Beth Shapiro is far from a giddy enthusiast about de-extinction.  She knows more than nearly anyone about the subject because she is a highly regarded biologist in the middle of the two leading efforts in the new field—to resurrect extinct woolly mammoths and passenger pigeons.  She knows exactly how challenging the whole process will be and how imperfect the later stages of success might appear.

An evolutionary biologist who created and runs the paleogenomics lab at UC Santa Cruz, Shapiro is a careful skeptic, a great story teller and explainer, and an extremely productive scientist.  In this talk she spans the full de-extinction narrative from DNA editing all the way to revived populations in the wild—from lab work with CRISPR Cas 9 and primordial germ cells through to the ethical and practical issues of restoring a long-absent keystone species in its former ecosystem.  

“The goal of de-extinction,” she points out, “is to restore ecosystems; to reinstate interactions between species that no longer exist because one or more of those species are extinct.  We don’t need to create exact replicas of extinct species to achieve this goal.”  She concludes, “De-extinction uses awesome, exciting, cutting-edge technology to take a giant step forward.  De-extinction is a process that allows us to actively create a future that is really better than today, not just one that is less bad than what we anticipate.”  

Beth Shapiro is a MacArthur Fellow, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and author of the new book from Princeton University Press, "How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-extinction".”

"How to Clone a Mammoth" was given on May 11, 02015 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

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Seminars About Long-term Thinking

Support this Series

Beth Shapiro - How to Clone a Mammoth

WARNING - this clip totally spoils the plot for Kingsman: The Secret Service.

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Valentine: "When you get a virus, you get a fever. That's the human body raising its core temperature to kill the virus. Planet Earth works the same way. Global Warming is the fever. Mankind is the Virus. We're making our planet *sick*. A cull is our only hope. If we don't reduce our population oursevles there's only one of two ways this can go: the host kills the virus or the virus kills the host. Either way..."

Arthur [Michael Caine]: "...the result is the same. The virus dies.

Eggsy: "So Valentine's going to care of the population problem himself?"

Arthur "Well if we don't do something, nature will. Sometimes a culling is the only way to ensure that the species survives.

And history will see Valentine as a man who saved humanity from Extinction."

Eggsy: "And he gets to pick and choose who gets culled, does he? All his rich mates, they get to live? And anyone he thinks is worth saving, he's keeping them safe. Whether they agree with him or not."

Supervillain Speech: "Global Warming Is The Fever. Mankind Is The Virus"

A conversation with writer and professor Ashley Dawson on his latest book, Extreme Cities. Here, he presents a disturbing survey of the necessarily ecological history of global urbanization and industrialization, as well as the unstable futures they are producing.

As much a harrowing study as a call to arms Extreme Cities is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world. The book is available for sale at Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2558-extreme-cities

Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change by Ashley Dawson

Episode 1 - I assume it'll get better as i go along

Subscribe on itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/permanently-moved/id1370546022

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

301 - 1801 - Episode 1

Transmissions and Archival Clips of a Cosmic Anthropologist.

Exploring and documenting the nature of living in the science-fictional condition of the early twenty-first century. Examining topics like: hyperreality and metafictionality. Diving deep into the science of annd issues surrounding DeExtinction & ReWilding.

Broadcasting live to the centre of the Galaxy, simulcast on Cosmic TV.

"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - J. B. S. Haldane

Tune in and get strange.

Part of Dark Extropian Musings - https://www.patreon.com/m1k3y

Supervillain Speech: "Global Warming Is The Fever. Mankind Is The Virus"

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