135. How to Grow a White Rhino

People I (Mostly) Admire

Thomas Hildebrandt is trying to bring the northern white rhinoceros back from the brink of extinction. The wildlife veterinarian tells Steve about the far-out techniques he employs, why we might see woolly mammoths in the future, and why he was frustrated the day the Berlin Wall came down.

• SOURCES:
  • Thomas Hildebrandt, head of the department of reproduction management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and professor of wildlife reproduction medicine at the veterinary faculty of the Freie Universität Berlin.

• RESOURCES:
  • "An Inside Look at the Embryo Transplant That May Help Save the Northern White Rhino," by Jeffrey Kluger (TIME, 2024).
  • "Mud, Bugs, and Dung: How Rhinos Shape Their World," by Rinjan Shrestha (World Wildlife Fund, 2022).
  • "The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth," by Sam Anderson (The New York Times Magazine, 2021).
  • "Embryos and Embryonic Stem Cells From the White Rhinoceros," by Thomas B. Hildebrandt, Robert Hermes, Cesare Galli, et al. (Nature Communications, 2018).
  • "Loss of a Species – A Giant, Extinct," by Thomas Hildebrandt (TED, 2017).
  • Colossal.

• EXTRAS:
  • "Why Do We Still Teach People to Calculate?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "What’s Stopping Us From Curing Rare Diseases?" by Freakonomics, M.D. (2023).
  • "We Can Play God Now," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).