What Next TBD: What Would Convince a Lab Leak Skeptic?

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was reported this week that the U.S. Department of Energy now believes, “with low confidence,” that the COVID-19 virus came from a lab. But is there enough evidence for the “lab leak theory” to convince those who believe the virus emerged from animals in a wet market? Guest: Angela Rasmussen, virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me.
0:22.7	When you're left for dead, you want answers. We Will Liars. New series, watch now, only on Prime
0:29.2	video. Just a quick heads up that there is some swearing in this episode. Okay, here's the show.
0:39.4	One of the things I noticed this week when I was researching this episode is that very few
0:44.8	virologists want to talk publicly about the lab leak theory of COVID.
0:49.6	So when I got Angie Rasmussen on the line on Wednesday afternoon, I wanted to know why she was different.
0:56.9	Why are you willing to talk about it?
0:59.3	Because I shot my mouth off about it in February 2020.
1:05.1	In her day job, Angie studies emerging viruses at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
1:15.1	In her off time, on Twitter, she's pretty famously blunt.
1:18.9	I don't remember what I called Tom Cotton, but it was something probably not very nice because he was at the time saying that, you know, for sure this was
1:29.4	manufactured and it may have been intentionally released, it may have been accidentally
1:35.2	released, but this is the product of, you know, so-called gain of function research and possibly
	...

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