Professor David Farrier

There are further problems.

Introducing this change makes the trees less able to survive other kinds of challenges and conditions above ground.

And the complexity of creating a new phenotype out of a gene edit is formidable.

But what's really striking for me is that this whole story puts a different question at the heart of it.

And it's a question as much about us and who we are in this

as it is about the kind of actions we take.

You know, this podcast is called Accidental Gods.

And, you know, we have had this kind of God-like view of ourselves.

Stuart Brown famously said, we are as gods, we may as well act like it.

We may as well get good at it, I think is what he said.

Exactly.

I think we take ourselves out of that role altogether and we recognize, as the Maori do, the divinity that's in all living things, the shred of the divine that's in everything to act.

on that principle, you know, as it were, in quotes, as gods, is to recognize that whatever is divine or godlike in me is divine and godlike in every other living thing.

That it's not an expression of exceptionalism, it's an expression of relationship and connection and kinship.

So for me, yeah, that's what's so revolutionary about that idea and that question is that it grounds everything in

the way it does or doesn't foster that greater sense of relationship, does it or does it not stitch us more tightly into the weave of the living world?

Even the people who brought... Well, they thought they were protecting their crops and their profits, but yes.

No, that was great.

I've really appreciated this chance to really talk at length.

I mean, often podcasts are a lot shorter and you have to really sprint through things.