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0:52

Hello and welcome Factually. I'm Conover.

0:55

Thank you so much for joining me once again

0:57

as I talk to an incredible expert. about all

0:59

the amazing shit that they know that I don't

1:01

know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are

1:03

gonna get blown together and we're gonna have so

1:06

much fun doing it. I wanna remind

1:08

you, if you wanna support the show, please head to

1:10

patreon dot com slash adam Conover for

1:12

just five bucks a month. You can join our Patreon

1:15

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our community book club. It's such a fun

1:21

community. I love hanging out with everybody

1:23

there, and I hope you will come join us

1:25

at patreon dot com slash Conover. Now

1:27

this week on the show, we're talking about

1:30

viruses. I love viruses

1:33

so much. No. I know. It's weird to say I love

1:35

viruses. Okay. don't like it when they infect

1:37

me and get me sick. I don't like when they

1:39

when they shut down our entire society. I

1:41

don't like when they kill loved ones of

1:43

mine or anyone's loved ones. But

1:45

I do find viruses endlessly

1:48

fascinating as a form of

1:50

life because

1:51

By thinking about viruses, we can get

1:53

a sense of what life is at the

1:55

absolute

1:56

minimum. When I think about viruses,

1:58

it makes me realize that life

1:59

is nothing but a complicated chemical

2:02

reaction because viruses are

2:04

just a teeny tiny little sequence

2:07

of chemical instructions that hack our

2:09

cells and control how they replicate

2:11

and cause ourselves to replicate the virus

2:13

instead of themselves. They are

2:15

alive. As you'll hear

2:16

me grapple with in the episode, they are alive

2:19

evolution and natural selection do work

2:21

on them, but they are such an

2:24

absolutely minimal, simple form of

2:26

life that it makes me think about how all

2:28

of us at the end of the day

2:29

are just a complicated series of chemicals

2:32

reproducing themselves through the

2:34

laws of physics and chemistry. And that

2:36

is so fucking cool.

2:38

And not only that, by understanding

2:41

them, we understand more about ourselves

2:43

and the world around us. Part of what makes

2:45

mRNA vaccines so cool

2:47

is that we are using some of the same mechanisms

2:49

viruses use, but we're using

2:51

it to hack our immune system so we

2:53

can teach our body to fight back diseases

2:56

like COVID-nineteen that it has never encountered

2:59

before. It's a tiny little hack with

3:01

massive world historical impact

3:04

and that's true of viruses as well. They

3:06

are so tiny and so simple in so

3:08

many ways, but they're also a major player

3:10

in our history, our society, and,

3:12

of course, our lives. Viruses

3:15

can cause our entire global economy to shut

3:17

down for years on end. They can throw

3:19

governments out of power. They can kill

3:21

us in droves. And as we'll discuss

3:23

today, a virus became a flash

3:25

point moment in the fight for LGBT

3:28

rights. Viruses are a biological

3:30

force but they are a social one as

3:32

well. They start their work in ourselves,

3:34

but they end up woven into the fabric

3:36

of our world. So To dive

3:39

deep into this topic today, we

3:41

have an incredible guest.

3:43

Joseph is a scientist

3:46

and writer. He's a professor of biology

3:48

at NYU and most recently he's

3:50

the author of virology essays

3:52

for the living, the dead, and the small

3:54

things in between I was so

3:56

fascinated by this conversation. I laughed

3:58

so much. He's one of the most entertaining

3:59

and thought provoking guests we've ever had on

4:02

the show. and I know you're gonna love it. Please welcome

4:04

Joseph

4:07

Joseph,

4:08

thank you so much for being on the show.

4:10

It

4:10

is a true pleasure to be here.

4:12

Oh, it's a true pleasure to have

4:14

you. So look, tell us

4:16

a little bit about yourself. You have a new bookout about

4:18

viruses, tell tell tell us

4:20

more about your work generally though.

4:21

Yeah. You know, so I have been a have

4:24

been a scientist my whole life. Imagine that.

4:26

I've been doing science. professionally

4:28

as long as I've had a job, and

4:30

I've studied microbes. So small,

4:32

invisible things that cover the

4:34

planet Viruses and

4:36

microbes are more numerous than us

4:38

on this planet by many orders

4:40

of magnitude. there are more viruses

4:43

on planet earth than there are stars in

4:45

the sky. Mhmm. And they shape

4:47

our reality. So, you know,

4:49

oftentimes when there's something that is so

4:51

small, so difficult to understand

4:53

scientifically, but it has such a

4:55

profound impact on

4:58

how we live as humans we

5:00

can actually attach too much

5:02

meaning to that thing. You know, it becomes like

5:04

super saturated with

5:06

meaning. And I think with COVID-nineteen, my

5:08

goodness. have we seen the

5:10

rhetoric spill And

5:12

everyone is trying to grapple. Make

5:14

sense of it. It's nonsensical. So

5:17

in my book, I really argue that

5:19

you have to understand science, to understand

5:21

viruses, but science alone

5:23

is insufficient. We have to look

5:25

at art We have to look at

5:27

narratives and stories. We have to look

5:29

at clear theory and philosophy

5:32

and what they tell us about how

5:34

we've always lived alongside viruses.

5:37

And that through these different sort

5:39

of methods or ways of looking, we

5:41

can start to better approximate the nuances

5:44

of these very complicated, very small

5:46

objects. I love

5:47

that you have that perspective because so often,

5:50

you know, I'm I'm from a liberal arts background.

5:52

I studied philosophy as I've said on the show, far

5:54

too many times. But, you know, the liberal

5:56

arts ideas to sort of take all the different

5:58

-- Yeah. -- fields in together and

6:00

have them all in conversation with each other.

6:03

which is the way that we know more about the world. But science

6:05

tends to be the one that does that the least that, you

6:07

know, you'll have, I don't know,

6:09

historians and philosophers who learn a lot

6:11

about science The scientists tend to not, you

6:13

know, engage with philosophy a lot. So I

6:15

love that you come at it from that angle.

6:17

I'd love to just talk a little bit

6:19

about viruses themselves. You

6:21

said microbes and

6:23

viruses. I know that viruses are not

6:26

microbes. Is that correct to

6:28

say viruses? viruses are

6:30

so interesting. What the fuck are they? Just

6:33

Like, I love thinking about what viruses

6:35

are because I know there's this whole are

6:37

they alive? Are they not alive? Yep. Like, they're not

6:39

themselves able to reproduce.

6:41

They're not unit they're not

6:43

like where they're

6:45

not, like, on the fucking tree of life, really.

6:47

But they're, like, some sort of little thing

6:50

that hacks our DNA. Please, you tell me what how do

6:52

you describe viruses. And and

6:54

yet, you, Adam, sitting

6:56

here right now, are roughly ten

6:58

percent

6:59

ancient virus. Your DNA has

7:02

is roughly eight to ten percent what we

7:04

call endogenous retrovirus. So

7:06

these are viruses related to HIV that

7:08

have infected you know, our ancestors

7:10

many, many generations ago that have

7:12

lost the ability to leave our bodies that have

7:14

become us. They are

7:17

us. Right? Viruses

7:19

are certainly are microbes.

7:22

Microbes sort of are microscopic

7:24

organisms, and they include everything

7:26

from bacteria. The virus

7:28

is to yeast and fungi.

7:30

Yep. Yep. Yep. You know,

7:32

as you mentioned to a biologist,

7:35

a virus is not a living

7:37

object because it cannot replicate itself.

7:39

But it gets messy, dare I

7:41

say clear, because

7:44

there are viruses are clear microbes.

7:47

Okay. Keep going. Keep going. I was I was going to see

7:49

all of these distinctions are get

7:51

very messy because for example, there

7:53

are species of bacteria that

7:55

we consider living, but that are

7:58

obligate endosymbctions, which

7:59

means they exist only

8:02

and can exist only in

8:04

the gut of a worm, for example. So

8:06

that bacteria can't replicate on

8:08

its own, and yet we call it

8:10

living, whereas -- Mhmm. -- for a virus,

8:12

we say it's not living precisely at only

8:14

because it cannot replicate on its own.

8:16

Mhmm. So, you know, evolution

8:19

you know, is this driving force of

8:21

what makes different organisms, what they

8:23

are at every level from

8:25

the hands that I have to the DNA

8:27

that is in my genome? and

8:30

evolution acts on viruses and microorganisms

8:32

and viruses are weird as fucking

8:34

shit. You know, I was studying a

8:36

virus in my PHD.

8:38

that had just we knew its genome.

8:40

We knew what genes were in it. We knew nothing

8:42

else about it. And like eighty

8:44

percent of its genes were not related to

8:47

anything else that existed ever been

8:49

studied. Right? So each virus sort

8:51

of often finds its own

8:53

evolutionary niche, its own way

8:55

of being in the world that that

8:57

no other living thing and maybe no

8:59

other known virus has

9:02

has evolved that same pathway.

9:04

So they are fascinating tricky

9:06

little things and, you know,

9:08

they're tricky precisely because you can make it

9:10

antibiotic for a bacteria

9:12

because they all have similar mechanisms of

9:14

living -- Yeah. -- whereas each virus

9:16

is do something different.

9:19

Right? So an

9:21

HIV drug is not going to work

9:23

against the polio virus or a monkeypox

9:25

virus or any other virus necessarily.

9:27

You sort of have to tackle each virus

9:29

individually in terms of vaccination

9:31

and also in terms of medicines

9:33

to stop it from replicating?

9:35

Here's so Okay. Thank you for

9:37

correcting all the wrong shit that I said.

9:39

And I I love that you point

9:41

out that viruses are operated

9:43

on by evolution, by natural selection,

9:46

and that if we wanna call evolution

9:48

something that happens to living things, then we

9:50

would, as suppose, say, the viruses

9:52

are living. But here's what I trip

9:54

out about. when I think about

9:56

viruses, is that like bacteria,

9:58

okay, I understand it's a little, you

9:59

know, unicellular organism and it's

10:02

reproducing and it's having you know,

10:04

etcetera, it's doing its

10:06

thing. Viruses almost

10:09

strike me as like, it's almost just like a

10:11

chemical reaction. that's happening. Right? It

10:13

seems like it's very simple in some

10:15

ways that, hey, I've got a whole bunch of cells

10:17

and a self perpetuating

10:20

reaction starts happening where this particular, you

10:22

know, little collection of molecules when it

10:24

enters my field,

10:25

oh, it interacts with my

10:28

molecules in a way that causes it to be reproduced.

10:31

in this way that I find very inimical. It

10:33

hurts my life. Right? But

10:35

we talk about them so often as though

10:37

as though there are enemies. You know, COVID

10:39

nineteen is a very smart virus. If you

10:41

know, it's very clever. People

10:43

describe, we'll enter more programorifies it this way.

10:45

But then on the other hand, it's just

10:47

like it's it's a I don't

10:49

know. It's it's something very simple and small

10:51

happening. I'm talking around in

10:53

circles. You respond to whatever nonsense

10:55

I'm saying. You have you have it precisely well,

10:57

not precisely. You have roughly forty three

10:59

trillion in sales in your body

11:01

any given day. Some more or

11:03

less. your your DNA

11:05

that makes you up is

11:07

made of three point two billion

11:09

unique letters of information

11:12

Well, to a to a biophysicist

11:14

in a way you are not neither

11:17

no more nor no less complicated than

11:19

a virus. Right? your DNA

11:21

programs a set of cells

11:23

to create a bunch of structures

11:25

that give you the ability to be a

11:27

human and, you know, Your consciousness

11:29

is related to your development of your brain

11:31

and your neurons. And, you know,

11:33

functionally, everything

11:35

we experience see taste,

11:37

smell. It's just electricity across

11:39

a membrane. Right? And

11:41

and viruses play on that same level

11:44

of biology, that same

11:46

level of information encoded

11:48

in genetic material, then

11:51

is acted upon based on nothing

11:53

more than the sequence of the genetic

11:55

material. I find, you know, first of

11:57

all, I will say, you know, viruses can

11:59

make us sick. Of course, they can.

12:01

And they can even kill us.

12:03

Ninety nine point 999999999

12:07

etcetera, percent of viruses on this

12:09

planet will not.

12:10

Really? Even oftentimes when you are

12:13

infected with the virus, you

12:14

are not sick. Wow. If you

12:17

get herpes, If you get a

12:19

cold sore, you will

12:20

have herpes for every day that you live

12:22

until you die. That

12:23

virus will always be in

12:25

you and your immune system will essentially

12:27

always be talking to it and telling it to shut

12:29

up, and the virus will always be there kind of

12:31

hanging out. There's work

12:33

by this guy name, get this.

12:35

This guy's literal name is skip

12:38

version the third.

12:39

Amazing, amazing

12:42

virologist name. I love how after two

12:44

skip versions they're like, you know what?

12:46

Go again. we're going again with skip

12:48

version. You gotta skip just just make

12:50

sure you skip every third version. Okay? If you're

12:52

going on list of versions, just you can

12:54

you can go with it, you can you can fuck the first

12:56

version, you can fuck the second version, skip the third

12:58

version, then go to number four. That's what

13:00

that makes me think. I

13:02

really wanna know I really wanna know

13:04

if there's skip version the fourth. I think I'm gonna email

13:06

him later. We we didn't meet a couple of times. I

13:08

have met skip version.

13:11

He does this incredible work on how

13:13

important microbes are for

13:15

a functioning immune system. A lot of people are

13:17

taking us out of perspective with COVID like,

13:19

oh, we've been wearing masks for two years

13:21

and that's why everyone's getting sick right now, that's

13:23

bullshit. But because

13:25

the world is covered in microbes, it

13:27

is the only human experience

13:29

to grow up constantly interacting with

13:31

microbes. And Skip actually showed

13:33

that having a herpes one infection,

13:35

like pretty much everyone does,

13:37

is actually preventative against

13:39

certain bacterial and

13:41

parasitic infections. So -- Wow. --

13:43

almost think about herpes one, as

13:45

part of your immune system. It

13:47

is actually activating your immune system

13:49

to be ready to fight off other

13:52

things. Right? So you know, we will

13:54

always, you know, this

13:55

notion of virus as being our enemy. I

13:57

think it's

13:58

it's one that I worked very hard in my

14:01

book. try to reframe because if

14:03

we view it that way, you know, essentially, they're

14:05

gonna win and we're gonna lift because they yeah.

14:07

They're gonna be here long after we're

14:09

gone. They they were here before life

14:11

evolved, you know. It's sort of like trying to

14:13

fight the wind. Yeah. It's just like

14:15

it's just not it's just

14:17

not hot. happened. But so how do wait. III

14:19

want you to go into more detail than that. Why

14:21

do you say the viruses were here before

14:23

life evolved? Because to me, I think of what

14:25

might just, again, dumb dumb understanding what

14:27

a virus is is a virus is something that sort

14:29

of operates on life that it needs to take

14:32

advantage of an existing organism in order to

14:34

reproduce itself. So how would a virus exist

14:36

before life? We think that

14:38

early life was essentially like a

14:40

virus. Before there

14:42

were cells, there were virus

14:44

like objects and, you know, that were

14:46

able to take things from the

14:48

environment and use very simple

14:50

systems to replicate their own genetic

14:52

material. Essentially, life

14:54

began as a virus is

14:56

the idea. That's

14:57

and now now you've just got me

14:59

thinking about what life is,

15:03

which I love to think about. Right? because

15:05

it bring again, brings you back to life as a

15:07

chemical reaction as nothing but a self perpetuating

15:10

chemical reaction that becomes more and more

15:12

complex over time. which

15:14

is just my favorite thing to just,

15:16

you

15:16

know, lie back and and just think about that

15:18

world for a long time. But okay. So I

15:20

I want you to go into more detail on

15:22

I believe you said endogenous retroviruses.

15:24

These are viruses that became

15:27

part of our bodies and are part of us permanently.

15:30

So how do we think that that happened? And and what

15:32

are some examples of those? So

15:34

the oh god. They're RTLVs or

15:36

something like this. They are all these horrible names.

15:39

that I can never remember. And

15:42

there's an open evolutionary question

15:44

about whether

15:47

whether retroviruses like HIV

15:50

evolved from the endogenous ones by

15:52

gaining the ability to leave cells

15:54

or if the ones in us

15:56

evolved from retrovite from a previous HIV

15:58

like infection by losing

16:00

the ability to leave cells. Wow.

16:02

They were a long thought to be dormant.

16:05

So, you know,

16:07

genomes like

16:08

sets of genes in

16:11

organisms like humans. We can

16:13

carry a lot of junk around Factually metaphor.

16:15

Like, you know, there are plants that are like

16:17

ten percent of their genome is

16:19

is what they need to be a plant. Everything else

16:21

is endogenous a huge amount of

16:23

our DNA is just not

16:25

actually used for anything. And is that where the

16:27

viruses are? That's like in our

16:29

DNA. Wow. So it's a

16:31

part of what we used to call when

16:33

I was doing my PhD, we used to call

16:35

this junk DNA. Right? Because

16:37

it's there and it's not doing anything. But

16:39

of course, it it was doing

16:41

something. Junk DNA does a lot. We

16:43

didn't yet have sophisticated enough tools to

16:45

understand what it was doing. So

16:47

Factually endogenous providers is we

16:49

used to think about them like hanging out,

16:51

not doing anything. Incorrect, they

16:53

are actually play important roles in

16:55

early human development. essentially, they kind

16:57

of turn on when you're at the 123

17:00

cell or 124 cell embryo

17:03

level and help regulate your

17:05

gene expression. I mean, they are fundamental and

17:08

integral part of what it means

17:10

to be a human. And

17:12

so you so you say that there's a bit of

17:14

a debate how they actually became

17:16

part of our genome, so there isn't a

17:18

clear answer to that. because I know

17:20

there's the story of I love the story of what

17:22

is it? The the

17:24

mitochondria becoming part of the cell.

17:26

Am I right about that? Am I remembering this correctly

17:28

from whatever sort of radio lab I heard five

17:30

years ago? And

17:32

so to me, it sounds a little bit like that, but we have a little bit more of

17:34

that story. But in this case, we're we're

17:36

not entirely sure what happened. Yeah. The

17:39

evolutionary traject to be honest with you is

17:41

probably forever lost to

17:43

time. The other thing that

17:45

makes these viruses so difficult is they're all

17:47

quite similar to one another. And

17:49

so it can be hard to different it can be

17:51

hard to retell the story.

17:53

Whereas when we think about viral

17:55

evolution that's existed, in real

17:58

time. So HIV from

18:00

well, HIV actually emerges

18:02

in what was in the Belgian Congo around

18:04

the turn of the nineteen hundreds.

18:07

around the year nineteen hundred or

18:09

COVID, oh my god, we are watching COVID

18:11

evolve in real time. Right? It's

18:13

like, oh my god, it's

18:15

b dot q dot x dot z,

18:17

you know, and and oh my god,

18:19

it's gonna kill us all. We

18:21

can understand those evolutionary

18:24

steps by watching them in real time.

18:26

A lot of these, you know, I've

18:28

been looking super fascinated by

18:30

the studying of the Neanderthal

18:33

genome that was actually the the sequencing of the

18:35

Neanderthal genome won the Nobel Prize

18:37

this year. Yeah. And so sort of what,

18:39

you know, humans in Neanderthals existed at

18:41

the same time in interbred. Yeah.

18:43

And Factually lot of some of our DNA

18:45

is Neanderthal DNA. Yeah. And

18:47

a lot of our DNA that's Neanderthal

18:49

DNA has to do with

18:52

infectious diseases, probably and potentially sexually

18:54

transmitted diseases between humans

18:56

and the andrials. I love that

18:58

humans have always been freaky because you know what I

19:01

mean? It's like a little

19:03

inner species yum yum. You

19:06

know, I know I love it. And it's like who who doesn't want

19:08

a little bit of strange, especially when,

19:10

you know, you're you're

19:12

living out on, you know,

19:14

the wilderness and and, you know, you're just trying to forge for food

19:16

every day. And then you see, so I've never

19:18

seen a person like that before. Yep. They

19:20

may I think they must have

19:22

been really into it. Like, I a couple friends who really like, hairy

19:25

Greek guys. You know, I think that's like it's

19:27

like a hair finish, you know. They just love

19:29

rubbing their hands. through the

19:32

back hair. That's that's what I'm

19:34

imagining. That's why New Neanderthals like

19:36

to us. Right? I don't know. I

19:38

mean, who does it love

19:40

tall with a big forehead, like, signing me up. I would

19:42

climb in the Neanderthal, like a tree.

19:49

I love it. And so we actually well,

19:51

there were there were STD's passed in this

19:53

way that then influenced our genome is

19:55

what you're saying. the majority of our

19:58

genome that still stems from Neanderthals

19:59

is around protection

20:02

against infectious diseases Osmundson in

20:05

all likelihood the the boing, going

20:07

diseases. Yeah. That's

20:10

true health care

20:12

as old as time. You know what I mean? That's

20:14

incredible. I mean, with something

20:16

like COVID-nineteen, I mean, our virus is

20:19

continuing to influence our genome. I

20:21

guess is the question I was driving towards.

20:23

almost certainly, although for a virus

20:25

like COVID-nineteen or even like HIV, it's

20:27

been too soon. But research

20:29

that just came out gosh,

20:32

a month or two ago. And

20:34

this is, of course, not a virus, but showed

20:36

that the plague in Europe

20:38

created bottlenecks in evolution that

20:40

still are influencing our genes to this day hundreds of

20:42

years later. That was because the population loss

20:45

during that. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

20:47

Mhmm. so that creates different

20:49

evolutionary scenarios where certain

20:51

genes of the people who happen to survive the

20:53

black plague are now more common in

20:55

descendants of those populations. And

20:57

we've had a large -- I mean, there's been a relatively

21:00

large reduction in population because

21:02

of COVID-nineteen. So, presumably, you'd

21:05

see some effect from that. I

21:07

mean, look, you love you

21:09

love viruses so much

21:11

clearly. It makes me wonder

21:13

when a new virus arises because they

21:15

do pop up like COVID nineteen or

21:17

like HIV back when it it

21:19

first arose. Does this excite you? I mean,

21:21

when when the news of COVID nineteen broke or

21:23

were you slightly like this is good. I

21:25

mean, it's horrible. But also, is

21:27

it kind of fun? It's

21:28

it's a morbid fascination -- Yeah. --

21:30

for sure. But it is not fun. You know, I Monkeypox

21:33

this summer, for example -- Yeah.

21:35

-- incredibly not fun.

21:37

You know, is there's

21:40

Viruses are awesome in sort of the

21:42

original sense of the word that

21:45

they do inspire ah. I mean --

21:47

Yeah. -- HIV has ten thousand

21:50

letters, and you have three point two

21:52

billion. And if you get that virus

21:54

and you don't take medication, it

21:56

will kill you. Yeah.

21:57

That is awesome. There is a power

21:59

in

21:59

that. That is incredible. The

22:02

the cool thing about that is that

22:04

studying, well, first of all, we've been able to

22:06

develop really good meds. That means that

22:09

HIV essentially has

22:11

not as much impact on your health.

22:13

Yeah. And studying HIV

22:15

has taught us really a

22:16

huge amount of the cell

22:19

biology that we learned in the 90s and

22:21

2000s was through studying how

22:23

HIV trick cells into doing all the

22:25

things that it needs to do. So of course,

22:27

when you study a virus, you also

22:29

study the cell that it infects and you learn

22:31

a huge amount about these biological

22:34

tricksters. Yeah, come to think of it, like,

22:36

as a kid growing up in the

22:38

'80s and early '90s, I mean, there was a ton of

22:40

information about HIV. I just

22:42

remember watching PBS, and it was like,

22:44

hey, here's a half hour explanation

22:46

of how HIV works, t cells,

22:48

and all that kind of thing. And

22:50

come to think of it. I'm like, that that is maybe part of

22:52

the reason that I have like a relatively good

22:55

understanding of how virus is what is because this

22:57

is like a hot topic. that it

22:59

was like something everybody was really

23:01

interested in learning more about and

23:03

fighting and and was cutting edge science

23:05

at the same time. that it was, you

23:07

know, tragically killing so many people.

23:10

You

23:10

know, the the story of

23:13

the scientific

23:13

response to HIV and the

23:16

demand from people who were most impacted

23:18

by the virus, the demand that

23:20

their wives mattered enough that this

23:22

should be a scientific priority.

23:25

shifted both science and

23:27

science advocacy for

23:29

forever. And in ways that are

23:31

still, you know, I in my work

23:33

on COVID, and on monkeypox

23:35

and continuing work on HIV. You

23:37

know, I've been able to work with some of these some of

23:39

these folks David Barr and Mark Harrington and

23:41

Greg Gonzalez, who were a huge part.

23:44

of the act up New York organization

23:46

that really pushed pushed

23:48

to be taken pushed for the

23:50

science of HIV to be taken seriously.

23:52

and without them, the drugs that did come in nineteen

23:54

ninety six would have certainly come

23:56

much later. Yeah,

23:58

that's that

24:01

interaction with that history, though, is,

24:03

like, incredibly fascinating. I have a lot more

24:05

I wanna ask you about it, but we've gotta take a

24:07

quick break We'll be right back with more

24:09

Joseph Osmundson.

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Okay. We're

26:56

back with Joseph Osminson. Right before break,

26:58

you were talking about you

27:01

know, the history of HIV, how that caused

27:03

a sea change in scientific

27:05

understanding of viruses, also the way

27:07

that science has been done because of

27:09

the demand by those activists for science to take

27:11

them seriously. And I'm just curious because it's

27:13

come up a couple times, like, how has

27:16

queerness influenced your scientific

27:18

work if it has at

27:20

all? Yeah, you know, I

27:22

think it impacts what

27:24

I find interesting. I always

27:26

wanted to study viruses

27:29

and I wanted to study viruses, I'm sure because

27:31

growing up as a person

27:33

born in nineteen eighty three,

27:36

they were just always on our minds. You know, HIV

27:38

was such a huge part of

27:40

my childhood. Yeah. It

27:43

connected

27:44

sex to death in

27:46

a way that I don't think is

27:49

healthy for a young person,

27:51

but that was the reality. I

27:53

mean, it was you know, my first met I

27:55

was born in eighty three, so I'm, like,

27:57

six to twelve in the early

27:59

nineties, late eighties. And

28:01

at that time, HIV was on their nose all the time,

28:03

and it was neurothelial sarcoma, and

28:05

it was people wearing eighty pounds

28:07

and their friends holding their hands, they

28:10

died. and it because sex

28:13

and they

28:13

were and queer sex more specifically.

28:15

You know,

28:17

and that,

28:18

I think,

28:19

imprint on you in ways both that you

28:22

realize and in ways that you don't realize.

28:24

Yeah. I also read the hot

28:26

zone in, like, middle school, and I was like

28:28

reading it on the bus. and, like, someone

28:30

bombarded, like, three c you know, it's about Ebola

28:32

hemorrhagic fevers. Right? And so it's like,

28:34

I'm I'm reading the scene and it's, like, in

28:36

the Congo and someone's, like,

28:38

vomiting out blood and their insides

28:40

are disintegrating and, like, Susie, three

28:42

seats back literally had too much candy

28:44

at lunch and, like, started vomiting

28:47

on the bus. And then I started

28:49

vomiting on the bus, and I was

28:51

convinced that I had Ebola, you

28:53

know. It was just like a In reality, you

28:55

were just one of a hundred thousand kids to throw

28:57

up on the bus that day. Kids just throw up to

28:59

be a bus driver is to constantly be cleaning

29:01

up kid vomit. Right? like,

29:03

looking for, like, speck specked

29:05

of black blood in my vomit. Like,

29:08

every totally fucking normal

29:10

twelve year old child. And this

29:13

brought you to where you are

29:15

today. Baby, my parents shouldn't have bought me

29:17

the hot zone in paper back from the

29:19

Michael Price Conover. It

29:21

was not that was the hot zone was a Preston,

29:23

I think Richard Preston. It was a It was a non

29:25

fix. It was A00 It's

29:27

a non fix. It was not the was not the abdronomerist

29:30

strain or That's what I was thinking of. Yeah.

29:32

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was a nonfiction

29:34

about about Ebola virus.

29:36

and that family of viruses. And it

29:38

certainly is sensationalized. You know,

29:40

I have good friends now who work

29:43

on Ebola. including who have

29:45

done patient care on a

29:47

bullet. And a bullet

29:49

doesn't look like that most of the time in real

29:51

sense. Uh-huh. But that doesn't make for

29:53

a page turning, you know --

29:55

Right. -- best seller in the mid

29:57

nineties. So, yeah, I think, you know,

29:59

there's always been scientists

30:01

believe it or not, our people. And what

30:03

we find interesting comes

30:05

from things that have happened to us

30:07

and our wives. And so yes, certainly my

30:09

fascination with viruses has come from living

30:11

in the late twentieth century which is an age of

30:13

the reemergence of infectious diseases.

30:16

If you remember before HIV,

30:18

people thought infectious diseases

30:20

were forever gone. Right. Right.

30:22

Smallpox, we had wiped out all of these diseases, wiped

30:25

it out, you know, a polio, measles,

30:27

you know, we essentially

30:29

we thought viruses were to put because

30:32

of that seins, and bacterial infections were all

30:34

treatable with antibiotics. Infectious

30:36

diseases, humanity has

30:39

one you're done. It's

30:41

over. This is, you know, cancer is

30:43

real. Diabetes and heart disease are real.

30:45

Infectious diseases. What I done?

30:47

Yeah. Well, HIV

30:49

showed us that that was

30:51

a little bit of hubris. Uh-huh.

30:54

Yeah. You'd said right before

30:56

we started rolling, that some

30:58

of your work involves, you know, communicating with queer communities

31:01

about how to stay safe during COVID nineteen. Tell me

31:03

a little bit of that work and how you got involved

31:05

in it. Well,

31:07

yeah. You know, I'm just a nerd and

31:09

also a a fag and have

31:11

some slutty tendencies. And So

31:15

at the beginning of COVID-nineteen, when

31:18

all the scientists friends that I knew

31:20

infectious disease folks were watching data

31:22

and we kind of knew that something really nasty was coming

31:24

our way. You know, I

31:26

was doing some outreach to to

31:29

nightlife and sex parties because if

31:31

you're in a respiratory infection, being at

31:33

a circuit party with fifteen hundred people

31:36

or at a sex club in one tiny room

31:38

with two hundred people, It's

31:40

a pretty bad situation for the transmission of

31:42

the virus. Yeah. Because of the dancing

31:44

or the sex. Because of the ventilation.

31:47

Yeah. The ventilation, the

31:49

air. And so I was just doing outreach, you know, and just Yeah. You're like,

31:51

hey, guys. Fuck all you want, but go to

31:53

an open field. Like like like like three

31:55

holes are back, baby. They're back.

31:58

I literally, one of these parties so I've

32:00

been working extensively with these parties. One

32:02

of these parties literally set

32:05

up I'm not gonna name the name of the park or

32:07

the the spot, but a very infamous

32:09

park in New York has a very

32:11

infamous wooden area

32:14

that's used been used for gay cruising since the

32:16

sixties and seventies. Mhmm. And they brought

32:18

their party to that park,

32:20

you know. They hosted a weekly

32:22

outdoor cruising party, and I'm

32:24

like, fucking sluts are

32:26

the best. and

32:28

safe. Safe sluts is what we're we're getting

32:31

it in and caring for each other and

32:33

caring for our communities and it's

32:35

outside and You know? It's like people

32:37

are wearing masks and then taking them down

32:39

to do a blow job and then putting them back

32:41

on, you know. It's like, it's

32:43

winning, it's great, you know. Beautiful. Mhmm.

32:46

So it's it's, you know, these types of

32:48

solutions that, you know, that

32:50

come from someone who has the gay voice

32:52

and does the limpress. And

32:55

isn't I'm like the least

32:57

sex negative person on the face of the planet. So when you when I talk

32:59

to people about the risk

33:02

behaviors or this virus with that, they know it's not coming

33:04

from a place of a

33:06

lot of it historically has come of people

33:08

who just don't like queer sex, don't

33:10

like queer pleasure, don't like thinking about

33:12

the fact that people are out there enjoying

33:15

group sex, and use whatever virus it is, be it

33:17

HIV or monkeypox or COVID as a way

33:19

to put a stop to the thing that they already are

33:21

just deeply in terribly comfortable with.

33:23

Well, when you go and talk to that community, that

33:25

community knows that that you're

33:27

not someone from the eighties saying,

33:29

you know, hey, if if only you didn't,

33:31

you're saying, you're saying, hey, go nuts, but do it

33:33

safely. Right? And they and and they feel

33:35

that. Yeah. You know, and and

33:37

there might be times when there's no way to go

33:39

nuts safe. Right? Like, the the

33:41

sex parties in New York this

33:43

summer voluntarily shut down because of

33:45

monkey box because it just having

33:47

sex with multiple people in one night

33:49

without good access to vaccination

33:51

when there's high levels of a virus in the community. You're

33:53

not -- Right. -- you know, they said we're

33:55

not doing this. You know, when I go to do outreach

33:57

at an event nightlife

33:59

or a commercial sex venue. I wear my little

34:02

necklace that has my little poppers on

34:04

it. I I was in November

34:06

last weekend, and someone was

34:07

like, oh, I forgot my poppers. And I was like, oh, you

34:10

could borrow mine, and I

34:12

was doing outreach upfront and they did a little lap with my poppers

34:14

and then brought them back to me, you know, it's

34:16

like, there's not a

34:18

lot of translation.

34:20

You know, translation

34:22

of a community values or community communication when

34:24

you have someone who's both an

34:26

expert in the topic, but also

34:28

a member of the community. Yeah.

34:31

You know, people just love it. It's like people

34:33

are like, it's so cool that y'all are here.

34:35

We were doing monkeypox vaccines in

34:37

a van outside. if someone had I had two doses, I was walking

34:39

them down to the van. They were coming back to the party.

34:42

It's like it's how it should always

34:44

be. Yeah. It should be the the rule

34:46

and not

34:48

the exception. And that's public health too to say for that

34:50

for those parties to say, hey, there's a

34:52

there's a virus right now. It's sweeping

34:56

through. let's take a break for a couple months or however long it Let's

34:58

make sure people are vaccinated. Like, that's that's

35:00

the core of public health, and it makes

35:04

me reflect again on why when you look at vaccine

35:06

rates in America, there's so much attention given

35:08

to anti Vaxors and there's so

35:10

little attention given to the

35:12

fact that how many communities didn't have, and not necessarily the

35:14

queer community, but communities of color, and

35:16

whatever city you wanna list, didn't

35:18

have somebody from their

35:20

community, saying,

35:22

hey, this is how we keep each other safe who has that voice of

35:25

credibility rather than people who are seen as coming

35:27

from outside or or, you know, not

35:29

not being representative. I

35:33

think, you know, queer people incredibly high uptake of

35:35

the COVID-nineteen vaccine. And I think this is

35:37

a part of why. We

35:40

are it's it's very normal. We have community experts. We

35:42

have infectious disease doctors who are big

35:45

fags. You know, I you

35:47

know, when I'm doing outreach the

35:49

thing. Some people will be like, oh, I'm a doctor, you know, or I'm

35:51

a nurse or whatever. It's like, we are the

35:54

community, and so we don't have to

35:56

have anyway it's

35:58

not communication with outside experts. It's, you

35:59

know, sort of, elevating the

36:01

experts we have within our community because we

36:03

already have the trust. We already

36:05

have the knowledge. It's just

36:07

sort of, and the frustration with monkeypox this

36:09

summer was that when we were

36:11

going to, you know, people in

36:13

the FDA, the CDC, saying,

36:15

you know, my my dear friend,

36:18

this is a story for me. My dear friend had

36:20

monkeypox. He definitely

36:22

had it. He had gone to Europe and had

36:24

gone to a bathhouse. So he had high

36:26

risk exposure when the rates in

36:28

Europe were very high. He had come back. He had

36:30

developed symptoms.

36:32

and he tried to get tested five times over seven days and couldn't get tested.

36:35

Right. Right? And so that we're then in a meeting with people with the

36:37

FDA and the people with the FDA saying, oh, no.

36:39

Testing is great. You know?

36:42

we definitely, you know, everyone can get tested. We're nowhere near. You

36:44

know, not having enough tests. And we just

36:47

we were like, but that's a so

36:49

active. It's so untrue. You're just lying

36:52

to our faces and we have the

36:54

community knowledge to to show

36:56

that. So it was

36:58

very frustrating that we had so many community experts in

37:00

May, in May and June of twenty

37:02

twenty saying, take this seriously.

37:04

Give us

37:06

the tools. It's not just about messaging, oh, don't have sex. It's

37:08

about if you get if you're sick, get

37:10

tested, if you're having sex, get

37:12

vaccinated. Yep. You

37:14

know? And and we didn't

37:16

have those tools. We didn't have tests and we didn't

37:18

have vaccines. So it

37:20

was very difficult time. Just

37:23

getting back in the biology quickly, is there anything

37:25

particularly interesting about monkeypox as a as a

37:27

disease? I'm just curious as

37:29

a virus? Well, The

37:32

most interesting thing about monkeypox as a virus

37:34

is very similar to

37:36

the story from HIV. I'm actually

37:39

working on a a book with a dear friend of mine, a

37:42

girlfriend who's a podcast

37:44

singer and a human rights expert,

37:46

and he's from the Congo.

37:49

The Congo

37:49

is where both monkeypox and HIV

37:52

emerge. And

37:54

these viruses emerge in a social

37:57

and political context. and the social and political context

37:59

of the monkeypox virus is that it

38:02

emerges in the Congo.

38:04

In nineteen seventy, we identify it in

38:06

a human

38:08

And at that time, we were vaccinating for smallpox because we

38:10

were trying to eradicate it from planet earth.

38:12

Right. So basically, everyone in

38:14

that region where monkeypox is in

38:18

rodents and sometimes pops into humans. Basically, everyone was immune from the

38:20

smallpox vaccine. But when we eradicate

38:22

smallpox in nineteen eighty, we

38:24

stopped vaccinating

38:26

against smallpox. that therefore no one

38:28

born after that time has immunity

38:30

against monkeypox. So essentially the

38:32

population immunity

38:34

against monkeypox is going down down

38:36

down over time. And so the virus is popping up

38:38

more frequently and it's staying in

38:40

humans longer. And that

38:42

leads up to twenty ten, twenty seventeen, between twenty seventeen and

38:44

now, there's been a nonstop

38:46

monkeypox epidemic

38:48

in Nigeria. Right?

38:50

And and we somehow imagined this wouldn't affect the rest

38:52

of the world. Right? Because we think Western

38:55

lives are not

38:57

connected. to

38:58

West African lives. And that is an incorrect and

39:01

racist, colonialist assumption. Yeah.

39:04

And so,

39:06

you know, these viruses, the biology of

39:08

these viruses, intersects

39:10

and interacts with social

39:14

and political realities

39:16

and assumptions. And

39:18

so that to me is I think where

39:20

that's both the most depressing and the

39:22

most hopeful thing that there is depressing

39:25

because we try to ignore that

39:27

reality and hopeful because if we now

39:29

take the opportunity right now, to

39:31

say that our lives are connected to Nigerian

39:33

lives. And therefore, Jimio's

39:36

vaccine access to

39:37

Nigerian people, including

39:39

but not limited to Nigerian and queer people matters to

39:41

me materially, you know, and we

39:44

have that vaccine. We let twenty

39:46

million doses of

39:46

it expire in a freezer in

39:50

Denmark. as opposed to giving it to people in

39:53

Ghana, Nigeria, the Congo who

39:55

needed it. Right? And and

39:58

these choices Well, we

39:59

could make

39:59

them differently in the future if we had the

40:02

political will. Yeah. If we

40:04

recognize it, you and I can recognize it right here.

40:06

It's a bigger job

40:08

to make everybody else in power recognize it or to

40:10

make our culture give

40:12

give priority to that. overall.

40:15

It also makes me think about you say that

40:17

these viruses are intertwined with their social and political

40:20

distinctions or

40:22

conditions. that's clearly true because whether or

40:24

not these viruses even arise is related

40:27

to population density

40:30

and you know, proximity

40:32

to public health and and,

40:34

you know, proximity to concentrations

40:36

of animals and how many animals are concentrated

40:38

in a place. And all these sorts of I

40:41

mean, we we create these conditions ourselves. It's really

40:43

interesting that you brought up, that we

40:46

eradicated smallpox and these other

40:48

diseases with

40:50

you know, a technological solution with a vaccine that we distributed widely.

40:53

And then, as you say, had this

40:55

impression, oh, that's just gonna solve

40:57

everything forever. And neglected

41:00

as a as a global society to realize,

41:02

oh, well, more will arise.

41:04

And we actually are in control

41:06

of whether or not they do. They'll arise

41:10

because of our actions. That's right. Because we're concentrating

41:12

people, concentrating animals, increasing

41:14

that level of interaction, and not

41:18

distributing healthcare resources equitably,

41:20

that's going to be the

41:22

result. And it's like, you know, we had the medical

41:24

technology, but not the social technology. And it's a

41:26

thing we keep returning to on

41:28

the show. Yep. Yeah. And

41:28

and, you know, now that we have

41:31

the medical technology, is

41:34

constantly a choice who will have access

41:36

to it, which is another way of saying this social

41:38

technology. Right? Yeah. You know, I think

41:40

one of the stories it

41:42

gets lost in work on

41:44

HIV AIDS is

41:45

what happened between nineteen

41:46

ninety six and two thousand and six.

41:48

Right? In nineteen ninety six, you

41:51

have the biomedicine arise, be developed, they can

41:54

save lives. The three drug

41:56

cocktail that brings people back

41:58

from the brink

42:00

of death. you know,

42:02

activists then said, well, this pill

42:04

costs less than a dollar to

42:06

make. So shouldn't everyone on

42:08

planet Earth have access? and the

42:10

pharmaceutical companies said no. They

42:11

said no. People in South

42:13

Africa will not have access

42:15

to our drug. and work, really a decades

42:17

work, worth of work from

42:20

universities who co owned

42:22

patents to South

42:25

African officials that just said we're actually not going to

42:27

abide by patent law because it

42:29

is ghoulish and we are not going

42:31

to do it. companies

42:33

in India that began manufacturing the

42:36

pills and a huge

42:38

activist push, a global

42:40

activist push to really humiliate the drug companies

42:42

for their greed, and it

42:44

was largely successful. And I

42:46

really hate to do this. Are you ready for, like,

42:48

the worst in

42:50

the entire history of bad news. Oh, give

42:52

it to me. This is what I live for. Tell me

42:54

Have you heard a pet far? No,

42:57

I have not. Pepfar is a US

42:59

government funded organization that

43:02

ensures access access

43:04

to HIV medications to people globally. So in

43:07

South Africa, in India, and Thailand, wherever

43:09

you are, if you have HIV,

43:11

you get no cost HIV

43:14

meds. People shouldn't die of HIV

43:16

given that there are meds that can be made.

43:18

Do you know who funded,

43:20

Pepfar? No, I do not. George

43:22

W. Bush. Good job,

43:24

George. You know

43:28

In two in two thousand and

43:30

three George. I mean,

43:30

in two thousand

43:31

three, it it it it is one of

43:33

the most progressive it is probably the

43:35

most progressive piece

43:38

of American public health funding

43:40

-- Wow. --

43:40

that has ever been made. I think English has one

43:43

or two things on his record like that where

43:45

it's like somebody's administration was

43:48

like, hey, we should do this. And they were just like, yeah, good idea

43:50

because they weren't completely fucking insane yet.

43:52

They had a little bit of occasionally,

43:54

they would see reason. apparently

43:56

someone went to George Bush and said people are dying of HIV and

43:58

they don't need to, and that made him really

44:00

mad. Yeah. You you really was

44:02

like, I mean, this guy had

44:04

one compassionate thing in him. And and it was

44:07

that people don't need to die of

44:10

HIV unnecessarily. But, know,

44:12

we argued in January of twenty twenty

44:14

one that we needed a Pepfar for

44:17

mRNA vaccines for COVID. Right?

44:19

That that it's the same thing that no one

44:21

should go on vaccinated against a

44:24

deadly infectious disease just because of

44:26

where they live on the planet. we were we

44:28

actually had for some time some traction

44:30

in the Biden administration on that

44:32

idea, and pharma really shut it down.

44:34

that the manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines weren't,

44:37

you know, it was the same thing where like

44:39

you're not going to lose money. Let's have a

44:41

factory in South Africa.

44:44

on how to make mRNA vaccines for this one. And they basically

44:47

said, no, bitch, you can't do it because it's not

44:49

just about this mRNA vaccine. It's

44:52

about the next one and the next one and the next one and we are not gonna teach other

44:54

people how to use this technology. They

44:56

they see it as a slippery

44:59

slope for them where it's

45:02

gonna reduce ability to capitalize on any number of

45:04

future, so other mRNA

45:06

vaccines using that technology to

45:09

to cure other diseases? Is that what they were concerned with having

45:11

their vaccine? Wow. But this

45:14

but mRNA vaccines, as we've talked about

45:17

on this show, are the greatest you you got your hands up. You're

45:19

like, hey, it's not me, man. Meet

45:21

you. mRNA vaccines are one

45:23

of the greatest medical

45:26

technology break throughs of the last couple decades. They're incredible.

45:28

We did a bunch of episodes on them and

45:30

how how like, once you understand how

45:32

they work,

45:34

they're like, fucking space

45:36

race shit. They're incredible, and

45:38

they are so there's such a positive

45:40

move for our ability to fight other diseases.

45:42

And so the fact that they would stand

45:45

in the way of that is unconscionable.

45:47

Yep. It

45:47

was, I mean, it was it was

45:49

just a very, yet again, a

45:51

very frustrating activist you

45:54

know, three, four month push where

45:56

we really thought we might be able to get something

45:59

really incredible done. on mRNA vaccines, you know, that

46:01

could have prevented Omecron. Right? It's like if you get

46:04

enough people vaccinated that there's less viral

46:06

replication, you also prevent

46:08

viral evolution.

46:10

It's such a win win. We thought it

46:12

was such a no brainer. It wasn't that much money. You know, people around the

46:14

globe love Pepfar. I think there's a lot of philanthropy

46:16

that people in a lot of countries

46:20

are resentful about. They don't love it. People fucking love

46:22

the pet far. You go to any country of

46:24

the world. And people are like, yeah,

46:26

pet far is fucking awesome. them,

46:28

you know. And it and it brings people into into primary healthcare for other things

46:30

as well. It's just like a really great

46:32

program. Yeah. And so, you

46:36

know, these patterns of emerging diseases

46:38

where Pepfar is basically funding

46:40

for HIV meds. So, you know,

46:43

then we saw the need for a pet

46:45

for egg program for COVID. And then we saw the

46:47

need for a pet for egg program

46:49

for monkeypox. So I think what

46:51

infectious disease experts are thinking about is

46:53

that infectious disease money needs to

46:55

no longer be siphoned into this is

46:57

HIV money and this is COVID money and this

46:59

is monkeypox money. there's gonna be shifting global needs and

47:01

there is a high global need as you're saying

47:04

now, you know, given the planet is warming,

47:06

people have more and more interactions

47:08

with wildlife, animals

47:10

are concentrated in certain places

47:12

where people also are, there's going to be

47:15

a global need for HIV monkeypox.

47:18

COVID, you know, got polio, malaria.

47:20

Right? So we need money that is

47:22

able to be accessed by what people

47:26

need that funding for

47:28

for treatment, for testing, for

47:30

research and development. And I think we're

47:32

really pretty much everyone I know

47:34

in the infectious disease world is no longer funds

47:37

for this disease than that, funds

47:39

infectious diseases, and have the

47:41

flexibility to be able to move and

47:43

respond to emergencies. because

47:46

our our lives are so global now. We're so

47:48

connected to everybody else on Earth like we need

47:50

this, not just for them, but

47:52

for ourselves. and you would think that would

47:54

be the lesson we learned from

47:56

COVID-nineteen, but it doesn't sound

47:58

like

47:58

we have. I mean, it's the

47:59

challenge of the entire century as

48:02

global collaboration this on climate change,

48:04

on everything else, but it

48:06

continues to be the thing

48:08

that a hundred years from now they're gonna

48:10

be screaming into the past going, why the fuck didn't you

48:12

do this? It was obvious it needed to be done. It just the

48:14

there's there's

48:14

good choices and there's bad ones and we're not making

48:17

the good ones. We have to take another really

48:19

quick break. We'll be right back

48:21

with more Joseph Osmudson, and I positive I promise it

48:23

might be a little bit more positive. Or maybe not, we'll find out

48:25

Oh, yes. Let's let's get hopeful in this one. Let's do

48:28

it again. I believe Okay. we'll we'll we'll

48:30

be right back. We'll be hopeful with

48:32

Joseph Adlington.

48:35

I'm

48:36

gonna start a podcast called

48:38

being hopeful with Joseph

48:39

Osminson. Oh, that's a wonder that's

48:41

a wonderful idea. Okay. Each

48:44

each episode will be exactly seven seconds

48:46

because that's about as much hope as I can

48:48

muster any

48:50

given day. Okay. Well, we're gonna include that. We're back now. IIII

48:52

want I want I want that promise from you on the

48:54

record. So, Joseph, I wanna ask about

48:56

your book because it is

48:59

really fascinating when I started looking into

49:01

it in preparation for this episode. It's it's

49:03

really a book of literary essays in in

49:05

addition to being a book about vaccines

49:08

and viruses and all the other

49:10

biological things that we might expect. And

49:13

so tell me about you

49:15

know, that part of your work and and

49:17

how you, you know, became how

49:20

you wanted to start doing that sort of

49:22

writing? Yes. So, you know, I don't know if you

49:24

ever. Anyone's paid attention to the rest of this conversation, but I'm kind of a nerd.

49:27

Mhmm. Actually, you know, I also

49:29

come from Arts back around.

49:31

And so in at the very beginning of

49:33

my education coming out of, like, a

49:36

really poor town in the in the

49:38

rural west, I studied French literature and biology by

49:41

side. And then

49:42

I studied biology in France.

49:45

I did a one year

49:48

master's program in Glenobbe, France -- Mhmm. --

49:50

where I was studying the biophysics of the

49:52

pre on protein, which causes mad cow

49:54

disease and crops sold Jacob. And

49:58

I've always

49:59

had reading and writing as a really

50:02

essential component of my life.

50:04

I just again, that's someone who grew

50:06

up in a really rural town without a lot of access to ideas

50:08

and to people, you know,

50:10

to to scholars or writers or

50:14

people doing creative work.

50:16

I met so many ideas that

50:18

expanded my life in books, you

50:20

know. And when I read Judith Butler's

50:22

gender trouble, about

50:24

how all gender is

50:26

performative. When I read

50:28

foucault's interview

50:29

where he

50:31

said, homosexuality

50:32

is not so much a system of desire,

50:34

but something desirable because

50:36

of the friendships that lets you

50:39

make. you know, I mean, that

50:41

shifted my insights. Like, that

50:43

that sentence changed my insights

50:46

because I've I had felt that for a long time. I

50:48

had felt that Whereas

50:50

growing up, I was scared of

50:52

being close to other boys. I would

50:55

you certainly couldn't touch other

50:57

boys, you I have a life that's full

50:59

of casual intimacy with

51:02

friends, men and women, and non

51:04

binary. And what I gift that

51:06

is in So, you know,

51:08

books have had this hugely

51:10

profound impact on my

51:12

life and and

51:14

and I'd always been writing. And it comes out of

51:16

writing a scholarly article. I was writing a scholarly

51:18

article about the genetics of sexuality.

51:22

back in the Lady Gaga days if I was born this way, remember those

51:24

remember those days. Mhmm. And I

51:26

as as a noted bisexual, I

51:29

was like, I actually have a lot of choice in my

51:32

sexuality. I actually have a lot of choice around

51:34

who I sleep with, who I'm romantically and

51:36

sexually attracted to Factually, just because I

51:38

could choose to only super women

51:40

doesn't make my queerness any worse or

51:42

better than anyone else's. Yeah.

51:44

So I was kind of pushing back on the notion

51:46

of the soul gay

51:48

identity was like, I've known I was five that liked

51:50

boys and -- Yeah. -- and

51:52

and the the trouble that comes

51:54

with a a genetic

51:56

reductive view of human sexuality,

51:59

and a dear friend of mine who ran a website at the

52:01

time called the feminist wire, which was kind

52:03

of public facing scholarships. So please write

52:05

about this for the

52:08

feminist wire. And I was like, oh, no. I'm I don't do that. I've you

52:10

know, five thousand words emails to my

52:12

friends. I mean, we we would do book clubs

52:14

and just, like, write emails about every channel.

52:17

back That sounds like you're a little bit SAS curious if you're writing

52:19

five thousand word emails to friends. I

52:22

was they were essays that we were just

52:24

writing an email. My this is my

52:26

dear friend. Whitney,

52:28

and she Factually, for my birthday

52:30

one year in the Aats,

52:32

had bound our emails that we

52:34

had written to each other. Hundreds and hundreds of

52:36

pages. of emails about books and art and experiences

52:38

that we had had. Yeah. You know, so

52:40

it it I had always been doing

52:44

the work privately. And the other amazing thing

52:46

that starting to do more public

52:48

writing gave to me was a

52:50

whole new a set of

52:52

friends and community, queer

52:54

writers are just fucking

52:56

awesome and smart and hardworking.

52:58

And often humble, although

53:00

not always, and often

53:02

with good senses of humor,

53:04

although I'll sometimes not always. And

53:06

it and it is through

53:08

actually this work public writing and

53:11

activism that I made so

53:13

many friends who are a generation older than

53:15

me. I had always sort of

53:17

wanted to have queer elders.

53:20

And I had this sort of notion

53:22

that all the queer elders had died of

53:24

AIDS, which of course is not true.

53:26

Yeah. Many people, you know, who are elders for me

53:28

on forty, so sixty and

53:30

up, did not

53:30

die of AIDS. And I

53:34

have varied your friends now who have met, who are

53:36

writers or

53:37

activists. And all of those

53:39

things are just

53:42

in such incredible gifts in

53:44

my life. So I really wanted my book to

53:46

it is it's exactly literary essays.

53:48

His literary essays about viruses

53:51

and how our bodies interact with them. And I wanted to

53:53

bring that craft and that care,

53:55

that rigor, that

53:58

curiosity, that experimentation

54:00

to the page. My favorite

54:02

I honestly, my friends and I were talking last

54:06

night about doing an event where we all got up and read one

54:08

star good read reviews of our

54:10

books. And

54:14

I honestly honestly love the one star good read review

54:16

of my books that are saying, I thought this

54:18

was gonna be a textbook

54:20

on virology. Conover there was a

54:22

blowjob on gate on page

54:24

two. Like, you're a

54:26

bitch. I got your sixteen

54:28

ninety five.

54:30

Literally, one just said not about viruses,

54:32

about gay culture. But

54:36

Yes. Yes.

54:38

You read the book correctly.

54:40

That is that's wonderful.

54:42

I mean, come on every goodreads

54:44

review. Even when you read Even when you

54:46

get the five star ones, you're like, oh, come on. This is this is

54:49

like, no good reads review is

54:51

any good. You know? everybody

54:53

should go back. Just

54:56

just write down what you thought about the book in a little

54:58

journal. You know what I mean? We Write write your

55:00

friend a five thousand word email. There

55:02

you go. write an essay about what you thought about the

55:04

book. Well, I love writing like that. Some

55:06

of my favorite writing is is, you know,

55:08

that which someone who understands the

55:10

science deeply then

55:12

starts thinking about, hey, what does it mean to us? You know, or

55:14

or how does it affect my life in a

55:17

non trivial way? I mean, sometimes

55:19

it's done trivially, but I

55:22

think that that's so

55:24

beautiful. And so let's let's sort of move in

55:26

that direction when you think about what

55:28

you know about viruses and

55:30

virology and all of this. How does

55:32

that change your notions

55:34

of, say, sickness or

55:36

wellness as you know, as a human

55:38

moving through the world or how how might we think

55:40

about them differently? Yeah. You

55:42

know, I write about about this

55:44

in the book that a a human

55:46

being is I is sort of in a

55:48

constant continuum of sick

55:50

and well. Mhmm. Right? You have

55:52

viruses, you have a herpes virus, and you

55:54

almost certainly The example that I like here is Caparci

55:56

sarcoma, which of course is a famous

55:58

cancer that reads the purple

55:59

blotches on

56:02

ACE patients. the patient did

56:04

not -- it's this virus called

56:08

HHS eight or

56:10

HHV eight herpes simplex virus

56:12

eight, and it is an infection that that person has had for many years. But

56:15

because they have a functioning immune

56:17

system, the virus doesn't

56:20

do anything. it chills.

56:22

It sits there. It's when you have a depressed

56:24

immune system due to aids

56:26

you actually, the virus, can

56:29

activate and cause cancer. Right? So do

56:31

you have HHV eight in you

56:33

all the time? Yes. Are you sick from

56:35

it? No. You're only

56:38

sick. when a set of conditions comes about

56:40

that leads to sort of

56:42

the expression of that virus is

56:46

impact. you know, I think there are writers thinking of Susan

56:48

Sontag and you, Avis here. I

56:50

love you, Aviso. I was thinking of

56:52

her when you were talking about

56:55

we're talking about writing in this way. She's -- Yeah.

56:57

-- such a wonderful essayist about

57:00

medical and scientific issues. Sorry, please go on her.

57:02

And and she writes a lot

57:04

about wellness as a moral

57:06

state. Right? Mhmm. The

57:08

American notion that one can purchase

57:10

wellness, that eating a just salad at

57:12

lunch and having a personal

57:14

trainer and having two percent body fat and only drinking

57:16

smoothies. And it's sort of a class

57:18

symbol is what a

57:21

good person does. and

57:24

therefore, you know, being fat

57:26

or being sick is what

57:28

is by inversion an

57:30

indication of a not

57:32

good person. Yep. And fundamentally, the problem with

57:34

this is the only human

57:36

truth that we all share is that

57:38

we all will get sick and die. That is

57:42

that's it. The only experience all human share is

57:44

sickness that we know for sure you

57:46

experience this and so have I. And

57:48

so it sets us all up to

57:50

inevitably be

57:52

the not good person that we are trying to consume

57:54

our way into being.

57:57

And, you know, I think

57:59

there's something deeply tragic about

58:01

-- Yeah. -- about that. And so I think,

58:03

you know, writing against that and

58:06

remembering that we are always

58:08

influx, that being being

58:10

sick sucks, Right? And

58:11

I thought about this so much with

58:13

monkeypox. My dear friends, two of my I have five

58:15

friends total, not a lot of friends. Two of them

58:18

had monkeypox at

58:19

the same time. and

58:20

they were miserable, not just because they had an infection,

58:22

but because they were feeling all

58:24

of the weight of the stigma about having

58:26

a sexually transmitted infection. Palmanet

58:30

is an incredible writer who died of HIV and

58:32

he wrote about the shame of dying

58:34

of an STI. You know, when your

58:36

mother holds your hand on your deathbed,

58:39

in in a way she knows you died from fucking,

58:41

you know, there and there's an

58:43

inherent shame in that. And, you

58:46

know, it's quite bad enough to have AIDS.

58:48

It's quite bad enough to have

58:50

monkeypox. One doesn't need the

58:52

additional illness of the

58:54

stigma associated

58:56

with it. you know, so it inevitably will harm us

58:58

all. So I think there, you know, it is

59:00

hard to undo

59:02

thinking

59:02

about

59:04

being

59:05

sick as

59:06

sort of a moral failure

59:08

or any sort

59:11

of not, you know, not way of being

59:13

healthy, not being I'm turning forty, my body is changing. I used to have a

59:15

six pack. I don't anymore, you know.

59:17

It just, like, it just

59:19

is not possible. for

59:21

me, and that makes me feel away. And

59:24

that's not good, you know. And so I it's

59:26

this constant sort of working toward

59:30

taking value out of states

59:32

of sickness and health and

59:34

wellness and bodies and size.

59:38

It's

59:38

so true what you're saying. I think about

59:40

when people would do COVID-nineteen posts,

59:42

and they still do, of course. But, you

59:44

know, the I've got COVID-nineteen posts.

59:47

so often they would say, I don't know

59:49

what happened. I did everything

59:52

right. I was good. I

59:54

was good. and I got it and

59:56

you could you could feel in that that there

59:58

was a shame about yet somehow

59:59

I got it anyway. I

1:00:02

also

1:00:02

write it I mean, III do a joke

1:00:04

on stage about this right now that I've been working on

1:00:06

about how, you know, when I drink a diet coke and

1:00:08

people are like, oh, don't you can't drink that, that's

1:00:10

worse than regular coke. And, like,

1:00:12

that's not scientific. They're just they're just saying it's a sin. It's a sin to drink

1:00:15

it. Yeah. You shouldn't be drink. It's

1:00:18

it's chemicals. love

1:00:20

when people say it's chemicals. I'm like, bitch, everything is chemicals. Yes. Water

1:00:22

is a chemical. I'm like, you wanna

1:00:24

rock with you. Yes. God.

1:00:28

I, you know, I

1:00:30

love nothing more than like

1:00:33

a barbecue piece of meat. Yeah.

1:00:35

And the thing that makes barbecued meat

1:00:37

is that char on it, and that's literally

1:00:39

a carcinogen. It causes cancer. I

1:00:42

don't I would rather die of

1:00:44

cancer than live a life without grilled meats. You know

1:00:46

what I mean? I think it's fucking

1:00:48

fine. I I don't need to live to

1:00:50

be a hundred and three. I wanna

1:00:52

do poppers. and eat hard steak. But have a

1:00:54

glass of wine and

1:00:56

just it's there's there's

1:00:58

more to life than just

1:01:00

a thirst or

1:01:02

like the right thing all the time. Barry

1:01:04

me in a coffin of Diet Coke for cup

1:01:06

steak. Mine mine would be gin and tonic. Barry

1:01:08

me in a gin and tonic baby.

1:01:11

Incredible. That that's

1:01:14

you know what? I was gonna ask you another question, but

1:01:16

I actually wanna end right on that

1:01:19

as I get I think perfect way to

1:01:21

go out. Popper's mistake.

1:01:24

Thank you, Joseph, for coming on

1:01:26

the show. Please tell us the

1:01:28

name of the book one more time and where

1:01:30

people can get if you have a favorite bookshop you

1:01:32

wanna shout out. Yeah. It's

1:01:34

virology essays for the living, the dead, and the

1:01:36

small things screen and it's wherever books are sold.

1:01:38

Yeah. Bookshop dot org is great.

1:01:40

Yeah. And we have us actually have a special

1:01:42

affiliate bookshop

1:01:44

at factory pod dot com slash books that takes you to our special

1:01:46

affiliate bookshop, if you wanna support this show

1:01:48

and support your local bookstore. Thank you so much, Joseph,

1:01:50

for coming on the show. This has been so much

1:01:54

fun. I've had a I've had a blast. And less

1:01:56

clinically depressed than I was before.

1:01:58

Morris, you know. Oh,

1:02:00

That is what that is the experience I wanna be

1:02:03

I want people to have on this show. Thank you

1:02:05

so much, Joseph. Thank you.

1:02:06

Well, thank

1:02:08

you once again to Joseph for

1:02:10

coming on show, if you wanna pick up his book,

1:02:12

you can get a copy pod dot

1:02:15

com slash books. That's factualy pod

1:02:17

dot com slash books. and you'll be

1:02:19

supporting not just this show, but your local bookstore when you do so. I

1:02:21

wanna thank our producer, Sam Roudman,

1:02:23

our engineer, Kyle McGraw, and everybody

1:02:25

who supports this

1:02:27

show. dollar a month level on Patreon. Now

1:02:30

look, I'm not recording this episode at

1:02:32

home, so I don't have my complete list of

1:02:34

patrons in front

1:02:36

of me. and also the list is getting very unwieldy at this

1:02:38

point. But let me just shout out a couple

1:02:40

people. I wanna thank Mark Harris. I

1:02:42

wanna thank

1:02:44

Peter Zeglen. I wanna thank Oren Cohen. I wanna thank Clifton

1:02:46

Vargas. I wanna thank Larry Lathouf.

1:02:48

I wanna thank Chris

1:02:50

McInlis. I wanna

1:02:52

thank Kelcro. so many of you signed up in the last few weeks, and really

1:02:54

thank you for doing so. If you wanna

1:02:56

join them head to patreon dot com

1:02:59

slash Adam Conover. We'd love to have you join our

1:03:02

community. Thank you to Falcon Northwest for

1:03:04

building the incredible custom gaming PC

1:03:06

that it records so many of my episodes for

1:03:08

you on. Thank you

1:03:10

to enter w k for our theme song. You can

1:03:12

find me online at adam conover

1:03:14

wherever you get your social media or

1:03:16

adam conover dot net Thank you so much for

1:03:18

listening, and we will see you next time

1:03:20

on factually.

1:03:25

Stipends

1:03:27

audio. A podcast a podcast

1:03:29

network.