Higher Animals with Michael Specter

Revisionist History

Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 61.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin
0:09.4	Intelligence-squared podcast is the home of debates and discussion to get you thinking.
0:14.2	Join us a few times a week to get a little bit closer to some of the brightest minds on
0:18.5	the planet and to be part of the biggest conversations of our times.
0:22.2	People are counting on me and on you tonight to speak for them in this debate.
0:26.9	Is the part of Russian propaganda right now?
0:32.5	Is there anything that you guys think can make you great right across from Alfred
0:36.0	Tuvik to me?
0:37.0	I think being a woman.
0:39.7	Find those at Intelligence-squared wherever you get your podcasts.
0:46.4	I got my first real job in journalism at The Washington Post.
0:50.3	It was the 1980s.
0:51.7	I was 23.
0:54.7	I had never written a newspaper story before.
0:57.1	I had no idea what I was doing.
0:59.2	All around me people were shouting at a telephone, banging out stories on deadline.
1:03.8	I sat there, mute, terrified, convinced that I would be found out and fired.
1:10.2	And then I was rescued.
1:13.2	By this crazy opinionated insanely productive brilliant genius of a reporter who, if memory
1:18.8	serves, used to cruise the newsroom every Passover handing out MOTSA.
1:23.9	His name was Michael Specter.
1:26.4	I was rescued by Michael Specter.
	...

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