Why we need to find the truth, and the “curious coincidence” that set off a battle over covid-19’s origin.

We Meet:

Peter Ben Embarek, WHO program manager and covid-19 origins mission leader

Jesse Bloom, virologist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Alina Chan, postdoc, Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard

Natasha Loder, health policy editor with The Economist

Links:

On Finding Answers, by Natasha Loder on Substack

They called it a conspiracy theory. But Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab, MIT Technology Review

No one can find the animal that gave people covid-19, MIT Technology Review

Credits:

Curious Coincidence was produced as part of MIT Technology Review's Pandemic Technology Project, which is supported in part by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation.

The series was created by Antonio Regalado and Jennifer Strong and produced by Anthony Green, Luke Robert Mason and Lindsay Muscato, with help from Emma Cillekens. The executive producer is Golda Arthur.

Theme music was composed and recorded by Jacob Gorski, with Ben Tolliday on cello and Ben Haeuser on woodwinds. The episodes contain original scoring and sound design by Garret Lang.

Art direction by Eric Mongeon with illustration by Selman Design.

The series was edited by Michael Reilly, David Rotman and Jennifer Strong, with fact checking by Matt Mahoney.