409. Question Time: Trump's Golden Dome, Gaza's Global Outcry and Starmer's Prison Gamble

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Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest-paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Hello, welcome to the Rest of Spoilers Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

And before we start today's episode, I want to say a big thank you to all of you who bought tickets for our November live tour.

Fortunately, for those of you who haven't got around to buying yours yet, there are some left.

And I'm very excited that we're going to be on the road again.

Back on the tour bus, amazing tour bus, travelling to London, Glasgow, Manchester, Bournemouth.

You excited to play Bournemouth for the first time, Alistair?

Bring back Memories of the Labour Party conference 1999?

1999.

No, my big memory of Bournemouth is Neil Kinnock's speech when he took on the militant tendency.

That was one of those genuinely historic moments.

So yeah, I think, look, party conferences do tend to sort of meld into one, but yeah, I've had some good times in Bournemouth.

And I suspect that it won't be the last time that we see big political dramas in Bournemouth, but hopefully ours will be nice, calm, agreeable disagreement from time to time.

Lots of people, lots of interaction with questions.

To get your tickets, just go to AEGP, that's aegp.uk slash trip25.

Okay, Roy, let's get going with questions.

Ruby Blanche, what would be your best advice for how global leaders deal with Trump?

And how do you rate King Charles' attempt?

Well, listen, I discussed this with Antony Scaramucci at Hay,

and he said that he thought the best thus far dealer with Trump was Mark Carney.

And he made the point that Mark Carney, when he won, he was absolutely clear about Trump during the election, that this is a threat to Canada and he's going to fight it.

When he won, he did not pick up the phone to Trump.

He left Trump to sort of hang around thinking, why isn't Carney phoning me?

And eventually there were sort of talks between officials and the talks fixed up.

But Mark Carney was clear.

If you do all that 51 First State stuff or you don't show me the respect that Canada deserves, then this call's not going to happen.

Now, easier said than done, I would argue.

I suspect that for lots of leaders, Trump would actually say, Well, you know, unless you deal with me the way I want to deal with you, then

no play.

But fair play to Carney, he did that.

And now, King Charles, of course, is there doing the speech for the throne from the throne.

That's like the Queen's speech, King's speech in our parliament.

The Queen did it in 1957, and

which is the year I was born, that's 68 years ago, and also I think 1977 so it's the first time in a long time and it's very very clear King Charles is is helping the Canadian and the Canadian government to push back on this American stuff at the same time as trying to keep good US-UK relations well I think the key thing is that Canada obviously went fully independent from the UK a very long time ago 1860s

but King Charles remains the head of state in Canada as he is in Australia and New New Zealand.

And what he's reminding Donald Trump Donald Trump is very, very

fond of the British monarchy.

It's a sort of I was talking to someone who knew Trump well and said that one of the stories that he was loved to share is the moment that he and the Melania walked down the steps of Buckingham Palace and said to Melania, I can't believe I'm here.

So I think King Charles is reminding Donald Trump that he's the head of state of Canada and that when he starts talking about the 51st state, he's also directly challenging this monarchy that he claims to respect.

I suspect Malladia also said, I can't believe I'm here either alongside you, but you know, we've got a good deal, so let's just smile and pretend.

I watched King Charles and Camilla's arrival in Ottawa last night.

It was quite amazing to see, I mean, Mark Carney, who we've interviewed twice on the podcast and both of us know well, it was quite amazing to sort of see him there.

Just his incredible story, the Bark Cardi story.

He's gone from being this sort of, you know, seen as this dry bank governor, and there he was, sort of alongside the king, play, you know, shaking hands with the crowds, standing and listening to the indigenous music as they were being welcomed.

But this is a big deal.

This is a big deal for King Charles to do this.

And when they announced he was doing it, if you remember, I said that one of the things it will do, it will mean that this visit, the king's speech, the speech from the throne of the Canadian legislative programme, it will get so much more attention.

And he knows that's what he's doing.

And fair play to him.

And a lovely thing, just to finish, I think with both the King and Mark Carney are examples of people who've really stepped into their roles, seem to have really grown into those roles, with people maybe being sceptical beforehand whether they were Super Table for them.

I think it's,

I'm obviously extremely biased because I'm an unapologetic monarchist, but I think King Charles had, to put it mildly, a pretty difficult act to follow with the Queen.

And I think he's done it pretty amazingly well.

I think it has given continued life to the monarchy.

And I think it's lovely to see him and Mark Coney because they were very close because they did an enormous amount on climate and trying to get the private sector involved in addressing climate change together through his Sustainable Markets Initiative.

So that's a lovely partnership that's gone on for a long time.

Well, Rory speaking as a non-monarchist, I also think he has stepped into the role extraordinarily well.

So there you go.

Right, Matthew, if Trump's Golden Dome does happen,

and the golden dome is a defense shield,

it's not a new sort of lottery that Trump is launching.

If it does happen, and if it works, what does this mean for the concept of mutually assured destruction if it is no longer mutual?

Also, if everyone gets one, what does it mean for the future of nuclear weapons?

Do they become obsolete?

Do you think this will actually happen, this thing?

I have my doubts.

Well, I mean, the first thing is it's incredibly expensive and incredibly complicated.

Trump's talking about $175 billion, so $175,000 million dollars.

The Congressional Budget Office is talking about $570 billion.

And this is about intercepting missiles before they hit.

And of course, it's called the Golden Dome because it builds on the idea of the Iron Dome in Israel.

But the difference is that Israel is about the size of New Jersey, and it largely has to deal with this pretty slow-moving stuff coming from over Iran, which come...

not quite flapping slowly over the border, but quite different to the kind of stuff that the US would have to deal with from Russia, which are hypersonic missiles traveling at five times the speed of sound.

So if you can imagine what you'd have to do to make this thing, which is weave together hundreds of different interceptor systems, some on the ground, some in space, incredibly complicated command and control done by the US military.

This is, of course, what Reagan tried to do when he began this, his missile defense shield, and it had to be abandoned because it got too expensive and too complicated.

This is the so-called Star Wars program, the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Very, very similar.

In fact, Reagan called it a suicide pact,

which I don't think was very good marketing.

Presumably now, the technology is developed to such an extent that this will bear little relation to it, but it's a very, very similar principle.

Yeah, and one of the problems is that if you are dealing as Israel is with ballistic missiles fired from Iran and drones from Iran, At the moment, Iran has not yet developed a nuclear program.

So some of those missiles get through, very few of them, but if one or or two get through, what you end up with is a huge crater next to the Mossad headquarters, which was the attack a few months ago.

But, of course, a nuclear missile getting through to the United States, one or two getting through, is a very, very different proposition.

Okay, let's stay with Israel-Palestine then.

Jasmine, what do you think the implications will be of the response of Netanyahu to blame Western leaders for the horrific murders of two diplomats in the US?

Feels like Netanyahu is deliberately seeking to connect a line between criticism of his government with anti-Semitism, which I find very worrying.

Harry, who's a Trip Plus member from London, why have the UK, France and Canada chosen now to speak out against Israel?

The hunger and aid crisis has been going on for months.

What's triggered them finally to take a stronger position?

What more should they be doing?

And also Monday, Chancellor Mertz in Germany, he also joined in the chorus of criticism of Netanyahu, said what they're doing in Gaza can no longer be justified.

There's been a very significant shift, hasn't there?

Which, as you say, has really only just been over the last couple of weeks.

And somehow, I think something changed.

So I think the peace deal

and then the imposition of the food blockade and the fact that it's now a long time since October the 7th, you know, well over a year and a half, has got to a stage where mainstream European leaders

are now much clearer in saying that this cannot be justified, that it's gone beyond what they thought was, you know, the initial narrative was very clear.

Israel has a right to defend itself.

This is the response to October the 7th.

Since the beginning of the year, I think that's faded away.

And in particular, since the food blockade has really faded away.

It's interesting, though, that at the same time as that happened, there was this really disturbing, horrifying murder of two Israeli diplomats.

And obviously, you know, as a former diplomat, I feel feel very strongly that diplomats are civilians, they're not military personnel.

A young couple killed just

on the way to an event in Washington, D.C.

And Netanyahu, very, very strongly focusing on this as a way of almost implying that the comments of Macron Stamer encouraged this.

And Jonathan Friedland, I think, has written a really good piece in The Guardian on this, where he says Netanyahu's got to stop this.

At some point, he's got to recognize it's true that anger against his government is not driven by what foreign leaders say,

it's driven by what he's doing, that the objective facts of that blockade and that killing in Gaza is fundamentally driving this, and that he cannot keep saying that this is just an invented narrative from Israel's enemies.

I think a narrative from Israeli's enemies that has really taken hold

is the idea that Netanyahu is doing a lot of what he's doing to hang on to his own political survival because he worries that if he falls and if these hard-right figures, Ben-Gabir and Smotrich, pull the plug, that he's going to end his days in prison.

And I think that's a narrative that holds some water.

I think the answer to the question of why have they chosen now to speak out against Israel is because they've been trying for a long time to give Israel the benefit of the doubt.

But I think they've realized that saying Israel has the right to defend itself does not mean Israel has the right to do whatever the hell it wants.

And I mentioned in the main podcast this interview with this young girl who'd lost several brothers and sisters and a parent.

Probably her other parent was dead as well.

They hadn't found him.

And she was being looked after by her uncle.

And it was just the most moving thing.

Because, I mean, she was only five or six, but speaking and describing what had happened and how her feet were burning as she walked out of the fire, and how she wanted her mother, and she did, and that you could literally see rivers of tears coming down her face as she spoke.

And I think that, allied to these pictures, of people fighting to get a bowl of soup, the food spilling as it goes into their

just absolute desperation.

There was a very moving interview last night with a British doctor, Victoria Rose,

who was just sort of giving the facts facts of what it's like to be a doctor looking after these people when supplies are running out so i think it's that that has turned i also think that the way that the israelis communicate over time has done them damage um and the other thing yesterday it was jerusalem day so there was coverage of this event where

lots of kind of you know ben gavir smotrich supporters kind of going around the place literally chanting death to the arabs now when you think about what the opprobrium that was extended to people, you know, singing that chant, um, from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.

And yet, I think there's just such a double standard that is being seen again and again and again.

And I know I'll get criticized for that.

We'll get the usual onslaught from the Israeli supporters, the government supporters, and from the government itself.

But honestly, that is the answer to the question.

Leaders like Starma, Macron, Khani, Mertz are looking at this night after night and saying, sorry, you have got to slow down here.

And I actually think the pressure will grow on these governments to do more and get into the area of arms sales and so forth.

What's happening is it's intolerable.

It cannot be justified.

And by the way, Roy, they keep saying every time they do one of these attacks and children die and mothers die and fathers die.

And they say they were taking out a Hamas command center.

When are we going to see the names of the Hamas people that they've killed in these attacks?

If they're so sure that that's what they've done, why are we not able to see who it is that they've killed, who was, in their eyes, a Hamas commander?

We saw this, didn't we, with the attack on the ambulance where they claimed individuals driving those ambulances were connected to Hamas.

And the question of who is Hamas, who isn't, what type of Hamas you are, is right at the heart of this whole controversy.

But from the point of view of Smotrich and Ben Gavir, it seems that everyone in Gaza is either Hamas, a Hamas supporter, or family family member of a Hamas

activist.

We'll keep coming back to this.

Okay, Rory, quick break and then back for more questions.

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The rest of politics is, as ever, efficiently powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

And on the subject of energy, a question from Kate Sawyer, who asks, why isn't the government fighting back more strongly against reform UK, turning net zero into a dirty word?

What have they got to lose?

So that links, I guess, Alistair, to the Ed Miliband double part we've just done.

What have they got to lose by pushing back more strongly against reform on net zero?

Well, if you listen to Ed, and I strongly recommend that people do listen to, especially part two of the interview, because a lot of it is about this very subject, we asked him whether he felt that they were on the back foot in relation to net zero, and he said absolutely not.

And I think if you listen to him talking the way he does with real sort of passion and vigor about the financial benefits of net zero, about the obvious economic and environmental benefits, then I think you have a sense of somebody who really feels that he's on the

right arguments and he knows how to play them.

I guess where Kate's question is coming from is that, and I think this relates a lot to our media, about the way that they project this debate, that she's probably hearing more about the anti-net zero arguments than she is about the arguments that Ed Miliband was putting.

And of course, you know, we talked about housing on the main podcast the other day.

I think that this is, you know, this is another area that is unbelievably complicated.

But there was a wonderful thing recently with Anushka Astana on the Peston Show on ITV where she played a graphic.

She described a graphic to Kemi Badenot, which just explained, look, the net zero stuff is not adding that much to your bill.

Here's where the real bill's coming from.

And

a lot of it's coming from gas prices, wholesale gas prices.

The

small thing, final thing for me on this question is this question of where you follow the polls and where you change them.

And I felt one of the problems with Boris Johnson was very much that he was a follow-the-polls man.

My sense that, and I'd love to see what you thought of this, in British politics, there are probably two issues where it's very difficult to change people's minds and where I think you have to respond to public opinion.

One of those is around public ownership, the NHS, which I don't think is up for grabs, and the second is around immigration.

I don't think there's any doubt that the majority of people in Britain want illegal migration brought down and they want the number of legal migrants reduced.

But in almost every other issue, I think you can lead the national conversation.

And one of the problems, I think, in politics, there aren't enough people in government saying, okay, this may not be a priority for the public, may not even be very popular with the public, but we're going to persuade people, we're going to change their minds.

And I guess net zero is a classic example of that.

I would even argue that NHS and immigration, there is, I agree with you, that the debates are real and the kind of love for the NHS is enduring.

But it doesn't mean you can't have a debate about the future of the National Health Service.

And likewise, in immigration, I think there should be more debate about the benefits of immigration as well as all the sort of the negative stuff.

I think, in relation to net zero, though, I really do strongly recommend people listen to Ed because I think what's happened is the right wing and the fossil fuel industries have done a very, very, very, very good job of weaponizing net zero.

And if your opponents weaponize something this way, you have to fight back against it.

So I think the question is a sensible one because she's picking up on the fact that the debate has moved to a different place.

In the end, it is up to political leadership to shift the dial on that.

So there we are.

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Head to getfuse.com slash politics we've got a lot of questions this week on young women and particularly catherine dunn are young women being politically taken for granted i wonder whether you thought why we're getting so many questions on this and what your answer that would be i suspect we're getting a lot of questions because there is so much focus in the political debate on young men we keep talking about you know disengagement of young men angry young men who feel that they don't know what their role in life is and and i think young women maybe feel that

it's becoming a given that because young women and women more generally are supposed now to have greater equality, more power, et cetera, that this is being done at the expense of young men.

In fact, one of the other events I did in Leeds last week, there was an event at the civic chambers organized by a wonderful school teacher called Zara Dixon, and it was a mix of adults and school kids.

And there was a question actually from, I remember from a 16-year-old from Harrogate who'd come to the event.

And she was coming at this from the perspective of, you know, do young men understand what the experience of a young woman is these days?

She was talking about, you know, sexual assault, about domestic violence, about particularly online, about, you know, I know I talked to my daughter Grace about this.

She said, you know, young women pretty much on a consistent, persistent basis are getting kind of harassed and so forth.

So whether it's partly that, that their issues are not listened to.

I think there's also an opportunity here, which is that if you focus, and I'm partly to blame this, I keep telling you to focus on why young men disproportionately vote for far-right parties.

But actually, there's a huge opportunity in the fact that young women are much more progressive, much more in favor, for example, the welfare state, much more interested in climate.

A quarter of women aged 18 to 24 voted green, which is twice the number of percentage-wise of young men who voted for reform.

So you could really imagine a progressive politics that addressed young women and focused on getting young women out to vote, which was actually a big problem in the US election where young men who traditionally didn't vote came out to vote and young women didn't play the role that people were hoping.

Anyway, so that's an opportunity.

Back over to you.

Well, that speaks exactly to what I've been saying about my worries about Labour strategy being very, very focused in a certain direction.

One of the events I did at Hay, and people go on about young kids not being interested in politics.

So, you know, the big stage at Hay, I did an event on my kids' book, 1700 state schools kids from Wales who'd been, you know, brought in for the day.

It was, it used to be funded by the Welsh government, and now that's been cut.

So they got sponsors to bring these kids in.

And it was absolutely brilliant.

And I had them up on stage debating issues like devolution, whether to ban social media, whether Welsh should be taught in schools.

And at one point, I just said,

right, is there anybody here who actually just wants to come up and make a speech about something they care about?

And it was like what the the one i picked in the end was because all around her all her school friends were going brooke brooke brooke get brooke she's amazing right so this girl came up and she just made a speech about inequality And it was absolutely brilliant.

She slightly lost me when she said that the bourgeoisie are to blame and the proletariat need to unite and rise up against them and so forth.

But it was honestly that I had several kids came up and made really, really good good speeches and the thing is when i talked i talked in my speech about about gina martin the woman who got the law changed on upskirting that she drove the upskirting bill and you you know when you're talking to kids and there were 50 50 boys and girls so when i was talking about that and there wasn't a single snigger when i tell that story to adults you often get a snigger when they're talking about young guys going around they were taking pictures up women's skirts etc and this audience honestly i was i actually said at the end of it rory never mind lowering the voting age to 16 we should do it to 14 because these kids were switched on they were passionate they were boisterous and they believe stuff so that doesn't really answer the question um i'd love maybe we we should ask some young women because we do have a lot of young listeners Maybe they can tell us and write to us about whether they think young women are being ignored, why and what more we should be doing.

Little shout out to Mr.

Anthony Albanese, the new Prime Minister, well, the re-elected Prime Minister of Australia.

First time in history, there are now going to be more women than men in his cabinet.

And there are now going to be more women in the House and in the Senate.

You know, people going about Australia being a sexist country, that is quite a pretty positive, good story to tell.

Should we go your hero?

Your hero.

You have many heroes.

They tend to change week by week, but one consistent hero.

Katrina, I regularly listen to your podcast and wondered if you had a view on David Gork's proposal to chemically castrate those accused of sexual offences.

Is this vengeance, not justice?

Should the state be given this irreversible power over the bodies of its citizens?

What if a mistake is made, etc.?

Are we abandoning our principles, our belief in justice for populist quick fixes?

We should also point out that the other big thing in David Gawk's review was

really

something you and he tried to do in government, cutting down on shorter sentences and giving people greater opportunity to get out early, subject to the way they conduct themselves in prison.

Yeah, it's interesting.

The focus has been on that.

I mean, Oliver, who's a Trip Plus member from Leicester, asked more generally about censing review.

And I think dealing with the fact that Britain locks up many more people for non-violent crimes than any of their European equivalents.

I mean, it's a staggering number of people.

Almost half...

sometimes more of people in prison are in for non-violent crimes, which wouldn't be true in Europe, where prison is largely reserved for people who are in there for violent crimes.

One of the things that is right at the heart of this, as you say, a short sentences, I talked to you about the fact that I'd met someone in Bedford Prison who'd been in nine times in a year.

There are people who've been in prison dozens of times.

They're in for a few weeks.

It massively disrupts their lives because they lose their housing, they lose their job.

They have a very high suicide risk.

They massively destabilize the prisoner state.

Now, the problem then is if they're not sent to prison, so this might be people who do regular shoplifting, they could be drug addicts, for example, who are shoplifting in order to feed their habit, are there good community sentences as an alternative?

And one of the great things about Gorg's proposals is the idea that hundreds of millions of pounds more will go into probation and really sorting out community sentences.

That is where all the evidence points.

Going to prison fat increases your chance of reoffending more than having a community sentence because of all the ways that disrupt your life.

So the public is safer if you don't go to prison, paradoxically.

But we really need to make that investment.

What do you think about the chemical castration stuff?

Well, there's an experiment going on with it now.

I love the way that I asked you the question, Roy, and your way of dealing with it was to ask me the question.

I suspect that's because we were both slightly avoiding it.

I think it makes me feel slightly queasy.

And I go to the point there about what if there's a mistake.

And, you know, the so I think where people are saying, I am incorrigible, I cannot help myself, etc.

And this is the only way that can happen.

Then I can see why that might be might

be the way forward.

But I can't pretend not to be a little bit queasy about it.

On the big stuff, despite all the sort of screaming headlines of, you know, prisoners and murders and murderers and rapists who let out early,

I hope that they do actually, because, you know, you and I both know from our work in prisons that

the prisons are an absolute disgrace in this country.

And I think David's come up with some, on the big picture, some pretty sensible stuff.

Alisa, Hillary Greenwood, what do you think of Alan Yentob being described in his obituary as the BBC?

Perhaps in both his success and controversies, there's some truth in this.

Well, look, I think Alan Yentob, he was a friend of mine and a great guy.

And yeah,

there was something very, very BBC about him.

He genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believed in public service and broadcasting as public service.

He was a brilliant filmmaker.

He became an executive, you know, director of BBC One and BBC Two at different points, but I think actually was at his best when he was doing his own films, Arts and Culture.

And some of them have been kind of seminal.

You know, his documentary on David Bowie was seen as one of the greatest sort of documentaries ever made.

I got to know him especially well through

we had a mutual friend, Ed Victor, who was my literary agent, and Ed had leukemia and survived.

He's dead now, sadly.

And we got Alan to, we basically raided Alan's contacts book and we we did an annual event.

The first one was with one of Alan's closest friends, who was Mel Brooks.

And Alan was just such a giving guy.

And he got a lot of grief over one of the charities he was involved in, which was completely unfair.

It was a classy sort of British media hounding.

So, no, I think he was a very, very, very exceptional broadcaster and an exceptional human being.

Very good.

Sycamore Gap.

This is more of an information than a question, but it's a jolly information.

Mr.

Campbell, I listened to your trip episode discussing the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree.

From one tree lover to another, it'll hearten you to know the National Trust have grown saplings from the seeds of the original fell tree and are distributing the saplings this year to various charities and institutions throughout the UK.

In the UK MOD, we are receiving one as part of our marking of the 25th anniversary of the ban being lifted on LGBTQ personnel serving in the military.

The Sycamore Gap Tree was a symbol of British strength.

cut down in its prime, much like the British men and women dismissed in the midst of their careers while serving their country.

The 49 Trees of Hope are a beautiful symbol of new beginnings from a census act.

I hope this brings you some tree-based joy.

Kind regards G.

Thompson.

And just to remind people, you don't focus on this.

Sycamore, my goodness, it grows.

I've got a couple of saplings I planted outside.

They are now pushing 17 feet tall within three years, even here in my pretty cold part of Scotland.

Well, I'm imagining, and by the way, yes, thank you very much, G.

Thompson from the MOD.

That does bring me some tree-based joy.

And I think I'm right that the reason why it's there are 49

is because the sycamore gap was 49 feet tall.

So that's brilliant.

And actually, we should put in

the show notes the link to the National Trust story about this, which is that it explains where these 49 saplings are going.

And you'll then be able to follow their growth.

So I have a great belief, always try and get good out of bad.

It was horrible what happened to that tree, and it caused a real sort of uproar around the world.

And we're now going to have 49 versions of it growing up in different parts of Britain.

Final one for you, Rory, from Pippa Mel.

Have either of you been following the story of the genetically modified dire wolves?

Could you give an explainer on the scientific success and the controversy?

And Rory, this is going to have to be you because...

I haven't been following this story, I'm afraid, knows.

But Rory said, can you please ask me about the dire wolves' DNA?

So there I am, I'm asking you.

The dire wolf was,

people know about from Game of Thrones because these puppies of these enormous wolves are found by the heroic family who command the northern reaches of

the kingdom and are given to the kids.

But they are also an Ice Age giant wolf.

And this company called Colossal announced that it had recreated the dire wolf.

So there's been a lot of debate about what's been going on, but but what they actually did was they edited 14 key genes in grey wolf cells to express 20 traits associated with dire wolves, and they're raising these pups in a secure, undisclosed location of 2,000 acres.

Purists would say these aren't actually dire wolves.

What they are is grey wolves which have been edited to become like dire wolves.

But it's a big growing thing this.

I mean Viscount Ridley, who

was the head of Northern Rock and is a prominent Conservative peer and scientist, has also been really interested in the question of bringing back the great orc, a bit like the dodo,

and a lot of interest both in what you can do to manipulate the DNA and also take DNA that you can find in lost specimens.

And actually there's a really fun novel by Sebastian Falkes called The Seventh Son, where essentially a kind of tech bro billionaire gets into gene editing and recreates a Neanderthal human.

And this unfortunate individual is born into the modern world and then finds that his perception of the world, his way and interacting with it, is quite different from that of other humans.

And

that is an increasingly possible story.

If you can gene edit a grey wolf, you can gene edit a lot of things.

Very good.

Well, thank you for following that story and thank you for explaining.

And I'll see you very soon.

See you very soon.

Hopefully not with a dire wolf.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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