Joe Rogan Experience #1616 — Jamie Metzl Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. Yeah, you're a legitimate chocolate fiend. I'm definitely a legitimate chocolate fiend. How much do you eat pudding. I mean, it's like this thick, bubbling hot chocolate. It brings me joy. I feel like everyone ate two pounds of chocolate a week, Jean Calment in France, Like a chocolate bar. but it has a little bit of it. gives them a feeling of being loved.

3:08 maybe it's part of the chocolate maybe it's part of our experience i think it's like a Butterflies we feel when falling in love. So maybe it is a replacement in a little way. that it may have been a lab leak was so taboo because it was what Trump was pushing. And it's actually really strong. It's all circumstantial evidence, but we don't have any evidence of the other hypotheses of where COVID comes from, like this series of jumps through different animals in the wild.

6:38 a while trying to really say, where does this come from? investigation that's needed. And three, here's what a full investigation looks like. And we call Yeah, I know. And China has some sort of strange, I don't know what it is, but there's some sort of political influence on the World Health Organization. Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing.

9:27 own surveillance network. On December 31st, 2019, Taiwan declared a national emergency on COVID. that's unfortunately the story of COVID is that. I mean, it was politics that made it so that you could have this outbreak, carry out this massive cover-up over the course of the last year where we're facing, how are we possibly going to address it? Now, what is the circumstantial evidence?

12:51 And I knew that they didn't have horseshoe bats in Wuhan. Well, the Wuhan story? Because there was a paper that came out in The Lancet in January of 2020. would be someone who works at one of these Chinese virology institutes, probably the Wuhan Institute of Virology, if that's the case, you'd have to say, well, what are the chances that that patient zero

15:38 There's also an issue with the actual structure of the virus itself, right? This virus showed up fully able to infect humans. Like, what is the intent? outbreaks is growing. And rather than being behind the curve and waiting for some terrible outbreak, And there's a whole history of people who were warning, saying, well, we're trying to coronaviruses. And their safety protocols aren't up to snuff. So there was a lot of warning and a lot of fear.

19:18 What was his motivation for being on the other side? in the British medical journal, The Lancet, which we've subsequently learned was highly Someone named Nicholson Baker, he had a great piece in New York Magazine. The World Health Organization hasn't said this. So now I feel like there is an opening, and I hope that we can continue. And the goal, We don't have access to them, and frankly, I think a lot of them are afraid that if they

23:46 a half ago, who are the people who you respect most in the field of virology, he would be place where those dangerous pathogens are. life has been in the world of understanding China. And so I think if you're just in the world of of the Chinese government. But coming back, I think there were people in the kind of more we need to look at both options. I think that would have been a much healthier place because

27:17 interest, you shouldn't be in those kinds of roles. It's just always so disturbing to someone he's invested his entire life into doing the right thing, trying to protect us from this are who believe that it's more likely to come from a lab leak. But what I will say, I get a lot, journalists require scientists to legitimate claims about the origins. And so there was this weird thing that's lasted for a year,

30:24 talked about the lab leak hypothesis, and people were talking about it more often. culture today is that we've fallen into this very strange situation where we really have two sides of America. scientists to figure things out to go hey what the fuck is going on like why why is this politics So two great points. And it seems to me we should just say, well, let's try to be open-minded.

33:18 It's exactly, and I'm mindful of it because especially with all of this conversation about the origins of the pandemic, one, into these little realities that are self-reflective, and two, into a world where conflict is rewarded more than finding middle ground. a couple of weeks. As I've said very publicly, I hope that the report is much better than just the

36:17 very likely the Chinese government isn't going to sign off on that letter, on that report. imprisoned the journalists, gagged the scientists. Our bad, just come in and do what you want. that we need to get to the bottom of this, but at very least, we should articulate what the pandemic, like the moment they knew about it, it would have saved 95% of their lives.

38:50 But the earlier you intervene, the greater the possibility to stop it. And this is certainly a highly contagious virus. you know, because they have this weird mix of the government and business. They're intertwined the Chinese government. And it's an authoritarian system. And we've experienced authoritarian sophistication. I mean, one of the reasons why we're even having this conversation is their

41:31 Well, it's spooky for them and it's spooky for us. so this idea that, well, what happens in your country is your business, it doesn't really make mean, I think we have to have a space for the conversation. I think that's the key point. Yeah. But with Trump, it's like you listen, and then you're all agitated, and then you pass And whether you agree or disagree, and I agree with a lot of what he did, you think like he's,

45:59 There's been so many articles. there are more prominent scientists who are saying that the zoonotic theory is more likely. And my And I think that's the kind of thing that we need to do. And I hope it's possible. Certainly, in writing this letter, And it's not only that. because, again, if we can't have the conversation, we're screwed. Well, here's another question,

49:57 coronaviruses more able to infect human cells. Like that was, I guess, it's useful information. Now we gain-of-function research than to the people who are its proponents, like Peter Daszak and that's not just a Chinese issue. That's an everybody issue. We are going to make everything open right now because let's get to the bottom of this. are bad enough if you're living in China. But we're all, whatever the origins of the pandemic,

54:00 China, China has been more helpful. And now even with this idea of, well, where does the vanished. So they didn those people has mostly vanished. So it was a bad vaccine. But it wasn't very effective. You kind of neutralize it by taking out its kind of delivery package and then put the gene that's delivered through that other virus into the body. it was made from cell lines that were derived from aborted fetal tissue. Yeah, aborted fetal tissue

57:31 vaccine, it's my view that they should take it, not just for themselves, or they should do it for I don't think there's some kind of hidden thing that two years from now, we're going to find out I mean, this is what we're doing is we're getting our body, is mounting this kind of response. It's not a side effect, it's a consequence. I guess aggressive weightlifting or something along those lines.

1:00:00 a massive advantage that the gaps between the haves and the have-nots will grow ever wider. Yeah. I guess they don't want Chinese men to become too metro. Yeah. I just wonder if you can pull up Korean Wave on this screen. and there you go. But my guess is that Chinese modern history, it all comes out of this mythology of the Long March, And now that we understand that CRISPR is a real tool and it's viable and we can—

1:03:12 went to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel Charpentier, As a matter of fact, the World Health Organization committee on which I serve was created in to read, write, and hack the code of life. to die of a terrible, deadly genetic disorder. So now you can screen each one of those 10 embryos So I do think that it will be possible or sometimes low billions of sperm.

1:07:21 And what does it mean for humans, for agriculture, for so many other things, but sometimes less favorable outcomes create a different strength. Yeah, no, I want The Rock with the mind of Einstein and whatever. a cockroach was actually the right answer. Or being a crocodile. it may be that we limit not just our diversity, You don't get no knock on the rock,

1:10:23 of each individual action. And maybe that's good. What do I do? Australopithecus. Because it's clear we can identify what feel like, at least for now, terrible abuses. it's really hard to define what the others, who said American leadership in science and problems that we face is that human beings, we've become this species with a global reach that just like we're seeing with

1:15:09 Well, we know Russia will go balls to the wall to try to win the Olympics. They did, This feels like we're playing God. Do you just say, all right, we're sticking to our guns and we recognize that maybe we'll Some say, well, just going to let a bunch of kids play sports these things called national competitiveness and the application of revolutionary science is one

1:17:54 on himself. What kind of therapies is he doing? Yeah, I think that, so he's done some, he injected crisper yourself bro exactly no no i mean what we're talking about here, and coming back to earlier, there's billions of years, almost four billions of years of biology got us from little single cell organisms to this. And through this sort of selection and natural selection and mutations,

1:20:08 scared with eugenics. When you say, you know, what we need is the strongest, most healthy, So we must derive extreme caution from that history. It's going to be framed, all right, you're having it, you decide to have a child. and all you have to do is check a box and your child wouldn't have leukemia. playing God. I mean, without sounding disrespectful, I feel like if God were playing God,

1:23:45 surviving infection, disease, injury, where we're already playing God. again. And then we have, it's not just these individual tools like the computers and AI and Yeah, all the time. had never seen this before because most of the time when people talk about the The United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule. A lot of this new free time will

1:27:31 The work would come to us. One government reporter. It's interesting, he's kind of right. What I said at the start is this isn't a snow day. Whatever happens with the vaccines, it's not like quantum leap and some of those um changes will think as negative but some of them will actually I was actually telling somebody the other day when their microwave broke,

1:30:36 and wonder what the human of three, four, biological systems work, about what makes a human, about how we interact with the environment. which is probably way off. Well, there's a big difference between the type of people that are allowed to go to the International Space Station. But how about that thing? the first space tourist. That seems a little pricey.

1:33:14 But this space hotel thing, if you see it, Jamie, it looks like what happens is some sort of shuttle-looking thing docks at the end of each one of those little ports. there's no technology there that you think well that whole technology needs to be invented in If you're going to put a big, giant hotel in space, Well, it looks pretty goddamn big, space. So we may need to think about, well, what are some biological differences that could be

1:35:30 and I think that's the same thing with Mars. to adapt your body to the environment of Mars, anymore. If we behave, if all we have that's guiding us is kind of our brains like when we were the Australia Pythagoras. So we have to figure out a way to evolve past biological competitiveness, like the primate or solve problems? competitive in terms of like working together to try to achieve a goal that's

1:38:19 think of, all right, so chimpanzees are our closest genetic relatives. And what is it when you see personal challenges to try to overcome obstacles to achieve a goal. Yeah. And then that comes back like these are a bottleneck to progress and then we're brains versus our large skull and large brains and you go extrapolate, you look at the future And a grown chimp is like a 400-pound man.

1:41:29 There's just some variation, but there's a lot of this one thing, which is a small body with a large head. maybe we're going to supplement our brain function and in most cases it hasn't gone well. But one of the key points, and I think why this moment we have ethical traditions that have evolved over many thousands of years, and they're applicable.

1:44:18 Catholic Church has done, including this recent statement on the vaccines. But we can't jettison 75,000 years ago, there were maybe 1,000 humans left just in the southern tip of Africa. Eventually, that's going to happen. But I think it's a race between exponentially evolving technology and our ability to develop ethical and governance systems. I mean, these were otherwise perfectly healthy babies, or to be babies.

1:47:08 single mutation that is almost certain to cause a deadly, untreatable genetic disorder. And so if these parents want to have their own biological child and their genetics dictate that either way, like condoms. Well, not just condoms, just medical treatments too, right? The death rate for I remember this really well. to humans that are especially embryos that are being brought to term,

1:49:21 It was just three years ago. done somewhere else. And again, that's why there are a lot of things that could be done, Uyghur Muslims and ship them off I don't think there were any living people in the train. Well, what I can say is that when the news came out Well, I think that China really sees itself as being the world leader. And so for them, especially scientists who were trained outside of China,

1:53:01 so you have this kind of young power. China is an ancient facility. And we don't even know the full extent. But I think it's extremely likely, You got to think they gave him authorization to do that. them and bring glory to China. But then, so I think that was something that was supported among I don't think ultimately they will be. that if you do something that pisses us off, you're going to be punished.

1:57:09 disappear one day and then months later reemerge and apologize and basically assert, oh, the I've realized I was wrong in some little minor infraction, and I pledge my support to the This is like a really scientifically advanced society. Mao? It's like they're George Washington. But if you know anything about Chinese history, He had a China CCTV, China Central Television, nightly business show.

2:00:37 I am extremely confident there are many people in China right now who have highly relevant And it also makes us realize that we have to fight for what we have. including the people with whom we may not agree. That's why the freedom of information and the And though there's another thing of how do we find a common sense of reality and truth? But how can you have a center of gravity so that there can be a space where people can find common ground? I

2:03:40 to do that. We just have to establish in young people this narrative, and we have to avoid the You show up in New York for five days and you're a New Yorker. often rewarded for tribalism online. They're rewarded by the likes of the responded to and what arguments they're in with people and is there division in their clan or is any need to flavor things to fit the narrative that their tribe holds on to that we got to

2:07:01 with our community calling for a full investigation. rallied around that call. And we've now come together and we've founded an organization called One Shared hope, but we also have a lot of work to do. Yeah, that's where we have a lot of work to do. These And, with somebody earlier today, there was a time in the early days of the internet where I think a lot

2:10:19 I think there's a Chinese saying, which I can't remember, but it's something like, message that everybody in China would hear. So it encourages self-policing. COVID, even if COVID started with an accidental lab leak, as I believe it most likely people are free to express their views of how they would like to live and how they'd like to be on standards of ethical behavior is a world that is going to decay. And there's nothing

2:14:00 But it's spooky. your wind turbine business. We're going to steal all the technology. We're going to copy it. for access to China, then they're going to play both sides against the middle. powerful people in China. And when Xi Jinping, the current leader, was coming up. That guy represented a different power center. you, and you kind of do favors for them, and they do favors for you. And the people who are in your

2:17:51 to Xi Jinping. And when you say they're being kicked out, they're not just being kicked out. But certainly- all of the Chinese dissidents from the old days from Tiananmen Square. And I was asking him, that they would not think that they and their family were at risk. I know he just one day to the next vanished. And he could speak openly and honestly.

2:21:02 that made him really popular. And that is, when we think of a company here in the United States, the local political boss telling you, do this, do that. But you know that if you do something that is not to the liking of the government, Yeah. And so it is scary. And the scary thing, I mean, is that they're actually really good at it. so they have to accept it. And it's scary that it's happening, but it's also scary that they're

2:24:27 I'm afraid of living in that world, a world that is defined by China's norms. nothing matters. And I feel like It's like, what are we doing? Yeah, I agree. And that's this tragedy. And that's why I hope that Well, they've brought 700 million people out of abject poverty. they basically opened up a highly restrictive agricultural sector. And they were, this is

2:27:35 And so India in a way has missed that level of high employment manufacturing. between government, business, and academia? And I think that we would, I don't see with our current climate, Well, that's the analogy that they're making about us right now. Yeah. And that's, everything that we have is up for grabs every day. And if we want to climb higher, we have to get to

2:30:47 But as I was saying before, I have been so inspired by these young people who I've worked Then we have a small team of experts that are going to take these resolutions negotiated problem. So there's hope, but we need to be creative in how to harness this hope and turn And I do think that a lot of young generation people have realized that the world that our generation has left them is broken in so many ways, and that if they don't rally to fix it, the future

2:33:51 My father came to this country as a refugee. For sure. to fight for the better path? on our differences than on what we have in common. Yeah, I agree. And the sad thing is, you would say, like in some abstract way, well, maybe if like You are so right. come together it's like yeah sure kumbaya but maybe if we kind of break it down and everybody has exacerbated

2:36:38 tough position, because it really, it's exactly what you say, things are pulling apart. The I'm going to go for a run. In Los Angeles. They released them there and they kept them there. it was and no one was talking about it. Yeah. Because it's contained into this one area. Well, what can they do? I mean, some of the zoning things like you mentioned. There are a lot of things

2:40:31 for sure, I think it would be achievable. The fire department. genome sequencing. Like, could we, you know, 20 years from now say, like, you see this kid here Well, I've always said that the one way if you want to make America great again is to have less losers. systemic approach. And then the other thing that we could do that I've always said that we should

2:43:27 Instead, what we're doing is keeping people out, and they create this Department of National Competitiveness But I do think it doesn't have to be the government. You put all your effort into fixing that, but some piece of that has to be connected to a sense of the commons. And I still, I don't think that that China already has the biggest navy. And we are embracing censorship.

2:47:50 created by the United States. We thought we had a peer competitor in the Soviet Union, and then from now, there's some moment and we realize, oh, now it's too late. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. reasonable person and they're making executive orders to fix problems I'm going to be bummed out for the rest of the day. Really my great pleasure. Thanks Joe.