This is a level A plus revolution. And yet, it seems to be that nobody knows about it. Like for example, not a day passes when you can't hear some lament from some Silicon Valley person,. which is all about how they promised us flying planes and all we got was 14 characters. This is... Twitter A plus because we're taking a physical science, biology, and we're turning it into an information science. If I think of something clever to do, like for instance, create a vaccine against COVID, I can put it up on the internet and people all over the world can download it within minutes. Which is what happened to them.
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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