The Forever Pandemic, Omicron, Build Back Better, Biden, Putin, China, What's Trump got up his sleeve? The media gave these stories ad nauseum coverage in 2021, often marching in lockstep and suffering from a painful lack of imagination about what should be the big news of the day.
But what about underreported stories: The important news that most of us missed?
Richard and Jim share their gripes, observations, hopes and insights about the media, science, the environment and global affairs. Our co-hosts are not only solutions journalists with decades of reporting experience, they're also voracious readers and observers of current events
Read moreA crucial step in preventing the next global pandemic will be knowing where this one came from. Did SARS-CoV-2— the virus that causes Covid-19— jump from animals to humans, or was the outbreak the result of a lab leak? The world still doesn’t know the answer.
This episode is part two of our wide-ranging interview with Alina Chan, a postdoctoral scientist who co-wrote an explosive online paper in May 2020. She argued that scientists and governments should investigate whether a virus from a laboratory in Wuhan, China caused the pandemic.
In this episode, we discuss the need for much greater transparency when viral outbreaks occur. The world needs to adopt new policies and strategies to prevent or mitigate future outbreaks. Proposed solutions include more regulation of scientific experiments— including “gain of function” research, better lab safety standards, greater international oversight of groups that study how viruses cross species barriers, and a global treaty governing viral research.
Read moreTwo years after the known human case of COVID-19, the mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains unresolved. Did the virus emerge from an animal in nature, or could it have accidentally leaked from a research lab in Wuhan, China? Shockingly, the world appears to be no closer to knowing the crucial answer.
In this first of two episodes, we get a brief explanation of the growing controversy from our co-host, Jim Meigs, who has written about allegations of a scientific cover-up. Molecular biologist Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow in a gene therapy lab at the Broad Institute, is our interview guest.
Dr. Chan first became widely known last year for suggesting that COVID-19 could have escaped from a laboratory. Her early research was called a "conspiracy theory" by leading scientists and mainstream media journalists. But in recent months, expert views of this mystery have decisively changed.
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