Ian Sample
speaker
2,123 appearances
29 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 5d ago
Ian Sample’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 29 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 8.
Appearances
It's life.
But you have things that are sort of sit in this sort of weird space like viruses.
I think most biologists don't consider viruses alive, but obviously they replicate, they mutate, they have a genome and they basically hijack cells to do what they want to do in life.
They absolutely are.
And they really want all of this work to be done in the open.
And they want to have just a sort of agreement on what we're going to do with these cells and what we're not going to do with these cells.
If you wanted to cause mayhem, there are far easier ways of doing it than starting with a small blob of fat with water in it.
You know, you could take an existing pathogen and boost it using genetics.
You can make it more transmissible and all the rest of it.
No, that is dangerous science.
I think if you're starting with something like this, it's quite hard to see how you're going to cause any damage.
But it's a good time to start thinking about it.
And I put this to Kate because I was really keen to know what she was thinking about that.
That phrase playing God is inherently considered a bad thing to do, isn't it?
And so what do we mean by playing God?
I mean, if we're going to talk about, should we be trying to build life?
Well, why not?
Why wouldn't we want to know how chemicals assemble and become living?
That's a really, really interesting question.
These groups are a million miles away from creating even a living ball of gel, basically.
Showing 1461–1480 of 2,123 · page 74 of 107
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