Hey, you're listening to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your host, Whitney Webb. We are already back with a new episode, as I mentioned in the last podcast with Robbie Martin. I'm hoping to put out more episodes this month because of health issues that kept me from podcasting most of May and part of April. Since I'm playing catch-up a little bit with this podcast, I've been looking to cover some major events that took place while I was away.

In addition to what I discussed with Robbie in the last podcast, I've also been eager to cover the relatively sudden pivot regarding the attention now being given by mainstream media

and some alternative media outlets to the lab leak theory and more broadly the possibility

that the origins of COVID-19 could be related to gain of function

experimentation. After aggressively censoring such discussion throughout last year, something has obviously

shifted in recent months raising the question as to why and why now. Of course, in discussing

such theories, the Wuhan Institute of Urology has figured prominently for obvious reasons.

However, despite now being recently deemed safe, quote unquote, safe to discuss in mainstream

in some independent media circles, a few have tackled the considerable involvement at the

Wuhan lab of U.S. government entities or funding or the possibility that the breaches last year at the U.S.'s

biosafety level four lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland could have played a role on the origins

of the condition. To discuss this and more, I am joined today by Sam Husani. Sam is a Maryland-based

journalist and artist who has written for Counterpunch, Anti-War, the nation salon, consortium

news, fair, and most recently

independent science news. Sam has been one of the few journalists of his caliber that has been

willing to tackle gain of function research as a topic in dual use, bio-warfare, biodefense

research in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis in a nonpartisan manner. So great to have you on the podcast, Sam. How are you doing?

Very well. It's wonderful to be with you. It's an honor with me. Thank you.

Thanks. Well, I'd like to start by asking you about your initial impressions of this recent shift around the plausibility of the lab leak theory and the mainstream attention now being given to the gain of function issue.

So why do you think the shift has taken place and why do you think it's happening now?

I think there are two reasons for it.

They're both kind of insidious, one more subtly than the other.

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