Jamie Metzl: Lab Leak Theory | Lex Fridman Podcast #247

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Jamie Metzl, author specializing in topics of genetic engineering, biotechnology, and geopolitics. In the past two years, he has been outspoken about the need to investigate and keep an open mind about the origins of COVID-19. In particular, he has been keeping an extensive up-to-date collection of circumstantial evidence in support of what is colloquially known as lab leak hypothesis, that COVID-19 leaked in 2019 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In part, I wanted to explore the idea in response to the thoughtful criticism to parts of the Francis Collins episode. I will have more and more difficult conversations like this with people from all walks of life and with all kinds of ideas. I promise to do my best to keep an open mind and yet to ask hard questions while together searching for the beautiful and the inspiring in the mind of the other person. It's a hard line to walk gracefully, especially for someone like me who's a bit of an awkward introvert with barely the grasp of the English language or any language except maybe Python and C++. But I hope you stick around, be patient and empathetic, and maybe learn something new together with me. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my conversation with Jamie Metzl.

Lex Fridman 1:27 What is the probability, in your mind, that COVID-19 leaked from a lab? In your write-up, I believe you said 85%. I know it's just a percentage, we can't really be exact with these kinds of things, but it gives us a sense where your mind is, where your intuition is. So, as it stands today, what would you say is that probability?

Jamie Metzl 1:47 I would stand by what I've been saying since really the middle of last year. It's more likely and not, in my opinion, uh, that the pandemic stems from an accidental lab incident in Wuhan. Is it 90%? Is it 65%? I mean, that's kind of arbitrary. But when I stack up all of the available evidence, and all of it on both sides is circumstantial, it weighs very significantly toward a lab incident origin.

Lex Fridman 2:14 So, before we dive into the specifics, at a high level, what, uh, types of evidence, what intuition, what ideas are leading you to, uh, to have that kind of estimate? Is it possible to kind of condense... When- when you look at the wall of evidence before you, where's your source, the- the strongest source of your intuition for this?

Jamie Metzl 2:36 Yeah. And- and I would have to say it's just logic and deductive reasoning. So, before I make the case for why I think it's most likely a lab incident origin, let's just say why it could be, and still could be what we, uh, natural origin. All of this is, uh, natural origin in the se- in the sense that it's a- a bat virus backbone, horseshoe bat virus, uh, backbone. Um, yeah.

Lex Fridman 2:57 O- Okay, I'm gonna keep pausing you-

Jamie Metzl 2:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 2:59 ... to define stuff.

Jamie Metzl 3:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:01 So, maybe it's useful to say what do we mean by lab leak? What do we mean by natural origin? What do we mean by virus backbone?

Jamie Metzl 3:07 Okay. Great questions. Um, so viruses come from somewhere. Viruses have been around for 3.5 billion years and we, uh, they've been around for such a long time because they are adaptive and they're growing and they're always changing and they're morphing. And that's why viruses are, uh, I mean they've been very successful and we are, are victims. Sometimes we're beneficiaries. We have viral DNA has morphed into our- our genomes, but now, certainly in the case of COVID-19, we are victims, um, of the success of viruses. Um, and so when we talk about a backbone, so the SARS-CoV-2 virus, um, has a, uh, it has a history and these viruses don't come out of whole cloth. There are viruses that- that morph. And so we know, um, that, uh, at some period, uh, maybe 20 years ago or whatever, um, the- the- the, uh, virus that is SARS-CoV-2, um, existed in horseshoe bats. It was a horseshoe bat virus and it evolved somewhere. And there are some people who say, uh, there's no evidence of this, but it's a plausible theory based on how things have happened in the past, maybe that virus jumped, um, from the horseshoe bat through some intermediate species. So it's like let's say there's a bat and that it- it infects some other animal. Let's say it's a pig or a- a raccoon dog or a civet cat, they're all, pangolin, there are all sorts of animals that have been considered. And then that virus adapts into that new host and it changes and grows. And then according to the "natural origins hypothesis," it jumps from that animal into humans. And so what you could imagine, and some of the people who are making the case, all of the people actually who are making the case for a natural origin of the virus, what they're saying is it went from bat to some intermediate species, and then from that intermediate species most likely, there's some people who say it went directly bat to human, but through some intermediate species, and then humans interacted with that species and then it jumped from that, whatever it is, to- to humans. And that's a very plausible theory. It's just that there's no evidence for it.

Lex Fridman 5:23 And the nature of the interaction is do most people kind of suggest is that the like wet markets? So the interaction of the humans with the animal is in the form of it's either a live animal that's being sold to be eaten or a n- recently live animal but newly dead animal being sold to be-

Jamie Metzl 5:42 That's certainly one very possible, um, possibility, a possible possibility. I don't know if that's a word. Um, but the people who believe in the wet market origin, that's what they're saying. So they had one of these animals, um, they were cutting it up, let's say, in a market, and maybe some of the blood got into somebody who's maybe had a cut on their hand or maybe it was aerosolized and so somebody breathed it, and then that virus found this new host and that was the, uh, the human host. But you could also have that happen, uh, in, let's say, a farm. So it's happened in the past, um, that let's say that there are farms and- and because of human encroachment into wild spaces, um, we're pushing our- our farms and our animal farms further and further into what used to be the- the just natural habitats. And so what's happened in the past, for example, that there were bats roosting over pig pens and the bat droppings went into the pig pens. Um, the viruses in those droppings infected the pigs and then the pigs infected the- the humans. And- and that's why it's a plausible theory.... it's just that there's basically no evidence for it. If it was the case, uh, that SARS-CoV-2 comes from this type of interaction, um, as in most of the, at least recent, uh, past outbreaks, we'd see evidence of that. Viruses are messy. They're constantly undergoing Darwinian evolution and they're changing and it's not that they're just ready for primetime, ready to infect humans on day one. Normally, you can trace the viral evolution prior to the time when it infects humans. But for SARS-CoV-2, it just showed up on the scene ready to infect humans and there's no history that anybody has found so far of that kind of, uh, of viral evolution. With the first SARS, you could track it by the- the genome sequencing that it was experimenting and SARS-CoV-2 was very, very stable. Uh, meaning it had already adapted to humans by the time it interacted with us.

Lex Fridman 7:49 Like fully adapted, so with SARS, there's a rapid evolution when it, like, first kinda hooks onto a human.

Jamie Metzl 7:58 Yeah, well, 'cause it's trying. Like a- a virus, its goal is to survive-

Lex Fridman 8:01 It's a startup.

Jamie Metzl 8:01 ... and replicate. Yeah. (laughs) No, it's true, it's like, "Oh, we're gonna try this. Oh, that didn't work. We'll try..." Exactly like a- like-

Lex Fridman 8:06 A pivot.

Jamie Metzl 8:07 ... like a startup. And so we don't-

Lex Fridman 8:09 Oh, boy.

Jamie Metzl 8:09 ... we don't see that and so there are some people who say, "Well, all right. Well, one hypothesis is, all right, you have a totally isolated group of humans, maybe in- in southern China which is, you know, more than 1,000 miles away from, uh, from Wuhan. And maybe they're doing their animal farming, um, right next to these, uh, where these areas where there are these horseshoe bats and maybe in this totally isolated place that no one's ever heard of, they're not connected to any other place, one person gets infected. Um, and it doesn't spread to anybody else because they're so isolated. They're like... I- I don't know. I mean, I can't even imagine that this is- is the case. Then somebody gets in a car and drives all night, um, more than 1,000 miles through crappy roads to get to Wuhan. Doesn't stop for anything, doesn't infect anybody on the way, no one else in that person's village infects anyone, and then that person goes straight to the- the Huanan seafood market, according to this, in my mind, not very credible theory, and then unloads his stuff and everybody gets infected and they're only delivering those animals to the Huanan market, um, which doesn't even sell very many of these kinds of animals that are likely intermediate species, and not to anywhere else. So that's... I mean, it's a little bit of a- of a straw man.

Lex Fridman 9:26 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 9:26 Um, but on top of that, the Chinese have sequenced more than 80,000 animal samples and there's no evidence of this type of- of- of viral evolution that we would otherwise expect.

Lex Fridman 9:37 Let's, uh, try to, at this moment, steel man the argument for the natural origin of the virus. So just to- to clarify. So Huanan is actually, despite what it might sound like to people, is a pretty big city.

Jamie Metzl 9:53 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 9:54 There's a lot of people that live in it.

Jamie Metzl 9:55 11 million.

Lex Fridman 9:56 So not only is there the Wuhan Institute of Virology, there's other centers that do work on viruses.

Jamie Metzl 10:03 Yes.

Lex Fridman 10:04 But there's also a giant number of markets, and everything we're talking about here is pretty close together, so-

Jamie Metzl 10:10 Yep.

Lex Fridman 10:10 ... uh, when I kinda look at the geography of this, I think when you zoom out, it's all Huanan, but when you zoom in, there's just a lot of interesting dynamics that could be happening in what-

Jamie Metzl 10:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:20 ... the cases are propping up and what's being reported, all that kinda stuff. So I think the people that argue for the natural origin, and there's a few recent papers that came out arguing this, it's kind of fascinating to watch this whole thing, but I think what they're arguing is that there's this Huanan market that's one of the major markets, uh, the wet markets in, uh, Huanan, that, uh, there's a bunch of cases that were reported from there. So if I look at, for example, the Michael Worobey-

Jamie Metzl 10:56 Worobey, yep.

Lex Fridman 10:57 ... perspective that he wrote in Science, he argues... He- he wrote this a few days ago, the- the predominance of early COVID cases linked to Huanan market, and this can't be dismissed as ascertainment bias, which I think is what people argue, that you're just kind of focusing on this region 'cause a lot of cases came, but there could be-

Jamie Metzl 11:15 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 11:15 ... a- a huge number of other cases. So people who argue against this say that this is a later stage already.

Jamie Metzl 11:22 Right.

Lex Fridman 11:23 Um, uh, so he says no. He says this is- this is the epicenter and, uh, this is a clear, uh, evidence that, uh, circumstantial evidence, but evidence nevertheless, that this is where the jump happened to humans, the big explosion. Maybe not case zero, I don't know if he argues that, but w- the early cases. So what do you make of this whole idea? Can you steel man it-

Jamie Metzl 11:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:50 ... before-

Jamie Metzl 11:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 11:51 ... we talk about the alternative?

Jamie Metzl 11:52 So e- and my goal here isn't to attack people on- on the other side, and- and- and if- my feeling is if there is evidence that's presented, um, that- that should change my view, I- I hope that I'll be open-minded enough to change my view. And certainly Michael Worobey is a thoughtful person, a respectful- a respected scientist, and- and I think this work is- is contributive work, but I just don't think, um, uh, that it- it, uh, i- i- that it's as significant as has been reported-

Lex Fridman 12:21 (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 12:21 ... in- in- in the press. And so what his argument is, um, is that there's an early cluster in December of 2019 around the- the Huanan seafood market, and even though he himself, um, argues that the original, um, uh, breakthrough case, the original case, the index case where the first person infected, um, uh, happened earlier, happened in October or November, so not in December, his argument is, "Well, what are the odds that you would have this number, this cluster of cases in the Huanan seafood market and if the origin had happened someplace else, wouldn't you expect other, um, other clusters?" And it's not an entirely implausible argument, but there are reasons why I think it's, uh, that it's, this is not nearly as determinative as has been reported, and I certainly had a lot of tw- I and others had, uh, tweeted a lot a- about this.And that is, first, uh, the- the people who were infected in this cluster, it's not the earliest known, uh, virus, of the SARS-CoV-2, it began mutating, so this is, it's not the original SARS-CoV-2 there, so you- it had to have happened someplace else. Two, the people who were infected in the market, um, weren't infected in the part of the market where they had these kinds of animals that are considered to be candidates, um, fo- as an intermarry- intermediary species. And third, there was a bias, uh, actually I'll have four things, uh, third, there was a bias in the early, um, assessment in China of what- what they were looking for. They were asked, "Did you have exposure to the market?" Because I think in the early days when people were- were figuring things out that was one of the questions that, uh, that was asked. And fourth, and probably most significantly, we have so little information about those early cases in China, and that's really unfortunate, and we'll talk about this later because, uh, the Chinese government is preventing access to all of that information, which they have, which could easily help us get to the bottom, at least know a ton more about how this pandemic started. And so this is, it- it's like grasping at- at straws in the dark with gloves on.

Lex Fridman 14:38 That's right. But to steel man the argument, we have this evidence from this market and, uh, yes, the Chinese government has, uh, turned off the lights essentially, so we have very little data to work with, but this is the data we have. So who's to say that this data doesn't represent a much bigger data set, that a lot of people got infected at this market wh- even at the parts or especially at the parts with, uh, the meat, the infected meat was being sold?

Jamie Metzl 15:09 So that could be true and it probably is true. The question is, is this the source? Is this the place where this began or was th- this just a place where it was amplified? And I certainly think that it's extremely likely, uh, that the Huanan Seafood Market was an, uh, point of amplification and it- it's just answering a different question.

Lex Fridman 15:33 Basically what you're saying is it's very difficult to use the market as evidence for anything because it- it's probably not even the starting point, so it's just a good place for it to continue spreading?

Jamie Metzl 15:45 That's certainly my view. What Michael Worobey's argument is, um, Michael, is that well what are the odds of that? That we're seeing this amplification in-

Lex Fridman 15:55 At this particular...

Jamie Metzl 15:55 ...in the market. And if we... if... let's... let me put it this way. If we had all of the information, if- if the Chinese government hadn't, um, blocked access to all of this, because there's blood bank information, there's all sorts of information, uh, and based on a full and complete understanding, uh, we came to believe that all of the early cases, um, were at this market, I think that would be a- a stronger argument than, uh, what this is so far. But everything leads to the fact that why is it that the Chinese government, um, which was fa- frankly after a slow start, the gold standard of doing viral tracking for SARS-1-

Lex Fridman 16:36 Mm-hmm.

Jamie Metzl 16:37 ...why have they apparently done so little and shared so little? I think it- it asks... it- it- it begs a lot of questions.

Lex Fridman 16:45 Okay. So let's, uh, then talk about the Chinese government. Uh, let's... there's several governments, right? So one is the local government of Wuhan. And not just the Chinese government, let's talk about government. Uh, no, let's talk about human nature (laughs) . Let's just keep zooming out.

Jamie Metzl 17:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:03 Let's talk about planet Earth.

Jamie Metzl 17:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:05 No. Uh, so there's the Wuhan local government, there's the Chinese government, uh, led by Xi Jinping, and, uh, there's governments in general. I'm trying to empathize. So my father was involved with Chernobyl. I'm trying to put myself into the mind of local officials, of people who are like, "Oh shit, there is... there's a potential catastrophic event h- happening here, and, uh, it's my ass because s- I... we... there's incompetence all over the place." Uh, human nature is such that there's incompetence all over the place and you're always trying to cover it up. And so- so given that context, I want to lay out all the possible incompetence, all the possible malevolence, all the possible geopolitical tensions here. All right, where in your sense did the cover-up start? So, uh, there's this suspicious, uh, fact, it seems like that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had a- a public database of thousands of, uh, sampled bad coronavirus sequences, and that went offline September 2019. What- what's that about?

Jamie Metzl 18:28 So let me talk about that specific and then I'll- I'll also follow your path of- of zooming out.

Lex Fridman 18:33 Is- is that a-

Jamie Metzl 18:33 And it's a really important-

Lex Fridman 18:34 Is that a good starting point you think?

Jamie Metzl 18:35 It's- it's a great starting point, yeah, yeah. So, but there's- there's a- a bigger story, uh, but let me talk about- about that. So the Wuhan Institute of Virology, um... and we can go into the whole history of the Wuhan Institute of Virology e- either now or later because I think it's- it's very relevant to this story, but let's focus for now on this database. They had a database of 22,000 viral samples and sequence information about, uh, viruses that they had- had collected, um, some of which, um, the collection of some of which was supported through funding from the NIH, not a hu- NIH through the EcoHealth Alliance. Uh, it's a relatively small amount, $600,000, but, uh, but not nothing. Um, the goal of this database, um, was so that we could understand viral evolution so that...... for, exactly for this kind of moment where we had an unknown virus, we could say, "Well, is this like anything that we've seen before?" And that would help us both understand what we're facing and be better able, um, to- to respond. So this was a- a- an ac- a- a password protected public access database. In 2019, um, it wa- in September 2019, um, it became inaccessible. And then the whole, a few months later, the entire database, uh, disappeared. What the Chinese have said, uh, is that because there were, um, all kinds of computer attacks on this- on this database. But why would that happen in September 2019, um, before the- the pandemic, at least as far as- as- as we know. So-

Lex Fridman 20:11 So just to clarify.

Jamie Metzl 20:13 Yes.

Lex Fridman 20:14 It went down in September 2019, just so we get the year straight.

Jamie Metzl 20:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:19 January 2020 is when the virus really started getting, um, uh, the press. So we're talking about De- December 2019, a lot of early infections happened. September 2019 is when this database goes down. Just to clarify 'cause you said it quickly.

Jamie Metzl 20:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:37 The Chinese government said that, uh, their database was getting hacked.

Jamie Metzl 20:43 Right. Well-

Lex Fridman 20:45 Therefore-

Jamie Metzl 20:45 ... Shujun Li, the director of this part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said that.

Lex Fridman 20:50 Oh, sh- oh, really?

Jamie Metzl 20:52 She said it.

Lex Fridman 20:52 She was the one that said it?

Jamie Metzl 20:53 She was the one who said it.

Lex Fridman 20:54 Oh, boy!

Jamie Metzl 20:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:55 I did not even know that part.

Jamie Metzl 20:56 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:56 Okay. Well, she's an interesting character. We'll talk about her.

Jamie Metzl 20:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:59 Uh, (laughs) so- so the excuse is that, um, th- that's getting cyber attacked a lot so we're gonna take it down, without any further explanation, which seems very suspicious. And then this virus starts to emerge in October, November, December. There's a lot of argument about that, but after.

Jamie Metzl 21:19 Sorry to interrupt, like, but some people are saying that the first outbreak could have happened as early as S- September. I'm not-

Lex Fridman 21:25 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 21:25 I think it's more likely it's October, November, but for the people who are saying that the first o- outbreak, uh, the first incident of a- of a known outbreak, at least to somebody, happened in September, they make the argument, "Well, what if that also happened in mid-September of- of 2019?" I'm not prepared to go there, but there are some people who make that argument.

Lex Fridman 21:45 But I think if, again, if I were to put myself in the mind of officials, whether it's officials within the Wuhan Institute of Virology or Wuhan local officials, um, I think if I notice some major problem, like somebody got sick, some sign of, "Uh, oh shit, we're screwed up," that's when you kind of, uh, do the slow, there's like a Homer Simpson meme where you slowly start backing out, and I would probably start, um, hiding stuff.

Jamie Metzl 22:20 CYA. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:21 Yeah. And then coming up with really shady excuses. It's like you're in a relationship and your girlfriend wants to see your phone-

Jamie Metzl 22:29 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 22:29 ... and you're like, "I'm sorry, I'm just getting attacked by the Russians now."

Jamie Metzl 22:33 Yeah (laughs) exac-

Lex Fridman 22:34 "This cyber security issue, I can't."

Jamie Metzl 22:35 Yeah. "I wish-

Lex Fridman 22:36 "I can't."

Jamie Metzl 22:36 ... I wish I could-" So-

Lex Fridman 22:36 "I wish I could. It's just un- unsafe right now." (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 22:39 So- so would it be okay if I give you my kind of macro view of the whole information space and- and why I believe this has been so contentious? It's- it's- it's, so here's- here's, if I had to give my best guess, and I underline the word guess, um, of- of what happened and- and your background, your family background with Chernobyl, I think, is highly relevant here. So after the first SARS, um, there was a recognition that we needed to distribute knowledge about virology and epidemiology around the world. The people in China, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, they, uh, were the front line workers and they needed to be doing a lot of the- the viral monitoring and assessment so that we could have an- an early alarm system. Um, and that was why there was a lot of investment in- in all of those places in building capacity, in training people, in helping to build institutional capacity. Uh, and the Chinese government, um, they recognized that they needed to ramp, uh, ramp things up. And then the World Health, uh, Organization and the World Health Assembly, they had their- their international health regulations that were designed to create a stronger infrastructure. So that was- that was the goal. There were a lot of investments and- and I know we'll talk later about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and I won't go into that, uh, into that right now. So there was all this distributed capacity. And so, in the early days, there's a- a breakout in Wuhan. We don't know, is it September, October, November, uh, maybe, uh, December is when the- the local authorities start to recognize that- that something's happening. But at some point in late 2019, uh, local officials in Wuhan understand that something is up, and exactly like in Chernobyl, these guys exist within a hierarchical system and-

Lex Fridman 24:29 Mm-hmm.

Jamie Metzl 24:30 ... they are going to be rewarded if good things happen and they're going to be in big trouble if bad things happen under their watch. So their initial instinct is to squash it. Uh, it's, and they, uh, my guess is they think, "Well, if we squash this information, we can most likely beat back this outbreak," 'cause lots of outbreaks happen all the time, including of SARS 1 where there was a di- uh, multiple lab incidents out of- uh, out of a lab in- in Beijing. And so they start their cover-up on day one. They- they start screening social media. They send nasty letters to- to different, uh, doctors and others who are starting to speak up. But then it becomes clear that there's a bigger issue. And- and then the- the national government of China, again, this is just a hypothesis, the national government gets involved. They say, "All right, this is getting much bigger." They go in and they realize that we have a big problem on our hands. They-... relatively quickly know that it's spreading human to human and so the right thing for them to do then, is what the South African government is doing now, is to say, "We have this outbreak. Uh, we don't know everything, but we know it's serious. Um, we need help." But that's not the instinct of people in, in most governments and certainly not in, in authoritarian governments like China. And so, the f- the national government, they have a choice at that point. They can do option one, which is what we would here call the right thing, which is total transparency. They criticize the local officials for having this cover-up, uh, and they say, "Now, we're going to be totally transparent." But what does that do in a system like the former Soviet Union, like China now? If local officials say, "Wait a second. I thought my job was to cover everything up, to support this alternative reality that authoritarian systems need in order to, to survive. Well, now I'm gonna be held accountable for if, if we're- I'm not totally transparent?" Like, your whole system, um, would, would collapse. So the, the national government, they have that choice and they- their only choice, according to the logic of their system, is to be all in on a cover-up. And that's why they block the World Health Organization from sending its team to Wuhan for over three weeks. They overtly lie to the World Health Organization about human to human transmission. And then they begin their cover-up. So they begin very, very quickly destroying samples, hiding records. They start imprisoning people for, uh, asking basic questions. Soon after, they establish a, a gag order preventing Chinese scientists from writing or saying anything about pandemic origins without prior government approval. And what that does, means that there isn't a lot of data, there's not nearly enough data coming out of China, and so lots of responsible scientists outside of China wh- who are data-driven say, "Well, I don't have enough information to draw conclusions." And then into that vacuum, um, step a relatively small number of, uh, largely virologists, uh, but also others, respected scientists, and I know we'll talk about, uh, the, uh, I think infamous Peter Daszak, um, who s- who say, well, without any real foundation, uh, in, in the evidence, they say, "We know pretty much this comes from nature and anyone who's raising the possibility of a lab incident origin is a, is a conspiracy theorist." So, that message, um, starts to, to percolate. And then in the United States, we have Donald Trump, and he's starting to get criticized for America's failure to respond, prepare for and respond adequately to the outbreak. And so he starts saying, "Well, I know..." First, after praising Xi Jingping, he starts saying, "Well, I know that China did it and the WHO did," and he's, uh, kind of pointing fingers at, at everybody, uh, but, uh, but himself. And then we have a media here that had shifted from the, from the traditional model of he said/she said journalism. So-and-so said X and so-and-so said Y and, and we'll present both of those views. But with Donald Trump, he would make outlandish starting positions. So he would say, "Lex is an ax murderer." And then in the early days, they would say, "Lex is an ax murderer. Lex's friend says he's not an ax murderer." And we'd have a four-day debate. Is he or isn't he? And then at day four, someone would say, "Why are we having this debate at all because the original point is, uh, is just, is baseless?" And so the media g- just got in the habit, here's what Trump said and here's why it's wrong.

Lex Fridman 29:16 It's very complicated to figure out what is the role of a politician, what is the role of a leader in this kind of game of politics. But certainly in, um, when there's a tragedy, when there's a catastrophic event, what it takes to be a leader is to see clearly through the fog and to make big, bold decisions and to speak to the truth of things. And even if it's unpopular truth, um, to listen to the people, to listen to all sides, to the opinions, to the controversial ideas, and to see past all the bullshit, all the political bullshit and just speak to the people, speak to the world, and make bold, big decisions. That- that's probably what was needed in terms of leadership. And I'm not so willing to criticize whether it's, uh, Joe Biden or, uh, Donald Trump on this. I think most people, uh, can not be great leaders. But that's why when great leaders step up-

Jamie Metzl 30:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:18 ... we write books about them.

Jamie Metzl 30:20 Yeah. And I, and I agree and, and even though, I mean, I, I'm a- I think of myself as a progressive person, I certainly was a critic of a lot of, uh, of what, uh, President Trump, uh, did. But on this particular case, even though he may have said it in an uncouth way, Donald Trump was actually, in my view, right. I mean, when he said, "Hey, let's look at this lab." I mean, he said, "I have evidence I can't tell you." I don't think he even had the evidence.

Lex Fridman 30:50 (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 30:51 But his intuition that this probably comes fr- from a lab, in my view, was a correct intuition. And certainly, I started speaking up about pandemic origins early, uh, in 2019 and my friends, my Democratic friends were brutal with me saying-

Lex Fridman 31:09 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 31:09 ... "What are you doing? You're supporting Trump in an election year." And I said, "Just because Donald Trump is saying something doesn't mean that I need to oppose it." I- if he s- if Donald Trump says something that I think is correct, well, I wanna say it's correct just as if he says something that I don't like, I'm gonna speak up about that.

Lex Fridman 31:26 Good. You walked the fire. So that's, uh, that's... You laid out the story here and, um...... I think in many ways it's a human story. It's a story of politics, it's a stor- story of human nature. But let's talk about the story of the virus, and- and let's talk about the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So, maybe this is a good time to try to talk about its history, about its origins, about what kind of stuff it works on, about biosafety levels, and about bat woman.

Jamie Metzl 32:00 Yeah! (laughs) Shi Zhengli, yes.

Lex Fridman 32:02 Shi Zhengli. Uh, so, what- what is the Wuhan Institute of Virology? When did it start?

Jamie Metzl 32:07 Yeah, so, i- it's a great question. So, um, after SARS-1, which was in the early 2000, 2003, 2004, um, there was this effort to, um, uh, to enhance, as I mentioned before, global capacity, including in China. So, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been around for decades before then, uh, but there was an agreement between the French and the Chinese governments to build a, the largest BSL-4 lab, so, Biosafety Level four. So, in these, what are called high-containment labs, there's level four, which is the highest level, and people have seen that in, on TV and elsewhere where you have, uh, the- the people in the different, in suits and all of these protections. And then there's level three, which is still very serious, uh, and, uh, but not as much as, uh, as level four. And then level two is just kind of g- goggles and- and some gloves and maybe, uh, and maybe a face mask, much less. So, the French and the Chinese governments, uh, uh, th- uh, agreed that France would help build the first and- and still the largest BSL-4, plus some mobile BSL-3 labs, and they were going to do it in Wuhan. And Wuhan is kind of like, uh, China's Chicago. And I actually been, it's a different story, I'd been in Wuhan relatively, um, uh, not that long before the pandemic, uh, broke out, and that was why I knew that Wuhan is a, it's a r- it's not some backwater where there are a bunch of yokels eating bats for dinner, uh, every night. This is a really sophisticated, wealthy, highly educated and- and- and cultured city. And so I- I knew that it wasn't like... That even the Huanan Seafood Market wasn't like some of these seafood markets that they have in Southern China or in Cambodia where I lived for, uh, for two years. I mean, this, it's, it was a- a totally different thing.

Lex Fridman 33:59 But I'm gonna have to talk to you about some of the f- including the Huanan market, just some of the wild food going on here, 'cause you've traveled that part of the world.

Jamie Metzl 34:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:06 But let's not get there.

Jamie Metzl 34:07 Yeah, okay, good.

Lex Fridman 34:07 Let's- let's not get distracted.

Jamie Metzl 34:08 Good. As I was telling you, Lex, before, and this is maybe an advertisement-

Lex Fridman 34:13 Yes.

Jamie Metzl 34:13 ... um, is having now listened to- to a number of your, your podcasts when I'm doing long ultra-training runs or driving in the mountains, like, the really... Because in the beginning, we have to-

Lex Fridman 34:24 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 34:24 ... talk about whatever it is, is the topic.

Lex Fridman 34:26 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 34:26 But the really good stuff happens later, so-

Lex Fridman 34:28 So friends-

Jamie Metzl 34:29 ... stay tuned.

Lex Fridman 34:29 ... you should listen to the end.

Jamie Metzl 34:30 I- I, you know, I- I have to say, as I was telling you before, like, when I heard your long podcast with Jaron Laniere and he talked about his mother at the very end, I mean, it w- just beautiful stuff. So I don't know whether I can, I can match beautiful stuff (laughs) , but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, gonna do my best. So-

Lex Fridman 34:48 You're gonna have to find out.

Jamie Metzl 34:49 E- exactly. Stay tuned. Um, so, um, so France had this agreement, um, that they were going to help design and help build, uh, this BSL-4, um, lab in Wuhan, and, um, it was going to be with, um, French standards and there were going to be 50 French experts who were going to work there and supervise the- the work that happened even after the Wuhan Institute of Virology, um, uh, in- in the new location, um, uh, started, uh, started operating. Uh, but then when they started building it, uh, the- the French contractors, the- the p- the French overseers were increasingly appalled, um, that they had less and less control, that the Chinese, uh, contractors were swapping out new things, they, it wasn't built up to French standards, so much, um, that at the end when it was finally built, uh, the- the- the person who was the vice-chairman of the project and a leading French, uh, industrialist named Mérieux refused to sign off and he said, "We- we can't, um, support, we have no idea, um, what this is, whether it's safe or not." And when this, this lab opened, remember we were supposed to have 50 French experts, it had one French expert. And so the- the French were really disgusted. And actually, when the Wuhan Institute of Virology in its new location opened in, in 2018, um, two things happened. One, French intelligence privately approached US intelligence saying, "We have a lot of concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, about its safety, and we don't even know who's operating there. Is it being used as a- a dual use, uh, facility?" And also in 2018, the US embassy in Beijing, uh, sent some people down to Wuhan to go and look at, well, at this laboratory, and they wrote a scathing cable that Josh Rogin from The Washington Post later got his- his hands on saying, um, "This is really unsafe. They're doing work on dangerous bat coronaviruses in conditions where a- a leak is, uh, is- is possible." And so then you mentioned Shi Zhengli, and I'll- I'll connect that to the- these virologists who I was- was- was talking about. So there's a very credible thesis, um, that because, um, these pathogenic outbreaks happen in other parts of the world, having partnerships with experts in those part- in those parts of the world must be a foundation of our, of our efforts. We can't just bring everything home because we know that- that viruses don't care about borders and boundaries, and so if something happens there, it- it's going to- to come here.... very correctly. Um, we have all kinds of partnerships, um, with experts in, in these labs. And Shuzheng Li, um, was one of those partners, and her closest relationship was with Peter Daszak, who's a British, I think now American, but the, the president of a thing called EcoHealth Alliance, which was getting money from NIH. And basically, EcoHealth Alliance was a pass-through organization, and, and, you know, over the years it was only about $600,000 so almost all of her funding came from the Chinese government, but there's a little bit that came from the United States. And so she became their kind of leading expert, and the, the point of contact, uh, between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and, um, certainly Peter Daszak, but also, uh, also with, with others. And that was why in the earliest days of the outbreak, I didn't mention that... Um, I did mention that there, there were these virologists who had this fake certainty that they knew it came from nature and it didn't come from a, a lab, and they called people like me conspiracy theorists just for raising th- that possibility. But when Peter Daszak was organizing that effort in February of 2020, what he said is, "We need to rally behind our Chinese colleagues." And that, the basic idea was, um, these international collaborations are under threat, and I think this was because of that, because Peter Daszak's, basically his, his major contribution as a scientist was just tacking his name on work that Shuzheng Li had largely done. Um, he was defending a lot, certainly for himself and his organization.

Lex Fridman 39:16 So, y- you think EcoHealth Alliance and, uh, Peter... I- it's less about money and it's more about kind of, um, almost like legacy 'cause you're so attached to this work? Is it just on a human level?

Jamie Metzl 39:28 I, I think so. I, I think so. I mean, I, I've been criticized for being... Actually, I'm, I'm certainly a big critic of Peter Daszak, uh, but I've been criticized by some for being too lenient. I mean, it's so easy to say, "Oh, somebody, they're like an evil ogre and just trying to do evil and, and cackling in their, uh, in their closet or whatever." But I think for most of us, even those of us who do terrible, horrible things, the story that we tell ourselves, and we really believe, is that we're doing the thing that we most believe in. I mean, I did my PhD dissertation on the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. They genuinely saw themselves as idealists. They, they, they thought, "Well, we need to make radical change to build a better future," and th- what they described as, what they felt (laughs) was radical change was, was a monstrous atrocity by us.

Lex Fridman 40:22 S- so, so the criticism here of Peter is, uh, uh... is that, uh, he was, uh, part of an organization that was kind of, um... well, funding an effort that was an unsafe implementation of a biosafety level 4 laboratory.

Jamie Metzl 40:42 Well, uh, a few things. So what he thought he was doing, um, was... And, and what he thought he was doing is itself highly controversial because there's one... there... that, um... in 2011, um, there were, I know you've talked about this with other guests, but in, in 2011, uh, there were the first, um, published papers on this now infamous gain-of-function, uh, research. And, and basically what they did, um, both in, um, uh, in different labs, and certainly in the United States, in, in, uh, Wisconsin, and in, uh, in the Netherlands, was they had a bird flu virus that was, that was very dangerous but not massively, uh, transmissive. And they, they had a, a gain-of-function process through what, what's called serial passage, which means basically passing of vi- it's like natural selection, but forcing natural selection by just passing a virus through, uh, different cell cultures and then selecting for what it is they, that you want. So relatively easily, they took this deadly but not massively transmissive virus and turned it into, in a lab, a deadly and transmissive virus, and that showed that this is really dangerous. And so there were... At that point, there was a huge controversy. There were some people, um, like Richard Ebright and Marc Lipsitch at Harvard who were saying, um, that this is really dangerous. We're in, th- the i- the idea that we need to create monsters to study monsters, I, I think, uh, maybe even you have said that in the past, uh, it doesn't make sense because there's an unlimited number of monsters, and so what are we gonna do, create an unlimited number of monsters? And if we do that, eventually the monsters are, are going to get out. Then there was the Peter Daszak camp, and he got a lot of funding, uh, particularly from the United States, who said, "Well..." A- and, and certainly Collins and Fauci were supportive of this, and they thought, "Well, there's a safe way to go out into the world to collect the world's most dangerous viruses and to poke and prod them, um, to figure out how they might mutate, how they might b- become more dangerous," with the goal of predicting, um, future pandemics, and that certainly never happened, with the goal of creating, uh, vaccines and treatments, and that largely, uh, never happened. But that was... So Peter Daszak kind of epitomized that, uh, that second, uh, second approach. Um, and as, as you've talked about in the past, in 2014, there was a funding moratorium in the United States, and then in 2017, uh, that was lifted. It didn't affect the funding that went to the, um, to the EcoHealth Alliance. Um, so when this happened in, i- in the beginning, and again coming back to Peter's motivationsI don't think, um... Here's the best case scenario for, for Peter. I'm gonna give you i- i- if what I imagine he was thinking, and then I'll tell you what I actually think. So, I think here's what he's thinking. Um, this is most likely a natural origin outbreak. It- it- it... Just like SARS 1, in, again, in Peter's hypothetical mind, just like SARS 1, this is most likely a natural, uh, outbreak. We need to have an international coalition in order to fight it. If we allow, uh, these political attacks to undermine our Chinese counterparts and the trust in this rel- these relationships that we've built over many years, we're really screwed because they have the most local knowledge of these outbreaks. And even though... And, and this got... gets a lot more complicated. Even though there are basic questions that anybody would ask and that Shi Zhengli herself did ask about, uh, the origins of this pandemic, even though Peter Daszak, and I'll mention this, uh, I'll describe this in a moment, had secret information that we didn't have that, in my mind, massively in- increases the possibility of a lab incident origin, "I, Peter Daszak, would like to guide the public conversation, uh, in the direction where I think it should go and in the, in support of the kind of international collaboration that I think is necessary."

Lex Fridman 45:04 Th- that's a strong positive description because it's true that there's a lot of political BS and a lot of, uh, kind of just, uh, bickering and lies, as we've talked about. And so it's very convenient to say, "You know what? Let's just ignore all of these, quote unquote, 'lies,'" and my favorite word, misinformation.

Jamie Metzl 45:26 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:26 Uh, and then... Because the way out from this serious pandemic is for us to work together, so let's strengthen our partnerships-

Jamie Metzl 45:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:36 ...and everything else is just, like, noise.

Jamie Metzl 45:38 Yeah. So, l- let's... And, and so then now I wanna do my personal indictment of Peter Daszak because that, that's m- my view, but I wanted to fairly-

Lex Fridman 45:46 That was nice, yeah.

Jamie Metzl 45:46 ...because I think that, that, you know, we all tell ourselves stories. And, and, and I th- and, and also, when you're a science communicator, um, you can't, in your public communications, give every doubt that you have or every nuance. You kind of have to summarize things, and so I think that he was, again, in this, this benign interpretation, trying to summarize in the way that he thought the, the conversation should go. Here's my indictment of Peter Daszak, and I, uh, I, I... (laughs) It's... I feel like, uh, Brutus here, but, uh, I, um-

Lex Fridman 46:22 (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 46:23 ... (laughs) I've not come here to praise, um, uh, Peter Daszak because, um, while Peter Daszak was doing all of this and making all of these statements about, "Well, we pretty much know it's a natural origin," uh, then there was this February 2020 Lancet letter where it turns out, and we only knew this later, um, that he was highly manipulative. So, he was, uh, recruiting all of these people. He drafted the, the infamous letter calling people like me, uh, conspiracy theorists. He then wrote to people like Ralph Baric and Linfa Wang, who are also very high-profile viroologists saying, "Well, let's not put our names on it so it doesn't look like we're doing it," even though they were doing it. Uh, he didn't, um, uh, disclose a lot of information that, that they had.

Lex Fridman 47:09 So, it, it, it was a strategic move. So, just, uh, uh, in case people are not familiar, Feb- February 2020 Lancet letter was, uh, TL;DR is, uh, lab leak hypothesis is a conspiracy theory.

Jamie Metzl 47:24 Essentially, yes. Um-

Lex Fridman 47:25 So, uh, so like with the authority of science-

Jamie Metzl 47:29 Correct.

Lex Fridman 47:29 ...not saying like, "It's highly likely," saying, "It's obvious. Duh, it's, uh, uh-"

Jamie Metzl 47:36 Yes.

Lex Fridman 47:36 "...it's natural origin. Everybody else is just, uh, is... everything else is just misinformation. And look, there's a bunch of really smart people that signed this, therefore it's true."

Jamie Metzl 47:46 Yeah. Not only that. So, there were (laughs) , um, the people who... S- 27 people signed that letter, and then after President Trump cut funding, uh, to EcoHealth Alliance, then he organized 77 Nobel laureates to, to have a public letter criticizing that. But what Peter knew then that we didn't fully know is that in March of 2018, EcoHealth Alliance, in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and others, had applied for a $14 million grant, um, to DARPA, which is kind of like the, the VC side of the... venture capital side of the, of the Defense Department. They're kind of... Th- where they do kind of big ideas. Um-

Lex Fridman 48:29 Oh, by the way, as a tiny tangent, I've gotten a lot of funding from DARPA. They fund a lot of excellent robotics research. I don't know if you-

Jamie Metzl 48:36 And DARPA's incredible.

Lex Fridman 48:37 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 48:38 A- and among the things that they applied for is that we, meaning Wuhan Institute of Virology, is gonna go, and it's gonna collect the most dangerous bat coronaviruses in Southern China, and then we, as this, uh, as this group, are going to genetically engineer these viruses, um, to insert a furin cleavage site. So, I think when, when p- everyone's now seen the image of the SARS-CoV-2, uh, virus, it has these little spike proteins, these little things that, that stick out, which is why they call it a coronavirus. Within that spike protein are these furin cleavage sites, which h- basically help with g- the virus getting access into our cells. And they're going to genetically engineer these furin cleavage sites into these bat coronaviruses, uh, the sarbecoviruses. Uh, and then (laughs) ... And so then, a year and a half later, what do we see? We see a bat coronavirus with a furin cleavage site unlike anything that we've ever seen before in that category of SARS-like coronaviruses that, well...... yes. I mean, it- it- the- the DARPA very correctly didn't support that application.

Lex Fridman 49:50 Well, let- let's actually-

Jamie Metzl 49:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 49:52 ... let's, like, pause on that. So for a lot of people, that's like the smoking gun.

Jamie Metzl 49:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 49:56 Okay, let's talk about this 2018 proposal-

Jamie Metzl 50:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 50:01 ... to DARPA. So, I guess who's drafted the proposal? Is it, uh-

Jamie Metzl 50:04 EcoHealth.

Lex Fridman 50:05 ... Eco- EcoHealth. But the proposal is to do res- so EcoHealth is technically, uh, a US-funded organization.

Jamie Metzl 50:14 Primarily.

Lex Fridman 50:15 And then the idea was to do work at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Jamie Metzl 50:21 With, yeah, so it was the-

Lex Fridman 50:22 With EcoHealth.

Jamie Metzl 50:23 Yeah. So EcoHealth, basically that, um, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was gonna go and they were gonna collect these viruses and store them at- at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Lex Fridman 50:31 But they're also gonna do the actual t- the-

Jamie Metzl 50:33 So according... It's a really important point. According to their proposal, the actual work was going to be done at the lab of Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, who's probably the world's leading expert on, uh, corona, uh, coronaviruses. And so we know that DARPA didn't fund that work. Um, we know, I think quite well that Ralph Baric's lab, in part, uh, because it was not, uh, funded by- uh, by DARPA, they didn't do that specific work. What we don't know is, well, what work was done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology because WIV was part of this proposal, they had access to all of the plans, they had done... They had their own capacity and they had already done a lot of work in genetically engin- in genetically altering this exact category of viruses. They had created, um, uh, chimeric mixed, uh, viruses. They had done... They had mastered pretty much all of the steps in order to achieve this thing that they applied for funding with, uh, EcoHealth to do. And so the question is, did the Wuhan Institute of Virology go through with that research anyway? And in my mind, there's- that's a very, very real possibility. It would certainly explain why they're giving no information. And, um, a- as you know, I've been a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing-

Lex Fridman 52:05 Mm-hmm.

Jamie Metzl 52:05 ... uh, which Dr. Tedros created in the aftermath of the announcement of the world's first CRISPR babies, and it was just basically the exact same story. So He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, who was not a first-tier scientist but a perfectly adequate second-tier scientist, came to the United States, learned all of these capacities, went back to China and said, "Well, there's a much more permissive environment. I'm gonna, you know, be a- a world leader. I'm gonna establish both myself and China." So in every scientific field, we're seeing this- th- this same thing where you kind of learn a model and then you do it in China. So is it possible, uh, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology with this exact game plan, um, was doing it anyway? Do we... Possible. We have no clue what work was being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It seems extremely likely, um, that at the Wuhan Institute of- of Virology, and this is certainly the US government position, there was the work that was being done in Dr. Shi's lab, but that wasn't the whole WIV. We know, or at least according to the United States government, that there was the Chinese military, the PLA was doing work there. Were they doing this kind of work, not to create a bioweapon, um, but in order to understand these viruses, maybe to develop vaccines and treatments? Ev- it- it seems like a very, very logical possibility. Uh, and then so we know that the- the Wuhan Institute of Virology had all of the skills, we know that they were part of this proposal, and then you have Peter Daszak who knows all of this, that at that time in February of 2020, we didn't know. But then he comes swinging out of the gate saying anybody who's raising this possibility, um, of a- of a lab incident origin is a conspiracy theorist. I mean, it really makes him look, in my mind, very, very bad and-

Lex Fridman 54:01 Yeah, not to at least be somewhat open-minded on this because he knows all the details, he knows that it's not 0%. I mean, there's no-

Jamie Metzl 54:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 54:10 ... way in his mind could you even argue that. So it's- it's potential because of the bias, because of your focus. I mean, it could be the Anthony Fauci masks thing whereas he knows there's some significant probability that this is happening, but in order to pre- uh, uh, preserve good relations with our Chinese colleagues, we want to make sure we tell a certain kind of narrative. So it's not really lying, it's doing the best possible action at this time to help the world, not that this already happened.

Jamie Metzl 54:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 54:42 But that's how like...

Jamie Metzl 54:43 Yeah, I'm- I- I think it's quite likely that that was the story that he was telling himself. But it's that la- that lack of transparency-

Lex Fridman 54:54 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 54:54 ... in my mind is fraudulent, um, that the w- that we were struggling to understand something that we didn't understand, and that... I just think that, eh, people who possess that kind of information, especially when, um, the existence, like his- the entire career of Peter Daszak is based on US taxpayers. There's a debt that comes with that and that debt is honesty and transparency. And for all of us in our... you talked about your girlfriend checking your phone, for all of us being honest and- and transparent in the most difficult times is really difficult. If it were easy, everybody would do it and- and that's... You know, I just feel that- that, uh, Peter was the opposite of transparent and then went on the offensive and then, um, uh, had the gall of joining... I know we can talk about this, this, um, highly compromised, um, joint study, um, process with the- the- the, uh, international experts and their Chinese government counterparts and used that as a way of furthering this...... um, in my mind, fraudulent narrative, um, that it almost certainly came from, uh, natural origins and, um, and lab origin was extremely unlikely.

Lex Fridman 56:12 Just to stick briefly on the proposal to wrap that up, because I do think in a, in a kind of Jon Stewart way, if, if you heard that, uh-

Jamie Metzl 56:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:23 ... uh, uh, bit.

Jamie Metzl 56:24 Loved it.

Lex Fridman 56:24 He... (laughs) Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 56:25 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:25 So it's kind of like common sense way, the 2018 proposal to DARPA from EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology just seems like a bit of a smoking gun to me. Like that, um... So the- there's this excellent book that people should read, uh, called Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, uh, Matt Ridley and, uh, Alina Chan. I think Alina is in, uh, MIT probably.

Jamie Metzl 56:54 She's at the Broad, yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:55 At Broad Institute, yeah, yeah. So she, uh... I heard her in an interview give this analogy of, (laughs) of unicorns.

Jamie Metzl 57:03 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:04 And, uh, where basically somebody writes a proposal to add horns to horses, the proposal is rejected, and then, uh, a couple of years later, or a year later, a unicorn shows up. (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 57:19 In the place where they're proposing to do it. I mean, that's so... I had-

Lex Fridman 57:24 And then everyone was like-

Jamie Metzl 57:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:25 ... "I- it's natural origin."

Jamie Metzl 57:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:26 It's like, it's possible it's natural origin.

Jamie Metzl 57:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:29 Like, we haven't detected a unicorn yet and this is the first time we've detected a unicorn. Or it could be this massive organization that was planning, is fully equipped, has like a, a history of being able to do this stuff, has the world of experts to do it, has the funding, has the motivation to add horns to horses, and now a unicorn shows up and they're saying, "Nope, yep, definitely-" (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 57:52 Because you could-

Lex Fridman 57:53 "... definitely not true." (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 57:53 Well, and that, that connects to the... to what you... your first question of how do I get to my 85%? And here's, here's a summary of that, uh, of that answer. And so it's what I said in my 60 Minutes, uh, interview a long time ago, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world."

Lex Fridman 58:09 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 58:09 The quote from, uh, from Casablanca.

Lex Fridman 58:11 Mm-hmm.

Jamie Metzl 58:11 And so of all the places in the world where we have an outbreak of a SARS-like bat coronavirus, it's not in the area of the natural habitat of the horseshoe bats. It's the one city in China, um, with the first and largest, um, level four virology lab, which actually wasn't even using it, they were doing level three and, and level two for this work, where they had the world's largest collection of bat coronaviruses, um, where they were doing aggressive experiments designed to make these scary viruses scarier, where they had been part of an application to insert a furin cleavage site able to infect human cells, um, and where th- when the outbreak happened, we had a virus that was ready, ready for action to infect humans, and to this day, better able to infect humans than any other species, including, uh, including bats. And then from day one, there's this massive cover-up. And then on top of that, in spite of lots of efforts by lots of people, there's basically no evidence for the natural origin hypothesis. Everything that I've described just now is circumstantial, but there's a certain point of where you add up the circumstances and you see w- this seems pretty, pretty likely. I mean, if we're getting to 100%, we are not at 100% by any means. There still is a possibility of a natural origin and if we find that, great. But from everything that I know, that's how I get to my 85.

Lex Fridman 59:50 And, and we'll talk about the why this matters in a political sense, in a human sense, in a science, uh, in the realm of science, all of those factors. But, uh,

Lex Fridman 1:00:01 first, as Nietzsche said, "Let us look into the abyss and the games we play with monsters that is, uh, colloquially called gain-of-function research." Let me ask the kind of political sounding question, which is how people usually phrase it. Did Anthony Fauci, uh, fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

Jamie Metzl 1:00:26 So it depends. I mean, I, I've obviously been very closely monitoring this, I've spoken a lot about it, I've, I've written about it, and it depends on... I mean, not to quote Bill Clinton, but to quote Bill Clinton, it depends on what the definition of is is.

Lex Fridman 1:00:41 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 1:00:41 And so, um, if you use a common sense definition of gain of function, and by gain of function, uh, there are lots of things like gene therapies that are gain of function, but what... here what we mean is gain of function for, uh, uh, pathogens able, potentially able to create, um, human, uh, pandemics. Um, but if you use the kind of common sense language, uh, well then he probably did. If you use the technical language from a 2017 NIH document, uh, and you read that language very narrowly, I think you can make a credible argument that he, that he did not. There's a question though, and, and, uh, Francis Collins talked about that in his, in his interview with you, but then there's a question that we know, uh, from now that we have the information of the reports submitted by EcoHealth Alliance, um, to the, uh, the NIH and, and some of which were late or not even, uh, delivered, that some of this research was done on MERS, Middle Eastern, uh, respiratory syndrome, um, virus. And if that was the case, um, there is a, I think, a colorable argument that that would, um, c- be considered gain-of-function research even by the narrow language of that 2017 document. But I, but I, I definitely think-... and I've said this repeatedly, that Rand Paul can be right and Tony Fauci can be right. And the question is, um, what, how are we defining gain of function? And that's why I've always said, the question in my mind isn't, was it or wasn't it gain of function, as if that's like a binary thing, if, if not, um, great, and if yes, guilty. The question is just, what work was being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? What, um, role, if any, did US, uh, government funding play in supporting that, uh, that work? And what rights do we all have as, as, as, as human beings and as American citizens and taxpayers to get all of the relevant information about them?

Lex Fridman 1:02:47 So let's try to kinda dissect this. So who frustrates you more, Rand Paul or Anthony Fauci in this discussion, or the discussion itself? So for example, gain of function i- i- is a term that's kind of more used, uh, just to mean making, uh, playing with viruses in a lab to try to develop more dangerous viruses. Is this, uh, kind of research, um, a good idea? Is it also a good idea for us to talk about it in public in the political way that it's been talked about? Is it okay that, um, US may have funded gain of function research elsewhere? I mean, i- it's kind of assumed, uh, just like with Bill Clinton, there was very little discussion of, um, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, whether it's okay for a president, male or female, to have extramarital sex, okay? Or is it okay for a president to have, uh, extramarital sex with people on their, on his staff or her staff? It was more the discussion of lying, I think. It was, "Did you, did you lie about having sex or not?" And in this gain of function discussion, what frustrates me personally is there's not a deep philosophical discussion about whether we should be doing this kind of research and what kinds, like what are the ethical lines? Research on animals at all. Those are fascinating questions. Instead, it's a gotcha thing. Did you or did you not fund research on gain of function? And did you fund... It's almost like a bioweapon. Did you give money to China to develop this bioweapon that now attack the rest of the world?

Jamie Metzl 1:04:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:04:49 So, I mean, all, all, all those things are pretty frustrating, but i- is there, um... I think the thing you can untangle about Anthony Fauci and gain of function research in the United States and EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology that's kind of, um, that's clarifying?

Jamie Metzl 1:05:07 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:07 What were the mistakes made?

Jamie Metzl 1:05:08 Sure. So on gain of function, there actually has been a lot of, uh, o- of debate. And I mentioned before in 2011, these first papers, uh, there was a big debate. Uh, Marc Lipsitch, who's formerly at Harvard, now with the, the, the US government, uh, working in the president's office, um, he led a thing called the Cambridge Group, uh, that was highly critical of, of this work, basically saying we're, we're, uh, we're creating monsters. They had the funding pause in 2014. Uh, they spent three years putting together a framework, uh, and then they, they lifted it in 2017. So we had a thoughtful conversation. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and I think that's where, where, uh, where we are now. So I absolutely think, um, that there are real issues with, uh, the relationship between the United States government and EcoHealth Alliance, and through that, EcoHealth Alliance with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And one issue is just essential transparency, because as I see it, it's most likely the case that we transferred a lot of our knowledge and plans and things to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And, and again, I'm sure that Shi Zhengli is not herself a monster. I'm, I'm sure of that, even though I've never met her. Um, but there are just a different set of pressures on people working in an authoritarian system than people who are working in other systems. That doesn't mean it's entirely, entirely different. And so I absolutely think that we shouldn't give $1, um, to an organization, and certainly a virology institute, where you don't have full access to, to their records, to their databases. We don't know what work is, is, is happening there. And, and I think that we need to have, um, that kind of full examination, and that's why... So I understand what, what Dr. Fauci is doing is saying, "Hey, what I hear..." Dr. Fauci said, "What I hear from you, Rand Paul, is you're accusing me of starting this pandemic and you're using gain of function as a proxy for that, and we have... In, when there are senate hearings, every senator gets five minutes, and the name of the game is to translate your five minutes into a clip that's going to run on the news." And so I get that there is that...

Lex Fridman 1:07:23 It's a dark, dark game.

Jamie Metzl 1:07:24 ... kind of gotcha. Um, but I also think that, uh, that Dr. Fauci and, uh, the NIA, the National Institute of, of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the NIH, should have been more transparent. Um, because I th- I, I think that i- i- in this day and age where there are a lot of people poking around in this whole story of COVID origins, uh, we would not be where we are if it wasn't for a relatively small number of people. And, and, and I'm, I'm part of, there are two, as... no, two groups. One is these internet sleuths known as Drastic, and a number of them are part of a group, um, that I'm part of called, it's, it's not our official name, but called the Paris Group. It's about two dozen experts, um, uh, around the world, but centered around some, some very, um, high level French academics. So we've all been digging, uh, and meeting with each other regularly since, uh, since last year.... and our governments across the board, certainly China but including the United States, haven't been as transparent as they, uh, as they, they need to be. So, there's definitely mistakes were made on all sides and that's why for me from day one, I've been calling for a comprehensive investigation into this issue that certainly obviously looks at China but we have to look at ourselves. We did not get this right.

Lex Fridman 1:08:43 So, do you... I'm just gonna put Rand Paul aside here.

Jamie Metzl 1:08:49 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:50 He, he politician playing political games. It's very frustrating but, uh, it is what it is on all sides. Anthony Fauci, you think should have been more transparent and, um, maybe more eloquent in, in expressing the, the complexity of all of this, the uncertainty in all of this.

Jamie Metzl 1:09:12 Yeah. And, and I get that it's really hard to do that because let's say you, you, you have one... You speak a paragraph and it's got four sentences and one of those sentences is the thing that's going to be turning to Twitter and-

Lex Fridman 1:09:27 All right, Jamie, let me push back.

Jamie Metzl 1:09:28 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:28 I get really... So, um, I'll try not to be emotional

Lex Fridman 1:09:32 about this, but I've heard, uh, Anthony Fauci a couple of times now say that he represents science.

Jamie Metzl 1:09:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:43 I know what he means by that. He means in this political bickering, all that kind of stuff, that for a lot of people, he represents science. But words matter, and this isn't just clips. I mean, maybe I'm distinctly aware of that doing this podcast like, yeah, I talked for like hundreds of hours now, maybe over a thousand hours. But like, I'm still careful with the words.

Jamie Metzl 1:10:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:11 Like I- I'm trying not to be an asshole and I'm aware when I'm an asshole and I'll apologize for it. Uh, like if the words "I represent science" left my mouth, which they very well could, I would sure as hell be apologizing for it and not in a... Because I got in trouble. I would just feel bad about saying something like that. And even that little phrase, "I represent science." No, Dr. Fauci, you do not represent science. I love science. The, the, the millions of scientists that inspired me to get into it, to fall in love with the scientific method in the, um, exploration of ideas through the rigor of science, that Anthony Fauci does not represent. He's one, I believe, great scientist of millions. He does not represent anybody. Uh, he's just one scientist. And I think the greatness of a scientist is best exemplified in humility because the scientific method basically says, like you're, you're, you're like standing before the fog, the mystery of it all and like slowly chipping away at the mystery and the... It's, it's like, uh, it's embarrassing, it's, uh, humiliating how little you know. That's the experience.

Jamie Metzl 1:11:29 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:11:30 So, the, the great scientists have to have humility to me, and especially in their communication, they have to have humility. And I mean, I don't know. A- and some of it is also words matter because (sighs) you have to... Like great leaders have to have the poetry of action. They have to be bold and inspire action across millions of people but you also have to, uh, through that poetry of words express the complexity of the uncertainty you're operating under. Be humble in the face of not being able to predict the future or understand the past or really know what's the right thing to do but we have to do something. And through that you have to be a great leader that inspires action and, uh, some of that is just words and he chose words poorly. I, I mean, I... So I- I'm all torn about this and then there's politicians that are taking those words and, um, magnifying them and playing games with them and of course that's a disincentive for the people who do... The s- the scientific leaders that step into the limelight to say any more words so they kind of become more conservative with the wor- the words they use. I mean, it just becomes a giant mess but I think the solution is to ignore all of that and to be transparent, to be honest, to be vulnerable and, uh, to, to express the full uncertainty-

Jamie Metzl 1:13:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:13:01 ... of the, what you're operating under, to present all the possible actions and to be honest about the mistakes they made in the past. I mean, there's something... Even if you're not directly responsible for those mistakes, taking responsibility for them is, uh, is a way to win people over. Like I don't think leaders realize this often in, in, in the modern age, in the internet age. They can see through your bullshit and it's really inspiring when you take ownership. So to do the thought experiment like in public, do a thought experiment. If there was a lab leak, and then lay out all the funding, the EcoHealth Alliance, all the incredible science going on at the, uh, Wuhan Institute of Virology and the NIH. Lay out all the possible ethical problems. Lay out all the possible, um, mistakes that could have been made and say like, "This could have happened and if this happened, here's the best way to respond to it and to prevent it in the future," and just lay all that complexity out. I mean, I wish we would have, uh, seen that and I have hope that th- this conversation and conversations like it, your work, uh, and, uh, books on this topic will inspire young people today when they become in the Anthony Fauci's role.... to be much more transparent and much more humble and all, all of those kinds of things. That this is just a relic of the past when there's a person, no offense to me, in a suit that has to stand up and speak cl- w- with clarity and certainty. I mean, that's just a relic of the past is, uh, i- i- i is my hope. But...

Jamie Metzl 1:14:40 D- do you mind if I, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:14:41 Yeah, please.

Jamie Metzl 1:14:41 ... may, 'cause I, I agree with a, a great deal of, uh, of what you said and I, and I, it's, it's really unfortunate, uh, that our, certainly the Chinese government, as I said before, our government, um, wasn't as transparent as I feel they should've been, particularly in the early days of the pandemic and particularly with regard to the issue of pandemic origins. I mean, we know that, that Dr. Fauci was on calls with people like, um, Christian Andersen at Scripps and others in those early days raising questions, "Is this an engineered virus?" There were a lot of, uh, of questions. And it's kind of sad. I mean, as I mentioned before, I've, I've been, um, one, I mean, and certainly there were, were others but there weren't a lot of us, um, of the people who from the earliest days-

Lex Fridman 1:15:29 (laughs)

Jamie Metzl 1:15:29 ... of the pandemic were raising questions about, "Hey, not so fast, um, here." And I, and I, I launched my website on pandemic origins in April of last year, April 2020. It got a huge amount of attention and actually my friend Matt Pottinger, who is the Deputy National Security Advisor, when he was reaching out to people in the US government, uh, and in allied governments saying, "Hey, we should look into this," the, what he was sending them was my website. It wasn't some US government information. And so they-

Lex Fridman 1:16:00 And by the way, people should still go to the website.

Jamie Metzl 1:16:02 I hope so.

Lex Fridman 1:16:02 You keep, you keep getting, uh, keep updating it-

Jamie Metzl 1:16:05 Yep.

Lex Fridman 1:16:05 ... and it's, uh, it's an incredible resource.

Jamie Metzl 1:16:07 Well, thank you. Thank you. Jamiedmetzel.com. Um, i- i- and it's really unfortunate that our governments and international institutions for pretty much all of 2020 weren't doing their jobs of really probing this issue. People were hiding behind this kind of false, uh, consensus. And, and I'm critical of many people, even when I heard, uh, Francis Collins', uh, interview with you. I just felt, well, he wasn't as balanced on the issue of, of COVID origins. Certainly Dr. Fauci, um, could have in his conversation with Rand Paul, it wasn't even a conversation, but in some process in the aftermath, um, could have laid things out a bit better. He did say, and Francis Collins did say, that we don't know the origins and that was a shift, um, uh, and we need to have an, an investigation. So now, um, but having said all of that, I do kind of, one, I have tremendous respect for Dr. Fauci, for the work that he's done on HIV/AIDS. I mean, I have been, uh, vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine. Uh, Dr. Fauci was a big part of the story of getting us these vaccines that have saved millions and millions of, uh, of lives and so I- I don't think... I mean, there's a lot to this story. Um, and then the second thing is it's really hard to be a public health expert-

Lex Fridman 1:17:28 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 1:17:28 ... because you have, your mission is public health. And so, and you have to, if you are leading with all of your uncertainty, um, it's a really hard way to do things. And so, like, even now, like if I go to CVS and I t- and I get a Tylenol, somebody has done a calculation of how many people, um, will die from taking Tylenol and they say, "Well, all right, w- we can live with that, uh, and that's why we have regulation." And so all of us are doing kind of summaries and then we have people in public health who are saying, "Well, all right, we've summed it all up and you should do X. You should get your kids, you know, vaccinated for measles. Um, you should not drive your car at 100 miles an hour. You, you should, y- don't drink lighter fluid." What- whatever these, these things are and we want them to kind of give us broad guidelines and yet now our information world is so fragmented that if you, i- if you're not being honest about something, th- something material, someone's going to find out and it's going to undermine your credibility. And so I agree with you that, that there's a greater requirement for transparency now. Maybe there always has been, but there's an even greater requirement, um, for it now because people want to trust that you're speaking honestly.

Lex Fridman 1:18:53 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 1:18:53 And that you're saying, "Well, here's what I know and this is based on what I know. Here are the conclusions that I draw." But if it's just, and, and again, I, I don't, I don't think the words "I'm science" or what- whatever it was are, are the right words, but if it's just, you know, "Trust me because of who I am," I don't think that, that flies anywhere anymore.

Lex Fridman 1:19:14 Can I just ask you about the Francis Collins interview that I did, if you got a chance to hear that part?

Jamie Metzl 1:19:20 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:19:20 I think in the beginning we talk about the lab leak.

Jamie Metzl 1:19:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:23 Um, what are your thoughts about his response basically saying it's worthy of an investigation, but... I mean, I- I don't know how you would interpret it. I, I, see-

Jamie Metzl 1:19:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:34 ... it's funny 'cause I, I heard it in the moment as, it's great for the head of NIH to be open-minded on this.

Jamie Metzl 1:19:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:47 But then the internet and, uh, Mr. Joe Rogan-

Jamie Metzl 1:19:51 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:51 ... and a bunch of friends and colleagues told me that, yeah, well that's too late and too little.

Jamie Metzl 1:19:58 Yeah. So first let me say I've been on Joe's podcast twice and I love the guy, which doesn't mean that I agree with everything he does or says. (laughs) Um, and on this issue, uh, and I'm normally a, a pretty calm and measured guy and when you're just out running with your AirPods on and you start...... yelling into the wind in Central Park, nobody else knows why you're yelling. Uh, but what-

Lex Fridman 1:20:27 So then you had such a moment with the pod-

Jamie Metzl 1:20:29 I had a moment with Collins, and again, Francis Collins is someone I respect enormously. I mean, I live a big chunk of my life, um, living in, in, in the world of genetics and biotech, and my book, Hacking Darwin, is about the future of human genetic engineering and his work on the Human Genome Project, and so many other things have been fantastic and I'm a huge fan of the work of, uh, of NIH. And he was right to say that the Chinese government hasn't been forthcoming and we need to look into it. But then you asked him, "Well, how will we know?" and then his answer was, "We need to find the intermediate host." Remember I said before-

Lex Fridman 1:21:07 Yeah.

Jamie Metzl 1:21:07 ... and so, that made it clear that he thought, "Well, we should have an investigation, but it comes from nature and we just need to find that, whatever it is, that intermediate animal host in the wild, and that'll tell us the story."

Lex Fridman 1:21:22 So he already had the conclusion in mind, and they were just waiting for the evidence to support the conclusion.

Jamie Metzl 1:21:28 That was my feeling. I felt like he was-

Lex Fridman 1:21:30 And that was frustrating.

Jamie Metzl 1:21:31 ... open in general, but he was tilting, and I, again, I, you, my, your first question was, "Where do I fall?" He was, like, I'm 85, uh, percent or whatever it is, 80, 75, 90, whatever it is in the direction of a lab incident. It made it feel that he was 90/10 in the other direction, which is, still means that he's open-minded about the possibility. And that's why, in my view, every single person who talks about this issue, I think the right answer, in my view, is we don't know conclusively. Um, in my- and this is my personal view, the circumstantial evidence is strongly in favor of a lab incident origin, but that could immediately shift with additional information. We need transparency, um, but we should come together in absolutely condemning the outrageous cover-up carried out by the Chinese government, which to this day is preventing any meaningful investigation into pandemic origins. We have, if you use the, the Economist numbers, 15 million people who are dead, um, as a result of this pandemic, and I believe that the actions of the Chinese government, um, are, um, disgracing the memory of these 15 million dead. They're insulting the families and the billions of people around the world who have suffered from this totally avoidable, uh, pandemic. And whatever the origin, the fact the criminal cover-up carried out by the Chinese government, which continues to this day, but most intensely in, in the first months following the outbreak, that's the reason why we have, uh, so many, uh, so many dead. And, and certainly as I was saying before, I and a, and a small number of others have been carrying this flame since early last year, but it's kind of crazy, uh, that our governments haven't been, uh, demanding it. And we can talk about the World Health Organization, uh, process, which was deeply compromised in the beginning. Now it's become much, much, uh, better, but again, it was the pressure of outsiders who, that played such an important role in shifting our national and international institutions. And while that's better than nothing, it would have been far better if our governments and in- and international organizations had done the right

Jamie Metzl 1:23:56 thing from the start.

Lex Fridman 1:23:56 If I could just, uh, make a couple of comments about, uh, Joe Rogan. So I've, there's a bunch of people in my life who have inspired me, who have taught me a lot, who, um, I even look up to.

Jamie Metzl 1:24:14 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:24:14 The, many of them are alive, most of them are dead. I, I, I want to say that, uh, so Joe said a few critical words about the conversation with Francis Collins, most of it offline-

Jamie Metzl 1:24:26 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:24:26 ... with a, with a lot of great conversations about it, uh, some he said publicly, and, um... He was also critical to say that me asking hard questions in an interview is not my strong suit. And I, I really want to kind of respond to that, uh, which I did privately as well, but publicly to say that, uh, Joe's 100% right on that. But that doesn't mean that always has to be the case, and that is definitely something I want to work on 'cause most of the conversations I have, I want to see the, the beautiful ideas in people's minds. But there's some times where you have to ask the hard questions to bring out the, the beautiful ideas. And, um, it's hard to do. It's a skill, and, and Joe is very good at this. He says, the way he put it in, in his, uh, criticisms, and he does this in his conversations, which is, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop." It, there's a kind of sense like, "Did you just say what you said?"

Jamie Metzl 1:25:38 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:25:38 "Let's, let's make sure we get to the bottom, we clarify what you mean." Uh, 'cause sometimes really big, negative, or difficult ideas can be said as a, as a, as a quick aside in a sentence, like it's nothing. Uh, but it could be everything and you want to make sure you catch that and you, you talk about it. And not to, not as a gotcha, not as a kind of way to destroy another human being, but to reveal something profound, and that's definitely something I want to work on. I also want to say...... that, uh, as you said, you disagree with Joe on quite a lot of things. So for a long time, Joe was somebody that I was just a fan of, I listened to. He's now a good friend and I would say, we disagree more than we agree, and, uh, I love doing that and, um, but at the, at the same time, I learn from that. So it, it's like dual, like nobody in this world can tell me what to think, but I think everybody has a lesson to teach me. I think that's a good way to approach it. Like, I, whenever somebody has words of criticism, I assume they're right and walk around with that idea.

Jamie Metzl 1:27:04 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:27:05 To really sort of empathize with that idea because there's a lesson there and oftentimes, uh, my understanding of (sighs) of a topic becomes, um, is altered completely or it becomes much more nuanced or much more, uh, much richer for the, that kind of empathetic process. But definitely I do not allow anybody to tell me what to think, whether it's Joe Rogan or, uh, Fyodor Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or my parents or, um, the, the, like, the proverbial girlfriend which I don't actually have.

Jamie Metzl 1:27:46 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:27:46 Like, all the-

Jamie Metzl 1:27:47 But, but she's still busting my balls. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:27:49 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. In my imagination.

Jamie Metzl 1:27:52 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:27:52 I have a girlfriend in Canada-

Jamie Metzl 1:27:54 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:27:54 ... that I, yeah, that I-

Jamie Metzl 1:27:56 Victoria.

Lex Fridman 1:27:56 ... have imagining... Exactly.

Jamie Metzl 1:27:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:27:58 Uh, imagining conversations. I just don't want to mention that. But also, I, I, I don't know if you've gotten a chance to see this. I, I'd love to also mention this, um, Twitter feud between two other interesting people, which is, uh, Bret Weinstein and Sam Harris.

Jamie Metzl 1:28:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:28:15 Or Sam Harris and others in general. And, uh, it kind of breaks my heart that these two people I listen to that are very thoughtful about a bunch of issues. Let's, let's put COVID aside 'cause people are very emotional-

Jamie Metzl 1:28:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:28:29 ... about this topic. I mean, I think they're deeply thoughtful and intelligent, whether you agree with them or not, and I always learn something from their conversations and they are legitimately, or have been for a long time, friends. And it's a little bit heartbreaking to me to see that they basically don't talk in private anymore and there's occasional jabs on Twitter, and, um, I hope that changes. I hope that changes in general for COVID, that-

Jamie Metzl 1:29:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:29:02 ... COVID brought out the, the, I would say the most emotional sides of people, the worst in people, and, um, I think there hasn't been enough love and empathy and compassion. And to see two people from whom I've learned a lot, whether it's Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, you can criticize them as much as you want, their ideas as much as you want, but