I think this is a really exciting time and I don't think it's hype to say work and create a lot of solutions to terrible problems. And the sort of what your book is about that if the walls come down, it's exciting, but it's also kind of terrifying. Once you start being able to make those things, you can make them in such a way that they evade the current vaccines. We can then develop new vaccines and you're in a really ugly arms race.
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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.