Bittersweet Infamy - #1 - Barbra Streisand's Cloned Dogs

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Josie tells Taylor about the late great Samantha Streisand-Brolin (2003-2017), her clones, and the commercial pet cloning industry.

Hello, and welcome to Bitter Sweden for Me, the podcast about infamous people, places, and things. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. Each week, one of us will tell the other a story. The listener doesn't know what the story is going to be. The only rule? The subject matter.

Must be infamous. How you doing, Josie? Oh, I'm doing good. I'm doing real good, actually. Yeah, I know. It's something, there's a lightness in the air lately. Okay? Yeah.

I agree. It's a little strange. What could it be? Who knows? What could it be? Um, so yeah, uh, for the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of people who will surely be listening to this first effort. Dozens.

The dozens who aren't friends and family of minor Josie's. Josie and I are long story short. We're both writers. We, we went to school together in Vancouver. I still live in Vancouver. She now lives in Houston. Texas. Houston, Texas.

Houston, TX. There, I don't think there is another Houston, to be honest. There must be. Because Houston's for sure one of those like colonizer names, right? So they never stop at one. That's true. The point is that they don't stop. The whole point is that they're, that they're just pissing all over the world.

But yeah, so we, as, like many people as the pandemic has kind of taken hold, we've been eager to find ways to stay in touch and engage ourselves creatively and we thought we both like weird shit. Why don't we tell each other stories about weird shit? We like weird shit and we like talking to each other about weird shit. I think that's the other thing too. So I'm very excited. So basically how it'll go each week is one or the other of us will tell a story.

If it might be me telling Josie a story, it might be Josie telling me a story. If I'm the listener, I have no idea what Josie's kind of coming in prepared. So it's like an advent calendar. Ooh. Yeah. We should have gone with bittersweet advent calendar shit. Ah, damn it. We missed the boat.

Well, you know, marketing. We can, that's a good merch idea coming up. This is just the first step in our podcast empire. We really should pace ourselves. And then before we start, we've decided that, I mean, I shouldn't say we, I personally hate podcasts where they talk all the time. Let me rephrase that. I don't know why you wanted to do a podcast.

There you go. So we're just going to observe some meditative silence for a while. No, I hate podcasts where they talk to you. They do too much internet or off the top. You know what I mean? So each week we got two minutes to get our shit in. So we got two minutes of just regimented brisk small talk brisk brisk. There's not, it's not a hard two minutes.

But it's a brisk two minutes. It's a brisk. It's like an autumn morning. Josie, while we record this episode, the American election has just been settled. How's it all doing down in Houston? You know, Houston, despite Texas being red, red, red, Houston is a blue, it's a little blueberry, like Austin, like Dallas, the major, like the Rio Grande Valley. So there was talk of Texas flipping this election.

That was really exciting. But that didn't really happen. The flip was a flop. The flip was a flop. And that's okay, because at least Trump got voted out so far. I mean, he did, he doesn't say he did, but he did. So the stuff in Houston is feeling pretty good. There's a certain lightness to the air, which is, which is always very, very nice, considering

that there's a lot to be tense about. So this was one thing to like have off the tense plate, and so that was good. Obviously, Donald Trump is his own piece of shit. And obviously, it goes without saying that just because like Trump has been voted out of office doesn't mean that all of the kind of various structural problems and endemic racism and stuff like that, that he was a mirror to and like a megaphone to, it doesn't mean all that magically goes away. But what it does mean, and I'm very grateful for this and just a purely selfish way is

I don't have to listen to that fucking goof Penteco Donald fucking Trump every day for the rest of four years. It's really nice. That's a really nice, and I'm really excited to not think about the presidency. Like Joe Biden is a perfect wallpaper. I'm like, that's, I don't know. And I think there's something nice to about this weekend as well, because the news broke or like, you know, the AP confirmed Saturday morning, but it's just kind of like, there's

a lot of work to do. But right now it feels like, let's just let's just take a knee and celebrate what we got here. You know, it's been, it's been a rough one. Yeah. But you know what I think would would make it a little bit better is a story podcast with one of us who to tell the other story about maybe something infamous. I wasn't thinking infamous, but if that's like your vibe.

So I've got a coin. We decided ahead of time that we weren't going to decide ahead of time, which one of us is going first. So I've got this commemorative coin. I don't know if you can see it. Adam got it for me in, I believe a bathroom in Portland, maybe a strip club. Yeah. Although I don't know what I've been doing.

Yeah. Bathrooms in Portland. Yeah. Bathrooms and strip clubs. Yeah. Yeah. And on, it's a novelty coin. And on one side it says big cats are dangerous and it's got a picture of a lion's head.

And then on the flip side it's got a picture of a kitten and it says, but a little pussy never hurt anyone. That's a love, what, what, what a thing to commemorate. That's beautiful. Yeah. So it's something, you know, for those of us who don't have it tattooed across our collar bones. It's just an important thing to remember.

Yeah. So your call, Josephine, do you want to be big cat or a little pussy? Ah, a little pussy. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Starting off the podcast, bittersweeten for me, little pussy. That's my DJ name now.

Oh no. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Just the smallest. Meow. Meow.

Okay. Cool. All right. I'm excited to tell you this story, Taylor. So I want you to think about 1997. Okay. Mine's in 1997 too. Fuck.

Title of the show. Okay. That's fine. Okay. We both did 1997. Okay. Go ahead. Okay.

So you, your mind is there. You, what if we, what if we picked the same one? Of all of the infamous things in the entire world? What if we picked the same thing? Okay. Go. Oh God. Well, no, I, I, okay.

1997. Uh, your puke shells are grimy because you shower in them. You have those weird like hair tendrils that look like like hair fangs or whatever. I did. I never had, I never had the Leonardo DiCaprio cut. Sadly. No, I did for a bit. I had the George Clooney Caesar for a little bit too.

Anyway, go ahead. The fan. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice one. So, uh, you're fan and out and 1997 and you hear probably in a science class, uh, that they have cloned a sheep in Scotland named Dolly. Okay.

Yes. I'm so excited. I don't know anything about this. Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, we're, we're, this is the beginning step. We're moving. Oh my God.

So this, this is, you've got an arc. I will stop interrupting you. Tell your story. I don't know if I have an arc. We'll find one. All right. So they cloned Dolly, uh, in Scotland, the first successful clone of a, of a relatively large mammal.

And, and through the years they do more and more, they do a lot of livestock. They do like mice, sheep, other smaller, you know, I don't know, pigs. Okay. Stuff like that. Um, so agricultural stuff that like, this is my assumption, but we as humans are more comfortable like harvesting livestock, you know, like we eat pigs, we eat, you know, like, yeah. Yeah.

So the idea of cloning isn't quite the same, like, I guess ethical or moral question because it's like, well, if you can slaughter a pig, why can't you just clone it? You know? Sure. Sure. I mean, I like, I like what you just said, doesn't necessarily reflect my personal ethics, but I can see how someone would get there. Yes.

Uh, the, you know, humanity at large, we'll say that, um, which we know has never been always right. So now fast forward. It's 2017. Okay. My hair has grown out. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. You got rid of the fan. Yeah. And Barbara Streisand. Oh, yes. Sorry. I'm so excited. Yeah.

Her 14 year old dog, Samantha, lovingly called Sammy, has passed away. And Sammy is, and I won't say her breed, right? It's a Coton de Thouliard dog? That is for sure, um, something that was specialty bred in a lab to Barbara Streisand's specifications. Most likely. Like that dog doesn't exist. Yeah. No.

Uh-uh. I mean, now it does, right? Yeah. But, so, um, and Sammy's a special one, uh, because usually this breed has straight hair. Sammy has curly hair. Right. Like had curly hair. Bichon Frise kind of vibe.

Yeah. Like a poofy white dog, small, cute, just, you know, you want to groom it all the time because it looks great when it's like not filthy, all that stuff. So Sammy dies and Babs is in her Malibu mansion, which, um, just a side note is insane. Her house is insane. And she, like, she has a basement that, you know, usually people store equipment or stuff for, you know, whatever it is. They use their basement as storage and she's like, you know what?

I use mine as storage too, but I've built a whole bunch of shops in my basement to display my storage. Did you know this? She has, like, an underground Christmas village kind of vibe. Yeah. It's like a sweet shop that's like filled with, like, yes. The rich are so different from, from, from the rest of us. It's fucking bizarre.

Yeah. And also side note to this side note, I found this out while I was on Molly and I was in this big mansion house and they had a coffee table book about Barbra Streisand's house. So I, like, Roland was, like, looking through this coffee table book being like, holy shit. What a treat. It was a treat. That must have been for you. It was a little hidden treat.

Yeah. And that's, that's exactly what you want to find when you're, when it's 2 a.m. and, and you know, you're tired of hugging whoever you just met and you're just like, oh God. Yeah. Yeah. What a coffee table book. Yeah. About Barbra Streisand.

Oh, do you know the other big thing about Barbra Streisand's house? Are you about to tell me this? No. Because if so, I won't step on you. Do you know about the Streisand effect? No. Oh, so this is perfect. So this very same house is, was listed on, I don't know if it was that there were satellite

images on, on like a Google Maps or some sort of like celebrities, where do the stars live website, but someone had obtained these photos of Barbra Streisand's house and put them on the internet. And she wasn't stoked about it. So she went hell for leather to try to get these photos taken down off the internet. And of course, the internet being the den of assholes that it is, responds to this by like, let's see how far and wide we can get these images of Barbra Streisand's house out there.

And so now, anytime someone desperately tries to get something removed from the internet and it backfires and just amplifies it more, they call it the Streisand effect. Oh my God, that's beautiful. So you were already learning off each other. This is so good. Wow. I really, I like that. I'm going to use that.

The Streisand effect. The Streisand effect. Yeah. So, so Sammy's 14 and she, she passes as we all do. And Barbara is upset. She's very close to this dog. She loves this dog so much. If only there was some way to bring the dog back.

If only. Now, my original thinking is like, there are minions and she like sends them out to like find how to do this, da, da, da. But in my research, I found that she actually was just talking to a neighbor, another like mansion Malibu neighbor who had cloned their dog. And she was like, Oh, well, I'll do that, which makes it feel very like more benign in a weird way. Or like also in this very weird way too.

It's like this higher weird echelon of the rich where it's like, Oh, you're a dog, that's so cute. Get it done. No, no. It's definitely got that energy of just like people, people with more money than they know what to do with and it's very, it's very, do you remember when they did the Richie Rich movie with Macaulay Culkin and his, the big thing, they showed us all the shit that Richie Rich could do.

He could drive around on ATVs, he had this big slingshot. But the big thing was that he had a fucking McDonald's 24 seven in his like, in his lobby. And that was just, that was like prime kid, like luxury porn or whatever, just the idea of McD's on tap. And I feel like this dog cloning and this, I've, I've set up this fucking Lars von Trier fake store in my basement. That's all, this is all very part of the same milieu. Yeah.

Yeah, it does. It kind of the Scrooge McDuck diving into like the points, yeah, where it's just like whole next level stuff. Yeah. And so in order to get the cloning done, she sends off cell samples from the mouth and stomach of her 14 year old Sammy and, and she sends it to, and in my research, I found that she sent it to two different companies, but, but it seems from, from her own writing and, and Barbara Streisand's own point of view, she sent it to one company called Viagin,

which is in Texas. It's here in Texas. Oh, local. It's a local, local company. Local, local boy makes big. And in the meantime, so she sent off these samples, these tissue samples to Texas, and she has the breeder, Sammy's breeder, of course, Sammy's bread, full bread. I didn't.

I somehow didn't assume pure, what was that French ass name that you said, I assume she didn't find one of those in the fucking SPCA is a backyard. Right. Exactly. And the breeder gets in touch with her and says, I know how much you love Sammy. I know you're devastated. We have a close cousin who is a close cousin of Sammy's who I would love to give to you. And so Barbara says, of course.

So she takes her and names her Miss Fanny from Funny Girl. I haven't seen Funny Girl. Oh my God. I don't know. I've never seen funny. I'm very, you know, the, you're, you're going to shit when I tell you the one Barbara thing I've seen, but I'll tell you at the end, I'll tell you at the end. Okay.

Okay. So a short time after she takes Miss Fanny, which is the same breed of dog, the clones arrive. Now I say colons because the company tried multiple times because it doesn't always take and what they ended up having cause dogs have litters, right? Yeah. Is four, four Sammy clones were born. Four clones.

Send in the clones. Send in the fucking four. Send in the clones. Jesus. Take away one because one of the puppies died shortly after birth. RIP. Exactly. But so that means she had three and so there, a lot of dogs in her house.

She lives in a mansion, but it's still a little too many dogs because she's a dog. Wait, it's, it's three clones and then Miss Fanny. And Miss Fanny. Yeah. Yes. We're all technically related, I guess. Genetically. Miss Fanny, genetically Miss Fanny, if the clones are, and I don't understand the science

of cloning exactly, but my interpretation of it is that a clone is an exact genetic match to whatever it was cloned of. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So there's, so she's cousin to the three Sammys who are not, I guess you would call them the closest thing is triplets, but effectively they're all the same dog. Right.

Yeah. So you, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So this is too many dogs for Barbara Streisand. She lives in a mansion, but it's just, she's the dog, a dog owner who likes to bring her dogs with her everywhere. So she couldn't bring five conceivably, I don't know.

If you're Barbara Streisand, I don't know why you couldn't bring five dogs with you. You're Barbara Streisand. No, of course you could. Or rotate the dogs, or get like a full-time dog nanny. I don't know. She can live in one of your fucking stores, you psycho. Sorry. I should be, I should be so judgmental.

So okay, so she, she has one of the clones and she gives it away to somebody, somebody that he worked for her, like a, I don't know, like a lawyer who worked for her, something like that. His daughter really connected with the dog. So she gave one of the dogs away and she kept two. So she's got two identical dogs and another dog that's very same breed and everything like that. Yeah.

One of the identical dogs, she dresses one in purple and the other in red. So one is called Miss Scarlett and one is called Miss Lavender. I would have gone Professor Plum, but fair. I agree, but do what you gotta do. And so that's how she tells them apart. I don't know how she tells the third one apart because it most likely looks exactly the same, but not exactly, right? So okay, so she has these three dogs, two of whom are clones.

Okay. So this all was revealed in a variety, uh, interview with Barbara Streisand that was like this very in depth interview where it was like your past, your present, your future barbs, where, what are you doing? And then like offhand, very casually, she was just like, Oh yeah, those are my clone dogs over there. And of course, like it's mentioned in the interview, but it explodes from the interview and it explodes.

Of course. And it explodes big enough that Barbara Streisand herself then writes a short article for the New York Times. Oh my God. Yeah. Describing the process and the, and the whole, you know, for the rest of us who want to get our dead dogs cloned and have the means to do so, which I assume is most of us. Right.

Exactly. Um, and so of course there's, there's a bit of a Barbara Streisand effect there, right? Cause there's like this more moral ethical thing and there's this really famous photo of like, of Ms. Scarlett and Ms. Violet. And they're like posing at Sammy's gravestone, one, Sammy has a gravestone, two, the dogs are like posing. That's the least crazy thing you've told me, but yes, I mean, a dog gravestone. That's where I draw the line.

Well, when, okay. So when our family pets died, my mom, and we had like the, I think the biggest dog we had was like a 30 or 40 pound dog. My mom took McDuff and Brandy and Chewy. Oh. Yeah. And, and Kitty Loco. And she would put them in, she'd put them in pillowcases and bury them in our backyard.

Like, but that's, there's lots of, there's lots of cultures where like a body is buried in just a shroud or whatever. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with like, you put on a little bit of fabric, but like in a perfect world, it's not like they're going to need to exhume your dog to determine if foul play was involved. It's, it's okay to let them just kind of go to the elements. Exactly. Exactly.

I think it's just like, there are many ways that people deal with the passing of a pet. My mom, sorry to interrupt. My mom came down the stairs right after our dog Boston had died. And she came down the stairs and she had, she's going to fucking kill me for telling this story, but I'm going to do it anyway. She had a Christmas ornament in her hand, and it was like a Santa sitting on a star or something. And she was like, you know, I've been thinking about burying Boston with this.

And I just look at her and I'm doing this math and I had him like the dog wasn't born in December. We didn't get it in December. Is the dog dead at this point? Or is the dog still very much alive? It's not. The dog, Boston has died. Okay.

And I say, so I finally am just like, why do you want to bury the dog with that Christmas ornament? And she's like, and just like stone face. She's just like, you know, I love Christmas and then goes back up the stairs and was like, you know what? That's if she's, I don't know if she, I don't think she ended up. I should ask her, mom, if you're listening, you know, I love Christmas, you know, I love, she does though.

She's not lying. Yeah. Christmas as much as anyone I know. So oh yeah. Yeah. She has her, has her three dogs at home now, whom she loves unconditionally and two of whom are clones. They're exact genetic replicas of her Sammy dog.

Yeah. Now, even Barbara Streisand has said that their personalities are different. If we know anything about cloning, it's that the genetic makeup is exactly the same. But of course, nature versus nurture, blah, blah, blah, right? And we're, you're just going to have a very different dog that Sammy was a dog by herself. These dogs are three, you know, it's just like, they're different personalities and Barbara Streisand has said like they are very different. So I was like, okay, this is some crazy rich person bullshit.

Like this is Barbara Streisand and the stores under her house. And like, this is just next level, right? And then I started researching this Viagin place that she sent her. Are you about to do, are you about to do an expose? Is this, is this umbrella court from like Resident Evil and like, is it going down? No, not really. I mean, I just want to like, I just want to point out this, yeah, this, the infamy of this particular like industry, I think is really fascinating to me because they do,

and it's not, I don't want to just point out Viagin because there's some others as well, not one being in South Korea, but there's multiple. So, so I'll refer to them as like this industry, I think that might be fair. But this industry does a lot to normalize this. Like there's a lot of advertisements and like info YouTube videos where it's like cute little pen drawings and someone explaining how, how clones are made and like interviews with people who just love their new pets and how it's so beautiful to have the memory of their old animal and this new beautiful animal, da, da, da.

And then, and then you kind of start looking at the prices and it's extremely expensive. Yeah, I would assume so. Right. Okay, let me guess. Can I do my price take a shot? Yes, yes, yes, please guess. Yeah. Okay.

Oh God, on the, on the very, oh my God, because like getting, just getting IVF if you're like a normal human person with a uterus or whatever is, is runsy in the thousands, right? Is it 100 grand a pop or is it less? There's multiple steps, but I think it would be less than that. Okay. Okay. Like is it like 10 grand a pop? Are we going like around there?

So, Viagen has put up on their website that they do cats and cats are 35,000 to clone and dogs are 50,000 to clone. Wow. Yeah, but that is just the cloning process that does not involve, you have to take samples from the animal and you can do that at any time in the animal's life. So if you do it quite early on or, you know, if you do it well before you clone the animal, then you have to also cryogenically freeze that biological material. Right.

So they, they're charging for storage and stuff presumably to them. Exactly. So that's where the price varies because you can, you can save a biological sample and then wait 30 years to clone the animal. That's totally fine, but the price tag would be much higher, right? And it's, I don't know, it's just really, it's really crazy because it also feels, and this, like looking at, looking at more people who have done this too, I'm finding a lot more people who like exhaust their savings funds.

Wow. As opposed to just rich people who have it to burn, it's people who don't necessarily have it to burn, but are so grief stricken by the loss of an animal or whatever that they're, this is their way of attempting to, oh, that's quite sad. And it, yeah, it is really sad. And there's cause, cause there's a lot of people who I've read about who like they're still just freezing, they're cryogenically freezing their animals, biological matter and waiting cause they can't afford it yet.

And it's just like, oh my gosh, like this is, it seems very predatory on the part of this industry and that's just on the humans involved. That's not including the animals. So the other thing about the whole process is that they, so they take biological matter from the animals, but it has to be born somehow, right? So they find another dog who is, has to be a female dog and they, it's an invasive surgery and they extract the eggs from that dog. Get out of town.

Okay. And they usually have to extract quite a few eggs from multiple dogs because it takes a few rounds to get the exact like fertilization correct. And okay. They have to get the eggs from somewhere, but then they also have to put it in a surrogate dog. So this is a whole nother animal that has to be involved in this or multiple animals that has to be involved in this, which is really crazy.

It's kind of like this underground like underclass group of animals who are all in this industry to support the cloning of a loved animal. It's like a, it's like a loved animal puppy milk clone thing. Yeah. So it has like all the, it has all like the, the strange money and class thing of the puppy mill, right? And kind of the issues of, of, of buying puppies, you know, don't breed or buy when shelter puppies die, right?

So it has that, but then it also has the moral question of the cloning because you're not only not adopting a dog that could be on the street and needs a home, but you're also endangering these other animals lives or, or like, you're endangering, you're endangering these other animal lives. And there's also like a eugenics component to it. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's this weird kind of like, it's not necessarily that you're like selecting dogs

to be biologically superior, although I'm sure that the same technology or whatever could be easily repurposed to be used in that way. But it's, it's, it's more just that you're, you're attempting, you're, you're very rigidly controlling the DNA of what is born because you're literally saying I want it to be a clone of, of Sammy. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

And then it's just like, I don't know. There's so, and you're not getting the same dog because there's no, you're getting the same genetic dog. It's not the same dog. It's not the same, yeah. It's twins are, twins are genetically identical and they're not the same person. Yeah. Talk to any twins.

Identical twins. They're not the same as the other twin. Yeah. Exactly. But there's a lot, there's a lot of weirdness going on with it. And so I was kind of thinking back to like, well, is, you know, how, how common is this? Like is this a thing that like gets done all the time and we just like Barbara Streisand and her neighbor and like all these testimonies that I saw from people who like look like,

you know, normal ass Honda driving people, right? It's like rent and make and rent and paying $50,000 to say, you're not, you're not fucking making rent. If you're trying to clone, maybe if you're cloning your cat, yeah, not your dog, maybe your cat, but definitely not your dog. And the dog thing too is kind of interesting because we're also taught that dog breed has a lot to do with personality. So there's already this kind of undercurrent of like, well, yeah, their genetic makeup addresses

their personality in a direct way, which is not really true at all. Like dog breed, yeah, pugs have issues breathing because genetically they have issues. You know what I mean? Like golden retrievers are really nice or whatever, but it's that's all in the way that we treat them and then the way that we raise them. Yeah. Yeah. No, for, and for sure.

And for a lot of the things that you're saying, like, oh, pugs have trouble breathing or there's like, if you get an all white bull terrier kind of thing, bad kidneys, bad eyes, you know what I mean? Yeah. But that's because of the way that, not even just the way they are genetically, but it's like specifically because of the way that people bred them, right? Yeah. Am I wrong about that?

Like it's, it's cause domesticated dogs would be wolves if we hadn't stuck our dick in. You know what I'm not literally. Hope not. That's a whole nother animal rights issue. I was going to say, I was going to say, you're not going to like my episode of the podcast. Fair enough, fair enough. But okay.

So then I was thinking like, is this as common as they want, as these, as this industry wants you to make it, which is, which is crazy because it is like, it is intense sci-fi and yet in the advertising of it, they don't want it to be, they don't want these to be like Frankenweenies. They want them to be like, this is your beautiful jelly bean that you, and you, and he's back in better than ever, you know, and it's like, new. And so I talked to my friend, Chelsea Rose, who is the manager of a veterinary hospital in San Diego, in a part of San Diego, Chelsea. Yeah.

Hey, Chelsea. Um, in a part of San Diego that is extremely wealthy, Rancho San Diego, sorry, not San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe is, uh, Oh, I know, I know Rancho Santa Fe. Yeah. Pretty up there in terms of, uh, the money and, and so she works in this, in this area of San Diego. And I'm like, okay, if any place is doing this is taking these samples for, and sending them off to these companies, it's got to be in Rancho Santa Fe.

But she said that they've never been asked to do it. And they, and they've never, and I, she doesn't know if they would, they would have to like figure that out. But there's, that's a conversation with the board kind of thing, I'm sure. Exactly. Yeah. Cause they're also an adoption service. So they might be like, that is kind of antithetical to what we, we wouldn't help breed either.

So, so nobody has asked, um, to do it there, which makes me think that it's really not as, as common as they want you to believe it is. Um, cause they also, her, her place has done some experimental stuff with like, uh, stem cells, which is kind of the, you know, there's a similar kind of vibe there. But it is very different still. Um, so, yeah, this cloning stuff is, is really, really fucking wild. And that it's just like, happening. Like there is no real regulation.

That to me strikes me as, cause I feel like, I don't want to sound like a fence sitter here, but I do try to be somebody who, when I don't have all of the information about an issue, I'll admit that instead of trying to sound it like, and sound like I know it all like taken up a position that I can't really back up. So I will say that like my instinctive response there was to have, I have that eugenics thought, I have that, um, who does this serve and why kind of thought, but I will say that like, I don't know all of the ethics around something like cloning and I don't know all of the situations where maybe something like this would be useful for whatever reason, but I will say that the

fact that you just told me that there is no regulation to this industry gives me pause. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And cause yeah, there's the other hand of it too. Like this Viagen company worked with the San Diego Zoo to, uh, clone an endangered horse species. And it's like, yeah, yeah, we can do that.

Yeah, that's great. I love that. I mean, I wonder, I do wonder how much, um, use it is to, um, make copies of an endangered species that are all biologically identical to one another, but endangered though, right? So they'll hopefully, they're going to die anyway. We might as well fuck around. Yeah. But yeah.

And I just, I also think too, it's like, yeah, this industry that seems to be very predatory against people in, in very vulnerable situations, like after they're, I hate that, I hate people who prey on the vulnerable. I hate televangelists. I hate, which I'm sure I'll do. If this thing goes on, I'll do a televangelist at some point because they're, they're kind of a pet bugaboo mind, but, um, people who abuse positions of power over others. And I think it's quite yucky to, to take advantage of somebody's grief.

Yeah. And when I was talking with Chelsea too, I mean, she was also talking about the animals involved, like not just the surrogate mom and surrogate mom's dogs and like the dogs that they take the eggs from. It's also like that clone dog. You are already assuming as the owner that it's going to be like your other dog, whether or not- And it will be.

Yeah. Yeah. Or you're just like, you're, you're constantly comparing the dogs, right? And that's not fair, one, to the memory of the dog, of the dog who passed. And it's certainly not fair to the dog that's trying to live its little life. I've seen too many episodes of the Twilight Zone where some kid gets hit by a car and then they fucking bring in a robot kid and they think it's going to solve all their problems. And let me tell you something.

It never does. It never does. No. And if Rod Serling knew that in fucking 1961, yeah, maybe Barbra Streisand, I shouldn't, but like at the same time, who am I to fucking, you know, like Babs is going to do, she's got more money than God. Yeah. What happened?

Okay. So you never, is there an end to this story with, with Miss Lavender and Miss Scarlet? They're going strong. They're going strong. They're going strong. They are healthy. They're still kicking. Viable, kicking, barking.

Viable. Viable. Yeah. I don't know where, I don't know if she's trying to like continue the cloning cycle. Why? She can't just keep, she must have fucking noticed that the dogs are different. And she has said, she's like publicly said they have different personalities, assumably from themselves because they're two separate dogs and of course from Sammy.

Of course. So. Of course. It would be interesting just to kind of follow her and see if she does it again because that would be, it's like who does this, who, who, one, who does this and then two, who does it twice, you know? Do you know that British documentary seven up where they, every seven years, we should do that with Barbara Streisand's cloned dogs.

Yes. Yeah. Perfect. It could be called like. Seven pup. That's way better than what I was going to say. What were you going to say? I don't know dude, that's pretty good.

That's a tough one. So we might need to flip the pussy coin again. Yeah, but that's my, that's my little dive into, into pet cloning. That's so good. That was so, I, it's not, okay, so let me tell you what my one thing that I watched Barbara Streisand on is. Oh yeah, yeah. If it seemed, if it seemed like I was familiar with what you were going to tell me, which

I was familiar with, I, I, I'll just tell you, I'll just tell you, I was familiar with that here. I'm still pissed that you didn't give me the story of Dolly, but the story of Barbara Streisand's dogs is much better. So me and Adam were, my ex, my, my ex-boyfriend were watching Barbara Streisand had just done a new Netflix special and I'm, I'm not particularly a Barbara person and I don't suspect he is either except for the fact that we're kind of both gay and obviously and a little, no homo.

No homo, my friend, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Um, he, uh, we, we both kind of know of Barbara and, and the legend that is Barbara and she's like a camp icon and, and whatever and has a, has a beautiful singing voice. Yeah. So we've decided to put it on just to see what crazy old Babs was up to and we kind of skip through, skip through, skip through. And the very end is, I don't know if Barbara was literally singing memories, but in my,

or, you know, memory, um, we're going to have to pay for that now. That's nice. Um, I don't remember what she was singing, but it was this like, oh my God, the most lovingly composed montage of Samantha, um, who I guess had died while the production was ongoing and had appeared in some of the backstage stuff and whatever. So it was just this like, and it referred to her as, um, Samantha Streisand Brolin. Like it said, like, like RIP in loving memory, blah, blah, blah, but we were not expecting this at all.

And so it like, it, it caught us off guard, right? And we were both like laughing, a little laughing, not that a dog had died, but just laughing like what an absurd display of love and devotion to this poor dog that's passed away. And then, um, some time afterwards, it came across my desk that I don't know if Barbara had had the dog cloned or was looking into getting it cloned. I suspect that it's probably whenever she did that interview or whatever. But all I knew, and so I was just expecting that you were going to tell me Barbara Streisand had her dog cloned and I was going to faint in surprise and it would be a great first

episode. But what I, what I didn't know was I didn't realize that she'd gotten like the cousin or the three extra dogs. One of what she gave away, which feels like a ludicrous thing to do with a dog that you paid fucking $50,000 for, but that's just me. I mean, it was, maybe she had a little pet store in the basement. Maybe she had a little pet store in the basement. I was like, no, in my head, it's, um, it's, it's a woman in a fur coat made of Dalmatians.

But yeah, there's, there's that too. Yeah. So yeah, that was, that was my, that was my, my Barbara Streisand knowledge and I feel, I feel much more informed. So thank you. Good. Good. And, and also, um, I didn't know, I didn't know dick that this was an industry, but

of course it is. Yeah, of course. Yeah, pretty wild industry. Would you clone Batman if it were free? You know, I was doing all this research and really thinking about it with B-man in my lap and no, I would not, I would not come. I love that little fucker, but I love that fucker. But what?

Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. And then there's that weird, like, uh, discordant, like uncanny valley thing where it would look like Batman, but it would not be Batman. And so you'd have like a little imposter in your home.

You know? Yeah. You'd be evil. You'd be evil that way. Oh, evil Batman. You'd have a little white goatee. Yeah. Yeah.

And also I'd be that lady in the neighborhood with like a 60, 75 grand, 75, 100 grand, whatever. You know, way too much. You don't, you don't have to tell people how much you spent on it. Yeah. Numbers are, I don't, I, I have a, I have, uh, arts degrees. Exactly. I was, I, I'm going to try to figure out what the moral of this story is.

That seems like a, a sensible way to end this. Yeah. Well, okay. I'll, I have, I have a little, uh, a little bite-sized moral here. Give me a moral. I think that pets are very important parts of our lives and. That's it. That's the moral.

That's the moral. No, I think, I think, you know, pets aren't very important parts of our lives. And part of how they are so important is that they live much shorter lives than us. And I think that one of the things that I have learned from my family pets is how to deal with death too. I think like when, when your favorite dog passes away, like that's intense, that's really vulnerable and really emotional, but you're also dealing with death and you're, you're dealing with it.

You know what I mean? In a way that it's sometimes I might be like the little league for when, you know, people die. For when grandma kicks in. Yeah. But sometimes not. Or mom, or, or, or your, your wife or your kid or something, some, like God forbid. Right.

Yeah. I mean, but I think, you know, every, like every pet is different, every relationship with a pet is different. So it could, it might not be the little league, it might be the major league, but I think there is something also really important about, um, about having that experience with a pet and going through that experience and really dealing with it. And I think this cloning thing puts it off and it puts you in a strange space of denial. But I can't, I can't imagine that I'm Barbara Streisand for as magnificent a career as she'd

had, as she's had in as much money as she has. She's got to be what? In her seventies, she can't be a person unacquainted with tragedy. Right. Yeah. That's true. So yeah, I don't know. I definitely think, wait, I think you're right in what you're saying.

To me, there's, I was told once and it stayed with me that you never, you never love the same way twice. Um, and, and the context of it was in, in the context of romantic relationships. But I think it's also true of like, if the motivation, and I'm sure there's a lot more complications to the motivation than we're assigning them here, we just assume that she wants a photocopy of her dead dog to treat the exact same and it might be more than that. Or it might be as vapid as I like that he had that, or that she had that curly coat. So I just want another one with that.

Yeah. But, um, it's, it's, it's a little bit tragic and kind of a folly to think that like, you will suddenly be okay with the fact that Sammy has passed away because here is a thing that is genetically identical to her and I'll love it the exact same way. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you can get a new dog that has a new, you're already getting a new dog. So why don't you just like, get the new dog, you know?

Yeah. And that's the other thing too, is there's such a gap, there's such a gap between, uh, paying $50,000 or going to the shelter. Yeah. And you know what I mean? And yeah, yeah, you'll be out of pocket for the shots and the microchip and whatever the hell, but $50,000 is steep. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. You'll see other frustration. Maybe that's, maybe that's the moral of the story. $50,000 is pretty steep. Go, the moral of the story is go to your local shop local shop local. It's shop local. We called it early.

We called it early. Shop local. Totally did. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Just walk out on the sidewalk. Is there a dog there that needs a home?

Think about that dog. Take it. Yeah. Just take it. We need to call a wrap on, on episode part one of our, part one of our two part pilot, but history will remember this is episode one, I'm sure. Yeah. Um, what do you think?

Yeah. I'm stoked to hear what you got, dude. I'm so stoked. Sweet. Okay. So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to, uh, we're going to stop recording. I'm going to go hack a dart and then I'm going to come back in and tell Josie and all of

you a story. And in the meantime, stay sweet. I'm going to pop some popcorn and it'll be really loud. When I eat it into the microphone, yeah, eat a candy apple. The sources that I used for this were the article from Variety by Rameen Tuday, uh, Barbara Streisand on how she battled Hollywood's boys club. Uh, and that was published February, 2018. I also used an article called the real reasons you shouldn't clone your dog by Jacob Brogan.

Uh, that was published in Smithsonian magazine, March, 2018. Barbara Streisand wrote her own little piece for the New York Times called Barbara Streisand explains why I cloned my dog. And that was March 2nd, 2018. And I looked at the website for Viagenpets, Viagenpet.com, uh, the South Korean company I also looked at their website. It's called SuanBiotech.com and I looked at their English site. And then I also spoke to, uh, my friend Chelsea Rose, who is a veterinary hospital manager

at Helen Woodworth in San Diego, California. The song you're listening to is called Tea Street by Brian Steele. Thanks for listening.