Ashley: 0:05

Oh my God. Like, look how majestic that is.

Cat: 0:08

Didn't one of them say, I'm gonna light a cigar and then we're gonna talk about wolves? Like, okay, I'm sorry. The gender was at 11.

Ashley: 0:23

You know what reduced my stress this week?

Cat: 0:25

What's that?

Ashley: 0:27

Reading about dire wolves?

Cat: 0:30

That's funny.'cause it increased my stress.

Ashley: 0:33

Let's just say it increased my intrigue and curiosity, which for me as a person is a stress reducer.'cause I'm like, this is interesting.

Cat: 0:42

We were able to activate that. I think I just activated annoyance. But I'm ready to find the curiosity and the wonder. Tell me, tell me about dire wolves.

Ashley: 0:53

got a mix of things. We've got a mix of things. Earlier this month, this company Colossal Biosciences announced they brought the dire wolf back from extinction. So if you don't know about dire wolves, these are uh, species of wolf that were around about 10,000 years ago. They came to fame through Game of Thrones and some other places. So people just like."woo, dire wolves, very cool.". uh, yeah, This company was like, yeah, we made one. Here they are. Some pictures of them and they kind of announced that they had done this. And I actually didn't learn about this first cat. You were the first person to tell me about this. And I just remember you, I think you opened your phone one day and you were like, oh, like what's happening? What is this? Like? Do you remember that morning?

Cat: 1:31

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm Ashley's conduit to social media a lot of the time and, um, uh, I don't remember what I said, but it was something like. Can you believe this old man yells at cloud kind of reaction? Um, yeah. No, I mean, I, I, I don't like anything that, that comes out the gate with like a really preposterous, you know, Jurassic Park feeling claim. Um, and I, I think that. I think that I had seen this place a little bit before, and you know what, it just smelled startup to me as a former startup founder, and as someone who's, you know, done like rounds of raising money with VCs. I was like, my second thought was, I guarantee you these people are about to go raise money or something, and this is their, like, publicity tour. And, um, you know, I, I, yeah. I feel justified in that reaction. Yeah.

Ashley: 2:26

Yeah, that's fair. So it was funny'cause I think when you first brought this up, I was like, oh, what did they do? Like I was immediately like, what actually happened? So since then a lot more has come out They were able to obtain they're the only people and I, we don't know why, but they basically asked this collection, which had some they had a skull of a dire wolf. So they obtained enough genetic material from the bone inside the ear from one of these wolves. And they were able to then build out and figure out what. The dire wolf genome would look like. And then knowing that you could go in and say, okay, here are the genes that are different from gray wolves, which are a pretty close ancestor. And what happens if we modify some of those genes? So they did this, they made 20 edits in 14 different genes. That doesn't sound like a lot and one would be, I think, justified in feeling like, wait, that's only 20 edits to a gray wolf. Is that enough to make a dire wolf? And that is kind of the big question in a lot of people's minds at the moment. And I think for me, the knee jerk that your knee jerk was like, oh, startup, my knee jerk was like, wait, how you claiming about a species? Like, how are you gonna say that? Because there's a lot of debate over what makes a species like, is this actually a dire wolf? Even if it just looks like a dire wolf. So that was kind of my initial annoyance. Yeah.

Cat: 3:45

Okay. Yeah, and I think you and I are both pretty familiar with the idea that genes exist and you can do things to them. Um, and that might not be true for everybody. So I think I had a, a knee-jerk reaction too. That is, is my reaction to every headline about genes, which is just kind of like, oh, we're not doing a good job telling people what genes are putting it into context. There's so much hype about genes and you know, there's certain things that you just see and you know, as soon as that keyword is in there, people are gonna think everything about this claim is real and it's really important and it's really cool. And you know, I think that comes from a natural place, as you say, like it is incredible that we can know this stuff about genes. I think my reaction actually came from this deep frustration that I have that these truly amazing parts of science are like being shoved into news stories and kind of like manipulated. And so, you know, I think if it was just like a total snake oil thing, it's not that, right? It's actually, there's lots of interesting pieces of this, but then feeling like the science part of it is not in control of the story and worrying about what people take from this and sort of wondering about who gets to benefit from this. Uh, like, I don't know the name of the museum that had the samples that they took this material from.

Ashley: 5:10

Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't know offhand either. We'd have to look that up like it's not in, it's a really good point. Like it's not in the news releases about it, right? Like who actually got this skull and gave them this DNA?

Cat: 5:22

I don't know what you, what you, what you're called if you do this kind of science, I'm sorry. Like a paleo something

Ashley: 5:29

like paleontologist of some sort.

Cat: 5:31

yeah, like you're an archeologist for these animal remains. I mean, maybe there's like a whole history there of reconstructing the genetic material of, of these animals and how we understand. What they are and what they do. So yeah, there's also this, this way in which stories about dire wolves come out of, you know, from companies like this, it comes out of the ether as if they just like, are the only source of this. And they're the first people who've ever thought about it. And, and no one else has ever like imagined, you know,

Ashley: 5:58

Totally. Yeah. And this isn't my area of science, but I had exactly that kind of, uh, response to like some of the early news releases from Neuralink, which is, you know, like. I, I don't even wanna say his name, but you know, that dude's company to like dig into the brain and try to control a smartphone with it or something. Um, yeah. But like my initial thing was like, wait, we've been doing this for decades, like, and we've been translating brain activity into stuff for decades. Like back off, dude. Like, this isn't your rodeo.

Cat: 6:29

Don't. You show an example of something in, in one of your classes about this.

Ashley: 6:33

I do talk about this. Yeah, I do talk about this because I'm like, you know, I want my students to be informed consumers of information like this so that when someone walks into the room and is like, guess what? We did this very fancy thing and it sounds really cool that we could be like, okay, but that fancy thing you did is built on decades of federally-funded research. Not to go back to that, but this is so true. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. And a ton of time and PhDs, you know, who, who built the foundation on which, on which this stuff is built

Cat: 7:10

And none of them are getting credit or money

Ashley: 7:12

and they're not getting

Cat: 7:13

you know, or these press releases or reporters talking to them, even if they, you know, I think the question of who, who we think owns science and where we see innovation coming from and who, who gets to like patent an innovation. This is, this is like a deep part of American history and on our current society, you know, and, um, it's quite messy in this world of biotech. Right? And I remember when we put up our NIH episode, speaking of science funding, a reply that I got to that episode from someone was,"there's plenty of money being spent on big pharma" and I, I was like, what are you talking about? We're talking about, you know, this entire system that is completely invisible to you.

Ashley: 7:59

mm mm. Yes.

Cat: 8:01

Yes. scientists trained at universities go into big pharma and there is money for drug development, but you're so far from understanding the fact that science is happening. Way down, you know, at a different part of the stream than the eventual drug development that yields a medicine that gets to your door. And we even made that point in the episode, but okay. We've gone a bit far afield, but I, I want you to tell me more about the science the dire wolves.

Ashley: 8:26

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I think that this is like, you know, one of our. Um, you know, knee jerk feelings about this is like, why are these people getting all the credit? And it's built on a ton of science. And I think you brought up one other sort of knee-jerk feeling was, which is like, why is it all about the genes? And I think that this is really interesting because you think about a dire wolf living 10,000 years ago. Really different ecosystem, really different world. And you have to ask these questions about even if you were to perfectly reconstruct the genome of a dire wolf, if you raise it in an environment that's not the normal ecosystem of a dire wolf. Is it actually a dire wolf? Right. And these are actually really important and interesting questions and like this company has admitted that, okay, well they can't obviously recreate the ecosystem. They're, they're keeping these wolves in some undisclosed location, um, somewhere. So they, you know, they don't want, they don't want people to know, um,

Cat: 9:23

for the reporters that they sometimes bring to the wolf compound

Ashley: 9:26

well, I, I guess they drug them and helicopter them in or something.

Cat: 9:29

Yeah. Right. It's like The Gorge that we just watched.

Ashley: 9:32

Yeah. Yeah. Or like Peter Jackson got to meet the wolves. Right. Um.

Cat: 9:37

Not some wolf conservation biologist, you know, who's at like a national park.

Ashley: 9:43

Well, maybe those people have been there. I don't know. But, but you know, the, the CEO talks about bringing Peter Jackson, uh, to meet the wolves. Anyway, so, you know, there's these questions about like gene expression and environment and ecosystems, and like, Cat, this is your world of thought, right? Which is like, what are the forces that shape these individuals? And I think that this is something also that was upsetting to you.'cause you were like, well, what, you know, what about all the other stuff that is important for a wolf to live? You know? And I think

Cat: 10:15

Yeah, I mean, I I, was frankly, you know, I, I am really interested in conservation and questions of conservation and, and ecology and our relationship to our own environment, which I think is very broken given what's happening to the planet right now. And I kept asking myself things like how is it that we are okay with all of the wolves that do live in our current world? The wolves that are here now, the wolves that actually won out in their ecological niche. That's why they're here now. You know? And we tell this sort of story about de-extinction that completely doesn't have any human blame in it. It's just like, oh my gosh, there were these cool big animals. Jurassic Park. We deserve to have them. It, it's a really interesting question, I think when you're positioning yourself as a company that just like, just gets to do shit, you know, and, and a lot of, I mean, people who spend their whole lives working on what should we conserve? How should we conserve it? Make this point, we need to care about ecosystems, not just cute animals or cool animals, or the animals that can be in a zoo of a private company, which is essentially what this company's created. As soon as you look at it from that point of view, it starts to feel, and you're not looking at the wolf puppy pictures. Really cute. Okay. Like it's, it's like it's primo content that they've created these, like they have real living, breathing wolf puppies and you have this response of just curiosity, joy, wonder. It is kind of amazing. But then you're like, these are animals that will spend their whole lives in some private company's paddocks somewhere. And meanwhile we have real living members of an ecosystem out in Montana, out in lands that, that they have lived in forever, that are being massacred by fences. And we're not designing, we're not designing those environments to keep, you know, that ecosystem healthy. So I think that contrast is just very real for me. Again, I'm not an expert in any of this. I'm just like a member of an ecosystem, so I care about it. Yeah.

Ashley: 12:26

No. Totally. And I think like, yeah, the, the contrast between like what we get excited about and like in preparation for this episode, I listened to, you know, some other famous podcasters, I won't say their name, talk about this and interview the

Cat: 12:43

Ashley went into the trenches

Ashley: 12:45

I I went to the trenches and like I listened to, you know, these like two guys just like drool endlessly over these wolves and just like, oh my God. Like, look how majestic that is.

Cat: 12:55

Yeah. Didn't one of them say, I'm gonna light a cigar and then we're gonna talk about wolves? Like, okay, I'm sorry. The gender was like at 11.

Ashley: 13:04

I was, I was joking to Cat earlier that I was gonna like be like, just interrupt our episode to be like,"Hey, do you like cigars?" Because that's literally what happened on this episode. I listened

Cat: 13:13

We should pour some whiskey and talk about wolves.

Ashley: 13:17

Like that is literally the vibe of this conversation. Right? And it is so hard to imagine these two men having the same conversation about like, you know, the Endangered Species Act or the Defenders of Wildlife org, right? Like the people that are actually doing the work to save the wolves that exist today.

Cat: 13:34

Right. Listen, if you wanna care about predator animals out there in the world, you for sure can, because those animals are very threatened actually. And like that's, that's a, a hard, sad thing. And you know, they're like these farmers and ranchers. There's this whole narrative about how they need to kill all these animals because of our farms and ranches. And I'm not disputing that there are real issues there but what we've got is, you know, a situation where we're gonna wipe these animals out.

Ashley: 14:06

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and there's like real stuff to worry about in terms of the wolves, like in this country even. So, you know, in the United States, uh, wolves occupy like less than 15% of the habitat they would've occupied, you know, many years ago. Um, their, their populations are dwindling. The gray wolves in particular, which it's worth noting that, you know, what Colossal did was they modified the gray wolf genome, and gray wolves exist they're real wolves. There's been some debate over whether they should be considered an endangered species. So, um, several years ago they became protected, but now actually literally like the same week that Colossal dropped their headlines, they're also like now putting this under threat again. So they might actually be taken off the endangered species list again. So there are real things to worry about here.

Cat: 14:59

Colossal was cited in one of the statements right by, I don't remember who, I'd have to look it up(you

Ashley: 15:05

were

Cat: 15:06

the researcher for this episode, so I'm doing no work) but, um, Colossal and this whole dire wolf thing was cited in some member of the current administration's statement saying, we need to take more animals off the endangered species list.'cause hey look, we can do de-extinction. Look at cool tech breakthroughs. That's fucked up.

Ashley: 15:28

Yeah. Yeah. The problem is people mistake de-extinction as a way to bring animals back. And it's, and it's not, I mean, it is not a conservation strategy for one. Like, okay, they made, um, a, a few wolves, right? The thing we need to do is think about like thousands of wolves. And also, like, something I was thinking about this morning was like, okay, let's imagine even you can produce thousands of dire wolves. Like where are they gonna live? How are

Cat: 15:56

want

Ashley: 15:56

Take care of them.

Cat: 15:58

Thousands of dire wolves would be bad. This is exactly like people who are saying, let's go to Mars. And forget about Earth. Like we can't, they can't harness that energy that excites them to build on other planets to just build here. We already have cities. They could improve. We already have people living here they could be helping. If they genuinely cared about all of that, they could turn that energy to, you know, what's right in front of us. And I feel the same way about animals because I'm like, Colossals not using this opportunity to go talk about the gray wolf who's literally a big part of this story and is like rendered completely invisible by the way we're all talking about it, and I, I do find that like sociologically, psychologically very interesting that we're like capable of just engaging in these fantasies instead of asking ourselves, how are we really stewarding the earth here?

Ashley: 16:53

Yeah, totally. And I think that that contrast is really hard with like, okay, what is an actual conservation effort and what isn't? And then there's also the contrast right now in this moment with like so much science funding getting cut in this country and like literally last week, the NSF announcing more cuts with like more to come. While these companies get millions of dollars, I mean, this is like actually probably their estimate is like 10 billion. It's a$10 billion company or something in total. And meanwhile, they're sitting on all this cash and like, look, here's my honest opinion. Like I think this science is really cool. I love sci-fi. I think it's interesting to think about what genetic modifications can do and change, right? And, and we do genetic modification of fruits and vegetables to make them better. Like, there is value in this science, but is it the value of massive headlines, billions of dollars like that I don't know. And that is the thing that I think upsets me as a scientist.

Cat: 17:57

Yeah, and I think you should ask yourself what are we barreling towards? A dystopian kind of world of glam science where there are like, you know, VC funded companies, produce, results that, sometimes we use, sometimes we don't. But like we have no ownership as a public in that process. The whole structure of it is completely different from the structure of federally funded science at universities. And, you know, you and I have both spoken to the fact that that system's not perfect. Of course it's not because it's a human system, but we're barreling towards this reality where we get like science headlines without scientists, that labs that are actually funding all the people who study genes are getting shut down, that we're not caring about the data sets of our ecosystem are all getting shut down. Like the very routes for us to understand all of these questions are getting shut down. And meanwhile, we have these like headlines that have no people, no culture, no ecology. They just have like look at the fluffy wolf pictures, you know, and Game of Thrones, and it's like free association, glam science, you know, bullshit.

Ashley: 19:15

Yeah, totally, totally. And like, I'll give credit where credit is due, which is that, um, you know, last week they actually put the genome on, an NIH server where people share genomes. So they're sharing the data. That's awesome. That means other scientists can work with it and asked their own questions and I think that's really great. They also wrote a preprint that describes the new findings. So they had a 2021 paper that got a lot of press. So this is building on that. So like. There are things Colossal is doing that I think are legitimately very scientific and also in the service of sharing this science. Um, So like I'll give them credit for that. But I think you're right, like at the same time. Like, I would love to see these people with this platform advocating for science writ large, like all the science that they depend on to do their work and for, you know, ecosystems in this country that we need to think about, like all of the stuff we're talking about. So, yeah, like that's, that's frustrating.

Cat: 20:11

All of the things, their activities they're engaging in that you're giving credit for, were invented by other people that aren't them. Are, are like run by grad students who are currently afraid for their whole futures. I just want us to be really real about the facts of like who's experiencing what and absolutely, like this is an interesting story and a reason we picked it because, you know, it's actually not just all bullshit. Like, I mean, I said that two seconds ago, but you know, we, we don't really get a lot of joy or substance talking about things that are just flat out snake oil, total cons. I think it's actually very important to look at cases like this and understand like the many shifting pieces and what could push us towards more of one world or more of the other world. So I think there is a role for companies to play in the scientific process. I think that's what we have, you know? And I think that there is a role for, you know, interesting ways they can give back. Um, but there's a lot of elements here that I just, I just wish people could pay more attention to about who gets to own and profit from what I.

Ashley: 21:24

Totally. I think the question of profit is huge. I mean, this. This company is, is profiting tremendously. And that's a big question. Who owns that profit? Who should get it? Yeah. I think you know this, like, you put it really well, just like, which world are you shifting us to? And I think that that's like something we have to think about is like in every stage of this, we're moving towards one world or the other. And like, you know, we wanna live in a world where the people have access to science, the scientists are doing the science and getting paid to do it.

Cat: 21:57

And a world where people have scientific literacy, right? Which is like a huge problem and something you and I are both engaged in trying to do with our own work. So let's talk about this piece. Like why. You know, are we so inclined? Why do we see vanity science kind of cycles happen? What's your take on this as a science educator? I mean our listeners are probably in people who are interested in science. Like why would they be listening to our podcast?

Ashley: 22:24

Yeah,

Cat: 22:25

So what can we give them?

Ashley: 22:27

Yeah, I think this is interesting, like, you know, because on one hand I can see the role of a glitzy headline, getting people sort of excited about science, like Sure. And like when I teach in class, I try to choose examples that I think people can relate to that are like exciting, right? And so I think there's a role for that. However, those examples need to be about the process of science and not just about. Some fun fact, right? And I think like something that bugs me here as an educator is like, there's a difference between, fun science facts and there's like these feeds you can follow where it's like, oh, did you know, like, you know, male seahorses are the ones who like I. You know, give birth. That's a fact, right? That's not the process of science. People had to understand and study and observe seahorses to like learn about that and now they're doing like deeper science to learn about that. And so I think there's like this distinction between the glitzy headline thing, which is often just like a science fact, and actually understanding of the science process, which is what I want people to leave with when I think about like science literacy.

Cat: 23:36

Right. And you know, you are trained as a scientist to find your dazzling fact because you know you're negotiating for somebody's attention and you know, there's a really innocent version of it where you're just, you're trying really hard to say, Hey, this is cool. Like look at this, this is cool. And we all get trained to do that. However, the vulnerability of it, I think is that it kind of trivializes science and it, it really leaves you open to suddenly being the line on some Republican's poster board that they're holding up that says, can you believe we spent$2 million on, you know, fish? And that's so stupid. And actually if you knew the process of science, you would know that there's some mechanism that we can only study that happens in fish. But it lets us develop a cancer drug. I mean, this is the story always, always when they hold up these examples. But I think this, we've gotten in this kind of really vicious cycle and kind of, I would almost say abusive relationship with the media as scientists where we just feel like we have to constantly trivialize our science, flatten it, play their headline game. And I honestly feel like the world is so broken down. The world's so polarizing. Right now a polarized, we should ask ourselves, is that game constantly dragging us back into the same trap of being discarded as scientists? I think it is. I.

Ashley: 25:03

And I think it also treats audiences like they are. You know, more dumb or something, right? Like, like the only way you're gonna be interested in this story is if we tell you we brought back this Game of Thrones character. That's not treating your audience like they're smart. Like let's actually guide them through why this is interesting. Like what about the question of, you know, what a species actually is and how much environment changes who we are and the expression of our genes. Those are the questions that are. Interesting. Like give your audience that to chew on actually.

Cat: 25:37

Yeah, and we're, we're playing like a buzzfeed listicle playbook and in a completely different media world. And I am sick of it. I'm just sick of it. And I, I think a lot of, a lot of people out there want a deeper story. They want to know, how can I be curious about things? How can I care about things? And, and how do I fight these battles? Maybe, why does it feel kinda weird and wrong for all of my medicine to come from one single company and be manufactured at one single factory or whatever, you know? I think that these, these questions are like coming through every area of science right now.

Ashley: 26:16

Mm. So even though we're against factoids, I have a factoid for you, Cat.

Cat: 26:20

Okay.

Ashley: 26:22

Our dog. Our dog, who we know and love, uh, is dear to us. Um, he has a Wolfiness score, so we were asking like, how much do would we need to genetically modify Yeti in order to bring him to a wolf?

Cat: 26:35

For full, for full context, if you're listening to this, I think you need to know what Yeti looks like. He is, we call him an accidoodle. He's a rescue, has some poodle in him, and people describe him as a Muppet. They say he looks like the dragon from the never ending story,

Ashley: 26:51

Falkor. Yeah.

Cat: 26:53

yeah. And um, like he's a fluffy little curly mup faced Muppet who just does not even look hardly like a dog

Ashley: 27:00

Yeah.

Cat: 27:01

sometimes.

Ashley: 27:02

apparently, apparently his Wolfiness is medium at 0.9% according to Embark, where we got his DNA sequenced. Um. But speaking of like, sort of the frustration of stuff like this, so, you know, this is obviously a proprietary thing that they calculate their Wolfiness score is, is literally what it's called. They won't tell you like what it is. So I don't know, like if this is based on gray wolves or red wolves or some other thing, a dire wolf, who knows? Um, yeah, but that's, that's the factoid for today.

Cat: 27:34

How many times do we get like a health score or some index or some metric and you have no idea what it is, and it's just like here. This is your sleep score. This is your Wolf score. This is your ice bath score.

Ashley: 27:49

That's true. We do this like kind of bullshit reduction of things. I mean, double-edged sword again, like sometimes you need a number and you need to know where you sit. I just got blood tests like last week and they give you these like nice little scales. It's like, all right, you're in the middle. Or like, uh, my cholesterol's kind of high. They're kind of at the, at the end of that.

Cat: 28:08

Yeah, but see what they're giving you interpretation, you know? And you're like, okay, there's a population of people and we know the range they're giving you. You actually do, they're, they're telling you what they measure. What I'm talking about are these indexes that are like, we have aggregated something into this thing and we're calling The keyword is always. That you can watch for is that they call it an index and it, it usually means we have secret sauce and here's your score of on our index. And I, I abhorred these things. I think they're so misleading for people and I think it trains you to actually not ask how things are measured. It's like you live in this world where you're surrounded by numbers, but you have no agency over any of them.

Ashley: 28:49

Oh man.

Cat: 28:52

here, like you're a biologist trying to learn about your dog, and we pay for this service and you don't even get the information that you know you really could use to understand it, and this happens again and again.

Ashley: 29:05

Yeah, I mean they do give you like the genome file and I did download that and play with that, but I still don't know where their Wolfs score comes from.

Cat: 29:13

Hmm hmm.

Ashley: 29:15

But yeah, I think this point about indexes is really, that's really interesting. So like, do you have a favorite example of an index that like, I don't know, people get, you get a score on, but it's really hard to interpret. You just have to like take their word for it.

Cat: 29:29

all the time in like industry and business, there are, there are seemingly psychology based indexes. Happiness Index, wellbeing index. I mean, I, I do live in the world sometimes of creating measures that then we aggregate, but I'm really interested in like what's going into that and why, and justifying that. And I, I try to tie all of mine back to established bodies of literature. Um, but I think, I think what you see. Is that the goal of these things is to give you the feeling of being measured rather than like actual, information that you then incorporate into your decisions. Yeah, and then it, it makes it really, really difficult to compare between things, you know? But that's often what those are used as well, like, I mean, I think probably the most infamous examples are like personality measures or, you know, if you ever had to go through like a corporate thing where you're being told you're a blue person or a green person or, you know, there's just endless examples of times people have kind of taken, what started as a scientific idea somewhere, and then they said, I'm gonna make this way more marketable and something, I'm gonna translate it enough that I can put my name and trademark onto it. And now it's like the blue person method, you know?

Ashley: 30:47

Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, maybe there could be like a what percent dire wolf for you, sort of like personality score at work.

Cat: 30:54

my God. Can you imagine? You know, and then all, every executive will have to be like, I'm a, I'm a real alpha wolf,

Ashley: 31:03

Yeah. You don't get to be a leadership unless you're like at least 10% dire. I

Cat: 31:06

That's absolutely right. Yeah. And then there's gonna be like different cooler versions that emerge. Like

Ashley: 31:14

Yeah.

Cat: 31:14

will post a meme and it's like, did you know that the like red wolves actually are secretly the strategic thinkers and it's gonna be like a whole sorting mechanism.

Ashley: 31:25

Oh yeah. But it's like all of this, it strikes me as the same problem then the same problem is like just slapping a label on something without discussing how we got to the label, what it means to even have the label, right, what the definition of the label is, and why do we do this all the time?

Cat: 31:47

Well, I think it's a very effective way of directing resources to people who want resources. I mean, let's, like why is Colo colos Colossal? Colossus? I don't even know. I don't care. Colossal doing this. They're the wealthiest de-extinction company in the world. A thing they invented, which they also won't define what on earth is de-extinction. What's its purpose? Pretty easy to be the leading, cutting edge, best whatever of a thing that you also invented are, are the only player in, I think these serve like structural power ends and then they capitalize on our, our, the way our minds work to create hierarchies. I think all of that is sort of silly in the example of wolves, but we're not really giving silly examples right when it plays out in people's lives, like. One of my friends had a baby and she's a psychologist, and she texted me and she said, you know, trying to buy like nature related things for my baby. All boy clothes are predator animals and all girl clothes are prey animals. I mean, that is serving a social function. It's accomplishing a goal. It's accomplishing a goal that is useful for some people. So I know I sound really like a sociologist right now'cause I've been reading a ton of sociology, but I think that those people are onto something.

Ashley: 33:14

I think you're right. I think you're right. And I think, you know, like when I hear dudes talking about dire wolves, it's the same vibe. It's the same vibe.

Cat: 33:26

Vibe based science is what Ashley's supporting right now. Vibe based assessment of science.

Ashley: 33:32

Wait. No, no, I'm against. Well, okay. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm assessing it based on a vibe, but we shouldn't do science based on vibes,

Cat: 33:40

no, no. I know what you, that's what I meant. Oh, you, you might not have heard of this, babe, which is that there's this big conversation going on in software circles right now, and it's about what somebody called, vibe coding. So like coding, just kind of with, you know, AI assistance and, and not really worrying about it. And I think it's really interesting, but you, you know, there is some, there's some wisdom to the vibe

Ashley: 34:03

I see.

Cat: 34:04

is my controversial opinion here.

Ashley: 34:06

Yeah, so, so listener, which has happened to something that happens a lot in our household, which is Cat fills me in on something happening in tech. Um, vibe based

Cat: 34:16

too, online?

Ashley: 34:17

well, that's okay. One of us has to be, I guess, um, that sounds bad to me. Like shouldn't we be interrogating what

Cat: 34:25

No.

Ashley: 34:27

AI generated code is producing.

Cat: 34:29

Yeah, of course there's a bad version of it. However, I, I always as a psychologist, think that you can't just be like, bad and good. I'm the good one. I, I think that it's expressing a real thing, which is that developers are freaking exhausted, honestly. Simple as that. And they want to chill a little bit. Okay. And like a lot of the online reaction, I think isn't being compassionate to that. However, what I was saying was like, vibe based evaluation of the scientific stories that are being put in front of you, I, I think, has some merit. Like if it just feels like, like we've, we've, like we are in this world of constantly being sold bullshit, and you maybe you have those muscles a little bit,

Ashley: 35:12

Mm.

Cat: 35:13

And if you see a headline and you're getting that, that signal off of it, maybe that's a source of wisdom.

Ashley: 35:19

Yeah, I mean, I think that that is fine for people who have years of experience and hard work and expertise behind them to be able to make that kind of vibey judgment. Right.

Cat: 35:32

I don't know.

Ashley: 35:33

I don't trust, like I love my mom, but like my mom can't judge a dire wolf headline. She, you know, she's gonna be like, oh, that's really cool. They look cute.

Cat: 35:42

I don't know. I, I believe in the wisdom of ordinary people. I really do. Okay. And I, I know we're in a world of misinformation. I know we're in a world of, you know, this is a, maybe a, this is a different podcast episode. I always think my goal is not to make these people scientists. My goal is to help them tap into the ways of evaluating evidence that I think is everybody's right and heritage and like, yeah, you can't do all of it. It's not right to ask these people to like, have to evaluate like 19,000 genes or whatever. You know, there's niche knowledge they can't have and we can try to connect them to it. But I do think there's something about, listen, you can actually, you have skills to bring to this moment. You have wisdom, you have ways in which you understand whether people are trustworthy or not, you know, and that all, you can be a good scientific consumer. With all of that, if you can start listening to yourself about it.

Ashley: 36:40

Yeah, that's, that's totally fair. And, and yeah, mostly I agree with you. I think when I think about my role as an educator, it's like to get people to that point, like to get people to the point where they can look at a headline and, and suss it out.

Cat: 36:53

Well, you're forming scientists and I'm working with engineers who will never, ever not be engineers, in my opinion.

Ashley: 37:01

Yeah. But I think, you know, I think another thing that you're pointing out is, is again, like what does it actually mean to do science? And like, I think fundamentally science is a democratic process. Like everybody can participate in science, and I'm not just talking about like citizen science and that's all really good, but, but actually, like if you. You, you know, brew coffee and you are testing the grind size to see if that impacts the quality of your coffee. If you grow plants right, and you're, you're sort doing experiments, or if you're just observing the birds or the, bugs around you like. This is all science and the process of science includes these processes of observation and changing variables, and everybody can do that. And I think everybody can develop an intuition for that. And I think the thing we hate about headlines that cross our desk that claim big things is it's like. I don't know. It's not, it doesn't feel grounded in that, in the same way. Like, and it, it isn't accessible because, they, they're the only people that have access to this genome or these like sequencing technologies and this money, and it takes it away from people actually, like at the end of the day.

Cat: 38:18

Well, what a contrast to some of the work that you do and are connected to that thinks about can we send little tiny labs to classrooms for people who are in deep poverty and help them use a microscope to look at a leaf?'cause that's all they have. You have so many examples of, of work like that that you're connected to that really is about democratizing science. I think where you and I completely align whatever debate we might have about who should do what, we're completely united in, you need to be like an active consumer and you deserve to have agency. And a lot of this stuff is rendering people like totally w ithout that agency it's disempowering actually, even if it's glamorous for a second, you're just the zoo visitor forever. You're never actually like a member of this ecosystem who could maybe be a scientist one day. You're just the zoo visitor.

Ashley: 39:14

Oh man. Yeah, I think that that's. I think that that is it. That's one of the core things that I think this is like landing on is like, it feels inaccessible. It's actually putting people on the outside, and like when we think about the ideal science we want, we want investment from the public. We want, people to know what's going on behind the scenes. And like when you have companies with proprietary. Wolfly wolfiness scores or hidden zoos where they have their wolves, that doesn't feel right, right? That feels wrong. That feels like not the, the public investment in science, which is how we really want to do things openly with input.

Cat: 40:00

I think about like, where did science come from in the first place? And I didn't know what science was when I was a kid, but I remember reading, books about 1800s people who went to their backyards and observed insects, even despite all of the things I didn't have access to, like I didn't have, science labs or know any scientists, having this belief that if you just look at the world long enough, you could be a scientist as well. People deciding they could go out and do this. And in that, I think maybe science is really our birthright part of our human legacy and all of this dystopian future that we can kind of see glimpses of when we see this sort of stuff is about shifting that ownership away from humanity and towards just very specific individuals and groups they just own it forever and they're the authority forever.

Ashley: 41:03

Hmm, and that's the bullshit.