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Lab Leak Fever with Philipp Markolin (Patreon)

Published:
2025-10-18 22:16:28
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Join Matt and Chris as they dive into the controversy-ridden world of the lab leak theory, accompanied by biochemist-turned-author Philipp Markolin. Philipp details his journey into the abyss of lab leak lore and sensationalist media, documenting how thorough research was pushed aside in favour of conspiratorial discourse. For those who dream of a world where science triumphs over sensationalism, this episode is your bittersweet symphony.

Links

Philipp's Substack

Lab Leak Fever Book Site

New Documentary Movie about the Lab Leak

Our previous episode on the Lab Leak

Bad Boy of Science: Sam Gregson's channel that includes many interviews with Philipp and relevant scientists

Comments

Protagonist Science

The documentary movie is fantastic, btw. Honestly. It has been winning a lot of awards at the film festivals that showed it to audiences; but so far, no US film festival has seemingly dared taking it up. So... if anybody has any connections, feel free to reach out to me and I can facilitate with the filmmaker directly.

Ema

Sad to hear Eco Health Alliance shut down. Also really enjoying the book.

pr

Fantastic episode.

Greg van Dyk

Are we sure Amazon has the book - it's not coming up in a search of the .au Amazon site?

Ema

I was in SE Asia in late 2019/early 2020. And all this seems straightforwardly true. Like we were in this Vietnamese biotech centre that was made by the French but they didnt train staff. So they had nice equipment but little capacity to use it. They liked Australians visiting to train them, but also didnt cause Australians are fucktards. When the virus really exploded in 2020 during lunar new year everyone panicked. I was travelling through Cambodia and Laos and everyone immediately thought bioweapon. Maybe Chinese, maybe US, but definitely bioweapon. Then the VCP freaked out cause we'd been travelling and didnt let us back into the province. Everywhere they checked your temperature. I remember finally going home and customs were not worried about covid at all, just some pig virus, it was all so strange.

Kgar

Here in the US the political right continues to attempt to rewrite the history of the pandemic. Yesterday we attended a No Kings rally in a small rural Texas town. Anti-science mentality of the right was the subject of a few good natured signs. And yes. Even Texas is only 55/45 red/blue. Don’t give up on us here in the old USA. We’re still here. Trying to get thru this crazy time in our jaded history.

Kgar

What a brilliant summary around the 20 minute mark from the author

Russell

Great interview. Really sad to hear about public health researchers being SWATted. I recently had to file a police report and talk with a detective about credible doxxing and SWATting threats over public health reporting I’ve done that people were mad and misinformed about. The lack of protection/protocol is pretty crazy. After an hour discussion, the basic advice was just, “cooperate with law enforcement if they do end up at your house.” Respect to all the researchers who keep doing what they do in the face of these disinformation campaigns.

Alex H

Good interview, and it's very sad to hear about the harassment of virologists. I just bought his book on Kindle.

Andreas Singer

What a great job Philipp did here. This is an actual contribution to make the world a better place. Many thanks for this! I am always amazed but not surprised that our DTG Patreon consists of such smart and spirited individuals. Btw, Austria did not just give us Hitler but also Mozart, Schwarzenegger etc.

Dada de Broglie

Look at Matt in the book’s praise section. Good quote. Excited to read the book. The antagonist structure sounds interesting. Book club candidate?

Kerena

Such a great interview! Though not very guru-like to put the book out for free. What about a tiered membership of training courses or some such? Just a thought :)

Bernt

Great episode. Can't wait to read the book and watch the doc. I shared this episode to blocked and reported chat because always enjoy pushing that button amongst their audience. The vast majority of the folks over there see the lab leak as all but proven. The first and only reply says "this is a terrible interview with zealot" 🤣. It is an uphill battle at this point but i am glad there are smart people pushing back against popular misconceptions. I think is chris is right that eventually popular opinion will catch up with science, but there will always be the die hard conspiracy theorist.

Brink

Great interview. Philipp did a wonderful job summarizing the state of the science. I particularly liked his explanation of the latest evidence on the natural evolution of the furin cleavage site, since that's the thing the lab leak hypothesizers like to deny the most. I too want to be optimistic that we'll eventually look back on this time and wonder how so many people could be so confidently wrong.

Sue Fricke

Great episode, so brilliantly summarised. Truly shocked to hear the level of harassment and threat to the virologists. Looking forward to reading the book.

Bill Duross

Excellent discussion. Here's hoping the optimism you expressed at the end is borne out. Personally, I suspect we're screwed, but I hope I'm wrong.

Bernt

Anybody know what this guy is talking about? This came from comment when I shared this article in another chat (barpod) "Linked below is a proposal from 2018 directly contradicting one of the author's main claims, which is that no one was studying adding furin cleavage sites to bat coronaviruses as part of GOF research. This proposal to study adding furin cleavage sites to bat coronaviruses lists 5 groups, one of which is WIV. Peter Daszak, a major contributor to the quotes from the author's blog, is in the top left corner of this proposal. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966/defuse-proposal.pdf "I don't know who you are, or what your interest is in this story, but you either trying to dupe people, or you have been duped yourself "

Nancy Hale

Thanks so much for this interview and especially Philipp for his dedication to this work. It’s unfortunate that his original publisher chose to not go forth with the finished book but thank goodness there are ready alternatives. Fear of legal action is a big factor of course, but the harassment history by hardcore lab leak truthers could also be a concern, I imagine. Looking forward to reading the book and seeing the film.

Greg

Phillip is amazing. Thanks Chris and Matt for having him on and create this perfectly summarized version of what actually happened. Great stuff 👍

Lucyna

Really appreciated this episode - very important in the age of the most powerful country actively and sabotaging undermining science. I hope the documentary will be widely available.

Martin 🇧🇻

As a Norwegian my belief was that the lab leak theory (i guess it may be more like a hypothesis) and natural origin wet market theory were a 50/50 toss up. The reason for this is probably that a biologist named Sigrid Bratlie published a book claiming that the lab leak hypothesis was the most probable one. She seemed like a reasonable person, and the media gave her good press (it's not every day a Norwegian scientist is in the news). I never read her book, but just foolishly assumed she was right based on press coverage and such. But now I see that, among others, Kristian Andersen did actually respond to her on several occasions. But I still think her view, which is based on circumstantial evidence and not virology as far as I can tell, is widespread her in Norway, at least among those of us with little scientific understanding of this subject. And it just seemed too crazy of a coincidence that the pandemic broke out in the same city that had one of the few labs in the world researching this exact virus (that I now learn was 1. Not a coincidence and 2. Not the exact same virus/mutation. Very informative interview, and I can also inform those who are interested that Zach Hensel recently wrote an article in one of Norway's biggest newspapers rebutting Sigrid Bratlies assertions.

Linda Sears

I just wanted to chime in about how glad I am that Philipp wrote this book and is featured in the documentary. It frustrates me a good deal that people who don’t understand how science works spin up stories about scientists, who’ve dedicated themselves to study specific things, acting in craven and deceitful ways, and then use the distrust they’ve generated to undermine the sciences in general. I have a great deal of respect for the people who have the intellect, patience, and determination to do science.

Ema

Just finished the book. So well written and researched. The persecution of scientists was really upsetting.