S3E16 - The Tundra Mouse (interview w Director of Pleistocene Park, Nikita Zimov)

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Nikita Zimov: And, for example, even you said that you think you feel that you're talking with celebrity. Let's say. Yeah, no one. Let's say 20 years, that wouldn't be a case. So in this sense, I think we do make a progress, and I think we will get the invention.

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Chris: So that was an interesting snippet from person, who I have not revealed to you yet. Actually, we did talk about this the other day.

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Kayla: You revealed it to me.

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Chris: First of all, this is Chris, data scientist and game designer.

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Kayla: I'm Kayla. I am a television writer.

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Chris: And this is cult or just weird, where we talk about cults or just weird. Maybe they're just weird. I don't know. So. Well, actually, in this. In this one, we're not. We're not answering a cult or just weird. This is actually. We're gonna talk about something.

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Kayla: Oh, no. Are we deviating again?

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Chris: We're deviating again. I'll get to that. But we're gonna talk about a cult or just weird that we already talked about this season. But first, business. I don't know if you have any business. I have a business. Again, it's actually the same exact type of business as last episode. We have a new patron, Jenny Lamb. Sorry, you stepped on the person's name. I'll say it again. Jenny Lamb. Thank you for becoming our patron and for supporting us. We really appreciate it.

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Kayla: We do.

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Chris: There might also. So here's the thing I was thinking is there might.

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Kayla: Is this for. Are you talking to the podcast or me?

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Chris: Both. There might be other patrons that sign up between now and when this episode goes live because we're recording. This is, like, as far in advance as we've recorded in, I think, since we started doing the show.

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Kayla: When does this episode come out?

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Chris: Two weeks from now. Yeah. Yeah. We usually record two days before. Like, two days before. We're doing it two weeks before.

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Kayla: So if anybody signs up between October 21 and by the time the podcast comes out, we'll get you next time.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: We're not ignoring you. The being proactive.

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Chris: Yeah, proactive. Thank you. And then we will also say your name. All right, so that's really all I have for business. What about you? Do you have anything?

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Kayla: He has some big business.

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Chris: We do.

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Kayla: Yeah. We got our booster, our Covid booster shots. Yes.

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Chris: Oh, yeah. So we feel like shit right now.

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Kayla: I did not have any side effects from the first two, and this one's knocked me on my ass. And even though I'm sitting here, like, in a sweatshirt in 90 degree weather, I can't imagine not having gotten it.

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Chris: Yeah. And you're shivering and you're just in pain.

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Kayla: I don't feel good.

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Chris: I do feel like I got hit by a truck again. The second shot I got. We did Pfizer. The second one I got. I felt like I got hit by an 18 wheeler.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: This one's more like a Ford F 150. You know, like, it still hurts, but not like I'm not, like, lying in the couch moaning.

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Kayla: That's me.

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Chris: It is, but totally worth it.

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Kayla: Extremely worth it. Extremely worth it. I am glad to be feeling this pain today.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: We're very lucky to have been able to get our boosters so quickly.

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Chris: Yeah. We talked in the Matthew Remsky episode about, like, the. Sometimes the emotional. I think I had another little bit of an emotional reaction to the booster.

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Kayla: Oh, yeah.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: I didn't, because she did it so fast.

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Chris: Oh, she did do it very fast. But I definitely had, like, a little bit safer again. You know, sort of like, after the first one. Like, I didn't really have it the second time, but I think it's because we had, like, that Delta stuff in between and now. And so I think that, like, having the third one kind of relieved some of that long term tension. I don't know.

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Kayla: Anyway, go get vaccinated, guys. Get your boosters if you can.

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Chris: Yes, please do. Protect yourselves. Protect your loved ones and your friends. Kayla.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: I know we say this a lot. I don't know. Maybe it's true every time, but I am so freaking excited about this one.

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Kayla: Okay.

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Chris: I'm so stoked for this one.

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Kayla: Oh, I know you are. Yeah, me, too. I mean, same. Yeah.

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Chris: So, first, a little bit of context. As you guys, listeners heard in the episodes cold open. We've got another interview format this week. Now, I know you might be thinking, another interview format? This isn't about occult or just weird, either. You guys are lazy, which we. Okay, fair.

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Kayla: True.

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Chris: We are lazy indeed. But allow me to assuage those concerns. First of all, this time, we actually are talking about a particular group. As I mentioned to Kayla a few minutes ago, the catch is that it's a group we've already talked about, in fact, quite recently on the show. Second of all, this is just, like one of those things that I just couldn't pass up or push off or even restrict to Patreon. I did think about making this a bonus episode on Patreon, but I just. I turned it around in my head, and I thought, no, it's just too cool and provides too much good information and even some corrections.

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Kayla: We gotta bring it to the masses.

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Chris: Then, about a recent episode. So I just decided, yeah, it had to be a regular episode of our show. Third. And finally, don't worry, we'll wave the criteria paper around at the end regardless, I promise, since I know that's really what you're here for.

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Kayla: And then we will be back to a regularly scheduled episode next time. Yeah. Something brewing?

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Chris: You got something brewing?

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Kayla: Yeah, basically. I just want to say if I feel like it's been a little heavy around here recently.

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Chris: Well, I don't know.

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Kayla: We've been talking about QAnon again. We've been talking about the climate crisis. We've been talking about, you know, swindling of bereaved mothers, but we've been talking about helpers. We have been talking about helpers.

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Chris: It was good. Like, I think you talked about this in the Matt Remsky episode a few weeks ago. It was good to talk to Travis Vue instead of just talking about the shitty shit QAnon. Yes, it was good to talk about. It was good to talk to Matt Remsky rather than just talking about the shitty shit. Yoga Nazis. And similarly today, I think it's gonna be good to talk to this person that I'm going to reveal in just a moment instead of just talking about the shitty shit.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Climate crisis.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Plus, I also add the guy that talked to me was talking to me all the way from Siberia.

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Kayla: Ooh.

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Chris: Which, like, that, just by itself, is worth putting. Regular podcast feed.

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Kayla: Buddy from Siberia.

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Chris: Yeah. If the Siberia bit didn't give it away, then that means you probably haven't listened to our recent episode about Pleistocene park, which was the 12th episode of this third season. You should definitely go check that out either before or after you listen to this interview. The reason I was talking to someone from Siberia is because that someone is none other than Nikita Zimov himself, the director and lead researcher at Pleistocene park.

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Kayla: Hell, yeah.

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Chris: Isn't that cool?

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Kayla: Yeah, it's amazing.

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Chris: I'm sorry. I just, like, tell the listeners what my face looks right now.

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Kayla: Goofy? No, goofy.

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Chris: It's goofy.

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Kayla: But also excitedly goofy.

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Chris: Ear to ear smile. I'm always goofy. That's not. That's not a change. Anyway, yeah, it was basically like talking to a bona fide celebrity. And I know we've talked some pretty well known people on here, but I don't know, like, getting to talk to someone who is not only a scientist, doing, like, real, on the ground empirical research, adding to a body of knowledge that is critical to our survival as a species, that just felt different. It was, honestly, it was cool as hell. And to bring it sort of together with what were talking about in the last few episodes. Yeah, it was good to talk to a helper instead of just talking about climate crisis. It was good to talk about someone that is absolutely eyes deep in trying to help and trying to solve it.

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Kayla: The best part about this interview is when you finished it.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: You came dancing out into the living room.

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Chris: I did a little jig.

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Kayla: You did a little jig. I was on a Zoom support group.

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Chris: Oh, sorry.

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Kayla: Whoops. Like in the middle of people talking about, like, their horrible traumas.

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Chris: Oh, no.

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Kayla: And you come out dancing.

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Chris: Oh, no.

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Kayla: I'm sorry. It was the best. It was the best. So I'm very excited for this interview, mostly because that moment, I mean, it turned it all around.

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Chris: My b.

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Kayla: No, it was not a b. It was a g. It was a good. Okay, you're good.

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Chris: Thanks to and Kayla and dear listeners, lest you just think this is going to be a recap of episode twelve. No, no, no. My friends, Mister Zimoff. Mister Zmoff actually sharpened my knowledge about his park climate science and pleistocenery wilding quite a bit.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: And if that wasn't enough, he dropped a sick wisdom bomb in the form of a parable.

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Kayla: Oh, my God.

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Chris: I shit you not.

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Kayla: Please just give me the parable right now. Inject it into my veins.

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Chris: It is a vein injectable parable. Yeah, just. We'll get to that. So if you're not excited for this interview, I can't do nothing for you, son. That's why I had to produce this as a regular episode, even though last episode we did an interview too. So are you excited?

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Kayla: I'm so excited.

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Chris: Ready to go?

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Kayla: I'm so ready to go.

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Chris: All right then. Straight from the other side of the world in Novosibirovsk, Russia, cult or just weird's interview with Nikita Zimoff. Hello. Hello.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes, hi.

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Chris: Hey, Mister Zimov. How are you doing?

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Nikita Zimov: Quite good, thank you.

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Chris: All right, so 1st. 1st things first, if you could introduce yourself for our listeners.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes, my name is Nikita Zimov and I'm director of the Pleistocene park.

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Chris: I'm sorry, I'm just so excited to have you. It kind of feels like having a celebrity on because I, you know, I already did an episode on Pleistocene park for our podcast. So, you know, I've already done like a ton of research on Pleistocene park. All of our listeners, anybody who's listening this will be familiar with it, but it's really cool to have you here. Could you maybe give us a summary of what Pleistocene park is?

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Nikita Zimov: Yeah, so Pleycene park, it's a scientific experiment to restore high productive grazing ecosystems in the Arctic and through that mitigate climate change.

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Chris: That is a really good summary. As much information as there is out there about Pleistocene park, I'm impressed with how succinct your summary was.

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Nikita Zimov: Well, you know, I spent the last 15 years doing that and I had enough time to come up to a concise phrase.

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Chris: Right. That makes sense. So you said part of the goal is to mitigate climate change. So I wanted to ask you what you think is the primary goal of Pleistocene park, because there's a lot going on. So is it primarily about climate change improving the model that animals can protect permafrost? Or is it more of like a general environmental science project? Or is it more about rewilding and bringing about mammoths? Like, what would you say is the main goal?

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Nikita Zimov: I think the main goal is even a little bit different. I think the main goal is to learn how to manage our planet, ecosystems, nature, efficiently and sustainably, and to learn how to exist on our planet on sustainable manner. So that's kind of the more broad demand, because it's not only about climate change. So for our civilization and humans, as in general, we are pretty much acting as a cancer on our planet. And so we are pretty much destroying everything that we are using. We are using up all the non renewable resources and clearly we are pretty much, we got the situation quite complicated time. So now the climate change is coming, we are going to get low on many resources which we heavily rely on.

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Nikita Zimov: So our 7 billion people is relying on their harvesters, which are fueled by oil, and the oil is going to be depleted and there is many other problems. And so far we didn't do a good job at living sustainably on the planet. I think one of the tasks for us is to learn how to do it efficiently. And I believe that if we have rich ecosystems which will be sustainable, we will be able to use the circa systems for our benefit. And it's about climate change, it's just about maybe kind of sustainable and effective use. And so the overall goal is do better for the human kind in general.

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Chris: That's a great answer. You use a phrase there, cancer on the planet, and you also talk about sustainability. So one of the things we talked about on the show was who is environmentalism for? Like, who is the main beneficiary when we do environmental science? So would you say that it's more about saving the planet or it's more about, like, being able to save ourselves, like, to be able to live, continue to be able to continue to exist.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes, I think second. Yeah, I would say that I do it for kids.

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Chris: Yeah, yeah, I think that comes up a lot for me, where it's like, you know, there seems to be sometimes, like, this moral or ethical statement about, like, saving the planet, saving the environment, when it's really is about. Actually, it's more about saving ourselves because, you know, the planet, even after we kill ourselves off the planet's still gonna. There's still gonna be life, there's still gonna be earth. Right. So the question is, are we gonna be around to be able to see that, like, and that's up to us.

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Nikita Zimov: Well, yeah, it's a question about diversity of life. We will live on the planet.

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Chris: Right.

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Nikita Zimov: Yeah. But indeed, it's definitely about humans anyway. So I, for example, I'm dealing with animals, but I'm not the biggest animal fan. For me, animals are tools.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Nikita Zimov: So those are tools to make this ecosystem and to benefit humans. I would love to find a way to get benefits for all of us. So both for humans and for animals. So that's what we're trying to do. But the primary goal is, of course, I care about humankind.

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Chris: Right. In the future generations. Yeah, you mentioned diversity. I think people don't really, actually, I won't even say people. I'll say me. When I first learned about Pleistocene Park, I don't think I had a good appreciation for how important biodiversity was. And this is, I care about the environment, and I still don't think I realized how important it was to have, for example, the grazing animals that you have brought back to Siberia. Can you talk a little bit about why diversity, biodiversity is so important?

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Nikita Zimov: Well, it's in this sense, we want. There are two types of ecosystems. What we have in the Arctic right now is a very low productive ecosystems with very low rates of photosynthesis, low rates of turnover of nutrients, of carbon. So. And we want to exchange. We are not creating mamma step ecosystem. We are not cloning something. We are trying to create something that would function on the same principles. And grazers are important because they are dramatically accelerating the cycles of the nutrients and carbon and bicycle in general. The main reason for that is that they accelerate the composition rates of above ground biomass. So if without animals, the average nitrogen lifetime cycle in the tundra is something 120 years or something like that. So it takes 120 years for the plant to pick up the nitrogen decompose, return back.

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Nikita Zimov: And in the grass ecosystems, it can be around one year. So the animals will eat the grass, digest and return nutrients 24 hours later. And in this sense, it can be picked up. So you dramatically increase their productivity also. And after that, the more diverse ecosystem, usually the more effective it is. It's kind of a general rule and more sustainable it is. So if the more niches you have, the better, and it has to be complete ecosystem. So right now we are bringing mostly herbivores, but definitely my project will not succeed. If you not introduce predators into the system. That's like the main must have.

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Chris: What is it about the diversity, though, that makes it, you said effective. Is it just that it makes that ecosystem more resilient to outside shock and change?

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Nikita Zimov: That's true. And also the more different types of animals and life you have there are kind of more effectively, you can consume all the productivity.

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Chris: I see. Okay, so there's different. If there's a niche that's not filled, then there's essentially, there's like a energy productivity input that is essentially going to waste. Is that kind of interesting? I see this. I'm learning new stuff right now. This is awesome. My next question is, do you consider Pleistocene park to have been a successful project so far? And then as a follow up to that, do you think that we truly will be able to save Earth's permafrost from melting using this method? Or is it not enough or too late?

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Nikita Zimov: Well, if we are seeing as a goal measure of success, creation of ecosystem which is big enough to have meaningful impact on the climate, then no, we are not nearly successful. So we are still in the, let's say, in the beginning, first stages. And from practical point of view, we are not developing as fast as we would want to develop. Of course, I think when 15 years ago my dad invited, or maybe 20 years. Come on, how many? 20 years ago when my dad invited me to come back to the arctic. And I came back, well, it was first year university. And then I said that, yes, I will come back. And three years later I returned. And I think if I would know how complicated all that would be, maybe I wouldn't be so happily accepting my dad's invitation.

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Nikita Zimov: So, you know the problem? No one has ever really restored the ecosystems entirely. People so far been, you know, sometimes introducing this animal or that animal and creating the caste system and I changing the whole setup of the kind of functionality of ecosystems. And it's not only about animals, it's mostly about plants, it's about soils, and it's a very complicated task, and there is a lot we don't know. And of course, over the time of the development of the park, there have been failures, and success wasn't as good as we wanted that to be. So that's kind of. Well, it's a normal thing. I think it's true for any new project. But overall, of course, we are still in the early stage. However, I think we are really making good progress, not only practically, but also in terms of getting the idea.

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Nikita Zimov: For example, 20 years ago, when it was still just starting, there was really few people who took this idea seriously and who was even considering rewilding as a kind of important or reasonable thing. And now there is, more and more people are aware of revolving ideas. The more and more people know about climate change, more people know about poison park. And for example, even you said that you think you feel that you're talking with celebrity, let's say no one, let's say 20 years, that wouldn't be the case. So in this sense, I think we do make a progress, and I think we will get there eventually, because, you know, we are not inventing a bike. We are building a bike. We know that the bike existed.

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Nikita Zimov: So we know that those high productive grazing ecosystems existed in the past, and they existed for millions of years on the enormous territories. And we know that they have many animals. We know that they have lots of carbon in the source of the sequester carbon. We know that they keep permafrost cold. So all these things we know, we just don't maybe know yet exactly how this bike look like. And. But we know some ideas about it, and we are discovering the ways how to make this bike. And so in this sense, I think sooner or later, I hope we'll succeed.

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Chris: That's. I like the bike metaphor. It's sort of like, you know, you sort of know what it's the general shape and what it's supposed to accomplish, but you're still trying to figure out the different parts to put together. I think my feeling about the park, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's, I would consider a success to say that it provides a model. It doesn't feel to me like Pleistocene park by itself is going to be able to solve the climate crisis, but what it could do is provide a model that other people could use and that we could scale up potentially. So would you say that it's a success yet in that sense, has it proven enough effectiveness that the idea could be spread and scaled up?

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Nikita Zimov: I think, yes, we, of course, Bison park, even if we will scale it up to what the territory, which we have, still will be tiny piece of land on the globe, and we definitely will need to expand and probably start many other parks and eventually hope that these ecosystems will establish and will grow on their own and merge together finally. And after that, we'll have quite a good tool to mitigate climate change. And I also wouldn't say that the Isica systems on their own will be able to solve the climate change problem. That will be kind of overstating from my side. And I think that it's kind of important to have these ecosystems coming, but there must be applied other activities. So it should be nature based solutions. It should be reduction in the. In our carbon footprint.

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Nikita Zimov: So all those things must take place. And climate change, it's a very serious problem. And, you know, it took us three centuries to get us that far into the climate change problem. So it's quite naive to think that, I don't know, for example, Elon Musk will give $50 million and some crazy guy will find the solution. No, he will not. It's just theoretically, I think, physically not possible. So if you take lots of money, lots of time, and lots of human efforts to really solve the climate change problem, and it will probably take lots of time, but, you know, in the complexity of the problem, we must take kind of any action possible. Also, in terms of the poison, park media always talk about the preservation of perm frost, and that's kind of the main feature. Why?

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Nikita Zimov: I actually don't know why everybody like this idea. I think mostly because people understand it. So it's kind of more. Yeah, kind of more logical. And those journalists kind of. They write about things they understand, and that's kind of the part people understand. So the horses trampling down the snow and cooling perm frost seems like an easy and logical concept.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Nikita Zimov: Oh, it's actually the hardest of all the climate mitigation options parc provides. We have four main features which we mentioned usually when we say about how Parc is helping to solve climate change. So, first is albedo effect. So grasslands are lighter than forest, and they reflect higher portion of energy back to space. So it's nothing to do with greenhouse gas, it's just direct cooling. For example, in the summer, it's the shades of greenhouse. So light green, dark green. So there is noticeable difference, but it's not dramatic. But, for example, in April, may in the Arctic, everything still covered with snow, but we already have a poor day. So we have sun high and very bright, and it provides lots of energy and all the forests.

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Nikita Zimov: So in the Arctic, it's mostly, at least in Siberia, so large forest, large trees have all the needles fallen every autumn. And the stems are super dark and they heated by the sun enormously. And we have, I think, something like 160 watts per square meter reflected for several weeks additionally from the pastures because they are white, because they come. And that's 160 watt per square meter. It's for comparison, it's like a put a heater, big oil heater in every room. Imagine every room you live like, you add extra heater. So that's quite a lot of energy. Second effect, yes, we talk about Peru frost and preservation of Peru frost, and how animals can help to trample down the snow and by that get two to three degrees cooling.

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Nikita Zimov: Third effect is actually, and the one which I personally kind of like the most, and I think it has the most, let's say long term and good effect, that right now in the arctic, all the vegetation is low productive. If it's low productive, it means it does not actively photosynthesize. If it does not actively photosynthesize, it does not evaporate water, it does not use much water. If it does not use much water, it does not need deep roots. And all the vegetation which we have now in the arctic has no roots like moss and lichen. Or for example, as large trees have all the roots only by the surface. So there is no deep roots in any vegetation in the modern arctic ecosystems. And we are replacing that by grass and herbs, which grow very rapidly. They need lots of water for growing.

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Nikita Zimov: And they are growing deep root system, which is going all the way down to peripherals. And in our soils, they are frozen most of the year. So in the winter, all soil profiles frozen. And in the summer it's still very cold. And the composition is very slow in these soils. And if you have some carbon input, so what's carbon? So there was CO2 in the atmosphere, was picked up by photosynthesis, converted into organic matter, and as a root was buried in the form of root was buried in the ground, then it will start partially composed and creating these rich soils. And the cold your soil, the more carbon you can store in the soil.

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Nikita Zimov: And that's kind of the main important feature that, you know, when people start talking about nature based solutions, I think pretty much 90% of the planet, of the people, maybe 95 or even 99, as the main solution will say that we need to plant trees and some moist and warm climates like in tropics or somewhere in California, where there is huge sequoias, which grow very rapidly. And it makes much sense. But for example, if you go to the Arctic, where our trees are sparse, tiny, and it takes them centuries to grow, it doesn't make much sense. So there is in above ground vegetation in my region, there is like 2 carbon per square meter. It's maximum what you can get in the forest, same time in the soils, you can get up to 100 carbon. So 50 times more.

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Chris: Wow.

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Nikita Zimov: So it's even apart from permafrost, rich permafrost is not that big territories, there is huge storages. But there is lots of place in Arctic where there isn't that much carbon in the permafrost. And still, if you create ecosystem, which will create rich soils, these ecosystems will sequester carbon. And the limits are quite high. So you can get for decades and centuries, you can sequester carbon by these ecosystems. And fourth effect, it's methane. As I said, productive vegetation use lots of water and it evaporates lots of water. Arctic, at least in our origin, is actually quite dry. We get only like 200 mm precipitation, maybe 300 mm precipitation. It's, I think several times less than what you get in your region. And grasses are really drying out the surfaces and soils and there is much less wet ones and leaks are forming and.

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Nikita Zimov: And exist in the ecosystem with high productive vegetation. And for example, I know that over the last 20 years in the poison park, the main probably difference which I see that when I just came to the poison park after university, I could not walk in the poison park anywhere without rubber boots. In the summer it was all super moist. And now I'm wearing sneakers all the time there.

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Chris: So because the grass is absorbed, all is starting to.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes. And overall the ground gets much drier. That's kind of visible effect. And where it's. Everything's moist and water saturated, all organic matter is getting decomposed into the methane. And methane is much stronger greenhouse gas. So if you dry out soils, if you don't have wet ones, if you have less lakes, you have much less methane emissions. And methane is very strong greenhouse gas. And you want to avoid emitting methane as much as possible. If you have 1 carbon, it's so much better to decompose it into the CO2 rather than methane, right? So in this sense, these grazing ecosystems are much better. There is case of ruminants. So animals, cows, bulls, they do produce methane, but still, I think that's around 25% of the methane which would be otherwise emitted from the water saturated at the same territory.

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Chris: That is fascinating. I did not. Yeah, see, you're right. All of the research that I read, actually, I did read a little bit about the carbon sequestration, but it was not explained as well as you did with the root systems and really getting into the moisture content and how that impacts everything. I did not know about the albedo thing and I did not know about the idea that decomposition in a moist environment creating methane. So thank you for going through that in such detail with me. That's really fascinating.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes. So now getting back to the kind of problem with permafrost. So right now, the status of poison park is that we have some territory, it's fenced, and we introducing animals and adapting herbivores, and herbivores are starting to roam and slowly convert the vegetation from one type to another. So the more they graze, the better grasses get. The grasses are getting competitive advantage against other plants when they're animals present. So they're kind of grasses. They are kind of. They don't have any defending strategies against other plants. And the mosses and trees will take over if there is no herbivores. And for that, grasses, they feed in herbivores, and herbivores for that kind of fighting against other vegetation for them. So all the ecosystems are in competition against, in the war against each other.

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Nikita Zimov: And for grasses, they are kind of the most developed because they are hiring soldiers like this foreign legion for them. And those animals are their warriors and it's their army. And in this sense, if you have this army, then slowly grazes are winning the war. And that's what pretty much happened now in the park. And at the same time, when we say that we already see that we have drier territory, we have less methane, and we can measure that. And there was some measurements showing that we have much less methane in the park. So this effect is already taking place. Secondly, we talk about Albedo. If you get rid of trees, if your vegetation is kind of, you have more grasses, you see the change in albedo. We can also measure that and we see that effect if we talk about carbon sequestration.

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Nikita Zimov: So the more grasses are growing, the more roots is building up. And we do have a detailed map of how much carbon we have in the park. We did it in 2018, and we see that it's like at least around 4 kg more than in surrounding areas. So we see the increase already, and we'll have more detailed map coming next year and already see the change in action, how much carbon content has changed over the four years. So that's something we can measure already right now. So those three effects are working. And with sperm frost, it's much more complicated. First of all, if you have animals, if you want to get rid of snow, for animals to dig through the snow, they need really good pastures. So it should be enough forage for them underneath the snow for them to start digging the snow.

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Nikita Zimov: So that's kind of the first factor. We don't have that much wood pastures yet. So we are forming the pastures, but really few territories, which are really high quality. And secondly, right now, we don't have complete ecosystem yet. So we have herbivores and we have change in vegetation, but that's not complete ecosystem. And as I said, complete ecosystem will be when we'll have predators. And predators main goal is that they are shepherding herbivores and they're changing the grazing behavior because, for example, right now we don't have any predators in the poison park. And my animals, they are lazy, didn't want to move. Well, it's nature. All of us are lazy. And they will all summer long, will hang out on the best pastures. They will kind of overgraze it.

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Nikita Zimov: They will eat everything to the kind of to the ground and other partials, they will not go and use them. Why? We have the best ones here. And as a result, for example, there is, I have good pastures, but all the grass on it I eaten in the summer and in the winter, animals will not go there, and we will not trample the snow. And what predators do? Predators immediately make sure that herbivores are not hanging out in one place, in kind of one huge fjord and without movement. So animals start to separate. So they evenly kind of spread around the territory. They don't grade over graze in one place. They migrate much more. So their strategy is not only to eat, but also to avoid predators. So in this sense, if in your ecosystem there are predators, you do not have overgrazing.

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Nikita Zimov: So that's pretty much not possible. And that's something we need animals for. And, you know, when animals move, that means that they use pastures a little bit in the summer and also in the winter. So animals move much more, they trample snow much more, and they use evenly all pastures, and they trample the snow evenly on all pastures. So for this preservation of permafrost, we need to create a caste system. We need to have good grasses and we need to have predators. And only after that, the sperm frost effect will take place. And that's something that makes it actually quite complex. And urgent because, you know, perfrost is getting warmer at a huge pace, right? Arctic is getting warm and permafrost is warming up, and we don't have too many years before.

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Chris: Yeah, I do want to ask you about the urgency, but before that, I just wanted to say I love the picture that you painted there because it really illustrates in very specifically the answer to the question I asked earlier about why diversity is important. And I could really see that start to come into focus when you talk about the grass needing the herbivores to survive and to thrive. The herbivores need the grass to eat, but then both of them also need the predators, otherwise they'll overgraze. And so you start seeing these, like, the interconnectedness of everything, because I just think there's a bias, certainly amongst non environmental scientists, that just everything is just sort of like a separate little entity. There's grass and then there's animals, and then there's this other thing. Right?

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Chris: But really, the web is in, the interactions seem to be actually where all of the action is at, and we just don't think about that enough. I think. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed that sort of painting that picture for me.

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Nikita Zimov: For many animals, kind of, you know, you need your house, you need a place for you to live. So same with animals. For animals, their ecosystem is their home. And for some of these creatures, getting kicked out of the ecosystem or being kind of left without ecosystem means death. So some animals can move to forest and hide from people there, like deer. They kind of hide that animals like to live in the forest. Like, people think that wild animals live in the forest, and that's kind of very false statement. They're hiding in the forest because their homework assistance were taken from them, because all the best pastures are now farmlands and urban territories.

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Chris: Interesting.

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Nikita Zimov: And that's why animals are kind of hiding in the forest, because humans don't get much profit from the forest, really. We are not feeding off the forest for the forest. We use maximum as a kind of lumber for creation of the house. That's the only profit we really get from the forest. And that's why there is little people in the forest, and that's why animals can survive and hide in the forest. In some regions, for example, in the temperate climate, even in the forest, deers or moose can find them enough food. But for example, in our local forests, in the large forest, we don't have any animals like, oh, really? Yes.

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Nikita Zimov: In the park, I have this large fenced area and let's say 20% of this fenced area, it's a large forest, and it's literally impossible to force my animals to walk into this forest. No, no, you're right.

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Chris: That is counterintuitive. You normally think of the forest as where the animals are. You're right. Yeah.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes, exactly. And that's, I think, the main challenge of the poison park. It's not even about getting animals or adapting them. And that's all practical things for us. If you want to create a world largest ecosystem, we need to convince people that what we are doing is important, that we want people to understand how the wild ecosystem really look like, how productive can they be? Because what you see, for example, in the National Geographic Channel or BBC about this Serengeti. So national parks in Africa and think, oh, that's kind of something extreme. No, that's not extreme. That was everywhere on the planet was like that. And we need people to understand that. And as long as people think that, if everybody think that forest is like a treasure, sacred ecosystem, we will not succeed.

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Nikita Zimov: And in our vision forest, it's invasive ecosystems, which appeared only after humans got rid of the green ecosystems. So just 15,000 years ago, there was ten times less forest than right now. So the forest were only small patches away in the tropics.

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Chris: That was a big reason why I wanted to do the show on pleistocene park was because it challenged so many. Learning about it challenged so many biases that I had. And I wanted to share that information with people because I, too, I'm relatively science literate myself. At least I like to think I am. I don't know, maybe I'm an idiot. But anyway, I think I'm science literate and I still had those biases you're talking about where I still considered, you know, if you had asked me months ago, before I was doing this research, I would have said, oh, yeah, forests, that's the, you know, the ultimate goal is, that's the king of nature is the forest. Right? I had that same bias, and I didn't understand the importance of the.

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Chris: The symbiotic relationship between animals and the grasslands that they're on and all of the carbon cycle. And so it's just part of what I really love about what you're doing is that there's some really counterintuitive things that are. It's actually really important for people to understand. And that's part of what I think of is like the magic of Pleistocene park to me.

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Nikita Zimov: Well, you know, if you think about the word herbivore, what does herbivore means something that eats herbs. So it's not something. It's not something to eat trees. And in this sense, also, you know, science. I'm a scientist myself, and I grew up on the research station, and so many scientists growing up and in my kind of professional career, I collaborate with and to work with many scientists, and I can see that science is actually. And many scientists are even more religious people than people who go to church every morning. So it's just the difference that scientists, they don't believe in God. They usually believe. For them, they are God as their scientific theory. And if someone has a scientific theory, it's for them, it's a sacred thing, and he will not change his perception of vision.

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Nikita Zimov: It's pretty much impossible to convince any scientist that his theory or some theory he believes in is wrong. So the only way is to change kind of for one theory to win another theory is to talk, not to scientists. You have to talk to people who don't have these strong ideas or suggestions about the topic. If they are kind of open minded and if they haven't thought much about that and they don't care, and then you come with the logic, and if you provide them the good Russia now, and they think that it's logical and they like it, then they can accept ideas. The people who already have the strong feelings and the scientists who spent years, for example, conservation, they would never kind of like the idea of the park.

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Chris: Do you get a lot of pushback from conservationists? Do you get a lot of pushback from other scientists that don't accept these findings of yours?

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Nikita Zimov: You know, I live in the remote arctic research station in the far northeast of Siberia. I'm so far away from all the people. That is, I don't really get much. We don't kind of. We are too far to get much retaliation. Maybe if you would be somewhere, I don't know, in the central capitals, in Moscow, in New York, and we would be struggling for the governmental funding, then I think we would be kind of suffering. And since placement park is mostly self funded project or using private donations of people who like the park, and we are not taking the money away from any other projects, even if so, we might think that some projects are kind of not important or useless or even wrong. We are just kind of. It's not our field. I'm not teaching others.

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Nikita Zimov: I'm just saying that, okay, here we do this and that. And since we do it on our personal resources mostly, then there is not that much negotiations. We see, because I think maybe probably many people don't like what we do, but they are either too polite or too afraid or don't care enough to say it in my face.

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Chris: Yeah. I mean, I do think that because of some of these biases, maybe there's. Yeah, there might be more, maybe more prone to people being afraid of something different. Right. Because it does feel somewhat different. Right. And so I could see that. I could see people being more even scientists, like you say, sometimes scientists can themselves be very dogmatic. So it makes sense that sometimes there would be some. Yeah. Some trepidation there.

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Nikita Zimov: But overall, I think I would say that we get still even accounts for everything that just said. I think we do get very little negative reactions because from scientific point of view, there is not that much you can object to us because there is not that much knowledge about the problem. And there is overall what we are doing. We are restoring something that used to be and those ecosystems we reach. And people don't really argue about that. I think the main concern and the main negative reactions people say and express is actually about feasibility of the project.

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Chris: Right.

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Nikita Zimov: So as a kind of side note, we had a couple movie makers working in the park in the last seven years. So there's one guy from United States, Luke Griest, he's making a movie, and I think he's just finishing his movie. He was filming it for seven years. And he wanted to make a story about the park, kind of top notch. And for that, of course, you know, not like news media who want to come just take a picture of courses, write a short report, explain.

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Chris: Right.

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Nikita Zimov: They wanted to make us kind of high quality documentary, and they needed controversy and they needed kind of some actions, and they were seeking for real, valid negative opinions, okay. About the park. They wanted to interview people who think badly about the park and whose rational explanations would make sense. And they both struggled with that. So when they said that, kind of the main, many people may say, oh, we don't like Zimov, we don't like what they're doing, but it will be just kind of a general statement.

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Chris: Right.

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Nikita Zimov: Without much justification. And the main justification comes here with that we might be too late or it's too hard of a task. So. And that's kind of, maybe those statements do have kind of ground.

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Chris: I gotta ask. I'm sorry. I apologize in advance. When do I get to see a woolly mammoth? Or is that something that's still on the table?

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Nikita Zimov: I think in the last month, I was answering this question like 50 times already to different media.

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Chris: I'm sorry to ask you again.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes, well, no, that's all right. So, yes, I think I know as much as you know, or any person who reads news knows that, like three weeks ago or something like that. George. George, who is the head of genetics lab in Harvard and some venture capitalist, Ben Wham, they created a company named Colossal, which is stating that they will get the mammoths in six years. So that's the official statement. And I know George church personally, and he being on the poison park, and I was in Harvard giving a talk in their lab, and according to his official statements, which he said several years ago, and I think they keep into the world, they say that the first mammals will go to the poison park. So in this sense, I, of course, really hope those guys will succeed. Do I?

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Nikita Zimov: You know, as a person who is trying to make something new and facing all the troubles, and I don't believe that creating a woolly elephant, what they're proposing to make, will still be possible in six years. I will be happy if I'm wrong. So with their efforts, it's kind of very. Lots of complicated problems that they will have to solve to create the mammoths, because it's scientifically many challenges. It's much more complicated than corn in a ship. And that's kind of. It's a scientific project. It's not only about mammals, it's about pushing the science forward. So, in a sense, in terms of how much I right now care about mammoths, I do think that mammoths will beneficial for the ecosystem. As you said, biodiversity. With mammoths, grazing ecosystems get much more aggressive.

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Nikita Zimov: So the mammoths can actually walk into the forest, so they can walk the grasslands into the forest. Also, we don't know exactly how the grazing consistency functions yet our understanding how the consistent function in general is not that great. But what we know, that in every, historically, in every grazing, high productive grazing ecosystem, there is an elephant. It's either african elephant in Srinathe, or there were several types of extinct elephants here in yopo. It's in North America, we had mammoths, there is asian elephant. So if there is a great ecosystem, there must be an elephant, there is a niche for an elephant, and we want to fill up all the niches. And in this sense, I would really love to have mama. But in terms of the time, even if they will succeed in six years, mama stay, grow for a long time.

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Nikita Zimov: I don't want to have infant baby mamas. First infant baby mamas coming to the place in park. I don't want to have that, right. I would need at least several species and they would have to be at least teenagers. So let's say, realistically, I don't see any mammals coming to the park in the next 20 years.

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Chris: And is that because you want them to be big enough to fill that niche of, like, knocking down trees? Is that why.

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Nikita Zimov: No, I don't want them to die in the first winter.

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Chris: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes. That makes sense.

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Nikita Zimov: They need to be kind of already kind of grown up and strong enough to resist their kind of the arctic. And in this sense, it's quite critical. We want them to be, of course, maybe they can be, if they will be huge money channeling. We may have this mama's facility built in our place and have mama's walk living inside and under kind of this controlled temperature and moisture regime, etcetera. But that's kind of the scientific. It's not about mammals play role in the ecosystems. It's about experiment, how to create a new creature and adapt it to new place. So it's not about climate change, it's not about environment. Apart from that, overall, I think that George Church, he's really a brilliant scientist and he's very smart. And I think if someone can create a mammoth, it's this guy.

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Nikita Zimov: I am overall kind of supportive of what they're doing, and I'm actually very sad how much negative reactions this idea received. So there was, I know, millions of media about this topic, and every journal, every big journal and tv channel of the world probably wrote about, there is always lots of negative reactions. And one, for example, of the big reactions, negative, saying, oh, you know, there's $15 million will spend can we wasted? And they should be rather used on conservation. And if this money, those $50 million, which is actually very tiny money for the scientific company in the United States, $15 million is like nothing. So really small money. And if those money would be taken away from conservation, this would be a valid statement. But those money, I think they were coming from the bitcoin market.

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Nikita Zimov: And there was trillions of dollars printed in the United States in the recent years. Majority of them went to this stock market and to the bitcoin market. And bitcoin market. Bitcoin is like the worst thing possible. It's nothing. Which is consuming energy and accelerated climate change, and it's consuming millions and billions, trillions of dollars probably going to the bitcoin market. And if there was this tiny bit of 15 million taken out of that and put into the research into genetics works, which is, you know, genetics, it's the first frontier of science right now. And it's anyway, great thing. If there would be enough, take another hundred millions and put to conservation, why not? Yeah, it would also be great. But come on.

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Chris: Yeah, I think there's a, that's a fallacy that you, I hear a lot when somebody just wants to try to justify their opposition to something. I hear that fallacy about like, well, we could be spending all this money on x on some other thing, but thats not actually how it works. Like you said, the money didnt come from another conservation project. It came from bitcoin capitalization. So thats not really a valid argument. Do you hear the playing God argument sometimes too? Is that something that you hear?

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Nikita Zimov: I personally know, come on. You know, I am trying to, for example, Miss Mamas. George Church does get that a lot and they do get a lot of negative reactions from the mamas. And I am trying to find a narrow path between trying getting as much hype from mamas as possible. So, you know, I have this mamas in our brand. Its called mama step. And you know, people like the mamas. And thanks to this cartoon, this ich cartoon, right. All people visualize mamas a lot. And from using up this mama's brand, we, I think, benefit with Python park, definitely. But at the same time, I am trying to receive as little negative reactions about this kind of clothing and mamas.

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Nikita Zimov: And as soon as someone will start saying bad things about me, I mean, they say, come on, I'm just bringing up courses to where they used to live and making sure they adapt to this new place. And I'm doing bison and horses, so just leave me aside. I'm not playing gun.

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Chris: Right.

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Nikita Zimov: I think overall, so far I managed quite good doing that. So benefiting from mammoths and not getting negative reactions too.

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Chris: That's good. That's a good way to have your cake and eat it too there. I mean, I'm certainly rooting for the mammoth. It does sound like there are still several challenges to overcome before it's, you know, before we see mammoths even living in the wild, much less, you know, herds of them. But I really look forward to that day and I just hope I get to see it before I go extinct. So that's, I'm rooting for it.

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Nikita Zimov: Yeah, there is, you know, I think the main challenge there is this artificial womb and there's a challenge which actually have nothing to do with mammoths, really. So that's a scientific challenge which many geneticists was trying to solve for many years now. And there's many groups working on this project, and if they will succeed with that will be a really big scientific breakthrough. Maybe. You know, some people, religious people, may not like it or may think it's a bad thing, but that's already kind of different topic. That's not a topic about mamas. It's a topic about developing science and making this kind of our natural way, how we kind of live and reproduce already kind of unnatural.

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Chris: Right?

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Nikita Zimov: So. But that's kind of. But that's a different story.

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Chris: If you don't mind, I want to ask you a little bit more of a personal question. Just because Kayla and I felt that one of the most interesting aspects of the story of Pleistocene park is your journey, your personal journey. So can you talk a little bit about sort of like, what your childhood was like, what drew you away, but then what motivated you to come back to the park?

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Nikita Zimov: Well, I don't think my story is that interesting, but anyway, so I grew up in scientific family. My father, Sergei Zimov, he was the founder of this northeast scientific station back in 1980. So it was founded three years before I was born. So I was pretty much born on the station. Well, I was conceived on the station. I was born in Vladivostok, and I came with my mom to the Arctic when I was two. So in 1985, and since that time, I was growing up on the research station. And then when I was five, my dad started first experiments with Bison park. It wasn't poison park yet, but he published a research paper in one of the big Russian Academy of Sciences journals stating that animals can really change the productivity and the function of the ecosystems in the Arctic.

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Nikita Zimov: And there wasn't much talk about climate change at that time. There was no. Everyone was expecting the ICH to come shortly, but with this paper, he came to some local administration, and a couple of weeks later, they already have a few courses around the base camp of the research station. So that was first experiment started when I was about five. Then in 1990, 1991, Soviet Union collapsed. Their funding for the research station was over. My dad had to give away all the horses. And then for all the nineties, it was pretty much tough time. When I was a teenager and growing up in the kind of collapsing Soviet Union, the remote resource station in the Arctic, and we didn't have much funding or, well, we didn't get any funding from the government. We got only some random grants from international scientific communities.

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Nikita Zimov: And that was very little. And at that time, my dad, in 1996, officially started the poison park. So it was a tough time, and I think to start the park and to get kind of a research station through this stuff years, my dad even sold his apartments in Vodyvostok, so he had apartments Voidivostok, and that time, nineties, for all the people in the Arctic, at least in the town of Chersky, were I grew up, and I think for most people in the post Soviet Arctic, that for them, the dream was to sell everything they have in the Arctic and buy apartments in the mainland and move to the mainland. And my dad did the opposite. So he sold the apartment in the mainland for the opportunity to stay in the Arctic. And that was quite the risk, big risk he took.

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Nikita Zimov: And then in 1998, I was, I think, 9th grade out of eleven, and I went to some competition in math and chemistry, and I got fourth place in our state of Yakutia in chemistry. And I was invited to Yakutsk and Yakutsk in some other kind of chemistry quiz. There were some people from Novosibirsk and there were professors who were interviewing kids for the invitation to this fancy physical mathematical school. So Novosibirsk is the third biggest city in Russia. It's the biggest in Siberia, and it's famous for its. There is Akadym Garadok, so called. It's a town just outside of the city where it's a big campus with 30 research institutes and a big and quite prestigious university. And I was invited to the high school there. And so in 1998, when I was still 14, I left the research station and moved to Novosibirsk.

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Nikita Zimov: And I was there for two years in high school and four more years in the university when I was in university, as I already said, in the first year, my dad came back, well, visited me in Novosibirsk and invited, asked if I have any plans for the future living. And they didn't have any. So I was in the mathematical department and actually honestly didn't really like it in the mathematical department, and it was just series of consequences which led me to this department, and majority of my friends went to become programmers, and I didn't have a desire to become a programmer. And when my dad invited me back to the Arctic, I was actually happily accepting the invitation because I didn't have any other options. And the Arctic seemed to be a nice place.

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Nikita Zimov: I grew up in the Arctic, it's my home place and I love it. And also I felt that research station and the park do have some potential for development.

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Chris: Right? So he didn't have to convince you very much.

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Nikita Zimov: He say, you know, if you would say him this question, he would say that it was a great challenge for him to do that. It was a kind of. It took lots of thinking and so on. But no, I was actually happily accepting this invitation, so. And then over the next three years, I just didn't change my mind. And finally, after I finished the US, I came back to the. To the resurgence. So, no, that was, I think, less cinematic as some journalists would want to portray that.

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Chris: I mean, there's still a lot of cinematicness to it. I mean, like, it's, I think. Well, actually, one of the questions I wanted to ask you then was like, what is it like to go back to a project that your father worked on is at that point was over 20 years old, and also is potentially so, had so much impact on not just science, but on, like, policy, like environmental policy, like, it's just such a bit like, did that ever weigh heavily on you?

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Nikita Zimov: Well, first of all, let's say poison park is much more theory, at least back at the time when I showed up, Puysen park was much more a theory rather than a successful experiment. So officially, park was found in 1986, and I came back in 2004. And all that time, it was always funded only from the resource of my family. And our family is the only profits my family is making is doing fundamental science. In the high siberian arctic. There is no one is making money doing fundamental science, and no one is making money in the high arctic. This in our region, people don't even mind gold because it's in our scientific goal.

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Chris: It's scientific gold, though, right? Like, that's what I mean is it's so important. Like, does that ever, does that make you feel pressured at all, the importance of it all?

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Nikita Zimov: Pressure? No, it's rather giving you satisfaction that you're doing something meaningful because, you know, it's a complicated work. There is lots of risks, and it's a wise risk even. So, living and running research station in the Arctic and doing the things that we do is there was many cases when I realized that could be dead, and many cases, I think I didn't realize that it could be dead, but I really could. And that's overall kind of all complicated. And it's a tough living, and it's not that much enjoyment you get very often from what you're doing. It's cold wetland or mosquitoes or, and very tiring.

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Nikita Zimov: But if you understand kind of comparing your, what you're doing with what many people do, I know, sitting in the office working for a boss or working in the factory or driving a truck and kind of spending your life doing all that. I clearly think that I do get much more satisfaction from what I'm doing.

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Chris: That's great. I mean, it sounds really fulfilling, and it's really. It's really good to hear that you feel more fulfilled and more satisfied than you do feel pressure. That's one of the things I was talking about with Kayla, is that it felt, we both. We talked about you a little bit on the show, on the podcast, and we said, man, that must have been such a tough decision for him to make, but it sounds like it was the right decision.

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Nikita Zimov: Yes. Maybe. First years when I came back to the station, I was working for my dad. I wasn't that satisfied because pretty much I was also working for boss. But over the years, I got more and more skills at managing these projects, not only at the park, but also other scientific projects. And when it became my job and my responsibilities, I started to get much more enjoyment and satisfaction from what I'm doing. And I think now I'm very much settled with. With my job and how we are developing the park and my role in all of that. So I don't have any big emotions thinking, oh, maybe I should have done something else. No, I'm perfectly, feel perfectly fine doing what I'm doing right now.

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Chris: That's great. And, I mean, I certainly appreciate. I think probably our listeners appreciate, a lot of people appreciate the work that you're doing. I know to me, when I learn about people like you that are doing work to, you know, enrich our understanding, and especially about a subject that is so critical to our continued health and survival as a species, it brings me a little more hope. I don't know if it's the same in Russia right now, but certainly in the US, there's a lot of anxiety around climate. You know, people are feeling very anxious about the climate crisis, the situation. And I know that learning about pleistocene park and learning about your work, it helped lift some burden.

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Chris: It gave me a little bit of hope that there are people out there that are working on this problem, that are people out there that are doing the science. I guess. I just want to thank you for that.

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Nikita Zimov: Yeah, thanks. Also, side note. Yes? There is actually huge increase in awareness about climate change in Russia in the recent couple of years. So let's see, 510 years ago in Russia, no one cared about climate change. It was some, everyone cared economical crisis. So some political situations, that's something people cared about. And climate change that wasn't a big topic at all. And now there is everybody. So president, government, business, all me is starting to talk about climate change too. And that's actually something that makes me happy too, because, you know, it's, if you don't talk about the problem, if you don't think about the problem, there is no way you can solve the problem. And in the past five or ten years ago, there was no media in Russia about poison park it.

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Nikita Zimov: So all the media was coming from and all the interest was coming from abroad. And now we do get lots of press attention within the russian media. And that's kind of, oh, it's nice.

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Chris: I was going to ask you, as my next question is, are we too late? Or is this a, is this model that you guys have discovered? Is that something that actually could really help us and make a dent? Or is it all too late?

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Nikita Zimov: Well, first of all, as a, first thing that I told you during this chat is that we see Pyson park as a sort of development, learning how to live sustainably on the planet. So it's not only about climate change. And in this sense, even if the climate change, if the global warming will happen, if it will increase the temperatures by five degrees, and let's say there will be huge problems, war, starvations, migrations, all that will happen. Still, those ecosystems will eventually help us live on this planet and make kind of soften the consequences of the climate change anyhow. So that will happen. Secondly, I don't know if we are late or not. I don't know how the climate change will be happening in the next several decades. We don't know if the perifrost will start thawing or not.

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Nikita Zimov: Maybe, you know, there's many scientists who actually warming up, that we are entering new ice age. And that's kind of, it doesn't have to do something with greenhouse gases, it has to do with ocean circulations. And there's this not that atlantic circulations are slowing down and there is going to be less heat transported to the euro, for example. So there is many unknowns and we cannot say. There is nobody who can definitely say. You say, no, we have 30 years left. If we have 20 or 30 years left, maybe it's too late, but we don't know how rapidly we will be able to develop the park. And so in this sense, I see that there is a problem that perforce is changing, that we need to mitigate climate change. And I know the solution. I know that restoring the ecosystem will help.

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Nikita Zimov: And all I can do is that, you know, that's a problem, that's solution. And I'm trying to create the solution. So I'm just putting all my efforts to create this ecosystem and to develop wasting park. I clearly probably cannot do it better and faster than I do it right now.

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Chris: Right?

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Nikita Zimov: So I'm, let's say, using up all my resources and abilities. And after, for example, this year, we did lots of progress in terms of parking or bringing new animals and building the fence and etc. Etc. Etcetera. And it will probably take me another year to pay all the debts for everything that we've done this year. So I really cannot do it better than I do it right now. And so in this sense, if there is a path you need to walk, you just, you cannot finish unless you start walking. There is a little fairy tale which I like to say to answer as a. So this fairy tale, which I want to say as a kind of answer to a question if you are too late or not. So there is a what? Jarvis milk. And three mice fell into this jar of milk.

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Nikita Zimov: And the first one was starving for so many years and see all this milk, and she's like, oh, great, milk. And she starts drinking the milk, and milk drinks, drinks, until she actually chokes and drowns. And the second one was much smarter. And she saw that the walls of the jar are tall and there is no way to get out. And this milk is not a, it's not a kind of gift, it's not a fortune, it's actually a trap. And there is no way to get out. And she's like, well, I don't want to prolong my sufferers. And she just dives to never get out. And the third one, she also saw the threat, but I don't know, she was too stupid or too optimistic or too stubborn. And she was just, yeah, it's a milk, and there's no way to get out.

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Nikita Zimov: I'm going to still keep trying. And she was swimming in this milk and trying to jump on the walls and swam and swim and jumped and jumped until she finally mixed this milk into a butter, and through butter, she get out. So I really hope that I'm this third mouse in terms of the place in park and in terms of climate change. So I have no idea if my efforts will be enough. I have no ideas if we deliver solution to the climate change in time. But those uncertainties are clearly not the reason for me not to try doing.

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Chris: Well, then we never really know how to transition away from interview. Oh, I have a perfect transition especially interviews that long. Good.

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Kayla: Do you want me to give you the transition?

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Chris: Please do.

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Kayla: Wow, Chris, that was a mammoth of an interview.

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Chris: Oh, my God.

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Kayla: Told you I knew how.

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Chris: Okay, I quit. That's it.

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Kayla: That's finally the thing.

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Chris: Well, I think maybe a good thing to talk about first is sort of the thing that we have been circling around for the past few episodes and definitely came up in a pretty big way here and sort of what the interview ended on, which is talking about that idea of taking action. That's what that fairy tale, that parable that he told was all about, right? Like the three mice parable, you know, the first mouse was like, yeah, this is great. I'm gonna just drink all the milk. That kind of feels like that's the climate change denial sort of thing where it's like, this is awesome.

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Kayla: Fettered capitalists, the dirty polluters.

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Chris: And then the second mouse kind of feels like the, you know, climate hopelessness. Like, well, I'm gonna drown anyway. And then the third mouse is like, okay, I'm just gonna do something. And I don't know. Like, certainly I think part of the good part of what's so instructive about that metaphor is that it's not just that the third mouse does something, it's that in so doing, they discover a different exit because they can't predict the future. They couldn't predict the future that, like, oh, if I swim around fast enough, I'll make butter. They just said, I'm gonna try. And then the solution presented itself. And I think that is just such a really, it's, you know, because the reason he told it was to answer the question, like, are we too late?

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: And he's right. Like, we don't know what's gonna happen. Like, we think we know.

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Kayla: And especially, we have best guesses. We have scientific projections.

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Chris: Right, exactly. And so, like, to say too late. And also, like, there's not really ever going to be a binary of, like, yesterday it was awesome, and tomorrow it just is. Everything's disastrous and burning.

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Kayla: Right? It's not suddenly it's going to be too hot to live in Los Angeles. It's going to be, oh, this summer it's this much, and this summer it's much. And this summer people aren't buying houses here now. People are having to move. It's like, it's going to be gradual, right?

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Chris: And we've already seen some leading edges, stuff of that. And frankly, as privileged rich Americans, we have probably noticed a lot of the leading edges of those things that have happened to poorer people around the world, poorer countries that are closer to coasts or more susceptible to desertification, the.

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Kayla: Countries that are contributing to climate change the least are the ones that are being affected by it the most.

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Chris: Right. So, you know, if were to sit here and say, like, well, I don't know, when it's too late, like, those folks have a different answer than we would. We were like, I don't know. It's coming, isn't it? And those people would be saying, it's here, it's been here. Like, we're pretty screwed. Thanks for noticing. So, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a gradual process. Like, we're starting to notice it in the west now, especially in California with all the fires we've been having. We always have fires, but they are increasing in frequency and magnitude.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Same thing with hurricanes out east.

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Kayla: So, I mean, there was flooding in Germany, there was flooding in New York. There's weird weather is happening all around us, which indicates that, oh, yeah, the climate has changed.

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Chris: Yeah. So the point is not that, like, we're there. The point is, like, is now the too late? Was before the too late? Is tomorrow the too late? Or is there just no such thing as too late and it's a sliding scale and we should just not worry about. About. Not have the, like, anxiety, the existential anxiety, and instead just churn our butter.

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Kayla: Right, right. The benefit of expending so much energy to pinpoint the too late probably is outweighed by anything.

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Chris: Yeah. And I get it. I mean, like, we. I think I mentioned this in the last episode, but, like, I talked to my therapist about my climate anxiety, and it's like, apparently, according to all the, you know, pundits out there, it's a very popular thing, right, for people to talk to their therapists about these days. And it sounds like, according to Mister Zimov, it's gaining a lot of attention in Russia as well. Anyway, I guess that's all that is to say is I loved his answer so much. And honestly, that's why I did the Pleistocene park episode. I wouldn't have done an episode if it was just about, like, here's some shitty climate stuff. I did the episode because I wanted to highlight a person that was churning butter.

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Chris: I wanted to highlight someone who was solution oriented and have that be, like, a beacon for hope, but also a model for behavior for the rest of us. And I hope I can take it to heart and I hope it helps. I don't know, I hope it helps our listeners to hear these stories too.

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Kayla: You know who else was a mouse that churned butter?

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Chris: Mickey. Give a mouse a cookie mouse.

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Kayla: Prolific con artist Frank Abagnale, as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the classic Steven Spielberg film catch me if you can. Where?

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Chris: What are you talking about?

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Kayla: Tom Hanks and Leo DiCaprio.

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Chris: I've seen that movie. Yeah, that was. Leo DiCaprio was, like, the con man. And then.

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Kayla: Yeah. And his father was portrayed by Christopher Walken. And several times in the movie, he had a little story to tell his son. Two mice. Frank fell in a bucket of.

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Chris: Okay, thank you for doing the Christopher Walken impression.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: I don't understand what has to do with con artistry.

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Kayla: I'm just saying that's the first.

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Chris: Oh.

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Kayla: Because one mouse was like, the other mouse fucking bootstrapsed.

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Chris: So he was saying that con artistry is like bootstrapsing.

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Kayla: Yes.

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Chris: Oh, okay. That's. That feels a little shoehorn. I don't know.

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Kayla: I also think he, like, the actual guy was maybe less of a prolific con artist than the film portrayed him to be. But I can't. I can't. Who's to say?

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Chris: Well, that's.

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Kayla: I just wanted to throw a little Easter egg in there because as soon as he started telling that story, I was like, I've heard a version of the story. Less good. Because when I. That movie came out when I was in high school and there was a couple friends and I who for some reason really keyed on the way, Christopher Walken said, two mice. Frank fell in a bucket of cream and told that story. And we would always just quote it at each other.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: As Christopher Walken.

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Chris: So you were weirdos in high school and that's why you were weird. That makes sense. Okay. That explains it. Anyway, back to Pleistocene park and Nikita Zimov. He also talked about this sort of more towards the beginning of the interview about how the point of the. I asked him, like, what's the goal?

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Nikita Zimov: Right?

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Chris: Is it. Is it climate science? Is it environmental science? Is it something else? Is it rewilding? And he said, actually, the goal is learning. Yeah, that's.

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Kayla: I took a note on that where I was like, yeah. It wasn't just about. It wasn't really about the. The main goal wasn't the doing. The main goal wasn't like saving the world. It was learning.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: I thought that was really a good way of putting it.

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Chris: Yeah. And if he's swimming in the butter, then, yeah, he might discover that it can. No. Swimming in the cream swimming in the milk. He might discover that it can be churned somehow that we just haven't thought of because we are mice living in two mice.

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Kayla: Frank fell in a bucket of cream.

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Chris: I'm sorry. I just really like. I really like the parable.

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Kayla: It's a great story.

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Chris: Really good.

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Kayla: Catch me if you can. Was a wonderful movie at the time.

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Chris: The other thing I wanted to say is just like, there's some. We'll get to that in this statement. But did one of my favorite things here, which is being corrected and having some of the things that I assumed were true and updating my knowledge to something more accurate. So there were definitely a few things that he said that either gave me more context or outright, like, corrected some fallacies that I think we talked about in the episode. So we will get to that. Another big thing that came up was biodiversity. That's something that came up in our episode on Pleistocene park, but it came up, of course, in this interview as well, which makes sense because that's kind of what Pleistocene park is all about.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: It's based on this idea that there is this sort of less productive, non productive forest ecosystem that's this invasive sort of ecosystem in the siberian tundra. And the way to turn that into something more productive and more environmentally friendly, basically, is diversity. Right? So with a lack of that animal diversity, the forest took over from the grasses. But then when you start bringing that diversity back, all of a sudden those things change. And we talked about, again, we talked about this on the episode, but animals, plants, and even the inanimate objects that they find themselves living around are all interconnected in this web of relationships. And it's really those relationships that are more, almost more important than the individual organisms themselves.

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Kayla: Right, right. Yeah.

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Chris: I thought it was funny that he said he was not the biggest animal fan.

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Kayla: Well, I just. It's like, what does that mean? You don't like them?

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Chris: I mean, he's. No, I doubt that he hates animals. It was just funny that he, like, works with animals. And he's like, yeah, I don't care about animals.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: But I guess I get it, you know, like, if you work with them all the time.

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Kayla: Sure. Well, he said, like, explicitly, you know, my focus on this isn't like, it's not about making a better world for the animals. It's about making a better world for. For humans. And ideally, we can make a better world for every living thing. But for him, it was like, I do it for the kids, like future generations. First and foremost, animals are tools let's make a system to benefit humans. That was more the priority. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

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Chris: Yeah. And I think thesis here, too is a little bit like, yes, we're doing this for humans, but as it turns out, you can't actually do it for humans without also benefiting animals and benefiting biodiversity.

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Kayla: A rising as well. Well, ecosystem lifts all boats.

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Chris: Yeah, that's right. And then the other thing I just want to mention about diversity is that I assumed, and I think I said this in the interview, is that diversity was just about resilience, right. Because the more different diverse species and all these different ecological niches that are filled in the ecosystem, if some of them die off, then there's other ones to sort of, like, take the place.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And so therefore, diversity is more about, like, weathering shocks to the ecosystem. While that's still true, he also added that it's about efficient use of resources in the environment. So when you have less diversity, I just use the word niches. Basically, an ecosystem is just full of these different. What's called these ecological niches. And the more diversity you have, the more of those niches are filled. And so a niche is just like, imagine the best example is like a giraffe, right? So there's a niche for, like, animal in an ecosystem to eat leaves off of really tall trees. So if you have a giraffe, then that fills that niche of tall tree eating.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And. And now those resources are actually going to use and they're being recycled back into the ecosystem. They're the giraffes. Yeah. And for a giraffe, you know, the shit is like, you know, from however 10ft up. So it just splatters everywhere.

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Kayla: It does splatter everywhere. It's not necessarily a lot like. I can't imagine. There's like a ton of.

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Chris: I don't actually know anything about giraffe poop. And now I want to.

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Kayla: No, I mean, it's. It's. They have a lot of fiber in their diet, so it's true. As opposed to predators poop, which might be, you know, less frequent and more hard.

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Chris: Speaking of predators and. Well, speaking of predators and diversity, he.

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Kayla: Said that we are going to be able to see a saber toothed tiger whilst driving to the grocery store. As I posited in the episode previous.

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Chris: That'S basically what I heard. I heard that, like, on the way in downtown Los Angeles, if I drive to Ralph's, I'm going to see a saber toothed tiger. Just walking down the street.

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Kayla: He said it'd be good for the environment.

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Chris: Is it gonna eat people? Or is it just gonna be like, having, like, a Gucci bag and, like.

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Kayla: Talking to their agent is more likely he's gonna be hurting the animals.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: Predatory.

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Chris: That's right.

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Kayla: Life.

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Chris: So here's another correction or elaboration. When I was talking to Kalin when were doing the pleistocene park episode, he and I were sort of just, like, pontificating about the necessity of predators and whether. How important they are. And were like, well, it doesn't seem like they're that important because, I don't know, there's probably other ways that they could successfully cull the population. Right? Like, hunt them or. I don't know. They don't even want to cull the population right now because there's not that many. So not necessary.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And what Mister Zimoff here elaborated on for us is that it's not just about predators keeping a population in check. It's also about the, like, the sort of the herding and shepherding value that they bring.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Because otherwise the herbivores will overgraze, and that's bad for them, bad for the grass.

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Kayla: They'll do to the grass what we did to the mammoths.

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Chris: Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

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Kayla: But it's interesting how the predators. It's interesting how non human predators, I guess this is not always the case, but the idea here is that you would need to introduce enough predators so that there's an effect, but not so many predators that overhunting occurs. And that's like, you know, that's part of what is so difficult to balance in an ecosystem, which I think is. He also talked about how no one has ever really, quote unquote, restored a. Fully restored an ecosystem that's been destroyed or changed. And I think that's a difficulty of trying to balance it, is that you kind of gotta get that just right otherwise.

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Chris: Right?

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Kayla: I mean, we overhunted. They're gonna overeat.

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Chris: Yeah. I think, like, sans humans, it feels like that's the type of thing that ebbs and flows over time and follow sort of a chaotic pattern from what I understand, as populations do sometimes have crashes and booms. And it's, you know, and that's. And that's why is because there's so much feedback mechanism that we talked about on.

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Kayla: There's instances of, like, wolves overhunting the rabbits or whatever, and then there's no more rabbits left, and so then the.

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Chris: Wolves die off, and then rabbits build back up and so on. But I think with humans it's a little bit different because our ability to affect our environment around us is so much drastically more powerful than other predators. Like an elephant can knock down a tree and that's cool. But, like, if we wanted to, we could knock down every tree. So I think, yeah, with humans it's weird is because we. And the other thing is, we're the only ones that understand that there is such thing as an ecosystem.

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Kayla: Right, right. Other animals probably have like an instinctual.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: But not any sort of sentient or.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: What's the word? They cannot distill it into any sort of.

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Chris: I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, elephants may even have some sort of sense that they're, you know, they're belong to some web of life.

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Kayla: Right, right.

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Chris: I mean, actually, I've seen Lion King, so maybe they do, but I mean, they're not writing books about it.

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Kayla: They might be able to do it.

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Chris: You think so?

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Kayla: I don't know. They're very complicated.

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Chris: Whales are pretty smart. All right, well, anyway, the point is we have this. We're in a unique position with both the amount of impact we have on the environment and also our ability to sort of comprehend it at a logical level.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And so I think that sort of changes that battle. I think that's why there's such an amazing imbalance when humans arrive versus when wolves overhunt.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: All right. And then, so one of the things that were sort of, like, glad to get his input on was the fact that we. That predators are. Have this shepherding function, but there was also, like this big sort of. I don't know, it's not correction. It's just we had some really incomplete information from my research, which that. That is on me, but I'm glad that I reached out to him.

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Kayla: Shame.

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Chris: Oh, my God.

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Kayla: Shame. How dare you not have all of the information immediately?

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Chris: Well, actually, I talked about this with him, is that it's not. I mean, there's in all the articles and everything I read, they didn't really talk much about all of the things that the park was doing other than the trampling too.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: Kalin did on his video on Atlas pro. So hopefully you guys have watched that. So he. Because he did talk about some of those things, his video.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: But yeah, the permafrost trampling was like the main thing that, you know, all of like the Atlantic and the Guardian and all those articles that I read were about. So I'm glad that I totally primary sourced this right. Because now culture, just weird is basically going to be the most accurate journalism out there for Pleistocene park.

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Nikita Zimov: You know what I'm saying?

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Kayla: There's four different things that they're focusing on. It's not just trampling the permafrost.

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Chris: Right. Yeah.

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Kayla: I couldn't tell you what the other four were.

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Chris: Luckily for you guys, I wrote them down. So obviously, permafrost is the first one, so we can kind of skip that over. But the idea was that by trampling the snow is. Has a much lower insulating effect to the ground underneath during the winter. So more stuff can freeze. So more ground can freeze into permafrost. So when the animal trampled the snow, it's like getting rid of the insulation.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: Does that make sense?

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Cool. The other thing he talked about, which I mispronounced in the interview, which is like, super awesome that I mispronounced this to embarrassing my favorite celebrity scientist. But the albedo, I called it albedo, the albedo effect. So the albedo effect is just reflection of the sun. That's what albedo is, reflection of the sun's rays. So we talked about that a little bit with Kaylin. He talked about how there's actually some strategies for climate change where they're just like, yeah, let's just throw, like, a big white tarp on the ground.

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Kayla: I like that one.

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Chris: I like that one, too. It seems pretty cheap and effective, but it's slightly different than what they were doing at Pleistocene park. Basically, what Mister Zimov was talking about was that they are trying to alter the environment in order to produce more in order to produce an effect where more of the sun's energy gets reflected back into space. So basically the idea is that the forest leaves are dark. So if you know, if you take the 10,000 foot view, literally, then, you know, a patch of ground that has forest on it is darker. A patch of ground that has grass on it is lighter, and thus will reflect more of the sun's energy back into space. And I forget the exact numbers he gave, but it sounded like it was actually pretty significant.

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Kayla: Yeah, it did.

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Chris: The third thing he talked about was the productivity. So he was saying that arctic vegetation has low productivity. Currently. He was speaking specifically of trees and moss and things that are there that aren't grassland. So because they are low productivity, in other words, they don't use up a lot of energy and don't use up a lot of resources, they also don't need much water. And since they don't need as much water, they don't need as deep of roots. Grass is water thirsty because it grows so fast and it is productive. So it does need deep roots. Why are deep roots important? Well, because the deeper the roots, the further they go into the permafrost. Why is that important?

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Chris: Well, when roots decompose underground and deposit their carbon, the deeper they are, the more likely they are to be locked in, frozen into the permafrost than they are to be at the surface and release their carbon back into the atmosphere.

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Kayla: Hell yeah.

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Chris: Does that make sense?

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Kayla: Yes, it does.

366
01:32:08,954 --> 01:32:18,962
Chris: Hopefully I got that right. Sounded right, but yeah, he used the number 50 x. He said 50 times more carbon is capturable by grasses than by mosses and trees.

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Kayla: Wow.

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Chris: So you could call this a grassroots solution.

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Kayla: No.

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Chris: No, I got you back. I got you back for your pun. No, the beginning of this.

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Kayla: I mean, I quit now. No one's doing the podcast anymore.

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Chris: This is just two fake people talking now. Okay, I'll talk about the fourth thing. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. The fourth thing is methane capture. So farts, well, farts from the cows. Yes, cow farts. But he says that basically when the grass ecosystems return to, you know, to where there was moss, like when he first arrived in Pleistocene park in that area, he said it was all damp and soggy and he was walking in the moss and, you know, they would squish under his feet. And he always had to wear boots because it was just squishy and swampy. And when you have more water, decomposition turns, decomposition of biomass will turn into methane. When it's drier, you won't have as much decomposition of biomass into methane.

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Chris: And because methane is such a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, basically doing that trade for like, okay, it's going to turn into CO2 instead of methane is a good trade to make. And he did mention cow farts. In this case, it's not cows, it's bison and horses and whatever. Maybe a moose, and maybe a moose fart as well.

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Kayla: I think they have some. Oh yeah, it was the bison that they had recently. I think there's zebras there and camels. Probably some camel farts.

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Chris: Oh yeah, definitely. All of those animals are farting. Hopefully they'll eventually be mammoth farts. But according to him, the methane released by the animals is still less than the effect of drying the ground and not having methane be released from decomposition of plant matter.

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Kayla: Gotcha.

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Chris: So there's four things that the park is doing. He said his favorite one was the thing about the deep roots. But, I mean, the fact that it's like, that sort of, it's got this multi pronged, multifaceted approach to a diverse approach. A diverse approach is really cool.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: But even cooler than that, they're learning, and they're doing something. They're taking action and learning, and I think that's basically what it comes down to. And then sort of the last thing we talked, at least the last thing we talked about before, sort of talking about the let's learn and take action thing, was his personal story, which the.

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Kayla: Part that I wanted to know the most about, honestly, I'm not gonna lie here.

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Chris: And he was so humble about, like, predictably humble about it. He's like, oh, my story is not interesting. And I'm like, dude, your story is hella interesting. What are you talking about? He sounded maybe a little conflicted. Like, early in the interview, he sounded like it was actually a big challenge to do what he does. And he expressed the idea that maybe, oh, if I had known how challenging this would be, I don't know if I would have done it. But then later on in the world.

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Kayla: Which I want to say, that feels very human.

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Chris: Oh, yeah.

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Kayla: I feel like a lot of us end up in places in our lives where we go, I'm content with this. I'm happy with this. I like what I'm doing. Maybe I would have done something differently looking back.

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Chris: Yeah. I mean, like, that's. Yeah. I don't think it's unique to him. I think it's just, like, we all play sliding doors, right? Right. We all play the, like, what if game in our heads, and it sounds like that's all he was doing there, because later in the interview, it sounded like he really didn't have regrets, which is awesome. It was funny that he was sort of led back to Pleistocene park by default. You know? He was like, yeah, I finished college. All my friends were new programmers, and I thought that sucked. Agree. My dad, Washington, like, come back and save the planet. And I was like, okay, yeah, that's.

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Kayla: That's not interesting. That's not cinematic.

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Chris: I know. Totally cinematic.

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Kayla: That's the basis of, like, half of the anime, like, literally.

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Chris: Right, right. So, Nikita, if you're listening to this, your life is cinematic.

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Kayla: We dig your story.

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Chris: We work in Hollywood, so trust us. Actually, do. Do you want to sell us your story? Is that. Can we do that? Can we sell this?

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Kayla: Buy the life rights.

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Chris: Can we buy a life rights on a podcast?

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Kayla: Do it. Right.

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Chris: But, yeah, I also, like, sort of commiserated with the, like, I don't want a program, though, because, like, I've even worked in.

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Kayla: That's you every day.

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Chris: It's me every day. And, like, I work in, like, tech industries, and I'm still like, I don't.

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Kayla: Want to program numbers.

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Chris: Yeah, numbers suck. Speaking of numbers, I also liked his answer about, like, we should be spending this money on the other conservation efforts. And it's like, hey, man, like, this came from a tech bro. This money came from a tech bro from his bitcoin stash. So that's fine. It wasn't like this 50 million was, like, earmarked for, like, saving orphans. And then were like, no, let's make a mammoth.

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Kayla: I mean, I don't disagree, though. Like, I think that they're. I think it's perfectly fine to have a reaction or a comment about how very wealthy people spend their money to, quote, unquote, make the world a better place. It's not necessarily a criticism.

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Chris: It is. But I just feel like I just. Maybe this is just my own bias, but I frequently come down on the side of just do the thing. And I don't know. I don't know if that's me or if it's a legitimate thought that is in my head, but I do feel like most of the time when I hear we should have spent this on x, I kind of go like, okay, like, was there actually, like, a decision that was made in this regard? Was there a committee where this was. It was debated in, like, a clear and concise format about, like, the best place to, you know, budget everything.

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Kayla: Right?

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Chris: And, like, the answer is always no to that because, like, that's not how the world works. The world works because somebody has an idea, and they're like, I want to do this thing. I need money to do it. Give me some money. They get money. They do the thing, or they fail at doing the thing. Like, it's almost never, like, we're not. There's not, like, one sloshing bucket of money that we're, like, optimally prioritizing all the time across all functions across the world. Like, it's much more chaotic.

404
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Kayla: There are worse things these people could be spending their money on, too, right?

405
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Chris: So, yeah, I know I said this, like, eight times on the interview, but thank you again to Mister Zimoff, Mister Nikita Zimoff, for his time coming on the show.

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Kayla: It was a damn good interview.

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Chris: It was a really good chat. And I, you know, I just. I love the fact that it wasn't just a rehash of what we talked about on the show, that he, like, had a lot of new information, corrected a lot of things, added a lot of things.

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Kayla: I understand so much more about it now.

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Chris: So. Yeah, so that's. We don't have criteria again, unless you want to rejudge pleistocene park as a cult, do you?

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Kayla: I mean, I think it's even less of a cult now.

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Chris: But we just talked to the charismatic leader and he's very charismatic.

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Kayla: Well, is he the charismatic leader or is he the mod non sheila? Is he the number two who's really the number one? Or is his father the number one?

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Chris: I think he's definitely the number two who is really the number one at this point.

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Kayla: Interesting.

415
01:39:04,326 --> 01:39:06,206
Chris: But the father was number one for a long time.

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01:39:06,278 --> 01:39:06,890
Kayla: Right.

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Chris: But they're both charismatic, so I don't know, maybe it is a cult also.

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Kayla: It's not a cult.

419
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Chris: Fine.

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Kayla: It's pretty clearly not a cult. This is definitely a. Just weird I. And it's like a positive just weird, I guess. You want to. You want to crinkle some paper before we make the call? That's a terrible paper.

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Chris: It's the only one I have in front of me. We need to find the old paper. We need to. Whatever. Close enough. That's our fake paper that has all of our criteria on it that we're totally not going to read.

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Kayla: Not a cult.

423
01:39:33,700 --> 01:39:40,170
Chris: Not a cult. But it was a good chat with a helper that is learning.

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Kayla: Right.

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Chris: And taking action.

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Kayla: It makes me think of the last episode we just did with Matt Remsky, where he was talking about one of the ways to preserve his mental health and for all of us to preserve our mental health is to find the people that are doing the hard work answering the questions, being the helpers that Mister Rogers once cited. So I think that. Yeah, I think that the zmovs are those people. Precisely.

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Chris: They're churning that butter.

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Kayla: They are.

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Chris: This is Chris, this is Kayla, and this has been cult or just weird?