Rudyard Griffiths

speaker

3,928 appearances 39 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3d ago

Rudyard Griffiths’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 39 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 9.

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The Munk Debates Podcast · Be it Resolved, let’s engineer better human beings · 11 Aug 2026 podcast

Let's get our last rebuttal in from Ezekiel and then we'll move to our moderated portion of our debate. You have three minutes on the clock. voice-verified

Okay, well done, debaters. You've been working hard to get us here to the 50-minute mark. We're now gonna dig into a moderated conversation. I'm gonna throw some questions at our two teams, and we're gonna see if we can light this stage voice-verified

up. I have encouraged debaters to jump in if they've heard something that particularly excises them from the other side. And if things get too cacophonous, I will level set and we'll start again. But Max, I want to come to you first. voice-verified

Ezekiel raised something that I was thinking about going into this debate. I think we all agree that eugenics was the great moral stain of the 20th century. It led ultimately to the deaths of millions. How is what you're arguing for today different voice-verified

than many of the same arguments that eugenicists made in the 20th century. Give us the philosophical and moral argument for why the type of selection and performance enhancement and all those characteristics that eugenics talked about in the last century should be allowed in this century through the technology of genetic engineering. voice-verified

No, no, I want to try to keep this debate focused, and I appreciate you guys jumping on each other, but let's just stick on this eugenics theme for a little bit longer here, because, yes, aspects of the eugenics movement were state-controlled, but there was a lot... Eugenics was a grassroots movement through much of America in the beginning of the last century. So, Joyce, talk to us about a concern that you have as someone who's thought about these things from an ethical and moral perspective about... voice-verified

the connection between that very dark chapter in our collective history and the type of technology that we're discussing on the stage today. Is there a connection or not? Have we learned something? Is this fundamentally different, what we're talking about now, than what we were contemplating and what we unfortunately perpetrated on the disabled, on people with all kinds of conditions that we have now understand today are normalized or accepted into our society? voice-verified

See, we haven't really used the word serious. Serious genetic disease. Because this is a question I had coming into this debate. Why not germline edit that embryo to save that embryo, to remove that disease, Huntington's, cystic fibrosis, whatever you've identified, use the technologies that these gentlemen are advocating for to intervene in that embryo, and then that embryo goes forward. It creates a life because you've germline edited it. voice-verified

So they've thrown them away, and the couple have gone through the whole thing again, the whole IVF cycle, which is really difficult to go through, because they didn't have the right sex. Okay, let me cut to Gregor, because this germline editing is really an important part, I think, of this debate, because that's where, Gregor, if I'm correct, that's where the more innovative technologies are happening right now, that you are able to intervene and select, either remove illness or... voice-verified

preference certain traits and pass that through an embryo into a womb and have that womb birth a child who carries both those preferential traits and or the removal of disease that's been identified through genetic analysis. Is that what you're advocating for? And if so, why is that a transformative voice-verified

That's the problem. That sounds awful to me. Oh, gosh. We're talking about engineering, not for disease. We're not talking about engineering for disease. We can sort that out now. Max's point in the opening statement, because I want to bring Max back in on this. We have engineered ourselves in all kinds of ways. We've engineered our climate. We live in an Anthropocene. We have literally changed the atmosphere. And is that for the good? No, but it's the example. That's to be clear. voice-verified

Actually, yes. Thank you. That's a separate debate, though. But I'm saying, Joyce, you're not off the hook yet. You've got to answer why is this type of engineering wrong when prostheses are right, when the wheel is right, when other engineered enhancements of the human condition have been accepted by us, embraced by us? Okay, those are things we are doing to ourselves. voice-verified

rightful, I think, ethical objections here is the imposition of choice by the parent on the child. He's saying if there was the technology to allow someone at the age of majority to then choose to have those enhancements, as an ethicist, would that change the way you think about that? But that's not the way it's going to work. Wait, wait, so you're going to deny her to answer the question. Let her answer the question. And what, to cure disease? To do what? voice-verified

Absolutely, 100%. So I guess my question is, is this technology already out of the bottle? Is this controllable at this point? Do we have a choice as to whether we're going to... The question is, let us engineer better human beings, not what is going to happen in history. We're making a moral judgment, not a futuristic prediction here. voice-verified

If they're arguing that we should engineer better human beings, and that is a de facto reality of what is staring us in the face in terms of the advances of this technology, are we not voice-verified

Okay, and that is, a lot of that is genetics. There are other things involved, but you can really see that in different families, okay? Let me just try to, as we're coming down here on time for this moderated middle, let me just try to come at this a different way, because this has been a really rich debate, and I appreciate the back and forth. Potential. I think we all agree, would we not, that human potential is something that is a good, a collective good. It's something we try to encourage, we do it at... voice-verified

educational institutions like this and our society in so many different ways, why isn't what Max and Gregory talking about not about increasing the scope of potential? That yes, there are risks, there are trade-offs, but fundamentally it comes back to one of our grand civilizational projects, which is to expand our potential, each of us individually, and to benefit from that collectively. voice-verified

Let's go to closing statements. Ezekiel, you're up first. We're going to put your minutes on the clock here, and we'll abide by our audience applause rule. Four minutes to give us your concluding. As I began, this really is a debate about eugenics. Eugenics 150 years ago is... voice-verified

Thank you. Thank you, Ezekiel. I love it. Okay, Max, you're up next. Four minutes on the clock. Give us your closing thoughts on this evening's debate. Well, I hear a lot of fear. I hear a lot of, let's not do things for the first time. voice-verified

Well done, Max, right on time. Joyce, four minutes, take us away. voice-verified

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