lot of people have decided they just want to give it. To give all the power to one guy and let him do stuff.
Other people, you know, have a hard time with uniting behind a small common set of ideals as opposed to saying, hey, everything. Everybody has to be exact, think exactly like me in order for you to be on my side. Like, there are a lot of issues that we're having in terms of the idea of self governance. But the self governance piece, if we want as a society to have the conversation and to be able to say, okay, you know, we think either with rule of law or with whatever, that there should be some guardrails here or some constraints that we want to put on this as we allow this to develop. That's the conversation that needs to have. I think there should be. I'm not optimistic that we're going to be able to get a handle on that. My concern is that generally speaking, I guess kind of in the same way that humans react to competition, we react to crisis as well.
So with a lot of the things that we're looking at, whether it be AI, whether it be whatever, you know, cloning, it seems like we're going to need to have a crisis happen first. And then we figure out, then we get some will to say, okay, well, let's try to deal with this. Which would not be unlike what happened with the, you know, the nuclear bomb. You know, like the crisis happened and then it was like, oh, we got to get a handle on this. And so maybe that's the natural order of things for us, you know. But I at least think we should start mentioning the fact that, hey, science isn't going to establish the boundaries here. Science is going to keep going. So if we want any boundaries, if we think there should be any boundaries, if we think there should be any conversation on boundaries, we probably should have that conversation. So.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Well, I just figured out the boundary.
The boundary is we need. No, the boundary is we need to live in a theocracy so that science doesn't exist anymore.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: That's a simple answer. That's a simple answer I'm sure many people would get behind, because simplicity does.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: I'm gonna be the high priest, though. Okay? That's the rule.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: There you go. There you go. I'm sure you could do like an AI photo, make your, you know, put a vision of yourself as the high
[00:41:20] Speaker B: priest or the deity, hand on someone's head in a hospital bed healing them, are you right? And all that.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: If it's your religion, man, you call the shots, man. And I'm sure there are people that are looking to follow something like that.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: This went from a joke to something I'm actually gonna consider now. So.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Hey, man, fortune favorites.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Wait till my wife gets home and tell her what you put in my head. This is going to be fun.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. So, no, but I think we can wrap this conversation from there. But, you know, I think you started it off, started us off very well. You know, like exploration as. Whether it be space, whether it be genetics, it's going to continue to happen. And so, you know, we're learning about this stuff. It's very interesting at the very least. And there's other conversations that should be had. But, you know, we also can just appreciate, you know, what actually is happening and, you know, the awe of that. So we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate the podcast, tell us what you think, review it, send it to a friend. Till next time, I am James Keys.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogonlana.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
