Skip to content
Should we mess with nature? episode artwork

Jun 24, 2026 22 min

Should we mess with nature?

from How We Survive Hosted by Marketplace

All season, we’ve been unpacking the controversial ways we’re messing with nature to save the planet. In this episode, we explore the wildest intervention to date: de-extinction. We take a tour of Colossal Labs, the $10 billion Dallas startup betting it can reverse-engineer extinction itself, to see how they plan to turn pigeons into dodos and Asian elephants into woolly mammoths. But whether it’s bringing back the woolly mammoth from extinction or shooting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, just because we can mess with nature, does that mean we should? After the tour, host Amy Scott chats with Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert to find out.

Episode details come from the podcast's RSS feed.

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Should we mess with nature?

0:00 22:25

No transcript yet.

Requests help us decide what to transcribe next.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this episode of How We Survive?

This episode is 22 minutes long.

When was this How We Survive episode published?

This episode was published on June 24, 2026.

Can I download this How We Survive episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.