You Asked for More Teeth

I try to read to my babies every night.

I believe reading is fundamental to human growth, but even more than that, I think one of the greatest gifts we can give future generations is a vivid imagination.

I love watching my children’s imaginations bud and flourish in whichever direction they decide to take them.

Freedom of imagination should be protected.

So naturally, the material I read to my babies is all over the place.

Numbers.

Letters.

Nursery rhymes.

Fables.

The Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss classics.

Geography.

Basic introductions to money.

And several important books I am currently developing myself, including:

How to Give Mommy and Daddy a Damn Break

and its forthcoming sequel,

Letters That Will Absolutely Be Sent to Santa Claus If Y’all Don’t Sit Down Somewhere.

😂

Very educational household.

But there is one category that seems to occupy significantly more childhood real estate than everything else.

Dinosaurs.

We are obsessed with dinosaurs.

Both of my daughters have their own favorite dinosaur shows.

And when I audited my own life, I realized dinosaurs are one of those rare childhood fascinations that simply evolve with us.

For me, it started with The Land Before Time.

Fam.

When Littlefoot lost his mama?

That shit hit my generation like the Northridge earthquake.

Littlefoot and them were IT.

Littlefoot was the longneck.

Cera was the mean-ass triceratops.

Spike stayed eating.

Ducky was sensitive as hell.

And somehow I still remember all this about a fictional group of dinosaurs trying to get to the Great Valley.

I’m 42 years old.

I have children.

Bills.

Responsibilities.

And apparently valuable cerebral real estate is still being occupied by Ducky.

Yep yep yep!

But that’s the thing.

There’s something about dinosaurs.

These weren’t dragons.

They weren’t monsters somebody invented.

These enormous creatures actually populated the planet.

At some point in Earth’s distant past, giant animals that look completely unreasonable by modern standards were simply outside.

Walking around.

Eating.

Fighting.

Minding their dinosaur business.

That fascination never really left us.

We just graduated from The Land Before Time to Jurassic Park.

And Jurassic Park gave us a different question:

Just because we can create something…should we?

At the same time, science was changing the dinosaurs themselves.

The dinosaurs I grew up imagining looked like giant reptiles.

Now our understanding is much more complicated.

Some dinosaurs had feathers.

Many were closely related to birds.

Our picture of them keeps changing as the evidence changes.

Science audits itself.

Our imagination gets updated.

Hollywood, however, has a different problem.

Because imagine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a Jurassic Park movie and then telling everybody:

“Good news! We have updated the velociraptors for scientific accuracy.”

And then a large homicidal chicken runs onto the screen.

😂

People came for monsters.

They want teeth.

Which brings me to one of my favorite lines in Jurassic World.

Dr. Henry Wu is confronted about the genetically engineered Indominus rex—a dinosaur that never existed.

He explains that the animals in the park were never truly recreations of prehistoric reality anyway.

They were products.

And then he says:

“But you didn’t ask for reality. You asked for more teeth.”

That line stayed with me.

Because the Indominus rex wasn’t really a dinosaur.

It was an idea of a dinosaur.

A product engineered from different biological ingredients to give people what they wanted a dinosaur to be.

Bigger.

Scarier.

Smarter.

More entertaining.

Reality wasn’t enough.

They wanted more teeth.

Thankfully, this is an entirely fictional movie.

Right?

Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary molecular biologist and the Chief Science Officer of Colossal Biosciences.

Colossal is trying to do something that sounds suspiciously like the opening twenty minutes of a movie where everybody later gets eaten.

They call it de-extinction.

In 2025, Colossal announced three animals—Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi—that it calls functionally de-extincted dire wolves.

Now this is where shit gets interesting.

They did not find a perfectly preserved dire-wolf cell somewhere, clone it and yell:

WELCOME BACK, BIG FELLA.

Scientists reconstructed ancient dire-wolf genomic information, compared it with living canids, edited gray-wolf cells at selected genetic locations associated with dire-wolf characteristics, and then used cloning technology to create the animals.

Colossal calls that functional de-extinction.

Which immediately made me ask:

So...

is that a dire wolf?

Or did we just create something new?

Because those are not necessarily the same question.

And apparently even Beth Shapiro understands that the label is less interesting than the science.

That somehow makes this even more fascinating to me.

We may be entering an era where “What species is this?” has an answer that begins with:

“Well technically…”

😂

Colossal also has plans for the woolly mammoth.

Again, not necessarily by creating a carbon copy of some mammoth that froze to death 10,000 years ago.

The project involves editing living elephant cells with genetic traits associated with mammoth cold adaptation.

Thick hair.

Fat storage.

Smaller ears.

Cold-adapted biology.

Which raises another question.

If we engineer an elephant with enough mammoth characteristics...

when does it become a mammoth?

And who gets to decide?

I find it hilarious that we spent decades making movies warning ourselves about this exact scenario.

Scientists in movies:

“We have resurrected an extinct animal.”

Audience:

NOOOOOOOO.

Scientists in real life:

“We have developed a platform for functional de-extinction.”

Audience:

Oh shit, that’s dope.

😂

And to be clear, Colossal says this technology has conservation applications: developing tools for genetic rescue, preserving endangered species and understanding how lost traits might be restored.

That’s meaningful.

It is also still wild as hell.

Because once a technology exists, the question eventually becomes larger than the reason it was invented.

Which brings me to the question that really got me:

If I had this kind of power…what would I create?

Easy.

I would save humanity.

Obviously.

Give me unlimited resources.

Gene-editing technology.

Artificial intelligence.

A laboratory.

And absolutely nobody around capable of telling me:

“Marcus, this is starting to sound a little crazy.”

I would create what I call:

Designer DNA.

At first, my intentions would be beautiful.

Eliminate inherited diseases.

Prevent devastating genetic disorders.

Help people live longer, healthier lives.

Who could argue with that?

Then I’d improve cognition.

Why leave the brain alone?

Let’s make everybody smarter.

Then physical durability.

Stronger bones.

Better cardiovascular systems.

Improved immune response.

Perfect skin.

Perfect eyesight.

And while we’re already in there...

fam...

I’m finally getting a pinky toenail.

Science has ignored this crisis for too long.

Then I’d use it on myself.

Perfect my DNA.

Improve my intelligence.

Optimize my reasoning.

Make myself physically elite.

Maybe add wings.

Nothing obnoxious.

Tasteful wings.

Black.

Possibly gold trim.

I’m still The Moody Maestro.

There has to be some brand consistency.

😂

Eventually I would create a system capable of giving these improvements to everybody.

No disease.

No genetic disadvantages.

No biological suffering that we knew how to prevent.

Humanity 2.0.

And people would love me.

TIME magazine:

MARCUS MOODY — GREATEST HUMAN EVER

Probably a beautiful picture too.

Black turtleneck.

Wings tucked behind me.

Very humble.

Of course there would be critics.

There are always critics.

They’d say:

“Human imperfection has value.”

I’d say:

Cool.

But your kid doesn't need sickle cell disease to appreciate life.

They’d say:

“You’re changing what it means to be human.”

I’d say:

Human beings change what it means to be human every day.

They’d say:

“I don't want my child genetically modified.”

And that’s where things would get interesting.

Because now their unmodified child has to compete against children who are healthier, stronger and more cognitively capable.

Is that fair?

Would genetic enhancement become a luxury?

Would wealthy families create advantages that money currently can't buy?

Would there eventually be a biological class system?

And here is where my beautiful humanitarian project starts getting a little...

Henry Wu-ish.

Because after years of perfecting my own cognition, building enormous influence and watching my technology “improve” humanity...

I might start thinking:

Why are we even debating this?

I have the data.

I have the technology.

I have the results.

I am objectively helping people.

Just flip the switch.

Everybody gets upgraded.

Problem solved.

Perfectly logical.

Right?

...

Right?

At what exact point did I stop helping humanity...

and start deciding what humanity should be?

That's the shit that bothers me.

Because in my imaginary story, I never became evil.

There was no thunderstorm.

No sinister laugh.

No bald cat sitting in my lap.

Every decision made sense to me.

Every step had a justification.

I was helping.

Then I gained more capability.

More influence.

More certainty.

More power.

And somewhere along the way, the question changed from:

“Can I help?”

to:

“Why should anybody be allowed to stop me?”

That's a very different question.

And unfortunately...

we don't even need my fictional laboratory to explore it.

In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of genetically edited twin girls known publicly as Lulu and Nana.

He used CRISPR-Cas9 to alter embryos in an attempt to affect the CCR5 gene associated with HIV infection.

These weren't theoretical cells sitting in a laboratory.

Children were born.

Real human children. You can check on their current status at any time.

The experiment was widely condemned by scientists and ethicists.

He Jiankui was later sentenced to three years in prison for illegal medical practices.

The future had already arrived.

We just didn't all agree that it should have.

And here we are again.

Extinct-animal traits being reconstructed.

Gene editing becoming increasingly precise.

Artificial intelligence accelerating scientific discovery.

And this year, a company co-founded by David Sinclair began human trials of ER-100, an experimental epigenetic-restoration therapy.

The current trial isn't giving anybody abs and turning their biological clock back to 23.

Calm down.

It's testing whether controlled expression of specific factors can restore function in aging or damaged retinal cells in people with certain optic-nerve diseases.

Still...

we are testing cellular rejuvenation in human beings.

That's real.

The line between science fiction and Tuesday afternoon is getting disrespectfully thin.

This started with dinosaurs.

Then dire wolves.

Then mammoths.

Then gene-edited babies.

Then rejuvenated cells.

And somehow I ended up genetically redesigning humanity and giving myself wings.

Typical Tuesday.

😂

But underneath all of it is one question I can't shake:

What happens when curiosity gains enough power that it no longer has to ask permission?

Maybe curiosity and madness aren't opposites.

Maybe they're neighbors.

Maybe the difference is restraint.

Because human beings have always imagined impossible things.

That's one of our greatest gifts.

We imagine.

We explore.

We question.

We create.

And sometimes those questions cure diseases.

Sometimes they save lives.

Sometimes they open entirely new doors in human understanding.

But eventually somebody walks through a door and realizes:

Nobody can make me come back.

That's when curiosity becomes power.

And power introduces another question:

Not can I?

Not even should I?

But:

Who gets to tell me no?

Maybe that's where the hero and villain begin to look alike.

Both believe they're creating a better world.

Both believe the stakes justify their actions.

Both might even have the data.

The difference may simply be what they're willing to do once somebody stands in their way.

And maybe that's why Dr. Wu's line still hits me.

Because perhaps the problem was never the dinosaur.

Perhaps the problem was the request.

We didn't ask for reality.

We asked for more teeth.

—Moody Maestro

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