Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where free thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, associate editor Toby Young and

Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Welcome to the Quillett podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay here to introduce my quillett colleague Razib Khan and his interview

with veteran science writer Nicholas Wade, whose byline has appeared in such well-known publications as Nature, Science, and the New York Times.

And the subject of their discussion is well summed up by the title of Mr. Wade's widely

circulated May 2nd medium article, Origin of COVID. Following the clues, did people or nature

open Pandora's box at Wuhan.

Not so long ago, even speculating about the idea

that the virus that causes COVID-19 was leaked

from a Chinese virology lab,

well that was enough to get you denounced as a conspiracy theorist, perhaps even an anti-Chinese hate

monger or even perish the thought a Donald Trump supporter.

We all knew or were supposed to know at least, that COVID-19 came into existence thanks to a

zoonotic virus, having made the jump from an animal, probably a bat, to humans in a Wuhan market or some similar milieu. But a lot has changed in recent weeks,

what with the Wall Street Journal and other major media reporting on evidence that suggests a link to a virology research institute in Wuhan,

where, according to intelligent sources, several researchers got sick in late 2019

with a disease that sounds an awful lot like COVID-19.

...