Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maugh.

Okay, here we are on CNN.

Whatever that happened, we're glad to be here.

We have author of the New York Times Newsletter, John McWater,

and we have Emmy-York winning producer and journalist Josh Kirin-Go.

Okay. Here are the questions I hold in my hand.

Let me do a carnack tonight. I'm certain.

Uh, nobody under 75.

Well, they see it on YouTube. You're right. They don't even do that.

All right. With a former CDC director testifying before Congress that gain of function labs,

probably caused the pandemic, should we rethink our approach to scientific research?

Well, I know about scientific research, but gain of function.

I don't know if people know what gain of function is, but that is how possibly this escaped.

And it's very, very scary to me, because gain of function means we're taking the virus,

manipulating in the lab to make it worse, so we could study that if the worst happens,

which does happen when it escapes.

I would say this about that. I'll just jump in. You can argue.

If we think nuclear power, we can't have it.

Some people think that because it's great, except for that one in a thousand chance

that it goes bad, it goes so bad, isn't this the same thing?

Gain of function. Isn't it very similar to nuclear?

Yeah, it feels pretty self-evident that we ought to have the highest possible restrictions

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