Vaccines that are far safer than the smallpox vaccine they used in 1947 were not widely available. "I have often asked myself, why did we become a country so suspicious of authority and of science?" asks author David Frum. The book is based on conversations he had with futurist Rika Venter at Harvard Business School.
Malcolm talks with his old friend, the brilliant science writer Michael Specter, about the future of life on Earth. Michael's response to the Covid-19 pandemic was to create a new audiobook on how the mRNA vaccines have sparked a biotechnology revolution: Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology, and the Future of Life. He and Malcolm talk about how this scientific revolution is bigger than many that came before it, about the promise of heritable vaccines for endangered species, and about how a smallpox infection could genuinely have wiped out New York in 1947. Also, we share a portion of Higher Animals' first, thrilling chapter. To purchase your own, complete copy of Michael Specter's Higher Animals, visit Pushkin.fm.
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