SPEAKER_00 0:00

So if you could just clone the kids, then everybody gets their own kid, the version of the kids.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Ew. Ah. What's ooh? Ew. I don't feel good about any of it.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention, and cause us to wonder, what and why? I'm Ross, your host, and my guest today is a sparkling human, a real dazzler, who does so many cool things. Her resume has to be printed on legal-sized paper. It's Kira.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

It's great to have you. How is Florida today?

SPEAKER_02 0:52

The waves are pumping, as the kids would say. But we get the positive effects of that, which is big waves.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

You've heard of spray tan.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

How about spray burn?

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Oh wow!

SPEAKER_00 1:19

You spray sunburn, and then you get the sympathy from others.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Oh, the sympathy part was your ankle. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

It mustn't be so much pain. Look at that sunburn. What happened?

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Funny. Yeah, that opened up my mind to all the all the possibilities that would present for you. I was thinking from an aesthetic point, when you presented the idea originally, I was thinking, well, some people do maybe like the aesthetics of a sunburn.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, like a lobster burn.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Like a lobster burn. It's appealing.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

That's pretty stunning. So I'm hearing something in the background. What's that?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

That's my assistant. Also, she's a different species. She's a dog, and she's really busy with her admin work, which is also known as chewing on something.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

That's great because we are going to be talking about dogs today.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Oh, convenient. Great.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah. So what's your dog's name?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Her name is Lula.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Well, Lula is welcome on the show, and please get her headset. So we know that some pet owners love their animals so much, they'll let them be part of a podcast. And also, it's really difficult to say goodbye when it's time for them to go on their spiritual adventure. Many of us, including yours truly, have been right there. So a few people are doing what might have been unthinkable just a few years ago. They are cloning their furry friends. That's right. Animal cloning has been possible since our dear friend Dolly the Sheep back in 1996. Do you remember hearing about Dolly the Sheep?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I do. I do. I think we've even talked about Dolly.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Do you know that she was named after Dolly Parton?

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Oh, I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Um, I I had heard about her, and but I kind of forgot about the whole cloning thing, the whole animal cloning thing. I remember the Dolly thing, but it just kind of went off my radar. By the way, I just read that Ian Wilmett, the British scientist who led the project that cloned Dolly, died very recently. He was 79 and apparently uncloned. So the first cloned pet, apparently, so Dolly was first in 1996, but she wasn't really a pet. I mean, I having a sheep is a pet. I don't know how that would work.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Non-human companions, it doesn't really matter what species they are. You get attached, you project things onto them, even if it's a reptile, it we have similar relationships to sheep as we do dogs, is my hypothesis.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Wow, yeah. I've been around some sheep. I don't know. They I don't feel like there's anything going on in there, but you may be right.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Were they your sheep?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

No, I had a relative who had like a sheep farm. Oh, and uh the main thing that happened when I would visit is uh I would back into the electrified fence and get an orchid shop. Clouded my opinions.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Definitely altered your possibility for a relationship with those sheep.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, by the way, I always stayed inside the fence once that happened, so they do work. So first cloned pet was in 2004, and it was a main coon cat. The first dog, 2005. But this whole thing has really been on the back burner. I haven't been really tracking this up until 2015. The only place you could get a dog cloned was in South Korea.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, the first dog cloned in America was a Jack Russell Terrier named Nubia. That was 2016, cloned by a Texas company. And then in 2018, Barbara Streisand famously cloned her dogs. Two pups, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett, are clones of her dog Samantha, who passed away in May of 2017.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

She did it twice.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yes, it all came to my attention. I hadn't really been tracking this at all. But um, I sometimes look at this advice column where people write in about anything. So this is the letter. It goes on as follows. My partner and I went through a breakup recently. During our relationship, he developed a close bond with my dog. As the dog grew older, we joked about cloning her to keep her in our lives. Then the joke became a reality. When my dog turned 12, we cloned her. It's been a joy to see her as a baby. Then came the breakup. I am keeping the older dog, but we can't agree who should take the younger one. I think of her as part of my dog, and I want to keep her. He argues, this is selfish of me, and we should each get a dog in the breakup. Note he paid most of the cloning costs, about fifty thousand, and we share dog care. Thoughts. So I read that and I go, whoa, all over the place.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Like there's just a lot of whoa going on there.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah, that's remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

So I didn't realize that people were actually cloning their pets. That's part one. And part two is whoa, what do you think they should do?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Wow, I get this question all the time. It's just I mean, I immediately think of children, I guess, and IVF and people who have to go through pretty extraordinary measures to bring life into the world when they can't do it by means of nature.

unknown 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

So then they resort to that. And that's a another really expensive thing. But that's also a human species that we you know we come to these agreements upon, and it's all written out and very legal, and it's 50-50 or 60-40 or whatever it is. So if you're paying 50, that's wild. First of all, that it's $50,000 and that people do it. I mean, it's just in I don't know. In my initial thoughts on cloning pets, is that my brain goes to instances where it's gone wrong and people don't get the results that they were hoping for. And they it looks the same, but it acts like this absolute menace to society, and they're like, wait, I just spent $50,000 on this, and I could have just gotten another dog for what $500.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, and there's tons of dogs to be rescued and cats.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

This is so true.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Just waiting. But the you're you're absolutely right about the uh not so much the the uh it's not like necessarily a Frankenstein gone wild problem with clones, but it is true that even though they're genetically the same, their personalities are often very different, which is what Barbara Streisand discovered. She's like, Oh, these aren't like the original dogs at all. I hate these dogs.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

That's what I seem to remember when you brought up absent.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, she's she didn't say she hated them, but if you're thinking like you're gonna get another Lula in the background still chewing on something, say goodbye to that sofa, by the way. You know, you're not necessarily gonna get the exact same temperament, the exact same spirit. It's gonna be a different personality because our personalities are a function of you know our reaction to the environment we're raised in. But yeah, it's very expensive. $50,000 for a dog. This is current pricing, it used to be more. $35,000 for a cat, it's just so much. Wow. And I know you, you're you're you love all animals, so you might be thinking, what about a horse? Yeah, you can do it. It's $85,000 for a horse.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

And if you're not sure you want to go the whole way, you're thinking, you're thinking, like, well, uh, I might want to do this, but I don't really have a spare $85,000 lying around. I do like this horse though. You can have a company preserve your animal cell sample cryogenically, so you have the option of cloning your animal in the future.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

In the future. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

So, like you could have a dog now, you know, you could have be a kid with your dog, you know, when you're like between 10 and 15, 10 and 20 years old, and then you freeze it. You don't freeze the whole dog. You just freeze a cell sample. That's all they need.

unknown 10:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I mean, you could freeze the whole dog or just its head or whatever, but you don't really need to do that. And so then you so then, so then you go to work and you have your career and you do all your fun things, and then you're like around 70 and you're like done. You just want to sit around and have your old friend back. You go down to the lab and they pop you out a brand new dog that you used to have when you were a kid. So that's an option for you, too.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

3D print it right out of there, huh?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Well, um, you know, they haven't got to that yet, but I think that that's what I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for instant copying. I think what a lot of people don't, and I certainly didn't understand, is that this is not really um oh an obtrusive procedure, because first of all, you have to harvest the cells from the dog when it's still alive or right after it has passed on. Then you have to um collect the eggs from another dog, and that requires a skin punch biopsy on the dog's abdomen or whatever the pet is.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

And then, you know, they remove the nucleus from the eggs that have been harvested, and then insert the cells from the dog that wants to be cloned or whatever the animal is, and then the embryo, this new kind of repurposed embryo, is then given an electric shock to start the whole process.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Then after you have, and you have to do this several times because they don't all take.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

And then they stick these modified embryos, they're implanted with an invasive surgery into surrogate dogs in the hopes that you know all goes to plan and a genetic twin of the pet dog is born. So this is not like a um harmless little push of a button. There's a lot involved, a lot of dogs involved, and some pain and discomfort. And some people say, you know, that's kind of an ethical problem if you really care about animals.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just goes to show the uh the extreme nature of human attachment. We're so, yeah, that's it's just very extreme.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, it's extreme. And I, you know, I my last dog, I can't imagine loving an animal more than I loved that dog. Like I can't even think about it. I mean, I loved him more than I love almost every person I know.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

So, but still, I just I I just I can't see, even if I had the extra money just lying around a stack 50 50 lards, you know, in my go bag, and I'd say, well, you know, I'm not really using this. I'll I'll clone my pet.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

I still don't think I could do it. There are other issues though. Um, and and these are important too. So cloned animals tend to have uh be more likely to have health problems than the original. They often don't live as long. Sometimes they do, but they're you know, their lifespan doesn't isn't as long often as uh what we'll call the OG dog.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

The OG, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

There's you know, as I said, there are people who have raised ethical issues associated associated with the amount of dogs you have to use just to get a clone. You know, there's a lot of surgeries on a whole lot of dogs, and is that okay? Like, are we okay with that? Again, if you really love animals, are you okay with that cost?

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

But the biggest problem is the one you landed on right from the outset. You were hanging 10 on this issue, which is the personality is not going to be the same. So you go through this expense, you put all these dogs through this process, and then you get a dog, and it's nothing like your original dog. In fact, it stinks.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

It's a dud.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

It's a dud, exactly. You spend 50 grand, you get this copy, but it's a bum.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Yeah, it's a bum dog. I would almost, I mean, I'm not even a cynical person, but I would almost bank on that happening. It's not even 50-50, it's like a 100% chance you're going to be disappointed.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

And you know, people, you know what's gonna happen. Okay, they spend 50 grand, they get this thing, they're all excited, they get to have their dear pet come again to them as a puppy and all the excitement, and the dog's a bum. The dog's a dud. So they just, you know, let it loose in the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

My God. So yeah, you end up with a rescue.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

No people, they just one time I was living in this neighborhood, and this dog showed up, just moped into our yard. You know how some dogs just mope in. Yeah, so this dog comes moping in, and we're like, had no collar, didn't have anything. So we're like, wow, where'd this dog come from? So we're trying to find out. Long story short, we find out where the dog lived. We take the dog back to the owners and we say, Hey, your dog moped into our yard. Here he is, you know. And they're like, Oh, oh yeah, um, yeah, we've been really busy moving and he got out. Thanks for doing that. Well, fine. So we feel like heroes, right? Or mini-heroes. A day later, here comes old Mr. Mopster coming back into our yard, like, oh gee, I'm back. I uh nobody loves me. I'm like, what's going on, man? Yeah, so now we know where he lives, we take him back, and they moved, they did it on purpose, they didn't want the dog. And so, you know, there, you know, some people are like that, but their pets are like, Well, they're inconvenient. Or they're like, Who are these people? Well, they're just, you know, humans. And you know, they're like, we don't like this mopey dog. He's pulling us eeure stuff all the time. Like, we want to, and I'm just afraid that would happen with these people because they if you're gonna spend all this money and time, it seems like your expectations might be a little distorted, you know, not because you're necessarily a bad person, but because you're grieving and you're trying to recreate something that was unique to that dog, and then if you don't get it, you know, next thing you know, that dog's running down the median of a freeway or something.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Right, moping into your yard. It's always gonna be your yard.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah, we we had a moper magnet. I think at some point they're gonna skate around the ethical issues about cloning a human being. I just somehow, right now they haven't figured out how they're gonna get away with it, but somehow they'll do it. And I was thinking, kind of because this this pet, this breakup, you know, this letter about you know, we're breaking up, what should we do? But when it comes to divorces with real people, this whole custody thing is a real bugaboo. Yeah, so if you could just clone the kids, then everybody gets their own kid, the version of the kids.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Ew.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Uh what's ooh?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Ew, I don't feel good about any of it.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

I don't feel good about it. I really can't get to a place in my mind where I can I can think of an instance where someone is of sound mind and is making that choice with a dog or a human, especially a human. I don't, I think that's a big red flag. If someone's trying to clone their kids and they're gonna settle for some 2.0 knockoff, 100% guaranteed to be a dead version of their kid.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Um they might get a mopper, they might get a moper kid.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

They're going to get a moper, Ross. That's guaranteed right here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Well, I just I mean, this is I was just thinking, it's like, man, that would just put this whole custody battle thing on its ear because it'd be like, well, you want Jimmy and the other person wants Jimmy. Let's clone Jimmy. And there's two Jimmies, and you get OG Jimmy, and you get Moper Jimmy.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

No, it'd have to be, it would have to be a randomized thing. It would have to be a situation where the parents didn't know if they were getting the original or the clone. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Oh. Okay, I'll take door number two.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yes. Moper kid. You're just presented with one and they look identical and no one ever knows which is which. That would have to be.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah, but you gotta, you can't, yeah, but you have to do it, you have to do it blind because you know the original kid might do a wink or something. Try to wink.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Oh, they would have to, yeah, they would have to erase his memory.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

No, we're not erasing people's memory. What are you insane?

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Okay, well yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Come on, be reasonable. We want it. We're trying to be reasonable and sensible here.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

So I think it changes the so the the main problem, the main problem at the moment with my little uh custody plan, custody solution plan, is that one kid, let's say the kid's eight years old, then if you clone that kid, then what you're gonna get is a baby of that kid. So that means someone's getting an actual baby.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Correct. Oh, and then you gotta move to the back of the line, start all over again.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

You gotta start all over. And I know as a mom, you know exactly what that means.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yes, and I ain't signing up for it. That ain't signing up for it.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah, you've put in your time. Uh-huh. But you know, on the other hand, people always talk about, oh, I love this age. Well, yeah, here you go. You could get that age again. You could get that young little one-year-old raisin. Yeah, you could get that back. I know there's a tremendous ethical hurdle to get over, but I know they will. And uh, because you know, it's right there in front of us. Sports, like they'll be cloning like the best athletes. You know they would do that. Or the low-hanging fruit here, and everybody who listens to the show knows that I love low-hanging fruit, organ harvesting, hello, and I know everybody listening to this going, oh, that's terrible. That's so unethical to how you clon you create a human being just for their parts. But if you needed a kidney when you and you open your closet and you've got a backup cura, so why is she in the closet?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Because you've got that's yeah, you don't want her to experience the rest of life.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

That's you have to protect your assets.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Oh, there you go. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

If you gotta, if she's your um uh protoplasmic equivalent of a bag of spare parts, then yeah, you gotta keep right, keep them pristine. The problem with cloning people, besides the obvious ethical problems, is uh the clone doesn't know it's a clone. The clone doesn't sit there and go, oh, I'm just a copy, I'm less than. The clone thinks, hey, I'm good to go. I'm regular. They don't think they're a clone. So they want, they want to do everything a regular person does. That's where the closet comes in. It has to have a lock on it. Yeah, yeah. So this, um, so I know you probably haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, but if you could clone a person other than a friend or a family member, because that's too easy. Was there anyone that you would clone, a specific person that you would like to have as a clone? Or just uh a talent, a particular skill set that you'd like to have on board at your place?

SPEAKER_02 22:43

So you're saying I would have them cloned and they would be in the world, or I would have them cloned and they would be my own personal.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

They would be your own personal. Let's say, for example, you're a big let's say you're a Taylor Swift fan and you want your own personal pan, Taylor Swift. So you clone Taylor Swift, and so now you have your own personal pan, Taylor Swift, hanging around your house all day.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

This is such an interesting thought exercise. I would most certainly clone B. And have her as my own. She's my queen. I think she's from start to finish, her life has not finished. Uh thank goodness. But it's good to do this exercise now so that before her life does finish, I can put this into motion. Get the ball rolling. Uh, she's so brilliant, she's so unique. There's no, I've never met or encountered or observed another human being like that who's so oh man, she's so herself and so creative and so fluid with her creativity, and it's turned into so many different things, and she's been so vocal about her internal processes throughout her life. And I think that's that's really uh a powerful resource to humans.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

So that's really great. That's a great answer. I have two things that I want to ask you as a follow-up. One is I no longer hear the dog chewing, and it makes me wonder if I killed her. Did you say if you killed her?

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Hopefully you cloned it first.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Well, she is that's actually where she is right now. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Wow. Okay, the other follow-up is now you say Bjork would be the person you would clone, so you could have your own personal pan, Bjork, hanging around you all the time, which I get would be cool. Are you willing, however, to um, you know, uh raise Bjork from a diaper Bjork to her full self? Because you're gonna get the problem is with the cloning, is you get remember, you get the baby Bjork. Not the baby Bjorn, but this is the baby Bjork. And you're gonna have to diaper, you know, you're gonna have to diaper up that Bjork for a while. So are you willing to invest that time to get your own personal pan Bjork?

SPEAKER_02 25:22

No.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

You're not?

SPEAKER_02 25:24

No, it's so far out. That's way too far out. You're waiting at least 18 to 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

And then and the other thing is, and this is the real uh hinky part of the whole deal. Nothing else I've said is hinky, but this is where the rubber meets the road, is that as we've already said, with your diaper Bjork, you might turn out when uh Bjork grows up, it may turn out that Bjork is no longer interested in any of the things that brought Bjork to your attention.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Right in the first place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

They might be interested in computer science.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Ew.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Or puppetry.

unknown 26:07

Ew.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Or hamster raising.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

I don't sign on for any part of it. I'm not willing to do the diapering part. I'm not willing.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah, it's hard. And so what we really want, and I think you know, you've helped us understand what we really want. What we really want is something very science fiction-y where we can do the clone, but it's very much like a copy machine where you put the person in a booth, you press the button, and the exact copy comes out of the exact person who does the exact same things in the exact same way.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

That's what we need, and there's no diapering.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yes. As is, as they are now.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Right. What you see is not a no diaper bjork, not a diaper chef, no diaper surgeons. It's the exact person. Taylor Swift is there. She's got all of her talent, she knows all of her songs, but she's yours. Now, again, some people would think, among other things, that the idea of buying a human being is weird and unethical. But, you know, it's Bjork, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Obviously, there's no debate.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Oh, and by the way, yeah, somebody sneak clones you. What if somebody sneak clones you like? You're just standing on a subway platform and you feel a little stab.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

What if you're Taylor Swift and you get sneak cloned? That's a whole legal issue right there.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I didn't even think about that.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Don't even get me started on uh Clinton. Sneak cloning cloning, Taylor Swift.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Sneak cloning, that's gonna be a whole that's gonna be the crime of the future.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Man, I've been sneak cloned. Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

See yourself like at the bagel shop, another version of yourself coming in to get the same kind of bagel, and you're like, dude, you where did you come from?

SPEAKER_02 28:04

That's a great, that's potentially a great premise for a series.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yeah, uh it's probably been done, but in case it hasn't, uh copyright.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

We've always been so creative about justifying our technology, whatever it is. We always find a reason to use whatever it is, and then explain later why it makes sense. Yeah. And so I think we will somehow figure out a way to do human cloning. I mean, we already know how to do it, but we'll we'll we'll we'll be able to justify it and people accept it, and then you'll have choices. And uh then you just have to decide, you know, if you're in it for long term, you're waiting, you know, you're willing to wait for them to become the person, unless it's a baby you're cloning. See, that would be the smart thing.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Oh, you like the baby so much that you immediately have that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

So you're you're you're yes, that's that's actually interesting. Yeah, that's so like if you have a puppy and you really like it, you know, or a a a horse and you're like, I really like this horse and it's brand new. I'm gonna get one right now. Yeah. And so then it'll they'll grow together and maybe they'll develop, you know, the same. But you know, when you have twins, yeah. I don't know if you've ever had twins.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Not yet.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

But um, but there's time, but but um, you know, they sometimes are different from each other, they look the same, but like one is you know, pretty affable and the other one's a goon. Have you ever seen us in twins?

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Absolutely affable and goon.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Well, I am really glad I had this discussion with you because I think we've um opened a lot of minds out there to the possibility of cloning their pets, their loved ones, their favorite movie stars or performers or chefs. I really think this is one of those things where people hear it and they go, wait, I never thought of that.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Right. And it's gonna plant seeds and it's gonna blossom in so many different ways for so many different people. I will say this because this has been on my mind this entire time.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

My mom has done pretty much this whole process in attempts of cloning. There was at one point in her life where she got a dog, a specific kind of dog, very unique little thing, uh, combination of qualities and breeds, I guess, yeah, or like a mini version of some breed, you know how people love that. It's like this dog and the coloring, but a small version. People love it. So she got she did that, and she grew so attached to this dog that since then, which was it it was probably 20 something years ago that she got that first dog. She's repeated and she's had multiple at a time of the same mini version of the same breed in hopes to like it's essentially aiming to clone and have the same experience and connection that she did with that first one. And it's gone really wrong for her.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I mean, there's just that's too bad.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

It's too bad, but she won't let it go. And she's got like it just it's gotten honestly, it's gotten worse and worse for her. So this is just yeah, this is just um a disclaimer, she's doing it the hard way, she's doing it the old-fashioned way, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Yeah, of the yeah, yes, you know, remind me of uh I live in a building and someone used to live here, and they had this beautiful uh I think it was a golden retriever, and it was named something, I don't know. It was a kind of a weird name, like uh uh Chester or Friedrich or something that you shouldn't name a dog. It was just like that's not a dog name.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Like, come on. But anyway, so they have this dog Friedrich and it and it died, and they didn't clone it, but they got an exact match. They got a dog that looked just like it, and they named it the same name.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Ew, no, no. I'm surprised my mom hasn't done that, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Well, at least she's not doing that because that gives the the new the new animal kind of a complex.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yikes, yikes.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Because it's already a janky name, and then it's like a repeat name.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

Oh, that is disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Exactly. It's like I think, and I'm pulling this out of a deep memory well, so it could there could be some inaccuracy here, but uh inaccuracies here, but I think that's what happened to Vincent Van Gogh. I think he had an older brother who died as a baby, and the older brother was named Vincent, and then they had Vincent and they named him Vincent.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

Really? Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Yeah, so he was backup Vincent. That was just the beginning of his troubles.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

Right. Shadow self. That's ugh. I mean, parents, come on with that. Parents do weird things, Ross. This is yours. Parents are weird and they do weird things. They do, they do no end to funny.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

I was talking to someone last night about some of the stuff my parents did, and they and stuff I've talked about on the show, and they were just like, what? I just couldn't believe any of the things were true. I'm not joking. This really happened.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Oh, it's so entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

I do appreciate you being part of this episode. As I say, I think we've opened everyone's minds. And thank you to everyone for joining us for this show. If you like what we're doing, you can help us by sharing the show. You can reach out to us on Instagram and chat us up. We always respond. You can give us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and we'll read it on an upcoming episode. And we're even still on Patreon for those of you who maybe have some of that $50,000 fun wad that you want to, you know, share a little bit with us before you spend it on your cloning experiment. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are just a moped dog looking for a new home or just someone liberally applying the spray burn, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

You only have good self esteem when you're worried about getting cloned.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

That's right. That's right.