Why Darwin was Right: The 222nd Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

In this 222nd in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

In this episode, we discuss evolution, and how we know that it is true. We discuss the different kinds of beliefs that people have—beliefs that attempt to reconcile with reality, vs beliefs that reconcile with social standing and comfort. If your beliefs put you on the outs with your friends, do you change your beliefs, or your friends? Are you willing to give up the cocktail party for reality? We also discuss research published in 2000 and funded by Fauci’s NIAID, which demonstrated that it was possible to make chimeric coronaviruses, swapping the spike protein from one to a different species entirely. Finally: sex-biased gene expression, in which genes are expressed differently in the two sexes, in anatomical systems as varied as brain, kidneys, and liver.
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Mentioned in this episode:

Kennedy 2023. The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bio-Weapons Arms Race: https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510773981/the-wuhan-cover-up/

Kuo et al 2000. Retargeting of coronavirus by substitution of the spike glycoprotein ectodomain: crossing the host cell species barrier. Journal of virology, 74(3):1393-1406: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jvi.74.3.1393-1406.2000

Rodríguez-Montes et al 2023. Sex-biased gene expression across mammalian organ development and evolution. Science 382(6670), p.eadf1046: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf1046