Highlights: #164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives from 80k After Hours

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Highlights: #164 – Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives

27 minutes Posted Oct 30, 2023 at 10:36 pm.

Intro

Risks from biological weapons are worse than they used to be

Omnicidal actors in history

Why we might deliberately design new pathogen-capable pathogens

Can a virus be very deadly and very transmissible at the same time?

Using metagenomics to stop a "stealth" pandemic

Using CRISPR to solve a range of world problems

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Show notes

This is a selection of highlights from episode #164 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast.

These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode:

Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives

And if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing [email protected].

Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong

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