Special Episode: Recipes for Future Plagues

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode of the podcast, Rob Reid and Kevin Esvelt discuss USAID&rsquo;s new &ldquo;Deep VZN&rdquo; program, which aims to discover new pandemic-grade viruses and publish their genomes to the world. Esvelt estimates that there are currently around 30,000 people who could then easily build them.</span></p> <p><strong>Rob Reid</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is a podcaster, author, and tech investor, and was a long-time tech entrepreneur. His </span><a href="https://after-on.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">After On podcast</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> features conversations with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists on topics including synthetic biology, super-AI risk, Fermi&rsquo;s paradox, robotics, archaeology, and lone-wolf terrorism. Science fiction novels that Rob has written for Random House include </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The New York Times</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> bestseller </span><a href="https://amzn.to/32GcIec" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Year Zero</span></em></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and the AI thriller </span><a href="https://amzn.to/3tLzAVg" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">After On</span></em></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. As an investor, Rob is Managing Director at Resilience Reserve, a multi-phase venture capital fund. He co-founded Resilience with Chris Anderson, who runs the TED Conference and has a long track record as both an entrepreneur and an investor. In his own entrepreneurial career, Rob founded and ran Listen.com, the company that created the Rhapsody music service. Earlier, Rob studied Arabic and geopolitics at both undergraduate and graduate levels at Stanford, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Cairo. You can find him at </span><a href="http://www.after-on.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">www.after-on.com</span></a>