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At first glance, the pairing of Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson and Colossal Biosciences founder and CEO Ben Lamm is a bit odd. When its onstage at the worlds largest gathering of brands and marketers, it gets even more confusing. But Jackson has been a major investor in Colossal since last year, and he and Lamm were at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity to talk to Chaka Sobhani, president and global chief creative officer at ad agency DDB Worldwide, for a conversation that aimed to find common ground in the creative challenge between Middle Earth and IRL. Colossal, of course, made headlines in April for revealing its first de-extinction project, reintroducing the worlds first dire wolf in 10,000 years. After the stage presentation, Jackson told Fast Company that Colossal has significant storytelling potential, particularly in sparking interest and engagement on issues like environmental conservation. It’s stimulating curiosity, that’s the most important thing, says Jackson. I grew up imagining all sorts of things, imagining flying cars, imagining a woolly mammoth. And the phones, social media, and everything else have the danger of deadening imagination. And so I think that this is an opportunity. Jackson has had some significant input in how Colossal tells its stories. Lamm says that just before the dire wolf announcement, Jackson had a suggestion: He told me, When you announce this, you need to show the world the dire wolf howls, because it’s the first time in 10,000 years anyone’s ever heard that. That just made it so much better. Lamm says Jackson is an active investor. The director and his wife Fran Walsh invested $10 million into the company in October 2024. Peter gives us a lot of advice, says Lamm. Peter connects us to a lot of people in the world, including George RR Martin. Even though he didn’t make dire wolves, he made them famous. Peter actually wants to be involved. Its not about writing a check and then move on to the next deal. Theyre true partners. Jackson believes the real power is in the companys potential impact on conservation. It’s not just de-extinction, which is obviously exciting, but it’s also conservation, says Jackson. It’s saving species that are really endangered now, and using the technology that these guys have developed to create a larger gene pool, for example, the white rhino. There’s only two left.” The most common criticism Jackson hears about Colossal is that it should be spending its time and research on currently endangered species instead of de-extinction. Well, you can actually do both, he says. Both Lamm and Jackson say the de-extinction projects are what get people excited and interested in everything else the company does. Come for the dire wolf, stay for the red wolf. In April, Lamm told the Most Innovative Companies podcast that Colossal had cloned four red wolves that will be able to join the 15 left on earth. The red wolf project, to me, is as magical as the dire wolf, he said. Though sometimes even Jackson gets nervous. I was nervous about the woolly mouse, he says. The company spent 2.5 years editing mammoth genes, then applied its work to mice rather than trying to create a creature that has been extinct for thousands of years. It’s an important part of their research on the way to a mammoth, but I was saying, Do you really want to release it to the public? Because it could play to people’s idea of genetic engineering. Its like your Frankenstein. I was nervous about that. Lamm says the point of the woolly mice was to transparently show the process toward a full woolly mammoth. Its not taking woolly mammoth genes with 200 million years of genetic divergence and ramming it into a mouse. This is part of a gradual road map. Peter brought his concerns to me, but we just feel that if we’re doing radical things, we still need to be radically transparent, says Lamm. To Peter’s point, while some people could be like, Oh, why are they making woolly mice? We thought it was important to educate the public on this is the process of science, and this is also how we ethically get to a mammoth.
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E-Commerce
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a stunning setback to transgender rights. The justices’ 63 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to the one in Tennessee. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the law does not violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same. This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound, Roberts wrote. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best. In a dissent for the court’s three liberal justices that she summarized aloud in the courtroom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.” Efforts to regulate transgender people’s lives The decision comes amid other federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. In April, Trumps administration sued Maine for not complying with the governments push to ban transgender athletes in girls sports. The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people. And the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court fights continue. The president signed another order to define the sexes as only male and female. Trump’s administration has also called for using only therapy, not broader health measures, to treat transgender youths. Some providers have stopped treatment already Several of the states where gender-affirming care has not been banned for minors have adopted laws or state executive orders seeking to protect it. But since Trumps executive order calling for blocking federal funding for the treatment for those under 19, some providers have ceased some treatments. For instance, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia announced last month it would not provide surgeries for patients under 19. The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Susan Kressly, said in a statement the organization is unwavering in its support of gender-affirming care and stands with pediatricians and families making health care decisions together and free from political interference. Five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled transgender, gay and lesbian people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. That decision is unaffected by Wednesdays ruling. But the justices Wednesday declined to apply the same sort of analysis the court used in 2020 when it found sex plays an unmistakable role in employers decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate. Roberts joined that opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was part of Wednesday’s majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett also fully joined the majority but wrote separately to emphasize that laws classifying people based on transgender status should not receive any special review by courts. Barrett, also writing for justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that courts must give legislatures flexibility to make policy in this area. A devastating loss’ or a ‘Landmark VICTORY Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case for transgender minors and their families, said in a statement that the ruling “is a devastating loss for transgender people, our families, and everyone who cares about the Constitution. Mo Jenkins, a 26-year-old trans woman who began taking hormone therapy at 16, said she was disheartened but not surprised by the ruling. My transition was out of survival, said Jenkins, a Texas native and legislative staffer at the state capitol in Austin. Texas outlawed puberty blockers and hormone treatment for minors in 2023. The legislature in May also passed a bill that tightly defines a man and a woman by their sex characteristics. Trans people are not going to disappear, Jenkins said. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti on social media called the ruling a Landmark VICTORY for Tennessee at SCOTUS in defense of Americas children! There are about 300,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17 and 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute, at think tank at the UCLA School of Law that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics. When the case was argued in December, then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and families of transgender adolescents called on the high court to strike down the Tennessee ban as unlawful sex discrimination and protect the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans. They argued the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Tennesses law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors but allows the same drugs to be used for other purposes. Soon after Trump took office, the Justice Department told the court its position had changed. A major issue in the case was the appropriate level of scrutiny courts should apply to such laws. The lowest level is known as rational basis review, and almost every law looked at that way is upheld. Indeed, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati that allowed the Tennessee law to be enforced held that lawmakers acted rationally to regulate medical procedures. The appeals court reversed a trial court that employed a higher level of review, heightened scrutiny, which applies in cases of sex discrimination. Under this more searching examination, the state must identify an important objective and show the law helps accomplish it. Roberts’ 24-page majority opinion was devoted almost entirely to explaining why the Tennessee law, called SB1, should be evaluated under the lower standard of review. The law’s restrictions on treating minors for gender dysphoria turn on age and medical use, not sex, Roberts wrote. Doctors may prescribe puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors of any sex to treat some disorders, but not those relating to transgender status, he wrote. But in her courtroom statement, Sotomayor asserted that similar arguments were made to defend the Virginia law prohibiting interracial marriage that the Supreme Court struck down in 1967. A ban on interracial marriage could be described in the same way as the majority described SB1, she said. Roberts rejected the comparison. Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week to extend a deadline for TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the popular video sharing app, the White House announced Tuesday. Trump had signed an order in early April to keep TikTok running for an additional 75 days after a potential deal to sell the app to American owners was put on ice. As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure. Trump had told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew back to Washington early Tuesday from the Group of Seven summit in Canada that he probably would extend the deadline again. Trump also said he thinks Chinese President Xi Jinping will “ultimately approve a deal to divest TikTok’s business in the United States. It will be the third time Trump has extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when the ban approved by Congressand upheld by the U.S. Supreme Courttook effect. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trumps tariff announcement. It is not clear how many times Trump canor willkeep extending the ban as the government continues to try to negotiate a deal for TikTok, which is owned by Chinas ByteDance. Trump has amassed more than 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. He said in January that he has a warm spot for TikTok. Aamer Madhani, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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