#214 — A Conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Siddhartha Mukherjee about our ongoing failure to adequately respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. They discuss the significance of asymptomatic spread, the lack of Chinese cooperation, the failures of testing, travel restrictions, the missteps of the FDA and the CDC, controversy around masks, the lack of coordination among the states, conspiracy thinking about mortality statistics, the political contamination of public health information, electronic medical records, preparing for the next pandemic, the immunology of Covid-19, the long term consequences of the disease, concerns about a vaccine, the coming prospect of school openings, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast.
0:08.0	This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently
0:13.4	on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing partial episodes of the podcast.
0:17.6	If you'd like access to full episodes, you'll need to subscribe at samherris.org.
0:23.0	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with
0:27.5	other subscriber-only content. And as always, I never want money to be the reason why
0:33.0	someone can't listen to the podcast. So if you can't afford a subscription, there's
0:37.1	an option at samherris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those requests,
0:42.8	no questions asked.
0:45.2	I am here with Siddharth and Mukherjee.
0:50.2	Sit, thanks for joining me again on the podcast.
0:52.5	Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
0:54.6	So you've been here twice before we spoke about both of your fantastic tomes, the Emperor
1:01.0	of All Maladis, which is really the definitive book on cancer in our lifetime, just an amazing
1:08.5	book. And also the gene, which was also amazing. And we've spoken about both of those books
1:15.9	at length on the podcast. I recommend anyone interested in those broader topics, consult
1:22.6	those previous conversations. But today I just want to talk to you about the COVID pandemic
1:30.2	in general and just get your kind of expert eye view of what has been happening here these
1:36.2	long now five months in the US that we've been dealing with this, I think, ineptally
1:43.0	by any objective criterion, you know, our ineptitude is fairly well established here.
1:49.0	So I'll just remind people who may not know it. You are a famous oncologist and also writer,
1:57.0	but your background is in virology. So you actually have a wheelhouse that is relevant
	...

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