Highlights: Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone and stealth vs wildfire pandemics

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 - so if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode: • Cults that want to kil...
In this episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews Kevin Esvelt - a biologist at the MIT Media Lab and the inventor of CRISPR-based gene drive - about the threat posed by engineered bioweapons.
Highlights include:
• Luisa's intro (00:00:00)
• Risks from biological weapons are worse than they used to be (00:00:23)
• Omnicidal actors in history (00:03:26)
• Why we might deliberately design new pathogen-capable pathogens (00:08:03)
• Can a virus be very deadly and very transmissible at the same time? (00:12:59)
• Using metagenomics to stop a "stealth" pandemic (00:18:08)
• Using CRISPR to solve a range of world problems (00:24:13)
Learn more and find the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website:
80000hours.org/podcast/episod...