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The Tim Ferriss Show

#503: Walter Isaacson on CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

Tools Of Titans, Lifestyle Design, Business, Tim Ferriss, Timothy Ferriss Show, Startups, Longform Interviews, Productivity, The 4-hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss, Tim Ferris, The Tim Ferriss Show, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 17.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2021

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Walter Isaacson on CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race | Brought to you by Magic Spoon delicious low-carb cereal, LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with ~720M users, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating. More on all three below.

Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) is a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of Leonardo da VinciThe InnovatorsSteve JobsEinstein: His Life and UniverseBenjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is co-author of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.

His new book is The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

You can find our first conversation from 2017 at tim.blog/walter.

This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.Ëś

And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim or use code TIM. 

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This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.

Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 722 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.

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This episode is also brought to you by Magic Spoon cereal! Magic Spoon is a brand-new cereal that is low carb, high protein, and zero sugar. It tastes just like your favorite sugary cereal. Each serving has 11g of protein, 3g of net carbs, 0g of sugar, and only 110 calories. It’s also gluten free, grain free, keto friendly, soy free, and GMO free. And it’s delicious! It comes in your favorite, traditional cereal flavors like Cocoa, Frosted, and Blueberry.

Magic Spoon cereal has received a lot of attention since launching in 2019 when Time magazine included it in their list of best inventions and Forbes called it “the future of cereal.” My listeners—that’s you—can get $5 off and a 100% happiness guarantee when you visit MagicSpoon.com/Tim and use code TIM. And some great news for Canadian listeners: Magic Spoon now also ships to Canada!

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you by Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon is a brand new cereal that I eat just

0:05.0

about every day that is low carb, high protein and zero sugar. I just ate a huge bowl of their

0:10.3

cocoa flavor about an hour ago after a short workout. Magic Spoon cereal has received a lot of

0:16.1

attention since launching last year. Time magazine included it in their list of best inventions of 2019

0:22.3

and Forbes called it the future of cereal. It tastes just like your favorite sugary cereal from

0:27.3

childhood. Remember that? But it's actually good for you. Each serving has 11 grams of protein,

0:31.9

three grams of net carbs, zero grams of sugar and only 110 calories. It's also gluten free,

0:37.6

grain free, keto-friendly, soy free, and GMO free. All the things, it's delicious. And I don't

0:43.2

see that lightly because most of this healthy version of X stuff is not delicious. But these guys

0:50.2

really nail it. Magic Spoon has nailed it. It comes in your favorite traditional cereal flavors,

0:54.0

like cocoa, frosted, and blueberry. You can try them all by grabbing a variety pack at magicspoon.com

0:59.7

slash Tim or you can just grab a bunch of boxes. I'm going to order some more today of the cocoa,

1:05.8

which is my personal favorite. But there is a new contender for favorite flavor because they just

1:11.3

launched two limited edition flavors, honey nut and peanut butter, which are delicious. I am a

1:16.4

sucker for peanut butter and it is outstanding. So I think cocoa and peanut butter are my two

1:22.7

new favorite flavors. And fun fact, my friends are also obsessed with Magic Spoon. One of the podcasts

1:29.4

most popular guests, Dr. Peter Tia, routinely crushes six to seven servings at a time. That's a

1:34.4

lot with no glycemic response. He's looked at this with a glucometer. He likes it so much. He

1:39.6

invested other friends to very fine gentlemen and also passed podcast guests. Kevin Rosen-Rion

1:45.1

Holiday also invested. So go to magicspoon.com slash Tim to grab some delicious cereal and try it for

1:52.2

yourself today. Use promo code Tim. That's T.I.M. at checkout to save five dollars off of your order.

1:58.1

And magicspoon is so confident in their product. I have boxes and boxes and boxes. It's back

...

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