What would it take to make the Saudi desert look like Yosemite? Samo Burja has done the arithmetic: desalinate a Nile’s worth of water a year, pump it inland, bring in soil, plant redwoods. He thinks it would pay for itself.

Samo is the editor-in-chief of Palladium Magazine, founder of Bismarck Analysis, and author of Great Founder Theory. He coined the term “live player” for a person or group able to do things they have not done before, a phrase the Mormon Transhumanist Association has borrowed for its own work.

Carl Youngblood and Steve Christiansen sat down with him on the sidelines of the Reproductive Frontiers Summit in June 2025. They talk about whether America’s institutions have grown old rather than mature, what charter cities and new universities might do about it, the surge in demand for skilled blue-collar work and why the opportunities to build physical frontiers are greater than ever, and what humans are for in a universe this large. Near the end Carl asks whether there is anything like theosis in Samo’s vision of a spacefaring humanity. Samo answers that God may have set humanity a challenge, sharing hopes for his own posterity.

Pioneers is the podcast of the Mormon Transhumanist Association: long-form conversations with the people pushing on today’s frontiers in science, technology, history, and theology, and what drives them. Every episode, with video and a full transcript, lives at https://transfigurism.org/news-and-podcasts/podcasts/pioneers

Pioneers is a podcast from the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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