CL217: Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering And The Future Of Humanity – Interview with Jamie Metzl — SuperCreativity Podcast with James Taylor | Creativity, Innovation and Inspiring Ideas

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Genetics is the ultimate big data science. And so you need very large data pools, but you also need very large and high-quality data pools. And what needs to be in this data, one, is the genotypic information, and you can, you get that by sequencing larger and larger numbers of people.

Hi, I'm James Taylor, business creativity and innovation keynote speaker, and this is The Creative Life, a show dedicated to you, the The Creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration, and advice while at home, at work, or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, performer, designer, or thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much, much more. You'll find show notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode. Hey there, it's James Taylor, and I'm delighted today to have on the show Jamie Metzl. Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, geopolitical expert, novelist, entrepreneur, media commentator, and senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. In February 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing. Jamie previously served in the US National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a human rights officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. His latest book is called Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. Ray Kurzweil calls the book an outstanding guide to the most important conversations of our time, how we humans will hijack our evolutionary process and transcend the limits of our own biology. It's my great pleasure to have Jamie with us today. So welcome, Jamie.

Thank you, James. Thrilled to be here.

So share with everyone what's happening in your world just now.

Well, there's a lot. As you mentioned, I have my big book coming out. April 23rd is the release date called Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. And it's really the story of the genetics revolution and more importantly, what it means for each of us because we are entering this genetic revolution that is going to fundamentally transform not just our healthcare, although it will, but the way we make babies, the nature of the babies we make, and ultimately our evolutionary trajectory as a species. And so that feels like far-off sci-fi, but it's happening much, much sooner than people appreciate, and it's going to touch everyone in a far deeper and more profound way. And so I've written a book that, as Sanjay Gupta said, if you can read one book about where our species is going, I hope that this is it. And I'm really hoping to to spark what I'm calling a species-wide, an inclusive species-wide dialogue on the future of human genetic engineering.

And before we go into in-depth in some of the key messages in the book, I'm interested because this isn't your first rodeo, this isn't your first book. You have also written fiction books as well. Looking through your biography as well, you are definitely a Renaissance man. You have all these very interesting parts of what you do. And a question I usually ask my guests here is is how did you first learn your craft? And that's an interesting question to ask someone like you, because I wonder, do you even think about, would you say you have a core craft to what you do that everything revolves around? If you strip everything else away, it comes back to this one craft that you have?

Yeah, yeah, so a few points. First, a lot of people call me a Renaissance man. And what I tell everybody who says that is, you're really in the Renaissance, about 98% of everybody was shoveling manure or doing something equivalent So it's not being around in the Renaissance, it's what role did you play in the Renaissance? And connected to that, when I kind of strip everything away, and certainly I love to write, and I love to communicate, but I'd say my core skill in this world is to take— is one, being a voracious learner, but two, and essentially to take all of this data and all of this information from so many different sources and weave it together into a story that is meaningful and actionable for people. Because that's— it's really difficult. We all, myself included, we live in these little bubbles by definition. And so it's really hard to kind of see these bigger forces that are transforming our lives. What I pride myself on, whether I'm good at it or not, you know, other people can judge, is to understand these stories about what's coming maybe a little better than some other people and to translate that insight into forms that other people can absorb. And so these ways that the future is going to change become a little less scary and people start to see themselves in that future and then feel empowered to play a role in shaping that future, both for themselves and for the communities around them.

So I'd imagine a book like this obviously requires— you say you're a voracious learner— requires huge amounts of research in different fields, not just in, in genetic biology, but in other kind of related fields and some unrelated fields. How do you go about, first of all, as you're going through these, um, kind of cataloging what you want, what you see as important, you know, highlighting certain things, how do you then go about kind of synthesizing this information? Because it'd be quite easy easy just to go and you're taking all this information and create, write something which reads like a textbook, an academic textbook, where you're ending up a bit like a cover band in music, rather than being an original artist. How do you go from synthesizing to actually finding those messages, those stories that are unique to you and only you perhaps can tell?

So first, people ask me about research all the time. And what I always tell people is, well, I don't do any research. And they say, "What? How do you write about all these technical subjects without doing research?" And what I mean is not that I don't do research, it's when I'm doing research, it's not like I'm feeling like, "Oh, now it's 4 o'clock, it's time for research." Like my entire life is and always has been dedicated just to learning everything that I possibly can. And then at a certain point, I get to the thing where I say, I feel like, you know, I really have something to say. And so certainly with this book, this is a topic that I've been writing and speaking about for over 20 years. And so I definitely, over the years of just thinking so much about so many aspects of the genetic future of our species and how genetic engineering is going to change us and the world around us, you know, I've come to these preliminary hypotheses and conclusions and, you know, giving so many talks all around the world, I've had to challenge myself. I speak to scientists and doctors and middle schoolers and everybody's kind of poking and prodding and adding and asking questions, which has forced me to really, over the many years, find my voice. And so with this book, what I have my kind of big case that I've been making for many, many years about why the genetic revolution is coming and what it means and what we need to do. And so then I started this book with that outline, and then there were areas where I felt like, you know, I'm really strong, and then there were some kind of adjacent areas where I needed to write about it. Felt like, well, I need to deepen myself in those areas. So I just, I made a list of those things and learned them to the best of my abilities. But the core thing for this is not— is when you're writing a story, to not get lost in tangents. And it really helps me that I'm also a novelist, because in a novel, a good novel, and I guess you could write Ulysses, but which is also a good novel, but for a kind of a science fiction novel, the kind of things that I've written, you really, you can't lose your narrative. You can't lose the essence of where you're going or your reader will get lost. So for me, tackling a complex scientific topic with the sensibility of a novelist, I feel like it was a real asset.

So let's go into the actual kind of genetic engineering part itself and how, what some of these trends are that we're starting to see. I remember my wife's a lawyer. I remember coming back from work one day and saying, I've just been working on the intellectual property related to this thing, and it's really weird. It's basically a sheep in Aberdeen that we've done where they've taken it and they've genetically engineered. Starts with a D. Yeah, it's Dolly the sheep. And I remember telling me, and I said, that sounds kind of creepy. Now when you see like things that are coming out of China in terms of— I know you've written about this— using CRISPR, uh, very powerful, um, tools now to really change the genetic makeup of of sentient beings, of living things. So how do you— you kind of almost feel like on one end you've kind of got this transhumanism that we're going to evolve past the species, and the other side you've got this very kind of dark possibilities as well. Where do you find— at the end of the book, where did you find yourself coming out on? Are you positive about where we're going with genetic engineering?

Yeah, I'm certainly very positive, but that doesn't mean that anything goes. And so one, I'm certainly very critical of the people who say we just need to shut this down now because it's so dangerous, because genetic technologies are going to help us live longer, healthier, more robust lives. They're going to help us cure and eliminate, you know, all kinds of terrible diseases that cause tremendous suffering, and they're going to help us live lives in a hotter planet. Someday our Earth is going to go away, and to survive, we're going to have to live in space, but we won't be able to do it with the biology that we have. So this is really important stuff for our survival as a species, and if we're going to start, we should start now. At the same time, though, there are the transhumanists who feel this should just be unregulated, everyone should just do whatever they want, and I'm very strongly against that as well. What we're talking about is the future of all of life, and our lives. And this is very powerful technology, and therefore it should and it must be regulated. It needs to be regulated in a smart and thoughtful way. We can't have regulatory black holes. We need to have an inclusive process to build the norms that underpin these kinds of regulations. So I'm certainly all in all net positive But that doesn't mean I'm not aware of the dangers as well.

Interesting, just now, you know, we're seeing obviously with some of the social media companies, we're having to, you know, many regulators have to kind of catch up to how things have evolved and not really having this thing, but it seems to be on this topic and also kind of related things in terms of artificial intelligence. There is definitely a feel amongst the creators of some of these technologies, we need to start looking at ethics, how these things relate, you know, what regulation needs to happen. But something I've seen you write a lot about, because you have this experience, you know, with State Department and other things of having a very global outlook, you've spoken in the past about these two ecosystems are starting to change, and almost like being separate, the China technology ecosystem versus the US or the Western-based one as well. How are they, each of these two very different systems, how are they approaching genetic engineering and this future of humanity?

Yeah, so there's, there's some similarity and overlap between these two ecosystems, and there are significant differences. And in, in broader terms, this U.S. innovation, U.S.-centered innovation and creativity ecosystem is evolving in one way, and then the greater China ecosystem is evolving in another way. There's a lot of overlap now, but in many areas that level of overlap is decreasing. And so I think that in 10 years, there's a significant likelihood there'll be kind of a US-centered internet and a China-centered internet. And there'll be different rules of the road. And certainly, in terms of the norms that are used around big science and revolutionary science, where our two cultures are in many ways coming at this with very different backgrounds. And on genetics, the Judeo-Christian societies tend to believe that in this idea, even the secular atheist among us, that the world exists based on some kind of divine inspiration. And even the people who are the atheists in the West, like the anti-GMO campaigners, just have this gut feeling that messing with nature is wrong. But in China, and this is a gross but not entirely wrong overgeneralization, there's a sense that engineering is what humans do. And so there's a much greater level of comfort with societal engineering, and the one-child policy in China is an example of that. And there's a much higher, greater level of comfort, even on a parental level, with making these kinds of tough decisions in the context of assisted reproduction, in vitro fertilization, and in the not distant future, about embryo selection and ultimately genetic alteration of embryos. And so culture— the technology is racing forward, but our cultures are different. And then those cultural differences are exacerbated by the competitive environments within environments. Within and between societies. And so all of that, that's why I think you can kind of— you can't just see the science in and of itself. The science exists within these broader societal contexts, both within countries and internationally, that in many ways shape how the science evolves.

So for something like— I know China has this plan, the 2025 plan, you know, very strong on AI, being number one on AI. The US has only just, I think, brought out an AI strategy behind a lot of other countries.

Well, the US had one under Obama. And then President Trump took office and gutted the Office of Science and Technology Policy, didn't mention AI, didn't mention science. Now there seems to be a greater recognition in the Trump administration about what's at stake. But the US has certainly lost a lot over these last couple of years.

So one of the things that it feels like China has the edge on is data being free-flowing of data in a very different way than we would certainly have in Europe, or you would probably have it in the US as well. So it feels like that's a bit in advance. AI just needs data. That's, that's how it functions. So, and when it comes to genetic engineering, what do you see? Is, is, is data like one of those secret things you— or most important things you need, or is there something else that you think that one of those ecosystems, they're gonna— they have a better chance because they're more in— they have better access to this particular resource or this particular way of doing things?

Well, certainly one is a quality culture of responsible science. And so the US is significantly— and Europe are significantly ahead of China in that area, but China is catching up. Genetics is the ultimate big data science. And so you need very large data pools, but you also need very large and high-quality data pools. And what needs to be in this data, one, is the genotypic information. And you can— you get that by sequencing larger and larger numbers of people. And so China will almost certainly outpace the United States and the West in sequencing its citizens. But then you also need extremely high-quality, not just electronic health records, but electronic life records. Because if you have messy systems or systems that aren't aligned with each other or a mishmash of different systems, it makes it very, very difficult to access these big data pools that are so essential for finding these deep insights that will drive genetic technologies forward. And so China, because of its central organization, has an opportunity to move ahead. And there are countries in the West, like the United Kingdom, actually, because of the centralization of healthcare around the National Health Service, Actually, the UK has an advantage. With the United States, there are certainly models for distributed data networks, and there are different companies that are using blockchain and other models to try to build these. But this is a race, and whoever, whichever society builds the better, high-quality, more inclusive data pools, they are certainly going to have an advantage because the algorithms are really important, but they are more easily shareable than the data pool.

So as we start moving towards this new way of thinking about genetics and the engineering of our genetics as well, obviously there's the stuff that gets talked about a lot. I know this— I saw one thing you wrote, like, how is sex for reproduction about to become extinct? So that's kind of really kind of an interesting thing. But was— is anything else that you've seen as you were doing your research and writing this book that you just, you know, frankly just knocked you on the back of your heels and you went, oh, okay, this is, you know, the real— turn your head.

Well, the thing is, I mean, I live in this world, so there's very few things that really blow my mind. But the thing— there's a few things that constantly just, I mean, shock me. And that is every time when I think about some timeframe, because I'm also a science fiction writer, and when you're writing science fiction, you know, you can just kind of, you don't really need to be absolutely exact about when something happens. I mean, if you're trying to be realistic, you say, I think this is going to happen, and I've written it in the future, and if it's going to happen in 2045 or 2075 or some other time, it's like no one's going to kill you for that. But I'm always surprised that all of these things that I, and I'm certainly not the only one, but have predicted will happen, all seem to happen so much faster than you would think. Then I certainly, I would have thought. Like just with this book, with Hacking Darwin, it was when I, you know that there's this process and when you submit the book and then you finalize the book and then you lose control because it's gone into production. And I had to fight it back 2 times. The first time, was it had already gone into production, and then these two female mice in a lab had their own 100% biologically related baby, which is something I had written about this in the book, that single-sex couples were going to be able to have their own 100% biologically related children. But it was like an abstract thing based on my interpretation of the science. But then it actually happened, and I thought, well, I can't write about this, happened and not mention it. So then I— I have the most wonderful publisher in the world, Sourcebooks, who I love, but that's a subject for another time. And I had to kind of fight it back, and I got it, and then I submitted it. And then there was the announcement in November 2018 by Dr. He that these genetically engineered babies had been born. I thought, well, geez, you can't have a book on hacking the human and not mention that it actually happened. And so I'd always said the whole book was about this is going to happen, but I would have thought it wouldn't have been in 2018. I would have thought it would have been in 2020 or 2021.

I'm guessing this book is going to have many editions over the— if you want to do it that way.

Absolutely. And so I have this thing because every day, you know, I read so much and every day something will— I'll see and I'll say, well, this is really important. So, you know, I have a certain word. I won't tell you what it is because this isn't that kind of show, but it's like a swear word. And then I forward whatever news story or scientific study up to myself with this word in the title. And so then I know for the next thing I'm going to say, you know, I just have to do a search in my email for this one word, which guaranteed will not be used in any other context, and then I'll have these hundreds of reports that I'm collecting. So definitely for the next editions and for the paperback, this is the kind of thing where I will certainly will be revising and updating.

Well, the thing is, you're in good company. Your book is obviously, it has the Darwin side there as well. And I was recently at one of the libraries in London. They have the edition of Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. And one of the things I never realized in the book, it was only the 8th edition where he mentions evolution, evolutionary for the first time. The first 7 editions of that book never mentioned evolution, evolutionary. So it took the 8th edition. So these things are always, it doesn't matter who you are, they're always growing. As you've been going along your own creative journey, you've had a really fascinating life of writing and research and obviously speaking. I know you're very into the healthy kind of lifestyle as well. Was there a key time in your life where you frankly gave something your all perhaps, but it didn't work out like you'd hoped? And what was the lesson that you took from that experience?

So in 2004, I ran for United States Congress. From my hometown, original hometown of Kansas City. And I felt it was my mission in life because the same skill set that I've described to you about taking all of these changes in the world and information and turning them into a story and then using that story to try to inspire people to do, take a certain action that you believe will make the world a better place, that's part of writing, but that's politics at its best is about that. And so I really threw my all into that process, and I didn't win. Upon analysis, the reason why I didn't win was because the other guy got more votes. That's a joke, I don't hear laughter, but okay, good. Okay.

Damn, if you'd stood in China, you might have had a chance there, but never mind.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But afterwards, I had just been on. I was just like, you know, like a just fully on for more than a year. And then afterwards, I like, I kind of crashed, and I just like emotionally and physically, I just felt exhausted. But I had this kind of heroic sense of myself. It's like, well, I'm not a person who crashes. I can, you know, go from one peak to the next peak. And, you know, if it's not this, you know, where's the next dragon? And so I just, I really didn't give myself the space just to accept that my body was telling me something, that you just can't be fully on always for your whole life. And the fighting against it actually was harmful to me. And it kind of, it gave me, even though I don't write about humble things, it just gave me a sense of humility, that we are beings, have these rhythms and willpower. I'm all about willpower and discipline, but we also just kind of have to respect ourselves as we are and the world as it is and kind of figure out what's the right balance between accepting that kind of harmony but also never just saying, well, the world is exactly as it is and I'm a passive player. Without the ability to do my bit to try to make it better.

And I know today you're often on stages traveling around the world speaking. I'm guessing this— there's going to be a big speaking tour on the back of this book as well.

Yeah, 15 cities, and it's kind of grueling. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a musician, and I was saying, you know, it's this— it's like I'm giving a big talk one night and then wake up at 4 in the morning and fly to the next place, and then I'm I'm speaking at noon in a city that's a 3-hour flight away, and they say, "Hey, that sounds like a musician." And so, I will have this kind of somewhat grueling 15-city book tour, but when you write books, that's the exciting— sitting down with a blank page or a blank screen, that's terror. Having a book that you're traveling around talking about where people sing your praises, that's actually a pleasure.

Wonderful. And talking about screens, as we start to finish up here, just a couple of quickfire questions for you. Do you have an online resource or a tool or a mobile app like Evernote that you love and that helps you do the work you do?

You know, not really. I mean, I use my iPhone like everybody else. I mean, it's going to be no insight to everybody that I use Microsoft Word. So I feel like on that, I hope I have some insights about life in times of technology. I'm going to listen to all of your other people you've interviewed, because I guarantee you they will know more than I do about that.

You were mentioning music there, being the life of a speaker is actually very similar to the life of a touring musician. If you could recommend just one album and also one book to our listeners, not your own book, a book by another author, what would that record and that book be?

So when you use the word record, it forces me to look historically at myself when actually I had records, because now I don't know anybody who has records. It's so retro, and I love that term. So if the answer is record, I will have to tell you the record that I listened to over and over and over, and it will not surprise anybody to hear that that record is Thriller. So if anybody hasn't heard of it, it's like this new— this record by Michael Jackson. I know we're not supposed to mention Michael Jackson these days, but that's for the answer of record. For books, thank you for mentioning my book, but I just finished a book that just moved me so deeply, and I really— I've sent copies to many people who I know, and I certainly am telling everyone, certainly anybody living in in the Americas about this book. It's called The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson. It's about really the terrible tragedy of what happened to the Native American Indians after the European settlers arrived in North America, North and South America. And it's such a deeply moving book, and it's such a tragic history, and it's just terrible and it's so not sufficiently in the consciousness of most people here in the Americas. So that's certainly a great book and I recommend it highly.

Fantastic. We'll put all those links here. So if people just go to JamesTaylor.me, just look for Jamie Metzl's name and you'll see all these show notes here as well. Let's final— as we start to finish up here, I want you to imagine tomorrow morning you woke up and you have to start from scratch. So you've got all the tools of your trade, all the knowledge that you've acquired over the years, but no one knows you, you know no one, you have to restart. What would you do? How would you restart?

It's a great question. And I kind of feel that way every single morning in the sense that every single morning I wake up and think, all right, well, I've done these things in the past, but that's already done. And so I've already kind of banked those. Where am I? Where am I going now? And I would just continue to do the things that I do now. I would, be— I would go out and I would talk to people and I would find topics that interest me and I just would throw myself into learning everything that I could. And whether that— once you have that kind of process and that kind of knowledge, then you can figure out what's the right application for it. Is the application writing? Is it speaking? Is it business? Is it medicine? There's so many different things, but I like that kind of curiosity-driven life where you're learning about something, developing theses, and acting upon those theses. In my mind, that's kind of the core of everything else.

And where's the best place for people to go so they can learn more about you, this book, and also some of your other writing?

I would be really honored if people would do that. It's my website, www.jamieMetzl.com. And if J-A-M-I-E-M-E-T-Z-L.

Fantastic. Well, Jamie, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today, learning all about the new book, which is called Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. I wish you great success with the launch of the book and also with the, the tour, your life on the road as you go around sharing the ideas in the book with everyone. Thanks so much for telling us about your creative life.

Wonderful. Thank you, James. Bye-bye.

If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high-performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me to get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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