Dr Jemma Geoghegan, a virologist at the University of Otago, talks to Quillette's Jonathan Kay about how viruses evolve

Quillette Podcast

Quillette

Society & Culture, Politics, News, Science, News Commentary

4.6 • 917 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Jemma Geoghegan, a virologist at the University of Otago, talks to Jonathan Kay on how viruses evolve and the lessons we can learn about social distancing from fish, dogs and rabbits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.
0:08.0	Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.
0:15.3	Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,
0:18.8	associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by
0:24.2	visiting Patreon.com forward slash quilette and becoming a monthly patron. By
0:29.1	becoming a monthly patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter.
0:32.4	Welcome to the quilette patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter.
0:33.0	Welcome to the Quillett podcast.
0:36.0	I'm Jonathan Kay.
0:37.0	The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how susceptible
0:42.0	our globally connected societies have become to new viruses.
0:45.4	It also has brought attention to the strange nature of viruses themselves, a strange kind of
0:50.7	entity that some scientists don't even consider to be a form of true life.
0:55.0	That's because viruses can't create energy or replicate themselves or even move without
1:01.0	infecting the programming of a host cell, such as the cell of a human.
1:05.0	As we've seen with COVID-19 and many other deadly viruses, such infections can have devastating
1:11.1	consequences for whole civilizations.
1:14.0	In recent weeks, as I've been studying the science of
1:16.8	verology for my regular quilette COVID-19 science updates,
1:20.4	I came across an especially interesting paper in the Journal of virus Evolution by lead
1:25.5	author Jemma L. Giegel, who is now a lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
1:31.8	Professor Giegel's 2018 paper called Hidden Diversity and Evolution of Viruses and Market Fish
	...

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